History is an imprecise thing. Events that, at the time, seem inconsequential, like a fledgling band happening upon a movie marquee and changing its name from Earth to Black Sabbath, or two teenagers meeting at a county fair in 1957, one being John Lennon, the other, Paul McCartney, turn out to be really important, while other events' importance is manifest as they are happening, like a young man witnessing Bob Marley perform at the Lyceum in 1975 or David Bowie announcing his "retirement" as Ziggy Stardust.
In Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of Rock Stars, David Hepworth toggles between these two extremes, examining the arc of rock 'n' roll through one discrete event each year between 1955 and 1995. Instead of leaning on a collection of greatest hits, like a band that refuses to repeat a set list, Hepworth combs through the back catalogue. It is Springsteen way back in 1974 on the cusp of super stardom, but also at risk of becoming a never was, noodling through what would become Born to Run for six months before converting the promise expressed in his concert reviews into wide scale popularity. It is Hendrix, not at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival blowing every mind with his lights out performance and incineration of his Strat-O-Caster or his iconic rearrangement of the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969, but rather, his low key introduction to England in 1966, long before Are You Experienced? rocket launched him into the stratosphere and made him a god.
While Hepworth finds some of our musical heroes in their embryonic states, his book is also happy to marinate in their debauched success. Uncommon People is as much about the cost of celebrity as it is the music that produces that adoration. In this way, it is easy to understand why Janis Joplin (the subject of Hepworth’s 1967 entry) is eager to rub her hometown’s nose in collective shit when she decides to return for her ten-year high school reunion, only to feel as empty and ostracized as when her wildest fantasies of revenge do not materialize.
At the level of celebrity enjoyed by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, or Jim Morrison, it is all too easy to be sucked into a vortex of your own bullshit, to confuse the adoration you receive for the self-worth you may not feel. The list of rock casualties is long and Hepworth’s tidy summation of Elvis Presley’s demise in 1977 is Exhibit A for how the seductiveness of fame can blur easily with its isolating effects. Elvis was one of the most recognized human beings on the planet, yet he was surrounded by a cadre of sycophants lured by the whiff of easy money and access to his reflected glory but none of whom had his best interests at heart.
Of course, as Hepworth notes, in death, the messy details that led to the early demise of artists like Presley, Morrison, Joplin, and Hendrix get swept away as fans mourn their artistry, not their very human flaws. And for those left behind, there is money to be made in remaking these stories. Presley’s survivors were monetizing him within days of his death, when his manager drily noted “the king is dead, long live the king,” to the present-day, when his ex-wife Priscilla executive produced a largely sympathetic four-hour documentary about him for HBO (naturally, with a soundtrack available in all the relevant physical and digital formats).
Uncommon People is also deft in charting the trajectory of rock ’n’ roll. What starts out in tiny rooms and dingy bars moves inexorably with the times. As the baby boom exploded, so did rock ’n’ roll. As musicians went from being troubadours to voices of their generation, the stakes got higher but so did the temptations, after all, it’s not called sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll for nothing. In July 1974, Stevie Nicks was waiting tables after her and her boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham were dropped by their record label. Two years later, she was a millionaire co-headlining a bicentennial concert on the Fourth of July in Tampa, Florida before 50,000 screaming fans - how can that not mess with a person's head.
As the book moves into the 80s, the predictable denouement for many rock stars who made their bones in prior decades comes to pass. As Hepworth charts rock’s domination of popular culture, it tracks closely with the lives of the people whose singular talents resulted in the form’s ubiquity. As musicians became bigger celebrities so too did their appetite for hedonism. The once-young deities like Clapton and Page, Starr and Crosby, were now middle-aged and doughy, struggling with addiction, bankruptcy, and divorce. Their challenges tracked closely with the industry. The self-indulgence and feeling of invulnerability resulted in spectacles that had tragic consequences. Michael Jackson was happy to take a check from Pepsi to shill its product, but a rogue pyrotechnic at a commercial shoot led him down a path to opioid addiction that, years later, resulted in his death. Meanwhile, the tour bubble that musicians travel in resulted in a gifted twenty-five-year-old guitarist named Randy Rhodes dying in an entirely avoidable plane crash.
For me, the later chapters of Uncommon People are rightly bookended by the emergence of Guns ’N Roses out of the L.A. hair metal scene, applying a needed enema that flushed out the pop sensibilities of bands like Ratt, WASP, and Motley Crue and replacing it with precisely the type of hedonistic-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude that makes rock great. Ironically, when the band gave in to the same excesses that befell those before them, it is left to Kurt Cobain, the man Hepworth accurately calls “the last rock star,” to apply his own corrective. Of course, Cobain was a flawed messiah and Hepworth’s argument that in Cobain’s suicide note lay a message of inadequacy, of someone who, having reached the pinnacle of his profession, feared he was not up to the challenge of being a prophet for the millions who worshipped him.
Cobain's 1994 suicide is also a useful marker for the music business. If this tragedy was not the death knell for rock 'n' roll, it certainly put the patient on life support. The book’s final chapter tracks the migration of music onto the Internet and with it, the game changing file sharing programs that crippled an industry that was simply unprepared for the sea change that occurred once fans stopped accepting the idea they had to pay a premium (or anything at all) for artists’ music.
Meanwhile, the rise of boy bands, pop divas, and the mainstreaming of hip hop and rap has pushed rock ’n’ roll out of the cultural zeitgeist. What remains is nostalgia. Music companies continue churning out greatest hits collections and decades-old concerts of classic rock acts knowing a generation of 40-, 50- and 60- somethings are dependable consumers. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend can still be found marching under The Who! banner and you can now go on cruises and hear intimate performances by one-hit wonders still trying to squeeze a few more seconds out of their 15 minutes of fame. Turn on your TV and what were once anthems of youth and rebellion are now used to market Cadillacs and iPods. Of course, since the last phase of any successful artist's career is the lusty hiss of "sell out," this makes total sense.
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