Available:*
Library | Collection | Collection | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Beale Memorial Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Non-Fiction | 781.66 BRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Fresno Central Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Non-fiction Area | 781.6609 BRO | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be ; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu ; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water ; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who's just completed Sweet Baby James . Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives--and the world around them--will change irrevocably. Fire and Rain tells the story of four iconic albums of 1970 and the lives, times, and constantly intertwining personal ties of the remarkable artists who made them. Acclaimed journalist David Browne sets these stories against an increasingly chaotic backdrop of events that sent the world spinning throughout that tumultuous year: Kent State, the Apollo 13 debacle, ongoing bombings by radical left-wing groups, the diffusion of the antiwar movement, and much more.
Featuring candid interviews with more than 100 luminaries, including some of the artists themselves, Browne's vivid narrative tells the incredible story of how--over the course of twelve turbulent months--the '60s effectively ended and the '70s began.
Author Notes
David Browne is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the author of three books: Dream Brother (2001), Amped (2004), and Goodbye 20th Century (2008). He also contributes to the New York Times , NPR, and other outlets. He lives in New York City.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Browne (Goodbye 20th Century) revisits the musical, political, and cultural shifts of 1970, a year that left an indelible mark on rock history. As the Beatles disintegrated, the career of a shy, unassuming singer/songwriter named James Taylor was just beginning. Meanwhile, Simon & Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released iconic albums (Bridge Over Trouble Water and Deja Vu), each of which ultimately led to the demise of their collaboration. Using new interviews with the artists and their colleagues, as well as access to rare documents and recordings from the period, Browne employs a smart narrative style to make such well-worn stories as the Beatles' breakup fresh again. Through it all, he remains convinced that the first year of that new decade was just as pivotal as its well-documented predecessors-a perfect reflection of the chaotic end of the Sixties and the beginning of a new era in rock. This book will appeal to classic rock fans, as well as younger readers who may find this to be a fascinating look at an era when an artist's reputation was built not on social media sites, but on the music itself. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
We live in turbulent times, our distrust of institutions seemingly at a peak. Yet between January 1969 and the spring of 1970, according to the author of Fire and Rain, borrowing figures quoted by CBS News, radical groups set off an estimated 4,330 bombs across the United States, with the state of California contributing 20 a week. In New York, David Browne writes, "between August and October 1969, explosive devices had gone off in three buildings on Wall Street and in Macy's, followed by bombs at the Chase Manhattan Bank, the RCA building and General Motors in November". The following March the targets in midtown Manhattan included Mobil, ICM and General Telephone and Electronics. Such statistics may supply a jolt even to the memories of those who lived through the era in question. But revolution certainly was in the air, the widespread grievances of Vietnam war and civil rights protesters taken to an extreme by the Weather Underground and other bodies, many of them less charismatic and not so easily defined, but each of great concern to Richard M Nixon and his notorious FBI chief, J Edgar Hoover. As the generalised euphoria of "the 60s" dissolved, something darker and more divisive took its place. Fire and Rain examines the music of the period, specifically of the year 1970, and even more specifically of three groups and one solo singer: the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and James Taylor. If the book often seems like a set of discrete incidents in search of a unifying theory, and comes to no identifiable conclusion, there is no doubt that the chosen subjects shared a moment in which, thanks to the rock revolution of the 1960s, musicians were so lavishly feted and rewarded that they could challenge their industry to grant them a degree of autonomy impossible for their predecessors to imagine. This was the mini-era in which the Beatles became four solo artists, in which cracks appeared under the surface of Simon and Garfunkel's image even while their recordings were achieving their greatest success, and in which David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash left the bands with which they had become famous - respectively the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies - to form an early example of the genre known as the "supergroup", soon to be joined by another former member of Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young. "A year or two before, the concept was unimaginable," Browne writes. "Bands were collectives, united fronts, rarely if ever did a member spin off and make his or her own record on the side. Those who worked on their own, like [Bob] Dylan, had always done so and were continuing the long-standing tradition of the troubadour." The troubadour tradition would be renewed by James Taylor, the soulful junkie son of a professor of medicine whose gentle, lilting songs - including the one that gives the book its title - provided an early focal point for the 1970s singer-songwriter movement. The author, a Rolling Stone contributing editor whose previous subjects include Sonic Youth and Tim and Jeff Buckley, dutifully retraces the relevant histories, stinting neither on the personal details of marriages and other relationships, the vast quantities of drugs ingested by most of the parties, and experiments with psychotherapy, nor on the social context (in which, for example, the killing of four Kent State students by National Guardsmen inspired Neil Young to write "Ohio", which became one of CSN&Y's biggest hits). Although his research is reasonably diligent, he is not immune to small errors: Savile Row, the location of the office of Apple, the Beatles' company, is described as "a Piccadilly Square street"; Stills is said to have been fond of "Kruger" champagne; a monthly publication he refers to as the Beatles Book was surely the Beatles Monthly; and there is, or was, no