"Where's Eddie?" - Eddie and the Cruisers

Some excellent films have been made of B-grade novels, while some truly terrible films have come from excellent novels.  Truffaut said something like a work of genius is an idea that has found its ideal form of expression. Which may explain why good novels make average films and vice versa.

Eddie and the Cruisers was a failure at the box office but has become something of a cult classic. My brother introduced me to it many years ago. It features Michael Pare as Eddie Wilson, a combination of Jim Morrison, young Elvis Presely and Brian Wilson, and Tom Berenger as Frank Ridgeway, or Wordman, a college kid who ends up the band’s lyricist and keyboard player. After the Cruisers hit the big time with their first album, Eddie is killed in a car crash. The story takes place two decades later, when interest in the Cruisers is revived and someone is tracking down Eddie’s lost tapes, the rumoured second album, and isn’t afraid to kill to get them. It’s a good movie and the music is good even if it rather sounds like what Bruce Springsteen was doing in the 80s rather than rock of the 1960s. (Do us all a favour and avoid the sequel, Eddie and the Crusiers II: Eddie lives! That exclamation mark is a shriek of disappointment.)

I was surprised the other day to walk into a library and see a new edition of the novel, by P F Kluge, sitting on the shelves. One, I didn’t know it was a novel and two, it seemed a bit odd to bring it back. So I borrowed it and have come back to tell you all about it.  It’s not a bad read. The movie kept pretty close to the story, although they have softened it somewhat. The novel is darker and more violent, but I think the scriptwriters made the right call there. I don’t think the tone of the novel and the stakes quite justify the violent ending of the novel, and suit better the pathetic villainy of the movie. But the novel is a loving tribute to the music and the power of the music of the early 1960s, and the terrible power of youthful dreams. The Maguffin of the lost tapes, with the surname, makes me fairly certain that Brian Wilson and the long lost Smile album form part of the inspiration for the Eddie Wilson character, while his sexy onstage persona and reaching for philosophical insight brings to mind the lost Jim Morrison. Perhaps it’s all a bit of anachronistic jumble of rock heroes but it seems to me that’s the nature of popular music, someone new who reminds you of someone else.

Anyway, I had an enjoyable few days reading the book and even ordered a copy to be sent to my brother for his birthday. If he hasn’t got it yet, and this is the first he knows about it – happy birthday AB!