Overview
Between the years 1965 and 1971 something happened to make the world on one side of that divide all but unrecognizable to the world on the other side. For better or for worse (it very much depends on whom you ask), those seven years revolutionized western-and eventually global-culture as utterly as any of the great turning points in our history. What happened were the hippies.
Long hair, grass and LSD, free love, rock music and the great festivals from Monterey to Woodstock, antiwar protests and political activism, communes and macrobiotics, spiritual seeking in Eastern religions and personal transformation in therapies and practices from est to gestalt, the first stirrings of the modern environmental and feminist movements: the hippies were defined by virtually everything so-called straight society was not.
Hippie combines hundreds of photographs, a fascinating narrative highlighting all the social and cultural upheavals of the time, as well as quotations from many of the people-Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Grace Slick, George Harrison, Wavy Gravy, and many others-who lived through and shaped the counter culture. Proceeding year by year, it gives an unprecedented degree of shape and coherence to a time that by its nature is kaleidoscopically bewildering.
For instance, 1965 saw the formation of the key psychedelic rock bands, including the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. In 1966 the Hare Krishna movement was born, and 1967 was the year of the Summer of Love in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury and the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1968 politics erupted into violent clashes from Paris to Chicago. 1969 demonstrated the possibilities of the communal spirit at Woodstock as well as its limits at Altamont. 1970 was marked by the first Gay Pride marches and the first Earth Day in the U.S. And by 1971, even politicians were wearing their hair down to their collars and many aspects of the hippie way of life, from vegetarianism and organic food to the perpetual quest for enlightenment and self-realization, had taken permanent root in the general community -- and marketplace.
This book is a sensory delight and a mind expanding trip for those who came of age before and after the hippie years and wonder what that time was really like, and especially for those who were part of the scene themselves and would like to know how their particular experience fits in with everything that the hippies meant and presaged.
About the author:
Barry Miles was a central figure in the development of the hippie movement in the UK and has written biographies of Beat generation writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac.
Synopsis
Let your freak flag fly!
Climb on the psychedelic bus with the Merry Pranksters and take the Acid Test..Groove on the streets of Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love..Get experienced with Hendrix at Monterey and commune with the mud and 400,000 free spirits at Woodstock..From the mid-60s to the early 70s, the hippie counter culture burst upon the scene in celebration of freedom, love, peace, and the limitless possibilities of sensual and spiritual exploration. Alive with the outrageous personalities and revolutionary upheavals of a time that changed the world, Hippie is trippy and true to the spirit of a time unlike any other. Far out, man!
The Washington Post - Nick Gillespie
To his credit, Miles, best known as a biographer of those proto-hippies, the Beats, doesn't shy away from the dark side of '60s youth culture. The Manson Family, not just the Merry Pranksters, appears in DayGlo detail. Nor does he gloss over the misogyny at the heart of much of "freak culture," even as he convincingly argues it ultimately helped to liberate women, gays and straights. The freshest part of the book is the attention paid to European variants, and the colorful reprints from the censored English underground mag Oz are worth the price of Hippie alone.
Editorials
Booklist
(STARRED REVIEW). The watershed 1960s can be gloriously re-experienced in the pages of this magnificent oversize volume. The swinging sixties will live forever for the boomers who came of age in that decade; for their parents, who, at the time, felt uncomfortable with the abrupt shifts they observed in values and attitudes (to say nothing of dress); and now for their children, who listen to the rock music of that era and wonder, Was it really all that cool? Miles uses the hippie as a metaphor for the whole cultural experience of the 1960s and its impact on American – no, world – political and social life. As is so graphically documented here, the hippie was the epitome of the youth culture and very much defined the times. This was the great era of protest; hippies stood outside society, and from that vantage point, they offered both valid and off-the-wall criticism. This luscious book, its textual accompaniment as spirited as its bounty of dynamic illustrations (including candid photos, album covers, and publicity shots), establishes the wide social boundaries of the movement – from antiwar activities to fashion and music and cinema – and spotlights the individuals most important to the counterculture, from Bob Dylan to Jim Morrison, from Ken Kesey to Abbie Hoffman. And, of course, the new-arrivals display potential of this book is rich and varied. Wayne Koestembaum’s biography Andy Warhol (2001) could be set beside it as collateral reading, as could Bruce Spizer’s The Beatles are Coming! (2004) and the Autobiography of Martin Luther King (1998), a collection of King’s writings. Also, don’t forget to use books and even actual artifacts pertaining to gay liberation, fashions of the time, cinema, and all other aspects of distinctive sixties culture.—August 2004 issue
Christopher Hitchens
… photographs (plus a certain pungent reek that some people, such as myself, never actually inhaled) are the best mnemonic prompting. To turn the shiny pages of Hippie is to breathe deeply.— The New York Times
Nick Gillespie
To his credit, Miles, best known as a biographer of those proto-hippies, the Beats, doesn't shy away from the dark side of '60s youth culture. The Manson Family, not just the Merry Pranksters, appears in DayGlo detail. Nor does he gloss over the misogyny at the heart of much of "freak culture," even as he convincingly argues it ultimately helped to liberate women, gays and straights. The freshest part of the book is the attention paid to European variants, and the colorful reprints from the censored English underground mag Oz are worth the price of Hippie alone.— The Washington Post