Count me out: why rock and politics don't mix.

• Author: Segal, David
• Position: On Political Books

We All Want to Change the World ought to be a shorter book. The history of rock and politics could be summarized in an hour or two, because pop stars--or their handlers--are typically smart enough to stick to their strengths, namely selling music and piercing their extremities. Many performers are simply apolitical or indifferent, and the few who dare to approach the podium tend to tiptoe. Even the Beatles tune that provides this book's title is a study in equivocation. "You can count me out," John Lennon tells destruction-minded agitators on "Revolution 1," a cut from the White Album. He then promptly changes his mind. "In," he mutters a moment later.

But with We All Want, author Tom Waldman wades into this pool as though it were a great lake, and for 300 pages he dawdles like a man with a month to kill. His goal is strikingly timid. The book, be announces in the prologue, "holds that the shape, direction and the history of rock and roll, soul and rap has been affected by the Vietnam War, women's lib/feminism, gay liberation, black nationalism and self-reliance, the environmental movement, affirmative action, President Reagan and President Clinton."

Well, no doubt he's right. It would be bizarre if an art form as popular and as porous as rock were totally impervious to current events, wouldn't it? The question isn't whether politics has had an impact on rock, and vice versa, but how large that impact has been. And the answer is: not very.

This couldn't be news to Waldman, a former congressional assistant mad author of a book on Chicano music. He quotes rockers throughout We All Want who seem to be urging him to give back his advance and write about something else. "I've always said, and I don't think I'm being" revisionary here," says Michael Stipe of R.E.M., "I don't think music and politics mix." (And R.E.M. is actually one of the more civic-minded bands out there.)"I think the only vehicle for political change is going to vote," says Ray Manzarak, former keyboardist for the Doors. "I don't see how rock can affect the propositions on the ballot, or the list of candidates in the national election."

Waldman doesn't heed these warnings. Instead, he tells the familiar tale of rock's origins in the '50s, its maturity through the'60s, its nihilistic turn when the Sex Pistols showed up in the '70s, and its assorted subplots over the last three decades, all the while casting an eye toward the political realm for any evidence that Planet Rock and...