Titles

Too Much, Too Late: A Novel

Marc Spitz
Three Rivers Press / Crown
February 28, 2006
ISBN: 1400082935

Suburban Ohio, summer 1990: All Sandy Klein wants to do after graduating high school is rock (and make out with Winona Ryder). With the help of his Keith Richards-obsessed buddy Rudy Tunick, the misfit genius Harry Vance, and Ritalin-addled Archie Funz, he creates the Jane Ashers—and the song “Go Steady Debbie,” an instant power pop classic. But the fame ends before it ever really begins when Harry quits the band on the eve of their big break: opening for Liz Phair in Cleveland.

By 2006 the Ashers find themselves back in the garage, each twenty pounds heavier and a bit lighter on top, approaching middle age and rocking out merely as a hobby. After nearly two decades of suburban ennui, their long-overdue break arrives when a hip teenage blogger, after watching the aging dudes play, raves online about having just seen “the best band like ever in my life.”

Overnight, the Jane Ashers acquire millions of teenage fans, a record deal, a hot young bassist chosen by their label to up the band’s cute quotient, and a massive hit single. They pack up and leaver their “real” lives to embark on a depraved West Coast tour with the Spurts, the hipster band du jour who were in the first grade when the Ashers started. Finally, their rock dreams are coming true…

But ultimately the siren call of sex, drugs, and debauchery proves to be a bit more than the guys can handle, making the Ashers question all their previous assumptions about success.

Author Bio

Marc Spitz is a former Senior Writer at Spin magazine, the author of Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day and the novel How Soon Is Never. He is the co-author of the oral history We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk (with Brendan Mullen). His writing on music has also appeared in Nylon, The New York Post, The Washington Post, and GQ. Spitz lives in New York City.