Star Fever

Star Fever, by Nancy Weber

April, 1971  Signet Books

As mentioned in my review of $500, Star Fever was Nancy Weber’s first novel, a paperback original published by Signet that is so obscure I didn’t even find it when I was obsessively searching for rock novels a few years ago. 

This slim novel, barely over 150 pages (the last several pages are comprised of song lyrics by Weber’s fictional musicians), is very much of its era…sort of a more literate take on what J.R. Young was doing. In her 2014 interview Weber described Star Fever as a “a silly work-for-hire about groupies,” but really it isn’t – it’s more along the lines of the later Rock & Roll Retreat Blues, a sort of surreal slice-of-rocker-life sort of thing, with the caveat that Star Fever is like so, so many other “rock novels” of this era in that it really isn’t about rock music at all. 

No, the focus is on Susan O’Brien, sexy young socialite reporter (apparently a Weber staple; the same sort of protagonist featured in $500) who is doing a magazine expose on groupies…and to this end a lot of the book is comprised of taped conversations between Susan and Star, essentially the top groupie of her day: a young groovy chick who is the main woman of Frog Johnson, a Bob Dylan-esque folk singer with big underground cred. 

Then a lot of the novel is comprised of the pseudo diary entries of Jan, a teenager who saw Frog in her hometown of Seattle, had sex with him in his hotel room, and now is obsessed with him, to the point that she’s run away from home and is trying to be with him because she thinks they were meant to be together. The novel starts off on very casual footing; Susan “rapping” with Star, diary excerpts from Jan…the actual rockers, ie the focus of the novel, are barely even seen! The editor at Signet is to be given much credit for sifting through the novel and making it seem like it’s going to focus on the “sleazy rocker stuff.” Just check out this first-page preview: 

And also the back cover, which promises a completely different novel than what we get: 

So yeah, it develops eventually that Susan, a roving magazine reporter who comes off like a proto Sex and the City character but a lot less shrill and self-involved, once had a casual fling with Pete Kettle, drummer for top British sensation The Boys. That Susan is determined to get him, as per the back cover, is not really an element in the novel…though she does eventually get him. 

As for the porno flick hyped on the first-page preview? It happens so casually in the novel that it barely even resonates. Once she’s hooked up with Pete Kettle again, Susan is at a party and smoking pot and all those usual late ‘60s things (the novel is set between 1969 and 1970, though curiously there’s no mention of Woodstock), and someone decides to shoot a porno for another guy’s birthday present, and Susan says what the hell, she’ll be in it. But the actual shooting of the movie happens off-page and indeed, Weber keeps all the sex-scenes off-page or so obfuscated that even the most depraved reader will have to do some heavy lifting in the imagination department to make things juicy. I mean, this ain’t no $500, but even that wasn’t too explicit. 

But really, this isn’t a “plot” type of novel. As with the later $500, Weber really excels at bringing a lost New York to life – though again, hers is a New York of upper-crust socialites. One of the subplots of the novel is Susan, “old” in her late twenties, learning to let herself loosen up and join up with the young hippie crowd. 

But where are the rockers? Sadly, they’re window dressing. Star Fever could’ve just as easily been about movie stars. Frog Johnson and Pete Kettle are only there to deliver a few lines of dialog, otherwise the novel belongs to the women. That said, Weber gets major props for bringing an unexpected magickal direction to the novel; Frog hangs out with a black guy who fashions himself as a wizard and Star sees herself as a witch, and there’s a lot of groovy ‘60s ritual stuff when Jan is indoctrinated into the world of magick. 

Oh and speaking of random metaphysical things…now this is crazy, but then again it would really only matter to me, but still. As I mentioned in my review of $500, I discovered that book in Montreal. Well, folks, guess where Susan O’Brien just randomly decides to go early on in Star Fever? That’s right – for no reason than just to be spontaneous, Susan catches a flight to Montreal and hangs out in Old Montreal for a few days, which I thought was crazy – what Jung would’ve called synchronicity, especially because as mentioned the coincidence of it all really only mattered to me (the essence of a synchronicity…or at least that’s what Robert Anton Wilson always said, but what the hell did he know?). 

I seem to be losing the plot. And speaking of plot, one gradually develops in Star Fever. Basically, Star learns that she will never have a child due to all the abortions she’s had, and she thinks that’s a damn shame because Frog Johnson should have a child. So on one of her witchy ritual trips she gets the idea for one of Frog’s fans to carry the child. And guess who it turns out to be? That’s right: Jan. So the teenaged Jan spends the last third of the novel very pregnant – something her desperate-to-be-hip mother thinks is just grand, but something that might not resonate very well with sensitive readers of today. 

As for Susan, her story has her wondering if she should just hook up with her agent, with whom she’s had a long-simmer “will they or won’t they” relationship (another $500 carryover), but then after the trip to Montreal she runs into Pete Kettle again – hanging out in a hotel a la John Lennon  – and soon enough she’s spending New Year’s with him and heading down to Majorca and whatnot. 

But man, there is absolutely no scene here where Frog Johnson or the Boys have a concert, or perform music – other that is than randomly strumming guitars during parties. This is very much a “rock musician’s life” novel instead of a “rock novel,” and even the “groupie” element Nancy Weber mentioned in her decades-later interview is minimal. Star is already established as Frog’s girl, the groupie who managed to snare her idol. That said, her parts are by far the most entertaining, including randomly bizarre stuff like when she decides to drive against traffic in downtown Manhattan. 

As for Weber’s writing, as with $500 it’s exceptional, with the note that her skill is snappy wordplay and dialog. There are some narrative portions that are a bit muddied because Weber is trying to capture the fractured mentality of a drugged-up hippie girl (that “driving against traffic” scene mentioned above). 

Overall Star Fever is entertaining, and in its easy-going attitude toward plot it manages to capture the era very well. But it isn’t really a rock novel. It’s more of a “socialite woman in her late twenties decides to get with the Now Generation” sort of novel, and even then it’s really easy-going…like a part early on, where Susan attends a party at Star’s and apparently has an orgy with Star and Chinese cook “The Wok,” but Weber doesn’t dwell on the sleazy details and the reader is left wondering what actually happened. 

Finally, Star Fever wins the award for most abrupt ending this side of an average installment of The Sharpshooter; Jan is pregnant with Frog’s child, Susan is in Majorca with Pete Kettle and wondering if she should take this cushy new deal to write a roman a clef about The Boys…and then the novel just ends, and suddenly we have a few pages of song lyrics. 

But I guess in that way too Star Fever succeeds in capturing the vibe of its era, but apparently the novel made little impact when published, and is so obscure today that I had to hunt to find a reasonably-priced cover. And it’s got a groovy Gene Szafran cover, too, despite the naked male ass on display. But hell, a woman did write the book, so…