You know that feeling when someone you trust recommends something and you just know it’s going to be right up your alley? That’s what happened when I saw Will Wheaton’s post about narrating the audiobook for The Whyte Python World Tour by Travis Kennedy. He was almost over-the-top excited about the project. I’m a big fan of Wheaton’s work in audiobooks, and so the first moment I had to download the book and start listening, I took it.
I am 57 years old, and I still remember the exact moment I first saw the video for “Looks That Kill” by Mötley Crüe in 1983. My impression was that this was awesome. It blew me away. I bought Shout at the Devil and Too Fast for Love on cassette, I think, on the same day. I loved the theatricality and the sheer ridiculousness of it all. It was sort of like my favorite band all through middle school (and to be honest, longer), KISS, but something else. Something new.
Next came the wave of hair/glam metal bands that dominated the culture. Quiet Riot, Ratt, Twister Sister, Poison, Bon Jovi, Dokken, Def Leppard, and so many more. This was the soundtrack of my high school and college years. A ten-year dominance.
So, when I downloaded Kennedy’s audiobook about a drummer named Rikki Thunder who gets recruited by the CIA to topple communism through the power of glam metal, I figured I was in for some lightweight ‘80s hairband fun with Wheaton’s familiar voice guiding me through it. Maybe a few laughs. What I didn’t expect was to care so much about these characters. I should have known Wheaton’s narration would bring them to life.
Rikki is one of those protagonists who shouldn’t work but totally does. He’s naive without being stupid. When he gets pulled into this insane scheme involving his gorgeous handler Tawny Spice (and yes, that name is absolutely intentional), you want to shake him and tell him to run. But you also completely understand why he doesn’t.
The book jumps between Rikki’s wide-eyed wonder and the CIA team members being cynical about the whole thing. Kennedy makes both feel authentic or at least as authentic as needed in this wild world of rock and roll, the Cold War, and spy craft.
I found myself trying to see if Kennedy would incorporate real-world events into the tour’s timeframe and actually show how this band started an Eastern European revolution. It doesn’t quite go that way, but it doesn’t matter.
The ‘80s setting feels real without a lot of nostalgia thrown in. Kennedy clearly did his research, but he wears it lightly. The references feel organic, not like someone showing off their Wikipedia knowledge. When Rikki meets Brett Michaels from Poison in a throwaway scene, it’s exactly as awkward and surreal as you’d expect, but it serves the story rather than just being fan service.
This book is incredibly funny. Not in a desperate, trying-too-hard way, but in the way that comes from really understanding your characters and letting them be human. The CIA handlers are a little silly, but none are bumbling or incompetent. The band members have just enough depth to surprise you when they need to, and Kennedy is deft at throwing some good backstory when needed. Even the villains feel lived-in rather than cartoonish.
What surprised me most was how much emotional weight the book carries. Yes, it’s about hair metal and Cold War espionage and all sorts of inherently ridiculous things. But it’s also about found family, about the power of art to change people, and about what happens when your dreams come true in ways you never expected. There’s a subplot about Rikki’s relationship with a plumber who gave him The Who Live at Leeds and his first record player that genuinely moved me. The band’s friendship is also well written and grows naturally. The guys start as strangers thrown together by circumstance and become something like brothers.
The audiobook format works particularly well for this story. There’s something about hearing the characters’ voices that makes the absurdity feel more grounded. Wheaton handles the different characters with subtle distinctions that never feel forced or showy. When he’s doing Rikki’s earnest confusion or Tawny’s calculated charm, you believe these are real people.
This is what good pop culture does, whether it’s hair metal or super spies or books about hair metal spies. It gives us permission to have fun. To believe, however briefly, that art can change the world. Why do I all of a sudden hear “Winds of Change” by the Scorpions? Weird.
Travis Kennedy has written something special here, a book that works both as entertainment and as a meditation on music, friendship, and the things we do for love.
I can’t wait for the movie.
Be seeing you.
