Ronald Brownstein makes his argument for 1974 being a pivotal year early in Rock Me On the Water: “In film, 1974 saw the release of Chinatown, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and the great Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds; the filming of Nashville, Jaws, and Shampoo; and the completion of the first-draft screenplay for a space adventure called Star Wars. In television, the year brought together the transformative comedies All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and Mary Tyler Moore (along with the Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett shows) on a CBS Saturday schedule that has been called the greatest night in television history. That year, Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt all issued career-redefining albums on Geffen’s label, and Bob Dylan and the Band and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young mounted record-setting concert tours with him.” (p. 3)
Brownstein captures the tenor of the time perfectly. As he moves through 1974 month by month, he alternates his analysis of what was happening in film, music, and television.
My favorite chapter of Rock Me On the Water is “November Breakthrough.” For years Linda Ronstadt struggled to move from small clubs to larger venues. And, Ronstadt wasn’t happy with the quality of her earlier albums (or their paltry sales). Brownstein asserts that the change that turned Ronstadt’s career around was her selection of Peter Asher as producer of her classic Heart Like a Wheel album. Brownstein shows how each song on the album was included to produce a unique effect.
If you’re interested in all the creative energy of the early Seventies, Rock Me On the Water shows how the artists, performers, and decision-makers produced the incredible movies, TV, and music of that era. What were you doing in 1974? GRADE: A
Table of Contents:
Prologue: Magic Hour in Los Angeles 1
1 January Hollywood’s Fall and Rise 11
2 February The Republic of Rock and Roll 40
3 March The Greatest Night in Television History 76
4 April Already Gone 100
5 May The Ballad of Tom and Jane 131
6 June From Chinatown to Jerry Brown 165
7 July Hollywood’s Generational Tipping Point 196
8 August The Icarus of Los Angeles 229
9 September Three Roads to Revolution 258
10 October The (White) Boys’ Club 291
11 November Breakthrough 325
12 December Transitions 352
Acknowledgments 391
Notes 397
Index 429
I graduated high school in 1975, so in 1974 I was a junior for half the year and a senior for the other half (I turned 17 in October of 74). I was doing typical teenage stuff—as all of my peers did, I had a “starter job in the food-service industry,” I drove a 1966 Dodge Dart, I read continuously (FEAR OF FLYING was popular—but then again so was SWEET SAVAGE LOVE), hung out with my friends, went to movies (I remember we had trouble getting in to see “Blazing Saddles” because none of us was 17 yet—it was early in the year, but eventually some older kid said we were with her and she was our “guardian,” ha-ha, but otherwise never had an issue getting into R-rated movies), and listened to all of the music mentioned above (CSNY was my all-time favorite); I listened to the radio continuously, when I wasn’t listening to records (45s & LPs) that I bought by the ton and listened to obsessively. I also used to watch the Saturday CBS lineup—The Bob Newhart Show was my favorite because of Bob’s understated delivery. For me, it was a transitional time—not really because of anything in the pop culture, but simply like all high school seniors, I was preparing to finish high school and begin my next steps into adulthood. Now it’s almost 50 years ago…that’s the baffling part.
Deb, Time flies when you’re having Fun!
My memories of 1974 consist of changing diapers. Lots and lots of diapers. Can’t remember much else.
Jerry, I was just starting my PhD. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I remember moving into my apartment when I arrived then going out to pick up a Sunday NY TIMES with the story that Nixon resigned. It was August 4, 1974.
I’m with Jerry. In 1974 I had a three and four year old and lived in a subdivision without sidewalks or a car. My biggest outing was to Farmer Jacks, a grocery story I could walk to with both kids in a double stroller.
Phil was busy getting his career started so I was alone a lot.
I blame this on missing all of the music you guys talk about all the time. Apple TV’s 1971 would call that the pivotal year. This book looks great though.
Patti, you could catch up on all the movies, TV shows, and music from 1974 with ROCK ME ON THE WATER.
Every year finds ways to be pivotal.
Todd, but some years are more pivotal than others…like 2020.
Though we got there with Dumber Dick Cheney, aka Even Less Principled Reagan…
Frankly, I would argue with the premise of the title, as I don’t think it transformed everything. A lot of things, yes. But, yes, for us there were major changes. My father finally pulled the trigger, closed his business and moved the family (that is, my parents and my sisters, who were 15 and 12) across country, where they ended up in an apartment (and ultimately a house) in North Hollywood. We didn’t see them off, as we left on July 4 for a seven week trip to Europe. We flew to London (for 5 days), then from there to Rome, then used our Eurailpasses to travel near and far, mostly to places we’d never been before – Rome (9 days), Florence (6), Pisa (yes, we climbed the Leaning Tower), Venice, Zurich, Lucerne, Vienna (4 days), Munich (5), Salzburg, Copenhagen, Oslo (we were there when Nixon resigned), Stockholm, Paris (6 days) and Amsterdam. (We’d been to Paris and Amsterdam in 1972 and Copenhagen and Paris in 1973.) Jackie was teaching, basically learning on the job. It was the next year when the final crisis hit New York and she almost lost her job.
