Life is but a rock 'n' roll dream! Thirty years ago, artist Guy Peellaert teamed up with author Nik Cohn to create this fantasy tribute to rock 'n' roll and r&b. Through surreal texts and images, Cohn and Peelaert paint an imaginary world where the great gods of mid-century popular music appear in their own settings (the Drifters under the boardwalk, Otis Redding on the dock of the bay, the Beach boys on the beach). Here, rock music is a "secret society, an enclosed teen fantasy" treated with the same kind of passion and obsession famously generated by the most fanatic of lovesick, pimply adolescents. All of the founding heroes of rock, soul, and pop appear in peellaert and Cohn's colorful hallucinations, including Buddy Holly, Elvis, Ray Charles, Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, the Rolling stones, the Beatles, the Who, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, and many more. Taschen's revival of this unique book comes at a time when rock is making a strong comeback and young musicians are taking inspiration from the very stars featured in rock dreams.
You got it wrong. It goes 'sex, drugs and rock n roll' Hot Topic emerged when I was just starting my Freshman year in high school. Growing up in suburbia sucked for a lot of reasons. One big reason being that there really were not any record stores, rock t-shirt shops or head shops in the area. I actually made my own rock t shirts for years, using stencils to spell out things like "The Beatles" and t-shirt iron-ons. You had to get creative and in many ways it was teenage DIY at it's best. I was introduced to Hot Topic the same way every bored suburban kid did...by going to the mall. When you live in the suburbs, all there really is to do is to visit the mall. And I did a lot of that in my youth. When I discovered Hot Topic I was pretty pleased and I could finally find shirts that said "Blondie" or "The Ramones" on it and I didn't have to make it myself. I was excited to find a store that sold so much of what I liked. Not long
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