The Rock Music Imagination is an exploration of rock artists in their social and artistic contexts, particularly between 1964 and 1980, and of rock music in relation to literature, that is, creative expression, fantastic imagination, and contemporary fiction about rock. Robert McParland analyzes how rock music touches our imaginative lives by looking at themes that appear in classic rock music: freedom and liberation, utopia and dystopia, community, rebellion, the outsider, the quest for transcendence, monstrosity, erotic and spiritual love, imaginative vision, and mystery. The Rock Music Imagination explores blues imagination, countercultural dreams of utopia, rock’s critiques of society and images of dystopia, rock’s inheritance from romanticism, science fiction and mythic imagination in progressive rock, and rock’s global reach and potential to provide hope and humanitarian assistance.

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In this addition to the "For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music" series, McParland (English, Felician Univ., and an ASCAP member) focuses on the period between 1964 (the beginning of the "British invasion") and the 1980s and joins the daunting discussion of rock’s social and artistic contexts and rock music in relation to literature as a product of rock music’s imagination. McParland focuses such classic themes as liberation, freedom, utopia/dystopia, the outsider, imaginative vision, and mystery. Including abundant references to songs and artists, discussions hinge on the author's extensive source work. He researched the standard literature on American popular music (specifically music of the 1960s), including work by all the usual suspects—Walter Everett, Susan McClary, Robert Walser. McParland discusses significant aspects of the musical imagination in reference to the blues, progressive rock, punk and new wave, the lyricist as poet, rock in literature, music as community identity/identifier, and the role of the musical imagination in the face of crisis. Part music history, part cultural analysis, The Rock Music Imagination works hard to address heady issues in American popular music.

Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.