The Psychogeography of “Dead Rock Stars”
(NB- this one is for people who’ve already read it only- spoiler threat alert!)
I’ve been very touched by the reviews and response so far to “Dead Rock Stars”. Given what a personal novel it was (I was brought up on the Isle of Wight and much of it centres around a young, lost, creative boy called Jeff who isn’t a million miles from me) I feared it wouldn’t find an audience or even have once, so when it went to #2 on some Amazon charts a week or so ago I was encouraged.
More than any other novel I’ve written it was written with real geographic locations in mind, many of them based around the places I lived as a young boy on the Isle of Wight.
But the opening scene is set, during the nineties heyday of Emma (heavily into her Kinderwhore phase at this point) at The Purple Turtle in Camden, a venue which I had great times playing at with my own band Alba Nova.
It’s a novel written over the course of one summer, a summer in which Jeff brings himself to read the diary that his sister, a young rock star called Emma, left behind when she tragically died on the cusp of fame. Many of Jeff’s haunts, during the summer in which he goes to live on the beach, are were my real life haunts.
I wonder if people have picked up on something in the book that was wrought from very real emotional experiences, and I can’t help but think that the location has something to do with it. The Isle of Wight, and particularly the stretch of land on the West coast from Seaview around to Bembridge, is picturesque, characterful and far more unique that the i-phone pictures that are to follow will attest to.
Some of the readers have commented a lot on the location. During an era of Covid travelling is harder than ever, and by a peculiar twist of fate on the day the novel was released (as reviews poured in) I was on the Isle of Wight. I felt a curious intuition, when I wasn’t checking my phone, to take photos of the locations where key scenes in the book are. So this blog, obscure even by my standards, will mean nothing to casual visitors here, and possibly something to people who’ve read the book. I’ll share some photos of the places in the novel where key scenes are, without giving too much away from the plot. So, in essence, this is an article for readers of the novel who have told me they are going to read it again, in the hope that in so doing visual aspects of the novel, before described only in words, will be further illuminated.
Or this is just a blog piece with some nice beach pics.
On arrival on the island Jeff is ‘rescued’ by his friend River, who arrives in a beat up sailing dinghy to sail him back to Bembridge from Seaview. This scene echoes many summers spent by Seaview Yacht Club, where I spent many summers attending their Cadet Week.
They sail around to Bembridge Beach, where River stashes his battered boat, Brown Owl on the pebbles there.
This beach, on the cusp of the village where much of the story is set, is where I lived as a child. In the thick woods above the beach Jeff runs away from the family he is supposed to be staying in.
On the books publication day I visited this beach and, out of mild curiosity, looked for a spot where Jeff may have set up tent when he was escaping the world to immerse himself in Emma’s diary.
I found a winding, hidden path that takes beach walkers along the shore whilst keeping them elevated above the sand. It’s here that ‘Jeff’ sleeps throughout much of the summer whilst he immerses himself in Emma’s last words.
Where he wakes up to the sound of the sea, which becomes, in his words, ‘like a family member that you can’t get away from.’
In Emma’s diary she describes a disastrous (and for me, semi-autobiographical) acoustic gig she undertakes in the local village and where she goes with her friends after it. This was set in the strikingly beautiful, white-gold sands by Bembridge Sailing Club
At the other end of Bembridge Beach, at the entrance to Swains Road, is the bench where Ruth sees Jeff coming out of the sea, and where he remembers them last speaking before this summer
At the far end of Bembridge Beach is the Lifeboat Station, where Jeff walks along the top of a fence as his mind unravels.
A local person told me- curiously, given that this is a place where Jeff’s mental pressure gets the better of him, that this is the exact spot where the strongest leyline that runs through England ends (if you’re into that kind of thing!)
In happier scenes in the novel Jeff enjoys beach parties at a spot on the Isle of Wight, Seagrove Bay, where I spent many summers. A picture of that part of the world seems a good place to end this piece!
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