A time machine disguised as a book
5 stars
There is a certain orthodoxy derived from summarising the events since any given date. Andy Warhol for instance, is seen as a world-beating artist whose paintings fetch millions at auction. But in 1966 his crew were on a gruelling national tour with their multimedia show The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, meeting rivalry on the west coast where Haight Ashbury happenings were a world away from Warhol's New York weirdness. There was hostility and indifference in other venues across the USA.
Jon Savage tells you that other, lesser known story. It's still epic, like a tale from Mount Olympus, but it's an alternative version of the classics. And Savage's research is like physical evidence for the existence of Zeus and Poseidon and Hera. Rather than archetypes, summaries of certain emotions or events or human traits they have come to represent, Savage gives our heroes real life, everyday drama, like Robert Graves fleshing …
There is a certain orthodoxy derived from summarising the events since any given date. Andy Warhol for instance, is seen as a world-beating artist whose paintings fetch millions at auction. But in 1966 his crew were on a gruelling national tour with their multimedia show The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, meeting rivalry on the west coast where Haight Ashbury happenings were a world away from Warhol's New York weirdness. There was hostility and indifference in other venues across the USA.
Jon Savage tells you that other, lesser known story. It's still epic, like a tale from Mount Olympus, but it's an alternative version of the classics. And Savage's research is like physical evidence for the existence of Zeus and Poseidon and Hera. Rather than archetypes, summaries of certain emotions or events or human traits they have come to represent, Savage gives our heroes real life, everyday drama, like Robert Graves fleshing out the lives of the Roman emperors in "I, Claudius".
The characters are not gods and emperors. They are Jagger, Lennon, Joe Meek, Dusty Springfield, and countless others. Unlike Graves, Savage doesn't just make up the details. The facts are all there, plucked from primary sources and interviews with people who witnessed them. A history which became a mythology is turned into history again. But it's still epic.