Mockstars - Christopher Russell

Book Details

Country: UK
Language: English
Genre: Humour
Publisher: Red Button Publishing
Publication Date: 2014


Fictional Artist: Satellite
Genre: Rock
Country: UK
Real World Analogue: Russell's own band, Lightyears

Jacket Blurb: 

‘Back in the nineties, when everybody else was at illegal raves taking ecstasy, what were you boys doing?’
I look at George. He shrugs.
‘Jigsaws,’ I reply.

Chris and George are best friends, and they want to be rockstars. Unfortunately, a childhood spent playing in the school orchestra and listening to Jimmy Nail has left them a little fluffy round the edges. At the age of 23 they’re still living with their parents and it’s becoming clear that their acoustic duo Satellite doesn’t resemble Bon Jovi nearly as much as they’d planned.

So how do two ordinary boys from the Home Counties go about taking on the cut-throat world of rock ʼn’ roll?

They’re just going to have to fake it.

True to life, funny and moving, Mockstars is a coming-of-age story about friendship and chasing the rock ʼn’ roll dream, inspired by the real-life tour diaries of the author’s band The Lightyears. An uplifting comedy with its own accompanying soundtrack, it’s the perfect summer holiday read.

Review: 

Mockstars is an easy and funny read. I ploughed through it in one sitting, so you can take from me that it's engaging and entertaining.

The depiction of gigs played by Satellite/The Lightyears rang true. My bands were never at the same sort of level, but descriptions of changing rooms being full of crates of soft drink and the general levels of squallor depicted in venues brought back suppressed memories. It's somewhat heartening to learn that even the next level up in terms of gigs were no less grotty.

The depiction of the so-called 'European tour' of ski-resort towns also rang largely true. When a bunch of us went skiing in the arse end of Finland in the early 2000's, we were gobsmacked to discover Dr Feelgood playing in the town's only venue - though not as gobsmacked as they were to see my mate Rich in the crowd waving his Southend United scarf. After the show they came and found us and we had a good old natter about finding yourself touring venues called 'The Crazy Reindeer' to tourists after a bit of apres ski.

There's a reason all this rings true. The Lightyears are a real group, author Chris Russell is their keyboard player and George, John and Tony really are in the band. Russell's novel is based upon his tour diary, which you can read at http://www.thelightyears.com (see Blog). The tale of cramming an entire band and their equipment into a Vauxhall Omega for a European Tour are true - and George really did smash the car's window with Chris's keyboard. Tony really did have to play while suffering from an appallingly violent stomach bug in ski resorts full of public school kids. They really did win the first-ever INDY Awards ceremony. Accoding to Russell, the book is about 60:40 in favour of reality.

As far as I can work out, pretty much only the Heidi and the Black Cats aspect to the plot is fictional. The Black Cats do seem a little too full on and too much of a cartoon, but then you only have to read The Dirt to realise there are plenty of bands that do party exactly that hard. If the characters perhaps lack nuance, then it's entirely excusable in a comedy.

You have to wonder how his band mates take being fictionalised, but the band is still very much a going concern, so presumably they're not too unhappy. It's fair to say that Chris comes across worse in all this, appallingly gauche and overly bothered by his lack of rock cred. You have to wonder whether the crack cocaine episode raised eyebrows when his parents read it, no matter how much he (I assume) protested it was invention! Having said that, in an interview on his publisher's website, he does comment "one of the scenes you’ll assume I made up did, rather worryingly, actually happen."

There were a couple of moments where I winced slightly as someone else's joke was thrown out as a band member's witicism; saying a drummer lost both arms in a gardening accident, for example. But perhaps the expectation was that the reader would understand this was appropriation of another's line, after all, many of us have absorbed favourite comedy lines into our own repertoires. It just felt a bit tonally off to me.

Perhaps most strange is the fact that the songs that started off as fiction in the novel have started to become real ones and will be released at some point in time. This is all a bit meta for me.

I can't pretend it's a book with any tremendous insights into either the world of rock or the human experience, but it's a good romp, comes across as authentic  and has some proper belly laughs.