The chapter starts out on the wrong foot as the first person to appear and speak is Ned Raven of Bluesnroyals, coming off his unfortunately non-fatal electrocution. Maybe his near-death experience has caused him to become something other than a complete asshole. Let’s find out, shall we?
“What ho, sugarbritches!”
Well, that hope died at birth. And this guy would say “sugartits,” not “sugarbritches.”
So this is Ned Raven, who sees Rennie in a corridor at the motel and does a move that sounds like he’s lining her up for noogies.
And we get an overwritten greeting from Rennie that’s so twee and obnoxious I’d like to put an inch of water on the hotel floor and drop a power line into it.
“Ah, Reddy Neddy Kilowatt, the Amazing High-Voltage Shockman!”
That line alone should be proof positive that Kennealy-Morrison cannot write dialogue that sounds like anything an actual human being living on Planet Earth would say. There’s some subpar badinage between them that does double-duty as a capsule recap of some of the more important events of the series to date and Rennie finally asks him how he feels, which should have been the first words out of her mouth. He says he’s fine after he notices her trying to suck up second-hand pot smoke that’s drifting out of one of the rooms. Why no, she’s not an addict at all.
They get into a conversation about the festival and Ned checks to see if Rennie’s still in love with Turk. Really? I’d think he’d only care if she wasn’t willing to throw a fuck in his direction. Rennie affirms her love is constant and Ned asks what she sees in him in a way that destroys the conceit that Ned Raven is an actual human male.
“…he is tall, gorgeous, brilliant, titled, came to Earth with powers far beyond those of mortal men…”
No straight man will call another man gorgeous. If you’d put this line in Demelza’s mouth, it would have sounded more natural. A writer should try to be aware of their weaknesses and attempt to improve on them, not wallow in their every bad habit because they’re self-published and don’t have an editor and can do whatever they want, so there!
Rennie agrees with him completely, supplies another couple of reasons, and let him know things would never have worked out between them and they’ve known it for years. The writer presents the badinage as “teasing,” but I don’t believe Not-Mick Jagger wouldn’t have gotten up in her business if she’d given him the green light. And then Niles Clay shows up! And calls Rennie a slag!
In a “waspish” voice, of course, because Niles is evil as he doesn’t fall down in worship at the feet of the living Queen Emma Peel. No, he’s just the only recognizably human character in this book so far. If this were real life, there would be a lot more people who weren’t murderers or victims that couldn’t stand Rennie fucking Stride.
We get a description of Niles Clay that seems more detailed than the one we got in Love Him Madly, and reveals he does have Rennie’s Mark of Cain.
…glaring at Rennie through narrowed eyes under his trademark tangle of coal-black curls.
I don’t know why Kennealy-Morrison hates men with curly black hair so much, but this is the third male antagonist in the series who has it. Not Frankie Avalon in the first book did, Danny Marron in the second book also did, and now Niles Clay (Future Me: I checked the fourth book and Cleve Farris also has curly black hair, so that’s four male antagonists with it). The only thing she seems to hate more is men who are balding. The writer also advises that “[h]e looked like a malevolent cocker spaniel” and that he’s roaring drunk. How convenient for Rennie!
Anyway, Ned steps between them to protect her as he’s still enthralled by Rennie’s Magic Hooha (trademark pending). Turk also hears this and rides to the rescue like the ridiculous cardboard male Hannah Montana belted earl that he is. I was flipping through Kennealy-Morrison’s book Rock Chick, because I remembered the writer had made a couple of comments about using some experiences she’d written about in her reportage for books in this series, and found something about Turk’s characterization where she wrote that she created Turk as “a sort of [Eric] Clapton clone without the drug problems” (page 322). It shows she doesn’t have enough distance from the work to see it clearly. If Turk’s anything, he’s a Jim Morrison clone without the alcohol problem and the other women. And what Jim Morrison—whoops, I meant Turk Wayland—has to say to Ray Manzarek—whoops, I meant Niles Clay—is one of the most stilted, unbelievable pieces of dialogue that the writer has ever created, including in Blackmantle, where they were supposed to speak in faux-medieval stilted language.
“Speak to my lady like that again, you sodding little wanker, and I’ll punch your face out the back of your head. And then I’ll sack you. And I don’t care if I have to sing lead vocals in your place for the rest of my life.”
I’d bet money the writer was typing this one-handed, if you know what I mean, because there is no way Jim would ever have said anything even vaguely like that to Ray, no matter what he said to Patricia. In her memoir she writes that she didn’t really know the other Doors, so I doubt if any of them would have cared enough about her or thought she was important enough to sling insults like that.
And why doesn’t Niles take the power out of Turk’s hands and quit? He already seems to have sussed out what a black hole of malevolence Rennie is, and her very presence is going to destroy their friendship. Why, because it doesn’t suit the writer to have her villains take sensible, realistic actions!
Turk’s doing his whole Earl of Wallowinthemire routine and not trying to keep his voice down, so this draws a lot of attention. He points out that Niles is drunk, which I’m sure Niles is aware of, and tells him to go back to his room, which he does, with a “smirk” and a “sneer.” Doesn’t the writer ever get tired of creating such cardboard characters? Again, any real lead singer of a band as successful as the writer insists Lionheart is wouldn’t have any trouble finding a berth in another successful band.
