\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>hey have sold out venues on both sides of the Atlantic. Their first-ever gig was opening for a former member of Arcade Fire. Their 2024 album has been acclaimed as sounding like a lost classic of 1970s rock. Their two top tracks, Bright and Masquerade, have notched up 700,000 streams on Spotify. In fact, by the numbers, they\u2019re having one of the most buzzy rock debuts of recent years. Yet they don\u2019t really exist. They don\u2019t even have a name.<\/p>\n The band is in fact the unnamed five-piece featured in Stereophonic, a hugely successful, Tony-winning drama, currently playing in London\u2019s West End. Written by David Adjmi, with music by former Arcade Fire member Will Butler, Stereophonic earned five stars from the Guardian, which praised its \u201cmoments of creative transcendence, including a late-night epiphany so electrifying that the sound waves will excite your internal organs\u201d.<\/p>\n Critics dismissed The Commitments until Elvis Costello said: \u2018If you want to know what it was like, read this\u2019<\/p>\n Making it in the music industry is often framed as a triumph of individual artistry and hard sweat. Yet a huge number of bands invented for novels, TV shows and films have ended up with real songs and even real hits. Spinal Tap, born of the 1984 mockumentary, landed a Top 40 single \u2013 and a reunion concert, thanks to the recent sequel, which keeps the silliness dialled up to 11. The Commitments, the group from Roddy Doyle\u2019s 1987 novel, have enjoyed the sort of success and longevity many flesh-and-blood acts would kill for, from a chart-topping album (the film soundtrack) to international tours.<\/p>\n More recently, Aurora, the debut album from Daisy Jones and the Six, was reviewed in Pitchforkwhen released as the soundtrack to Amazon\u2019s TV adaptation of the 2019 novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Meanwhile Netflix\u2019s animation KPop Demon Hunters, about rival bands, became the platform\u2019s most-watched film ever.<\/p>\n <\/span>Faking it up to 11 \u2026 Spinal Tap.<\/span> Photograph: PictureLux\/The Hollywood Archive\/Alamy<\/p>\n Both Daisy Jones and the Six and the unnamed band of Stereophonic are often likened to Fleetwood Mac for their 1970s settings, transatlantic lineups and romantic turbulence. Ken Caillat, producer of Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Rumours album, even sued the makers of Stereophonic for similarities to his memoir, settling out of court.<\/p>\n Rather than any one act, though, Adjmi says he was drawn to quasi-mythological legends of rock music (the seed was Led Zeppelin\u2019s Babe I\u2019m Gonna Leave You) and the band members\u2019 relationships behind the scenes. \u201cI was very interested,\u201d he says, \u201cin this bleed between personal and public, professional and romantic.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as Fleetwood Mac, Adjmi looked to the Mamas and Papas, Arcade Fire and the Metallica-in-therapy documentary Some Kind of Monster. He also drew on his experience making theatre: within a production, as with a band, egos have to be managed \u201cin service of this larger thing\u201d. For that reason, Adjmi resisted the \u201ctired tropes\u201d of rock star rebelliousness and hell-raising. \u201cTo be successful,\u201d he says, \u201cyou can\u2019t just<\/em> be throwing pianos out the window.\u201d And cocaine, his research showed, was treated by 70s bands as something akin to coffee: \u201cJust another way to wake up.\u201d Hence the one-kilo bag that gets casually dipped into in his play.<\/p>\n Set exclusively in a recording studio, Stereophonic is in some ways \u201can office drama\u201d, Adjmi says. The band came alive to him not in their music but in the downtime between takes, \u201ceating Chinese food and chatting about crispy noodles\u201d. For a non-musician, however, representing the recording process required a steep learning curve: \u201cI watched every VH1 documentary,\u201d he says. Soon, themes emerged \u2013 mostly to do with keeping the music flowing while keeping the musicians under control. This inspired the play\u2019s overarching tension between the banality and alchemy of artistic creation. Butler was tasked with delivering the music and lyrics. One early brief ran: \u201cYou\u2019ll hear something transcendent \u2013 then someone will stop it for no good reason.\u201d<\/p>\n Butler tried to write from the characters\u2019 perspectives, reflecting not the era\u2019s defining songs but the songs they would have grown up with. \u201cLike, Holly heard this reggae song she really liked at Eric Clapton\u2019s house when he was being a total piece of shit. Then they saw Sylvester open for David Bowie in 1975 in San Francisco.\u201d Butler even projected forward, imagining the band as a formative influence for Michael Stipe, and their seminal album on repeat in the Cobain family home.