Rolling Stone the Seventies: The Seventies

Rating:
Summary: a serious yet entertaining look from the inside
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A rich revival of the minds at work in the 70s
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Seventy essays on that decade
Review: 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.