Switched On
Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution
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The Moog synthesizer "bent the course of music forever" Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Einstein hair and pocket protectors. He walked into history in 1964 when his homemade contraption unexpectedly became a sensation---suddenly everyone wanted a Moog. The Beatles, The Doors, The Byrds, and Stevie Wonder discovered his synthesizer, and it came to be featured in seminal film scores including Apocalypse Now and A Clockwork Orange. The Moog's game-changing sounds saturated 60's counterculture and burst into the disco party in the 70's to set off the electronic dance music movement. Bob had singlehandedly founded the synth industry and become a star in the process. But he was also going broke. Imitators copied his technology, the musicians' union accused him of replacing live players, and Japanese competitors started overtaking his work. He struggled to hang on to his inventions, his business, and his very name. Bob's story upends our notions of success and wealth, showing that the two don't always go together. In Switched On, author Albert Glinsky draws on exclusive access to Bob Moog's personal archives and his probing interviews with Bob's family and a multitude of associates, for this first complete biography of the man and his work. Switched On takes the reader on a roller coaster ride at turns triumphant, heart-breaking, and frequently laugh out loud absurd---a nuanced trip through the public and private worlds of this legendary inventor who altered the course of music.
About this Author
Albert Glinsky is an American composer and author. His music has been performed internationally and he holds honors and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. He was educated at The Juilliard School and New York University. His music ranges from acoustic to electronic works. His book, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, with a foreword by Bob Moog, is the standard work on Leon Theremin, and won the 2001 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Glinsky is a frequent lecturer and appears regularly on television, radio, and podcasts. www.albertglinsky.com
Reviews
"Switched On makes a significant contribution to the history of American music in the 20th century." --Jamie Bernstein, author of Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
"Like Moog's eponymous instrument, Glinsky takes the raw information and material of Bob Moog's life, and skillfully composes it into a beautiful textual symphony that evokes the man (and the music's) complicated humanity. Switched On is a sonic literary triumph!" --David Sax, author of The Revenge of Analog
"Albert Glinsky paints an amazing saga of a musical inventor who changed the music world, but who could never manage to find himself a stable position within it. In lively and fast-paced prose, Glinsky draws myriad connections that sparked beneath the surface of the music world in the 1950s and '60s among a kaleidoscopic variety of names, some famous, some influential behind the scenes. In so doing, he does for Robert Moog what his earlier book did for Leon Theremin: make a rather shadowy figure look like the secret center of the universe for rock music, the avant-garde, the counterculture, and the commercial music business." --Kyle Gann, author of Charles Ives's Concord: Essays After a Sonata
"Bob Moog. Iconic name, iconic man. His revolutionary instrument made it possible for me to find my true voice. I am forever thankful to him. And that's why I'm very excited about Switched On for shining a light on this giant of musical history." --Jan Hammer, composer, keyboardist, and former member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra
"I loved the book! Based on superb research into the history of the cloak and dagger era that defined the emergence of analog electronic music instruments and the challenges and misunderstandings of what this new technology meant, Glinsky gives us the very human portrait of a man who embodied the intersection of invention, musical culture, business and destiny. I lived through this era, but to see it etched in such defining detail untangles all the loose ends of a sometimes painful story. Switched On is a page-turner." --Suzanne Ciani, composer, electronic music pioneer
"In Switched On, Albert Glinsky shows the character and brilliance of Bob Moog - a wry wizard of applying science to music, and the creator of tones and tools now foundational to our culture. Tracing Moog's technical advances in close but accessible detail, Glinsky gives an enlightening view of one of the twentieth century's most important musical innovators." --Ian Port, Author of The Birth Of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll
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