Fuel-Injected Dreams

Fuel-Injected Dreams, by James Robert Baker

April, 1986  Plume Books

I still rank Boy Wonder as my favorite novel ever, so it’s a “wonder” it’s taken me so long to read this, James Robert Baker’s first novel. I think I put it off because I was under the impression Fuel-Injected Dreams was focused on early ‘60s rock, an era which only occasionally interests me. But in one of those rare instances, I recently became interested in this era of music, so I decided it was finally time to read Fuel-Injected Dreams. Yes, it’s another great novel, if flawed. But no, it’s no Boy Wonder. But then how could it be? 

While Boy Wonder was James Robert Baker’s take on the Hollywood novel, this was his rock novel. Sort of. Fuel-Injected Dreams is not a rock novel about a musician or group going through all the usual tropes of the rock story, like say for example The Rose (which actually gets a mention in Fuel-Injected Dreams). It’s not even about “the rock life,” like for example Triple Platinum. As it turns out, the “rock” conceit is just a framework Baker uses to set up a noir story that comes off like a combo of Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity, mixed with a roman a clef about Phil Spector. That’s the setup, at least. But just as in Boy Wonder the plot often takes unexpected turns. It’s also a darker novel than Boy Wonder, with a subplot concerning a missing girl – a girl presumably gang-raped and killed in the early ‘60s – as well as another subplot in which the Spector analog keeps his wife literally under lock and key. 

At 323 pages, Fuel-Injected Dreams is also shorter than Boy Wonder, but it has that same manic drive. And often it is just as darkly hilarious. Some of the dialog here is incredible. Baker’s brief bio notes that was a Hollywood screenwriter when this was published, something I was not aware of – I’ve honestly never looked much into the guy’s life – which would doubtless be why his dialog is so good. But there’s often too much of a good thing in Fuel-Injected Dreams. In an email to me some years ago, John Nail noted that Fuel-Injected Dreams was “a wild ride well worth taking,” if “a little overwritten in spots,” and within the first twenty pages of the book I knew exactly what he meant. There are a few instances in which the narrative just sort of stops while Baker’s characters toss one-liners and sarcastic rejoinders at one another. Don’t get me wrong, the dialog is great, it’s just that it distracts from the mounting suspense Baker has created via those increasingly-manic plot twists. 

Another similarity to Boy Wonder is the lunatic protagonist. Actually, it’s a bit different in Fuel-Injected Dreams. Here the Shark Trager nutjob of Boy Wonder is split in two: there’s Scott Cochran, the self-obsessed lunatic who narrates the novel and appears to be Baker’s attempt at a hero, and there’s Dennis Contrelle, the self-obsessed lunatic who produced a string of hits in the early 1960s and serves as the novel’s villain. But unlike Shark Trager these two men are alive and present throughout the novel, and we aren’t just reading other characters’ thoughts on them. Dennis Contrelle, the Phil Spector analog, is as mentioned the villain, but Baker provides enough evidence that Contrelle and Cochran are just two sides of the same coin; in one of the many “ponder this!” unsolved mysteries in the novel, at one point Scott Cochran comes upon a room that is a replica of the one Dennis Contrelle grew up in, and Scott cannot get over how much it looks like his own boyhood room. 

Scott is our narrator, and like I say he is Baker’s attempt at the hero of the piece, but as usual James Robert Baker has a lot going on beneath the surface. One quibble I have is that Scott is a radio deejay, but Baker doesn’t do much with it. We only see Scott on the air once, at the very beginning of the novel, where he gives off a rapid-fire patter that seems the sort of thing Mark Leyner would’ve doled out in My Cousin, My Gastrointerologist. It’s very surreal, stream-of-conscious stuff, and Scott has a very progressive freeform show in which he can play whatever he wants. The explanation for this is that he is on around 4AM, thus he’s also free to talk about stuff daytime deejays can’t. The opening might be hard-going for some, what with its italicized print and random digressions, but I found it pretty damn funny – especially the part where Scott fantasizes that he got a “thank-you” card from one of the Manson girls in prison, requesting “anything except something from the White Album.” 

But otherwise Scott’s job as radio DJ has no bearing on the plot. Indeed, the big subplot of Fuel-Injected Dreams concerns a girl Scott was in love with twenty years before, in 1963, and all this is relayed to us as a fantasy movie in Scott’s mind. Complete with “reels” for the major events. This cinema framework is at odds with Scott’s radio personality job, and would seem more at home in Boy Wonder. Also, we never get much of an idea that Scott likes rock and roll, but at least unlike the guy in The Armageddon Rag he actually listens to it for fun, and has a prized collection of rare 7” singles. Actually I take that back. I think it’s more that rock is part of Scott’s genetic fabric, just a part of him, and he lives the rock lifestyle; in his mid 30s but still living in a hotel in Los Angeles and disregarding most societal norms. While the plot hinges on early ‘60s rock, Baker does reference a lot of stuff from the ‘70s and ‘80s, with even obscure punk group The Angry Samoans getting referenced. And Pat Boone is the butt of jokes throughout the novel. So it isn’t just that Scott likes rock – it’s part of who he is. 

