"Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential — there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change the world, except as a new brand of painkiller ...In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market."