I do remember the movies and television shows you mentioned. I also remember that my older sister had a going away party for her friends, so we took my younger sister to see a movie my mother would never have taken her to see – a revival of the previous year’s THE EXORCIST. She hid her eyes at the scary parts and clawed my arm.
Can’t remember for sure, but I think we made our first trip to California to visit my family that Christmas.
Jeff, wow! That’s a lot of travel! I left my job as a School Media Specialist (aka, Librarian) in Niagara Falls and headed for Wisconsin to become a doctoral student.
My new school in 1973-74 was the first and last to have a Media Center rather than library…
Todd, I ran a Media Center/Library in an elementary school for two years. “Media” back then were slide projectors and film-strip machines (remember them?). Also, I learned the first thing that gets cut when the Budget needs to be “reduced” is the Media Center/Library. I had a friend who was a Librarian in a Buffalo school who had NO book budget for three years!
Of course I remember them…I made more use of them than most…particularly looking at ENCY BRITANNICA travelog filmstrips and such on my own. It was simply that all the subsequent schools would have recordings and films and such in their libraries so-called.
In my school experience, the arts education was usually cut first, but by the years you cite, I imagine that was mostly a memory, then they came for the books and any other enrichment! As in, bastards.
Todd, while the Library budget was cut, the Sports budget remained intact.
Well, what’s important is whatever strokes the ego.
Oh, Jackie turned 26 in September, me in November. October was our 4th Anniversary. A long, long time ago.
God, we’re old.
Jeff, you and Jackie are like fine wine: you just keep getting better!
My library didn’t get this so I guess I’ll wait for the paperback, but it looks like a definite must. There was a book published a few years ago claiming that 1973 was the greatest year for rock music. Unfortunately I can’t remember the title or author, but the book seemed fairly persuasive to me. As far back as the Seventies many people were saying that the Seventies were the real Sixties. There seems to be little doubt that the Seventies were the greatest decade for American movies, and there’s a fairly persuasive case to be made for the music. I can’t say the same for Seventies TV, but there were certainly some great shows, mostly the sitcoms.
Michael, the Seventies started out with a burst of energy in music, movies, and television. But things went downhill fast with Watergate and stagflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis. ROCK ME ON THE WATER is a new book. Maybe your Library is still “processing” it.
I graduated from Oakland University in 1974 and a month later got laid off from my job at Pontiac Motors. It took me a year to find work. Diapers were still a couple of years in my future. As much as I like Ronstadt and company it started a trend to taking the rock out of rock and roll and fostered a lot of crap like Christopher Cross and Kansas,
Steve, mainstream rock & roll dominated the radio airwaves in the late 1970s.
I can’t specifically remember what music we were listening too. WCBS-FM started their oldies format in 1972 (when “oldies” still included the ’50s!) and we listened to that. For a couple of years (ca. 1976-77) I went though a country music phase when it was getting a big push in New York. I remember Red Sovine’s kitschy “Teddy Bear” and Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again” being from that era. But to give an idea of what we were listening too, here are some of the albums we bought that year (courtesy of the Wikipedia list):
Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark
Carly Simon, Hotcakes
Grateful Dead, Skeletons From the Closet
Elton John, Caribou and Greatest Hits
Carole King, Wrap Around Joy
Billy Joel, Streetlife Serenade
Linda Ronstadt, Heart Like a Wheel (still one of my favorites)
Jeff, that list is full of great music! You and Jackie have excellent musical tastes!
Two “too”s should have been “to”s!
A pretty good year for the music I liked, especially Eagles, and I was 4 years into what would be a 40 year career with the County. Driving a 1972 Dodge van which I sorta converted into a sorta camper for road trips and such. I read ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, TINKER, TAYLOR, SOLDIER, SPY, THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION, HELTER SKELTER and a ton of SF. I was still subscribing to ANALOG. Late that year I sold the van and bought a 1964 Jaguar XKE roadster. It was a project and I never got it finished, but it was a blast to drive. I remember listening to KRLA on FM radio a lot.
Rick, around 1974 I was listening to Madison, Wisconsin’s alternative FM rock stations. And plundering Madison’s used bookstores!
