“Stranger Things” metalhead Eddie Munson shares more of his backstory in prequel novel excerpt
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Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus reveals a lot more backstory for fan-favorite character Eddie Munson.
The prequel novel, written by Caitlin Schneiderhan, who also works on the show, is set two years before the events of Stranger Things season 4, which introduced actor Joseph Quinn as the beloved high school metalhead and Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast. And now you can learn more details about Eddie's relationship with music and his mother in EW's exclusive excerpt from the book.
Flight of Icarus follows a record producer named Paige who gives Eddie and his band Corroded Coffin the chance to fulfill their rock & roll dreams. The excerpt finds Eddie entering a recording studio for the first time and telling Paige how his late mom got him hooked on music. She had grown up in Memphis, where she met Eddie's dad, who turned out to be a schemer. They eventually moved to Hawkins, Ind., and while Al taught his son how to play guitar, it was his mom who taught him how to love music, sharing all the records she listened to on the nine-hour drive from Memphis. She eventually got sick and died when Eddie was 6 years old.
In a rather telling line, Eddie says, "This music takes you on an adventure, to another world where you're, like, facing down demons. Traveling into the depths of hell. My mom's music was plane tickets. I guess that makes my music a portal to another dimension." If he only knew...
Below, read the full excerpt from Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus, which hits shelves Oct. 31.
Penguin Random House The cover of 'Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus'
I see the door.
It's open, just a crack, just far enough for me to peer through. And inside —
The drum kit is the first thing I spot. Then the rugs laid out on top of one another, stacked high on the floor. Then the spindly leg of a microphone stand. And then I'm pushing the door open and stepping into an honest-to-God recording studio for the first time in my life.
It's not a big space, but even with all the equipment and the instruments and the scarfed raped lamps, it doesn't feel cramped. My sneakers scuff across the layered carpets with a shushing sound that feels too loud, and I realize that the room is completely soundproofed. Wanting to test this, I tap my fingernail against the hi-hat, and grin at the raspy chk-chk-chk that follows.
It strikes me hard, like, right between the eyes, standing here in the middle of this stack of carpets, cushioned air pushing in on all sides. I'm in a recording studio. A real one. I've only ever seen them in pictures or in movies — glossy photographs plastered across old issues of Rolling Stone, or grainy making-the-band snippets on MTV. But this isn't two-dimensional. It's not low-fi. It's —
"It's kind of a shithole."
The words come, staticky and broken and way too loud, through the intercom set into the ceiling overhead. I look up, startled, to find Paige watching me through the observation window. She's standing in the control room, leaning over the audio console. It's dark on her side of the glass, but the warm light from the studio illuminates her face, making her skin glow like she's got the sun burning somewhere inside.
"Hah," I say, and then realize that, with all the soundproofing, she can't hear me unless I'm talking into the mic. I lean closer and try again. "Yeah." It's the best I can manage without admitting the fact that, inside, I'm completely freaking out. This place might be a shithole, sure. It could be Abbey Road, and I'd be having the same reaction. I'm standing in a recording studio, like a real honest-to-God rock star. Did Munson Junior ever think he'd end up here?
She cups her hands over her ears, making big eye contact with me through the window. "Huh?" I say, remembering to speak into the mic this time.
Paige gestures and covers her ears again, and finally I think to look where she's pointing. Oh. There's a set of oversize headphones hanging off the corner of one of the amps. I hook them up with my fingers and slide them over my head.
"How's my hair?" I ask, grinning over the mic. Paige rolls her eyes, but her heart's not in it; I can see the smile she's fighting.
"Luscious."
"What did Nate say?"
"He's, like, catatonic. I'm not even gonna try until he's chugged at least one cup of coffee." She cocks her head, nodding toward something behind me. "You see that guitar over there?"
I'd spotted it as soon as I'd walked inside, a Strat dangling from a mount on the wall. It's a little worn — a few scratches etch the body, and the threads on the strap are starting to fray. This baby's seen some wars. But when I sling the guitar around my neck, plug it in, and play a chord, the sound that emerges is pure and clear and perfectly in tune.
"What do you think?" I ask, striking a pose.
"Looks good," Paige says.
