A debut collection of interconnected stories explores the bizarre microcosm of the business of rock music, capturing a world of worshipful fans, egotistical and unbalanced stars, and crude A&R executives, in works about a rock goddess named Pussy who experiences a nervous breakdown, cults devoted to Karen Carpenter, and an MTV-sponsored séance to raise the spirit of a dead rocker. Original. 20,000 first printing.
Too Weird for Ziggy
By Sylvie Simmons
Black Cat/Grove Atlantic Press
ISBN: 0-8021-4156-0
Chapter One
from JEREMIAH 18:1-10
We were in the hotel bar after the show, it was just gone two, you could see the bartender
was impatient to go home but hey, only four more hours till our flight so no point going
to bed. There were six of us - me and my photographer Eric, Jerry and Ted from ' XO'
magazine, Paul from 'Hundred % Heavy' and Rollo, the publicist, the man who'd brought
us all over to the States and was right now getting them in at the bar. All of a sudden this
girl comes up on my blind side and taps me on the shoulder and says in a soft Southern
accent, "Pardon me, are you with the band?"
"Certainly is", Eric shot back. "Shoot 2 Kill's chief knob-sucker. Four foot tall, no teeth,
made for the job." "Fuck you", I said with no particular malice. Photographers are all
sociopaths, something to do with always looking at the world through a lump of glass,
plus it was as good an answer as any to the 'are you with the band' question that rock
journalists are always asked.
"Only", she continued, undaunted for someone who looked so small and meek, "I saw
you backstage earlier talking to Frame."
"She's doing a story for 'Pulp'", said Rollo, "June issue, cover, double spread." Like all
publicists he couldn't go long without telling everyone what a good job he was doing.
The girl ignored him. "Do you know Duggsy?" she asked. She meant John Dugsdale,
Shoot 2 Kill's drummer. "Everyone knows Duggsy", chuckled Jerry. "Genius! The star of
the show!"
"You know, God's a good bloke", Eric joined in, "only he does keep thinking he's
Duggsy." The girl just looked perplexed.
"Modesty", Eric explained, "is not Duggsy's strongest suit."
"Neither's drumming", I said, and we all fell about in exaggerated drunken laughter.
Except the girl. She just stood there with her thin hair and long, baggy sweater and pale,
waxy face and said in a pained voice, "Do you know where I can find him?"
Just then two of the band's roadies walked into the bar. "Hey!" shouted the fat one in the
faded black Aerosmith T-shirt. "It's the snorkelling Southerner. Back for another
mouthful, darling?"
"Our cocks", said the other in a bad fake-posh English accent, "are quite frankly
irresistible". He had scrawny grey hair that stuck out from his bald patch and disgusting
trousers whose crotch dangled close to his knees.
"She wants to know where the drummer is", said Eric. "Last time I looked", said
Disgusting Trousers, "he was backstage in a room with a camcorder and two naked birds
on the concrete floor, stoned as fuck, eating each other out." I don't know what she
wanted to hear but it wasn't this. The girl visibly crumpled. She ran out of the bar. I felt
bad. I almost went after her - she had that innocence about her that the Japanese girl fans
have; it makes you want to protect them. But there are certain rules of rock journalism
that are inviolable, chief among them abandoning the bar when someone's getting in the
drinks, and anyhow I didn't want to give the boys any excuse to go thinking I was soft.
"Mad cunt", said Aerosmith. He told us they'd found her hovering by the pit when the
show was over while they were doing the rounds with backstage passes, trawling for
blondes who wanted to meet the band. "She comes up to me and says she has to see the
drummer. So I say", he knocks back a beer, a good third of it spilling onto his T-shirt and
softening up a blob of what I hoped was mashed potato on his chest, "you know the
routine. Only apparently she doesn't. Though her being blonde and female and breathing
naturally we figure that she does."
As a point of information for females this is the basics of the Backstage Pass Transaction.
A sordid business. In a nutshell: they've got something you want (band access), you've
got something they want (XX chromosomes) and so a deal is struck. To get to the
vocalist you fuck the tour manager, for the guitarist you blow two roadies, one for the
bass player, and if it's the drummer you're after they'll send you off for a brain scan, bum
a cigarette and give you an Access All Areas. Drummers, you might have gathered, do
not rate high in the rock pecking order. Neither, for that matter, do girls.
