Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded - Hardcover

Hepworth, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1627793992 ISBN 13: 9781627793995

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2016

Synopsis

**One of Amazon's Best Books of 2016: Top 100 Editors' Picks**

A 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

The Sixties ended a year late. 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. You might say this was the last day of the pop era.

1971 started the following day and with it the rock era. 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.

David Hepworth was twenty-one in 1971, and has been writing and broadcasting about music ever since. 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. There’s a story behind every note of that music. 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.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of June 2016: Rock & Roll nostalgia is hot. Since Keith Richards’s Life appeared in 2010 (and set the standard for rock books, by the way), a torrent of biographies, memoirs, and retrospectives have followed in its wake. Many have been excellent-- Trouble Boys, Kill ‘Em and Leave, and The Sun and the Moon and the Rolling Stones are just three recent examples, and Never a Dull Moment: 1971: The Year That Rock Exploded by the venerable music journalist David Hepworth continues the hot streak. Hepworth, who was 21 years old in the year of his title, pulls together 12 months of events that closed the Age of Pop (i.e. The Beatles) and ushered in the Age of Rock, with its shift to album sales (vs. singles), arena acts, and erosion of race- and gender-based cultural boundaries. Rather than a fawning run-down of the usual 70s acts—though he does range from Carole King and the Carpenters to Zeppelin and the Stones to Marvin Gaye and Sly and the Family Stone, and more--NADM takes the high-altitude view, blending together seemingly disparate elements such as boomer demographics, feminism, emerging technologies, and the apparent ubiquity of hot pants to recreate the seismic events of the year that shaped the entertainment industry's next decade (or three). He’s quite sure he’s right, by the way, and it's hard to disagree. This book is smart and a lot of fun. —Jon Foro, The Amazon Book Review

About the Author

David Hepworth is a music journalist, writer, broadcaster, and publishing industry analyst who has launched several legendary British magazines, including Q, Mojo, and The Word, among many others. He was a presenter of the BBC’s rock music program Whistle Test and anchored the BBC’s coverage of Live Aid in 1985. He has won Editor of the Year and Writer of the Year from the Professional Publishers Association and the Mark Boxer Award from the British Society of Magazine Editors. He writes about radio for The Guardian, comments on cultural and media issues for many magazines and newspapers, and blogs at whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1627793992
• ISBN 13: 9781627793995
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320