Guest Blog: Dave Cousins

Music in books – imaginary songs by bands that don’t exist!

If I had to write a list of my top three favourite ‘things’, music would come a close second to books – on the assumption that I can have both reading and writing books as one! The remaining place would be more difficult to fill, though I suspect that in the end, films and football would lose out to the simple pleasure offered by a mug of tea.

I like books and I like music – so books with music in are the equivalent of Christmas and birthday rolled into one!

Killing God by Kevin Brooks is a good example. Dawn, the narrator, is a massive fan of legendary indie fuzz-merchants The Jesus and Mary Chain – she even names her two pet dachshunds Jesus and Mary. The book is scattered with song lyrics and I found myself digging out my old Jesus and Mary Chain records while I was reading. Music can have such a powerful impact on mood, so to be able to actually hear the soundtrack playing in Dawn’s life, took me that much deeper into the story.

Halfway through my first book, 15 Days Without a Head, the main protagonists go to a local outdoor festival where the headline act are a Queen tribute band. I’m not a big Queen fan, but I chose the band because most people know at least one or two Queen songs. I was fairly certain that when I described the opening bars to the song We Will Rock You booming out across the field, that the majority of readers would instantly hear in their head what Laurence was hearing in the story and be transported that little bit closer to the action.

Music plays an even larger role in my new book, Waiting for Gonzo. This time though, I couldn’t rely on a shared musical knowledge. My narrator Oz is a huge music fan – in fact, the music on his phone is sometimes the only thing that keeps him going through the tough parts of the story – but he’s also a bit of an elitist. Oz only listens to obscure bands nobody else has heard of. That moment of ‘discovering’ a new band, feeling like they somehow belong to you, creates a special bond between the listener and the artist, and it was important to the story for Oz to have that.

Musical taste is a very subjective thing though, so I thought the best option would be to invent a number of bands and song titles for the book. Which was fine, until my publisher suggested it might be nice to compile a playlist of Oz’s favourite tracks to go online. I explained that this would be difficult, given that the music only existed on the page and in my head!

But it started me thinking – what if readers who enjoyed the book went looking for Dead Frank’s Supersonic Milkfloat, Prayer for Halo, Cyclops Dog and Cigarette UFO, to see if they really did exist? What if they found a few rare tracks hidden away on the internet – wouldn’t that be great? Except you can’t listen to imaginary songs by bands that don’t exist – it’s impossible.

Unless of course, there was a way to bring Dead Frank to life …

Waiting for Gonzo by Dave Cousins, comes out in March.

If you’d like to find out if Dead Frank and the other bands on Oz’s playlist were brought to life, you could always try putting one of the band names into a search engine.

You never know …

Visit Dave’s website

Follow Dave on Twitter @DaveCousins9000

Find him on Facebook

Check out the Edge

(Eight authors writing sharp teen/YA fiction)

Dave’s debut novel, 15days Without a Head has been nominated for both the Branford Boase Award and the Carnegie Medal.