"Even for a shithole?"
"I wasn't talking about the studio." She cocks her head, studying me through the glass. "You look good. In there, behind the mic, with a guitar. You fit."
I'm not sure I can answer that right away, not without my voice cracking. So I turn my attention back to the guitar, walking my fingers up the fretboard as I pick out a bare-bones take on the intro to "Number of the Beast."
Tina Rowden/Netflix Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson on 'Stranger Things'
"Can I ask you something?"
Her voice is low, but unmissable, hazing out of the headphones and into my ears until it's everywhere. I miss a note. "Shoot," I say, and whether I'm swearing in reaction to my screwup or inviting her to go ahead, I'll leave up to Paige.
"Why music?"
It's such an oblique question that I have to give up on Iron Maiden for a full 30 seconds as I try to figure out what she means. "Everyone likes music."
"Not everyone likes it the way you do." She cocks her head, and her short hair sways sideways in a dark ripple. "Fine, okay. Rephrase. Why this music?"
I hit a power chord and let it reverberate, filling every corner of the recording studio. "Because it's badass," I shout over the noise.
"For sure," she says, once the last echoes have died away. "But that's not the only reason, right?" When I just stare blankly at her, she huffs a sigh. "Help me out here, Eddie. If I'm gonna sell this package, I need some copy to write on the side."
Why music? Why this music? I flip my pick around in my fingers as I try to put my thoughts in some kind of order.
Because, weirdly enough, I've never actually asked myself this question before. For 18 years, music has just kind of... been. Like eating, breathing, taking a piss... music. Listening to it, playing it, talking about it. It's a fact of life. But why?
"My mom."
I'm not actually sure I mean to say it. It just kind of comes out, murmured into the microphone like I'm in a weird rock-and-roll-flavored confessional. I can imagine the words filling the air in the control room, the same way that Paige's voice is filling my head, delivered direct to my eardrums by the headphones.
"My dad was the one who taught me how to play guitar, but my mom, uh." I clear my throat. "She was living in Memphis when she met my dad. She'd grown up there, 19 years surrounded by music, everywhere she went. Country, bluegrass, rock... but her favorite was blues. Like, Chicago blues, the hard kind that gets into your bones, you know?"
Paige has straightened up on the other side of the observation window, pulling out of the light filtering in from the studio. I can't see her face anymore. It's just a silhouette that answers me. "Yeah."
"So — when she left, when she moved up to Indiana, she took the music with her. It's like a nine-hour drive from Memphis to Hawkins, and she and my dad spent all of that time squeezed into a tiny car with 20 boxes of records. And then when I was born, she started sharing those records with me." I'm still plucking out a tune on this beat-up old Strat, but it's not Iron Maiden anymore. It's a Muddy Waters riff, and as it reverberates from the studio speakers, I can hear the static from Mom's record player fuzzing underneath, familiar and comfortable as an old sweater. "I still have them. I still listen to them. They're stashed next to the TV. She called them her plane tickets. Even when she was stuck in Hawkins," waiting on her husband to come home from some dumbass scheme, "that music told stories. It helped her see the world."
"I didn't get it, when I was a kid," I go on. "All I heard on those records were people singing about sadness, about how shitty life was. And then, uh. She got sick and died. When I was like 6. I got it then." I pause. Typically there's a chorus of sympathetic crooning following that reveal, one that sets my teeth on edge. But Paige is still and silent inside the control room, watching me. Listening.
So I give her something to listen to. The guitar line for Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" trips off my fingers, half blues and half metal, and it might be my imagination, but I think I can see the shadow of Paige nodding along to the beat.
"I like this music because it's about sadness and how shitty life is. And things are sad, life is shitty. It's real. But also, it tells stories. This music takes you on an adventure, to another world where you're, like, facing down demons. Traveling into the depths of hell. My mom's music was plane tickets. I guess that makes my music a portal to another dimension."
"You like it because it's badass," Paige says.
"I like it because it's really fucking badass." I finish the riff and let my hand fall away. "Is that enough copy for you?"
Reprinted from Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus by Caitlin Schneiderhan. Copyright © 2023 by Stranger Things™ / Netflix. Published by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
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