What do radicals, religion, race, riots, restaurants and Rufus Thomas all have in common? According to this provocative first novel by veteran music journalist Ira Robbins, they are all defining elements of the 1960s. At times dishearteningly bleak, Kick It Till It Breaks is rich with offbeat characters vividly drawn against a tableau of antiwar violence. Unlike most stories of the time, the author - who nonetheless claims a high regard for its political and cultural achievements - is unsparing in his depiction of dedicated idealists failing to uphold their ideals. The author uses slang, dialect and timely pop culture touchstones to bring the Viet Nam era to life in such disparate locales as Memphis, London, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Fans of Putney Swope, The Young Ones and A Confederacy of Dunces will likely recognize a harmony of tone and perspective with those darkly humorous works.

Kick It Till It Breaks

Literature & Fiction

Robbins, Ira

Contemporary

Trouser Press, LLC

London, 1972: An ordinary schoolgirl is pulled into the world of a fading rock star and becomes the secret weapon in a plan to revive his career in the time of glam. The mysteries of sex and songwriting, connivance, fame, family and the music business collide to bring her to a life she has never imagined. With a detailed and knowing historical background, Marc Bolan Killed in Crash is a musical romp through an all-but-forgotten pop era by a veteran American music journalist. 
Praise for Marc Bolan Killed in Crash: 
"Ira Robbins brings a lifelong immersion in pop music's wish fulfillment to this detailed and note-perfect recreation of a glitter-tinged moment of generational transformation in pre-punk 1970s England. He plays his characters like members of a band, each with their own verse and chorus, I found myself waiting for the soundtrack to come, singing along." 
—Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith Group guitarist, journalist, author, producer 
"With the U.K. glam-rock craze of the ’70s as his gorgeous, glorious backdrop, Ira Robbins deftly explores the intersection where pop culture, society, and individualism meet. He’s written a smart, lively, finely wrought novel that’s packed with prose so glittery it positively sparkles." 
—Doug Brod, former Editor in Chief of SPIN 
"A deep, abiding love of music and an inexhaustible knowledge of it blend seamlessly in Ira Robbins' moving new novel, Marc Bolan Killed in Crash. He unerringly explores the endless shadings of the English glam-rock scene of the Seventies and why it meant -- and continues to mean -- so much. He is an astute, feeling writer who effortlessly summons the zeitgeist of that time -- and, intriguingly, ours as well.” 
—Anthony DeCurtis, author of Lou Reed: A Life 
"Transporting us from glam to punk to corporate offices, with period-perfect jargon and keen details about the way the music business manipulates fantasy and reality, Ira Robbins’ rollicking Marc Bolan Killed in Crash isn’t just the poignant tale of the way musicians and fans alike are swept up in the power of pop music, it's a also novel that reads like history.” 
—David Browne, author of Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, CSNY, James Taylor and the Lost Story of 1970. 
"Ira Robbins, one of the great American Anglophiles of rock writing, has written a shrewd and witty novel about the business of pop – the manufacture of glamour – in the benighted early '70s Britain of Bolan and Chinnichap." 
—Barney Hoskyns, author of Small Town Talk, Hotel California, Across the Great Divide, Waiting for the Sun and Editorial Director of Rock’s Backpages 
"You want to inhabit the music world of the ’70s? Who better as a guide than esteemed rock journalist Robbins, who’s written a feverishly fresh read. From the desperately fading rock stars and their hangers-on to the excitement of the new sound, Marc Bolan Killed in Crash is both a coming of age story of a talented young woman and of a new music moment." 
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You, Is This Tomorrow and Cruel Beautiful World 
"The authentic teenage voice is one of the most difficult feats in fiction as it can so easily veer into contrivance or outright cringe, but Ira Robbins nails it. The sense of time and place is deftly evoked and the story pulls you through from the beginning. Top shelf stuff. 
—Frank Portman, author of King Dork, King Dork Approximately and Andromeda Klein 
"In Marc Bolan Killed in Crash, Ira Robbins evokes the mood and mystery of the 70's Glam Rock n Roll zeitgeist." 
—Clem Burke, Blondie drummer

Marc Bolan Killed in Crash: A musical novel of the 1970s

Robbins, Ira A.

Genre Fiction

The Bleecker Street Tapes: Echoes of Greenwich Village

Pollock, Bruce

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