Before The Gold Rush: Peace, Love And The Dawn Of Canadian Sound - Softcover

Nicholas Jennings

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014026356X ISBN 13: 9780140263565

Publisher: Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 1998

Synopsis

This is an entertaining, authoritative, and highly anecdotal look at the golden era of Canadian pop music-the historically important decade that gave birth to such internationally respected recording artists as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, Murray MacLauchlan, Bruce Cockburn, Buffy Saint Marie, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Ronnie Hawkins. In the bohemian sixties, Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood was a hippie haven-our version of Haight-Ashbury or Greenwich Village, a place where coffeehouses like the Riverboat and the Purple Onion offered a creative mecca for musicians from across Canada. They came from Saskatoon and Winnipeg, from Vancouver and Edmonton and Halifax. By the middle of the sixties, they had forged an adventurous, original sound that the American music press proclaimed "a fresh wind from the north". It was Canadian music's first wave of international success. In researching the book, Jennings conducted more than 100 interviews with musicians, managers, club owners, booking agents, and record company executives including Gordon Lightfoot, Murray MacLauchlan, Bruce Cockburn, among many others. Many of those he's interviewed have provided the author with period photographs and other memorabilia for reproduction in this book.

About this title

About the Author:

Nicholas Jennings is one of Canada's most respected music journalists. As music critic and contributing editor to Maclean's, he has interviewed top Canadian and international artists from Joni Mitchell and Robbie Robertson to Whitney Houston and Paul McCartney. A frequent contributor to CBC radio, he worked in Yorkville's legendary Riverboat coffee house in the 1970's.

Review:

"Beginning with Ian & Sylvia, the narrative runs like a train, picking up passengers one by one, tracking their interrelationships, creating an underlying sense of accumulation and momentum". -- Maclean's

"Jennings' wonderful study of the formative years of a Canadian folk, pop, and rock sound is an invaluable addition to our understanding of our musical heritage, popular culture, and political history". -- Quill and Quire

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Canada Ltd
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 014026356X
• ISBN 13: 9780140263565
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228