Customer Reviews

Hippie

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Hippie is a glossy coffee table book covering the rise and demise of the counterculture during the years from 1965 to 1971. For those who lived through the era, the full-page photos are bound to get some synapses firing (presumably bypassing all those drug-damaged neural junctions). This is essentially a People magazine version of the sixties: lots of breathless headlines and celebrity photos. Writer Barry Miles has dug up some good music gossip, including not very flattering John Lennon anecdotes.

Some serious issues of the era get raised - Vietnam, civil rights, woman's liberation, gay rights - but in a, well, glossy coffee-table-book way. The editorial difficulty in putting together a book of this sort is deciding whether you're celebrating sex, drugs and rock and roll or chronicling a culture in crisis.

The young people in America rose up in mass revulsion against Jell-O molds and tract homes with bomb shelters in the back yard. They hit the road looking for something more optimistic and more fun. Enormous energy went in to trying to alter or bring down the dominant culture. In the civil rights and antiwar movements, people were literally putting their lives on the line. People's "lifestyle choices," as we now call them, had profound repercussions, personally and politically, in ways unimaginable to young people today (soldiers in Iraq excepted). Similar upheavals were happening in Europe, especially France, where the student - worker alliance only dreamed of in the US actually came to pass in the heady spring of 68.

You can get a good debate going by asking which specific event signified the end of the sixties in America. Was it Kent State, where the Ohio National Guard gunned down four student protesters? Altamont, where the peace and love culture broke down on its own without any outside interference? The breakup of the Beatles? Or, even earlier, Nixon's election in 68, which demonstrated the difficulty of changing hearts and minds in America? Barry Miles covers them all here, so you can make up your own mind.

But America has a genius for absorbing new ideas into its vast, spongy middle. Hippie notions of casual sex, recreational drug use, and quirky personal style seeped into suburban living rooms, stripped of any cultural or political critique. In the 1970s, the revolution was not only televised, but merchandised, and the momentum had for sure crested and started to recede. On the plus side, protests at the Miss America pageant led by a tortuous route to housewives in Sioux Falls filling cubicles at insurance and credit card companies. African Americans got access to academia and began moving up the economic ladder. George W. Bush notwithstanding, we work harder to prevent industries from poisoning our air and water.

But there was a time, my children, when hope hung in the air, and personal liberation was a radiant promise. All you had to do was stare out at the future with the right kind of eyes. Clearly the old structures would topple, and gleaming new edifices of our own making would rise to replace them. The apocalyptic change didn't happen, but whether you were partying or protesting, it was a grand time to be alive. Hippie, for all its slickness, is a great memory jogger for those who participated and not a bad introduction for those who missed out on the Age of Aquarius.

Having had my 6th birthday the month Sgt. Pepper appeared, my memories of the hippie era are tied up with childhood. I don't idealize or denigrate the hippie era, and I was curious, after reading TC Boyle's commune novel Drop City, to discover more about what now's forty and not "twenty years ago" today, or close to it now. Miles takes a rather bi-locational look at the era 65-71 or so mostly switching between London and California. Politics are downplayed and music is highlighted, along with drugs, as the forces inspiring fashion, mores, ecology, and sexuality to change. The text may not get the attention that the photos do, but Miles tries hard to hit all of the high points within the parameters described above. A few typos (Mondo Carne, Tasahara, Berry Melton) escape the editor's eye, but I admit that he crams a lot of material into short, easily accessible mini-essays.

One on People's Park, Berkeley effectively distills the whole conflict into a few well-written paragraphs. He gives a quick rundown on the French '68 risings, and notes how--given the lack of translations of Tim Leary, for example, the French took their radicalism more from rock n' roll from abroad to mix with Gallic activism and literary bohemianism. Miles stresses how remote the Beatles had become by the later 60s, influencing from a height what others scurried about to copy and further commodify.

In one essay on the drug culture in SF, early '67, he captures the aftermath of the idealistic Human Be-In in January, in that night's police crackdown on "soft" drugs like pot and LSD and how as if overnight, they and their purveyors were replaced on the streets along with new dealers, of speed and heroin. Miles hints strongly that there was a concerted effort from authorities to undermine SF culture that escalated into the decline of the movement just as it looked at its most utopian, while even by the Summer of Love, the decline has become irreversible.

