VU What If?

I’ve always enjoyed Chuck Klosterman, first for his books & then as a podcast guest.
I’ve loved the Velvet Underground for almost 40 years.
Over the last week I’ve been in a big VU mood, even more than usual.
See HERE.
And HERE.
And suddenly this pops up - Klosterman’s got a brand new book that seems to have been written just for me:

What if everything we understood about mainstream American music exploded from a single identifiable Big Bang moment and, setting aside other juicy potential candidates for it, that moment was Beatlemania? Or what if things had gone … another way?

Chuck Klosterman’s Rock*: A Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music uses that premise to get history boomeranging in another direction. The book beams in from a world where the culture overlooks the professionalism and earnestness of the Beatles because Velvetmania took off in its place. It all starts, in Klosterman’s alternate history, when 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico becomes a a massive influence on rock, drone, and punk music rather than (as in our reality) a commercial slow burn that led Brian Eno to claim that the few people who bought the album each started their own bands.

Rock* extrapolates wild timelines from this notion, fleshing out a late 20th century where gender experimentation, enthused simplicity, occasional inscrutability, and biting apathy become prominent after Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, & Co. log the best-selling album of all time. Suddenly, papers report rashes of women lapsing into monotone “Nico Speak.” The brutalist thump of drummer Moe Tucker renders the showmen in Led Zeppelin and the Who irrelevant. The clout and moxie of unionized rock critics exceeds that of the Teamsters in the 1970s.

Of course it's already in the mail, winging its way to me on flights of drone rock fancy.