"So, when the dirty deed is done I ask her what the fuck she wants with the drummer. So
I tell her that there was this drummer one time who was touring with Alice Cooper and
Alice's rattlesnake gets out of its snake-box backstage and bites him on the dick. And
there's this rancid old groupie wandering around the corridors looking for famous knobs
to suck and the drummer yells for her to go and get the doctor. So she goes to the doctor's
and tells him the drummer's been bitten on his dick by a snake. There's just one cure, the
doctor tells her. Suck out the venom or he'll die. So she goes back", he falls about
laughing. "And the drummer says, well what did the doctor say? And she says-"
Paul interrupts: "'The doctor says you're going to die!' Come on, that's an antique."
Aerosmith is choking with laughter, tears rolling down his cheeks. If you didn't know
better you might think he was crying.
"And", he manages to get out between gasps, "the girl doesn't even smile. She says, she's
going to marry him. That she's had a message from God. I say, why the hell would God
want you to marry Duggs? Fucking Jesus, he must have it in for you." Duggsy already
has three ex-wives-and three jail terms for assault and battery. Plus an ongoing lawsuit
from an ex-girlfriend, the mother of his child, who says he abused their little girl. Duggsy
hits things. He's a drummer.
"And she says", he rolls his eyes to heaven, "'It is not for me to question God.'"
"Wicked!" Rollo grinned.
"Top five lies told by drummers!", announced Paul. Uh-oh, circle joke. "Number five", I
taught John Bonham everything he knew. "Four", the guy from ' XO' joined in. "I practice
eight hours a day." "Three", yelled Eric-why do men get so excited over lists?-"I'm on
the cover of 'Modern Drummer' any day now." "Two", guffawed Paul "They'd never fire
me. I hold the band together". Aerosmith nodded, "Good one." "Number one", said
Rollo, "my girlfriend's a supermodel". "Nah", screamed Disgusting Trousers, "she's a
fucking great singer and the record label have asked me to produce her album!"
Whoever Duggsy's girlfriend might be, one thing was for sure. She was not going to be a
timid girl with a flat chest on a mission from God.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Too Weird for Ziggy
by Sylvie Simmons Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
In her prose debut, British music journalist Simmons makes the mistake of many writers in assuming that rock stardom is inherently interesting. The problem is, celebrities so often play the role of greedy, oversexed cretins in real life that when it happens in fiction, the reader can easily guess the consequences. Simmons means well in that she means to make fun of her mostly despicable characters, which include a manager who stages the resurrection of his biggest client from the dead and a slimeball singer who sprouts breasts. But they are already so shallow that to cut them down to size reveals nothing if anything, it may endow them with more undeserved notoriety. Likewise, when Simmons tries to empathize with more decent industry specimens, she considers only their slick surfaces when she should be groping for their souls. In the end, country singer/songwriter LeeAnn Starmountain and aging pop tart Pussy are no deeper than their skeevier rockers in arms. Sadly, another Ziggy bites the dust; not recommended. Heather McCormack, Library Journal Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
British music journalist Simmons has taken the years she spent interviewing rock's most outrageous personalities and compressed them into this lurid, engrossing collection of stories, gracefully linked like the incestuous world of rock itself. Alternating between first person and omniscient narration, she chronicles the transcendent weirdness of the music world. In one creepy story, "Pussy," a Blondie-esque pop goddess, disappears; years later, she's found in an East Village tenement surrounded by cabinets and sandwich bags stuffed with her own fingernails and excrement. The devastating effects of fame on personal identity are on display in almost every tale, from "Spitting Image," in which a megalomaniac rock star is ravaged by the kidnapping of his life-size look-alike puppet, to "Autograph," about an insolent rocker whose ex-girlfriend gives him a permanent comeuppance. The stories are at their best when Simmons depicts a scenario that doesn't read like a tabloid dream. In "I Kissed Willie Nelson's Nipple," a tough-living country star delivers a soliloquy so rich with hard-won wisdom that it trumps the too bizarre "Allergic to Kansas," in which a sexed-up lead singer mysteriously grows breasts. On these pages, fictional rock stars mingle with real ones, reminding readers, as with those ubiquitous Elvis sightings, that true rockers never die. They're just preparing for a comeback. Agent, Paula Balzer at Sarah Lazin Books. (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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