Songs in Ursa Major: A novel - Hardcover

Brodie, Emma

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593318625 ISBN 13: 9780593318621

Verlag: Knopf, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

A scintillating debut from a major new voice in fiction, Songs in Ursa Major is a love story set in 1969, alive with music, sex, and the trappings of fame.

Raised on an island off Massachusetts by a mother who wrote songs for famous musicians, Jane Quinn is singing in her own band before she's old enough to even read music. When folk legend Jesse Reid hears about Jane's performance at the island's music festival, a star is born--and so is a passionate love affair: they become inseparable when her band joins his on tour. Wary of being cast as his girlfriend--and haunted by her mother's shattered ambitions-- Jane shields her relationship from the public eye, but Jesse's star power pulls her into his orbit of fame. Caught up in the thrill of the road and the profound and lustful connection she has with Jesse, Jane is blind-sided by the discovery she makes about the dark secret beneath his music. Heartbroken and blackballed by the industry, Jane is now truly on her own: to make the music she loves, and to make peace with her family Shot through with the lyrics, the icons, the lore, the adrenaline of the early 70s music scene, Songs in Ursa Major pulses with romantic longing and asks the question so many female artists must face: What are we willing to sacrifice for our dreams?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

EMMA BRODIE has worked in book publishing for a decade, most recently as an Executive Editor at Little, Brown's Voracious imprint. She graduated from the Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars program, and is a longtime contributor to HuffPost and a faculty member at Catapult, Co. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and their dog, Freddie Mercury

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1

Island Folk Fest

Saturday, July 26, 1969

As a stagehand cleared the dismantled pieces of Flower Moon’s drum set, the last shred of daylight formed a golden curve around the cymbal. It winked at the crowd; then the red sun slipped into the sea. In the gathering dusk, the platform shimmered like an enamel shell, reverberating with the audience’s anticipation.

Any minute now, Jesse Reid would go on.

Curtis Wilks stood about thirty feet from the platform with the rest of the press. There was Billboard’s Zeke Felton, sharing a joint with a Flower Moon groupie in a beaded kaftan; Ted Munz from NME, reading over his notes under the nearest floodlight; Lee Harmon of Creem, trading stories with Time’s Jim Faust.

The Flower Moon groupie approached Curtis with the joint between her lips, eyeing the pass around his neck. It showed a picture of Curtis’s face—­which Keith Moon had once compared to “a homeless man’s Paddington Bear”—­printed above his name and the words Rolling Stone. The groupie offered Curtis the joint. He accepted it.

His exhale became a brushstroke inside an Impressionist painting; swirls of smoke rose in the salty air, tanned limbs and youthful faces interweaving like daisy chains across the meadow. He handed the joint back to the girl and watched her skip into a ring of hippies. Someone had a conga; thrift-­store nymphs began dancing to an asynchronous rhythm.

Curtis had cut his teeth as a correspondent on the festival circuit. Berkeley, Philly, Big Sur, Newport—­none of them could touch Bayleen Island for atmosphere: the hike up the red clay cliffs, the wildflower meadow, the view of the Atlantic Ocean. There was something magical about having to take a ferry to get to a show.

As he watched the girls dance, Curtis felt a wave of premature nostalgia. There was a sense in the industry that folk was on its way out; the Vietnam War had been dragging on so long, the protest songs that had made Dylan and Baez what they were now felt empty and tired.

Curtis had come to see what they’d all come to see: Jesse Reid ushering in a new epoch for the dying genre. As if on cue, the dancing girls began to sing Reid’s breakout single, their voices tremulous with excitement.

“My girl’s got beads of red and yellow,

Her eyes are starry bright.”

Their feverish giggles recalled Curtis to the time a young Elvis Presley had played his high school in Gladewater, Texas, back in ’55. Eighteen-­year-­old Buddy Holly–­obsessed Curtis had watched girls he’d known since kindergarten openly weep, swept away by the fantasy that Elvis might choose them. The full Bye Bye Birdie. That was the power of a true rock star.