Other essays, like that on the Weathermen, seem diffused, and confused--the Manson murders are celebrated by Bernadette Dohrn before the murders themselves are examined a few pages later; the SDS receives nearly no attention prior to the Chicago trial; the end years peter out into a dribble of unrelated vignettes before stumbling to a halt with Woodstock '99. One problem: many shorter entries read as if made to fit the page and the graphics, and they suddenly stop at the bottom while leaving you as the reader expecting more coverage on the non-existent next page's continuation. This staccato pace throws off the flow.

Miles wisely stays out of the way himself in nearly all of his narrative, allowing others to be quoted at length. You do learn about personalities like Vito and Szou in '65 on the Sunset Strip, the conflict between the Family Dog and Bill Graham approaches to doing business with/as the counterculture, and the Diggers vs. HIP Haight-Ashbury merchants ideological differences. Valerie Solanas' SCUM manifesto gains citations at length, as does a key ad by Frank Zappa warning the hippies about their smug conformity. What it felt like to have Neal Cassady driving the bus, play at London's Roundhouse, be at Woodstock, or watch a light show in SF all gain credence through carefully chosen details and quotes. Alice Cooper and Led Zep are astutely credited with ushering in the death of the love generation (named by SF police chief Thomas Cahill that night after the Be-In!) and the era of the no-message, good-time arena rock that followed the earnest 60s.

I do wish a glance at the hippie influence abroad--Brazil, Israel, Nepal, Japan, Mexico City--could have been included; the lack of international attention as well as how hippies filtered into suburban life would've been salutory. However, given the "heavy" heft of this large-format work, Miles and his photo compilers have pulled off a handsome and very inexpensively priced presentation. In summary, if you wish to see the rise and fall of the hippie ideals more from an Anglo-American rather than a global perspective, this book offers a glossy and engrossing, if not comprehensive, look at the London-California axis.

I was born in 1965 so that makes me 40 now so there are a lot of people who might say I have no buisiness writing a review of a movement I really knew nothing about. Maybe they're right...maybe I am just a poser but I can remember my older relatives being hippies and I grew up thinking that when I grow up I want to be just like that.

Be careful of what you wish for, kid.

I'm a hippie in my own way. I mean, I don't dress like one, I don't have long hair, I do have a beard and I am greatly impressed what the hippie generation tried to do; they attempted to win over a point that Love is where it's at, that Peace can happen, and that the individual is very important. Hippies brought to Light a lot of things that were previously in the dark; different religious beliefs, meditation, the use of psycho-active substances that may or may not lead to a deeper realization of the self and his/her relation to not only each other but to the universe.

Dude...I'm trippin'...

This book is a wonderful testament to those times. There are also a lot of pictures of some really hot hippie chicks. My dad laughed when he saw it on my coffee table after he removed the Nag Champa incense off its cover and read the title. I know I'm a poser! I know I have no right to review this book! Geezh...don't rub it in...but I think everyone has the right to pursue a deep inner peace, a greater love, and a willingness to know that all belong to the same planet, so let's hold hands, brothers and sisters...c'mon, people, smile on your brother, got to love one another right now...

RIGHT NOW...

Yeah, in some ways hippies were "mis-guided" in their attempts to create a better world. We know now that we don't have to support the war in order to support our troops. We know that having sex with everyone in sight may not be the smartest thing in the world. We know that certain chemicals may lead to a greater inner awareness but what do we do with the awareness once we've been blessed enough to receive it?

Once, you're past 30, you can't be hip anymore...but you can always be cool...you can always be well read...you can always stand for what you believe in. Maybe we need a term now for people who still have the passion, the enthusiuasm, and the energy to change things.

May Hippie Power prevail.

C'mon, c'mon...break out the loot and buy the dang thing...

Hippie by Barry Miles *****

One of the greatest and most interesting coffee table books in history. Hippie is bright with vibrant pictures of the hippie movement, which in this book is depicted as more than just a small gathering in San Francisco, California in the mid to late 1960's, but something that was much bigger and basically covered the entire globe.

Packed with great and intelligent quotes from those who were actually there. Interesting bits that some may not realized were in connection to the movement and what a massive impact they had on the world. Intelligently written showing both the goods the movement did as well as the bad. Both sides of the fence are shown, those who were for the movement and those against. Barry Miles is one of the worlds best biographers and Hippie is just another trophy on his wall. Highly recommended.

This book was a really great book,filled with colorful,pictures and text.I definaltly reccomend it to any one.This book really taught me the true meaning,of the word hippy,hippys are not pot smoking,sex addicts,but free spirtited,welocoming people who had intullectual ideas about politics,music and many other things.

Where this maxim came from I don't know, however, after reading this book I for sure believe it. Born a year before WWII ended, getting married during the summer of love 1968 in California, having a pg wife when Woodstock went down I kind of only and sadly vicariously experienced the era wistfully, fearfully, and most of all joyfully.
This work views the time primarily from a musically evolutional perspective. This worked for me since I knew the songs but with the exception of the supergroups; Stones, Doors and of course Beatles, I had no clue who was from beyond the pond or who was from the valley.
What this work accomplishes for me is to set forth a visual feast with the photographs presented and a text that brings it together and particularly sets in it a context that brings back so many memories, thoughts, ideals, and days past.
As Wordsworth said, "Though nothing can bring back the hour of spendor in the grass, of the glory of the flower" this book does a great job of trying.

I was a teenager in the late 60's and I still have a very special love for that time. This book is amazing in that it really transports you back to that time period, visually more than anything else. It isn't a replica of the 60's - it IS the 60's. For people who were there and have a special fondness for it, this will bring back your memories. For those who weren't there but wonder what it was like, this will take you there. Its a beautiful book at an incredible price. Don't wait for it to come out in paperback!

An inspired tome, this coffee-table type book offers a stunning visual bridge between the oft-mingled (but not often analyzed together) American and British youth subcultures labeled in mass media as "the hippies." Its narrative is lively, entertaining, and richly informed by the author's personal friendships with a great number of literary, musical, and other creative folk from the so-called Sixties. Efforts to give due credit to women, sexual minorities, and the gender revolution of a "make love not war" ethos are both thoughtful and laudable. Women do end up more in decorative roles among the illustrations, however, than as cultural creators or political agents in their own right. Readers unfamiliar with the basic contours of Vietnam Era history also may be a bit confused by the continental shifts between U.S. and U.K. contexts. In addition, the chronology can get a tad slippery at points, with a purported division by year from (19)65 through 71 that only aspires to the framework it imposes. Musical history is strongest. Still, the Civil Rights insurgency in America -- which surely informed rock'n'rollers various innovations -- seems both underplayed and, at times, dangerously misunderstood. Thus one relishes the vibe of this book while wishing it held some deeper socio-historical rigor. Overall aesthetics of the design, however, are brilliant. The picture archives attract a standing (and sustained) ovation, ultimately making Barry Miles' HIPPIE a becoming addition to the underground reading rooms.

The irony is clear: a coffee table book about the counter-culture. Once you get past the irony, this a wonderful book which spans 1965 through 1971, the heart of the "hippie era." With text and excellent photographs makes you feel like you are there, even if you weren't.

The focus is on the rock music, including band photos, album covers and concerts. The author also looks at the hippie lifestyle, including Haight-Ashbury, New York City and other meccas for hippie activity. Glimpses of the civil rights and anti-war movements are also thrown in. This book shows the good and the bad sides of the hippie lifestyle. We see joyous concerts and peaceful outdoor gatherings together with creative artwork from the psychedelic artists. But we also see the downside -- drugs, wasted lives and the Summer of Love gone sour in 1967. If you were there, this book will remind you of why the mid-late 60's were golden. If you were not there, this book will make you wish that you were.

First of all, the 3 stars are all for the pictures in this book, which are excellent. I love the layout of the book and the design is great. The photos have great colour and context. There are a lot of great quotes from important people of the era as well. I think really what's lacking here is the actual text of it. None of the articles are really that great or in-depth and you don't come out of it feeling like you learned much, sorry. That's what disappoints me about this book, especially since i didn't get to actually LIVE in that era.