474 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
thoughts of a serial killer, switching at the bridge from English to French, all
projected in the nerdy, gulping voice of lead singer David Byrne, who updated
Buddy Holly’s 1950s geek-rocker persona for a new generation.
Punk launched a reformation movement in rock, seeking to return to the
music’s roots. Already by the late 1970s that reaffi rmation of basics had borne
fruit in the New Wave, and after 1980 it would give rise to hardcore punk, grunge,
and alternative rock.SINGER-SONGWRITERS: IN SEARCH OF
AUTHENTICITYIf punks sought to purge rock of its venality and regain a more authentic state
of anarchic rage, another group of musicians sought authenticity on a differ-
ent path. In the wake of Bob Dylan’s innovations in the 1960s, a generation of
singer-song writers carried his work forward in the 1970s by performing their
own compositions, often with minimal instrumental accompaniment (a piano
or guitar, for example), with lyrics that are often personal, even confessional, in
subject matter and tone. Foremost among the singer-songwriters of the 1970s
was Dylan himself, whose albums Blood on the Tracks (1973) and Desire (1976),
in particular, contained songs that were widely received as autobiographical
accounts of his divorce from his wife Sara; the closing track on Desire, “Sara,” is
hard to read any other way.
Dylan had begun in folk music and switched to rock, then found a way to com-
bine the two in John Wesley Harding (1968). Singer-song w riters such as James Taylor
and Carly Simon began with a folk-rock blend; Carole King and Paul Simon came
to the style from a pop background, both making the transition from Brill Build-
ing tunesmiths to successf ul performers of their ow n confessional songs. A nd the
phenomenon was not confi ned to the United States: Canada produced Joni Mitch-
ell and Neil Young, and Cat Stevens and Elton John hailed from Great Britain.
Of course, the phenomenon of singers performing their own songs was not
new to popular music. Especially in country music, the singer-songwriter had
been a dominant fi gure since the days of Jimmie Rodgers. What was new in the
1970s was the emphasis on intimate self-revelation—self-revelation as an emblem
of the music’s authenticity, to the extent that listeners were encouraged to blur
the separation between singer and song persona. For some singer-songwriters,
that tone of authenticity was enhanced through musical references to country
idioms, as in the pedal steel guitar that quietly sneaks into Joni Mitchell’s song
“California,” on her 1971 album Blue. A more thorough country-rock blend was
pioneered by the Byrds in the late 1960s and continued into the 1970s most nota-
bly by the trio of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash, later expanded
into a quartet with the addition of Neil Young.
W hile country singers like Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash had never shied
away from confession in their songs, the country musicians closest in spirit to the
Dylanesque singer-song writers were the outlaw country artists, based mainly
in Austin, Texas. Willie Nelson’s transformation from Nashville industry song-
writer to confessional singer-song writer parallels Carole King’s similar trajectory
from the Brill Building; Nelson’s Red-Headed Stranger (1975) is a landmark country
concept album. Waylon Jennings came to outlaw country from a rock and rollBob DylanJoni Mitchelloutlaw country172028_19_468-494_r3_sd.indd 474 23/01/13 11:05 AM