This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. William Campbell Powell will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Books about bands – is that even a thing? I mean, isn’t it all about music, and how can you even do music in a book?

So let’s hit that first point. Yes, it’s definitely a thing, and it goes back quite a way. Importantly, it’s still happening now. Here’s a short list:

• The Commitments (Roddy Doyle, 1987)
• Espedair Street (Iain Banks, 1987)
• Knife Edge (Malorie Blackman, 2004)
• The Haters (Jesse Andrews, 2016)
• Daisy Jones & The Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2019)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton, 2021)

Two of those have been turned into films / TV series (The Commitments, Daisy Jones) and Espedair Street was adapted for radio.

So those three, at least, have had music written, whether at the time of publication or subsequently. The other three, I’ve not been able to find their songs on the web.

Before I continue, let me say I’ve been in bands, playing a variety of instruments, and writing songs since I was 15. So I think I’ve acquired some relevant skills (else I wouldn’t be writing this post).

So, why do we write about bands?

First of all, because music, singing and playing together, is an integral part of being human. It’s probable that song is older than human speech. Song is transcendent – it touches our soul in ways that few other human activities approach.

Secondly, because bands have become a global phenomenon, reaching across cultures. The emergence of ‘pop’ music in the 1950s, supported by radio and the new medium of TV – and the availability of affordable mass-produced instruments, brought music creation back into the reach of ordinary people.

Since then musical talent has emerged from everywhere, from the street corners of Detroit, to a chance meeting at a fete in the suburbs of Liverpool.

We love stories of journeys from humble origins to stardom (and the reverse).

From the writer’s perspective, bands are almost purpose-made for conflict.

• Bands are pressure cookers, hothouses. The band members are forced into proximity, whether they’re in a studio, recording, on stage, performing, or in a vehicle, touring. They can’t escape from each other. Even the smallest irritations are magnified.
• So we get conflicts over ego, over fame, over money, over sex. (And drugs, and rock’n’roll)
• We see jealousy, infidelity, rivalry, addiction, overdoses. Age and infirmity. Death.

Journalists, too, love bands for all the above reasons – they sell.

So bands give writers the ingredients for great stories. The only problem is, how do you convey music in a book? There’s no audio. It’s a book.

The obvious solution is to use songs everyone knows. The drawback is that most popular songs are under copyright, and fair use doesn’t apply in many legal jurisdictions.

When I wrote my first novel – Expiration Day – I went through the process of enquiring about using song lyrics (and poetry). Generally the copyright agent asks you how many copies you think you might print. They then think up an eyewatering number. You try to bargain, but the agent holds all the cards.

So authors end up writing their own.

Unfortunately, it’s a different skill from writing prose. (It’s also a different skill from writing poetry.) It can take years to acquire. Which is why, I guess, there aren’t that many books with songs.

Why and where do you insert a song?

So let’s turn to my new book, Teardown, and look at some of the songs, in context.

‘The Hall of Fallen Angels’ was written as a proxy for ‘Dark End of the Street’, which is a song about adultery: two lovers, meeting in secret, deceiving their spouses. In Teardown, Dom proposes it to get Kai duetting with her. She’s playing with Kai, raising Eros, to see if Kai reacts. Then she does the same with Neale, but it’s still Kai she wants to react. And it’s in the hothouse of rehearsal, and performance. Kai can’t escape.

‘Cross/Don’t Cross’ is similar – but part of Dom’s performance to the audience, and again it seeks a reaction from the audience. It is deliberately provocative and seductive, and Kai knows exactly what is at the heart of it – Dom manoeuvred Kai into co-writing it.

‘I Come From the Blues’ justifies its place on very different grounds. It’s there as a clue to the whole mystery of Dom. How does such a powerful, sexy singer come to choose Kai’s very ordinary blues band? I won’t say more (spoilers!).

‘Drinking Song’ is there to help break down barriers between the band and the audience at the pivotal gig of the tour. It’s the so that, when the next day the guests decide to go off together for something a little more social, it’s more natural that the band gets invited along too.

‘I’ve Got the Blues, I Ain’t Worried’ – I have to admit is just there for colour. It doesn’t really advance the plot or develop the characters. So there goes my thesis. But it’s just two verses.

