1973

Rock at the Crossroads

By: Andrew Grant Jackson

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

1973 was the year rock hit its peak while splintering-just like the rest of the world. Ziggy Stardust traveled to America in David Bowie's "Aladdin Sane". The Dark Side of the Moon began its epic run on the Billboard charts, inspired by the madness of Pink Floyd's founder, while all four former Beatles scored top 10 albums, two hitting number one.

FM battled AM, and Motown battled Philly on the charts, as the era of protest soul gave way to disco, while DJ Kool Herc gave birth to hip hop in the Bronx. The glam rock of the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper split into glam metal and punk. Hippies and rednecks made peace in Austin thanks to Willie Nelson, while outlaw country, country rock, and Southern rock each pointed toward modern country. The Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, and the Band played the largest rock concert to date at Watkins Glen.

Led Zep's Houses of the Holy reflected the rise of funk and reggae. The singer songwriter movement led by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell flourished at the Troubadour and Max's Kansas City, where Bruce Springsteen and Bob Marley shared bill. Elvis Presley's Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite was NBC's top-rated special of the year, while Elton John's albums dominated the number one spot for two and a half months.

©2019 Andrew Grant Jackson (P)2019 Tantor

Critic reviews

"An invaluable reference work . . . This chronicle of what was arguably the biggest year in rock contextualizes its musical markers and considers the artists behind them." -Shelf Awareness

A little too long but good

If you're a fan of 70's music as I am, you'll like it. It could have been a little shorter though. The narrator is subpar. Way too many mispronunciations. I swear they just hire people off the street. Poor narration happens too often.

Reliving in the past

I was working in a record store in 1973, and while I own a lot of albums from that year, I own less than 10% of the albums mentioned here. But I found the book informative. Jackson puts the music and artists together in a way that explains their relationship to each other AND in relation to real world events.
Living through these events, I took them as they came, not how they related to one another and how they helped shape the present. 1973 ushered in the end of the Viet Nam War, the Watergate hearings, the standoff at Wounded Knee, Roe vs. Wade, Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs, the Yom Kippur War - and the resultant oil crisis among other things. Gas at $.30 a gallon is so,, uh, 1972. The stock market really tanked and so did the middle class.
Some of the artists here reflected these changes - in both good and bad ways. Other groups, like The Rolling Stones, had peaked artistically and were in decline. But the stories, and the relationships viewed and ordered in hindsight, really captured my attention. But I did miss seeing my favorite albums (Dixie Chicken, Lark’s Tongue in Aspic, Tyranny and Mutation, countdown to Ecstasy, Solid Air, Show Your Hand, Twice Removed From Yesterday, …) get a mention.
But taste is ultimately personal, and it can be surely argued that my favorites had less impact on cultural values. I would say that the narrator for Audible just sounded wrong for this work. And I had that idea before the narrator started mispronouncing names. Mispronouncing Glenn Frey? Yikes.

Eh

Beware: it’s not about the music, it’s a boring, simplistic, political thesis using music to give it some sheen.