In Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There, music writer Marc Myers (Anatomy of a Song) gathers insights from nearly 100 people who have had something to do with making live rock happen over the years. Collectively, their observations tell the story of the rock concert--Angus Young's shorts and all.
Myers has musicians, promotors, managers, photographers, costume designers and others weigh in on the live rock show, whose early-1950s launch proved to be an unintended agent of racial desegregation, thanks to the music's appeal to young people of all backgrounds. Major developments that helped keep folks paying good money for live rock included the wireless electric guitar, which allowed musicians total freedom onstage; MTV, which fomented viewer interest in seeing their idols in person; and Ticketmaster, which enabled fans to buy concert tickets without leaving home.
Myers's book covers the requisite history-making gigs--the Beatles at Shea Stadium; the defiantly electric Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival; Woodstock and its foil, Altamont--and concludes with reflections on 1985's Live Aid, which manager Shep Gordon believes marked "the end of innocence. Businesses finally saw how concerts could be scaled up." Yet Rock Concert is anything but a bummer, rife as it is with firsthand accounts of those livin' the rock dream, sort of. Who would have guessed that after a performance Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull liked to hole up in his hotel room with an Agatha Christie novel? --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer