Emerging from a period of protest and social unrest, 1968 was the year that ushered in gut-punching sounds that would define classic and hard rock—the formation of bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath rolled away the light sounds of psychedelic music and Flower Power. Celebrated music journalist & author John Einarson provides the first detailed account of this crucial period.

Einarson begins by examining the birth of psychedelic music and experimentation beginning in 1965 and the resultant Summer of Love, showing how The Who and The Jimi Hendrix Experience planted the seeds for the harder rock sounds at The Monterey Pop Festival. Music and popular culture always reflect prevailing social and political conditions, and 1968 was no exception. Events like the Tet Offensive, student protests around the world, the My Lai massacre, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the Chicago Democratic National Convention protests, and the election of Richard Nixon set the stage for a more visceral music that reflected the sense of alienation, frustration, and violence among young people who rejected the vacuous platitudes of Flower Power.

Einarson traces the evolution of a harder rock sound throughout the year as well as the formation of pivotal hard rock and heavy metal bands in 1968, including Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin who would provide the all-important foundation for what we know today as classic rock.