"What do you get if you cross an Angry Young Bassist, a folk-scene doyenne, a Stratocaster demigod and a jazz drummer? Answer: Utopia Avenue, a band like no other."
It's 1967, and psychedelia has emerged in the London music scene. Rock bands are a dime a dozen, and an unlikely pair of musicians decide to enter the fray. Bassist Dean Moss (working-class, charming and impulsive) and guitarist Jasper de Zoet (oddly formal, awkward, constrained) are an odd couple. When they are joined by folk singer/keyboardist Elf Holloway and the crusty Griff Griffin on drums, Utopia Avenue is born. With manager Levon Frankland in tow and everyone but Griff writing songs and singing lead, the band begins its rapid ascent.
As each single and album outperforms the one before, they're still awestruck when they cross paths with Charlie Watts; Janis Joplin advises Elf on surviving as a woman in rock; and Jerry Garcia hooks Dean up with drugs. (Levon trying to figure out if artist Francis Bacon is hitting on him is priceless.) And they discover fame doesn't erase what haunts them privately--perhaps no more so than with Jasper, who is tortured by constant knocking and a voice in his head.
Fans of the David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks) universe will find nods to Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, but Utopia Avenue stands alone for its immersion in the exhilarating, hazy counterculture of the late 1960s. Fun, frisky and triumphant, this novel is a trip that is "less the stuff of life and more the stuff of dreams." --Frank Brasile, librarian