'Rock and Roll is Life': The True Story of the Helium Kids by One Who Was There: A Novel

by D.J. Taylor

You may remember the Helium Kids. Back in their late '60s and early '70s heyday they appeared on Top of the Tops on 27 separate occasions, released five Billboard-certified platinum albums, played sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and were nearly, but not quite, as big as the Beatles and the Stones.

Three decades later, in the big house on the outskirts of Norwich, Nick Du Pont is looking back on the rollercoaster years he spent as their publicist in a world of licensed excess and lurking tragedy.

What follows is not only the story of a rock band at a formative time in musical history, when America was opening up to English music and huge amounts of money and self-gratification were there for the taking. For the tale is also Nick's - the life and times of a war-baby born in a Norwich council house, the son of an absconding GI, whose career is a search for some of the advantages that his birth denied him. It is at once a worm's eye of British pop music's golden age and a bittersweet personal journey, with cameo appearances from everyone from Elvis and Her Majesty the Queen Mother to Andy Warhol.

'Rock and Roll is Life' is a vastly entertaining, picaresque and touching novel inspired by the excess and trajectories of the great '60s and '70s supergroups, and of the tales brought back from the front line by a very special breed of Englishmen who made it big in the States as the alchemists and enablers, as well as the old making way for the new in the era of the baby boomers. At its heart is one man's adventure, and the poignancy of the special relationships that dominate his life.

Genres: Fiction

480 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2018

About the author

David John Taylor (born 1960) is a critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his life of George Orwell.

He lives in Norwich and contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman and The Spectator among other publications.

He is married to the novelist Rachel Hore, and together they have three sons.

Reviews

[Ferocious french fry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is painstakingly slow and riddled with descriptions of setting, what people wear, references to famous people, and which character has met a famous person or is friends with one. It also seems quite messy with one chapter consisting of traditional narration and another having diary entries narrate the events of the day. The group here has constant comparisons to The Beatles and, while I understand that such a contrast seems to dictate that any British band of the 60s would get compared to the Beatles, it gets really tedious after a while. The point is made perfectly clear the first few times it was done.

While I do love rock & roll as a musical genre, it did not translate well into novel form for me. The band does drugs, has fights, and difference of opinion on musical tastes just like any band would, nothing surprising there. At first the narrator seemed like an inspiring character, with making his own path in life from grammar school to Oxford to a well paid publicist, after a few chapters he simply takes the role of a spectator commemting on other people's actions. What's the point of a main character then?

I usually try to finish at least half a book before deciding if it is worth continuing or not, and in this case even if it has a banger of an ending the slow pace ruins it for me.

[RICHARD HALL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable and celebratory. Clearly the author loves the period of rock n roll music from the early 60s to the mid 70s. This is a literary novel not just a pastiche rock biog. As such, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to record collecting Mojo readers who might be inclined to pick holes in it and consequently miss the point.

DJ Taylor can really write. It felt to me more like the story of the arc of a significant part of the narrator's life that happened to be framed around the music business. It's full of lovely touches such as referencing both ficticious and real acts, record lables etc. It's interspersed with prose that wittily alludes to song lyrics. The novel beautifully captured that feeling of being at the centre of the universe in your 20s and rather irrelevant by your late 50s.

[Misty Gardner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not entirely sure what I made of this. Some parts read more authentically than others and, at the end of the day, you wonder just what it was meant to do, although somehow it came together towards the end. Some readers will undoubtedly find more in it than others, and some will almost certainly be totally baffled...
From the jacket photo I suspect that the author is a little too young to have actually 'been there'. Oh, and the NME Poll-Winners Concerts were held at the Empire POOL, Wembley, not the Empire Bowl. I WAS there....

[Ralph · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author can certainly write but he's not as clever as he thinks he is. Many of the characters and scenarios are simply cut and paste adaptations of the already over familiar. In the end the central character didn't really grab me and it fails to convey a love for and joy in the music he writes about

[Sophia Barsuhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Occasionally a little too dry and dense, but for the most part very entertaining. I absolutely love when authors really do their research, and D. J. Taylor really did his homework. I also absolutely love the design of the inside cover featuring all the albums of the Helium Kids. The designer clearly had fun and I love it.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this tale of the fictitious band The Helium Kids. Narrated by the bands P.R. agent (who was an Earlham boy, which resonated being brought up in West Earlham myself).Will be checking D.J. Taylor's other books out. Recommended.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Taylor leaves Victorian England behind he suffers for it - and so do we. This is meant to be the written equivalent of Spinal Tap. It's more like the Bad News Tour.

Joseph O'Connor's The Thrill of It All is far better.