Customer Reviews

White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Written by a man who has produced so many classic albums and who has encouraged and brought to the limelight many artists I love, I simply had to get this book. It certainly delivers, too. Many, many interesting facts, dates, anecdotes about as many artists are crammed into the pages, so it makes for avid reading, especially if you're a music fan interested in the music in the past century (for we can not only read about obvious artists and groups like Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band, but about jazz artists like Duke Ellington and Sonny Rollins as well).
The downside of this book for me is the fact that it stays a bit on the surface. Both the artists as indeed the writer himself stay a bit distant, so that I didn't feel as involved as I could be. It might well be that Joe Boyd just wants to keep it factual and concise, but I think that he could have written a better book had he chosen to go a little deeper into (some of) the artists whose records he has produced.
Nevertheless, this is a fine book and you'll love all he has to write. Like I said, for me not buying and reading it immediately was not an option.

White Bicycles, by Joe Boyd, is a "pick up and don't put down all weekend" type book. Boyd has great storytelling style, here telling us about his career and where it took him with various recording artists, his escapades and participation in London in the "60's", and his professional development as a producer. I got the book primarily because I am a Nick Drake fan. The two existing Nick biographies, while diligently researched, and containing info based on many interviews, still have that degree of detachment that necessarily exists when the authors have never personally met their subject.I certainly wasn't disappointed-as Boyd's few chapters on Nick brought this departed artist to life for me more than the two existing bios. He conveys his interactions with the shy artist, and writes about him in a way that lets us see the person as well as the artist. Yes, it is very funny to read as Boyd describes how Nick answered his telephone (as if it had never rung before) and his first meeting with him after the intro by Ashley of Fairport Convention, then moving in to the production of Five Leaves and Bryter Layter, and Nick's decision to take a new direction w/Pink Moon, which Boyd did not produce.

But there are also so many other artists! The book is a fascinating journey through the emerging rock/pop/folk scenes of the 60's early 70's on both sides of the Atlantic, with some gigantic names, and some not so well known on one shore or another. My feeling upon finishing the book was a Question: I wonder what he'll publish next? I want to be there.

This book is an interesting look into the swinging London of the 1960's from the viewpoint of an American looking to make a name for himself in the music biz. Like fellow American Shel Talmy Joe Boyd was involved in many of London's top bands by running the UFO club and producing the Pink Floyd's first single, producing and managing Fairport Convention and Nick Drake and capitalizing on the new interest in the British folk music scene. This book starts with Boyd's childhood and his experiences working for the Newport Folk Festival, Elektra records, and his own Witchseason Productions. It is very well written and it makes me wonder why he has not written a definitive book on Nick Drake but that's for another time. If you love reading about music in the 1960's or just music in general this is a great book albeit very short.

You know that saying about the flower-powered era of the 1960's - "If you can remember it, you weren't there." Well, Joe Boyd was there AND he remembers it. This book is a journey through the American Jazz, Folk, Blues and British Folk/Rock scene at a time when the music business was rapidly changing and anything was possible. Boyd has had a career that spans the old and new, the traditional and the cutting edge on both sides of the Atlantic. He tells the tale with honesty, humor, and insight. It is an entertaining read from first page to last. Highlights: Joe Boyd was production manager of the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan unveiled his new electric sound. Boyd tells the story of this sea-change in American music with an even hand and from the inside, painting a rich portrait of both the folk purists and those who wished to transform the genre and make it their own. Boyd produced legends of British folk/rock, Fairport Convention and Nick Drake as well as co-founding the seminal psychedelic London music venue, the UFO club. He takes us into the heart of the English music scene during a time when its influence was at a peak.

I bought this book for my husband, a musician, and he devoured it.

I hope Joe Boyd decides to continue -- he either kept incredible journals or has an astonishing memory. Either way, this is one of the best accounts of the era I've read. To have a producer discuss how drugs influenced/changed the music of individuals and bands while he was working with them, the role politics played in his and various partners' efforts, and provide his completely candid assessments (I don't agree with him all the time -- but he sure doesn't mince words) is just great. If you have the LPs, make sure your turntable is in working order. You'll want to relisten to far more than is on the companion CD. Now it's time for the Hannibal years!

