Hippie, by Barry Miles. Essential Works Limited, 2003

Covering seven years- 1965 through 1971- this book gives good picture of the main hippie era. Yes, hippies still exist, but these were the years when they flooded western culture with new music, new social movements, new clothing and new ways of living. Some of it wasn’t entirely new- the movement was rooted partly in the Beats of the 50s and in the intentional communities that went back some 100 years.

I really enjoyed this book; while I’ve read a good deal about the era, Miles really brought it to life. Pretty much every page has an illustration on it: photos, posters, ads. The main subjects are music and concerts, drugs, and protest movements. While “Hippie” is the title, the author also covers the Beats, the Black Power movement, Gay Pride, the Mods, and more. It’s all part of the era. I lived through the era, but I was a child and my exposure was limited to TV, radio, and magazines. This book made me wish I had been just a little older. I would have loved to have gone to a Be-In, a Dead or Joplin concert, seen the Merry Pranksters with their bus. This book isn’t just the pretty stuff, though. He exposes the meth and heroin use, the Hell’s Angels becoming an unwelcome force at concerts, the ODs and the VD, and all the ugly parts. Five stars.

Beautiful Music, by Michael Zadoorian. Akashic Books, 2018

In 1969, Danny Yzemski spends most of his free time in the former coal storage bin in the basement, building model cars. He is already into music, as is his father, although their tastes run very differently. Danny likes rock, while his father likes “beautiful music”- modern songs covered by an orchestra. To better hear his Muzak, he buys a stereo unit for the basement den. Through the years, he teaches Danny to drive in his huge car, and they haunt the record stores together. Then his father suddenly dies, and life changes for him. His mother is alcoholic and mentally ill, and her sudden widowhood seems to precipitate a psychotic break. She drinks, smokes, and watches TV. That’s it. Everything else is Danny’s problem. He gets a job, drives without a license, learns about hard rock and deep cuts, and actually gets a friend.

It’s a coming of age tale, from ages 10 to 16, told in first person, sometimes in letters to his dead father. Music is what gets him through a really tough adolescence. It brings him out of his loner shell, and gives him something to sooth his emotions. It says things he thinks, but better. Surprisingly, there is no girlfriend; most coming of age books have a girl/boy who really, really understands the subject like no one else. Danny stands on his own, with some help from his friend. It’s very well written; it brought back a lot of memories of my teen years and the music from it and how it felt to have a song say exactly how you feel. Five stars, for making a Dickensian adolescence seem perfectly believable. 

I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for an honest review. This in no way influenced my opinion

Mother American Night: My Life in Crazy Times, by John Perry Barlow, with Robert Greenfield. Crown Archetype, 2018

The recently deceased author had a really colorful life. He seems to have known everyone and done everything. Born to a cattle ranching family that was powerful in Wyoming politics, he went to school with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, and later went on to write lyrics for the band. He mentored JFK Jr., and was campaign manager for Dick Cheney. Yes, he was an acid loving, alcoholic, Republican. The cognitive dissonance is still rippling in my head. Later he became a computer hacker and cofounded the Electronic Freedom Foundation, well as writing a book that was basically an ad for Steve Jobs and Apple. He hung at Andy Warhol’s Factory and dated the Dalai Llama’s sister. I’d have thought it was all bullshit, but the people involved say his life really was like that.

All was not sweetness and adventure. As I said, he was an alcoholic. He smoked three packs a day, was a coke dealer, cheated on women, and took off with a $5000 advance for a book he never wrote. He did some of the stupidest things with his health and safety; it’s a miracle he lived as long as he did. One thing his life never was, was dull. And he tells his story in short chapters, as if he was telling them over drinks. At least in the first half of the book; somewhere near the end he sort of … slows down. Given that he was in failing health, I suspect that he just ran out of energy for telling. The prose in the latter part of the book even has a different voice to it, as if the first part was Barlow telling it in full, while the co-author had to fill in a lot in the end. A truly amusing book- I figured I wouldn’t be impressed by the man, but I was. Four and a half stars.

