Lisa Simon, age 37, still loves loud punk rock and hates Dave Matthews with an all-consuming passion. April 15, 2001 should have been just another Sunday night. But a news headline landing in Lisa’s email inbox changes everything: “Joey Ramone is dead.” The death of one of her teenage heroes serves as an long-overdue wake-up call causing Lisa to examine her life and how she’s lived it, from her youth as a poet on the streets of the East Village to 10 years later, all grown up with a career and a fiance. Add to the mix Jake McDaniel, lead singer of million-selling, critically-regarded Seattle band Blue Electric, known better to Lisa as the starving renegades who lived next door to her when she first arrived in Seattle. In the midst of an unexpectedly heated argument with the fiance over the historical relevance (or not) of the Ramones – which forces Lisa to face the truth about her relationship – Jake writes and invites Lisa to LA. Throwing what seems like half her cd collection in the car, along with a wardrobe consisting of high heels, jeans and t-shirts, Lisa starts driving from Seattle to LA in the middle of the night, accompanied by music, memories, and the ghosts of the past. Arriving in LA, she finds refuge, but also collides with her past, present and future; decisions need to be made, and this time, Lisa stands her ground.BACKSTORY.
I remember the night Joey Ramone died. I remember getting the news, I remember the first email hitting my inbox with a ding and then the ding ding ding continuing, building, as I sat there reading that first email with that first news story, not believing what I was reading, and then reading it again and again as though rereading it I would find something different, that he would somehow not be dead. I remember listening to the U2 show from Irving Plaza and thinking that things sounded good, as they covered “I Remember You,” not knowing that they had just seen Joey in his hospital room and things were not good, at all. I remember sitting there feeling alone, 3,000 miles away from New York City, wanting to go into a bodega, buy a 7 day votive candle, walk down Bowery and stand in front of CBGBs and light that candle and stand there and cry for a good long while. But I couldn’t do that, because I wasn’t there.
A few months later, I started a novel about how someone’s life changed the night Joey Ramone died. It was originally titled JOEY RAMONE IS DEAD, and is now called B-SIDES AND BROKEN HEARTS.
The first time I met Nick Hornby, I took a deep breath and blurted out that my goal was to write the woman’s version of High Fidelity. I wanted to read a book where a woman could like music as much as a guy and not be called a groupie or be told that she sure knew a lot about music for a girl.
So I wrote the book I had always wanted to read.
