Customer Reviews

Prisoner of Woodstock

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I should begin this review with a little info for anyone who should read this.I read the name Dallas Taylor for the first time when I was about 10 years old,I was reading a name off an old 45 single of the songs Hitch Hike and Papas got a brand new bag.I always wanted to know who this guy was and how to get a hold of him. Well, now i know who he is,or was, but I still dont know how to get a hold of him. This book taught me a lot of the man who last knew my father before he died, and I even found a few pages dedicated to the last moments of his life.I thought I knew about the sixties but this book showed me how little I really knew.Many people who have had problems with drugs or alcohol in there lives will benifit greatly from this book.I hope you all will take the time to read this book.It will help you understand things a little bit better and introduce you to my dads last best friend.

real life american story of a lost child who was swept up in the compelling 1960's. dallas taylor's honest, revealing story tells what it was like to be a part of history - to experience the tragic/ comical reality of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll -- to suffer and battle his personal daemons and to survive drug addiction and an organ transplant. God Bless Dallas Taylor.

If you are a fan of CSNY, or just that era in California rock, this is a great inside look of how things went down. Dallas is very open, and up front about "Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll". His words also give you an inside peak on the personalities of the musicians you listen to, most notably Stills and Young. The music and musicians are just ONE part of the book. This is the part that made me buy it. The intruige of what went down in the 60s, 70s, 80s.

HOWEVER, as the title reads on this review, it's two books in one. Dallas also did an amazing job describing his drug problems. What drugs were being done, how they made him feel, what they made him do, what he had to go through psychologically, and physically. It was a tale of his struggles ON drugs and getting over drugs. Hospitals, sugeries, friendships and relationships lost.

I've been fortunate enough to never dabble into drugs, but if you have a friend or loved one who is/has, they should read this book. It's a great resource, and could scare them straight.

I rarely write book reviews but feel compelled to warn fellow shoppers away from this total waste of paper and ink. I'm a big fan of C,S,N&Y and even own and love the Clear Light LP, but you won't find any information about music here. And you won't find any intelligent insights into the people who made the music. What you will find is endless fabricated dialogue that rarely makes much sense. It's all just a bunch of boring, meaningless drivel. The whole book is totally disjointed and confusing. It's impossible to have any empathy for Dallas because he seems like a rotten person who offers no explanation for his horrible, selfish behavior. This whole book is just an empty, meaningless waste of time.

Too funny. Dry, cynical and by turns fearlessly objective and nastily subjective, Taylor pulls no punches and reveals himself at his worst, in the throes of addiction and wrapped in self-pity. Amazing that he could make such dire circumstances entertaining, often amusing and always enlightening. An honest, straightforward book by a man whose saving grace is probably his self-aware, self-depreciating sense of humor. Highly recommended.

This a very well balanced book. It is entertaining with great humor, but more importantly, it is about the courage to confront and struggle to survive and thrive in the face of great personal adversity

As a CSNY fan I found Dallas Taylor's book to be extremely depressing in the details it offers of a self-indulgent life mostly wasted (pun intended) and only mildly interesting for the many anecdotes it contains within. Even mindful of the title, I'm not certain that Taylor has any self-awareness at all of how ridiculous he comes across in this book and how little he should be admired for the lowest common denominator way he chose to live his life.

Whether fully conscious of it or not in his thoughts and dreams it brings out in full color the worst aspects of the Woodstock generation and none of the positives that we all hoped would make the world a better place someday.

To a degree I have to admire his courage in exposing the circumstances of his (more than) brush with `alleged' greatness...but I also have to note the utter selfishness, hypocrisy, lack of any character or personal standards that accompany his and the lives of many of these so-called genius musicians whose stories are included in the book.

Though no religious man I can't help but feel a closer affinity to any fellow traveler who doesn't make it his personal quest to screw all of his best friend's girlfriends and wives...snort, smoke and drink away the average yearly budget of a South American country and live his life with such careless self-indulgence as to burn through his critical bodily organs with ease.

...and after all this I'm supposed to feel sympathy for him that Neil Young fired him? Neil Young never used better judgement in my opinion.