I also think that’s about the time I discovered Tony Hillerman’s books, but that may have been a few years later.
Rick, I was reading Tony Hillerman around that time, too!
My favorite albums of 1974
Country Life by Roxy Music
Taking Tiger Mountain by Storm by Brian Eno
Too Much, Too Soon by The New York Dolls
411 Ocean Boulevard by Eric Clapton
The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle by Bruce Springsteen
Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell
It’s Only Rock and Roll by the Rolling Stones
I intensely dislike Billy Joel and am not really sure why but his music just rubs me the wrong way.
Steve, that is an excellent Clapton album, one of my favorites too.
Rick, I have 411 Ocean Boulevard by Clapton around here somewhere…
Steve, I need to listen to more Brian Eno. I had all the albums you list except for Roxy Music. I need to check out COUNTRY LIFE.
I don’t know what I did that year! Maybe I was in school part of the time! Maybe I was working in a print shop as a graphic artist, photographer, and stripper/plater! Maybe I was sharing a house with my friend and his bitchy wife! I know I was in APA-5, a comics apa although I was winding down my comic collecting passion! Too broke for any hobbies! It’s mostly a blur!
Bob, I never knew you were once a stripper!
My past is checkered, but I wasn’t the kind of stripper you’re thinking of, you nasty man!
Bob, thanks for the clarification!
Some primetime nights in US tv have matched the CBS Saturday night from (note) Fall 1973-Fall ’74, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with a better lineup on one network or station. Fall 1975 was Even Better for me, if just a Bit, with MTM, BN, CB on CBS (the replacement of M*A*S*H with PAUL SANDS IN FRIENDS AND LOVERS in Fall 1974 was only a slight diminishment, but I never enjoyed completely to the shout-fest that was THE JEFFERSONS, and the Family Hour programming starting in ’75 from 8-9p ET tended to be disposable), then MONTY PYTHON on local PBS at 11p, and NBC’S SATURDAY NIGHT (and WEEKEND every fourth week) rounding out the marathon.
1974 was a pretty good year on AM pop/rock/R&B/country radio–Top 40 radio still usually an eclectic Top 40, the year I really started to listen to all my parents’ LPs and check out a lot from the libraries (particularly continuing to pick up NEWBERY AWARD RECORDS dramatizations of winners and shortlisters for the kid/teen lit award and spoken word records of adult and YA lit, including such drama as NO EXIT and radio drama, the year my reading of adult fiction (as opposed to YA) picked up in earnest, I discovered my father’s PLAYBOYs and my mother’s PLAYGIRLs (PLAYBOY had better articles, but PLAYGIRL’s nude pictorials, at least the ones with nude women cavorting with the men, were not without interest)–puberty had arrived, as you might gather) and Nixon resigned two days after my tenth birthday.
THE BOB NEWHART SHOW was my favorite among the CBS shows, as well, by a slim margin, particularly one M*A*S*H was moved (and that series never the same after the first three seasons were done). Making Emily a bit dopy later on didn’t work as well, but happily they didn’t do Too much of that.
Though I really started to listen frequently to top-40 radio in 1973…
1974 Radio hits I recall fondly:
T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia) – MFSB
Bennie and the Jets – Elton John
Midnight At the Oasis – Maria Muldaur–sexiest vocal performance of the year as I recall from radio play
Time In a Bottle – Jim Croce
Let Me Be There – Olivia Newton-John
Sundown – Gordon Lightfoot
Feel Like Makin’ Love – Roberta Flack
Nothing from Nothing – Billy Preston
The Show Must Go On – Three Dog Night
Rock the Boat – The Hues Corporation
Smokin’ In the Boys Room – Brownsville Station–first single I purchased…protopunk!
Living for the City – Stevie Wonder
The Entertainer – Marvin Hamlisch
The Air That I Breathe – The Hollies
Rikki Don’t Lose that Number – Steely Dan–I was a jazz kid, as this and several others suggest
Mockingbird – Carly Simon and James Taylor
Help Me – Joni Mitchell
You Won’t See Me – Anne Murray
I Shot the Sheriff – Eric Clapton
Hello It’s Me – Todd Rundgren
Beach Baby – First Class
Me and Baby Brother – War–though I liked other earlier big-hit War songs better…
among the worst Top 40 songs in ’74:
Hooked On a Feeling – Blue Swede–decent song, bad gimmick
My Girl Bill – Jim Stafford
The Night Chicago Died – Paper Lace
and, of course, Seasons In the Sun – Terry Jacks
Todd, excellent choices! Both Good…and Bad!