So You Think You Know Rock and Roll?

Book excerpt: Rolling Stone magazine recently released its list of the 100 greatest albums in rock music history, a period spanning more than fifty years. Nearly 60 percent of those albums were released in the decade from 1965 to 1975—the golden age of classic rock. This book is a wide-ranging portrait of that transformative and remarkable time, from the dawn of the singer-songwriter era to days before disco. This book is presented in a question-and-answer format, but it is hardly a “trivia” book. It covers such diverse topics as censorship, chart phenomena, album covers, rock groupies, manufactured bands, one-hit wonders, rock festivals, supergroups, novelty songs, and the Beatles. All of the major figures of the ‘60s and ‘70s are here: Cream, CCR, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Neil Young, the Eagles, the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, Pink Floyd, Billy Joel, Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, James Taylor, Carole King, Aretha Franklin, Lou Reed, Carly Simon, Laura Nyro, and many others. Exhaustively researched, So You Think You Know Rock and Roll? is filled with “I never knew that!” moments on every page.