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t enough for the songs to be both good and consistent with the time, he points out \u2013 they also had to serve the play, bolster the drama and justify the focus on this particular band. \u201cThe whole play,\u201d he says, \u201cthey\u2019re talking, talking, talking. Then they play music and you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, it makes sense \u2013 this is why they\u2019re here.\u2019 Those moments of music had to have a hyper-reality.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Pitchfork approved \u2026 Riley Keough in Daisy Jones and the Six. <\/span> Photograph: Album\/Alamy<\/p>\n For novelists, the challenge is different: to portray convincingly a group that will probably never be heard. Roddy Doyle was drawn to the idea of writing about a band as \u201can excuse to bring a group of people together\u201d. He also considered a football team, but dismissed that as too difficult. The Booker-winning Doyle is not a musician and has never been part of a band. What made The Commitments work was his choice of perspective. The novel follows Jimmy Rabbitte, an opinionated outsider who \u201cknows his music\u201d and is brought in to manage the band. \u201cBy allowing him to just be a fan,\u201d says Doyle, \u201cI was on my way.\u201d<\/p>\n Then a 27-year-old teacher in Dublin, Doyle took just six months to write the novel \u2013 and one to come up with the band\u2019s name. \u201cI liked the mock earnestness. It wasn\u2019t 100 miles away from bands like the Temptations.\u201d He\u2019d been listening to soul compilation tapes, which gave him the idea \u201cto superimpose this Black American form on to Dublin\u201d.<\/p>\n A soul lineup also allowed him more characters \u2013 thus more tension. Veteran trumpeter Joey \u201cThe Lips\u201d Fagan, was drawn from the Specials\u2019 Rico Rodriguez and Saxa of the Beat, while their look of mismatched formal wear was chosen for comedic contrast. \u201cThere\u2019s something just utterly daft about the monkey suit.\u201d<\/p>\n For their first gig, Doyle put readers in the crowd with Rabbitte, sidestepping all that technical detail regarding instruments. The rest, he was free to imagine. \u201cTrying to capture the sound of the bass,\u201d he says, \u201cthe guitar and the Dublin accent singing the lyrics was a huge part of the fun.\u201d<\/p>\n He wrote to those soul tapes right into the night, his ear against the speaker to catch the lyrics after turning the volume down because his neighbour complained. \u201cIt would be so much easier now,\u201d he says. \u201cAll I\u2019d have to do is Google.\u201d He\u2019d sought to avoid the \u201cearnestness\u201d of music journalists, who dismissed his self-published novel \u2013 until Elvis Costello endorsed it in Irish music bible Hot Press. \u201cHe said, \u2018If you want to know what it was like, read The Commitments.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018A terrific experience\u2019 \u2026 the Commitments.<\/span> Photograph: Tristram Kenton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n One of the critics\u2019 objections was that the Commitments found success too quickly. Doyle scoffs. \u201cI just thought, \u2018Ya fuckin\u2019 eejits. You think the reader\u2019s going to hang around for 20 years till they\u2019re good enough on the trumpet?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Commitments went on to have a \u201chuge life\u201d, with the 1991 film and, later, a successful musical. Doyle co-wrote the film\u2019s script but sat casting out. He remembers feeling trepidatious: \u201cThese are people taking on voices that you had in your head for years.\u201d At first they \u201cjarred slightly\u201d, he says, but once he relaxed, \u201cit was a terrific experience\u201d.<\/p>\n The Flaming Dildos, by contrast, can be heard only in Jennifer Egan\u2019s imagination, and that of readers of her Pulitzer prize-winning novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad. Egan had been waiting for a chance to write about late 1970s San Francisco punk. As a teenager, she\u2019d been \u201ckind of a wallflower\u201d on the scene, attending gigs at fabled tiny nightclub Mabuhay Gardens. \u201cIn terms of a milieu, a vibe, an environment,\u201d she says, \u201cit was just catnip.\u201d She was delighted when the band name popped into her head: \u201cIt\u2019s laughably dumb, but it has a kind of snap to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Crime, the Avengers and the Germs \u2013 the more obscure bands Egan saw play \u2013 are namechecked as the Dildos\u2019 local idols. \u201cThe Mab\u201d is their regular haunt. Egan\u2019s memories of its expensive bar and \u201cgraffiti-splattered\u201d bathroom added realism. She also drew from \u201ccrappy videos\u201d of these bands\u2019 performances found online. Suitably \u201cresaturated\u201d in the music of the time, Egan then wrote What the Fuck? \u2013 the Dildos\u2019 \u201cbest song\u201d, which they practice in guitarist Scotty\u2019s garage. \u201cI had a ball,\u201d she says gleefully. \u201cThe lyrics were a lot of fun: both plausible, I think, as a punk rock song and obviously pretty sophomoric.