Bold As LoveGwyneth Jones
Gollancz hardback, 320 pages, £16.99
Published August 2001
ISBN 0575070307
Review by Mike Don (2001)
Although Bold As Love has the odd nod of acknowledgement towards fashionable SF tech, its basic premise – a near future, decaying, dis-United Kingdom being held together by the healing power of rock and roll – is firmly in the tradition of Rock Apocalypse, an odd little sub-genre (see Mick Farren’s The Texts of Festival and Michael Butterworth’s Hawklords trilogy, for example) inspired by that brief period from, say, 1967 to 1973, when rock music, fuelled by industrial scale ingestion of strange pharmaceuticals, had pretensions of changing the world.
From a purist viewpoint, the storyline is improbable, as full of holes
as a junkie’s armpit. Perhaps because the awesomely savvy, competent,
compassionate rock star heroes are so far removed from their
contemporary equivalents. But we’re talking an alternate history here,
where the ideas and iconic figureheads of Woodstock Nation never went
away. It’s no accident that two of the civilisation-saving bands share
names with Grateful Dead albums; nor that the book itself is titled in
tribute to Hendrix’s masterpiece.Gwyneth Jones’ musician heroes – Fiorinda, Ax, Sage and the self-effacing Rob Nelson – are drawn with the compellingly sympathetic approach of the life-long fan. Although their ability to resolve ever more terrifying crises by the old expedient of ‘putting on a gig’ ultimately has the weirdly unreal, living on the edge quality of an overextended tour of one-nighters. All the same, an underlying darkness, an Altamont to the heroes Woodstock, sometimes surfaces; the projected sequel could be more downbeat.