Searching for Jimmy Page
by Christy Alexander Hallberg
May 24, 2021
|
Dear Christy,
Your debut novel Searching for Jimmy Page is forthcoming from Livingston Press. Tell us a bit more about the story. Did you include any autobiographical elements? How long did the whole project take from the initial idea to the final draft? Set largely in the winter of 1988, Searching for Jimmy Page, is about eighteen-year-old Luna Kane’s journey from her rural North Carolina home to London. Luna wants to track down Led Zeppelin’s enigmatic guitarist in the hope of solving an old mystery. Her deceased mother, a free-spirit with a passion for the Tarot and healing crystals and Jimmy Page, set the wheels in motion when Luna was a child: Is Jimmy Page her father? The owls trigger suppressed memories of her mother’s suicide and instigate Luna’s mission. Luna’s great-grandfather, a self-proclaimed faith healer, tells Luna he hears them crying the night of his own death. Her chance to meet Jimmy and learn the truth about her parentage arrives when she attends a guitar contest in London that Jimmy and Brian May of Queen judge. |
Photo: courtesy of the artist |
In Luna’s search for her true identity, she must come to terms with her mother’s death and accept the power of myth and art and manipulating memory in creating one’s personal narrative.
Start to finish, the novel took over fifteen years to write, but then, it has seen many different incarnations during this period. My MFA creative thesis was the first version, a novel called And When the Owls Cry, which is a lyric from the Led Zeppelin song “Four Sticks” which is a motif in all versions of the book. I abandoned the manuscript after my mother, whom I adored, died in 2003, only to pick up the thread and weave it into a memoir after my husband Bill died in 2014. When I finished the memoir, also entitled Searching for Jimmy Page, I had to come to terms with the fact that that version was more of a grief therapy tool than something I wanted to put out into the world. It focused on my love of the band and, especially, Jimmy Page and how they’ve been a constant in my life, through joy and sadness, ever since I was 15 years old, when I first saw the band’s concert film, The Song Remains the Same, on MTV with my mother and older brother Steve, who was a huge fan of the group.
As for autobiographical elements in the novel, there are quite a few. For example, Luna’s great-grandfather is named after and inspired by my maternal great-grandfather, Jesse Baker, who died in 1946, twenty-three years before I was born. My grandmother told me he took a mail order course on faith healing because he believed he could cure his wife, my great-grandmother Emily, of breast cancer, which, of course, he couldn’t. That story, with alterations, is in Searching for Jimmy Page.
How do you describe the entire process of writing and publishing your first book? Share with our readers some of the most exciting as well as nerve wrecking moments behind the various phases that took to complete the work.
When I talk about the process of writing this novel, I include the time I spent working on the memoir. They’re intertwined in my mind. So much about this creation is wrapped up in loss and grief as well as self-discovery and healing. Writing helped keep me focused after my husband’s death, as did the hope that someone would eventually want to publish the book. I wanted desperately to keep my promise to both Mom and Bill that I would finish what I started. I got up every morning at five a.m.. I read to get my creative juices flowing. Then I wrote until it was time to check in with my students and begin my schoolwork for the day. I teach online in the English Department at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, although I live on the other side of the state.
Initially, I included a lot of song lyrics in the manuscript and thought at the time that they were crucial to the rhythm and flow of the story. I had no idea how complicated and expensive the process of securing permission to use lyrics can be. That was probably the most frustrating aspect of completing the book. And long story short, I wound up taking them all out and doing creative workarounds to suggest lyrics, focusing more on motifs in some of the songs rather than actual lyrics. According to my editor and publisher at Livingston Press, Joe Taylor, the novel is better because of this change. The obvious answer for the “most exciting” moment is when I received an acceptance email from Joe Taylor: “What a fine novel. I would like to publish it.” His words are stored in my memory. I bring them out and revel in them when I need a lift.
Do you feel that keeping busy with your book has helped you during this difficult period of a once-in-a-century global pandemic?
Livingston Press accepted the book for publication in April 2020. So, for most of the pandemic I was working on edits and proofreading typeset copies and stepping up my online author platform and actively promoting the novel. All of this definitely kept me preoccupied, but of course the pandemic and political landscape before, throughout, and after 2020 were a concern. Receiving this great news during a time when I was physically separated from friends and loved ones was a boost for them too. We had something to talk about and look forward to.
What thrilling new fact did you learn while researching material about your book?
