At first I loved this book.
Then it depressed me.
Ronald Brownstein posits that 1974 was the apotheosis in entertainment and it all emanated from Los Angeles. This is patently untrue. I hate when writers come up with a theory and shoehorn the facts to make their case. Didn't David Hepworth write a whole book about how 1971 was the year music exploded, they even made an Apple TV+ series about it, as a matter of fact it's going to launch this week! But Hepworth is a music journalist and Brownstein is a political writer and it makes all the difference. Brownstein is a better writer, but he's got no innate feel for the landscape. But it all happened so long ago, a long long time ago as Don McLean sang, but that was in 1972.
1974... I graduated from college.
I remember going to the Beatles' 50th Anniversary taping. Supposedly Paul had been reluctant and Ringo gung-ho but really it lacked gravitas, almost intentionally, at least what I could see from the floor, it might have played a bit different at home. It was a celebration, it was light as opposed to heavy. But when it gets heavy...
So Brownstein starts with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. That was a golden era of film, the late sixties and seventies. But I'd never say that '74 was the peak. And Brownstein never mentions "The Deer Hunter," which came out in '78, and was the most dynamic and thought-provoking anti-Vietnam film of the era.
Not that Brownstein doesn't discuss the penumbra, what happened before and after '74, but he says it was basically all downhill thereafter, that the social consciousness flicks were from the earlier part of the decade.
Anyway, Warren Beatty is now 84 years old. And Jack Nicholson is the same age. Warren is still around, but Jack has completely disappeared. There are rumors he is ill, but if this is so, no one is talking. And I learned a bit of info reading about these two, my mind drifted back to that era, talking to Jack at the sporting goods store I worked in when I first moved to L.A. And I thought how the Oscars were a cultural rite back then and are nearly irrelevant today, but that's because TV has usurped the throne that film abdicated. Studios decided they were going solely for the bucks, and they ruined the business, at least artistically.
And then Brownstein went into music. Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. There was very little I didn't know, but the scene came alive in my mind, I know those records by heart, and it's about more than the records, what we felt back then. And it's fun to read about what you already know, as long as the writer gets it right, and Brownstein does here. He interviewed all the subjects, he had access to everybody, the book is littered with footnotes, as a matter of fact, 25% of the book is footnotes, then again, I could write the music stuff off the top of my head, at least 95% of what Brownstein did, and his perspective is different from mine, he's doing research, he's coming from the outside, he's not rock and roll. And therefore, especially as the book unfolds, it's all about analysis and descriptors...I won't say style trumps substance, but I also won't say his viewpoint is the same as everyone else's. He cherry-picks Jackson Browne's apocalyptic lyrics while leaving the personal ones completely aside, and any fan knows Jackson Browne is a star because of his insight into people and relationships.
But then the book shifts to television. It's basically the story of Norman Lear. And CBS, which aired most of his shows. And the truth is...when I went to college we had no TV, I was aware of these shows, but I never saw them. Hell, I didn't own a TV until 1987, and I don't think I missed much. Sure, I gathered in houses to watch SNL, when I had mono I watched "Mary Hartman," but back then it wasn't happening on television, not at all, you could exist quite easily without ever turning on the idiot box, as a matter of fact TV was considered a time suck, and if you avoided it wisdom was you lived a much fuller life. TV didn't really become a thing until HBO started its original programming, and then the whole paradigm was blown up and jetted into the future in 1999 by "The Sopranos," Sunday night was for HBO, the networks didn't even bother to program against it.
But then there was a chapter on Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda and...it was all about politics, not Jane's movie career.
Many are now aware of Hayden as a result of the recent Chicago 7 movie, but he was never ever rock and roll. Nor was Jane Fonda. And as far as what they did in 1974...it wasn't much different from what they did before and after.
So why do we even need these two?
Because politics is Brownstein's beat, his everyday gig. And the truth is by the very early seventies, music disengaged from politics, and other than the news, TV wasn't involved at all. This is when Brownstein, trying to weave the story, loses the thread.
And this was when the book started to become tedious. Which completely surprised me, because I was so into it previously.
This is when I reminded myself that fiction is so much more rewarding.
This is when I started to realize everything that happened in this book happened a long damn time ago, almost half a century.
Let's see, I won't say it feels like I graduated from college yesterday, I feel like I've got runway left, but having said that, everybody I know outside the music business has retired. And that's it. Done. You can have experiences, but your life has basically been written, at least the way these people live it. They play golf and travel, but they don't change the world, despite having so much time on their hands.
And when you read this book you can't stop thinking how different things are today. TV and politics are obvious. But music is too... Acts don't migrate to Los Angeles to make it, you can make it from anywhere today, that's the power of the internet. Sure, you might ultimately move to the west coast, but back then you had to! And you paid a lot of dues. And hung out and got drunk and theorized... Today everybody is going where they're going real fast, there's no time to woodshed, the fear is that you'll be superseded, and never be able to catch up.
