Rick Rickenharp

Retro rocker who becomes a resistance fighter in John Shirley's classic cyberpunk trilogy A Song Called Youth (first published in 1985, reissued as one volume in 2012).

Rickenharp was a rock classicist; he was retro. He wore a black leather motorcycle jacket that was some seventy-some years old, said to have been worn by John Cale when he was still in the Velvet Underground. The seams were beginning to pop for the third time; three studs were missing from the chrome trimming. The elbows and collar edges were worn through the black dye to the brown animal the leather had come from. But the leather was second skin to Rickenharp. He wore nothing under it. His bony, hairless chest showed translucent-bluewhite between the broken zippers. He wore blue jeans that were only ten years old but looked older than the coat; he wore genuine Harley Davidson boots. Earrings clustered up and down his long, slightly too prominent ears, and his rusty brown hair looked like a cannon-shell explosion.

And he wore dark glasses.

And he did all this because it was gratingly unfashionable. (70-71)

His band includes Mose (rhythm guitar and backup vocals), Ponce (keyboards), Julio (bass), and Murch (drums).

Sample lyrics:

You want easy overnight action
want it casually
A neat little chain reaction
and a little sympathy
You say it's just consolation
In the end it's a compensation
for insecurity
That way there's no surprises
That way no one gets hurt
No moral question tries us

No blood on satin shirts (91)

External links

• Shirley's homepage