A complete list of illustrations can be found at the end of the book.

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Publishers since 1866
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New York, New York 10010
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Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Text copyright © 2012 by Janet Tashjian
Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Adam Gustavson
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tashjian, Janet.
For what it’s worth / Janet Tashjian. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
“Christy Ottaviano Books.”
Summary: Living in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon neighborhood,
fourteen-year-old Quinn’s life has been consumed by music and the
famous musicians who live nearby, but in 1971, his first girlfriend, a
substitute teacher, and a draft dodger help open his eyes about the
Vietnam War.
ISBN 978- 0-8050-9365- 0 (hc)
[1. Rock music—Fiction. 2. Musicians—Fiction. 3. Dating (Social
customs)—Fiction. 4. Family life— California—Los Angeles—
Fiction. 5. Teachers—Fiction. 6. Draft resisters—Fiction.
7. Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Fiction. 8. Los Angeles (Calif.)—
History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: For what
it is worth.
PZ7.T211135For 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011032001
First Edition—2012 / Designed by Elynn Cohen
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
R ock and roll can change the world and save your
life—and that’s just for starters. I challenge anyone
on the planet to remain in a bad mood when “Gimme
Shelter” comes on the radio. It’s physically impossible,
right? Rock and roll can get you through a boring school
year, give you something to bond over with your friends,
even provide you with a reason to get out of bed in the
morning.
You think I’m exaggerating? Listening to music is a
critical step in growing up, as important as learning how
to ride a bike with no hands. And not just rock and
roll—pop, rhythm and blues, country, jazz—I don’t care
what it is, I’ll listen to it. I’m like a junkie with a twenty-
four-hour addiction, except the needle’s not in my arm,
it’s on my turntable. Lucky for me, I live in the epicenter

1
 of the national music scene. Not just California, but Los
Angeles. And not just Los Angeles, but Laurel Canyon.
If you love music, there’s nowhere else to be in 1971 but
here. I can sit on my front steps, throw a rock in any
direction, and hit someone making music for a living.
Songwriters, drummers, singers, sound engineers—I’ve
trick-or-treated at their houses since grade school. My
sister, Soosie, housesits for Joni Mitchell, for crying out
loud. Don’t believe me? Ask Soosie to show you the
scratches on her arm from Joni’s cat—the singer/song-
writer might be known for writing emotionally bare
songs about her love life, but her feline companion is a
lot less subtle with her claws.
Where do I fit into this musical melting pot? I’m the
guy who chronicles everything in his ever-present
notebook—Elton John’s first U.S. appearance at the
Troubador, The Band’s newest demo, any rock-and-roll
tidbit a music freak like me might want to know about. I
continually make lists of songs, artists, and albums—
mostly when I should be doing homework. I begged my
English teacher last year to let me write a column for the
school paper about the music scene called “For What It’s
Worth,” based on the Buffalo Springfield song. She
finally relented, and I’ve been cranking out columns and
lists ever since. Just to keep in practice, I stockpiled sev-
eral of them this summer too. Speaking of Joni Mitchell,
I just finished one about her dumping Graham Nash

2
while she was on vacation. Women—they’ll annihilate
your heart every time.
The city is pulsing, the city is moving to an internal
beat—can you hear it?
I can.

3
 M y sister, Soosie, just got her hands on my
journal—which was in my room, which i asked
her fifty million times to stay out of—and threw
herself on her waterbed in a fit of convulsive laughter. If I
gave the false impression that I knew what it actually felt
like to lose a girlfriend, I apologize. Truth be told, I tech-
nically don’t know what it’s like to have one, never mind
lose her. Ow! (My bilious older sister now has me in a
headlock, insisting I be even more honest.) Okay! Not
only have I never had a girlfriend, I haven’t yet found a
way to cross the chasm between the witty repartee in my
head and a conversation with a real live human female
that lasts longer than two seconds. My number one goal
for this school year is to have a relationship with a smart,
funny, pretty girl I can talk to. Happy now, Soosie?
Sheesh. Go away to college already.

4
 H AT IT’S WOR
R W TH
O
F

8/71

After a particularly domestic

afternoon, Graham Nash wrote the song
“Our House” about the Lookout Mountain
home he shared with Joni Mitchell. The
album the song was on-—Déjà vu-—had
barely hit the airwaves when Mitchell
split for Greece without him. While
Nash was laying a new kitchen floor in
the home they shared, he received a
one-sentence telegram from Mitchell

5
 informing him
their relationship
was over. Nash was
crushed; he sat
down at the same
piano where he
wrote “Our House”
and wrote “Simple
Man” about their
breakup. It’s
almost as ironic as Joni writing
“Woodstock”-—the de facto anthem of the
peace and love generation-—from a
Manhattan hotel
room as she
watched the
coverage on TV.

6
 FLOWERING  JUDAS

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