The Tragedy Of “Stomp Clap Hey”

In 1971, the great rock critic Lester Bangs tried to imagine a time when the music of the recent past would seem alien. Projecting himself into the old age he would never reach, he pictured his future grandkids asking him about the music of the ’60s: “What’s all this shit about the Yardbirds?” It was a challenge to articulate the significance of a decade that had already hardened into a myth, as well as to reckon again with an original whose legions of imitators would go on to take over the world.