So music has completely changed. It's driven by the internet and it's about branding and money and the building blocks...that's a step you hope to skip. You read about these old tunes and you realize there are no modern equivalents, none... Come on, Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good" was her breakthrough, we haven't had a track that engaging and powerful in eons. As for "Hotel California," which was '76, that's a high water mark. The Eagles are hated because they were so damn good, talented, polished and great singers and songwriters, the reaction was punk, breaking it down, even though punk was really a reaction to prog and corporate rock. Simple had power. And in truth, punk didn't really have its heyday until '91 and Nirvana. And the reason that act was so damn great, and ultimately legendary, was because of the songwriting, Kurt Cobain had both punk and pop sensibilities, he knew how to write a song, and he had what all of the classic acts of the seventies possessed, he was alienated, he was the anti-Dave Grohl.
But forget debating quality, the point is those great records were fifty years ago. And as I'm thinking of the age and career status of those who made them it occurs to me they're all in their seventies, some, like Ronstadt, have already retired from the road. Soon, they'll be gone. And then I will be too.
One thing is for sure, time marches forward.
That's another thing that's upsetting about this book. I have sixties and seventies values, but those days are a couple of changes back.
The police are now gods, except when they kill people. Back then they were "pigs," yes, even Joni Mitchell sang about kissing a "Sunset pig." But that was back when Sunset Boulevard was the epicenter of the music business, not only is Pandora's Box gone, but so much of the music and arts infrastructure, the real estate values are just too high, now you've got residence towers and offices and...the culture has been excised.
Our worst enemy was Nixon. Sure, there were rednecks, but we didn't argue over the facts, just the opinions.
And the military! Vietnam vets were angry their efforts were not respected. Today people in uniform are exalted, irrelevant of the results of their service.
In other words, I grew up in a different era.
Most people my age have given up trying to keep up. They've got a smartphone, but oftentimes it's a few generations old. As for TV? They're the generation that still watches in real time, check the data. It's easy to use the clicker to change channels, quite another to record to the DVR and use the smart TV or the Roku to watch streaming outlets, never mind dig deep into the offerings. Of course there are exceptions, people who are computer savvy...then again, the truth is you no longer need to be computer savvy, the devices and operating systems are superior.
And the digital excitement and exploration of twenty years ago is almost extinct. Remember the Naked News? Probably not unless you're over 30. Now you can just Google nude bodies, sex acts, and your next door neighbor is flaunting it on OnlyFans.
In other words, culture moved. Forget judging whether it's for better or worse, one thing is for sure, it's different.
And so am I.
If I went back to my college campus, which I won't, the students there would see me as an oldster who attended in an ancient era. And they'd be right. We had no cable, no DVDs, no internet...it was literally a different century.
And then I start thinking about how much runway I truly have left. Do I really have twenty or thirty years? And even if I do, what will be my quality of life? Junior Bounous may have skied Pipeline at 80, and gone heli-skiing a month ago at 95, but you probably have no idea who Junior Bounous is. Bounous was the original ski school director at Snowbird, a legendary powder skier, was his life equal to that of the entertainment stars? I spent a lot of my life in the mountains, is that where I should be? Wherever I should be, whatever I want to do, I should go there and do it now. Most people don't live to 95.
But boomers thought they'd never die.
Therefore they're not prepared for retirement not only intellectually, but financially. Most can't afford to do what they want. And now my generation is the conservative one, living in the Villages in Florida, on a fixed income, not wanting to be taxed for social programs that don't benefit them. We used to blame our parents for thinking like this, now it's us.
Now if you didn't live through the aforementioned era, if you weren't in your late teens in 1974, you'll take everything in "Rock Me on the Water" as gospel. But it's not. It's not that the facts are so wrong, as a matter of fact they're almost universally right, but the feel and context are a bit off. Because Brownstein was not part of the equation back then, that wasn't his life. As a matter of fact, he was born in 1958. Chris "Mad Dog" Russo was born in '59, just a year later, and he was testifying to Howard Stern how the book was a revelation, that he was too young to truly experience what was happening back then, so he loved it.
I didn't love it.
He or she who writes history owns it.
As far as the history of the late sixties and seventies...
It was an era where we had time, today we don't. You could be bored, today you can't. Big ideas were important, cash was secondary, what you stood for was everything, credibility was key. That's hard to understand for today's generation, which is struggling just to keep its head above water. No one with a brain moves to Hollywood to spend a decade trying to make it in music, they exit much earlier if they try at all. Today you graduate from college and get a high-paying job, you get a business degree, never mind an MBA. No one I graduated from college with met with a recruiter, never mind got a corporate job. I don't think I even knew what an MBA was until the eighties. My life was about experiences. Which were rich. But not valued much today.
So you can listen to the records of yore, you're not going to bother to watch the TV, as for the movies, now classics are from the early twentieth century, but the context...one in which music was everything, when you listened to albums to from your opinions and direct your future, I don't think that comes through via the wax alone.
It was a long time ago, it's history.
And soon I will be too.
P.S. Brownstein posits "On the Border" as an artistic breakthrough for the Eagles. He's the only one who sees it that way. Yes, it was a commercial success, but the real breakthrough was its follow-up, "One of These Nights," in 1975, never mind "Hotel California" a year later, and all believe that its predecessor, the commercial disappointment "Desperado," is superior to "On the Border" artistically. And as my old friend Tony Wilson said, if you get the little things wrong, who is to trust you'll get the big things right?
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