NPR recently aired an excellent piece on a new book that chronicles the excesses of '70s bands, including famously indulgent tours by Led Zeppelin, The Who and Alice Cooper. In fact, Michael Walker posits that 1973 was the tipping point for both the music industry, which suddenly realized the enormous amount of money to be made, and the bands themselves, who figured they could put the make on everything else.
In Walker’s book, What You Want Is in the Limo: On the Road with Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and the Who in 1973, the Year the Sixties Died and the Modern Rock Star Was Born, he pinpoints this year as the year when the peace and love era was pushed aside in favor of carnal and other delights, as the “whole hierarchy of backstage and front of house started to reveal itself. And the audience began to be less in tune with the performer and more sort of a supplicant to the performer.“
The interview with the author can be heard (or read) here.
It looks to be a fascinating read and is on our “must read” summer list; hopefully, it’s on yours as well.
For more info on the book, go here.
