The Scene

The Scene, by Mike Jahn
January, 1971  Pocket Books

First published in hardcover by Bernard Geiss Associates in 1970, The Scene is courtesy Mike Jahn (aka “Joseph Michael Jahn” per the copyright page), who years later would write Six Million Dollar Man novels like Wine, Women And War. Here though he’s in much more of a literary mode, turning in a “Documentary Novel” that has more in common with the pretentious hippie lit of the era than the steamy potboilers Geiss was known for – Geiss of course being a Lyle Kenyon Engel type of book producer, one whose claim to fame was the publication of Valley Of The Dolls.

This underground literary style is evidenced posthaste; in a present-tense, almost stream-of-conscious opening Jahn elaborates on how those crazy kids today just love rock ‘n’ roll and, unlike the pulp readers of the past, they’re not ever gonna outgrow it. (And, uh, “Did anyone want to go down on Bob Kane for drawing Batman?”) All this was interesting to read from the perspective of decades later, as today of course grown adults collect toys, let alone rock albums. But at any rate this overly busy intro just serves to bring us into “the scene,” as it were – both the “rock scene” itself and the actual Scene Club, aka Steve Paul’s Scene. This was a real place, right on 46th Street in Manhattan, and we’re informed in the first pages that it closed in “mid-1969.”

I imagine then that the novel occurs in 1968 – we’re only told it’s “September,” and we’re introduced to Lori Thomas, who unfortunately will serve as our protagonist in this short novel. Lori is a 22 year old blonde with the expected great bod; she’s fully into the scene, both the vibe and the club, and while she dreams of being a singer-songwriter she’s really more of a groupie superslut. At least she is in the first half of the novel, until she experiences some hard-to-buy character growth.

Jahn at this time covered the rock scene for The New York Times (he also published a slim book on The Doors that’s highly collectible these days), so he knows his stuff – the novel is peppered with random notes about rock groups and the like. And in another similarity to those hippie lit novels of the day it’s not told in one plain fashion; interspersed with Lori’s main story we have digressive, interminable “tapes,” presented as interviews with three unnamed characters – a Groupie, a Guitarist, a Manager. Most of these are made up of the rambling, disjointed material as seen in the average Rolling Stone interview of the day, though some of it’s fun, like the Groupie’s astrological reading of the Beatles and other groups.

Lori Thomas is perhaps one of the more vapid, cipher-like protagonists I’ve yet encountered in a mainstream novel. Her entire goal seems to be screwing…well, everyone in the rock world. She specifically goes to the Scene to scope out rock world dudes, picking them up in blatant fashion. Lori’s top target is Gino Henley, of the Gino Henley Organization, an ersatz Jimi Hendrix who fronts a Family Stone sort of group that includes horns in addition to the basic rock instruments. A “spade Mick Jagger,” as Jahn refers to him – but let’s recall, this is from the era in which a Rolling Stone reviewer referred to Hendrix as a “psychedelic super spade” in his review of Electric Ladyland. Anyway Henley doesn’t sound very great, his guitar work and mannerisms expressly copied from Hendrix and Townshend and others, but Lori has her vapid sights set on him.

Thus she’s blown away when Gino shows up at the Scene one night. She brazenly hits on him, slipping her hand onto his crotch as he sits at a table, but her advances are turned away and Lori ends up with…“the bass player.” All we’re told is he’s a British dude, we’re never given his name, and I really thought at first that it was Noel Redding himself; Jahn doesn’t inform us that the “Him” Lori lusts over is a fictional rocker named Gino Henley. It really seems as if it’s Jimi himself, particularly given his easy-going manner and the fact that he’s accompanied at all times by a Devon Wilson-esque black beauty. But Lori, her head hanging low, goes back with the bassist to his hotel and proceeds to fuck him silly over the course of several pages in super-explicit detail; I can almost see Bernard Geiss rubbing his mitts together at this point – “Finally! This is what my readers want!”

Jahn has a tendency to perspective-hop, so we learn the bass player develops feelings for Lori, not that they’re reciprocated. In fact she’s angry that she even had to stoop to screwing the bassist, and basically tells him to fuck off the next morning. Here her character is developed slightly in that we finally see her doing something other than screwing rockers. She heads to the studio, where she’s working on a record with her producer, Tony, who of course was a former lover, but Lori dumped him because he wasn’t a real rocker type. Lori’s music is described as folk with a jazzy bent, just her and her acoustic guitar, so one wonders how much “producing” is necessary.

But Lori’s so caught up in recording her crap that she forgets she’s supposed to meet her friend – a fellow vapid groupie – at the Scene. Thus Lori is bummed to discover she’s missed an impromptu Gino Henley Organization gig! Here Lori commits another of her aggressive come-ons…she pushes her way backstage and slaps Gino on the ass! Well this time he takes her back to his hotel, Lori pointedly ignoring “the bassist,” but when the expected a-doings are about to transpire, Gino leaves Lori high and dry. Not only that, but he basically makes a fool of her in a roomful of people – Lori’s strung out on grass and whatnot – and once again leaves her with the bassist!

This horrible development serves to make Lori a better person, we’re to understand. Humiliated by the experience, she shuts herself off in her apartment, playing records. She then pours herself into the recording of her album. Here Jahn changes the format – previously the book has occurred over a few days, but now months pass between chapters. Despite all odds – because it sounds like awful, played-in-Starbucks shit, Lori’s LP is a smash success. Tony builds up an aura of mystery about her, keeping her out of the public eye. Meanwhile Lori’s been doing this pretty much on her own, no longer going to the Scene and ignoring all of her old friends there.

Around here Jahn begins to develop a sort of redeemed-through-love theme that’s hard to buy, given the cipherlike, one-track-mind Lori previously displayed. But slowly she begins to fall (again) for Tony, mostly because of the way he cares for her and whatnot. This leads to the novel’s big finale, at the Miami Pop Festival in January; Lori’s first unveiling to the public. Even here she stays in her hotel room, and on the big day she walks through a gauntlet of dudes she’s slept with as an increasingly-uncomfortable Tony escorts her backstage. A nice reminder of the girl’s rock-whoredom past.

But inexplicably the audience goes ga-ga for Lori, singing alone with her acoustic guitar, and she’s an overnight sensation. The novel ends with Lori on the cusp of major fame, but also in love with Tony – we don’t even get a “she’ll go back to her old ways” sendoff, as Lori has the chance to sleep with an old lay but turns him down, thinking about Tony. Meanwhile Gino Henley hasn’t been mentioned since he left Lori cold, so in reality The Scene is sort of like a period rock novel featuring a Joni Mitchell type, instead of the rocker type of progatonist most readers might want – at least that’s what I wanted.

The period details are somewhat cool, though, and it’s interesting to read a book from a time when Jimi and Janis and Morrison were still alive, and the other rockers were in their prime. And Jahn drops all kinds of rock world info on us, though sometimes it’s quite arbitrary, like a digressive bit on The Rascals, aka “the best known American rock group.” Huh?? There’s also a random flashback to when Lori saw Iggy and the Stooges in concert, and that’s megacool, given the early publication date of the book. In fact if the entire damn book had been about Iggy (or at least an Iggy-like character...or better yet he shoulda just made Gino Henley the protagonist), it might’ve been great. 

But I don’t think The Scene has been forgotten because it’s such a period piece; I think it’s more that the protagonist is unlikable and her story seems lifted from innumerable other rock success stories.