Fuel-injected Dreams — James Robert Baker

Here is the cult classic whose central character is based on the legend of Phil Spector. So there’s this record producer Dennis Contrelle who was huge in the early 1960s, creating epic trash masterpieces from girl groups and surf bands, a veritable Wagner of pop, but he retired at the end of the decade and disappeared into his mansion of tack somewhere in L.A. He’s still there, still married to the singer with his biggest group, a woman effectively held prisoner by the drug-damaged Svengali who can’t let her go ... But remember: “This novel is a work of fiction ... any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.” Our narrator is a hip late-night DJ, Scott Cochrane, who grew up on the music of Dennis Contrelle, and had a teenage crush on Sharlene, the singer for the Stingrays, whose classic ’60s pop album, Fuel Injected Dreams, is tied up in his mind with his first girlfriend, Cheryl, who mysteriously disappeared the summer of the album’s release. When the DJ belittles one of his tunes, the producer phones in a complaint, and Cochrane is soon lured into the Contrelles’ world of sadomasochistic sexual intrigue.