I already knew a lot about Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page before I started writing, having been a huge fan for so long. The kind of research that proved the most rewarding and illuminating was travel. I visited all of the Led Zeppelin landmarks mentioned in the novel: Jimmy’s famous Tower House in London; his former Windsor home, Old Mill House, where drummer John Bonham died; John Bonham’s grave near Kidderminster; Jimmy’s former home near Inverness, Scotland, which used to belong to the occultist Aleister Crowley in the early 1900s; Headley Grange, the manor house outside London where Led Zeppelin recorded much of their legendary fourth album.
Actually, I made my first trip to the UK a couple of years after my mother’s death in 2003. It was a way to shake myself out of my crippling grief. It was on that trip that I attended a charity guitar contest at the Hammersmith Palais in London that Jimmy, Brian May, and Dan Hawkins of The Darkness were judging, and I did have the opportunity to speak to Jimmy, however very, very briefly.
Since 2005, I’ve made that UK journey four times now, but I’ve only encountered Jimmy that one time. In 2006, when I was at John Bonham’s gravesite, his sister showed up. She couldn’t have been lovelier. She seemed to appreciate my coming to pay my respects. We stood there for several minutes talking—not about Bonzo, the wild man Rock star - but about our adored big brothers, both of whom played drums. I didn’t think such a coincidental meeting would play out well in fiction, so I left it out of the chapter in Searching for Jimmy Page in which Luna travels to the cemetery where John Bonham is buried.
What advice do you have for those who might be thinking about writing their first book?
Be prepared to make a long-term commitment. Set a routine for yourself and guard your writing time fiercely. That means don’t be afraid to say "no" to invitations or requests from friends and family if they infringe on your schedule. There are no shortcuts - at least none that I’ve discovered. And never lose sight of the goal.
I pinned a quote from Jimmy Page to my corkboard to remind myself of this while I drafted the novel: “I may not believe in myself, but I believe in what I’m doing.”
Where do you turn for inspiration or to overcome writer’s block?
Other writers. Great books. Stories. Poetry. Art. Music. Nature.
How do you plan to spend the summer months ahead if the virus is under control soon?
My fiancé and I are both fully vaccinated, so we’re hoping to get out and about this summer after living as virtual shut-ins for over a year. We don’t have any big travel plans, but we do want to enjoy the Asheville downtown scene: music, restaurants, the Fine Arts Theater, art galleries, and of course Malaprop’s Bookstore.
I’m jonesing just to walk around people and watch, and downtown Asheville is a great place to do that!
We have an ongoing campaign titled #BeatTheBlues on ways to prioritize mental health. What do you do to #BeatTheBlues?
I have a stunning view of the Great Smoky Mountains from my deck and spend a lot of time sitting on it, soaking up the natural beauty I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by. Gardening also helps beat the blues. I started growing a garden the spring my husband died because I wanted to nurture something and watch it live and thrive. Like writing, that was great therapy for me those four years I spent as a relative hermit. I found out that I love it, as does my fiancé, whom I met two-and-a-half years ago. We spend a lot of time outside digging in the dirt.
Who are the artists, writers, musicians, visual artists, whose works have motivated and helped you stay focused with a positive outlook for what lies ahead?
There are so many creative people who’ve inspired and motivated me. Liza Wieland, author of Land of Enchantment and Paris, 7 A.M., is an incredibly talented writer and close friend. She offered invaluable feedback on the first complete draft of Searching for Jimmy Page. Margaret Donovan Bauer is another close friend and Editor of North Carolina Literary Review. Her foray from academic writing to creative nonfiction over the last few years is impressive. She inspired me during the drafting of my book by being a tireless cheerleader and meticulous editor.
I feel so lucky to be a member of the North Carolina writing community and North Carolina Writer’s Network. As the late great Doris Betts once said of my home state, North Carolina is “the writingest state.”
Then there are the gazillion “untouchables”—artists who’ve come before me and reached the stratosphere of success. The first author who made me want to become a writer was S.E. Hinton, who wrote the YA novels The Outsiders; Rumble Fish; Tex; That Was Then, This Is now. I read The Outsiders in seventh grade and it blew my mind. Jack Kerouac, with On the Road, was the next heavy-hitter to motivate me. I drove cross-country solo when I was 23, reading On the Road every night of the trip, wishing I was as cool as Jack and his Beat pals. Then there are people like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Donna Tartt, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bernardine Evaristo, Maaza Mengiste—too many to name.
I could write a whole book on the musicians and filmmakers who inspire and motivate me. I cut my teeth on Classic Rock, so that’s my go-to music, but my taste is eclectic. Seeing Tosca at La Scala in Milan years ago was thrilling. I love old school Country, some Rap and Hip Hop, classical, Rock, Indie, etc. Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese are among my favorite directors. I can recite the dialogue of The Godfather. I also like Quentin Tarantino, especially Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I featured that film in an essay I wrote on Sharon Tate, “Shifting Phantasmagoria” published in storySouth in April.
