Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock by Steven Hyden – Halbs Book Review

Twilight of the Gods is Steven Hyden’s power balled tribute to the genre of classic rock and what it’s meant in his life. In this entertaining and thoughtful read, with chapters structured as a track list with accompanying liner notes, Hyden meditates on why he loves classic rock, what it means to lose heroes, and on the future of rock.

As you may be able to guess by the title and the cover, two of Hyden’s foundational bands are Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. He uses these two bands to highlight two of the things that resonated the most with him about the genre. Growing up, Hyden wished he had the swagger of Led Zep (“the guys in Led Zeppelin dressed like sex-hungry geishas”), but identified more with The Dark Side of the Moon (“Pink Floyd depicted what I actually was—gloomy”).

While the author is a few years older than me, I identified with so much of what he was saying. The guys (and it was mostly guys) in classic rock bands were already gods by the time he came to the music – he saw himself as studying at the feet of larger-than-life figures of debauchery and wisdom:

In my mind, the greatest rock bands the world has ever known were eternally frozen in their primes…I was in awe of my heroes. Loving classic rock has always been an act of faith: albums as sacred texts, live concerts as quasireligious rituals, and rock mythology as a means of self-discovery…what made classic rock an obsession for me was the belief that I was plugging into something profound and larger than life.

While Hyden loves rock, he understands that it has a dark side. The tendency to romanticize substance abuse and early death and the dangers of the road (“Seger was as burned out by rock ’n’ roll as I was by the eighth grade”) receive a lot of focus. He also explores the complicated relationship between rock culture and women. A steady diet of classic rock can lead to vieewing women as two-dimensional objects of conquest. An abashed Hyden admits that it wasn’t until he listened to his estranged father’s copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors that he really thought about the rich inner world and agency of the half of the population that he had taken for granted. In the same vein, he provides a thoughtful defense of the popular “cheesy” Midwestern rock bands that his mom liked. These bands provided a fantasy of a romantic man willing to put his heart and feelings on the line and to be devoted. Also covered are the genre’s exclusion of people of color and the exclusivist nature of the subculture.

With both a great love of the music and a sobering realization of the issues related to rock culture, Hyden finds reason to be optimistic about the future of the genre. He hopes rock will be a place for the marginalized is it used to be, instead of the music of stuffy campaign rallies as it is, now. “The old classic-rock myth about the white-male superman who pursues truth via decadence and virtuosic displays of musicianship has run its course,” he writes. “The time has come for new legends about different kinds of heroes.”

The best books change you, and Twilight of the Gods definitely changed me. I’ve had to reexamine some of the shadowy aspects of my beloved genre, and I’ve also tried to make strides in listening to more diverse music, just as I’m doing with reading this year. I recommend this one for music fans because it works as both a funny autobiography, a music history, and criticism.