Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded

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