Product Description

Between 1967 and 1973, political activists around the globe prepared to mount a revolution. While the Vietnam War raged, calls for black power grew louder and liberation movements erupted everywhere from Africa to Western Europe.Demonstrators took to the streets, fought gun battles with police, planted bombs in public buildings and attempted to overthrow the world's most powerful governments.Rock and soul music fuelled the revolutionary movement with anthems and iconic imagery. Soon the musicians themselves, from John Lennon and Bob Dylan to James Brown and Fela Kuti, were being dragged into the fray. Some joined the protestors on the barricades; some were persecuted for their political activism; some abandoned the cause and were dismissed as counter-revolutionaries.This collision of radical fervour and musical passion touched every facet of the revolution.Peace campaigners, feminists, black liberationists, anarchists and urban terrorists joined hands with many of the most important figures in black and white music to create a revolutionary tide that threatened to alter the face of global politics, before ebbing away under the pressure of government harassment and rampant egotism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #204411 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 598 pages

About the Author
Peter Doggett is one of the UK's leading rock writers and journalists. He was editor of Record Collector magazine for fifteen years, and currently writes for Mojo and Q among others. His most recent book is Are You Ready for the Country? (Viking), an authoritative history of country rock. He has also written biographies of John Lennon and Lou Reed.

Customer Reviews

How rock and the 'revolution' almost set the world ablaze
I would strongly advise anyone with a passing interest in the counter-culture of the 1960s, or enthusiasm for the Rock music of the Era (and political insurrection generally!) to pick up this important and timely book. Peter Doggett has performed a staggering feat in combining the historical sweep of 1965-1972 with intimate details of the people and organisations that rose up to change the world, but were undone by their own egotism, the machinations of government and the rampant commercialization of the music industry. It's about Rock Stars and political dissidents and should be a call to arms in our culturally impoverished times, where war abroad and apathy at home is rife. Stunning.

a talent for writing history
This is a fantastic book. The subject matter, counter-culture in the 60s, has been done before, but Peter Doggett uses his considerable writing skills to masterfully weave the big history of political events in with the smaller biographical details of musicians lives. He obviously loves his subject matter, and that passion really comes across in the writing. A must read for anyone interested in music, politics, or the 60s.

Superb and definitive history of rock and the revolution
One of the many things different about the role of music in popular culture between the sixties and today is the political dimension. Nowadays pop stars use their fame to wield a miniscule amount of political influence, maybe succeding in turning the political spectrum a couple of clicks at best. But back in the sixties the music *was* the revolution. Or so a lot of radical political activists hoped. Trailblazing singers and visionaries like Dylan and Lennon had captured the hearts and minds of their generation so successfully, it seemed only natural in some quarters that people's political inclinations would follow suit, and that there would be a general overthrow of the established world order.

The fact it didn't go down like that is the subject of Doggett's absorbing, scholarly and highly readable account of rock's honeymoon with politics in the late sixties and early seventies. Not only a brilliant work of popular culture, telling one of the most interesting epic tales in the annals of pop music, but a serious piece of cultural history which celebrates the optimism of a time when people felt the music was the message which could move mountains, as well as sadly recognizing, in hindsight, the naivety of those who believed it possible.

As Townshend (a musical giant featured extensively in the book) once wrote: 'a parting on the left is now a parting on the right... meet the new boss - same as the old boss.'