Visual art also inspires me. Luna’s mother, Claudia, in Searching for Jimmy Page dabbles in painting, so I included a few shout-outs to some of the Great Masters in the novel. I remember being struck by the Cezanne painting An Old Woman With a Rosary when I saw it in the National Gallery in London one rainy summer’s day in 2015. The emotion in her face haunted me so much that I included a mention of the painting in Searching for Jimmy Page. I was equally moved by Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond in the next room of the Gallery: the centerpiece—the bridge—holds it all together, gives a focal point so that you’re not lost in the blur, stability amongst confusion. That painting is one of Luna’s favorites.
What brain candy have you splurged on recently?
Maybe it’s because I miss traveling so much, but I splurged on Emily in Paris, the Netflix series, last month. That was what kept me on the treadmill a few minutes longer than usual every day.
Feel free to share with us the titles of books on your nightstand and the playlist that has made you smile.
As far as a playlist that makes me smile goes, right now I’m listening to a lot of Fela Kuti’s music. I tend to write mostly about musicians in my fiction and nonfiction. I’ve got a story about him knocking around in my head at the moment. I just haven’t figured out what to do with it yet.
My short story about Gram Parsons, called “Grievous Angel” will appear in Still: The Journal in June, so I’ve been listening to a lot of his solo work and his work with the Flying Burrito Brothers and The Byrds.
My dear friend Amanda Campbell sent me Bernardine Evaristo’s amazing novel "Girl, Woman, Other" last year and I loved it. A few months ago, I stumbled across a playlist for the book on Spotify that is amazing. Actually, that’s how I first heard of Fela Kuti. He’s on it, as is a whole range of other great musicians, like Joni Mitchell, Edith Piaf, Etta James, Sarah Vaughn, Amr Diab, Funkadelic, James Brown, whom I met backstage at a concert in Greenville, North Carolina, in 1984 or 1985. My father was Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at East Carolina University before he retired, so I had the opportunity to meet a lot of the artists who performed on campus in the 1980s, like Joan Jett, James Brown, and John Fogerty.
At the moment, I’m entrenched in Rock novels, since my book is now part of that subgenre. I have been toying with the idea of writing a nonfiction book of reviews, interviews with authors, and essays on Rock novels. I recently read Dana Spiotta’s Eat the Document, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, and Zachary Lazar’s Sway, all of which were terrific. I read all of Jeff Jackson’s books a couple of years ago and wrote a review of his most recent novel, Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel, and interviewed him for North Carolina Literary Review. I can’t recommend his work strongly enough. I’m about to read Don DeLillo’s Great Jones Street and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity.
And obviously, Led Zeppelin is a fixture on my stereo. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.
Thank you Christy!
You can pre-order Searching for Jimmy Page here or contact directly Christy Alexander Hallberg here.
Start to finish, the novel took over fifteen years to write, but then, it has seen many different incarnations during this period. My MFA creative thesis was the first version, a novel called And When the Owls Cry, which is a lyric from the Led Zeppelin song “Four Sticks” which is a motif in all versions of the book. I abandoned the manuscript after my mother, whom I adored, died in 2003, only to pick up the thread and weave it into a memoir after my husband Bill died in 2014. When I finished the memoir, also entitled Searching for Jimmy Page, I had to come to terms with the fact that that version was more of a grief therapy tool than something I wanted to put out into the world. It focused on my love of the band and, especially, Jimmy Page and how they’ve been a constant in my life, through joy and sadness, ever since I was 15 years old, when I first saw the band’s concert film, The Song Remains the Same, on MTV with my mother and older brother Steve, who was a huge fan of the group.
As for autobiographical elements in the novel, there are quite a few. For example, Luna’s great-grandfather is named after and inspired by my maternal great-grandfather, Jesse Baker, who died in 1946, twenty-three years before I was born. My grandmother told me he took a mail order course on faith healing because he believed he could cure his wife, my great-grandmother Emily, of breast cancer, which, of course, he couldn’t. That story, with alterations, is in Searching for Jimmy Page.
How do you describe the entire process of writing and publishing your first book? Share with our readers some of the most exciting as well as nerve wrecking moments behind the various phases that took to complete the work.
When I talk about the process of writing this novel, I include the time I spent working on the memoir. They’re intertwined in my mind. So much about this creation is wrapped up in loss and grief as well as self-discovery and healing. Writing helped keep me focused after my husband’s death, as did the hope that someone would eventually want to publish the book. I wanted desperately to keep my promise to both Mom and Bill that I would finish what I started. I got up every morning at five a.m.. I read to get my creative juices flowing. Then I wrote until it was time to check in with my students and begin my schoolwork for the day. I teach online in the English Department at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, although I live on the other side of the state.
