Congratulations to our winners of David Hepworth’s new book, Never A Dull Moment: 1971- The Year That Rock Exploded.
Cheryl Watkins of Cheektowaga
Paul Rigerman of Arcade
Michael Nesteruk of Hamburg
Mark Alexanderson of Elma
Nancy Rooney of Hamburg
‘Never A Dull Moment: 1971—The Year That Rock Exploded’ by David Hepworth:
David Hepworth’s NEVER A DULL MOMENT: 1971—The Year That Rock Exploded (Henry Holt and Company; June 7, 2016; $30; 307 pages) takes us on a personality-and-fact-filled, month-by-month tour of rock’s unexpected golden year—the year that saw the release of indelible recordings from, among others, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Who, Rod Stewart, Carole King, and the Rolling Stones; unparalleled innovation and creativity; and the release of more classics than any other year in rock history. By the end of 1971, the entire music landscape had changed.
From Hepworth’s perspective, the Sixties ended a year late. On New Year’s Eve 1970, Paul McCartney’s lawyers issued the writ that effectively ended the Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The rock era started the following day. 1971 saw the shift from the single to the rock album, the birth of the rock superstar, and changes in technology, audiences, and the rock tour. New releases that year included Don McLean’s “American Pie,” Sly Stone’s “Family Affair,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven,” the Who’s “Baba O’Riley”—all still standards today. Hepworth’s playlists at the end of each chapter are, on their own, worth the price of admission.
David Hepworth was twenty-one in 1971, a spectator of the dazzling surge of musical creativity, technology, naked ambition and outrageous good fortune that combined to produce music that still crackles with relevance today. And there’s a story behind every note—from the electric blue fur coat David Bowie wore when he first arrived in America in February to Bianca’s neckline when she married Mick Jagger in Saint-Tropez in May: from the death of Jim Morrison in Paris in July to the re-emergence of Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in August; from the soft launch of Carole King’s “Tapestry” in California in February to the sensational arrival of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” in London in November. Hepworth’s forensic sweep takes in all the people, places and events that helped make 1971 rock’s unrepeatable year.
