Cosby also covers what he terms “Cultural Checkpoints” that define the political and social settings that have driven, and been influenced by, rock’s emergence as a story of “freedom but also a certain recklessness.” As expected, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, James Brown (“arguably the most dynamic performer of the rock era”) and the powerhouse Stax and Motown labels often take center stage, but Cosby also celebrates the Velvet Undergrounds “annihilation of any pretensions and preconceptions in rock and roll” and features the lesser knowns, like the “cult heroes of power pop” Big Star. Their more subtle influence, he demonstrates, helped the genre push the envelope with an intense edge that was “visceral and… as beautiful as it is bleak.” Cosby brings incisive insight to the interplay of rock and roll’s ethos with religion, counterculture movements, and the oppressed—including Black genre offshoots that Cosby describes as “distillations of the Black experience through centuries of repression and voiceless-ness.”

Perhaps most entertaining and revealing are celebrations of often-overlooked musical phenomena, such as Cosby’s tour of Tutwiler, Mississippi, where at the dawn of the 20th century W.C. Handy discovered and popularized the first strains of the blues. Those memorable portrayals override the book’s somewhat sentimental view of rock and roll as the “inspiration to create a new way of living,” highlighting instead its power to transform the world.

Takeaway: Sweeping analysis of rock and roll’s impact on Western culture.

Comparable Titles: reil Marcus’s The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, Brad Schreiber’s Music Is Power.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A