Michael Walker, "What You Want is in the Limo" (Spiegel and Grau, 2013)

Jan 13, 2014

What You Want is in the Limo

On the Road with Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and the Who in 1973, the Year the Sixties Died and the Modern Rock Star Was Born

Michael Walker

Hosted by Greg Renoff

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Summary

Conventional wisdom holds that the birth of the rock star came in 1956 with the ascendance of Elvis Presley. Not so, says author Michael Walker, who argues in his page-turning What You Want is in the Limo (Spiegel and Grau, 2013) that in 1973 the Elvis, Chuck Berry and Beatles styled "rock and roll stardom" of the fifties and sixties gave way to "modern rock stardom," as embodied by the members of Led Zeppelin, the Alice Cooper Band, and the Who. This new way of living and performing came into full bloom that year as these legendary groups toured America in a manner that bore little resemblance to the everybody-jam-in-the-van cross-country rock tours of prior years. With what Walker calls "the infrastructure" of rock stardom now in place, private jets and black limousines whisked these musicians from luxury hotels to cavernous arenas where they performed in front of monstrous crowds. When it was time to wind down after the show, these stars enjoyed the benefits of a "halter-topped, lude-dropping coke-and-glitter-flecked" rock culture that fetishized depravity and provided riches previously unheard of in the music business. While Walker's addictive and fun book provides the kind of sordid and hedonistic details that are the makings of all great rock biographies, he also offers up the morality play corrective that demonstrates the costs of this manner of living. Alice Cooper later conceded that his record-breaking 1973 tour "wrecked" his band, which broke up soon after. For Led Zeppelin, the years following 1973 saw the band enter a "creative funk that stoke[d] rumors that the band is cursed." The Who, Walker writes, departed "the decade after a pair of desultory albums." But before the fall, these musicians threw one hell of a yearlong party. Michael Walker is the author of the national bestseller Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times,the Washington Post, andRolling Stone, among other publications. He lives in Los Angeles and can reached via Twitter @mwwwalker.