Honors Exposition of Images

Honors - Novel Three

          For my third honors novel, I chose to read “Blue Jean Baby”, an autobiographical work by Sally Parmer. Subtitled ‘One Girl’s Trip Through the 1960s L.A. Music Scene’, I figured that this book would give me insight into the time period I was looking into for this assignment. Luckily, I was right – of the three books I have read so far, this one most definitely gives the most feeling of what it was like to be in Los Angeles in the 60’s. While “Listen to the Lambs” was built upon events prior to and after the sixties, and “Helter Skelter” focused on a specific crime, “Blue Jean Baby” gave more of an overarching view on what life was like at that time.

          This book follows Sally Parmer - from a first-person perspective – as she becomes a part of the L.A. music scene.  In reference to the term ‘groupie’, she states:

“In reality, the original music fans, those of us who hooked up with the musicians in the early 1960s, were wide-eyed kids overwhelmed by a style of music so intensely life-affirming we longed to attach ourselves to the people who created the sound.”

          She and her friends, at the ripe age of fourteen, begin their pursuit of this musical lifestyle just as the Beatles began their rise to popularity. Music was changing from beachy to rock, and they all wanted a part in it.

“The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and nameless groups we’d soon grow to worship caused the ground to rumble in the West Coast pre-earthquake way. Something big was finally happening, and the emotionally weary among us vowed to be involved.”

          Sally exploited her visual similarity to Cher to initially make connections, and from there just expanded her circle. At school, she socialized with like-minded teens, and even became a folk singer with a friend, as a way to make money to fund their pursuits. They got into drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll – a stark contrast from what previous generations lived by.

“My generation carried the banner that transitioned western culture from conservative, post-war blandness to open-minded pro-activity. That transition included a free-spirited attitude toward speech, style, and behavior, and made the world cool for the first time since the 1920s.”

          Sally used this world to somewhat escape from her family – her mother was a drunk, and when Sally got pregnant at sixteen, she was completely locked up and treated horribly, resulting in a near-death experience after giving up her newborn.

          The story continues with expected outcomes – unwanted pregnancies in the music community, her different encounters with various musicians, her changing relationships, and a never-steady or calm lifestyle. Even the ending doesn’t really give resolution – in her seemingly early twenties (I don’t believe a specific age is ever stated) she takes her daughter and leaves an abusive relationship to continue on with her life. While the afterword tells the current lives of her friends, and other characters from the book, you never really learn what her final fate was.

          This book was a very easy read, because it read like a story. There wasn’t a lot of hard facts or figures anywhere throughout – just Sally Parmer telling you about her life. It also just seemed like an extremely relevant novel for the topic I’m looking into. In the books, mentions are made to the topics of the other three books I’m reading for this topic – the Watts Riots, Kennedy assassination, and Manson Murders – and it’s shown how they affected your everyday person. You get to see how these events were in context, which gave them deeper – it seemed – meaning than reading an entire book simply dedicated to it. All in all, I enjoyed this book and feel that it was a good choice. It really painted a picture of Los Angeles in the sixties, and I think that it will help me to have a good understanding of it as I continue on with this project.