Rock From the Beginning (1969)

I'm not going to attempt the convoluted publishing history of Nik Cohn's story of rock 'n' roll and, implicitly—shot from the hip as it is—early and influential essay at the rock critic enterprise. It has been sold under the titles Pop From the Beginning, Rock From the Beginning, and, most evocatively, AWOPBOPALOOBOP ALOPBAMBOOM (for Little Richard, of course). Editorial revisions appear to have gone on with every edition. The little mass market paperback with the illustration of Jimi Hendrix on the cover, called Rock From the Beginning, is the one I read in 1970. Written (mostly) in 1968 when Cohn was a jaded seen-it-all 22-year-old, its assessments are more often wildly wrong, or at least out of step with later rock critical canon (not least because so impossibly early). Nevertheless, it lit me up in the summer when I was 15 and instilled a certain set of long-lived prejudices, a tendency toward instinctive contrarianism that lives on yet, for better or worse (I'm honestly not sure which it is). Certainly Cohn's language no longer seems the freewheeling specimen of New Journalism it once did. But the orientation of swiftly moving fickle taste and self-contradiction set in deep, and I still find a likely source for fundamental preferences here. He singles out Eddie Cochran and Little Richard in the early bunch, for example, makes a lot out of the Coasters, and characterizes the Brill Building approach as "highschool." On the other hand, P.J. Proby gets his own chapter along with the Beatles and Rolling Stones (each), and the chapter on Bob Dylan is spent mostly sniffing at him with a superior air. In the end (remember, 1968) Cohn sees Pete Townshend as the single most important figure going. (There's a great anecdote about Townshend writing "Pinball Wizard" under Cohn's influence—Cohn hadn't liked much of what he heard of Tommy, still in production, and did happen to be a pinball maniac.)

Jeering Amazon reviewers are all over Cohn and this book for being so wrong about so many things. But I recognize and appreciate his skepticism about the evolving conventional wisdom, which was then deifying Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and other now-usual suspects, while artists like Larry Williams and Del Shannon were slipping down the memory hole. I read this book a few times when I was 15 and 16 and absorbed much of it at cellular level. Coming back to it decades later in my 40s it more annoyed me and I was embarrassed not only for it but for myself for ever liking it. Now I've reached a kind of Baby Bear middle. There's no sense to make of Cohn's taste. It is all pure response, contradictions bursting out like time-lapse flowers popping into bloom. One minute the Beatles are brilliant and historical, the next they're not all that, and then back again. He dismisses Rubber Soul and Revolver. He judges Sgt. Pepper's their best. The White Album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be came out later—they were freaking still together when he was writing! Cohn struggles for consistency even as he rails against it, grappling with these strange mysteries—why do some things sound good once and then never again, why do the opinions of others matter so much, why does everybody like something I can't stand, why can't I like it if everybody else does, and other conundrums about life and pop music. Really Cohn might have had it right with the title Pop From the Beginning. The book is not just about pop (from the beginning of the rock era anyway) but it is also '60s-style pop itself in its approach and attitude, caught in the flickering intense ecstasies of right now. And notwithstanding the later marketing ploys of Jimi Hendrix on the cover and appropriation of the word "rock," which by 1969 had achieved ascendancy over rock 'n' roll itself, not to mention pop. As if to prove the point, here is Cohn getting Hendrix wrong but also right in a way, simply by focusing so intently, elliptically, and self-consciously: "[Hendrix] was a conman, a black cliché, but it finally didn't matter much; he freaked out regardless, and he was real excitement." I'm going to start using "real excitement" as praise as soon as I possibly can, because he packs everything into that.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.