In many ways, Utopia Avenue is the Avengers: Endgame of David Mitchell’s novels. Under the guidance of the band’s manager, Levon Frankland - a queer practitioner of the “Dark Arts” - Utopia Avenue rises from obscurity to stardom during a turbulent historical moment of social change, revolutionary protest, and psychedelic enlightenment. The members of the band include Dean Moss, a blues bassist from a rough, working-class background who navigates a complicated relationship with his abusive, alcoholic father Elf Holloway, a pianist, folk singer, and songwriter coming to terms with her sexuality Jasper de Zoet, an autistic Dutch guitar virtuoso who seems haunted by severe mental illness and Peter “Griff” Griffin, a shaggy dyslexic drummer from Yorkshire. When did you stop?" So the answer's in there, isn't it? Too many of us stop painting.DAVID MITCHELL’S Utopia Avenue (2020) chronicles the rise of a delightfully improbable genre-defying British rock band in the late 1960s. When do you start painting? My answer is always the same. It reminds me of an interview I saw recently with a young artist, who was asked, "When did you start painting?" And she says, "I'm always asked that. You're lucky if it becomes comfortable, it doesn't become comfortable for a lot of people. But if life becomes comfortable, then some of the urgency falls away. Whether it's good fortune for the rest of society, or good fortune for the planet, or good fortune for governance is a much, much broader question. I'm not sure if a 52-year-old is the right person to ask! Part of the answer might be, through their own good fortune. On how the flower children became Boomers And if it's all bright, then you don't have a novel. Novels need a variety of tones and shades and colors. It's very dark, but he needs to work through that darkness and come out the other side. I think of it as a kind of toggle switch. He is either schizophrenic or he has inherited some kind of sentient curse from his, well, great-great-great-great grandfather. And the four of them, Levon the Canadian decided if he could get them to say yes, then he could curate them into a singular band, the likes of which the Soho London scene had never seen before. He's maybe like Ginger Baker from Cream, he's a virtuoso drummer with a jazz background. He's from Yorkshire, so he's not really on the class system. Jasper has an interesting relationship with reality, and this certainly colors his songwriting. In Jasper de Zoet, he saw a songwriter, vocalist - if you could somehow cross Nick Drake with Jimi Hendrix with a big generous dollop of Syd Barrett. In Dean Moss he saw an East End boy, the other end of the social scale, an R&B, pub rock background kind of musician. Something as poignant as Sandy Denny, say, from Fairport Convention. He saw Elf Holloway, a woman from the folk scene. But yet, just while that window was open, things came in which germinated and contained the seeds of the future." Sure, it was naive, sure after 18 months, two years, a more jaded reality reexerted itself. Pop got separated from rock in this time, and just a year when a critical mass of people began to believe that if only they wished it badly enough and wanted it, then society could be recalibrated and rebooted. The music - 1967 was an astonishing year. Mitchell - born just after the band Utopia Avenue would have been around - says it was the music that drew him to that era, and "the particular dark magic that was in the air at that time and place. Hah! No you don't, because Utopia Avenue is the title of David Mitchell's new novel about the rise of a psychedelic Sixties band that never was. Their great hits - "Abandon Hope," "Smithereens," "Mona Lisa Sings the Blues" - propelled Utopia Avenue from seedy Soho clubs to Top of the Pops, and then America in the enchanted times of bell bottoms, the Beatles, drugs, sex, and street protests. Griff on the drums - who didn't love gruff Griff? And of course, the peerless Jasper de Zoet, shredding, I mean shredding the guitar. Remember Utopia Avenue? Elf, their keyboardist and singer - a voice from the clouds.
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