\u201d She even came up with a melody, but declines to sing it to me. \u201cI think it\u2019s best on the page. That\u2019s the God I\u2019m serving in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryan Lee O\u2019Malley, the Canadian behind the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series, likewise wrote lyrics for a song his hero plays with his garage band Sex Bob-Omb. A musician himself, O\u2019Malley even printed the guitar chords so readers could play along. It was all a ploy, he says, \u201cto keep the book in people\u2019s hands after reading it. The song\u2019s tremendously terrible if you actually play it.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Malley now can\u2019t distinguish between the songs as he\u2019d imagined them and those available to stream<\/p>\n O\u2019Malley was writing about his own experiences as an indie kid in Toronto. \u201cIt was a world I knew so well. I could tackle it from every angle.\u201d Pilgrim\u2019s bass, a Rickenbacker 4003, was a model O\u2019Malley had lusted after in a shop window, knowing he \u201ccould never afford\u201d it. So there was \u201ca bit of wish fulfilment\u201d involved \u2013 but he also drew inspiration from Beck, Harold Sakuishi\u2019s manga series about a rock band. \u201cThe way he would draw them playing \u2013 you could feel the songs, even though you could never hear them.\u201d When Sakuishi\u2019s songs were recorded for an anime TV series, O\u2019Malley hated the results. \u201cThat isn\u2019t what they sounded like in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n When it came to giving an actual sound to Sex Bob-Omb for Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Edgar Wright\u2019s 2010 film adaptation, O\u2019Malley referenced the loud, abrasive yet poppy songs of Ohio lo-fi band Times New Viking. An esteemed duo \u2013 producer Nigel Godrich and Beck (the musician) \u2013 were tasked with making them a reality. \u201cIt felt like someone was going to the highest levels to make my dreams come true,\u201d says O\u2019Malley. \u201cWhich was cool \u2013 and a little surreal.\u201d O\u2019Malley now can\u2019t distinguish between the songs as he\u2019d imagined them and those available to stream. \u201cWe Are Sex Bob-Omb has almost 30m plays on Spotify,\u201d he says in disbelief.<\/p>\n The band in Stereophonic, says Butler, only became \u201creal\u201d to him once the cast was in place. \u201cIt was like a TV show about making a band,\u201d says the musician, who took the actors to his studio to work on their songs but also to give them \u201cthe experience of hanging out in the kitchen while there\u2019s some stupid tech thing to fix\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018The song\u2019s tremendously terrible if you actually play it\u2019 \u2026 Michael Cera and Sex Bob-Omb in Scott Pilgrim vs The World.<\/span> Photograph: Collection Christophel\/Alamy<\/p>\n Their baptism by fire was to open for his new band, Will Butler + Sister Squares, at the party for the release of their self-titled album. \u201cThe girls all hated it,\u201d he laughs. \u201cThe boys were really into it.\u201d In the script, he points out, Diana mentions having played Madison Square Garden. \u201cI wanted them to hear how loud a show is. To do that even in front of 200 people, you realise how horrible it would feel in front of 10,000.\u201d<\/p>\n Now the cast have performed to many times that number on Broadway, while the original cast\u2019s recording is available as an album. Adjmi is tickled by \u201cthe meta aspect\u201d of his fictional band becoming reality. Stereophonic\u2019s success, he argues, reflects a nostalgia for more authentic, analogue pop. \u201cThere\u2019s a sort of naivete, or innocence, that I am pining for in the 70s,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Scott Pilgrim \u2013 also adapted for TV in 2023 \u2013 likewise channels a time when joining garage bands was a rite of teen passage and local battles of the bands were life or death. Music and culture has changed so much since then, says O\u2019Malley, that \u201cmaybe there\u2019s some sort of nostalgic dive into the past\u201d. He remains bemused by the long life of his comic, which he started \u201cas a silly shit-post for my friends\u201d.<\/p>\n Doyle, meanwhile, delights in the Commitments\u2019 legacy. \u201cThere are people,\u201d he says, \u201cwho assume that Mustang Sally is a traditional Irish song.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" They have sold out venues on both sides of the Atlantic. Their first-ever gig was opening for a former member of Arcade Fire. Their 2024 album has been acclaimed as sounding like a lost classic of 1970s rock. Their two top tracks, Bright and Masquerade, have notched up 700,000 streams on Spotify. In fact, by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[16736,16737,1285,16739,2357,7592,70,686,168,14221,16738,5647,8242,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-28141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-30m","9":"tag-bands","10":"tag-big","11":"tag-dildos","12":"tag-fake","13":"tag-flaming","14":"tag-hit","15":"tag-music","16":"tag-plays","17":"tag-reallife","18":"tag-spinal","19":"tag-spotify","20":"tag-tap","21":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}