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The Perfume Burned his Eyes, by Michael Imperioli. Akashic Books, 2018

The story starts with 16 year old Matthew in 1976. His estranged, bad example of a father dies, then his grandfather follows shortly. This plunges his mother into a depression that she treats by eating tranquilizers, but it also provides an inheritance that allows them to move uptown and into a fancy apartment building in New York City. When he takes a part time job as a delivery boy for a local Chinese restaurant, he discovers that the people who he thought were a homeless couple when he’d seen them in the lobby actually live in his building, just a couple of floors up. It is, in fact, Lou Reed and his trans girlfriend Rachel. When Reed takes Matthew on as an assistant, it’s down the rabbit hole for Matt. Adding to the surrealness of his life, he falls for a girl at school: Veronica, who is an outlier, a witch, and a part time prostitute. Between Reed and Veronica, Matthews coming of age is more abrupt than most people’s, and definitely weirder. Whether it’s driving a borrowed van having never driven before, accompanying Veronica on a trick, or watching Reed basically melt down, it’s a walk on the wild side.

Matthew comes across as real and a sympathetic character. He’s been torn from his past life at a vulnerable point in his life. He’s smart. While the story takes place when he’s 16, it’s written from his POV at 18, and he looks at himself clearly and maturely. And, despite the grim subject matter, it’s funny. Four stars.

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All the Beautiful Girls, by Elizabeth J. Church. Ballantine Books, 2018

Lily Decker is only 8 when an auto accident takes the lives of her parents and her sister. Her own survival with no injuries in nearly miraculous. She is sent to live with her aunt, who has no idea how to deal with a child or show affection, and an uncle who sexually abuses her from day one. Her only solace is dance, and a ‘mysterious benefactor’ – who she realizes right away is the man in the other car at the accident, a military pilot she refers to always as The Aviator.  As soon as she turns 18, she heads off to the place her dance instructor recommends: Las Vegas. With an intent to be a troupe dancer, she is startled and disheartened to discover what dancing means in Vegas. But a new friend convinces her it’s a good way to make a living, so she bites the bullet, takes off her clothes, and it’s living the good life, and money to put in the bank.

All is not good, though; her previous sex abuse has scarred her badly, there’s a lot of temptations in 1960s Vegas, and she must work her way through her problems.  And while she is very lucky, there are people who will take advantage of beautiful girls- especially when they are making good money. When she literally drops into the arms of handsome and charming Javier, she thinks she’s found true love.

I enjoyed the book but I wasn’t thrilled with it. Ruby is a good character, with good points and flaws, and I was really rooting for her, but somehow she never got under my skin the way truly great characters do. The other characters are a bit flat, sadly. The descriptions of Vegas in the 60s were great fun. But the book just lacked… something… to make it all come to life. Four stars out of five. 

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Everybody Had an Ocean: Music and Mayhem in 1960s Los Angeles, by William McKeen. Chicago Review Press, 2017

While this book covers the Los Angeles music scene of the 60s, the backbone of the book is the story of the Beach Boys. Beginning with their early teen days of using music to keep their brutal, abusive, father from beating them, to the days when they worked with Jan and Dean, and then the LA studio musicians that were known as the Wrecking Crew (a crew that included Glen Campbell and Leon Russell), the book takes side roads through music other than surf pop. The Greenwich Village folk scene that spawned Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, and Cass Elliot. The “race music” that black musicians were putting out, mainly in the south. The various permutations Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, including bands before, during, and after. Frank Sinatra, which rather baffled me, although he was producing music that got played on the rock stations (and a chapter on how his son was kidnapped). Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound. The sex and drugs. How Charles Manson drifted around in the music world, living in Dennis Wilson’s house with his who knows how many girls, and getting a recommendation from Neil Young (the producer passed). Through the various chapters, the story returns again and again to the Beach Boys. The final chapter updates us on what happened to all those people, ending, as it began, with Brian Wilson.

