George RR Martin's "The Armageddon Rag": Sex, death, blood and rock-n-roll

On Tor.com, Jo Walton continues to romp through her series reviews of amazing books that she re-read this year: beloved old friends that she can't help but come back to again and again. Today, it's George RR Martin's fantasy/horror/alt history novel The Armageddon Rag -- one of those books that I've read about ten times. I even tried to sew a poncho made from neckties after reading it once.

The Nazgul were a sixties rock band. Sandy Blair was a radical journalist in the sixties and is a mildly successful novelist in the eighties. The lead singer of the Nazgul was shot dead at a concert in West Mesa in 1971, and ten years later their promoter gets gruesomely murdered. Sandy takes off to investigate the murder and finds himself caught up in an odyssey to discover what became of his generation. Through the first half of the book he looks up the band members and his own college friends. The second half is considerably weirder, as the band get back together, Sandy becomes their press agent, and things appear to be headed towards a rock and roll armageddon and revolution...

Yet it isn’t a sixties nostalgia trip that has nothing to say to anyone who wasn’t there. It highlights what was cool and significant in the sixties to show us why there are people who miss it so much they’ll do anything to get it back–but they’re not the good guys. Good guys and bad guys have always been too simple for Martin. Sandy’s lack of conviction is one of the rocks on which the novel is built. The magic is blood magic, it could all the way through be leading to armageddon or resurrection.

Don’t get too attached to this decade: George R. R. Martin’s The Armageddon Rag, The Armageddon Rag on Amazon

• [Nick Mathewson]

  The Nazgul have got to be one of my favorite fictional band ever. The descriptions of their music in Martin’s book are so wonderfully immersive, so completely what Rock is about, that I catch myself making mental notes to go listen to their albums before I remember that they aren’t real, and their music is music I can never hear.

• [Cyberwasteland]

  George R.R. Martin + 60′s = Awsome novel

• [Arun Jiwa]

  I’ve always wondered what Martin’s been doing outside of fantasy, and to date I’ve only looked at his sf short stories. Based on this recommendation, I think I’ll take a look at Armageddon Rag.

  @Padster123, Sandkings, IMHO, is one of his best short stories written to date.

  -A.

• [Bouncy Bouncy]

  I read this toward the very end of my High School years. I wasn’t crazy about it, but I do remember it.

  I always wondered who Martin based The Nazgul on.

  I guess that Martin based it on a number of bands and personalities. But —

  Shit going down at “West Mesa” suggested the Stones and Altamont. The provocative, martyred lead singer suggested Jim Morrison and The Doors. Something about Martin’s descriptions of the band and their music made me think of The MC5.

• [MonkeyRobo]

  One of my favourite books ever!

  Writing about the experience of hearing music is, I think, extraordinarily hard to do well. Martin gets rock spot on in this one.

  Plus, the soul-searching about what the counterculture really meant — and what is worth hanging on to — feels heartfelt, and important.

  Plus, there’s a hell of an adventure story.

  I’m so glad this is back in print. I’d gotten scared to keep lending out my old, battered copy.

• [Flying Orca]

  LOVED it when I was 19 or 20, and I’ve been waiting for it to come back into print following the success of that bloated fantasy series. But, um, the Doors?! More like Zep I think.

  Anyway, the Big Chill-esque reunion is the only such I’ve seen in print or film which didn’t somehow ring false for this barely-post-Boomer. GRRM can WRITE, and I don’t say that about too many people.

  Oh, obligatory shameless plug for a friend: if you like said bloated fantasy series, you’ll probably like Steven Erikson’s stuff even more. Of course it’s hard to be into one and not know about the other, but you never know.

• [Flying Orca]

  Oh yeah, you could do a lot worse than to incorporate some of Froggie the Gremlin’s lexicon into your relations with women. I’m just sayin’.

• [padster123]

  That book’s alright, but I never felt that George R R Martin lived up to the promise of his earlier stuff. Sandkings blew me away, and Song for Lya. The thing he did with Lisa Tuttle was nice. But much of his later stuff: too fantasy for me!

• [Halloween Jack]

  I have this somewhere, and generally like it, although some parts worked better than others. The fictional band reads like a LOTR-themed version of the Doors, and the secret plot at the heart of the book is kind of cheesy, but the parts where he talks to his old college buddies–especially the one who dodged the draft, only to be turned in by his evil, Tom Clancyesque father–are worth the price of the book.