My life of rock and revolution in the 60s

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“In silver boots, with flowing hair, Richard Goldstein strode through the 1960s like a hero in a picaresque adventure. He pioneered the new form of rock criticism; reported from the front lines of progressive politics and the counterculture; and, most of all, thoroughly lived the changes that revolutionary era wrought. This memoir provides unique views of some of the time's most colorful figures, including Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol. But most of all, it shows us how one electric consciousness--Goldstein's own--emerged and evolved as America itself became new.”
ANN POWERS, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO 

"Goldstein gives a deeply felt and compelling portrait of an age that indelibly marked everyone who took part in it. Indispensable for understanding the culture of the '60s and the music that was at its heart."
KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)

"For Richard Goldstein, writing about music was a lifeline. The utopian energies of rock provided a window through which he could glimpse a very different kind of future being born. And he recognized instinctively that this new music required a new kind of writing to comprehend it. So he invented it. Much of the most riveting material in the book centers on the connection he made with some of the most brilliant and vulnerable of the era’s artists: Brian Wilson, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Janis Joplin. Goldstein reminds us of a time when the relationship between a musician and her fans was personal, even intimate."
KEVIN J.H. DETTMAR, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES 

"Richard Goldstein's memoir took another little piece of my own heart. It's shrewdly observed, vividly written, steadily thoughtful, and above all honest about the exhilaration and fear that flourished in a time of giddy reinvention."
TODD GITLIN, AUTHOR OF THE SIXTIES: YEARS OF HOPE, DAYS OF RAGE

"As the first pop critic in the United States with a regular column devoted to rock, [Goldstein] presented a theory as well as a practice of pop that took neo-Freudianism, New Journalism, and Pop Art as its referents. Goldstein's music criticism was an ongoing argument against the mass culture critique, highlighting how significant, revolutionary, and thoughtful writing about mass media could be."
DEVON POWERS, FROM WRITING THE REORD: THE VILLAGE VOICE AND THE BIRTH OF ROCK CRITICISM

"As a writer for the Village Voice who covered music and culture in the 1960s, author Goldstein (The Poetry of Rock, Reporting the Counterculture, and Homocons) was in the right place at the right time, as he explains in this entertaining music memoir. A shy, fat kid from the Bronx suddenly found himself hanging out with Andy Warhol and John Lennon, crashing at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, and spending time Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin when they were still young and naive. While anecdotes such as these are more than enough to fill a book, Goldstein uses them as set pieces to chart his rocky road to his own sense of self. Artfully integrating a number of story lines—his murky grasp on his own sexuality, the vapidity of the peace movement, and the death of rock as a revolutionary force (he points a finger straight at “MacArthur Park”)— Goldstein takes a fluid approach that may irritate those expecting a linear tale. However, Goldstein’s confessional tone gives significant warmth to the book, encouraging the reader to settle in as Goldstein recalls a tumultuous culture with humility and a healthy perspective."
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