1971 has long been my idea of the high point of pop music, citing the charts in September as my main evidence, but everybody will have their own opinion which will usually be the year of some sort of 'coming of age'. Hepworth is old enough to prefer 1966 with its Pet Sounds, Beatles, Dylan and Stones but argues for 1971, with a convincing list of 100 albums in an appendix, in between reportage that he provides with disarming, less deceived panache.He is impressed by Rod Stewart. Led Zeppelin are understandably shown more than once to be light years ahead of Grand Funk Railroad. The vogue for singer-songwriters, Carole King, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens is celebrated as much for their music as their tendency to dally with each other. Warren Beatty's reputation in that area is acknowledged but not necessarily admired. And it is the way that business considerations shaped the emerging music 'industry' as much as artistic development, along with sociology, that make Hepworth's account so convincing. At about 400 pages, one imagines he could go into much more detail without straining too hard, and I would have been grateful to read thousands of pages if he'd had time to provide them.
While admiring the book greatly, we each have our own perspectives but we don't let them come between us, as we wouldn't fall out over significant differences in our record collections. Ownership of Dark Side of the Moon is something that only raises a sceptical eyebrow but goes no further than that in affecting comradeship.
Hepworth touches on a point that most artists can achieve three albums in three years as a natural life expectancy of success. Beyond that, they become Zeppelin, Dylan, Aretha, Bowie and suchlike with the talent to regenerate themselves. It became true of Oasis much later but is offered here as a limitation of T. Rex, who Hepworth regards as a bit 'thin'. But that is to measure longevity at the expense of dismissing quite how brightly Bolan shone, however briiefly it might have been for.
He also points out, vis a vis The Beach Boys, and everyone else ever after, how artists continued to live off their 'heritage' status as pop music managed to sell itself to a market of over-30's.
That might also be due to the fact that once the idea of the 'teenager' was invented, that tendency tended to stretch beyond teen years to any age at all. 60 this year, for example.
Nick Drake's success was almost all posthumous, who died before he could damage the body of work he left behind with any further efforts. Hepworth writes that,
Nobody talks about Lindisfarne or Brewer and Shipley with the same reverence.
Well, I've got news for him. I do.
It is informative, in a book largely about 'rock' music and thus white people with long hair, to note the attention given to Sly & the Family Stone, which is fine by me. Big sellers in the USA they clearly were but it seems that their significance in 1971 was their as yet unrealized influence on hip-hop which was not due to be relevant for quite some time. It is also fascinating to hear about Stevie Wonder moving into new areas by working with those technicians from Tonto's Expanding Head Band who, although they seemed avant garde and ahead of their time then, were actually responsible for some of the dullest music ever to be preserved on record. Hepworth might not be writing about soul and reggae but limiting mentions of Al Green to no more than his monthly playlists and making no reference at all to Trojan records renders his account of 1971 sadly incomplete.
But he 'gets it' and adds considerable hindsight perspective to some of the confidence tricks played on a gullible public at the time. The seriousness that much of this LP music was treated with is seen to be 'music that was measured more than it was enjoyed', which is a point that some of those still nostalgically attached to it have yet to appreciate even at this late stage.
The preposterousness of Frank Zappa, the dullness of the Grateful Dead and the lacklustre machismo of much 'rock' music has yet to be seen as such in some unreconstructed outposts of the culture and Hepworth at least draws gentle attention to the fact that even in a Golden Age there are elements that are to be regretted. But we live in unimaginable luxury in 2019 compared to 1971 except we don't appreciate it. So much so that we do, as he says, expect music to be available as readily as water from a tap whereas then it was to be treasured and highly valued, each purchase considered because it wasn't a matter of clicking on Amazon and ordering anything one felt like buying on a whim.
1971 was actually better than Hepworth says it was because it not only brought us Hunky Dory and Electric Warrior but also I'm Still Waiting, Just My Imagination and Double Barrel, but he is right in saying that in 1971 things were established and put in place that were the template for decades afterwards, not least the 'elegantly wasted' look of the Stones as exemplified by Keith and Exile on Main Street. It has probably been over for some time now but nobody's noticed.
As Lou Reed said when he was somehow persuaded to come and play Portsmouth Guildhall, 'after the first kiss, it's downhill all the way'.
