Rock Me on the Water

1974 - The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics

By: Ronald Brownstein

Narrated by: Will Damron

In this exceptional cultural history, Atlantic Senior Editor Ronald Brownstein—"one of America's best political journalists (The Economist)—tells the kaleidoscopic story of one monumental year that marked the city of Los Angeles' creative peak, a glittering moment when popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become.

Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Los Angeles that year, in fact, dominated popular culture more than it ever had before, or would again. Working in film, recording, and television studios around Sunset Boulevard, living in Brentwood and Beverly Hills or amid the flickering lights of the Hollywood Hills, a cluster of transformative talents produced an explosion in popular culture which reflected the demographic, social, and cultural realities of a changing America. At a time when Richard Nixon won two presidential elections with a message of backlash against the social changes unleashed by the sixties, popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become. The early 1970s in Los Angeles was the time and the place where conservatives definitively lost the battle to control popular culture.

Rock Me on the Water traces the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative, magical year. Ronald Brownstein reveals how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Today, we are again witnessing a generational cultural divide. Brownstein shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future.

©2021 Ronald Brownstein (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

A look into a great moment in time

A thoroughly enjoyable look at a piece of time in a specific place that changed the future. The beautiful collaborations couldn’t hold together long but had long term effects. I encourage anyone to read this and hope for repeat somewhere in America.

There But For The Lack of Networking

This book was a fascinating (re-)education - moving, inspiring, nostalgic - and melancholic. I’d known Ron Brownstein as an excellent reporter. Now I can also report that he’s an excellent author.

I’m sure some of my reaction was, at least in part, about who and where I was at the time. Having met in my 60’s band, The Grodes, my girlfriend and I (we were the band’s lead singers), moved to LA together near the end of 1968 to ‘make it’ in the music business. We pledged our love as well as writing and performing talents to each other ‘til the end of time’ (in our case, that was March 1, 1985). Daily we filled my car with cheap (17 cents/gallon) gas and drove around Hollywood ogling at the Hollywood mansions, one of which we’d soon own. Patti was immediately signed to Liberty Records and, at 17, touted as the next big thing. I was relegated to a publishing contract. It hadn’t taken ‘them’ long to break us up as a duo. We married in August 1970. We ‘re-united’ in 1972 as Fire & Rain to release our eponymously-named album on Mercury Records. On a $12,000 budget (of which $4,000 was kicked back to our producer), we scored a Top 100 single, Hello Stranger. There followed four grinding years of nothingness except performing in little cabarets like The Bla Bla Cafe and restaurants like The Hungry Tiger - oh, and being jealous of all the success rising all around our North Hollywood apartment like smoke on the water: The Eagles and Joni in Laurel, Fleetwood Mac in The Valley - etc etc etc. we released the lushly flat album (thanks to legendary arranger Arty Butler) Living Together on legendary exec Russ Regan’s label, 20th Century Records (‘legends’ were everywhere except having our backs). The resulting album was so boring even WE wouldn’t listen to it. The record failed as did our marriage.

We experienced the precise mirror opposite careers of the monster ‘70s artists covered in the book. Still it was magical, seductive, addictive, and ultimately disillusioning time.

Point being, minus the success, we were here in the middle of it when it all happened (I even helped David Crosby finish a song at a local deli and went to school with Linda Ronstadt) and can vouch not only for the factual accuracy of Brownstein’s tale, but even more importantly, for its flavor. I thought it would be a typically average ‘survey’ effort, but instead it was captivating and compelling. It t transported me back to that time, when folk rock music, hope and inspiration were in the very Hollywood air we breathed.

Patti and I ‘coulda been somebody,’ if we’d only spent more evenings networking and less time cocooning. I still think we got the best end of the deal.

It was a great time - and this is a great book!

Manny Freiser

Wow!

Ron Brownstein has done a masterful job researching and writing this book. I was involved with music during the 60s and 70s and was fascinated by the history of those "golden" days. Brownstein also had the good sense to get a professional to narrate. Anyone over 60 will love this book. And, there are many younger people who have fallen in love with the music of the 70s. Brownstein knows how to pull you in and keep your interest from start to finish. And I'm one picky old lady!

Astonishing History of a Golden Age of Movies, TV, Music and Politics in Early ‘70s LA

Meticulously researched and engagingly told story of the convergence of new waves in movies, television, music and politics in the early- to mid-1970s, all centered in Los Angeles. Very informative and entertaining on all fronts, and well (if not perfectly) read by Will Damron. And you’re not missing anything by listening, instead of reading, the book, as the has no photos, which it sorely lacks. Highly recommended.

Loved it.

I lived through all of this television and worked in the industry.

Great portrayal of how it really was!

Thoroughly enjoyable

Gregg S.
A great synopsis of the intersection of art, entertainment music , politics and the 70's .

Snapshot in Time

This story took me back to so many headlines from the 1970's that I felt like I was back in those days. I remember when so many of the events he writes about were the stories of the day. I wish he used more Malcolm Gladwell like production with music in the background of the artists and songs that he writes about. Books about music should have music heard in the background to really draw the story into the listener/reader.

A fun ride through my past.

Loved it. What a fascinating look into film, television, music and politics of the 70's. I was lucky enough to be in my 20's, living through that time. If you missed it, the audio gives the inside story of the time. A wonderful audiobook. Highly recommend.

for people that remember 1974

I definitely remember all the music, movies, politics and TV. Nice trip down memory lane.

You kinda had to be there, and I was! What a ride.

Excellent book with all the details required to feel like u were in '70s LA