I picked this book up as being of just passing interest; I was never into the surf and car music of the early 60s. But I saw that it was about more than that, so I figured I’d give it a try. I ended up not being able to put it down. It seems like the entire rock music industry was interconnected. It’s well written, entertaining (albeit depressing a lot of the time, but that’s what happened), and apparently well researched. This isn’t a memoir from someone who was there; McKeen is a professor of journalism, so I assume he takes a neutral approach to the material. Five stars. 

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Hippie, by Barry Miles. Bounty Books, 2013 (first printing 2003)

 

Barry Miles knows about what he’s written about here; he lived it. From the Beat culture of the 50s to New Wave and Punk, he was there. The title is misleading in a way; while it’s about hippie culture, it is also about the Beats, Black Power activists, the start of Gay Pride, and musicians- lots and lots about the musicians; people I tend to think of as separate entities from the peace, love, pot, and granola hippies. Of course not all hippies were dropping out; many *were* activists; there is no hard line that says “This is a hippie and this is not”. But it’s more a history of the era in general than about the entire hippie movement.

I found it very interesting; while I lived through the era I was just a little too young (and too much of a book nerd) to participate in much of it. This book illuminated things that I saw from the edge looking in. The book is visually very appealing; there are very few pages that don’t have images on them. Photos, album covers, and posters are all part of the imagery. It’s like a coffee table book, but with smaller dimensions.

The book doesn’t beautify the hippie scene. He writes about both the good (peace demonstrations, the Diggers, wild fashion, hopes for a more egalitarian future, Woodstock, activism) and the bad (hard drugs like meth and heroin, the Hell’s Angels moving in on the scene, Altamont, Manson, Kent State). It’s a very even handed approach. Now, I think I need to go listen to some 60s music.  

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High on Rebellion: Inside the Underground at Max’s Kansas City, by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin. Open Road, 1998, re-released 2016

Max’s Kansas City sounds like a name for a steak house, and up front, that’s what it was. On the first floor in the front area, they served surf and turf and had a well-stocked bar. But it was a lot more than that; it was ground zero for the changing arts and music scene of the 1960s and 70s and saw the birth of glam and punk. Owner Mickey Ruskin liked artists, and the club became their hangout. If he thought their work had promise, he’d let them run up unpaid tabs or take artworks in lieu of payment. Soon Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, and the Factory regulars were ruling the arts scene from Max’s back room; the drag queens were welcome there when they weren’t in many other places. Lots of musicians started coming in, and it soon became a place where anything could- and did- happen. Sex and drugs in the bathrooms, peeing in the phone booths because the bathrooms were taken, blow jobs under the tables, fights, and waitresses in crotch high skirts were all common. Beat writers were there. Amazing new music started showing up as well as visual art; Bowie, Springsteen, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Aerosmith, Tim Buckley, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith (both she and Janis Joplin would be turned away at the door the first time they showed up, Ruskin saying they were too dirty), Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, and the New York Dolls were all there regularly- Debbie Harry was a waitress there before achieving success with Blondie. Ruskin had a talent for working the door; he could sense who would fit in and who wouldn’t, and would turn lots of people away. It was high art and low life, and it was deeply mourned when it closed down because of the debts Ruskin had and his increasing drug use. Everyone spoke highly of Ruskin, even though he was an anti-Semite, a bigot, and a misogynist.

The story is told in snippets from all sorts of people who’d been there. Everyone from Lou Reed to Ed Koch to Halston to ex-waitresses to Abbie Hoffman to Holly Woodlawn have short bits of recollections in the book. It’s all loosely held together by memoirs of Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin, a former waitress who ended up marrying Ruskin and having children by him. There are lots of photos. I found it mostly an interesting, if uneven, read although I did get bored a couple of times. Given my interest in pop culture I’m not sure how I got to be this old without knowing about Max’s.

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