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Some wag (probably not Grace Slick) observed that if you remember the 60s, you weren't really there. Enough people remembered the 60s that Selvin manages to recreate the sprawling story of the San Francisco music scene 1965-1971. You know the big players, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Big Brother, Santana, and a host of lesser lights. Moving season by season, Selvin describes the forge of creation, as tightly knit musical families under the influence of large amount of then-legal LSD carved out a new sound at the intersection of rock, blues, folk, and pop, an artistic flourishing intrinsically linked to the counter-cultural nexus of Haight-Ashbury and the radical politics of the antiwar movement.
But the scene rapidly turned sour. The tight-knit communes and proto-hippie neighborhood around Haight-Ashbury exploded under hundreds of thousands of hippie tourists, wannabes, and drifters. LSD was supplement with speed, cocaine, and dope, adding an edge of paranoid violence to a vibe already flying somewhere else. Bands broke apart under the pressures of touring and differences of artistic vision. Jefferson Airplane broke in factions that refused to play with each other, Joplin fired Big Brother, an unscrupulous manager stole all of the Grateful Dead's money. Drugs, alcohol, and the lifestyle began to take their toll, as members of the community overdosed, crashed cars, or withdrew from the petty jealousies of 'free love'.
This book is very much insider gossip about the bands and a few of their supporting characters, particularly concert promoter Bill Graham, who ran the famous Fillmore. Selvin gestures at the end towards his ideal vision of the rock band as a close group pushing the limits of artistic expression, but has little to say about why these people, in this place, at this moment. For all that LSD is centered in the title, the book also has little to say on psychedelia beyond the bare facts of the moment. If there is a vision there of the Acid Society, it can't be captured in words. And there's nothing about the fans, the hundreds of thousands who went to shows, pilgrimaged to Haight-Ashbury, or simply sat in their bedrooms, put on Surrealistic Pillow, and felt like part of the moment.
But the scene rapidly turned sour. The tight-knit communes and proto-hippie neighborhood around Haight-Ashbury exploded under hundreds of thousands of hippie tourists, wannabes, and drifters. LSD was supplement with speed, cocaine, and dope, adding an edge of paranoid violence to a vibe already flying somewhere else. Bands broke apart under the pressures of touring and differences of artistic vision. Jefferson Airplane broke in factions that refused to play with each other, Joplin fired Big Brother, an unscrupulous manager stole all of the Grateful Dead's money. Drugs, alcohol, and the lifestyle began to take their toll, as members of the community overdosed, crashed cars, or withdrew from the petty jealousies of 'free love'.
This book is very much insider gossip about the bands and a few of their supporting characters, particularly concert promoter Bill Graham, who ran the famous Fillmore. Selvin gestures at the end towards his ideal vision of the rock band as a close group pushing the limits of artistic expression, but has little to say about why these people, in this place, at this moment. For all that LSD is centered in the title, the book also has little to say on psychedelia beyond the bare facts of the moment. If there is a vision there of the Acid Society, it can't be captured in words. And there's nothing about the fans, the hundreds of thousands who went to shows, pilgrimaged to Haight-Ashbury, or simply sat in their bedrooms, put on Surrealistic Pillow, and felt like part of the moment.