ROCK MUSIC, AUTHORITY AND WESTERN CULTURE, 1964-1980

Exuberant music infused jolts of sex, drugs, and rebellion into civilization, according to this intricate history of rock music’s Golden Age.

Music writer Cosby surveys rock’s high-water era of the late 1950s through the 1970s, when it reigned as the world’s dominant genre of popular music and gained a new artistic depth and prestige. His interpretive narrative moves from Elvis Presley’s fusion of Black bluesman, white hillbilly, and matinee idol to Bob Dylan’s amalgamation of visionary folk prophecy and electric rock to Motown, the Grateful Dead and the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene, the Velvet Underground’s proto-punk evocations of narcotic squalor, and the 1970s reign of heavy-metal deities Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Ted Nugent. Presiding over the book are the Beatles, whose singular songwriting genius, capacious humanism, and avid embodiment of trends—from hand-holding to pot-smoking, beards, psychedelia, and meditation—made them all things to all men and all shrieking girls. Cosby gives comparable weight to the Rolling Stones; in his telling, they’re the dark, bad-boy yin to the Beatles’ bright yang, and the originators of the rock-star ethos of heedless, entitled debauchery. (“We are not worried about petty morals,” Cosby quotes Stones guitarist Keith Richards sniffing at his 1967 marijuana possession trial.) Cosby entwines his sketches of rock’s evolution and the musicians who crafted it with smart commentary on contemporary social upheavals and cultural artifacts, from the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War to the sitcom The Brady Bunch (the bland, wholesome antithesis of rock); he argues that, by undermining parental, religious, and sexual restraints, and celebrating Dionysian emotional freedom and individual authenticity, rock became an essential lens through which we understand “the ongoing arc of Western civilization.” Cosby’s vivid, perceptive prose captures the visceral impact of rock music while unearthing its roots in intense experiences and novel ways of life. The result is a compelling look at why, how, and where rock ’n’ roll has moved us.

A rich, insightful account of how rock music catalyzed a new world.