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The final word from one of popular music's greatest critics.
In the summer of 2020, acclaimed music critic and journalist Peter Goddard began work on a new book that would take readers on a journey back through his fifty-plus years spent writing professionally about rock music and the musical styles circling it—everything from blues and jazz to country and classical. His plan was to revisit his old haunts and their habitués, scenes and figures he first wrote about starting in the mid-1960s when he became Canada’s first on-staff popular music critic, to show how ongoing revisions continually reframe first impressions.
Tragically, Goddard died in 2022 before work on the manuscript was complete. But many of the core essays—on Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Who, k.d. lang, David Bowie, Liza Minelli, The Band, Neil Diamond, and others—are here. Accompanying these new essays is a collection of some of the best writing of Goddard’s career—ranging from interviews with B. B. King, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and Janis Joplin to reviews of classic albums by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Neil Young, to close readings of Leonard Cohen, Anne Murray, Led Zeppelin, and Gordon Lightfoot. Taken as a whole, One Foot on the Platform represents more than fifty years of thought and writing by one of Canada’s foremost cultural critics.
"This diverting collection of concert reviews, essays, and other writings ... shines with surprisingly intimate portraits of some of music’s most famous personalities ... It adds up to an illuminating record of rock’s coming-of-age." — Publisher's Weekly
"A rock ’n’ roll journey well worth taking." —The Toronto Star
“This is the soundtrack of our lives in print.” — Winnipeg Free Press
"A colourful collection of rock 'n' roll insight." —The Globe and Mail
“Despite the famous company he kept, it’s Goddard who is ultimately the star of this quietly autobiographical book.” — Literary Review of Canada
“Like rediscovering a long-lost album by your favourite band.” —Elliott Lefko, AEG/Goldenvoice Concerts (promoter for Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Sigur Ros, and Courtney Barnett)
"Peter Goddard's brilliant reporting helped define an era." —Jeanne Beker, television host and author of Heart on My Sleeve: Stories from a Life Well Worn
“This illuminating collection confirms Goddard's place among the world’s finest critics.” —Nicholas Jennings, author of Lightfoot
“Through Goddard’s eyes, we witness rock’s ascendance from teen trash to adult art, an evolution he playfully interrogated throughout his career. Essential reading for those who want to understand not just where today’s music came from, but the long, hard-earned shadow of the Sixties Generation.” —Jonny Dovercourt, author of Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History of Toronto Music, 1957–2001