That said, it’s a helluva long time until we get to much “rock novel” stuff. Very late in the novel we have a rundown of the discography of Dennis Contrelle’s most famous group, and here Baker shows that he can actually describe the (fictional) music, unlike so many other rock novelists who tell us nothing. It’s a cool fantasy discography – again, similar to Boy Wonder, with its fictional Shark Trager filmography – and I wish there was more like it in Fuel-Injected Dreams. But instead the majority of the plot hinges on the mind-fuckery of Dennis Contrelle, his prisoner-slash-wife Cheryl, and Scott’s confusion over what happened to his one-time beloved, Sharlene, back in 1963. 

One of the last similarities I want to call out between this and Boy Wonder is the subplot in that novel concerning Kathy Pietro, the blonde beauty Shark Trager was obsessed with. Anyone who has read Boy Wonder will recall the string of pseudo-Kathy Pietros Shark finds (or creates) in the course of the novel. That theme, of doubles and lookalikes, has its start here in Fuel-Injected Dreams. For we are informed posthaste that Cheryl Contrelle, ie the beautiful singer with the beehived hairdo who went from a member of Dennis Contrelle’s band to being Dennis Contrelle’s wife, is a dead ringer for Scott’s vanished girlfriend Sharlene. Note even the similar names, Cheryl and Sharlene. And Cheryl Contrelle appeared on the scene shortly after Sharlene went missing. She even wears an ankle bracelet, same as the one Scott gave Sharlene back in 1963 – an ankle bracelet neither he nor Sharlene could unclasp, as Scott accidentally clamped it permanently shut when trying to remove it with his teeth. So is Cheryl really Sharlene? This is just one of the mysteries Baker spins out through the novel. 

So the long and short of it, as relayed by that fantasy “movie” in Scott’s mind, is that Sharlene was a new girl in Scott’s high school, back in ’63, and he was instantly smitten. The other guys joked that she was a notorious whore, but Scott didn’t listen to them. Scott lucked out one day, spotting Sharlene looking for a ride, and soon enough they were back at his home smoking dope and having lots of sex. This turned into true love, though all the guys kept joking with Scott that it was “just sex.” But when Sharlene got pregnant, Scott freaked out – only sixteen, with no way to support a kid – and Sharlene stormed off. The last time Scott saw her she was hanging out with one of those guys who claimed Sharlene was a whore, and it looked like the two were about to become friendly. Scott never saw her again; indeed, no one ever saw Sharlene again, as it seemed she walked off the beach that night and into legend. 

Shortly after that Dennis Contrelle unveiled his new group, fronted by a young woman named Cheryl who not only looked identical to Sharlene but sported the same beehive hairdo. But the group eventually broke up, Cheryl becoming Dennis’s shut-in of a wife, and Dennis Contrelle himself went into seclusion, after the wild recording of his gotterdammerung single “Tidal Wave” (ie “River Deep, Mountain High,” complete with a fictional analog of Tina Turner). Now, twenty years later, Scott happens to play “Angel of the Highway” on his late-night show; a clear reference to “Leader Of The Pack,” this fictional song finds James Robert Baker mixing his early ‘60s schlock, as “Leader of The Pack” was not a Phil Spector production. (Scott’s description of the song leaves no doubt of its real-world inspiration.) After playing the song, none other than reclusive Dennis Contrelle calls into the station, setting off the twisted plot. 

Baker’s dialog throughout this first half of the novel almost brought tears to my eyes. It’s not right that this guy was so gifted…and so neglected. I mean the dialog in the second half of the novel is great, too, but after a while it’s too much of a good thing – again, John Nail’s comment on “overwritten” was very on-point. But I mean take for example Dennis Contrelle’s first words to Scott when Scott answers the phone at the station: “You vomitous fuck.” It just made me laugh out loud. Same goes for a later bit where Dennis Contrelle, ranting in his oceanside mansion, tells Scott that people in Hollywood will cut out your heart and try to serve it to you for lunch. “That’s why I usually brown-bag it,” Scott responds. Almost the entire novel is made up of such flippant, acidic remarks and rejoinders, to the point that Scott Cochran comes off more like an ironic commentary on the novel itself. What I mean to say is, he’s such a self-obsessed sarcastic prick that it’s hard to believe he feels anything at all. Of course people probably say the same thing about me. 

