Introduction: When Men in Leather Pants Were Basically Deities
Remember when musicians weren’t vegan podcasters in knitwear? When they trashed hotel rooms, drank their own body weight in gin and still made it to the stage with eyeliner intact? David Hepworth does. And he’s written a book to make sure you don’t forget either.
Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955–1994 is part history lesson, part eulogy and part gloriously snarky love letter to a time when rock stars were larger than life and frequently smaller than pants. From Elvis’s first swivel to Cobain’s tragic full stop, Hepworth charts the bizarre, beautiful chaos of rock stardom and how it all went gloriously off the rails.
Spoiler alert: Spotify influencers with acoustic guitars do not count.
Table of Contents
The Premise: A Chronological March Through Ego and Amplifiers
Hepworth’s not here to give you one long, droning lecture. In Uncommon People He slices his timeline into chapters by year, from 1955 to 1994, each focused on a single figure who, for better or worse, defined that moment in music. Some are titans – Bowie, Jagger, Springsteen. Others are lesser-known yet fascinating footnotes – Billy Fury, Gene Vincent, or the ever-underrated Chrissie Hynde.
Uncommon Peoples structure is clever. It feels like flipping through a gloriously warped yearbook of rock ‘n’ roll delinquents. There’s no single protagonist. Instead, there’s a parade of egos, eyeliner, overdoses and outright brilliance.
It’s a bit like Love Actually—if everyone was drunk, playing a Les Paul, and screaming about alienation.
What Is a “Rock Star,” Anyway?
Hepworth makes a compelling case that the rock star was a very specific cultural phenomenon: not just a musician, but a myth in leather boots. They were rebels, sex symbols, accidental philosophers and capitalist disasters rolled into one.
They didn’t just make music. They were the product—equal parts charisma, controversy and cocaine.
These were people who didn’t own phones, they smashed them. They didn’t post selfies, they accidentally started cults. They didn’t rehearse, they “vibed.”
Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars argues that true rock stardom couldn’t survive the internet age. Not because people stopped caring, but because the mystery died. Once you can Google your idol’s breakfast or see them apologising for mildly offensive tweets, the illusion collapses. Rock stars were supposed to be unknowable. Now they’re on TikTok doing sea shanties.
Highlights: Meltdowns, Majesty and the March of Madness
Each chapter is its own mini-biopic, and while some entries are reverent, most are deliciously barbed. Hepworth loves these people, but not blindly. He’s as happy dissecting their flaws as their riffs.
A few standout chapters:
- 1956 – Elvis Presley: The moment rock got its swagger. Hepworth portrays Elvis not just as a musical pioneer, but a man both cursed and blessed by his own beauty. Spoiler: things don’t end well.
- 1973 – David Bowie: A glam-rock shapeshifter who basically invented performance anxiety as an aesthetic. Bowie is painted as both genius and human panic attack.
- 1980 – Malcolm McLaren: The punk puppet master who arguably weaponised chaos more effectively than any band he managed. Proof that sometimes the real rock star is the marketing guy with a God complex.
- 1994 – Kurt Cobain: The last of the true rock gods and the book’s heartbreaking finale. Hepworth handles Cobain’s story with sharp precision and deep sorrow, capturing the moment the curtain truly fell.
It’s not just a playlist of dead legends – it’s a slow-motion car crash of cultural transformation, with a killer soundtrack.
Sarcasm Meets Sentimentality: A Balancing Act in Doc Martens
One of the best things about Uncommon People is Hepworth’s tone. He’s not here to glorify self-destruction, nor does he wag a moralising finger. Instead, he observes these mad geniuses with the bemused affection of a zookeeper describing a particularly flamboyant chimpanzee.
Yes, it’s funny. But it’s also mournful. Hepworth doesn’t just chart the rise of the rock star – he charts its fall. With every chapter, you can feel the walls closing in: the corporate creep, the media glare, the creeping doom of celebrity culture morphing into commodity culture.
By the time we get to the ’90s, the wild, untamed energy of early rock has been polished into boy bands, cynicism and… well, Coldplay. The rock star is no longer a god. He’s a marketing campaign in skinny jeans.
What Makes This Book Different From Every Other “Hey, Remember Rock?” Memoir?
Three things:
- Chronological Cleverness – Instead of a messy memoir or thematic waffle, Hepworth gives each year its own rock deity. It’s a clever conceit that brings historical context without lecturing.
- Balanced Tone – It’s hilarious, but never dismissive. Hepworth can eviscerate a pop poseur with one sentence, then follow it up with a sincere tribute to their cultural impact.
- Painfully Accurate Cultural Observations – His insights into fame, fandom, masculinity and media are sharp enough to draw blood. He doesn’t just write about music, he writes about what it meant.
If Nick Hornby wrote while sipping whisky and muttering “Christ, what a circus,” this would be the result.
Who Should Read This Book?
Anyone who’s ever air-guitared to Thin Lizzy at 2am
People who think rock peaked with London Calling and everything since has been synth-pop foreplay
Millennials trying to understand what their dad means when he says “real music”
Music nerds who love footnotes and hate Ed Sheeran
Conclusion: The End of the Rock Star – And Why That’s Both Sad and Hilarious
Uncommon People isn’t just a history of rock music. It’s a funeral and a celebration wrapped into one leather-clad, cigarette-scented package. It mourns a time when fame was mysterious, dangerous, and occasionally fatal. When music was the message and the mess.
David Hepworth doesn’t just tell you what happened – he tells you why it mattered. And how we went from Jim Morrison swigging whisky on stage to YouTubers doing “lo-fi indie covers” of Wonderwall.
So if you’ve ever felt that the Spotify algorithm is trying to erase your soul, or if you just want to remember what it was like when musicians were walking car crashes with guitars, this is the book for you.
Uncommon People
As heard on BBC 6 Music with Shaun Keveny, BBC Radio 5 Live and Talk Radio with Eamonn Holmes
The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations.
What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had.
What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn’t stay the course.
In Uncommon People, David Hepworth zeroes in on defining moments and turning points in the lives of forty rock stars from 1955 to 1995, taking us on a journey to burst a hundred myths and create a hundred more.
As this tribe of uniquely motivated nobodies went about turning themselves into the ultimate somebodies, they also shaped us, our real lives and our fantasies. Uncommon People isn’t just their story. It’s ours as well.
