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Gandalf's Pikestaff
Extremely short-lived prog rock band from Jonathan Coe's 2001 novel The Rotters' Club.
Protagonist Benjamin Trotter plays keyboards in this group he co-founded in 1976 with guitarist Phil Chase. They agreed on the band name after considering other Lord of the Rings-inspired names such as Lothlorien, Mithril, Minas Tirith and Isildur’s Bane. After years of preparation, they gather together three other musicians and are about to rehearse their 32-minute rock symphony 'Apotheosis of the Necromancer'. About five minutes into the rehearsal, the drummer is fed up and starts a punk beat. He's joined by the bassist and singer. On the spot they become a new three-piece band, The Maws of Doom. Benjamin and Phil are left perplexed and defeated. The book includes their Rock Family Tree in the style of Pete Frame, which ended up far shorter than they had imagined.
A variation of this scene also appears in the three-part TV mini series based on the novel, The Rotters' Club (2005), episode 2: “The Maws of Doom”.