The name Joe Boyd connects me immediately to that distinctive pink Island record label that gave us the incredibly enduring music of Nick Drake, John Martyn, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Danny Thompson, the Fairport Clan, Cat Stevens, Traffic and all the other dizzying and diverse array of artists that Joe was connected to at one time or another. Certainly this was a time when creativity and artistry seemed to be the driving force behind the reason to release the recordings of this time, rather that pure commercial considerations. Funnily enough some of the records sold by the bucketload and continue to do so to this day.

White Bicycles is a well written wander through a wonderful period of musical history. My only quibble, as with some of the other reviews here, is that the book, at times, seems more a skim on the surface rather than the real depth and detail that this tale merits. I would love to sit down over a couple of pints with Joe Boyd and hear his recollections given the colouring they so richly deserve. In the meantime dig out "Bryter Layter", pour a large glass of your favourite tipple and enjoy the company of someone who had the knack of coaxing, what is in reality a unique and very British sounding music, out of a bunch of very young but quite brilliant songwriters and performers.

Joe Boyd's "White Bicycles" is an easy-to-read and fun memoir. It likely will appeal exclusively to fans of British folk and psychedelic music, but it's really about Joe Boyd more than anything else. And Joe Boyd is a man with a fascinating life and great skills as a writer. He also happened to have experienced some key moments in the '60s, and, if he doesn't quite make us feel like we were there (which is really impossible) he certainly makes us feel like we remember it along with him.

Since several reviewers have commented on the book's lack of scenes in the recording studio, I feel that I must address that point. First, I think he did an excellent job of describing what it was like to be in the studio with Nick Drake, and the sections of the book concerning Nick Drake are generally quite strong. But he devotes considerably less time to Fairport Convention, the ISB, and others, and readers expecting a book of tales in the recording studio will be disappointed.

But the book is about more than just music: it's about the '60s, and its about the cast of characters who came into Joe Boyd's life. It is rife with observations about the society of the time and how it has changed. It's nostalgic and really does give you the impression that Boyd's life has probably never been quite as fun as it was then, but it is all tempered by an acceptance that the '60s are over and a knowledge that the decade really wasn't so perfect. In fact, the title "white bicycles" alludes to just that: white bicycles were communal bicycles that the city of Amsterdam produced for its citizens to share, but people ended up stealing them and painting them different colors. The white bicycle was a "failed experiment," a description that many use to describe the decade itself.

But Boyd himself doesn't even go as far as to call the '60s a failure, or anything so dramatic. He paints the '60s not as a mythical era, but as a group of years that were just like any other years, except that a whole lot of cool things happened.

And included in the cool things that happened for Joe Boyd in the '60s are hanging out at Harvard Square with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, driving American blues musicians across France, stage managing the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band took the "folk" out of the festival, unleashing Pink Floyd on London, playing dice with Nick Drake, producing soundtracks amidst the chaos of the early '70s film industry, briefly joining the Church of Scientology and then escaping from it, and more. Boyd was there for all of it, but he writes about it in a reflective, clear manner that may have something to do with the fact that, in his words, he "never got too stoned."

Many people claim that life and music were better in the '60s, but Joe Boyd gives insight into some of the very logical reasons that '60s life and music were loved by so many. According to Boyd, the economy in the '60s allowed for people to live cheaply much more easily, and music sounded better because of the recording methods more than the quality of the music. Observations such as this are casually integrated into the narrative and sound neither preachy nor pretentious.

Although I know many readers will disagree, I really believe that "White Bicycles" is one of the best books ever written about both the music and the decade of the '60s.

If you enjoy well-crafted, laid-back memoirs, and if it intrigues you to wonder how it would feel to sit in the baffling presence of Nick Drake, or to like a girl but then discover Bob Dylan in her shower, this is definitely the book for you, and I couldn't recommend it more highly.

As a musician and general music junkie, I'd rate this as a must have. Joe Boyd is just as important to learn from as those blues and jazz bands he resurrected in the last 50s and early 60s. I also sensed the sadness and reverence he had towards Nick Drake, the sad honesty about Sandy Denny, as well as rejoicing in the still flourishing career of Richard Thompson, all of which are influences of mine.

I wonder if he has ever been to the Philadelphia Folk Festival.

This book had the potential for amazing insight into an "Incredible" man's career. Unfortunately it was like a movie trailer, it never really got deep enough to generate a satisfying study. I don't know what other books Eno(he said best book on the 60's) has read recently, but this one is too topically written for someone who was there for some of the 60's most landmark recordings.It could have used another 200 pages. Still worth the read for the fact it is Joe Boyd.