“Jackson has a better ear than a lot of music writers, and one of the best parts of this book is his many casual citings of songs that echo others: Marvin Gaye’s first million-selling single, “I’ll Be Doggone,” builds on a riff used in the Searchers’ “Needles and Pins,” one also pinched by the Byrds for “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” … A lot of the best insights come from writers who show us the familiar through fresh eyes, as Jackson does when he returns us to a year when a lot of us were young and poor and not as happy as we thought we were, yet there was always a great song on the radio.”

“This mid-decade moment of enchantment is finally given the scrutiny it deserves in Andrew Grant Jackson's 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music … This book deftly supports the claim embedded in its title … Written for music lovers who were there and for those who wish they were, the book is a well-researched cultural history that leaves no rolling stone unturned … [Jackson] goes beyond pop, rock, and the new "folk rock," showing how R&B, jazz, and country were also undergoing dramatic change in '65, and he foreshadows glam, funk, disco, and hip hop … The most revolutionary year in music is under the radar no more.”

“The author covered a lot more than many of the other books on music history I have read.”

“This is a powerful book because a lot of powerful things happened in 1965. A look at any current newspaper reveals how much we’ve progressed beyond that seemingly remote era and how little has really changed. My only wish is that Jackson’s doesn’t let it be with ’65. He may prove that ’66, ’67, ’68, and beyond weren’t as revolutionary, but I would still love to see him peer into those years too. It would make one revolutionary series.”

ANDREW GRANT JACKSON is the author of Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles' Solo Careers and Where's Ringo? He has written for Rolling Stone, Yahoo!, Slate's "Blogging the Beatles," Baseline Studio System, music magazines Burn Lounge, Mean Street, and Dispatch, and copyedited the Hollywood monthly magazine Ingenue. He directed and cowrote the feature film The Discontents starring Perry King and Amy Madigan and served as actor Jeff Bridges's development associate at AsIs Productions. He lives in Los Angeles.