Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture

Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll explores the interaction between two of the most powerful socio—cultural movements in the post—war years — the literary forces of the Beat Generation and the musical energies of rock and its attendant culture.

Simon Warner examines the interweaving strands, seeded by the poet/novelists Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and others in the 1940s and 1950s, and cultivated by most of the major rock figures who emerged after 1960 — Bob Dylan, the Beatle...