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Book Description
In 1969 Michael Lydon, a founding editor of Rolling Stone and a leading member of rock writing's first generation, got a dream assignment: to cover the Rolling Stones' hopscotch tour across America that ended at Altamont. His long, intimate piece on the tour, The Rolling Stones Discover America, captures the highs and lows of the grueling tour and has become a classic of rock 'n' roll journalism—one that the Maysles brothers studied to guide the editing of their film, Gimme Shelter.Nobody used the term "embedded reporter" in those days, but that's how Lydon lived on the tour, staying in the Stones' HQ house above LA's Sunset Strip and in suites at New York's Plaza Hotel, flying in private jets to Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston, gambling in Las Vegas, hanging out backstage at the LA Forum and Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, smoking pot with "The Boys" in late-night bull sessions, and night after night digging the overpowering, sensuous, and beautiful music. "This was the peak of my rock 'n' roll reporting career," Lydon has said. "I knew I was where every hippie in America wanted to be, and I jumped into the tour with my eyes and ears wide open, a big grin on my mug."
The peaceful miracle of Woodstock's three day "Peace and Music" festival had just happened, and the 60s revolution in electric music, psychedelic drugs, long hair, and free love was spreading across the country. Millions of kids, scared of Vietnam and bored in school, were searching for new ideas and directions in the music of the Beatles, Dylan, and the Stones; the rock stars, kids themselves, were searching for ideas and directions from their peers. "Every Stones' concert on that tour became a mutual celebration of a new generation," Lydon remembers, "Mick and Keith feeding off the energy blossoming up from the darkness in the huge halls and arenas and hurling that energy back at the kids in savage, demonic music."
The Stones' concert at the Altamont Raceway, planned as their free gift to San Francisco, turned to disaster, as a bad mix of youthful naiveté, vicious Hell's Angels, drugs, and the mind-bending pressure to top Woodstock engendered first fear and confusion and finally murder in front of the stage as the Stones played "Sympathy for the Devil."
In The Rolling Stones Discover America, Lydon also describes his own nervousness living so close to stardom. "The Stones were good guys and hard-working musicians," he says, "but they were the sun kings of the tour universe. The rest of us were minor planets spinning about them in fixed and distant orbits. It's a miracle I managed to keep my feet on the ground, keep taking notes, and get the story down on paper—but I'm glad I did."
Praise for Michael Lydon's writing:
"It is with the greatest sensitivity and care that Lydon explores the connections between the scene, the men, and the music." Ben Gerson, Fusion.
"Far and away [Rock Folk is] the best book on pop music I've ever read." George Frazier, Boston Globe.
Rock Folk is one of the best books on American music I've ever run across." Dennis McNally, Grateful Dead historian.
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