1971, The Year That Rock Exploded
In this book the author recounts growing up in the era when Rock ‘n Roll burgeoned. Dividing up the events of the year into 12 separate months, with corresponding chapters, he discusses the important musical events of that month, and provides a suggested listening list at the end of each chapter.
“These days in the United States, the records that win Grammy Awards tend to be the ones that have sold the most copies. The ones that win critics’ awards tend to be records most people have never heard of. In 1971 America’s most acclaimed albums- Tapestry, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, What’s Going On, Nilsson Schmilsson, Blue, Pearl, American Pie, L.A. Woman, and Mud Slide Slim– were also its biggest sellers.
“But it’s not just the big hits of 1971 that seems to have achieved a kind of immortality…Ever since hip-hop, all records have been made to some extent the magpie’s way, and some of the most discriminating borrowings have been from the textures, rhythms, and musical idiosyncrasies of 1971 recordings by Led Zeppelin, the Who, Black Sabbath, Can, and even Little Feat. By 1971 the basic building blocks had been put in place. Obviously, no single year marks the end of anything, but it’s fair to say, as Churchill said after El Alamein, this was the end of the beginning. The outlines of the rich tapestry were clearly marked. We encourage students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to study the history of Rock.
“Pop is as much about technology as it is about music. Any student of recorded sound will tell you that 1971 was the golden moment when technology became a help and wasn’t a hindrance. There’s something about the recordings of 1971 that makes them sound more right almost fifty years later than they sounded at the time. Particularly in their original vinyl forms, they have a warmth, crispness, sensuality, and presence that generations of recording software engineers have been trying to bottle and market ever since. We teach students in our music school in Odessa, Texas how technology has influenced music history.
“The sound of 1971 is the sound many acts are still trying to make today. You can hear Rod Steward and Lindisfarne in Mumford & Sons; Sly & the Family Stone all over hip-hop; the spirit of Joni Mitchell’s Blue in Laura Marling and a thousand other acoustic bluestockings; Pink Floyd’s Meddle in the tunes to which office workers chill out in Ibiza; and Led Zeppelin in numberless generations of young men who take up electric guitars.
“In 1971 there wasn’t a little indie niche you could insert a record…into. The middle of the road was the only place to be. Underground was over ground; anything could be a hit. It was into this moment of panic and opportunity that all these 1971 masterpieces were hurled.
“There were background factors behind this pop renaissance. The fact the Beatles had broken up meant there was a prize to play for. The record business was expanding at such a rate that the companies signed up anyone they thought might have an outside shot. Music was king: TV was nowhere, movies were in retreat, radio was growing, record stores were sprouting up like coffee shops, and the only material goods that anyone who counted was remotely interested in were black, vinyl, and twelve inches across.
“The glories of the sixties had been on seven-inch black vinyl singles. The seventies were all about albums…The numbers that were sold in the sixties would be dwarfed by seventies numbers, which were driven by the mania for stereo, the hi-fi setups that could reproduce it, and the new mass audience made up of baby boomers for whom a hi-fi would be the first piece of furniture they would install in the damp bedsits they would provisionally call home.
“If my twenty-one-year-old self wasn’t paying close attention, he might at first think that the alternative society that had been sketched out in the pages of the underground papers of 1971 had actually come to pass. In some respects the subculture appeared to have conquered the mainstream. A black man in the White House, openly gay people in public life, women leading political parties, hot entertainment stories leading the news, and rock festivals taking place all over the world. Everything that was once alternative is now mainstream. It is important for students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to understand the importance of seeing and perceiving new musical trends as they are happening.
“The rock-and-roll subculture started with the release of ‘Rock Around the Clock’ in 1954. That’s the first collision between exciting sound and personal charisma that defined the rock-and-roll age. That’s when the hysteria began. If we take the starting point of the rock-and-roll era as 1954, then 1971 is a mere seventeen years into that era, close enough to the beginning of the race for people to still remember the noise of the starting pistol. Even though Rock started before many students in our music school in Odessa, Texas were born, it marked the beginning of a new musical era in our country and around the world.
“Most of the musicians who became superstars in 1971 and are still revered today were war babies. A large proportion of them were between twenty-five and thirty…They were slightly older than rock and roll itself, and therefore they could remember a world before it existed.
“What these people in their mid-twenties 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 from of huge, multi-generational crowds made up of the children and even the grand-children of their original fans. The songs those crowds most want them to play are the songs from 1971: ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ‘Brown Sugar,’ ‘Baba O’Riley,’ ‘Tiny Dancer,’ ‘American Pie,’ ‘Heart of Gold,’ ‘Mandolin Wind,’ ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard,’ and ‘Oh! You Pretty Things.’ Thanks to the radio, the movies, the commercials, and the new ubiquity of all manner of music via YouTube and Spotify…these songs are as heavily imprinted on the minds of many twenty-somethings as they are on the people who first heard them forty years ago. These records are not just remarkably good and uniquely fresh; they have also enjoyed the benefit of being listened to more times than any recorded music in human history. It’s not surprising the music of 1971 is in everyone’s bloodstream. It no longer belongs to the people who made it or just to those of us who were lucky enough to be there when they did so. Now it belongs to everybody. We encourage students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to listen to a wide range of styles, including early Rock.