such thing as a "skiffle beat". Given that he is capable of describing tracks from George Harrison's All Things Must Pass as "joyful cacophony", it is perhaps unsurprising that he has little of interest to say about the music itself. Occasionally, however, he hits the spot, as when discussing the underlying factors behind CSN&Y's eventual break-up: "By then, each man's songs and approach to music-making reflected their personalities: Nash's orderly and tidy, Crosby's laissez-faire and permissive, Young's sturdy and focused, Stills's nervy and headstrong." He is also fond of modern turns of phrase that sit uncomfortably in a work aiming to evoke a particular historical period. Most conspicuously and irritatingly, his subjects are always "reaching out" to each other, by which he means "getting in touch", usually by telephone. Thus John Lennon "reaches out" to Ringo Starr, George Harrison "reached out" to Paul McCartney, agents "reach out" to promoters. At best, this seems an interesting example of how the vocabulary of psychotherapy has permeated public discourse in the four decades since John and Yoko paid their first visit to Arthur Janov for a course of primal screaming. What Fire and Rain succeeded in doing, nonetheless, was to send me back to albums - CSN&Y's Deja Vu, Taylor's Sweet Baby James, S&G's Bridge Over Troubled Water - that had lain undisturbed through half a lifetime. For all the instability and over-indulgence of the times in which they were produced, they turn out to have aged, in the main, surprisingly well. To order Fire and Rain for pounds 12.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846. - Richard Williams Although his research is reasonably diligent, he is not immune to small errors: Savile Row, the location of the office of Apple, the Beatles' company, is described as "a Piccadilly Square street"; [Stephen Stills] is said to have been fond of "Kruger" champagne; a monthly publication he refers to as the Beatles Book was surely the Beatles Monthly; and there is, or was, no such thing as a "skiffle beat". Given that he is capable of describing tracks from George Harrison's All Things Must Pass as "joyful cacophony", it is perhaps unsurprising that he has little of interest to say about the music itself. Occasionally, however, he hits the spot, as when discussing the underlying factors behind CSN&Y's eventual break-up: "By then, each man's songs and approach to music-making reflected their personalities: [Graham Nash]'s orderly and tidy, [David Crosby]'s laissez-faire and permissive, [Neil Young]'s sturdy and focused, Stills's nervy and headstrong." He is also fond of modern turns of phrase that sit uncomfortably in a work aiming to evoke a particular historical period. Most conspicuously and irritatingly, his subjects are always "reaching out" to each other, by which he means "getting in touch", usually by telephone. Thus John Lennon "reaches out" to Ringo Starr, George Harrison "reached out" to Paul McCartney, agents "reach out" to promoters. At best, this seems an interesting example of how the vocabulary of psychotherapy has permeated public discourse in the four decades since John and Yoko paid their first visit to Arthur Janov for a course of primal screaming. - Richard Williams.
Kirkus Review
Through the lens of four fabulously successful musical acts, aRolling Stonecontributing editor looks at the moment 1960s idealism "began surrendering to the buzz-kill comedown of the decade ahead."By decade's end, the '60s counterculture ethos of peace, love and togetherness lay pretty much in ruins. Browne (Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth, 2008, etc.) alludes to many dismal headline events that dominated the news of 1970the shootings at Kent and Jackson State, the Manson trial, the Weather Underground's terror bombings, Apollo 13 limping home from spacebut focuses here on the music makers, the most visible representatives of the youth subculture whose collaborations became every bit as dysfunctional as the Establishment they mocked. Released in 1970, the Beatles'Let It Be, Simon Garfunkel'sBridge Over Troubled Water and Crosby, Stills, Nash Young'sDj vuwere their final albums together and signaled the end of an era. The early fame and the seemingly effortless camaraderie gave way to jealousy, greed, infighting and disarray. Artists turned their backs on group albums in favor of solo efforts; intimate concerts were replaced by stadium shows; outdoor festivals, attempting to duplicate Woodstock, were brushed by fans demanding free admission. Hard drugs hovered over the entire scene, crippling musiciansJimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin overdosedand addling fans. That same year, James Taylor, famously a former mental patient, himself strung out, issuedSweet Baby James, for better or worse, the herald of a softer, more relaxed vibe that would dominate the years ahead. Browne skillfully interleaves the stories of these musicians during this tumultuous year, making room for substantial walk-ons by other significant industry figures like Bill Graham, Peter Yarrow, Phil Spector, Rita Coolidge, Carole King and Joni Mitchell. Intimately familiar with the music, fully comprehending the cross-pollination among the artists, thoroughly awake to the dynamics of the decade's last gasp, the author expertly captures a volatile and hugely interesting moment in rock history.A vivid freeze-frame of Hall of Fame musicians, some of whom would go on to make fine records, none ever again as central to the culture.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Browne (Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley) examines 1970 and, in effect, the end of the Sixties through the stories of artists who defined that decade and (in James Taylor's case) those who were about to represent a new one. The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel dissolved during that year; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) ascended and came apart in the span of months; and Taylor rose on the charts with quiet and self-reflective music that was distant from the chaos of the late Sixties. Browne contextualizes this story with the events that permeated American culture during that year-the Kent State shootings, college protests, bombings by radicals, and fatigue with Vietnam. Using interviews with many of the participants, contemporary journalistic accounts, and subsequent histories, he documents personal squabbles and disillusionment as well as the creation of classic albums Bridge Over Troubled Water, DejØ Vu, and Sweet Baby James. Verdict Browne engagingly illuminates many overlooked stories that may not be familiar to even dedicated rock enthusiasts. Highly recommended.-Jim Collins, Morristown-Morris Twp. P.L, NJ (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.