The Rock Music Imagination

The Rock Music Imagination takes on a huge and sprawling topic—and doesn’t disappoint. McParland maps out the diverse and often complex terrain of the rock music imagination during its height of creativity from 1964-1980. Drawing on multiple theories concerning the creative process, he cuts a path through blues and psychedelic rock, folk rock and prog rock, utopian and dystopian imaginings, science fiction meanderings and humanitarian appeals, and more. It is an ambitious undertaking that not only succeeds but also suggests further lines of inquiry to the serious student of rock music. -- Thomas Kitts, Co-editor of Popular Music and Society and Rock Music Studies
Robert McParland’s The Rock Music Imagination explores the roles of creativity, imagination, and emotional expression in the era of “classic rock” in a manner that is rewarding for the indoctrinated fan and accessible for the uninitiated reader. For those familiar with the subjects, McParland presents novel readings, interpretations, and connections between the popular and less popular, the creative process (produced from within the established commercial recording industry), and literature and related arts. For the newer fan of classic rock music, The Rock Music Imagination provides a primer of introduction that eschews linear and temporal timelines, scenes, and surface relations in favor of creative and imaginative connections between otherwise disconnected artists. Far from the repetitive playlists of classic rock format radio, McParland rescues classic rock’s creative influence from the banality of one or two representative songs by nostalgia acts in favor of a web-like analysis of innovators and innovation in one of popular music’s greatest “golden eras.” -- Colin Helb, Elizabethtown College