Former DP staffer’s book tells the untold L.A. story of sex, drugs and ‘Breedlove’
By KRISTIN MAYER Special to the Daily Press
TARZANA The rock ‘n’ roll dive bar Seven Black Cats reeked of heavy liquor. Old couches were crammed into one corner, a candlelit bar manned the other. A stage was located in the back of the room, with stickers from old bands clinging to the walls.
A New Year’s Eve excursion to the Tucson, Ariz., bar inspired local writer Ryan Hyatt’s debut novel,“The Death of Rock ‘n’ Roll: A Biography of Darrell Breedlove.”
“I pretty much saw the whole novel in a vision when I was at the bar,”said Hyatt, a former Daily Press staff writer.“After I conceived it, I let it sit in my head and grow for a while until I exploded and had to put it on paper.”
Hyatt credits a lot of coffee, wine, chewing tobacco and sleepless nights with propelling him through the three-month writing process. The 30-year-old calls his novel a “period piece,” a tale of 20-something life. His friends call it a dark “Nouveau Western.”
Out of the bar and onto the page stepped Darrell Breedlove — the son of an eccentric auto mechanic, who plays the guitar as well as he fires a gun. Darrell’s foray into adulthood is met with a series of nightmarish events, culminating in a gunfight on New Year’s Day. In self-defense, the protagonist’s marksmanship puts to shame the son of a judge who once sent Darrell’s brother to prison, re-igniting a feud between the two families.
“It’s about the struggles, trials and tribulations of artists, writers and musicians from an underground perspective,” Hyatt said. “These are people I know from my day-to-day experiences. We don’t have enough stories told from the perspective of real people, real heroes.”
Hyatt’s life story closely resembles that of his central character.He lives the artist’s life,jumping from one job to the next to support his writing passion.
“The protagonist in the story embodies the struggle a lot of people face in our society,” Hyatt said. “The struggle is how can you live by your principles and, in so doing, be an asset to the world around you, especially in a world in which it seems to pay off — or it’s at least easier — to be mediocre, to be selfish, to be spiteful, and, most importantly, to be ignorant.”
A love of rock ‘n’ roll and a fascination with the people who flock to Los Angeles to pursue their dreams in artistic industries served as inspiration for Hyatt.
“In reality, you have so many people who came here and are so talented, but their stories are never told,” Hyatt said. “Nonetheless, their stories have value.”
Hyatt wrote his first short story at age 11, and soon found writing to be an outlet for coping with his parents’ divorce.
“My mom has been married three times and my father five, so there was a lot of transition, a lot of emotional upheaval in the house,” he said.
Hyatt graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, focusing on history, psychology and creative writing. Following graduation, he edited a defunct horse trade magazine and worked as an auto liability investigator.
At one point, Hyatt’s journey took him on a psychedel-ic adventure and near-death experience in Las Vegas that involved running through the Bellagio and jumping off a balcony into a fiberglass verandah for fear of a bomb threat.
“After that experience, I realized that I was compelled to keep trudging my path at all costs, in the sense that I wanted to continue writing,” Hyatt said.
Within six months, Hyatt had quit his liability investigator job, sold his car and moved to the artistic boomtown of Barcelona, Spain.
A subsequent reality check sent him home to pursue various writing jobs in Arizona and California, including his stint with the Santa Monica Daily Press in 2005.
“It’s the story of my generation, the people who turned the other way from the system and wanted to find their own path,” he said of his novel.
Hyatt currently works at a substitute teacher in the San Fernando Valley to support himself as he works on his follow-up, “Stay Young Longer,” which takes place in Los Angeles 50 years from now.
“The Death of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” published by Publish America, is available online and at select bookstores.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 6, 2007. Read the original PDF.