Dennis Contrelle nearly steals the novel; he’s more cruel and deranged than Shark Trager, a onetime boy genius now in his 40s and suffering from unstated mental problems along with a few decades of drug abuse. Baker really brings the character to life, sometimes ranting and raving, other times contrite and eager to please. And in true roman a clef fashion, the real-world Phil Spector is also mentioned…so of course we won’t get the impression that Dennis Contrelle is supposed to be Phil Spector! Contrelle also has a bit of a Brian Wilson vibe (who is also mentioned), but Spector is the clear inspiration, even down to how Contrelle married the lead singer of one of his groups. And now keeps her a veritable shut-in here in his mansion, which he calls Scott to the next day. 

The first half of the novel follows the Sunset Boulevard setup; Scott is pulled into Dennis’s orbit, the whackjob recluse claiming that he’s spent all these years developing a “new kind of music.” But really Scott finds himself going back to Dennis’s mansion for another glimpse of Cheryl, still as beautiful as the day she went out of the public eye – and still sporting the same beehive hairdo. She also still has the same singing voice. But Scott cannot understand why Contrelle is so evil to her, so mocking of her “lost talents,” and Baker delivers a somewhat believable growing bond between Scott and Cheryl, which goes in the expected direction. All this part is masterfully done, complete with Dennis going into periodic drug-fueled fits and the ever-present menace of Dennis’s heavyset black bodyguard (who in another random and unexplored bit we learn was once a “Little Stevie Wonder”-type musician in Dennis’s stable). 

But around the halfway point things get crazy, which is to be expected of the guy who wrote Boy Wonder. Suddenly a main character has been gunned down in cold blood and Scott and Cheryl are on the run in a stolen sportscar. It gets even more manic, complete with Scott shooting an old rival at his high school reunion. The relationship between Scott and Cheryl also becomes fractuous, with the recurring conceit that Cheryl will rush back to Dennis, even though he treats her so horribly – or is Cheryl just doing this to protect Scott? Baker throws the reader into a constant whorl of uncertainty, particularly with the Sharlene-Cheryl mystery. I found myself so caught up in this that I was gutted, as the British say, to find out what really happened that night in 1963 – and Baker rubbed me the wrong way, here, with Scott telling us that he himself has accepted whatever Sharlene’s fate was (I won’t spoil it – but you certainly find out in the novel), given that it all happened twenty years ago. Well it didn’t happen twenty years ago for us readers!! The main problem with Fuel-Injected Dreams is that Scott’s relationship with Sharlene has more emotional foundation than the one with Cheryl. 

Regardless, I was truly caught up in Fuel-Injected Dreams, to the point that I found myself putting off other things to keep reading it. Baker has a gift for maddened narrative and it is in effect throughout the novel, which builds and builds in craziness. The finale is appropriately apocalyptic, taking place at Dennis’s oceanside mansion during a hurricane…apocalyptic, but repetitive, given that we read a similar sequence at Dennis’s mansion in which wildfires were raging out of control. In both sequences Scott must rush in to the fray to rescue Cheryl, and thus the climax comes off like a repeat of a scene we read about a hundred pages before. That said, the big reveal at the end, so far as the Sharlene-Cheryl mystery goes, is pretty gruesome and twisted, more so than anything I can recall in Boy Wonder. As I said, Fuel-Injected Dreams is just overall a darker story. 

This and Boy Wonder were the only two “mainstream” novels James Robert Baker wrote; after which he turned to gay fiction. Honestly, reading this novel I never would’ve guessed that Baker was gay. There was no “secret gay subtext” I could divine, unless you wanted to make an argument around the Dennis Contrelle-Scott Cochran relationship. But this would prove fruitless…and besides, you could probably make up a “hidden gay subtext” for any piece of fiction, so long as you had an agenda to push. There are no gay characters in the novel, other than minor ones who don’t even appear in the actual narrative: Contrelle claims that one of his early groups, a surf-rock combo, was made up of all gay members, and they’d spend their time either surfing or “screwing each other.” He also refers to them as “homos.” So yes, the only gay characters are mocked for being gay. Otherwise, Baker writes about women like…well, like a horny straight author. In his narration Scott is constantly mentioning Cheryl’s breasts, or Sharlene’s breasts, and it all comes off like genuine lust for the female form…basically, what you’d expect from a horny straight male author. Now the sex scenes don’t get very explicit; in most of them Baker often goes off into a poetic tangent, like one particular instance in which Scott sees himself as a miner while copulating with Sharlene, going for “gold dust.” There’s also a big focus on oral sex; the word “muff” wonderfully appears throughout. That’s a word you just don’t see very often. So Baker either had real-world inspiration to draw from (maybe he started off in hetero relationships before realizing he was gay), or he really just nailed the tone (so to speak). 

Another huge thanks to John Nail for casually mentioning in a more recent email that James Robert Baker wrote and directed a VHS movie in 1984. I’d never even heard of it! Titled Blonde Death, it’s available for free viewing at The Internet Archive.