Author: Paul Grushkin
Foreword by: Mike Ness
Format: Hardbound
Pages: 240
Length: 10.5w x 12h
ISBN-13: 9780760322925
ISBN: 0760322929
Catalog ID: 139932
FINALLY, THE FIRST ILLUSTRATED, BOOK-LENGTH HISTORY OF THE LONG AND WINDING INTERPLAY BETWEEN ROCK & ROLL AND THE AUTOMOBILE.
With the help of more than 1,000 evocative images, including many not previously seen in print, prominent rock historian Paul Grushkin presents an expansive celebration of the unholy marriage of rock & roll and internal combustion. Postwar America witnessed a swelling youth movement, which in turn proved a wild and loose breeding ground for the inseparable, simultaneous developments of rock & roll and car culture. This loud music and these loud cars were utterly unprecedented. To adults, they signified danger; to kids, they represented intoxicating freedom. Inevitably, the two got it on and never looked back.
With an appreciation for all genres of popular music to since emerge—R&B, rockabilly, surf, soul, psychedelia, punk, funk, folk, hip-hop, and more—Grushkin riffs on the associations that dozens upon dozens of historic and contemporary artists, both iconic and merely mortal, have had with cars for more than a half-century, through both their songs and everyday lives. Likewise, with an understanding of what it means to be an unrepentant gearhead—a devotee of hot rods, customs, muscle cars, motorsports, tuner cars, bone stockers, and even the obligatory limos and tour buses—the author also turns the table to show how leading figures from the automotive realm have played a persistent part in the world of popular music for more than fifty years.
The result is massive and mind-bendingly illustrated, thanks to scores of car-related musical ephemera (45s, album art, promotional posters, etc.), imagery from many of rock’s leading photographers (Joel Bernstein, Jay Blakesberg, Danny Clinch, Henry Diltz, Glen E. Friedman, Lynn Goldsmith, Jim Marshall, Charles Peterson, Neal Preston, Pamela Springsteen, to name a few), acclaimed photographers from the car world (including Steve Coonan and David Perry), and some of today’s top rock-poster artists, including Mark Arminski, Coop, Eleanor Grosch, Gary Houston, Kathleen Judge, Stainboy, and Alison Zawacki, all of whom have created exclusive art for the book.
The relationship between rock and cars has been long and rich—Rockin’ Down the Highway is the long-overdue and glorious tribute.