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Griff is the only band member who isn’t dealing with a back catalogue of issues, he’s from Hull, blunt and steady. It’s a kind of psychosis he’s dealt with since a teenager, as ‘knock knock’ threatens to return, Mitchell takes us in to Jasper’s mind and some bizarre, imagined worlds. He also suffers from aural hallucinations, something he’s called ‘knock knock’. Jasper is a guitar genius, he’s autistic, though that’s not said explicitly, he often doesn’t know what’s required of him in social situations and struggles to work out how people feel and how to react to that. She’s also experimenting with her sexuality and what it is to be a woman in an age where on the one hand you’re told there’s more opportunity while at the same time being reminded by older generations that there are still certain expectations. He’s still dealing with trauma from his childhood.Įlf is from a traditional middle-class background, she’s had her heart broken by her gobby Australian boyfriend, who she happened to be in an act with. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss and guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, Utopia Avenue embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on Top of the Pops, the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon, and San Francisco during the autumn of ’68.ĭavid Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder of the families we choose and the ones we don’t of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper of music, madness, and idealism.Utopia Avenue are folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin – they’re brought together by manager Levon Frankland and create a unique sound, in fact “they might be the most curious British band you’ve never heard of”.ĭean is seen as the heartthrob, he’s a bit of a playboy, finds himself in trouble and is from a large working-class family (how his accent is written does get annoying as the book goes on). Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post Making your way through this novel feels like riding a high-end convertible down Hollywood Boulevard.”- Slate

Mitchell’s prose is suppler and richer than ever.