Rock Bottom: A Novel [Paperback]

Michael Shilling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2009

Once, the Blood Orphans had it all: a million-dollar recording contract from Warner Brothers, killer hooks, and cheekbones that could cut glass. Four pretty boys from Los Angeles, they were supposed to be the next big thing, future kings of rock and roll.

But something happened on the way to glory, and now, two years later, along with their coke-fueled, mohawked female manager, they have washed up in Amsterdam for the final show of their doomed and dismal European tour. The singer has become a born-again Buddhist who preaches from the stage, the bass player's raging eczema has turned his hands into a pulpy mess, the drummer is a sex-fiend tormented by the misdeeds of his porn-king father, and the guitar player--the only talented one--is thoroughly cowed by the constant abuse of his bandmates.

As they stumble through their final day together, the Blood Orphans find themselves on a comic tour of frustration, danger, excitement, and just possibly, redemption.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A veteran of Seattle's rock scene chronicles the darkly comic ups and downs of L.A. foursome Blood Orphans, who've stumbled into Amsterdam to play the last dates of a tour that has gone disastrously wrong. Led by mohawked female manager Joey and male lead singer Darlo, the group had been primed to become the next big thing, but after a rock journalist pegs the band's lyrics as racist, things crumble—a night in jail, a riot, dismal record sales and the band gets dropped as the opener on an Aerosmith tour. Told in retrospective with alternating chapters from Joey's, Darlo's and many other points of view—including eczema-ridden bass player Bobby, drummer and sex addict Shane and nice guy guitar player Adam, who tries to keep the band mates from tearing each other apart—the sometimes predictable Behind the Music retrospective framework is enlivened by characterizations as deep as would seem allowable for such a narcissistic gang and industry, brisk observations about the pitfalls of fame, and often funny banter among the dueling inhabitants of a sinking musical ship. (Jan.)
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Review

"ROCK BOTTOM is a raunchy, knowing, brilliant novel - a diamond-sharp, lightning-witted, sex-packed, hilarious account of the last days of a fallen-from-grace hard rock band, marooned in Amsterdam under the crashing ruins of a lost greatness. Shilling, himself a former musician, is our insider guide to the ravages and seductions of the rock-and-roll world, and he describes the sights with a tender, pitch-perfect savagery. But more than this, the novel is a remarkably accomplished piece of art - a complicated survivor's tale, full of hilarious sadness, virtuous cruelty, beautiful destruction, the sort of book you pick up with high expectations and that, to your surprise and delight, surpasses them all, a book funnier, smarter, sadder, and more inventively composed that you could possibly have hoped. It's a hit, I mean - I was laughing all the way through, and singing along." (Michael Byers, author of LONG FOR THIS WORLD )

"A rock and roll novel at once rocking and rollicking. ROCK BOTTOM knowingly skewers the pretensions of the music business, while never taking them seroiusly, and the result is a simultaneously scabrous yet affectionate portrait of a band and its entourage in the final throes of a tour de farce. Michael Shilling writes with wit, fury and an infectious gusto; it's the kind of high-energy prose that makes a reader want to get up and strut their stuff." (Peter Ho Davies, author of THE WELSH GIRL )

"Michael Shilling's debut is everything one wants in a novel: tragic and thrilling, farcical and realistic. The prose is exuberant in its range and wildness, but also in its little treasures, its unfoldings and depths. Here is a writer who brings characters to life, circumstances to light, and imbues them with resonance, traveling the whole map of human obsession and longing with breathless energy. This is a sexy, funny novel, but with the kind of profundity we need from our best novelists at this time. Michael Shilling is an important new writer, and this is novel you won't forget having read." (Laura Kasischke, author of BEFORE HER EYES and SUSPICIOUS RIVER )

"Finally, at last, an ass-kicking, authentic rock & roll novel, one that peels back the veneer and gloss and--with an insider's eye--exposes the lovely, wondrous dirt." (David Means, author of ASSORTED FIRE EVENTS )

"[Rock Bottom is] enlivened by characterizations as deep as would seem allowable for such a narcissistic gang and industry, brisk observations about the pitfalls of fame, and often funny banter among the dueling inhabitants of a sinking musical ship." (Publishers Weekly )

"Simultaneously bleak and archly funny... With rich characterizations and surprisingly complex back stories, the author gets under the skin of his ragtag brotherhood... A thoughtful snapshot of a crumbling rock 'n' roll fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 373 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; 1 edition (January 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316031925
• ISBN-13: 978-0316031929
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,708,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Shilling is the author of Rock Bottom, which Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company published in 2009. This summer, the book will be adapted to the stage by the Landless Theater Company in Washington DC. Mr. Shilling, whose short stories have appeared in The Sun, Fugue, and Other Voices, teaches at Seattle University, plays the drums in a soul band, and is working on a novel, Midnight Hippies, which involves people running out of time while running after each other. It takes place in sunny Miami, rainy Seattle, and snowy California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Behind the "Behind the Music", January 28, 2009

By 

G. Schutz - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rock Bottom: A Novel (Paperback)

In rock and roll mythology, there are two linked stories that seem to be told over and over again: Pride, and The Fall. We admire a band's success, marvel at its excess -- and then, like motorists passing a grisly accident, we rubberneck at its self-immolation. VH1's Behind the Music series has made an industry out of telling and retelling this story -- adding, for the sake of narrative, a Part Three (call it Aftermath, or Redemption) and bending over backwards to force every band into their up-down-up, N-shaped rubric. The effect, of course, is facile, the glossy television product of elided facts and carefully edited interview snippets.

