Book Review: Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell
If David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue — which traces the arc of a progressive folk-rock band in late-1960’s London — were a movie, it would be directed by Robert Altman. Like Nashville and The Player, Utopia Avenue’s sky is bright with stars, all of them icons of what we Boomers look back on as the Golden Age of Rock and Roll. Look, here’s David Bowie, searching for his niche and hitting on a sexy German photographer; there’s Janis Joplin, commiserating with Utopia’s Elf Holloway on the difficulty of making it in the music business as a woman. Leonard Cohen is here, his voice rich with philosophy and deadpan humor; Brian Jones, good-natured and looking to score; Sandy Denny, resilient and warmly maternal; Jimi Hendrix, doing his own thing, a soft-spoken genius; Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, already weird and getting weirder; Mama Cass Elliot, hosting a party at her house in Laurel Canyon; Jerry Garcia, a guide to the revelatory wonders of LSD; Eric Clapton, Paul Kantner, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa and countless others — even a young Jackson Browne. If you’re a Boomer like me, Utopia Avenue is more than a stroll through rock-and-roll history; it’s like going home.
Still, if a shining constellation of stars were all there was to Utopia Avenue, the book would be entertaining but little more. Fortunately, and as David Mitchell has proven over a host of successful novels, he has larger themes on his mind. While Utopia Avenue charts the rise of a single band and the struggles and maturation of its individual members, it is really about the power of music. Its power to heal and unite, to transport and inspire, to protest and, gradually and if it’s not too intentional about it, to transform. Music scares tyrants shitless, says bassist and singer Dean Moss: “It’s the hooks. Once music’s in yer, it’s in for good. The best music’s a kind o’ thinking. Or a kind o’ rethinking. It doesn’t follow orders.”
Dean, a working-class lad from East End, doesn’t follow orders either, and his struggle to adapt to fame, fortune and the resulting abundance of drugs and women provides much of the novel’s dramatic tension. The other band members have their issues as well. Pianist, singer and songwriter Elf Holloway, whose talent must overcome her insecurity and poor taste in men. The blistering guitarist, singer and songwriter Jasper de Zoet, for whom verbal and emotional cues are a mystery and who faces destruction from a mental illness of fantastical origin. Drummer Peter Griffin, whose jokes both anchor the band and conceal the pain beneath. And back to Dean; creative, volatile and in control neither of events nor himself. But however different their backgrounds and personalities, the music they make together unites them — but only when it’s real, and heart-felt, and when it tells the truth, no matter how unbearably painful.
One of the satisfactions of Utopia Avenue is how Dean, Jasper, Elf and Griff, each beset with his or her own problems, learn to collaborate until, gradually, the band becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Mitchell follows their personal and musical journey with sensitivity, humor and kaleidoscopic detail, skillfully describing not merely the maturation of a band, but the drug-fueled arc of a unique and fragile moment in time. Consider his description of a night at the Scotch of St. James, a London nightclub that served as a gathering-place for the cream of the British music scene in the 1960’s:
HIGH WALLS, BEAUTIFUL people, next year’s fashion, eyes that don’t miss a trick, a corridor that ends in a salon. Smoke is thick, lamplight is foaming, mirrors might be doorways or might be mirrors. Jasper avoids these as best he can. Diamonds dangle, laughter boomerangs, champagne is golden, walls are tartan, bottles line shelves, rumors are spreading, faces are famous but at odd angles, talent is hungry, talent is assessed, lips are glossy, teeth are shown, perfume is French, yobs are northern, debutantes loll and flirt with the rough and the smooth, age woos youth, youth weighs up the pros and cons, senses commingle. Booths line walls.
As in his prior novels, Mitchell’s writing is creative, evocative and insightful. “The sky,” he writes, “is a no-man’s land between afternoon and evening.” On a somber morning “the sky was veiled. The woods smelt of Autumn. Dead leaves drifted on the liquid wind. Pines shushed and soughed. Crows hatched plots.” As a ferry pulls away from the pier, “the grubby sea foams up.” In town, where“ evening pools in London’s gardens, seeps through cracks and darkens streets.” In a darkroom, staring with fascination as an image slowly coalesces, “like a lake giving up its dead.”
A joy common to all of Mitchell’s novels is that he dazzles without showing off, seducing us with description, ideas and humor. Re-emerging in a crisis, a therapist assures Jasper that “old shrinks never retire. We just vanish in a puff of theory.” Meeting Dean on the stairs, David Bowie hands him his card — “David Bowie, artiste-at-large” — and “in a whirl of trench coat and hair, resumes his climb to the top.” In Amsterdam, a Mongolian tells a threatening dog to go away. “Why would a Dutch dog understand Mongolian?” Jasper asks. “Don’t underestimate dogs,” the Mongolian replies.
Readers of Mitchell’s previous novels will recognize a few characters and situations that carry over from the earlier books. In these continuing plot-lines, which represent the fantastical aspect of Utopia Avenue, Mitchell re-introduces prior events in ways that are both intriguing to those familiar with them and understandable to those who are not. If they appeal to first-time Mitchell readers, they may wish to pick-up Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and The Bone Clocks, in particular.
When I turned the final page of Utopia Avenue, I did exactly the same thing I did when I finished Nick Hornsby’s High Fidelity, another great novel about the rock-and-roll music scene. I got up, went over to the stereo, and — for the next several hours — re-kindled an affection for music I hadn’t listened to in years. I don’t know about you, but for my money, any novel that gets you to do that has an awful lot going for it.