The basis for the new hit documentary 1971: The Year That Music
Changed Everything, now streaming on Apple TV+.
A rollicking look at 1971, rock's golden year, the year that saw the
release of the indelible recordings of Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the
Who, Rod Stewart, Carole King, the Rolling Stones, and others and
produced more classics than any other year in rock history
The Sixties ended a year late. On New Year's Eve 1970 Paul McCartney
instructed his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London
that effectively ended the Beatles. You might say this was the last day
of the pop era.
1971 started the following day and with it the rock era. The new
releases of that hectic year--Don McLean's "American Pie," Sly Stone's
"Family Affair," Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," Joni Mitchell's
"Blue," Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," the Who's "Baba O'Riley,"
and many others--are the standards of today.
David Hepworth was twenty-one in 1971, and has been writing and
broadcasting about music ever since. In this entertaining and
provocative book, he argues that 1971 saw an unrepeatable surge of
musical creativity, technological innovation, naked ambition and
outrageous good fortune that combined to produce music that still
crackles with relevance today. There's a story behind every note of that
music. From the electric blue fur coat David Bowie wore when he first
arrived in America in February to Bianca's neckline when she married
Mick Jagger in Saint-Tropez in May, from the death of Jim Morrison in
Paris in July to the reemergence of Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden
in August, from the soft launch of Carole King's Tapestry in
California in February to the sensational arrival of Led Zeppelin's
"Stairway To Heaven" in London in November, Hepworth's forensic sweep
takes in all the people, places and events that helped make 1971 rock's
unrepeatable year.
