Twilight of the Gods (ePub)

How can classic rock live on when its idols are dying all around us?

In his first book, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, Steven Hyden derived life meanings from pop music rivalries. In his latest undertaking, Hyden takes aim at classic rock and its profound effect on all of us—from its existence as a radio format to a social phenomenon to a way of life.

Twilight of the Gods is a bold, often humorous, and effortlessly provocative book about our rock gods and the real messages they leave behind. Since the 1960s, artists like the Rolling Stones, the Who, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Black Sabbath, and Bruce Springsteen have ushered the classic rock canon forward for generations. Even groups that are no longer active—the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin—continue to wield an outsized amount of cultural capital; The White Album, Dark Side of the Moon, and Led Zeppelin IV are namechecked and referenced constantly in our culture. But no matter how entrenched these classic rockers have been, you can already see signs of their decline. At some point, rock will fade fully from view, just as all subcultures do.

By mixing personal memoir, criticism, and journalism, Hyden explores the ways that classic rock changed the culture—how it established the album as music's answer to the novel, and rock concerts as the secular equivalent to church—and asks whether any of these signposts can endure. He investigates the rise and fall of classic rock radio and determines whether the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is telling the right version of rock history, and he revisits all of your favorite live bootlegs, rereads all the great tell-all rock biographies, and excavates deep down into the liner notes of rock's greatest masterpieces to explain what we can all learn from rock gods and their music. Is classic rock ephemeral or forever?