I Knew GRRM When He Used To Rock’n’Roll: The Armageddon Rag

Most Song of Ice and Fire fans know by now that George R.R. Martin had a long and fruitful career before he ever turned the page into Westeros, and even before his decade as a TV writer before that. Lots of sci-fi, as a rule, with a bit of a fantasy tinge to it and more than a smattering of horror; ASOIAF readers can testify to ol’ George’s expertise with suspense and creeping fear. Among those dozen or so novels & collections that hit print before Wil, Gared & Waymar Royce ever rode into that fateful forest, there’s one odd bastard child. It’s horror, sort of, but it’s also political allegory, and autobiography, and some serious rock and roll. It’s The Armageddon Rag, a wholly unexpected piece of the Martinian back catalog, which also managed to almost destroy his career as a novelist.

George is himself a child of the 60s, a college student during Vietnam who avoided the draft as a conscientious objector, and that experience forms the core of Rag. The protagonist, ex-journalist and slowly-failing “serious” novelist Sandy Blair, has essentially outgrown his radical past, dating a realtor, making down payments on a brownstone, and settling into the cynicism & naked ambition of the early 80s. What pulls him back into the revolutionary undercurrent isn’t a powerful yearning for truth & freedom, but something far more elemental and just as essential to that 60s American culture – the music. Specifically, the music of the Nazgul, an American Led Zeppelin proxy whose fictional, oft Tolkien-inspired discography is the spine of the plot. They splintered on the eve of their fifth album, victims of a brutal act of violence, but their revolutionary discography remains, and Sandy’s not the only one who still finds something in it worth listening to.

Hired to write about the bizarre murder of the Nazgul’s former manager, Sandy finds himself tracking down the scattered band members on a journalistic road trip through America and his own memories of it. Along the way, he tracks down his old college friends to see how each of them is surviving the 80s, and maybe due to the stress involved, starts having some bizarre dreams. And starts listening to the Nazgul – I mean, really listening, maaannn – and hearing things in the lyrics and the music he didn’t hear before. Rag is framed as a murder mystery, but that’s really just an excuse to dive into a triptych of supernatural horror, political counterculture, and badass rock-and-roll.

Of course, those last two can’t really be separated. As one character observes early in the book, TV & film coverage of the decade’s politics is inevitably soundtracked with that thumping, jamming rock, an observation borne out in real life. (My dad remains convinced that any Vietnam documentary clip, whether combat, politics, or protest, can be synced up with “Sunshine of Your Love.”) And then the horror, too, is part of the music – the same character, a revolutionary mystic whose prophetic weirdness drives the plot, tells Sandy “The cliche is that music is a reflection of the times, but the cliche has it backwards. There is power in music.”

Which is to all say, on one hand, a reader can understand why The Armageddon Rag essentially torched GRRM’s career as a novelist for a good decade. An autobiographical novel (Sandy Blair isn’t really a George stand-in, but the author’s personality, experiences & filibusters are clearly split among several characters) is always a little risky, and in 1983 when it was published, likely not that many people wanted to be reminded of their generation’s youthful folly. The prose is a little more ambitious than GRRM’s standard, trailing into Kerouac word salad now and again and poking holes in his usual on-key dialogue with some unfortunate paragraph-long character filibusters. There’s also the schizoid nature of its genre classification, and finally, the big glaring weakness of (the) Nazgul. George does his best to make them a kickass rock band, and they’re certainly well-sold in-universe (as ASOIAF fans know, George has a way with lyrics), but the fact is, nobody has ever actually heard a Nazgul song. I personally imagine them as an American Zep, Philly steel flavored with jam-band dreaminess instead of English folk, but that’s all I can do – imagine. Which is too bad, cause in my head, they sound fuckin’ awesome.

So there are some problems with Rag. But it sputtered out on bookshelves in 1983, and this is 2013, and 30 years will give you a lot of perspective (not to mention a new readership; I wasn’t even born when this one hit print.) Turns out, 30 years aged this book pretty well. Rock and roll’s been through a lot, and it’s easy to imagine a band like the Nazgul being successful – easier to imagine their music, too. So, too, has America, and with the baby boomer generation pushing 70, the characters of Rag come off more sympathetically. Strip away the murder mystery, the magic in the music, and the creeping horror, and you’d still be left with a warts-and-all story about some aging revolutionaries, in both the social & musical spheres, who’ve lost that loving feeling.

Which isn’t to say that those aren’t important elements, but the book’s not just power chords and blood stains. GRRM may have been indulging himself a bit with this one, maybe overstating the role of the flower-children and bomb-throwers of the 60s alike; I figure, let him. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your youth, or the people you shared it with, and he’s populated this road trip with enough interesting characters (particularly the Nazgul themselves, a dynamic & believable portrait of rock stars gone white dwarf) and clever set pieces to swallow all the self-importance the baby boomers could ever bring to bear. And hey, it’s pretty self-aware, too – look closely and you’ll find a few predictions of just how fucking disastrous that generation could be in the balance.

So give Rag a read. It’s not Ice and Fire, not much like it at all, but it’s also not nearly as long, so even if you don’t enjoy the experience you haven’t lost nearly as much time. And if you do enjoy it, then let me ask you – do you play guitar? I know a bassist, I can get my hands on a drum-kit, and I have some ideas for the chords & lyrics to “Napalm Love” and “What Rough Beast.” Let me know. Let’s rock.