Author Chats
Rocking Out and Riding Into the ’70s With Howard Lee Kramer’s First Novel
May 09, 2025
Howard Lee Kramer’s Hitching to Bowie is a semi-autobiographical story set in the early 1970s about a 
University of Michigan student, nicknamed Midnight, who embarks on a 500-mile round-trip hitchhiking journey to attend a David Bowie concert. Along the way, the protagonist meets an array of characters, some hostile and some helpful, who illustrate the issues and attitudes of the time, many of which persist today.
Hitching to Bowie is Kramer’s first novel. Now retired, Kramer served as an attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and as a nationally ranked financial regulatory attorney in private practice. His book eschews his professional experience to reflect on his lifelong passion for rock music, and on a youthful willingness to accept risk in exchange for adventure and experience.
Which parts of your novel really happened and which were invented?
I was a sophomore at Michigan in 1974. My identical twin brother was a sophomore at Northwestern University. He copped some tickets to see our idol, David Bowie, in concert. I had no way to get there, so I ended up hitchhiking 250 miles, saw this fantastic concert, and hitchhiked 250 miles back.
I thought that this incredible 500-mile, two-day hitching journey would be a great basis for a road trip novel. It taps into the ’70s vibes of music, politics, and the immense promise of youth — in a humorous but thoughtful manner — and I thought it would make for a great novel.
But it is a novel, so it is fiction. It is based on this life experience that I had. When readers go through the book and get to the end — don’t jump to the end first — they’ll discover what was fiction and what wasn’t.
How does your novel’s 1970s setting compare to our current one?
None of my kids or younger people today would even think about hitching. You never see hitchhikers on the road these days. Everybody either has cars, or friends with cars, or they take ride shares, or whatever. Hitching was so common back in the ’70s, and you definitely had a bunch of experiences you would never have today — some good, some bad.
Every hitching ride in the book taught Midnight a valuable lesson … a few scary, others funny, and some illuminating. They include a Midwest granny, a conspiracy nut, and a businessman who … yearned for lustful tales of college life, as well as a bunch of other unique drives. They all taught a lesson in one way or another, and I thought that was as important to the book as the rock music theme.
As for the issues of the time, I think they’re still crucial because some of the things that happened in the ’70s still resonate today. We’ve made huge progress since 1974, but, in many areas, the book shows that some of the same issues have cropped up again or continued to linger. For example, Nixon had his “enemies list.” He wanted revenge on his enemies through devious or unlawful means. Sound familiar?
I wanted to touch upon rock music trends but also issues that were prominent in the 1970s and remain prominent today … anti-Semitism, the environment, generation gap issues, but also the unexpected thrills and lessons of a 19-year-old who takes a chance. I mean, these days, at my age, we don’t take as many chances in life. But when you’re 19, you do, and I wanted to capture that.
But the book really expresses the main character’s conviction for change to a more just society, and that age shouldn’t diminish that conviction. Just because as a 19-year-old I was idealistic or thought that I could change the world doesn’t mean that at 69 I shouldn’t have the same conviction.
In college, all young people have some naïveté, to some extent, whether they want to admit it or not, but that naïveté also spurs in them a desire to do things that we stop doing in our later years, like going to rock concerts, getting involved in activism, and the like. Sadly, age really shouldn’t suppress this desire.
I hope I express that in the book, to some extent. I talked about the follies of youth, but really some of it is about the follies of older age, thinking you can’t do the things that you did when you were younger when you actually still can.
Tell me about music’s part in writing your novel, and in your life.
Rock music is very central to the novel, for sure. I saw my first concert when I was 16 years old, and have been going to concerts ever since then, for over 50 years. In fact, a couple months ago I saw Bruce Springsteen, The Boss, in concert. It was amazing. I mean, he’s even older than me, but it was an incredible concert.
These days I mainly see indie bands in places like the 9:30 Club or The Hamilton in D.C., or at the Mercury Lounge or the Bowery Ballroom in New York. But one of the great things about satellite radio is that I can turn it on and hear anything from the ’60s to the ’90s, so I don’t have to be stuck with just what’s coming out today.
My book expresses how rock music is really poetry and artistry, as well as entertainment. The changing patterns of rock music run like a river through the journey of the book. Rock music, like other forms of art, isn’t static. It changes over time in some good ways, some not, but it is always enjoyable. Rock music has been central to my life, my biggest hobby. Outside of family, career, and travel, it has been the thing that has really driven me.
And David Bowie was boundary stretching, boundary breaking, back in the day. He was, in some ways, the epitome of what was then called glam rock … performers who came on with makeup and dressed to the max in a gender-bending manner. Bowie was shocking to people, and he wrote very perceptive work that resonated with his fans. After his Ziggy Stardust album came out, my brother and I vowed we would see him in concert someday, and we did, and in ways I never would have imagined.
How did writing a fiction novel differ from your writing experiences as an attorney?
It is 180 degrees different, just night and day. Law writing is supposed to be precise, explanatory, and, in some ways, argumentative. You’re trying to convince somebody of a point. Fiction is not precise. Fiction is supposed to be descriptive. It wanders, and it lets readers form their own ideas of what’s happening in the book. It paints a picture for the reader to imagine, rather than trying to push the reader to a particular point. But, to me, the biggest difference is in being descriptive and wandering, rather than being precise and to the point.
As an attorney I edited many memos and pieces from associates or, when I was at the government, junior staff. And, so, I was an editor. Now, having my work edited, it was edited in a very different way. It was edited to be more descriptive, more luminous and beautiful in how things are expressed. In contrast, as an attorney I was editing to correct grammar, get to the point, and cut out extraneous, verbose material that wasn’t needed. Verbose isn’t necessarily bad in fiction.
After many decades of writing as an attorney, writing this fiction novel was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Where can readers find your book?
The book currently is available directly from the publisher, Mascot Books, or major retailers like Amazon. There are several posts about it on my LinkedIn page, and I will update this periodically.
