I Read Books: The Armageddon Rag

George R R Martin’s occult thriller is a meditation on how the movements and revolutions of the 60s turned out, from the perspective of 1982. Martin’s sympathy (he was a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War) is clearly on the side of the kids who tried to change the world.

It’s also about death. The Kennedys, Dr Martin Luther King, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison.

And of course it’s about music. The protagonist, Sandy Blair, now a novelist, was a music journalist. The murder of a former music promoter brings back the band The Nazgûl, named for Tolkien’s creation, who fell apart after their lead singer was murdered on stage. Someone thinks that their album Music to Wake the Dead was prophecy and the spell it was casting was broken when Pat Hobbins was killed leaving the 23 minute, entire side 2 song, The Armageddon/Resurrection Rag, unfinished.

Blair goes back, seeing all the old band members, seeing his old counterculture friends and where they are now. Then he meets the new promoter of the new iteration of the Nazgûl and he has dreams and nightmares of the past and future. Will history repeat itself or is there a way to break on through to the other side?

Read This: For a taut thriller about rock music and death and (sort of) Tolkien
Don’t Read This: If 60s counterculture nostalgia is not your thing
Also: This was a commercial failure, leading to Martin concentrating on scriptwriting for most of the rest of the 80s.