Rocker to writer

In Competition No. 2920 you were invited to submit an extract from a novel written by a rock star of your choosing.

I was pleased that Adrian Fry went for Tom Waits, whose storytelling genius shines out on the likes of the grimly hilarious ‘Frank’s Wild Years’. But as Morrissey’s recent stinker demonstrates, being able to write decent song lyrics doesn’t guarantee literary success.

Gerda Roper, Mark Shelton and C.J. Gleed were unlucky losers. The winners pocket £25 each. Bill Greenwell takes the bonus fiver.

You know what it is to go thru the body of the beast, right? The heart, the crimson muscle, beating around you with soft & universal lamentations? All right, we shall go on. Into the blue mists, the territory of the Egyptian newt. Where the rooms are rented out only to strangers with naked brains & military industrial torsos. Where the killers have sacraments in their lockers & the girls abound in flowers. I tell you, this night shall you slumber with the ancients & eat their starlight, for this road leads thru the valley of incantation. Take off your shawl, which is red. Take off your faces, you will not need them. Take off your dialogue, & wear it around your cool neck.

‘Where are we going?’

‘We are going to follow.’

Is everybody ready for the cry of the maiden?

It is time to embark.
Bill Greenwell (from Newt Trips by J. Morrison)

Ed came back from ’Nam in bits, one of which fetched up in Vegas as a bourbon blunted card sharp. Another chauffeured for a Zoot-suited dwarf who’d sold his soul to the Devil for control of the toothpick business. Several bill themselves ‘curators of human flotsam’; they’re tending bar from Des Moines to Dubrovnik.