Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock

by Barney Hoskyns

Overview

Think "Woodstock" and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock-the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident-was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape.

In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren-and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title).

Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene-and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s-Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306823206
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Pages:	424
Sales rank:	340,969
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Barney Hoskyns is a music historian, editorial director of the online music-journalism library Rock's Backpages, and author of Hotel California, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits, and an oral history of Led Zeppelin. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Prologue: into the mystic 1

Rock & roll Woodstock: a guide 9

Part 1 A place i'd feel loose 11

1 The uneasy alliance 13

2 Folk songs of the catskills 23

3 Inside albert grossman 30

4 "The greatest place" 41

5 Boy in the bubble 51

6 Something is happening 59

Part 2 Going up the country 71

7 Hundred and forty dollar bash 73

8 Frankie and judas 86

9 Something to feel 93

10 Paint my mailbox blue 102

11 Everybody's apple pie 113

12 Combination of the two 120

13 Brand new days 134

14 Some way out of here 142

15 Back to the garden 150

16 He's not here 165

17 Oh lord won't you buy me a mercedes benz 179

Part 3 Dangerous fun 193

18 If you build it 195

19 The shape they're in 207

20 Music among friends 216

21 The ballad of todd and albert 230

22 "Creativity and ferment" 241

23 In a good place now 249

24 "Dope, music, and beauty" 262

25 A hermit, a true star 275

26 Tuesday night fever 291

27 Forbidden fruit 301

28 Broken heart 313

Epilogue: "how does that old song go?" 323

Coda: didn't he ramble 338

Take your pleasure: 25 timeless tracks 347

Acknowledgments 348

Bibliography 351

Notes 362

Index 381

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/15/2016
Historian Hoskyns (Across the Great Divide) offers readers an absorbing glimpse into events that shaped Woodstock, N.Y., into a haven for musicians. He takes the title from a song by Bobby Charles, who arrived from Tennessee, and who recorded with Maria Muldaur and Rock Danko of the Band; their collaboration is just one facet of what Hoskyns calls the “quintessential Woodstock of the early ’70s.” Drawing on interviews with many of the artists, their friends, and the inhabitants of the town, Hoskyns paints a brilliant portrait of the colorful characters that turned this little patch of woods in upstate New York into a hotbed for much of the music that changed America. He chronicles the history of Woodstock from its earliest days as an artist colony in the late 19th century, through its heyday in the late 1960s, and right up to the death of Band drummer Levon Helm in 2012. Along the way, Hoskyns shares the tales of Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan (at the beginning of Dylan’s career) and Janis Joplin, and who inspired the character of the megalomaniac manager Bob Grossman in the movie Inside Llewlyn Davis; the rise and fall of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; and the infighting among the Band, perhaps the group most associated with the town in popular imagination. In the end, Hoskyns’s stunning book highlights some of the most memorable music in American history. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

01/01/2016
Hoskyns (editorial director, Rock's Backpages; Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits) relates a fascinating history and behind-the-scenes examination of life in the small town of Woodstock in the Catskills region of New York State. Visitors to the area are reminded not to be confused with the location of the Woodstock Festival of 1969; Yasgur's Farm was over 60 miles away, near Bethel, NY. Bob Dylan and his manager, Albert Grossman, were instrumental in the development of this artist's conclave during the folk scene of the 1960s. It's where Dylan recovered from his famous motorcycle accident and recorded with The Band. Other musicians performed, recorded, or resided in Woodstock, including Peter, Paul, and Mary; Joan Baez; Janis Joplin; Jimi Hendrix; Paul Butterfield; and Todd Rundgren. The era was rife with open marriages, heavy drug use, and death at a young age. VERDICT This title will appeal to those who are looking for a detailed account of the bohemian lifestyle, as well as to fans of Sixties rock. Readers may also enjoy No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan by Robert Shelton and Dylan's Chronicles.—Elizabeth D. Eisen, Appleton P.L., WI

Library Journal

2015-12-07
Veteran music writer Hoskyns (Led Zeppelin: The Oral History of the World's Greatest Rock Band, 2012, etc.) peels back the layers of a musical Shangri-La that has plenty of dark corners. Woodstock, New York, has always seemed more a state of mind than an actual place, though an actual place it is—and, as the author writes early on, one well surrounded by a sense of reclusiveness and mystery, as if everyone there followed the Dylan-esque rule, "Don't talk to anybody." Much of Woodstock's rise can be attributed to Dylan and his backup musicians, the ones who would become The Band and record some zeitgeist-shaping tunes at Big Pink. But more can be attributed to the much-despised music manager Albert Grossman (who "wasn't a very nice man," Mary Travers recalls, "but I loved him dearly"), who bought up a considerable chunk of the town with the proceeds of Dylan et al.'s artistry. In any event, as Hoskyns helpfully traces, Woodstock had been an art and music colony for generations. The best parts of this fluent narrative come when the author finds unusual intersections: a very young Patti Smith, for instance, hanging out with Todd Rundgren, himself engineering The Band's most polished studio album, "Stage Fright." The cast of characters is stellar, from Van Morrison, even more hermetic than Dylan, to the poet Ed Sanders, doomed blues rocker Janis Joplin, and hippie entrepreneur Michael Lang, and a 100 names between. There are a few clues (including chronological mismatches: Music from Big Pink is much closer to 50 than 30 years old now) to suggest that Hoskyns has bundled up old pieces and notes, but one can charitably surmise that this just means he's been on the case for a long time. Much of this ground has otherwise been covered, and better, in Greil Marcus' Invisible Republic (1997). Still, fans of 1960s and '70s rock and music history buffs will find this a pleasure.

Kirkus Reviews

"Replete with gossip, freewheeling dalliances, artistic adventures and tales of general wildness, it also weaves in the history of the community...A very readable and interesting book."—Chicago Life

"[An engrossing oral history of sorts...A copiously illustrated East Coast complement to his well received Los Angeles canyon classic Hotel California of a few years ago...An absorbing, totally fascinating read."—Big City Rhythm & Blues

"Hoskyns has astutely described the ebbs and flows of Woodstock (the town, not so much the festival that borrowed the town's name), its varied iconic citizenry (namely The Band, Van Morrison, and enigmatic Dylan manager/Bearsville Records magnate Albert Grossman), and how the ripples from its '60s boon have left erosions in the town to this day...Through often heartbreaking historical accounts, Hoskyns manages to craft a strong, acute account of the legacy of an enclave that almost lived up to all its Shangri-La promises."

—Chico News & Review

From the Publisher

Read More