White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s

by Joe Boyd

Overview

When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the '60s, 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 the coolest club in London, the UFO; 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 '60s music autobiography, Joe Boyd's White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. His greatest coup is bringing to life the famously elusive figure of Nick Drake - the first time he's been written about by anyone who knew him well.

As well as the '60s 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, The Incredible String Band to Fairport Convention.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847652164
Publisher:	Profile
Publication date:	07/09/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

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, REM 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. Boyd lives in London where he writes for the Guardian and Independent.
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, REM and many others. He produced the documentary Jimi Hendrix and the film Scandal. In 1980 he started Hannibal Records and ran it for 20 years. Boyd lives in London where he writes for the Guardian and Independent. His next book is about World Music.

Editorial Reviews

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

Dave Itzkoff

A key producer of England's folk-rock greats looks back at the '60s. Boyd may be best known for helming unforgettable albums by Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, John & Beverly Martyn, the Incredible String Band and Vashti Bunyan, but he emerges in this memoir, originally published in England in 2006, as a sort of Zelig of '60s music. Born in New Jersey, he got his start as a concert promoter, road manager and stage manager for a variety of great folk, blues and jazz acts; the early pages of the book are filled with wonderful backstage glimpses of Lonnie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Rev. Gary Davis, Duke Ellington and others. Working for George Wein at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, he witnessed first-hand the violent birthing of folk-rock in Bob Dylan's controversial performance, caught in a lovely fly-on-the-wall chapter. In London, he recorded Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd in their pre-stardom days and co-founded UFO, the city's first underground rock venue. His Witchseason Productions brought the cream of the '60s U.K. folk-rock boom to light. Returning to the U.S. in the early '70s, he produced a memorable documentary about Jimi Hendrix for Warner Bros. Boyd's remembrances are delivered in cool, straightforward and self-effacing style. He's equally at home discussing the machinations of the British music biz and the eccentricities of his oddball stable of musicians (especially the Incredible String Band and the legendary Drake, a classic introvert whose essence seems elusive even to his discoverer and longtime producer). The book unfolds in leisurely fashion and allows for engaging tangents on such topics as the joys of analog recording and the inner workings of Scientology (ofwhich Boyd was briefly an adherent). Ultimately, the author takes a conflicted view of the radical decade; his title references the white bicycles, provided as free transportation by Amsterdam revolutionaries, that were finally stolen and repainted as the free-for-all spirit of the '60s disintegrated. A brisk, wised-up and highly entertaining consideration of a crucial musical epoch's many facets.

Kirkus Reviews