cover image SEVENTIES ROCK: The Decade of Creative Chaos

SEVENTIES ROCK: The Decade of Creative Chaos

Frank Moriarty, , foreword by Brian May. . Taylor, $18 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-58979-024-7

Since the end of the 1970s, a small but growing contingent of music critics—starting with Robert Christgau and his Record Guide to the '70s and more recently in Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic—have convincingly argued that the 1970s was the true era of musical innovation in rock music, while music of the 1960s has dated badly without its counterculture context. This new work by Moriarty (Johnny Cash; Springsteen) doesn't offer the analytic depth of Christgau or Carducci, but it does offer an incredible amount of descriptive precision in defense of '70s rock. Moriarty presents a year-by-year historical account of the concerts and recordings of almost every single musical trend and innovator from the death of Jimi Hendrix in 1970 to the breakup of the Clash in 1979. Along the way, he deftly captures the glories of an artistically chaotic decade that encompassed the Beatles, heavy metal, glam-rock, jazz-rock, progressive rock, country rock, reggae, funk, punk, New Wave and Bruce Springsteen. His writing is unflaggingly energetic, although it sometimes seems that there is nothing he didn't like in that decade. But Moriarty has clearly listened closely to the music, and he is equally at home discussing the works of Led Zeppelin and critiquing the Mahavishnu Orchestra or the commercial failures of Jo Jo Gunne. His great empathy with the musical and commercial nuances of the era gives him a solid foundation for arguing the importance of what was a wild and crazy decade of music. (Oct.)