David Hepworth

I once spent several years of my life trying to track down a deleted LP by the 1970s progressive rock band Van Der Graaf Generator. I can still remember my sheer joy when I finally located the album in a second-hand record shop in Liverpool. It turned out to be one of the group’s less impressive offerings but this in no way diminished my sense of satisfaction at finally having found the wretched thing. I now owned it and that’s all that mattered (must be the hunter-gatherer in me).

I show more mention this as it’s pertinent to something touched on in David Hepworth’s history of the rise and fall of the 12 inch LP: the pleasure of not being able to hear a record because it had been deleted, or was perhaps just unavailable in your local store, and having to doggedly seek it out. The chase being almost as pleasurable, possibly more so, as actual possession. This is, of course, now an unknown pleasure in a world where pretty much all music ever recorded is permanently available at our very fingertips.

As told by Hepworth the glory years of the vinyl LP ran from 1967 to 1982. As this happens to coincide with the heyday of what is now known as ‘classic rock’ this book is as much a celebration of that genre as the LP itself. He also looks at the way changes in technology changed the sound and nature of the music that was made and how it was consumed.

A Fabulous Creation is part memoir and there are lots of autobiographical reminiscences of Hepworth’s life as a vinyl junky. Pure nostalgia, of course, but he recreates with wit and a certain poignancy an age in which the physical LP was at the centre of millions of young people’s lives. He recalls hanging around in record shops for hours at a time as an impoverished student just to be close to records, gaze at the often astonishing artwork on the sleeves, marvel at the names of bands unknown to him and imagine what sort of music they could possibly make, and hold the records in his hand. It reminded me that listening to music used to be as much a visual and tactile pleasure as an aural one.

This is an amiable evocation of an era when record buying was a hugely lucrative mass market rather than a niche one with an uncertain future. It wasn’t that long ago but in many ways it reads like an account of a lost civilisation. It was a time when many of us music obsessives said, with our latest album held proudly under our arm, ‘it’s only the music that matters’. When we arrived in the digital age and only the music remained, in an infinite virtual library of recorded music beyond the wildest dreams of even the most avaricious 1970s teenage audiophile, we were shocked to realise that the music certainly wasn’t all that had mattered to us after all. show less

In Never a Dull Moment, influential music journalist David Hepworth postulates that 1971 was the seminal for rock music – the Beatles disbanding in 1970 marked the end of an era, yet influential bands (the Who, Rolling Stones Led Zeppelin, Marvin Gaye) were producing arguably their best work their best music while other stalwarts (Carole King, David Bowie) were just beginning their careers.

Hepworth makes an entertaining and informative argument. Like many books by journalists more show more accustomed to writing article-length pieces, Never a Dull Moment assumes that the reader is already somewhat familiar with the subject matter and can at times be rambling and muddy, but when it hits its stride – as it does early on when discussing Carole King’s Tapestry, it shines. Hepworth's strength is in providing inside stories and describing the background details and supporting cast, and circumstances surrounding each musician– the meetings and relationships that influenced each album release.

Overall, the book felt much talking with good friends over a few too many drinks - unpretentious, memorable, and fun. Never a Dull Moment is conversational, interesting, and grounded in a true love for the music of 1971. Recommended for music and history fans of all ages. show less

I found David Hepworth’s latest book particularly enjoyable. It is, after all, always rewarding to read a book by someone who is clearly knowledgeable about his chosen subject, without ever stooping to patronise his readers. Hepworth has spent most of his working life engaged with pop and rock music, firstly in the music retail industry and subsequently as a journalist or television presenter. In his previous books he has eulogised 1971 as the greatest year in the history of rock (a show more hypothesis that I found intriguing, even if I would put in a counterclaim on behalf of 1975), and offered a year by year portrait of some of the greatest starts within the genre.

Here he looks at the golden age of the pop and rock LP, starting with the release of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, and finishing in 1982, which saw the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which had, until just a few weeks ago, been credited with the highest certified sales of any album. [Thriller was dislodged from that pinnacle earley this year by the Eagles’ Greatest hits 1971-1975.]

Although Hepworth is a few years older than me, I could clearly identify with the experiences he recounts. As a teenager I used to spend far too much time hanging around my local record shop – the now sadly lamented Castle Records which was located just off the market place in the Charnwood Precinct in Loughborough – thumbing through the new releases and wondering wistfully how long it would take me to save up enough pocket money to buy my next selection.

Hepworth’s principal contention, with which I concur, was that there was something special about LPs. Subseqeunt media may have proved more convenient, and afforded greater quality, but they simply didn’t feel the same, or provoke the same level of emotional involvement. He is careful to steer clear of the debate as to which medium offers the best experience (i.e. is the ‘warmth’ of vinyl, despite its attendant surface noise and vulnerability to damage, better or worse than the often antiseptic quality of digital reproduction?). He is, instead, more interested in the relationship that the buyer had with a new record: carrying it home (perhaps provoking conversations on the bus about the relative merits of the artist over their rivals), the almost ritualistic stages passed when playing it for the first time, and then storing it with the rest of one’s collection.

He then goes through each year in his chosen span, flagging up some of the more remarkable albums that were released. His choices are not always the obvious ones, but he always offers and informative and entertaining explanation behind his selections.

Very entertaining and thought-provoking. show less

A fun read with plenty of nostalgia and space for arguing about provocative statements of opinion made as fact. It is probably the comparison of one’s own lived musical experience to Hepworth’s selection of defining “rock stars” which makes this book so engaging, readable and enjoyable.
I was born in the early sixties and the music of the seventies and early eighties were the soundtrack of my life, so I am probably in about the middle of the age group at whom this book is aimed. My show more musical tastes were for glam rock before I was a teenager and now are more towards progressive rock and country rock, so for me this book is more about the general soundtrack, rather than the music to which I really listened. As Hepworth says, “All history is subjective. This book is no exception.”
But this is well written journalism with plenty of fascinating anecdotes, humour, knowingness and enjoyably arguable opinions to keep me interested. And as written by someone who started working as a music journalist in Britain in the seventies, it also appears well researched about the first twenty years of this survey. show less