The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band is Killing Me offers an eye-opening exploration of the state of classic rock, its past and future, the impact it has had, and what its loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life.

How can classic rock live on when its idols are dying all around us?

Twilight of the Gods is a bold, often humorous, and provocative book about our rock gods and the real messages they leave behind. Since the 1960s, artists like the Rolling Stones, the Who, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Black Sabbath, and Bruce Springsteen have ushered the classic rock canon forward. Even groups that are no longer active—the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin—continue to wield an outsized amount of cultural capital. But no matter how entrenched these classic rockers have been, you can already see signs of their decline.

Mixing personal memoir, criticism, and journalism, Steven Hyden explores the ways that classic rock changed the culture—how it established the album as music’s answer to the novel, and rock concerts as the secular equivalent to church—and asks whether any of these signposts can endure. He investigates the rise and fall of classic rock radio and asks whether the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is telling the right version of rock history. Twilight of the Gods explains what we can learn from rock gods and their music, and tries to answer the most important question: Is classic rock ephemeral or forever?