And, of course, since she was in such deadly life-threatening danger from a man calling her a slag,
Turk…stood close in front of his mate, looming protectively between her and the rest of the crush, his arm braced against the wall barring anyone from coming near and a scowl as black as iron on his face.
Because women are helpless, amirite? Even ones who have been taught to fight by War God Cherry Blossom. He fusses over her while calling Niles “a nasty buggering tosser” and telling her that if she tells him to, he’ll “kick him into the middle of next week.” Unless that means fire him, Turk is not interested in losing his lead singer.
Then Rennie plays sweet and helpless to make Turk feel like the big man—nice manipulation there—and tells him it isn’t necessary, calling Turk “Studly Do-Right—”
–and keeps calling Niles Nilesy. Turk wishes there was something he could do. Well, he could fire him, like he just threatened, but it seems like he doesn’t really want to do that. Maybe Rennie’s Magic Hooha (trademark pending) left a little common sense in his brain.
So they get back to the room and Rennie instantly strips, presumably as the knight’s reward for the rescue of the fair lady. She’s thinking about how she won’t tell Turk about the Groupie Scrubber Melee because that would break up the band and she doesn’t want to “go down in rock history as the Yoko Ono of Lionheart.” Wow, you think a lot of yourself, Rennie.
They have a three-quarter page conversation about pie which is quite boring and Turk flaunts some literary cred with a Gone With the Wind reference, which seems unlikely as hell from a British nobleman.
Then the conversation shifts to buying a farmhouse and land around “here,” which I guess is Liberty, or Bethel, because we might not remember Turk, and Rennie through him, is rich as fuck. Eat your hearts out, proletarians!
And then it shifts again to touring and he doesn’t want to leave but she says the band needs a successful tour due to the failure of the album (although she doesn’t mention that) and that he needs to get Niles under control. Well, that “act like a lady” tactic you intended to use lasted all of fifteen minutes or so. So then she pretends to be mature and fools him.
Turk takes her by surprise then by telling her they don’t have enough good material for a new album, and I have to wonder how many albums the band is putting out. They’ve got at least one greatest hits album, five albums they did for the company before Centaur, the failed album, the one with Rennie’s love songs on it, the one she mentions when they first meet in the third book, the one that Turk forbade Centaur to release, and presumably some others. They must be putting out more than one a year, so why doesn’t Centaur have any concerns about saturating the market? And somehow what’s on the failed album is getting radio airplay, which I don’t believe because none of the songs are short enough.
She tries telling him she doesn’t believe that, and he expresses concern that they’re out of step with the times, and Rennie gets a speech that spells out how much she doesn’t give a shit about Vietnam or civil rights or feminism or anything outside her rich privileged rockerverse bubble. Needless to say, it really pisses me off.
“Oh, you mean that political protest crap? Well, no, that’s right, you don’t do that, and I for one give thanks to God that you do not. Honey, that’s not your thing! Anybody can write simplistic whiny protest songs; that’s easy. You guys are hunting much bigger game. And you don’t need me to tell you what it is, because you already know.”
Those last two sentences make no goddamned sense because it’s kind of a funhouse mirror version of something I remember Patricia saying to Jim in her memoir and it’s about the Native American/shaman conceit that he embraced. It doesn’t work here because TURK DOESN’T HAVE THE SHAMANIC CONNECTION THAT JIM DID BUT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN THAT TURK IS NOT JIM!
Still, you have to admire how far ahead on the developmental track she is. It was the hippies of the Sixties who turned into the Yuppies of the Eighties, and Rennie already doesn’t give a shit about anything other than money and possessions and social status. She has no principles she’ll need to abandon to get to that point as she is nothing but an empty vessel to be filled with money and expensive jewels and fancy dresses and forelock-tugging peasants calling her by the exalted title she covets.
And then we find out that Lionheart’s only been together for seven years, so they are putting out way more than one album a year. No wonder Turk’s burned out. That means between 1962 and 1967, when they were with Glisten, they did put out one album per year. In the two years with Centaur, they’ve put out at least three and probably four.
Anyway, she gets him in a better frame of mind by talking until he asks her how she got so clever and she gives the teeth-grittingly arrogant response of “Hard work and inborn superiority, of course.”
And, mercifully, chapter! Rennie’s a giant prolapsed anus that no amount of surgery could ever correct. I was getting through the chapter okay until she started shitting all over causes that are bigger than one person. Fuck all those poor ghetto and Appalachian boys who are getting killed in Vietnam while the rich boys are safe at home that she was just mourning for a second a couple of chapters ago. That doesn’t amount to anything next to Lionheart’s material success because Rennie basks in the reflected glory. O I hate Rennie and her shallowness and her hypocrisy with the fire of a thousand exploding suns.
Just as a palate cleanser, here are two of those “simplistic whiny protest songs” that Rennie and, seemingly, Kennealy-Morrison so disdain.
Next time, chapter 9, wherein the actual Woodstock festival begins, Turk and Rennie take a walking tour of the grounds, Niles can’t go on because he’s stoned, and nobody gets murdered. And Rennie doesn’t even start trying to investigate what happened to Cory Rivkin.
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