Rock Bottom, Michael Shilling's debut novel, bears a paradoxical relationship to this old rock and roll story. In recounting the very bad last day of the Blood Orphans -- a very bad band that could, once upon a time, have been very good -- Rock Bottom is at once a raucous celebration of rock mythos and magic and a searing portrayal of what it might actually be like to be caught at the center of a VH1-worthy storm. What makes this novel noteworthy is Shilling's ability to reconcile these objectives. Rock Bottom embraces the myths of rock even as it explodes them.

This feat is the product of an apparently egoless author. Like a good impresario once the band has taken the stage, Shilling makes himself invisible: the narration of the novel is given entirely over to its central characters, the four band members and their female manager. Jumping, in successive chapters, from one troubled head to the next, Shilling writes in an extremely close third-person that occasionally verges on stream-of-consciousness. The effect is remarkable: constructed completely from the actions, memories, and language of the characters themselves (none of that intrusive Behind the Music narrational presence), a complete picture of the Blood Orphans' dissolution emerges. The language may be salty, but one of the pleasures of this novel is the way in which it speaks through its characters. To deny them their F-bombs would be to deny them a certain degree of reality on the page. Shilling, to his credit, never flinches.

It would be unfair to call these characters "unlikeable" and leave it at that -- more often than not, these characters don't like themselves. Each is responsible, in his or her own way, for the failure of a band that began with such promise; the power of the novel lies in its relentless plot, which forces each bandmember and their manager to face that fact. Think of that line from Nixon: "Mistakes were made." With the passive voice, he camouflages his culpability. Scene by scene, Shilling strips the camouflage of passive denial from his characters until at last they see themselves -- and we, as readers, likewise see them -- clearly.

Because of this, though it brims with brio and black comedy, Rock Bottom is also a novel haunted by the specter of what could have been; a keenly rendered awareness of loss inflects many of its best passages. (Consider the deeply tragicomic moment, early in the novel, when Bobby the bassist stumbles upon a Blood Orphans display in a record store.) The path these characters follow is mythic, but by their humanity -- Shilling has imagined each so intricately, in all his or her particularities -- they rejuvenate it. Shilling's is an exciting new voice: muscular, ballsy, and heartfelt.

At a key moment in the novel (I won't reveal where, or in what context), a blue arc of electricity appears. Its purpose, I think, is to remind us: the Rock Gods are present here. Rock Bottom is a myth expertly repackaged. Through the humanity of its characters, it transcends its subject, finding art where VH1 finds only sensationalism. Rock Bottom takes an age-old rock and roll story and retells it in a funny, fresh, and surprisingly moving fashion.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shilling Nails the Musicians, February 24, 2009

By 

David Berck "cruecut" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rock Bottom: A Novel (Paperback)

I thoroughly couldn't stand some of the characters in this book. Therefore, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Shilling created living, breathing personas and was able to talk about the last day in the life of a band named Blood Orphans. More than just a story about five individuals that made up a completely dysfunctional rock n' roll family, the author showed how absolutely dreadful people can be to each other yet still delude themselves and hold on to a common bond.

Some people may mistake Shilling's take on relationships to be one whereby he believes that every person can be magically fixed by finding a special person in their lives, but I believe it can go deeper than that. What he may really be driving at is that, on some level, sometimes all we need is for someone to see the good in us and believe in it. Also included is a cautionary tale of how that belief can be completely derailed once you get to know someone. There are also times when Shilling also overreaches in trying to come up with detailed terminology (being involved in the medical field, I can tell you that some of what he put down was incorrect), but that can also be very charming and I found myself chuckling with all the rock references that were included.

This is definitely a solid first effort and an engaging story that isn't just about some of the stereotypical rock-god-complex driven musicians. I look forward to see what else the author has in store for the future.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Day In The Demise, February 7, 2009

By 

Pop Culture Mulcher (Detroit, Michigan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Rock Bottom: A Novel (Paperback)

Rock Bottom is about the final day of a band's collapse. The Blood Orphans are formerly ironic former rock gods turned Ugly Americans in a washed up band. None of the characters are particularly likable in the beginning, but by the end of the novel I found myself rooting for all of them. Rock Bottom is fast paced, mostly funny, and occasionally touching. It's not the next Great American Novel, but it's a strong first showing from Michael Shilling. Highly recommended.