Salman Rushdie's rock 'n' roll - author - Interview

Interview, May, 1999 by Deborah Treisman

After all those years steeped in history and politics, the heavy-duty man of letters was itching to get in touch with the rocker within. His new novel does just that

DEBORAH TREISMAN: Your new book, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Henry Holt), follows the lives of two Indian rock stars, a couple named Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama, as they move from Bombay to London to New York. I Imagine some people will be surprised to hear you've set a novel in the rock 'n' roll world.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: I hope so, because I love to surprise people. But there's a lot about me that people don't know. Few are aware that I've spent a lot of time with people in the rock world. I've always wanted to write about it, and I finally got around to it.

DT: Has rock music always played an Important role in your life?

SR: Yes. One thing that may not be well known in America is the speed with which early rock music crossed the globe. So at age eight or nine, there I was, sitting in India, listening to Bill Haley and Elvis and the Drifters. I think rock music was the fast postwar global phenomenon, and it occurred at a time when global phenomena were rare because we didn't have the mass media. For instance, I grew up in a country with no television. It wasn't just that we didn't have a TV set; there wasn't any TV. And the radio station was heavily state-controlled, so it didn't play Western music. But Bombay was full of kids from all over the United States and Europe who brought their records with them, so the music spread very fast.

I think people all over the world experienced the music in the same way: as rebellion music, as youth music, as stuff your mother wouldn't like, but mostly as music that seemed to belong to you. At the time I found it completely natural. Now, looking back, I find it very curious. What is it about this stuff that crosses frontiers? And that was one of the starting points for the book.

DT: Did you ever play rock music yourself?

SR: No. One thing I have in common with Rai, the narrator of the novel, is I come from a family that can't hold a note. [laughs] That's being slightly unfair to my family, but as far as I am concerned, no one should ever hear me sing. My tragedy is that my head is full of cheap lyrics [laughs], but I can't sing them.

DT: There's a great passage in the book about the nature of rock: "In the whole half-century-long history of rock music there is a small number of bands, a number so small you could count to it without running out of fingers, who steal into your heart and become a part of how you see the word, how you tell and understand the truth, even when you're old and deaf and foolish. On your deathbed you'll hear them sing to you so you drift down the tunnel towards the light: Shh . . . Shasha... Sha-la-la-la-la . . . Shang-a-lang, shang-a-lang . . . Sh-boom . . . Shoop . . . Shoop . . . Shh. It's all over now." Which bands will you be hearing on your deathbed?

SR: I suppose it would be the bands of my childhood. The Beatles. Elvis. Dylan. I don't know if there is anyone more recent I'd put up there. I like R.E.M. and U2. I'd probably put the Velvet Underground in that group. I met Vaclav Havel recently here in England - at Tom Stoppard's house one evening when fifteen or so writers gathered - and Havel was talking about the enormous influence of American rock on the Czech resistance. He said, which I took to be a joke but a joke with some meaning, "Why do you think we called it the Velvet Revolution?" I told Lou Reed this story, and he was quite impressed.

DT: Is it hard to recreate the experience of music using words?

SR: Yes, because it's nonverbal, or at least the bit that goes straight to the heart is. In the end, you have to write about the feeling, and just hope you create the illusion of what the music might be like.

DT: Didn't U2 set some of the lyrics in your novel to music?

SR: Yes, they did "The Ground Beneath Their Feet," which is the song that Ormus writes just after Vina dies. It's kind of a rock version of Orpheus's lament. The song will be on U2's next album, out in the fall. I've heard some rough versions, which I'm happy to say I really like. It's a beautiful, sad, ballady love song, very good for Bono's voice.

DT: Is U2's song what you Imagined when you first wrote the lyrics?

SR: I had no idea what it would sound like, but when I heard U2's melody, it seemed exactly right. It conveys the exact feeling of the words. I think U2's done a beautiful thing, and I hope people will agree. I'd like to have a rock 'n' roll hit! [laughs]

DT: The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice plays a big role in the book. Do you think it's correct to say the world of celebrities is the Mount Olympus of today?

SR: Yes, I think famous people have become these flawed giants we use to enact our own stories on a bigger stage, and then we tear them down - which is what used to happen to the gods. As a culture, we are forgetting the myths that once were our reference points. I wonder how many people could even repeat the story of Orpheus, if asked. If they could, they would probably remember the first part, which is Orpheus's descent into the underworld in search of Eurydice. But as important for me is the end of the story, when Orpheus is murdered - his head is cut off and thrown into the river, and it goes on singing. That idea - that you can destroy the singer but not the song - was something I wanted to write about.