BookBrowse Reviews Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett

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An indie rock musician reflects on his coming-of-age and his family's escape from a notorious California cult.

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It is not unusual for members of indie rock bands to have had close brushes with substance abuse and rehabilitation programs. But the story Mikel Jollett, frontman for the Airborne Toxic Event, has to tell in Hollywood Park is far from usual. His earliest years were spent at Synanon, the famous-turned-infamous alcohol and drug rehabilitation commune/cult in California in the 1970s (see Beyond the Book), just as the situation there began to disintegrate.

Jollett's abilities as a narrative songwriter serve him well in the storytelling techniques he employs in this engrossing memoir. The first chapters cover Jollett's escape from Synanon with his brother and their mother Gerry in the dead of night with the help of her parents. He narrates as his four-year-old self, complete with stream-of-consciousness misinterpretations, misspellings and made-up words straight out of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. As Jollett matures, so do his comprehension of the situation and his writing style, though because of the independence he was forced into in his early life, he always seems older than his years.

Life may change for Gerry and sons Tony and Mikel after leaving Synanon, but it does not necessarily get better, with a succession of men in recovery from one addiction or another, barely habitable low-income housing and Synanon pursuing them after their escape. Then there is the added complication of the boys' father, who sincerely wants to be a part of his sons' lives, and his new partner Bonnie, a woman who cared for Mikel in Synanon's children's compound. This is a jagged story of multiple generations struggling to recover from unhealed brokenness, told by one young man who is just beginning to find wholeness. Though he began life as a cult's "child of the universe" separated from his parents, by his 30s the author has accumulated a close extended family, blood-related and otherwise.

Jollett's storytelling becomes disjointed and less detail-rich around his college years, perhaps because he has not yet gained the same ruminative perspective he has on his meticulously remembered childhood and youth. (That said, the accounts of interviews with David Bowie and Robert Smith of the Cure done for a music magazine are packed with tiny, insightful observations.) This is not a book to inform the reader how an indie band comes into existence and achieves success; it is one man's memoir. That may be disappointing to readers drawn to the book less because of Jollett's unusual backstory and more because they are followers of the band; the band's formation and earliest songs take up less than 50 pages.

Nevertheless, this creatively spun memoir will give readers insight into Jollett's fascinating childhood and the influences that made him the unique artist he is today.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2020, and has been updated for the March 2022 edition. Click here to go to this issue.