Listening lists:
January
Slade: “Get Down and Get With It”
Van Morrison: “Domiono”
Yes: “America”
Elton John: “Your Song”
John Lennon: “Working Class Hero”
Dave Edmonds: “I Hear You Knocking”
Status Quo: “In My Chair”
Badfinger: “No Matter What”
T. Rex: “Ride a White Swan”
February
Carole King: “It’s Too Late”
James Taylor: “You’ve Got a Friend”
Joni Mitchell: “Little Green”
Janis Joplin: “Mercedes Benz”
Todd Rundgren: “We Gotta Get You a Woman”
Roy Budd: Get Carter soundtrack
David Bowie: “The Man Who Sold the World”
The Velvet Underground: “Sweet Jane”
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice: Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack
The Temptations: “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)”
March
Nick Drake: “Poor Boy”
Led Zeppelin: “Black Dog”
J. Geils Band: Whammer Jammer”
Humble Pie: “I Don’t Need No Doctor”
Allman Brothers Band: “Statesboro Blues”
Jethro Tull: “Aqualung”
Nancy Sinatra: “Hook and Ladder”
Judy Collins: “Amazing Grace”
Johnny Winter: Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”
Freddie King: “Going Down”
April
Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On”
Isaac Hayes: “Theme from Shaft”
Gil Scott-Heron: “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”
Tonto’s Expanding Head Band: “Cybernaut”
Sly & the Family Stone: “Family Affair”
Curtis Mayfield: “Get Down”
The Supremes: “Nathan Jones”
Al Green: “I Can’t Get Next to You”
Aretha Franklin: “Oh Me Oh My (I’m a Fool for You Baby)”
Santana: “Toussaint L’Ouverture”
May
Rolling Stones: “Brown Sugar”
Serge Gainsbourg: “Ballade de Melody Nelson”
Carly Simon: “Anticipation”
Randy Newman: “Tickle Me”
James Taylor: “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox”
David Crosby: “Laughing”
Paul McCartney: “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”
Elton John: “Tiny Dancer”
Colin Blunstone: “Say You Don’t Mind”
Stephen Stills: Change Partners”
June
Plastic Ono Band: “Power to the People”
Traffic: “Gimme Some Lovin’”
Terry Reid: “Dean”
John Martyn: “Glistening Glyndebourne”
Flamin’ Groovies: “Teenage Head”
Genesis: “The Return of the Giant Hogweed”
Pink Floyd: “Echoes”
Alan Stivell: “Ys”
Bob marley: “Acoustic Medley”
Fairport Convention: “Bridge Over the River Ash”
July
Rod Stewart: “Every Picture Tells a Story”
T. Rex: “Jeepster”
Cat Stevens: Tuesday Dead”
Leonard Cohen: “Dress Rehearsal Rag”
Graham Nash: “Wounded Bird”
The Doors: “Riders on the Storm”
Shuggie Otis: “Strawberry Letter 23”
Alice Cooper: “I’m Eighteen”
Dave and Ansil Collins: “Double Barrel”
Harry Nilsson: “Without You”
August
George Harrison: “What Is Life”
Bob Dylan: “Watching the River Flow”
Leon Russell: “Stranger in a Strange Land”
Crazy Horse: “I Don’t Want to Talk About It”
Little Feat: “Willin’”
Judee Sill: “Jesus Was a Cross Maker”
John Prine: “Hello in There”
Gene Clark: “For a Spanish Guitar”
America: “Ventura Highway”
Neil Diamond: “I Am…I Said”
September
Sandy Denny: “Blackwaterside”
Bob Dylan: “George Jackson”
Loudon Wainwright III: “Motel Blues”
The Modern Lovers: “Hospital”
Black Sabbath: “Sweet Leaf”
David Bowie: “Andy Warhol”
Can: “Halleluwah”
John Lennon: “Imagine”
The Band: “Life Is a Carnival”
Area Code 615: “Stone Fox Chase”
October
The Beach Boys: “Surf’s Up”
The Grateful Dead: Me and Bobby McGee”
Dolly Parton: “Coat of Many Colors”
Carpenters: “Superstar”
Neil Young: “A Man Needs a Maid”
The Kinks: “Muswell Hillbilly”
Frank Zappa and the Mothers: “Peaches en Regalia”
Laura Lee: “Women’s Love Rights”
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: “Will the Circle Be unbroken”
Al Green: “Tired of Being Alone”
November
War: “Slippin’ into Darkness”
Tony Christie: “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo”
Led Zeppelin: “Stairway to Heaven”
Boz Scaggs: “Running’ Blue”
Bridget St. John: “City-Crazy”
The Who: “Baba O’Riley”
Stevie Wonder: “If You Really Love Me”
Mickey Newbury: “An American Trilogy”
The Staple Singers: “Respect yourself”
Joe Simon: “Help me Make It Through the Night”
December
Elvis Presley: “Funny How Time Slips Away”
Bob Dylan and the Band: “Like a Rolling Stone”
Don McLean: “American Pie”
Title music from A Clockwork Orange
Roxy Music: “Virginia Plain”
King Curtis: “A Whiter Shade of Pale”
James Brown: Hot Pants (She Got to Use What She Got to Get What She Wants)”
Mountain: “Nantucket Sleighride”
Carly Simon: “Anticipation”
John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band: “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”
This is an excellent listening list for students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to study, creating a roadmap to the early beginnings of Rock.