Most books about the history of rock music are written by people who weren’t there when that history was made. It’s something they have in common with books about World War II: the authors may know all the facts, but they don’t feel the chronology in their bones the way they would if they had actually been there. I know lots of young people who know more than I do about the Beatles because they’ve grown up reading about them. On the other hand, I grew up living them.
I was born in 1950, which in pop-music terms is the winning ticket in the lottery of life. I checked this assertion with Stevie Van Zandt, the right-hand man of both Bruce Springsteen and Tony Soprano, who was born the same year, and he agreed. We were 13 when the Beatles came along, 15 when Bob Dylan recorded “Like a Rolling Stone,” 18 in the summer of Woodstock and Altamont, and for my part a mere 34 when I saw Paul McCartney take the stage at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1985 to close the Live Aid concert, with “Let It Be.”
