Currently reading David Hepworth’s “The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994”. I’m really enjoying it. He basically picks one “rock star” for each year and writes about their influence on the history of pop/rock etc.
Anyway, I thought as a Friday afternoon quiz, can you name the biggest “star” from each year, 55 to 94. I’ll start you off by saying 1955 was Little Richard. Because he has to pick one star per year he maybe hasn’t quite got certain stars in their best year (for example, I think Springsteen is in the wrong year) and at least a couple of stars are written about more than once, which is cheating. But at the very least, I hope it’s a good discussion about rock history and who the biggest artists of their day were. I find music history fascinating and the speed it developed - from skiffle groups to hippies to punks in just 15 years.
No, but actually I’ve mis-described the book in hindsight. It’s more about significant cultural events in a given year that changed the course of rock history, so 57 is The Quarrymen and 62 is the Beatles
Got to be the Sex Pistols for ‘77?
Was Nirvana the world’s last rock band?
You’d think so wouldn’t you? But the big event of 77 was Elvis dying and the effect this had on popular culture. An example of, at the time, a fairly irrelevant and broke has-been, turning into the biggest artist in the world as a sad result of dying. I think the Sex Pistols weren’t big enough to make the book but saying that, 78 is an alternative English act.
Yes. Actually, the 1994 chapter is titled “The last rock star”.
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As Hepworth is a big classic rock guy I’ll say '72 is Bowie doing Starman on TOTP?
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Very close. Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon in July 73.
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No. Think new wave rather than punk
No. On the right lines, but a “rock star” less famous for his music.
87 - guns n fuckin Roses?
Our axel
Correct! 85 is Bob Geldof.
Almost made the good point, which I’ve heard before, that U2 were shit at Live Aid if you were in the stadium, but Bono was one of the first to understand the power of television and did that extended fannying about under the stage (where no-one there could see him) for the benefit of TV, which made him a global superstar overnight.