Overview
“This is the best book about music I’ve read in years, and a gripping piece of social history.”—Brian Eno
When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the 1960s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running UFO, the coolest club in London; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd.
More than any previous sixties music autobiography, Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. As well as the sixties heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Fairport Convention.
Record and film producer Joe Boyd was born in Boston in 1942 and graduated from Harvard in 1964. He went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., and many others. He produced the documentary Jimi Hendrix and the film Scandal. In 1980 he started Hannibal Records and ran it for twenty years. He lives in London.
Synopsis
The essential memoir from legendary producer who knew Dylan, Nick Drake, Pink Floyd and many more
The New York Times - Dave Itzkoff
Most music-industry memoirs that aspire to "Zelig"-like levels of synchronicity read like Forrest Gump, with narrators witnessing or facilitating one crucial moment after the next, until the whole enterprise makes your teeth ache like a box of chocolates. The simple brilliance of White Bicycles is that its author never overstates his own importance or exaggerates his failings, and still ends up telling an irresistible tale.
Editorials
Dave Itzkoff
Most music-industry memoirs that aspire to "Zelig"-like levels of synchronicity read like Forrest Gump, with narrators witnessing or facilitating one crucial moment after the next, until the whole enterprise makes your teeth ache like a box of chocolates. The simple brilliance of White Bicycles is that its author never overstates his own importance or exaggerates his failings, and still ends up telling an irresistible tale.—The New York Times