“What these people in their midtwenties were doing, although none of them were aware of it at the time, was building the rock canon. In this they were more successful than they could have dared hope. Many of the musicians who made those 1971 records are still playing today, in bigger venues than ever, in front of huge, multigenerational crowds made up of the children and even grandchildren of their original fans.”
-David Hepworth (from Never a Dull Moment: 1971 – The Year That Rock Exploded)
When I was in high school in the 1980’s I had a regular Saturday ritual: I would make my way to the Atwater Metro in the morning and walk up Ste. Catherine Street, making sure to visit every record store along the way, from the cavernous Shaughnessy Village A&A, through indies like Crescent Street’s Rock En Stock, and ending with Sam’s near Bleury, perusing new releases (on vinyl, of course), examining album cover art, and occasionally trying to pick up some cute rocker girl (always unsuccessfully). Afterwards I would make my way to Steve’s Music on St. Antoine for a new set of Ernie Balls for my axe, then hop the 80 bus outside The Gazette building and head for home. The rest of the day and into the evening would be spent re-stringing and playing, hoping one day to be the next great guitar god. (With all the practicing I did you’d think I’d have gotten real good; but it was not to be.) No religion, nothing taught to me at P.S.B.G.M. schools, no wisdom a parent or elder tried in vain to impart had as much influence on me in my teen years as rock and roll music.
Rock and roll had been popular in the 50’s. It had matured during the 60’s. But in the 70’s it truly came upon its golden age. I was just a toddler then. However British author, music journalist and broadcaster David Hepworth was 21 years old, so he remembers it well. And that aforementioned period is the subject of his latest effort, Never a Dull Moment: 1971 – The Year That Rock Exploded.
In it Hepworth details not only music, but the social and political events of 1971 (what he refers to as the “annus mirabilis of the rock album”). Never a Dull Moment is divided into 12 chapters (one for every month), each ending with a list of the important songs released during those 30 or so days. It also has an Appendix with the 100 most important albums of that year (some are quite surprising!). And the author doesn’t restrict himself to just rock music or Great Britain; he covers multiple styles and crosses cultural barriers, giving the reader a broad, unrestricted view of the day.
Hepworth brilliantly captures the zeitgeist of 1971; the book is a terse, well organized and excellently executed history lesson packed so many facts they almost seem to fall of the pages. His analyses are smart, his observations are keen and insightful, and his asides are witty (of the dry, English variety). There is not a single wasted word in the text.
I have read countless volumes on rock and roll in the 70’s, and Never a Dull Moment is by far my favorite. I especially admired how the author finally gave the female artists of that epoch their due. Too many of those other books (almost all of which were written by men) only mention women in passing, and even then they are relegated to being either air-headed groupies, drug-addicted hangers-on who endlessly jump from the bed of one rock star to another, or heartless, blood-sucking gold-diggers who break up bands and stifle creativity.
Never a Dull Moment: 1971 – The Year That Rock Exploded is a great way to introduce the younger generation to what was a remarkable era in popular music. Reading it I realized that I was definitely born 20 years too late; truly I missed a great time.
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