Intimate Moments in Rock's Odyssey: LAT critic Hilburn looks back 40 years

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LA Times: A Backstage Pass to Intimate Moments in Rock's Odyssey
Meeting Joplin and her demons, having cornflakes with Lennon and coffee with Bono, going to Folsom with Cash and outraging Elvis.
By Robert Hilburn, Special to The Times
July 22, 2006


Robert Hilburn with John Lennon

....It was the first of many private moments I had with great artists in my nearly 40 years as The Times' pop critic. Among the encounters: sharing cornflake dinners with John Lennon, having a post-Grammy coffee with Bono and sitting in the kitchen with Johnny and June Carter Cash. Each one gave me not only insight into the creative process but also a deeper understanding of what drives artists — or destroys them.

Joplin's Hollywood Bowl show came near the end of rock's most explosive decade. Bob Dylan and the Beatles had turned the primitive energy of teen-oriented '50s rock into an art form that could express adult themes and emotions. Rock stars were suddenly pop culture gods whose music was embedded in the social and political fabric of a generation.

But many musicians found it difficult to adjust, especially those like Joplin, whose art was driven in part by feverish personal demons and an overpowering lack of self-esteem.

As we saw decades later in the suicide of Kurt Cobain, no generation is immune from the pressures of fame. But the rock star role was particularly difficult in the '60s and '70s, an era when young people prided themselves on stepping into the unknown....

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For me, the time with Joplin was a crash course in rock 'n' roll reality — an introduction to themes I'd encounter time and again. In the end, she got past my clumsy start and began talking about feeling like an outcast growing up, her music, her lifestyle and the one constant in her world: loneliness....

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-hilburn22jul22,1,4162476,full.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews

HILBURN'S FAVORITE ALBUMS, BY DECADE: 50's, Elvis Presley's "Sunrise"; 60's, Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited"; 70's, John Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band," Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run"; 80's, U2's "The Joshua Tree"; 90's and beyond, White Stripes' "Get Behind Me Satan"