"Seventies Rock" by Frank Moriarty

I picked this up at the library because I was hankering for some rock history, and the book's cover promised to be the first comprehensive account of... well, seventies rock which very much includes progressive stuff but pretty much every genre gets its due and a lot of rather obscure artists get their due, not just because they're personal favourites of the author but also because they went on to influence much better known acts. There's very little "genre chauvinism" on display, Frank Moriarty showing himself to be as big a fan of jazz as of rock. I also like it that he can appreciate progressive rock and punk rock equally much because I see that dichotomy as hogwash. Weirldy enough, though, there's very little about rock from outside the US and Britain. Magma and Amon Düül 2 aren't mentioned at all, neither are as mainstream a band as Scorpions.

Seventies Rock is very much the work of a fan. It is even moreso than books about rock history are by default: The book begins with the author's nostalgic memories of seeing Jimi Hendrix live and ends with his personal top 50. Moriarty wears his opinions on his sleeve, not just his idea of the 1970s as rock's golden age (the only eighties rock he speaks positively of is Black Flag and other underground punk acts! ) that informs its subtitle The Decade of Creative Chaos but also about which albums are good and which ones are bad. I actually like it when people wax rhapsodic about their favourite music in verbose and self-imporant ways, though, at least when they (like Moriarty) appreciate the same qualities in music as I do. It's not like most informed music history is particularly objective anyway.

However, I take issue with his reluctance to respect Frank Zappa, though, the jokey attitude Moriarty doesn't like in his fellow Frank is in my opinion appropriate to music that has a total "anything goes" attitude. However, the iconoclastic opinions often shining through are also refreshing at times. They show a certain honesty on part of the author: He also defends some rather divisive albums like Yes' Tales from the Topographic Oceans and Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps, so it doesn't come across as trying to be hip by way of either everything sucks-ism or suspicious open-mindedness.

It's not just all fanboy gushing/bashing, though, and not merely because it can take middle grounds but also because there's also a lot of behind-the-scenes information about what the artists of the day were thinking, what went on during the production of classic albums, who influenced whom and so on. At times it comes across as what would happen if the main character in Almost Famous got a book deal.

The main problem of the book is that Seventies Rock's way too short at just over 300 pages. It's not just leaving very little room for rock music from non-English-speaking countries. There's also very little room left for how the developments in music fit into the broader cultural context of the seventies, so it feels more like an edited-together assortment of reviews and reportages rather than a real music history. Since Frank Moriarty only touches that context thing on occasion, his book doesn't do that much to explain why as well as how the 1970s were rock's golden age. Unlike most other rock histories I've read, it often works on the unstated assumption that music for the most part is a cultural vacuum of sorts. This leads us to the book's other big shortcoming: For all the unpopular opinions that surface, there's still a lot of nostalgia clouding Moriarty's judgement. When he gets around to presenting a thesis about the cause of 1970s being the golden age of rock, he does mention objective factors like the music industry putting bands on a shorter leash from the late seventies and onwards (something he blames on punk making the record labels too paranoid about artists getting wild), but he also goes on a rant about how most of the really great musicians in rock died with nobody to pass the torch on to. I think that's a bit selective, really, like he had an a priori decision about creativity in rock dying out completely in the eighties with a handful of exceptions outside 1980s punk, and refusing to look beyond the classics he remembers from his youth. As I said before, Frank Moriarty is definitely approaching music as a fan and this has both good and bad effects.

From all this, I can conclude that Seventies Rock falls quite a bit short of its purpose mostly out of its short length combined with a huge scope but it is actually still worth reading because it calls attention to a fair share of surprisingly influential artists, and though a little fanboyish at times the author still has a good understanding of what makes good music tick. It's not a book I'd call good, though. For all the research done, it still feels more like an anthology of anecdotes than an actual history of music, so I'm happy I could find it at the library instead of having to buy it.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - February 22 2009 at 08:25