Five Years Ahead of My Time: Garage Rock from the 1950s to the Present by Seth Bovey (review)

Think of the salient elements in the lives of the American baby-boomer generation in the mid-twentieth century—a huge cohort of teenagers with disposable income and leisure time, living in bedroom communities as part of the growing suburbanization that provided more space for families and their activities. Then toss in the hand grenade of Beatlemania, and you have the makings of garage rock. Exemplified by guitar-based songs with few chords that teenagers could create with their friends in home spaces on inexpensive instruments, the genre took hold in 1960s with minor hits like "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five. The fad faded but never died out completely, instead finding pockets around the world and cyclical comebacks. With Five Years Ahead of My Time: Garage Rock from the 1950s to the Present, Seth Bovey provides a comprehensive overview of the genre across time and across the globe.

Bovey opens after the original rock and roll explosion of the 1950s, when the charts had turned bland with whitebread crooners and teen idols late in the decade. This was offset by the rise of raucous rock instrumentals by the likes of guitarists Duane Eddy and Link Wray, aided by the increasing coverage of pop music on television. The mass media exposure and the relative simplicity of the tunes, coupled with an influx of cheap Japanese imports, inspired and enabled American teens to pick up guitars. They formed bands, supported by the infrastructure of a large peer audience and venues that hosted dances for the teen baby boomers. One of the first bands to make a name for themselves was Tacoma's the Wailers, a band with origins in jazz who set a template for rock and roll, then incorporated elements of rhythm and blues into their live act.

The early 1960s laid the foundation for garage rock, fueled by teens' desire to dance. Dance clubs sprung up in large metropolitan areas. Those venues in the more isolated Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest provided opportunities for local acts to thrive, since the big names were less likely to tour there than on the East Coast. Bovey covers the career arc of the Sonics as a standout for both their musicality and their impact; a great strength of the book is his concise but insightful histories of many bands in the genre and brief descriptions of many more. In Southern California, instrumental rock morphed into surf rock, and Bovey covers that evolution with plenty of detail on what made it sonically distinct.

Then the Beatles blew up, creating a wake of imitators. Teen boys wanted to emulate them, if only to attract teen girls. Bovey extracts the signature sounds, identifies their historic roots, and describes how they manifested in the repertoire of numerous Beatlesinfluenced bands. He also examines other branches of the mid-1960s heyday: the rhythm-and-blues strand of the British Invasion, folk rock, garage punk, and garage psych. After noting a common lyrical trope of antagonism towards women, which he attributes to the sexual insecurities of teenage boys, he devotes a section to all-girl garage groups, who are often overlooked in the genre. He singles out the Pleasure Seekers's story as indicative of the sexism of the era and for launching Suzi Quatro's career.

In the wake of Beatlemania, garage rock became a global phenomenon. It took hold in Spain and throughout most of Latin America. In Argentina, a Uruguayan invasion accompanied the British one. Garage rock found footholds across continental Europe, aided by British pirate radio, and in Asia and Oceania. Bovey digs out great stories, such as the British groups that relocated to Sweden to escape stiff competition at home and to seek a rabid market abroad. The page he devotes to the Dandy Girls could spawn a movie: the Norwegian teenage...