This Ain't the Summer of Love

This lively and entertaining revisionist history of rock music after 1970 reconsiders the roles of two genres, heavy metal and punk. Instead of considering metal and punk as aesthetically opposed to each other, Steve Waksman breaks new ground by showing that a profound connection exists between them. Metal and punk enjoyed a charged, intimate relationship that informed both genres in terms of sound, image, and discourse.This Ain't the Summer of Lovetraces this connection back to the early 1970s, when metal first asserted its identity and punk arose independently as an ideal about what rock should be and could become, and upends established interpretations of metal and punk and their place in rock history.

Steve Waksman is Associate Professor of Music and American Studies at Smith College. He is the author of Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience