Seemingly inspired by the trite music critic observation that The Velvet Underground & Nico only sold 10,000 copies but all 10,000 of those people went out and started a band, Chuck Klosterman’s new novel Rock*: A Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music imagines that music history (and world history) took a different path. What if The Velvet Underground had become the most popular band in the world, instead of The Beatles? How might that change in taste have reverberated throughout the culture? And how might that culture have altered the world around it socially, politically, and otherwise?
Klosterman is maybe the only person on Earth who could’ve come up with such a premise, and certainly no one else would have carried out this little thought experiment to the extent that he has. However, the unfortunate side effect is that this is a novel that has a small circle of appeal. At times, I wondered as I was reading if Klosterman himself might be the only person who could love this book.
The repercussions of The Velvet Underground’s superstardom, in Klosterman’s imagination, range from the mundane to the absurd. There are tragic and comic outcomes in equal measure. The book is presented as a faux-historical account, meaning the jokes are delivered in a complete deadpan, sometimes obscuring the humor. Frankly, to even get the jokes sometimes requires having as complete a background in rock music, pop music, and the history of music criticism as Chuck Klosterman does.
Some of the least effective bits are the imagined quotes from other cultural figures, from Leonard Cohen, John Lennon (who lives a lot longer than in our timeline), Bob Dylan, and many others. Most of these are voiced in the audiobook by James Austin Johnson of Saturday Night Live, with diminishing results. Klosterman’s biggest jokes are too broad and on the nose to be actually funny.
By the end, any attempt to realistically consider what the world might be like if popular music tastes were different has been supplanted by an increasing reliance of absurdity. Somehow the Beatles wind up including Yoko Ono in the band and making it all the way to Live Aid in 1985 despite hating each other’s guts, while Leonard Cohen is shot by Mark David Chapman, though this time he has Jonathan Livingston Seagull in his pocket instead of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Rock music critics have formed the strongest professional union in the country, and use their influence to enforce rules regarding the presence of rock music in Hollywood movies and hotel lobbies. Republicans win every president election for 40 years.
However intriguing you find the bananas premise of this book, or however much you’ve enjoyed Chuck Klosterman’s other books or his increasingly bizarre appearances on the Bill Simmons Podcast, this probably isn’t the book for you. Unless, of course, you are Chuck Klosterman.
