Volume 46, Number 20 · December 16, 1999
Rock of Ages
By Geoffrey O'Brien
Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977
by James Miller
Simon and Schuster, 415 pp., $26.00
The history of rock and roll inscribed itself in the nervous system of who-ever passed through it. Years later it persists as a network of potential responses and unbidden flashbacks. Sometimes the resurgent impressions are connected with public events: watching a crowd of teenage girls storming New York's Paramount Theater for a glimpse of Eric Burdon and the Animals, or bursting into startled laughter as Bob Dylan launched into the as yet unrecorded 'Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat,' or sprawling on the floor of the Avalon Ballroom amid a sea of strangers, like a vast kindergarten class, as Janis Joplin tore 'Down on Me' to pieces. More often the crucial moments were less planned and less collective, tiny accidental collisions like a saxophone solo on the radio (Junior Walker's on 'Come See About Me') blowing away the intricacies of a personal crisis, or a refrain from the open window of a bus—the Orlons chanting 'South Street, South Street'—beckoning hauntingly toward the unknown.
Review, 5110 words
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