Book Review – The Armageddon Rag
Author: George R.R. Martin
Publisher: Bantam
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2007
Published in 1983, The Armageddon Rag is Martin’s fourth full length novel, after The Dying of the Light, Windhaven and Fevre Dream. It was also his least commercially successful and something of a turning point in his career. Martin began another novel that eventually ended up in a shorter form in the collection Quartet: Four Tales from the Crossroads and took off for Hollywood to write for Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. He didn’t get back to writing novels until the publication of A Game of Thrones in 1996. With the huge success of A Song of Ice and Fire reissuing some of Martin’s older works became inevitable. It must have been a pain to get it done there’s no less than four pages of copyright statements in the books for all the lyrics he used. I have absolute no idea why this book sold as miserably as it did in the 1980s. I will say fuck sales figures, this is among the best Martin has written.
Our main character is Sandy Blair. Once he was an underground journalist for a magazine called the Hedgehog but he has long since left his radical 1960s roots behind him and turned into a respectable novelist. His previous novels have been reasonably successful but he is stuck on a new book at page 37. Then his past draws him back in. The editor of the Hedgehog, that has long since gone mainstream offers Sandy a story. A rock promoter, Jamie Lynch, who made millions in the 1960s with a number of bands has been murdered in his own home. Despite his better judgement Sandy sets out to investigate and soon discovers a link between the murder and one of Lynch’s band. The Nazgûl has not played together since their lead singer was shot on stage at a gig on West Mesa in 1971. That is about to change though, someone is bent on making a reunion happen.
As his materialistic 1980s life falls apart around him, Sandy is drawn back to his past, his old friends and his old ideals. The friends he has long since lost touch with are all dissatisfied, mourning the loss of a chance to shame to world to their ideals. But somehow the times are changing. Another opportunity arises and the music of the Nazgûl album Music to Wake Up the Dead is key to it. The Armageddon Rag will be played again and may yet change the world.
This book is hard to place in a genre, I put it under mystery but there are some horror elements in it as well as a clear Tolkien influence. Not that they are very apparent, not until the last hundred pages or so of the book do these become very clear. It’s nor really crime fiction either, sure we start with a dead body but the question who killed him is not all that important any more at the end of the book. A very hard book to label. Maybe that contributed to the poor sales. People didn’t quite know what to do with it?
Despite the somewhat unusual setting for a Martin novel the writing is what we’ve come to expect of him. Martin has created brilliantly developed characters, each with a well worked out history and personality. Maybe he even went a bit overboard here as we do get to meet an awfully lot of unhappy ageing flower children, each with their own escape from the world. I didn’t think he needed quite so many to get his point across but I can’t say he repeats himself either.
What really lifts this book to a higher level is the music though. The Nazgûl are fictional, Music to Wake Up the Dead is fictional, but reading the novel will make you want to go to the nearest record store and look for a copy anyway. I caught myself thinking someone ought to make that record on several occasions. The description of the concerts, the music, the audience, you can almost hear the band as you read it. Martin uses the music to work to a number of climatic scenes in his novel. And it doesn’t stop there, the book is also filled with lyrics of song of that era. The Stones, the Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Creedence Clearwater Revival and of course the Doors. When you get right down to it, this book is about the power of music to change the world.
Blair’s attempt to escape to his past is ultimately futile of course, but his musical, almost psychedelic journey is a great read. Reading it made me want to turn up the stereo. In fact, I think I’ll go play Electric Ladyland now.
About Rob: 
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.