The Sixties ended a year late - on New Year's Eve 1970, when Paul McCartney initiated proceedings to wind up The Beatles. Music would never be the same again. By December rock had exploded into the mainstream. How did it happen? This book tells you how. It is the story of 1971, rock's golden year.

The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations.In Uncommon People, David Hepworth zeroes in on defining moments and turning points in the lives of forty rock stars from 1955 to 1995, taking us on a journey to burst a hundred myths and create a hundred more.

Pop music’s a simple pleasure. Is it catchy? Can you dance to it? Do you fancy the singer?

But what’s fascinating about pop is our relationship with it. David Hepworth is interested in the human side of pop. He’s interested in how people make the stuff and, more importantly, what it means to us.

In this collection of essays written throughout his career, Hepworth shows how it is possible to take music seriously and, at the same time, not drain the life out of it. From the legacy of the Beatles to the dramatic decline of the record shop via the bewildering nomenclature of musical...

_________'Hepworth's knowledge and understanding of rock history is prodigious ... [a] hugely entertaining study of the LP's golden age' The Times_________The era of the LP began in 1967, with 'Sgt Pepper';