1973: Rock at the Crossroads

by Andrew Grant Jackson Narrated by James Patrick Cronin

Overview

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 ten albums, two hitting #1.



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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for 1973: Rock at the Crossroads

“Jackson's book paints a vivid portrait of the year through the lens of popular music — mostly rock, but also country and hip-hop … His analysis of sexuality and rock music is particularly interesting ... Jackson also proves to have a real talent for evoking the places that made 1973 such a consequential year in music.” —NPR

“A comprehensive account of the year of 1973 and its legendary music and momentous social change.” —Rolling Stone

“It’s the excellent—and frequently hilarious—saga of a moment when the whole sprawling pageant of pop music was one great big band on the run.” —Rob Sheffield, author of Dreaming the Beatles

“One of the best books of 2019 … Jackson’s storytelling is so well supported and energetically told that he had my attention even when discussing artists that would normally send me rushing to my radio’s off switch.” —Psychobabble

“Jackson’s latest is a book so abundant in fact and feelings it can serve equally as an entertaining trip back in time and an all-knowing reference source for, perhaps, the last truly triumphant year in rock-and-roll.” —Jambands.com

“A capacious, informative, amusing, broad-minded history of the musical landscape in a single year, caught between the explosive creativity of the past and the corporatized near-future. Read it and rediscover one of the great years in musical history." —Saul Austerlitz, author of Just a Shot Away and Generation Friends

“Jackson not only weaves the sounds of the times into a shared tapestry, but provides an illuminating portrait of a particularly weird and wonderful year.” —Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies

“Jackson makes a good case for this as one of the most pivotal in terms of the art, commerce and personalities.” —The Oakland Press

“A joy to be read.” —Tulsa Book Review

“A well-researched and engrossing read.” —Harold Bronson, co-founder Rhino Records; author of My British Invasion and The Rhino Records Story

“Highly regarded as perhaps the rock book of the year, [1973] holds something for everybody.” —KGKS 93.9 the River

"It reads like a cracking novel, immersed in the cultural and social tumult of the times, as Jackson strolls leisurely through the chaos and minefields to deliver a series of tales of rock ‘n roll glory, transition, conflict and drama without mythologizing any of it." —Elmore Magazine

Kirkus Reviews

2019-11-11
An astute observer of popular culture takes a granular look at 12 months of music that reflected "the aftermath" of the preceding cultural revolution.

In a natural follow-up to 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music (2015), Los Angeles-based music writer Jackson examines another pivotal year in popular music, when radio programmers figured out how to commodify " ‘album-oriented rock'…[which] soon segregated rock from other genres that once spurred its evolution." There's all sorts of intriguing cross-pollination going on in the author's rollicking retrospective of 1973, a year that some may consider unexceptional. However, Jackson's expansive exploration obliterates such notions. On one hand, 1973 was a remarkable year for celebrated acts to produce some of their most seminal works, including Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Who's Quadrophenia, and Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies. On the other hand, 1973 was also an exceedingly fertile time for exciting new artists to burst on to the scene—Bruce Springsteen with Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.—and for others to break away from the confines of their home countries and garner a more global audience (Bob Marley's Catch a Fire). The title aside, Jackson demonstrates a determination to be musically inclusive. "Fifteen of the year's nineteen No. 1 albums were rock albums," writes the author. "In 2018, only eight out of the forty-one No. 1 albums were rock." Though Jackson dives deep into AOR radio, he makes it clear that 1973 was also about outlaws Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings upending the country music scene; superstars Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye revolutionizing the Motown sound; Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell defying genre norms; and much more. As the year turned over, the top song in the country was Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle." A month-by-month selected timeline helps readers situate the events discussed in the book.

Consistently surprising and richly entertaining.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173799173
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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