Initially, I included a lot of song lyrics in the manuscript and thought at the time that they were crucial to the rhythm and flow of the story. I had no idea how complicated and expensive the process of securing permission to use lyrics can be. That was probably the most frustrating aspect of completing the book. And long story short, I wound up taking them all out and doing creative workarounds to suggest lyrics, focusing more on motifs in some of the songs rather than actual lyrics. According to my editor and publisher at Livingston Press, Joe Taylor, the novel is better because of this change. The obvious answer for the “most exciting” moment is when I received an acceptance email from Joe Taylor: “What a fine novel. I would like to publish it.” His words are stored in my memory. I bring them out and revel in them when I need a lift.
Do you feel that keeping busy with your book has helped you during this difficult period of a once-in-a-century global pandemic?
Livingston Press accepted the book for publication in April 2020. So, for most of the pandemic I was working on edits and proofreading typeset copies and stepping up my online author platform and actively promoting the novel. All of this definitely kept me preoccupied, but of course the pandemic and political landscape before, throughout, and after 2020 were a concern. Receiving this great news during a time when I was physically separated from friends and loved ones was a boost for them too. We had something to talk about and look forward to.
What thrilling new fact did you learn while researching material about your book?
I already knew a lot about Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page before I started writing, having been a huge fan for so long. The kind of research that proved the most rewarding and illuminating was travel. I visited all of the Led Zeppelin landmarks mentioned in the novel: Jimmy’s famous Tower House in London; his former Windsor home, Old Mill House, where drummer John Bonham died; John Bonham’s grave near Kidderminster; Jimmy’s former home near Inverness, Scotland, which used to belong to the occultist Aleister Crowley in the early 1900s; Headley Grange, the manor house outside London where Led Zeppelin recorded much of their legendary fourth album.
Actually, I made my first trip to the UK a couple of years after my mother’s death in 2003. It was a way to shake myself out of my crippling grief. It was on that trip that I attended a charity guitar contest at the Hammersmith Palais in London that Jimmy, Brian May, and Dan Hawkins of The Darkness were judging, and I did have the opportunity to speak to Jimmy, however very, very briefly.
Since 2005, I’ve made that UK journey four times now, but I’ve only encountered Jimmy that one time. In 2006, when I was at John Bonham’s gravesite, his sister showed up. She couldn’t have been lovelier. She seemed to appreciate my coming to pay my respects. We stood there for several minutes talking—not about Bonzo, the wild man Rock star - but about our adored big brothers, both of whom played drums. I didn’t think such a coincidental meeting would play out well in fiction, so I left it out of the chapter in Searching for Jimmy Page in which Luna travels to the cemetery where John Bonham is buried.
What advice do you have for those who might be thinking about writing their first book?
Be prepared to make a long-term commitment. Set a routine for yourself and guard your writing time fiercely. That means don’t be afraid to say "no" to invitations or requests from friends and family if they infringe on your schedule. There are no shortcuts - at least none that I’ve discovered. And never lose sight of the goal.
I pinned a quote from Jimmy Page to my corkboard to remind myself of this while I drafted the novel: “I may not believe in myself, but I believe in what I’m doing.”
Where do you turn for inspiration or to overcome writer’s block?
Other writers. Great books. Stories. Poetry. Art. Music. Nature.
How do you plan to spend the summer months ahead if the virus is under control soon?
My fiancé and I are both fully vaccinated, so we’re hoping to get out and about this summer after living as virtual shut-ins for over a year. We don’t have any big travel plans, but we do want to enjoy the Asheville downtown scene: music, restaurants, the Fine Arts Theater, art galleries, and of course Malaprop’s Bookstore.
I’m jonesing just to walk around people and watch, and downtown Asheville is a great place to do that!
We have an ongoing campaign titled #BeatTheBlues on ways to prioritize mental health. What do you do to #BeatTheBlues?
I have a stunning view of the Great Smoky Mountains from my deck and spend a lot of time sitting on it, soaking up the natural beauty I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by. Gardening also helps beat the blues. I started growing a garden the spring my husband died because I wanted to nurture something and watch it live and thrive. Like writing, that was great therapy for me those four years I spent as a relative hermit. I found out that I love it, as does my fiancé, whom I met two-and-a-half years ago. We spend a lot of time outside digging in the dirt.
Who are the artists, writers, musicians, visual artists, whose works have motivated and helped you stay focused with a positive outlook for what lies ahead?