Soft-­spoken Jesse Reid’s persona couldn’t have been more different from Elvis’s, but Reid seemed to inspire the same devotion in his fans. He had the cowboy baritone of Kris Kristofferson (but Reid’s sounded effortless), and the lyrical guitar skills of Paul Simon—­plus, he was taller than both, with blue eyes that, according to Curtis’s guilty pleasure Snitch Magazine, were “the color of medium stonewash Levi’s.”

“She makes me feel so sweet and mellow,

She makes me feel all right.”

“Sweet and Mellow” was a Snickers bar of a song; to hear it was to crave it. Hands down the hit of the summer, it had been holding in Billboard’s top ten for eighteen weeks. Curtis had been tracking Reid since he opened for Fair Play at Wembley Stadium the previous year—­but this single from Reid’s self-­titled album had turned him from fringe hero to mainstream sensation overnight.

And tonight, Reid would take his place as the heir apparent to folk rock.

The crowd broke into applause as a bald man with a gray beard shuffled onstage—­Joe Maynard, the Festival Committee chair. The longer the audience clapped, the more pained Maynard looked. Curtis’s news radar bristled.

“Yes, hello, my beautiful friends,” he said. Maynard quieted the cheering with his hands.

“Well, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it,” he said. “I’m afraid Jesse Reid won’t be performing tonight.”

Curtis felt a stab of disappointment as his mental list of feature headlines turned to ash. A visceral shock wave passed through the crowd. One by one, dreamy expressions began to wilt, a field of dandelions turning white with anger, ready to blow.

And then they did. Cries of outrage rang the twilight like a bell. The girls who had been singing and dancing a moment before collapsed into sobs. Maynard shrank behind the mic.

“But we’ve got a great act for you up next—­it’ll just be a few minutes now,” he said, sweat gleaming at his temples. A second roar from the crowd buffeted him into the wings.

Curtis edged toward the platform. Something must have just happened—­he’d seen Reid’s A&R man backstage after Curtis had interviewed Flower Moon. Maybe Reid had gotten too drunk to go on. Maybe he’d lost it backstage. The festival tonight was performance number thirty-­six in a sixty-­arena global tour. Sometimes artists just cracked; Curtis had seen it before.

He spied Mark Edison passing from the backstage area into the audience and caught his eye. Edison was a reporter for The Island Gazette, a local independent daily. Most of the Fest’s press corps found his snide antics insufferable, but he had always been useful to Curtis.

The audience’s initial dismay had given way to movement. Amidst cries from the most stalwart Reid fanatics, lines had begun to form through the crowd, pushing toward the exits.

Edison reached Curtis. He offered Curtis his flask—­warm gin. They both drank deeply.

“What’s happening back there?” said Curtis. “Where’s Reid?”

Edison shook his head. They stepped aside as two girls thundered by, ripping up the peace love jesse sign they carried like a banner. Curtis did not envy the band about to perform to this mob.

“Who’s going on?” said Curtis. “Someone from tomorrow’s lineup?” Mark shook his head.

“It’s a local band—­the Breakers,” said Mark.

“I don’t know them,” said Curtis. “What’s their label?”

“Label?” said Mark. “They don’t have one. They’re just a bunch of kids. They were scheduled to play at the amateur stage down the hill, and the committee just scooped them up. The biggest show they’ve ever played is forty, fifty people.”

“Holy shit,” said Curtis. This was going to be a train wreck.

As he spoke, three young men began to set up onstage. They couldn’t have been more than twenty. The drummer looked the most filled out, with a chiseled jaw, shoulder-­length black hair, and almond-­toned skin. He and the bassist were clearly related; the bassist looked younger, hair shorn around his chin, a red bandanna tied across his brow. The guitarist was paler, with boyish features and a somber manner. His sandy hair flopped in front of his eyes as he tuned.

“We want Jesse!” a girl shrieked from over Curtis’s shoulder.

Curtis began to wonder if it wasn’t better just to head back to town. The Elektra producers had rented a yacht and were hosting an after-­party for industry folk. Bayleen Island was only five miles from international waters, which meant good drugs; he could be...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593318625
• ISBN 13: 9780593318621
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar