Customer Reviews

Summer of Love: The Inside Story of LSD, Rock & Roll, Free Love and High Times in the Wild

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

 

 

This book is an engaging, densely detailed history of San Francisco rock-'n'-roll from 1965 to 1971. It opens with the Charlatans giving birth to San Francisco rock and ends with the death of poor ol' Pigpen.

Selvin writes in great detail about how bands formed, learned (or didn't learn) how to deal with the music business, and broke up. It's a tell-all about who slept with who, the types of drugs each musician used and where and when they OD'ed, and the details of their recording contracts. To hear Selvin tell it, Janis Joplin bedded just about every male rocker in the business-- except for Jerry Lee Lewis: she got into a fistfight with him! Bill Graham's monstrous ego gets full play, until you get sick of reading about his temper tantrums and underhanded dealing.

But the book's title is misleading, for a couple reasons. For one thing, the summer of 1967 is completely absent from the book! The chronology jumps from spring to fall and ignores the summer altogether. Perhaps this was Selvin trying to emphasize his stark assertion in the book's first sentence: "The Summer of Love never really happened." But why he would deliberately omit the central scene of the whole saga is incomprehensible.

The other thing lacking in this book is a sense of the whole Zeitgeist of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene. The book has a focus on nothing but rock-'n'-roll music. Any mention of any other cultural aspects of hippie life, like folk music, the Human Be-In, the flower children, the communal Diggers, the arts and crafts, the antiwar movement, the Eastern mysticism, the wider scope of everything that went into the Haight scene, gets no mention except insofar as it directly relates to the story of the rock-'n'-roll bands. This is a book specifically about music, not about all the many things that went into making San Francisco the hippie mecca.

Rock-'n'-roll was of course a central feature of the scene, and deserves a book all its own like this one. It just isn't the last word on it, as the title seems to promise. It doesn't give the reader a feel for the complete Haight-Ashbury experience. An accurate title would be "Rock Music in San Francisco, 1965-1971", or more accurately, "Rock Music in the Bay Area, 1965-1971."

But it does give plenty of information about the unique personalities that made all that amazing music, how they developed their sound, the personal and professional pitfalls they encountered. It shows their development from naive groups of young people beginning by playing in cafes and garages and eventually hitting the big time, bringing their local little music scene, where everyone knew everyone else, onto the world stage.

Joel Selvin's chronicle of the span of years that saw the rise and fall of San Francisco's Ballroom heyday leaves one with a mixed bag of responses. While it is jam-packed with bits of "insider" history, it lacks synthesis, often making for a tedious read. Its title is misleading--"The Summer of Love: The Inside Story of LSD, Rock n'Roll, Free Love, and High Times in the Wild West" suggests a comprehensive exploration from the inside out. It would have been more accurately heralded under something like "San Francisco's Ballroom Era: Snapshots of the Players."

There is no in-depth analysis of the culture here--none of the great and privileged perspective that is often the gift of time and distance. Their is no insightful working over of how and why the elements came together the way they did. The text plods along, most of the time, with the certain monotony of required recitation --"this happened, then that happened,then this, then that..." It is distinguished only by chaotic leaps from scenes at one camp of personalities to those of another. It is the textual equivalent of a hastily compiled scrapbook covering some particularly seminal years in the rock n' roll counterculture. Some of the pages are given decidedly more consideration than others. We seem to be in Grace Slick's sidecar much of the time, but if this were the only exposure one had to the early days of the San Francisco scene, there is the danger of walking away thinking the Grateful Dead were a minor consideration, and Bill Graham was a pitbull who never had a good day.

The text is rife with other minor sins. The period's biggest events play out in an almost anti-climactic fashion, with Selvin often focusing on odd bits of detail when it seems there ought to be vibrant, big pictures. Among places where minutiae effects the frustrating sense of walking through a major event with a view through a straw are Altamont, Woodstock, and the death of Janis Joplin. Too many minor characters are unceremoniously punched in, and subsequently abandoned to fates we are left to imagine.

The text strives for cliffhanger transitions, structured with the same misguided melodrama of a soap opera. Clever turns of phrase make it to the page now and then, but more recognizable are attempts at lyrical grace that fall short of the mark. The content often smacks of secondhand news and the feeling that a peripheral perspective has been superimposed on the epicenter of dozens of critical moments and private conversations. A journalistic approach would have given more credibility to the many personal accounts. Was Selvin the ubiquitous fly on the wall in the lives of the people he writes about, or has imagination manifested the intimate details of conversations and events long since consigned to the quiet annals of private histories?

Selvin has offered up a few good nuggets--some precious gems in the rough--but one must be willing to mine for them. This is no motherlode, and upon closing the book, one is left with the feeling that this was a collection of narrative notes, still waiting to be refined to glistening. There are myriad fascinating leaping off points, but in the end, too many have us still hanging in the air.