There are so many creative people who’ve inspired and motivated me. Liza Wieland, author of Land of Enchantment and Paris, 7 A.M., is an incredibly talented writer and close friend. She offered invaluable feedback on the first complete draft of Searching for Jimmy Page. Margaret Donovan Bauer is another close friend and Editor of North Carolina Literary Review. Her foray from academic writing to creative nonfiction over the last few years is impressive. She inspired me during the drafting of my book by being a tireless cheerleader and meticulous editor.
I feel so lucky to be a member of the North Carolina writing community and North Carolina Writer’s Network. As the late great Doris Betts once said of my home state, North Carolina is “the writingest state.”
Then there are the gazillion “untouchables”—artists who’ve come before me and reached the stratosphere of success. The first author who made me want to become a writer was S.E. Hinton, who wrote the YA novels The Outsiders; Rumble Fish; Tex; That Was Then, This Is now. I read The Outsiders in seventh grade and it blew my mind. Jack Kerouac, with On the Road, was the next heavy-hitter to motivate me. I drove cross-country solo when I was 23, reading On the Road every night of the trip, wishing I was as cool as Jack and his Beat pals. Then there are people like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Donna Tartt, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bernardine Evaristo, Maaza Mengiste—too many to name.
I could write a whole book on the musicians and filmmakers who inspire and motivate me. I cut my teeth on Classic Rock, so that’s my go-to music, but my taste is eclectic. Seeing Tosca at La Scala in Milan years ago was thrilling. I love old school Country, some Rap and Hip Hop, classical, Rock, Indie, etc. Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese are among my favorite directors. I can recite the dialogue of The Godfather. I also like Quentin Tarantino, especially Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I featured that film in an essay I wrote on Sharon Tate, “Shifting Phantasmagoria” published in storySouth in April.
Visual art also inspires me. Luna’s mother, Claudia, in Searching for Jimmy Page dabbles in painting, so I included a few shout-outs to some of the Great Masters in the novel. I remember being struck by the Cezanne painting An Old Woman With a Rosary when I saw it in the National Gallery in London one rainy summer’s day in 2015. The emotion in her face haunted me so much that I included a mention of the painting in Searching for Jimmy Page. I was equally moved by Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond in the next room of the Gallery: the centerpiece—the bridge—holds it all together, gives a focal point so that you’re not lost in the blur, stability amongst confusion. That painting is one of Luna’s favorites.
What brain candy have you splurged on recently?
Maybe it’s because I miss traveling so much, but I splurged on Emily in Paris, the Netflix series, last month. That was what kept me on the treadmill a few minutes longer than usual every day.
Feel free to share with us the titles of books on your nightstand and the playlist that has made you smile.
As far as a playlist that makes me smile goes, right now I’m listening to a lot of Fela Kuti’s music. I tend to write mostly about musicians in my fiction and nonfiction. I’ve got a story about him knocking around in my head at the moment. I just haven’t figured out what to do with it yet.
My short story about Gram Parsons, called “Grievous Angel” will appear in Still: The Journal in June, so I’ve been listening to a lot of his solo work and his work with the Flying Burrito Brothers and The Byrds.
My dear friend Amanda Campbell sent me Bernardine Evaristo’s amazing novel "Girl, Woman, Other" last year and I loved it. A few months ago, I stumbled across a playlist for the book on Spotify that is amazing. Actually, that’s how I first heard of Fela Kuti. He’s on it, as is a whole range of other great musicians, like Joni Mitchell, Edith Piaf, Etta James, Sarah Vaughn, Amr Diab, Funkadelic, James Brown, whom I met backstage at a concert in Greenville, North Carolina, in 1984 or 1985. My father was Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at East Carolina University before he retired, so I had the opportunity to meet a lot of the artists who performed on campus in the 1980s, like Joan Jett, James Brown, and John Fogerty.
At the moment, I’m entrenched in Rock novels, since my book is now part of that subgenre. I have been toying with the idea of writing a nonfiction book of reviews, interviews with authors, and essays on Rock novels. I recently read Dana Spiotta’s Eat the Document, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, and Zachary Lazar’s Sway, all of which were terrific. I read all of Jeff Jackson’s books a couple of years ago and wrote a review of his most recent novel, Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel, and interviewed him for North Carolina Literary Review. I can’t recommend his work strongly enough. I’m about to read Don DeLillo’s Great Jones Street and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity.
And obviously, Led Zeppelin is a fixture on my stereo. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.
Thank you Christy!
You can pre-order Searching for Jimmy Page here or contact directly Christy Alexander Hallberg here.