Time Travel: From the Sex Pistols to Nirvana: Pop, Media and Sexuality, 1977-96

by Jon Savage

A collection of essays on pop music, including pieces on The Clash, The Sex Pistols, David Bowie and Nirvana. The book offers an account of changing fashions in style and musical taste, and of related youth, hatred, androgyny, sexual experimentation, drugs, America, Englishness.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Punk, Essays, Cultural

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Jon Savage (born Jonathan Malcolm Sage) is an English writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his definitive history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England's Dreaming (1991).

Reviews

[Andrea Janov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually love Jon Savage, but this fell a bit flat. Maybe because this was a collection of magazine pieces, mostly on bands that we already know so much about. Maybe at the time they were cutting edge and introducing the world to new sounds. But, to me it has all the trappings of rock journalism, too short to be insightful and too cumbersome to replace actually listening to the music yourself. I, myself used to write album reviews and stopped for this reason, nothing I was saying was going to change anyone's mind if they actually put on the record (and today, we can preview anything, so there is no need to really hype).

[Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

In places this is really interesting but it drags at points and certainly gets rather repetitive by the end. It suffers by spending most of its page time feeling very disconnected from each of its chapters but ultimately I think its valuable if you want an overview of pop.

[Tadeusz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lively immersion into pop culture through short, opinionated essays.

[Brett · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of pieces that Savage published in various music magazines from 1977 to 1996. They weave music criticism in with broad cultural commentary, and many of them are fun, interesting pieces. However, there's not much of an overarching theme, and I can't say there's a lot to draw readers to this unless they are a particular fan of the author. I thought Savage's England's Dreaming was an excellent piece of musical/cultural writing, and I would definately recommend it. This one is just less urgent, less topical, more dated, and more scattershot.

[Ian Mathers · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's interesting stuff, but more of historical/cultural interest than world changing for me. Valuable to have around, for sure.