![]() I might even grant him the point that David Bowie's real breakthrough was not 1972's Ziggy Stardust, but 1971's Hunky Dory. He's on solid ground when talking about the breakthroughs of Slade, Carole King, Neil Young, or Marvin Gaye. But the most important year of the arena-rock era? Why not say 1970 or 1972? Hepworth would rank the importance (popularity or critical) of certain albums and the seminal years for certain artists, but his statistics are fudged. Pop critics, for example, agree that 1966 was a far stronger year for rock than the Summer of Love that followed, and Hepworth can make a decent case for the importance of 1971. It's fine that Hepworth wants to choose a year or period that is often neglected, as these are the areas that are richest to mine. Costello, in his recent memoir, describes how much he appreciates music of all genres, and says quite bluntly that there never was a golden age of anything. He adds the important caveat that we should attach particular negative handicaps to music that was released during our adolescent years, because the interplay between our adolescent hormones, developing neural networks, and the music we hear, leads us to the incorrect conclusion that the music we heard in teen years was the best ever made. In How Music Works, Byrne describes an unbroken continuum in music evolution since recorded music began early in the 20th century. David Byrne and Elvis Costello, in two excellent recent music memoirs/analyses, have taken a more defensible path. ![]() Hepworth seemed bound and determined to break all my personal taboos in one fell swoop. I also am annoyed when an author uses the phrase "golden era" to describe any genre of music or art. It's certainly wrong with 1170 BC or 1493, and it is wrong in rock music for the year 1971. I've made it known several times in the past that titling a book with a particular year is preposterous, because few trends can be summarized in a single year, and the attempt to do so leads the author to artificially stuff things into misshapen categories. One can average it out by awarding three stars as I did, though it would be tempting to scrawl a big red I for Incomplete across the title page. It's maddening to attempt to review a nonfiction musical history when both anecdotes and writing style are top-notch, yet the premise on which the book is crafted is totally misdirected. From the electric blue fur coat David Bowie wore when he first arrived in America in February to Bianca’s neckline when she married Mick Jagger in Saint-Tropez in May, from the death of Jim Morrison in Paris in July to the re-emergence of Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in August, from the soft launch of Carole King’s “Tapestry” in California in February to the sensational arrival of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” in London in November, Hepworth’s forensic sweep takes in all the people, places and events that helped make 1971 rock’s unrepeatable year. There’s a story behind every note of that music. In this entertaining and provocative book, he argues that 1971 saw an unrepeatable surge of musical creativity, technological innovation, naked ambition and outrageous good fortune that combined to produce music that still crackles with relevance today. The new releases of that hectic year―Don McLean’s “American Pie,” Sly Stone’s “Family Affair,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven,” the Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” and many others―are the standards of today.ĭavid Hepworth was twenty-one in 1971, and has been writing and broadcasting about music ever since. ![]() You might say this was the last day of the pop era.ġ971 started the following day and with it the rock era. On New Year’s Eve 1970 Paul McCartney instructed his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London that effectively ended the Beatles. **One of Amazon's Best Books of 2016: Top 100 Editors' Picks**Ī rollicking look at 1971, rock’s golden year, the year that saw the release of the indelible recordings of Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Who, Rod Stewart, Carole King, the Rolling Stones, and others and produced more classics than any other year in rock history
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