"Rock and Roll Love Story: The Two Volume Set" is my magnum opus, my 500 page dirge to my late, lamented rock star career that almost was but never came to be. It starts out with a panean to the Jersey Highlands of days gone by, where I spent my youth, and it continues as the saga of Ronnie James "The Rocket" DeRenzo, a frustrated Jersey Cowboy and blue collar youth attending State College in the recession wracked late 1970's. Playing his Stratocaster knockoff three hours a day, Ronnie forms a Band with classmates Charlie and Dom and does the basement and garage circuit till a lucky break at the Last Blast musical fesitival at State introduces the band to an agent with ties to the landmark Maxwell's in Hoboken. Soon the band is playing the punk and alternative scene in the New York City area that spawned so many great acts of that era. As stardom looms, Ronnie suffers a devastating illness that launches him on a secretive, highly successful investing care with boyhood friend Peter Duncan. From his earliest days to his Citizen Kane-like later day existence, Ronnie is aided by the love of his love, the blonde and beautiful Michelle "The Fabulous Shelly" Williams, the band's muse and publicist. Along the way, Rocket becomes a mover and shaker, a music and investment guru and political activist who battles a shadowy terrorist drug gang. Conceived at the dawn of the Millennium, this book features cameos by John Lennon, Clive Davis, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, The Rolling Stones, Motley Crue, Eric Clapton. This story came to me during a weeks long daydream in the middle of a health and career crisis; in many ways it proved to be prophetic as years flew by. First published in 2010 as two books, this set is the original story as I conceived in the winter of 2000.