Harlan Ellison, Spider Kiss (M Press, 2006)
There have been many books written about rock and roll, some good, some bad, but this novel, originally published in 1961, has the singular distinction (as it proudly proclaims on the back cover) of being the only one enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ellison is best known for his speculative fiction and non-fiction writing, so it's hard to imagine him tackling something so mundane as the story of a rock star, but as he comments in his author's note, Stag Preston is a symbol, rather than a portrayal of any particular rocker and Spider Kiss is a fable.
Spider Kiss portrays the meteoric rise and fall of the career of one Luther Sellers aka Stag Preston, as told by one of his handlers (and primary stakeholders) Shelly Morgenstern. The bulk of the novel is told in flashback, as Shelly reminisces how things got to where they are, and where he is, acting as little more than a panderer for Stag, obtaining girls for him from the audience. It opens mid-concert, with Shelly just off-stage, musing, while Stag rocks to a full house of mesmerized and worshipful teens. While the opening scene is perhaps a bit too jam-packed with adjectives, anyone who's ever been stage front at a good rock concert knows damned well that Ellison's captured perfectly the steamy erotic frisson of the moment.
Back to Shelly's thoughts -- just four years back, he discovered Luther at a poker game in Louisville, Kentucky and, recognizing the boy's innate talent, dragged him off to Colonel Jack Freeport (though Ellison is adamant that the fictional characters are composites, Freeport seems an obvious nod to Colonel Tom Jackson), Shelly's boss. Similarly impressed, both men ensure that Luther's winning prize at the local talent show they are there to judge is a recording contract with Freeport.
And so the two men head back to New York -- or Jungle York, as Shelly calls it -- with their diamond in the rough. But before Stag even records his first demo, the signs are already evident that he's no easy-going hick: his departing treatment of his foster family in Kentucky was icy, at best, and he manages to negotiate a very high percentage of his own contract for himself. At first every thing Stag touches is gold -- his singles top the charts one after the other, his fans adore him, the critics write glowing reviews. But Stag has a thing for alcohol and the ladies and keeping him under control isn't always the easiest thing. And that unfortunate task falls to Shelly, who may have misgivings about the boy, but doesn't yet shy away from the money Stag represents.
As Stag's career blossoms, his debauchery worsens, and Shelly's disgust with him grows, though never enough to actually break ties with either Freeport or Stag. One boiling point is reached when Stag impregnates a young black singer while on tour. Shelly's not so much concerned about the scandal of a pregnancy, but is horrified at the overt racism that both Freeport, a Georgian, and Stag dole out. As a Jew, Shelly is very sensitive to such slurs, even if they're not directed at him – but as Stag is ever quick to point out, Shelly isn't walking away from the money Stag represents. And so he stays. But Stag is digging a deep hole for himself, spending money left and right, even as he earns it, and he has to borrow to pay the girl off. And borrow again when he inadvertently shoots a stag (ha!) film and has to buy all the prints.
We see how callous Stag is when his "foster" mother comes to see him at a show, begging him to come sing at her late husband's funeral. If Stag could avoid her, he would. Since he cannot, he is rude to her and refuses to grant the dead man's dying wish. Somewhere along the line he woos Shelly's woman Charlene away from him – and uses it against Shelly on at least one occasion as minor blackmail. It also comes to light at some point that he lied to Shelly about his parents having died. He saw Shelly and Freeport as his ticket out of poverty and jumped at the chance. It's that that moment that Shelly truly feels he is responsible for unleashing Stag Preston on the world, something he has felt somewhat guilty about for a while.
It all falls apart, though, when the book catches up to the present and Stag inadvertently causes the death of a teenaged fan club president he's trying to seduce . . . and gets away with it (accidental death, it's ruled). The same day, Freeport tells him that he's been sold off to a syndicate, who are, as Shelly predicates, strictly second rate. Even though everything was kept hush-hush, Stag loses Charlene; his shows are no longer packed; Shelly finally bails . . . and when he defies the syndicate one too many times, they send thugs after him, intending that he never sing again. Shelly visits Stag in the hospital, where the boy pleads with him to take revenge on his behalf. Shelly refuses, and leaves him there, walking away from the singer for what he hopes is the last time.
And that should be the end of it, but, as Ellison says in the first paragraph of the final chapter:
In art it is all clean, neat, final, tied up in a socko exit line and a clear moral point. In life it is messy; the ex-lovers see each other a few more times, drag it out, do it sloppy. The guy who rebelled slips back and takes a few more jabs to his ethics, his manhood, his pride. The nice black-and-white punchlines get muddy and gray and insubstantial. The Fastest Gun in the West grows old and wets his bed. The Wicked Witch of the East gets psychoanalyzed and turns out to be a latent dyke. The beautiful princess gets a little too heavy and the prince cheats on her with the scullery maid. It happens. That's life.
And so, some time later, Shelly runs into Stag in a dive strip bar in New Orleans. And miracle of miracles, the boy has grown into a young man . . . and he can still sing, still hold sway over an audience, still palpably wield power over them. Though he tells Stag he will help him be big again -- in fact momentarily has visions of doing so -- Shelly takes the high road, refuses to unleash Stag on an unsuspecting world again. He's learned his lesson. In this sense, the book's as much about Shelly as it is Stag. In fact, probably more so; with the exception of the chapter dealing with the stag movie, the entire book is from Shelly's perspective. I'm not so certain Shelly should feel so guilty about being Stag's "creator." In another day and time (such as today) Stag could be vile without any help at all from poor Shelly. All he'd need to do is get a video on YouTube.
It's somewhat quaint now to look back at Stag and really see him as evil. Yes, he was a manipulative bastard, but in a age of media whores like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and where rock star sex films can be had on the Internet and celebrity drug overdoses are so yesterday, Stag seems almost innocent in a way. Sure he was a monster of sorts for his time, much in the way Frankenstein was for his time, but today . . . today he'd be a museum piece, a relic, with a label indicating "Early Representative Sample of Cult of Personality." I think that's what makes this book important -- it represents an era of rock that's gone for good now (though not necessarily a better one -- prefabricated music is still prefabricated). Ellison's captured a time that might as well be mythical for those of us too young to remember it, that era just after the payola scandals, but before the British invasion hit big, when some young buck like Luther could rule the airwaves and the hearts and loins of teens across the land. . . .