There is a sixth song – a significantly modified version of ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, for duet singing. It does play a minor part in the plot, acting as a trigger for Kai to go and write ‘Drinking Song’. But the original tune and words go back to an old folk song, well out of copyright. Those songs are fine (and free).

So there we have it. Most times the band plays blues standards, referenced simply by their titles. But when you need something more substantial, it’s time to dig deep and write original material.

But, you say, I can’t hear them. It’s just poetry.

But you can hear them. Because I’ve recorded the five songs, to a reasonable demo standard and I’ve put them on my website at https://bit.ly/TeardownMusic. You don’t need any subscription to listen to them – though they are copyright. If you’re in a band, or a solo singer, there are chords, and you can pick out the melody from the mp3.

Have a listen. Have a sing.

Growing up in a dead-end, Thames Valley town like Marden Combe, Kai knows there’s no escape without a lot of talent, hard work—and luck.

Two weeks before the Clayton Paul Blues Band plans to set out on tour to Germany, their singer quits, and drummer Kai takes matters in hand. With bandmates Jake and Jamie, they recruit a talented new singer—the enigmatic Dominique—as the new face of the band and set out on the road to Berlin in a rickety white van.

Dogged by mishaps and under-rehearsed, the band stumbles through their first shows, zig-zagging between chaos and brilliance. But as the first gig in Berlin draws near, the band begins to gel. They’re clicking with their audience, and even the stone-hearted Kai starts to crumble under the spell, first of Dom and then…of Lars.

As the end of the tour approaches, Kai must make hard choices. Dom? But she’s keeping a dark secret. Lars? Not after the acrimony of their last parting. The band? Or will that dream crumble too?

Enjoy an Excerpt

The bus stank of commuters. It wasn’t like a night bus, granted, but the mix of sweat and cheap scent—and the pungency of diesel—was another reminder of how much I hated Marden Combe.

A Thames Valley town like every other Thames Valley town, Marden Combe had a posh, blingy bit, where the bankers, footballers, and celebrity chefs lived. The rest ran the spectrum from dilapidated through demolished to barely affordable modern rabbit hutches. The old town centre was closing down, and the new shopping centre was gridlock hell.

The bus lurched and swung left, past a school named for a long-dead parliamentarian. Or possibly a royalist. I ought to know; it had been my old school till I’d turned sixteen. But it had all seemed irrelevant to the more immediate problem of not getting picked on for being different. There were a dozen ways and more to be different, whether it was for being too ugly, too geeky, too slow on the uptake, too shy, too dark, not dark enough, having a funny accent, or a fundy religion, or being neurodivergent, being too posh, being too poor, liking the wrong music, or football team, or playing oddball sports, or using last year’s tech; not liking girls, not liking boys, not liking either, liking both. Plus others, plus combinations. By more than one marker, I was weird, and I hadn’t always kept my head down. But there’d definitely been no bullying at Sir Long-Dead-Parliamentarian School. Or Royalist, as the case may be. Oh no.

That didn’t come close to summing up the suffocating, hope-crushing, soul-sucking, shit-brown hole that is Marden Combe. I needed to escape.

If I had a plan, it was that music would save me…

About the Author: William lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night he writes speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His debut novel, EXPIRATION DAY, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for better than half-decent science in a YA novel—the citation actually says “Excellence in Children’s Science Fiction Literature”.

William’s latest novel – TEARDOWN – was published 10th December 2024, by NineStar Press in the US; it is an LGBT+ romance/road-trip.

His short fiction has appeared in DreamForge, Metastellar, Abyss & Apex and other outlets.
By day he writes software for a living and in the twilight he sings tenor, plays guitar and writes songs.

Buy the book here. The book will be on sale for $0.99

My comps for the book:

The novel combines elements of LGBTQIA+ romance with Road Trip fiction, and – with its focus on music – might sit alongside Taylor Jenkins Reid’s ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ (2016) or Dawnie Walton’s ‘The Final Revival of Opal & Nev’ (2022), or – with its focus on (Kai’s) gender-ambiguity and relationships – near Camille Perry’s ‘When Katie Met Cassidy’ (2018) or Beth O’Leary’s ‘The Road Trip’ (2022).

a Rafflecopter giveaway