"Summer of Love" may have been a bit over the top with it's tabloid style coverage of the rise and fall of the San Francisco music scene, but it was a fun read. Author Joel Selvin does have his facts straight and seldom misspeaks on this insider's account of bands like the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Selvin devotes a fair amount of coverage of the Bill Graham organization and the Family Dog, the primary promoters of live music in the old ballrooms of San Francisco. That coverage is justified because it is doubtful that this music would have found a national audience without the vibrant live music scene in the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms. And it is all there: Quicksilver's obsession with firearms; the Lovin' Spoonful's narking out on the manager of the improv group, the Committee; Janice Joplin's turbulent love life; Marty Balin's courageous attempts to diffuse the violence at Altamont, the internal bickering of the Grateful Dead which lead them to serve "walking papers" to Pig Pen and Bob Weir for not having enough musical talent, and Bill Graham's fisticuffs with just about anyone who disagreed with him. If you loved the music of Haight-Ashbury, you will enjoy "Summer of Love." Oh by the way, the expression "summer of love" was just a media label for the San Francisco music phenomena and I think some of the other critics have taken the book title too literally.

I thought it was really weird the way the author trashed Janis Joplin throughout. His characterization of her was stereotypical and demeaning at best. And his complete and total dismissal of her subsequent work with the Kozmic Blues band and Full Tilt band, (found in his innane synopsis of artists at the end of the book) is also a mystery. Kozmic Blues "lame", and Pearl a "Hollywood handjob"? Give me a break. It makes me wonder how accurate the rest of the book is, although it is an engaging read. Joel, get a grip. Janis was the belle of the ball during the Summer of Love, not some raging egomaniac like you portray her. She was the embodiment of the scene there, and you make her out to be some kind of piece of trash. But then again, you didn't start writing for the SF Chronicle until 1972. So WHERE the hell were YOU during the summer of love?

So many books about rock 'n roll are letdowns because they speak in generalities about the music without informing the reader of the circumstances that shaped it. SUMMER OF LOVE is an exception; it's a well-written, engaging chronicle of the music and the players in the Bay area from 1965 to 1971. Selvin lets history speak for itself, so you get the glorious and the ghastly with no punches pulled. The impression one is left with is that, whether you think the Haight-Ashbury thing was wonderful, tragic or a load of P.R. hype, it certainly was like no other scene and it left a lot of fine music in it's wake. A good one.

Am I the only one who finds it odd that a book entitled "Summer of Love" is missing the chapter called "Summer 1967?" Or was that intentional? The chapter called Spring 1967 precedes the photo section in the middle of the book, ending with the words "Monterey International Pop Festival." After the photo section, we're suddenly in "Fall 1967," with the words "The so-called Summer of Love left San Francisco in a mess..." What happened? Did I get a copy without that chapter? The pages are continuously numbered... I would have rated this a 5, but I feel gypped!

As rock is now redundant and is the classical music of the 20th century, I have been seeking out the great rock music of the past. Following a recent trip to San Francisco and Haight-Ashbury, I've been getting heavily into West Coast sixties psychedelia/hippy bands (although I was only 4 in 1967). This book was a great read and helped me understand the scene in more depth. I quickly gave up on keeping pace with the vast array of characters and players in this book and focussed more on the bands, the scene, and the events. This book is a must for any lover of rock music and is an important detailed historical document. Feed your head.

I don't care how interesting the material is - if a book is poorly written, I invariably get frustrated and set it aside. I grow weary of wondering "Why can't this person write a coherent, orderly narrative? Where was the editor?"

So it was with this book. I thought it might be me, but then I found myself reading a similarly awkward piece in MOJO and, sure enough, Selvin was the author. He obviously has a passion for the subject matter, but I expect a higher level of exposition for my money.

My judgment: if you want a lot of colorful details about this fascinating period, you'll probably enjoy the book, as other reviewers have. However, if you put a premium on clarity of presentation, be forewarned.

Two stars, plus one for attention to historical detail.

as a reporter and a writer, there isn't a cohesive paragraph in this mess of a book. Names thrown at you a mile a minute with no introductions, numerous subjects addressed in a single paragraph, disjointed sentences, NO feeling whatsoever in his writing. Just fact after fact after fact after........ GOD I had to put it down after 100 pages it made me sick. I was growng up during this era ON the west coast and it sure as hell didn't seem this boring!!!! AND NO MENTION OR CHAPTER ON THE SUMMER OF LOVE 1967. But then he would of just made it seem totally worthless and boring anyway..... I want my 16.95 BACK.
and i dont need my memories blandly reported by someone who I doubt was even close to being there.

If you are interested in the 60's San Francisco era and the bands that evolved, this is great reading. The documentation and the short synopsis of the events, bands, music and players at the end make this a wonderful reference. Bought used at a very good price with fast and reasonable shipping.