
Twilight of the Gods
A Journey to the End of Classic Rock
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Narrated by:
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Patrick Lawlor
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By:
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Steven Hyden
About this listen
The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing its past and future, the impact it has had, and what its loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life.
Since the late 1960s, a legendary cadre of artists - including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Black Sabbath, and The Who - has revolutionized popular culture and the sounds of our lives. While their songs still get airtime and some of these bands continue to tour, idols are leaving the stage permanently. Can classic rock remain relevant as these legends die off, or will this major musical subculture fade away as many have before?
In this mix of personal memoir, criticism, and journalism, Steven Hyden stands witness as classic rock reaches the precipice. Traveling to the eclectic places where geriatric rockers are still making music, he talks to the artists and fans who have aged with them, explores the ways that classic rock has changed the culture, investigates the rise and fall of classic rock radio, and turns to live bootlegs, tell-all rock biographies, and even the liner notes of rock’s greatest masterpieces to tell the story of what this music meant, and how it will be remembered, for fans like himself.
Twilight of the Gods is also Hyden’s story. Celebrating his love of this incredible music that has taken him from adolescence to fatherhood, he ponders two essential questions: Is it time to give up on his childhood heroes, or can this music teach him about growing old with his hopes and dreams intact? And what can we all learn from rock gods and their music - are they ephemeral or eternal?
©2018 Steven Hyden (P)2018 HarperAudioPeople who viewed this also viewed...
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The members of Led Zeppelin are major deities in the pantheon of rock gods. The first and heaviest of the heavy metal monsters, they violently shook the foundations of rock music and took no prisoners on the road. Their tours were legendary, their lives were exalted, and their music transcendent. No band ever flew as high as Led Zeppelin or suffered so disastrous a fall. And only some of them lived to tell the tale. Originally published in 1985, and last updated in 2008, Hammer of the Gods is considered the ultimate word on Led Zeppelin.
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- Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland
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- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all time. An instant classic, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. would prove itself to be a landmark not only for the man who made it, but rock music in general, and even the larger American culture over the next 40 years.
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Reads like a college term paper
- By Jeremy on 10-26-24
By: Steven Hyden
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Long Road
- Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Ron Hippe
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+ albums, performed for hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, and have even been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation, music critic and journalist Steven Hyden celebrates the life, career, and music of this legendary group, widely considered to be one of the greatest American rock bands of all time.
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Just ok
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- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future.
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Amazing read but…
- By Alexis Feldman on 06-01-21
By: Steven Hyden
-
Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me
- What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and Steven Hyden knows that firsthand. Each chapter in Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me focuses on a pop music rivalry, from the classic to the very recent, and draws connections to the larger forces surrounding the pairing.
-
-
Great title but not very good overall
- By Noam on 03-21-19
By: Steven Hyden
-
John Lennon
- The Life
- By: Philip Norman
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philip Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, here is the definitive portrait of John Lennon. This biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into almost a secular saint.
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-
Really Bad Abridgement Job (slash job)
- By Let's Be Reasonable on 12-04-08
By: Philip Norman
political tripe
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a nice perspective
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I learned new things about even the artists and albums I've been obsessed with for decades. Hyden is a master storyteller. I will be listening to this again soon.
Fantastic book!
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Entertaining book about classic rock, except for the gratuitous woke BS at the end
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The author, Steven Hyden, seems to have read one too many issues of Rolling Stone. Listening to this is like listening to 8 hours of that magazine. He does have a flair for the vibe of that rag. The vibe? It goes like this: Take whatever artist is raking in the most money at the moment from the sales of their records and concerts, then assign someone to follow them around for — oh, about a week, and then write an article about why the fact that you, and everybody like you, are a fool for digging this artist, band, etc. “Rolling Stone” will tell you what is cool.
And in that way Steven Hyden, too, will try to do the same. The author gets credit for… for trying? I must give him some slack simply for being too damn young for the job - if not in Earth years, than certainly in years of some other kind. Steven. You weren’t there man!
The author gets everything right. He gets everything right because he parrots perfectly everything he was brainwashed to say and think about this music. But, ultimately, he gets everything completely wrong. Or rather, he simply doesn’t get it… period. In a word, he likes all the right stuff for all the wrong reasons.
The Longest "Rolling Stone" article that "Rolling Stone" never published
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Except for the forced political pandering in one chapter and at the end. Skip that chapter and the last ten minutes and you’ll be gold.
And I’m a fan of things being wrapped up and seeing how a whole comes together. Oh well. Courtney Barnett sucks and music is good or bad because it’s good or bad, not because of the sex or sexual preference or race of the person singing. Propping up terrible writers like Courtney Barnett only cheapens the rock brand, makes it less interesting to converts, and makes it impossible for the next Janis Joplin or Patti Smith to get noticed - or to get judged based on their merits, not their plumbing fixtures.
Sad!
Good stuff...for the most part
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Loved the introspection
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Excellent book
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Enjoyably mediocre
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If you love Classic Rock, you have to read this book
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