1973 was the year rock hit its peak while splintering—just like the rest of the world. Ziggy Stardust traveled to America in David Bowie's Aladdin Sane. The Dark Side of the Moon began its epic run on the Billboard charts, inspired by the madness of Pink Floyd's founder, while all four former Beatles scored top ten albums, two hitting #1.
FM battled AM, and Motown battled Philly on the charts, as the era of protest soul gave way to disco, while DJ Kool Herc gave birth to hip hop in the Bronx. The glam rock of the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper split into glam metal and punk. Hippies and rednecks made peace in Austin thanks to Willie Nelson, while outlaw country, country rock, and Southern rock each pointed toward modern country. The Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, and the Band played the largest rock concert to date at Watkins Glen.
Led Zep's Houses of the Holy reflected the rise of funk and reggae. The singer songwriter movement led by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell flourished at the Troubadour and Max's Kansas City, where Bruce Springsteen and Bob Marley shared bill. Elvis Presley's Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite was NBC’s top-rated special of the year, while Elton John's albums dominated the number one spot for two and a half months.
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"An invaluable reference work . . . This chronicle of what was arguably the biggest year in rock contextualizes its musical markers and considers the artists behind them."
— Shelf Awareness
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Andrew Grant Jackson is the author of Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers. He directed and cowrote the feature film The Discontents, starring Amy Madigan. He has written for Slate’s “Blogging the Beatles,” Baseline Studio System, and the music magazines Burn Lounge, Mean Street, and Dispatch, and copyedited the Hollywood monthly magazine Ingenue. He also served as actor Jeff Bridges’s development associate at AsIs Productions. He lives in Los Angeles.
James Patrick Cronin began his audiobook career at twelve years of age opposite Christopher Lloyd in The Pagemaster. An Earphones Award–winning narrator, he has recorded over one hundred audiobooks across an extensive range of genres. A classically trained stage actor with an MFA from the University of Louisville and a degree in philosophy, he has spent his years since college performing as an actor and a comedian on stages all over the world. He has performed everything from the classics to original material in Ireland, Scotland, Serbia, and Israel, as well as all across the United States.