This brief and well-meaning study of the music's sociological impact from the early 1950s through the early 1960s—the work of such artists as Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry—is surprisingly flat, given the still-exciting quality of the music itself. Altschuler (Changing Channels: America in TV Guide) analyzes "the emergence of rock and roll as a cultural phenomenon" by reviewing all the standard truisms about the music, which makes the book seem like it was written by a committee of rock critics. He sees rock as "a metaphor for integration," as the focal point for anxiety that cultural life in the U.S. had become "sexualized," a catalyst that "provoked conflict" between parents and teenagers, and an enormous influence on the development of a mass market ripe for exploitation. He also looks at the "lull" in the music between Elvis's being drafted into the army in 1957 and the emergence of the Beatles in 1963, as well as the way that artists like Bruce Springsteen continue the rock effort to foster "intragenerational identity." Unfortunately, for all Altschuler's sincere and painstaking factual precision, he repeats what can be found in such previous works as Charlie Gillett's The Sound of the City
and overlooks the role that country music played in the birth of rock and roll, found in Nick Tosches's Country
and Where Dead Voices Gather. (Aug.)
