Almost Grown
The Rise of Rock
James Miller
415 pages including index
Published in 1999

I picked this up in a one-pound bookshop out of curiosity. For one pound there's little risk, isn't there? It looked interesting and though I don't often read books about rock, the writing looked good enough to try it. There was a passion and enthusiasm in the first chapter I read in the store that gripped me and promised much for the rest of the book.

Unfortunately, this promise was only partially fulfilled.

Almost Grown, as the preface admits, is not an objective history of rock, nor a comprehensive one. It starts in 1947, just before rock 'n roll was born and stops in 1977, with the death of Elvis, omitting a lot along the way. Rock music's history is shown in small, anecdotical chapters, each dealing with one specific moment in time. This works well when Miller is passionate about that particular aspect of rock, but less so when he isn't. Again, this is somewhat foreshadowed in the preface, when he admits that his heart lies in the early days of rock music, the fifties and sixties when rock was still young.

This is very noticable once you get past that period in the book. The first part of the book, which covers the "origin" of rock, is engaging and covered in detail. The second and third part, which trace the evolution of rock in the fifties are similarly gripping, even if Miller is a bit too enthusiastic about Elvis for my liking. It's after he has covered the emergence of the Beatles as the world's most influencial rock band that things sag.

Apart from a few incidental chapters everything after the Beatles seems perfunctory. The usual points are touched upon but never come alive and an unpleasant sneering tone creeps in. Miller's heart is not in it anymore and it shows.

Worse than that: too much is skipped over or never mentioned. Where are the Beach Boys or any English band other then the Beatles and The Stones? Where's the prog rock movement, or hardrock? What about funk, what about black music? A whole six chapters are devoted to Elvis, but most of the black artists of the fifties, sixties and seventies are glossed over. And why stop the book in 1977? Does Miller really believe nothing interesting happened after?

I don't know James Miller and had not even heard of him before I read Almost Grown. Sadly, the picture I got from him through this book is that of an middle aged, somewhat embittered and blinkered babyboomer, caught in the trap of nostalgia. Had he only limited himself to what he really wanted to write about, rock in the fifties and sixties, this could've been a good, interesting book, now it's only a disappointment.