Lavish, powerfully written, gloriously designed, "The Seventies" recaptures everything wonderful about the excess of the decade.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
When future archeologists pick apart the 1970s in America, due reverence will be paid, no doubt, to blaxploitation films, Watergate, gun-toting million-heiress Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army pals, the finer points of the Hustle, and the collision between imported punk rock and U.S. hip-hop. Meantime, Rolling Stone--the quasi-music magazine that put its impudent stamp on that decade--has turned in a hip and heady timeline of those days of yore. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) weighs in on the birth of Gonzo journalism, his peculiar brand of drug-driven, paranoid, and often inspired ravings that turned cultural and political reportage into mental pinball. American Indian Movement leader Russell Means recalls surviving three blizzards and "more than five million rounds of ammunition" aimed at the Native Americans who held the South Dakota village of Wounded Knee. Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders writes about her freshman year at Kent State University in Ohio when the National Guard opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War and killed four. On alternate pages, a column chronicles such momentous events as the FDA ban of the potentially carcinogenic dye that gave us red M&Ms; John Travolta's smash hit Grease; and the prescient pardon bestowed on former President Nixon for "all federal crimes he may have committed," although he had not yet been charged with any. Though far more entertaining than intellectual, Rolling Stone: The '70s is a wondrous revival of a sandwich decade sometimes marked off as a wasteland. --Francesca Coltrera
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More About the Author
Holly George-Warren is an award-winning writer, editor, producer, and music consultant. She has contributed to more than two dozen books about rock and roll, including The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, and The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. She's also written for the New York Times, the Village Voice, the Journal of Country Music, and Rolling Stone. Ms. George-Warren lives in upstate New York with her family.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a serious yet entertaining look from the inside,
By A Customer
This review is from: Rolling Stone the Seventies: The Seventies (Hardcover)
I'd had about as much ironic 70's redux as I could take; maybe that's why this book was such a pleasure to read. That and the fact that it exceeded all expectations that the Rolling Stone imprimatur conferred. This is a collection of essays by people who were there and have something to say about what they saw. The perspective is intimate but the observations-- especially if you were a teenager then as I was-- are universal. Patty Hearst, Ali, Nam, Zep, Nixon, Evel Knievel, disco, Dr. J., it all came jumping off the page. Many of the decade's Who's Who-- Dan Rather, Chrissie Hynde (present at Kent State!), John Milius, Hamilton Jordan, Joan Baez-- are not just subjects; they're essayists! Oh and by the way, the photos alone are worth the price of the entire book.As informative as anything I read as an Ivy League history major and as good company as my high school party pals. If you lived it or if you want to find out how we got where we are then you must read this book.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seventy essays on that decade,
By
This review is from: Rolling Stone the Seventies: The Seventies (Hardcover)
The wild, disillusioning, violent, and tragic face of the 1970's is covered in seventy (how apropos!) essays ranging from writers, entertainers, journalists, people connected with the entertainment industry, and more. Together, they bring about an exhaustively covered retrospective composite of that decade.Self-expression and the alarming gung-hoism of the US is recounted by Chrissie Hynde, who was a freshman at Kent State on that fateful day in 1970. To her, it was "inexperienced people put in chrage of events they didn't know how to handle," but she lists Sinead O'Connor being booed by Dylan fans for her political slap at the pope on TV, realizing how self-expression has become suppressed in the name of patriotism. The redemption of the South is told in essays about the resurgence of Southern rock, e.g. the Allman Brothers, and Jimmy Carter's winning the Oval Office. His advisor Hamilton Jordan defends Carter by his tackling tough issues Nixon or Ford refused to touch, such as the Panama Canal treaty, SALT, and the Middle East peace process, but was sunk by bad luck (the price of oil, the shah's ouster). Nothing new is revealed in Dan Rather's essay on Watergate. Yes, that scandal fostered a deep cynicism and skepticism in journalism and among the people in politics. It was the American people who decided Nixon's fate, but the legacy of that is what do people do when confronted with similar guilt from a politician or celebrity? Do they want objective truth, or do they want something splashed out sensationalistically, with a "gate" suffix attached? The music acts/artists covered here are David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac. The portion covering the Eagles is an interview with Don Henley and Glenn Frey, and something Henley said struck me as embodying what the 70's was. Henley lists the 70's as an attitude of disillusionment that the love-one-another ideal of the 60's didn't pan out and how a self-centered, self-concerned, materialistic mindset arose from the late 70's. Still, Glenn Frey does argue that the 70's gave some great names in music. Fleetwood Mac carved their name into rock legend status with Rumours, and the essay on them is written by Mick Fleetwood's ex-wife Jenny Boyd, who writes about the breakups and affairs that were going on during the making of the album and how they affected her personally. The essay that really drew me was Mikal Gilmore on his reaction to his brother Gary Gilmore, who became the first men executed after the Supreme Court made capital punishment constitutional after years of review, and the ethics of life and death in the Karen Ann Quinlan case. And disabled veteran Ron Kovic's quote on Vietnam rings true today: "a war ain't over until you don't have to live with it anymore." Film critic Peter Travers says he hates what Star Wars led to: the spate of sequelitis, cross-merchandise marketing, and soulless sci-fi movies like Starship Troopers. SW also rode the crest during a brief time (1976-1978) when it looked like things would be better, as Don Henley also thought. But it was also an escapist thriller, something needed after Vietnam and Watergate, something simpler, exciting, and yet innovative. There's also a chronological timeline by day listed in the margins, listing events as groundbreaking as Nixon's resignation to what song and album were at the top of the Billboard charts and what were the year's biggest movies, albums, and books. Mostly a pop culture stance on the Me Decade, but with asides to issues still relevant today.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rich revival of the minds at work in the 70s,
By A Customer
This review is from: Rolling Stone the Seventies: The Seventies (Hardcover)
Rolling Stone the Seventies by Kahn et al. admirably distills the current and past thoughts of many of the influential 70s writers, and a range of participants from politicians to musicians. It is too bad there is no accompanying CD or CD-ROM to go along with the book.The collection -- mostly essays and pictures, places the 70s in a nicely printed coffee table book. Marginal notes including timeline reference the dramatic movement through the decade. As a reference or a momentary revival of the period, the book provides content and layout that no other book contains.
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