I Want to Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era, 1965-1969 - Softcover

James Henke; Charles Perry; Barry Miles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811817008 ISBN 13: 9780811817004

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 1997

Synopsis

Chronicles the events and music of the late 1960s in the United States and Great Britain

About this title

About the Author:

James Henke is vice-president of exhibitions and curatorial affairs of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. For 16 years he was a writer and editor at Rolling Stone magazine. He has also written and edited several books on rock and roll.

Barry Miles was a seminal cultural figure in the London scene throughout the 60s. His many books include biographies of Allen Ginsberg and Paul McCartney. He lives in London.

Charles Perry has been associated with Rolling Stone since 1968 and is currently a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times.

Review:

--Star Tribune, June 1997
It hardly seems possible that the psychedelic era is 30-some years old, but the first major exhibition by the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland celebrated that era so it must be so. Still...30 years?

I Want To Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era: 1965-1969, edited by James Henke, essays by Charles Perry and Barry Miles is very much a Rolling Stone magazine product. Henke, the chief curator of the museum, is a former music editor of the magazine, and Perry has been associated with it since 1968. Miles has been involved in the cultural scene in London since the '60s and has written books about the late Allen Ginsberg and former Beatle Paul McCartney, both of whom first made names for themselves in the psychedelic years.

In an introduction, Henke quickly reminds the reader of not only the volume but the quality of the creative explosion that the book will survey. The music and energy of the period was fueled by the music and juices of the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, the Rolling Stones, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, the Velvet Underground, Big Brother and the Holding Company (read Janis Joplin), the Byrds, Donovan. . . and on and on.

The book covers the era both in the United States and England, where the first hint of the psychedelic era -- the marriage of drug use and pop culture -- took place on June 11, 1965, at the "Poets of the World/Poets of Our Time" reading at the Royal Albert Hall (one of the organizers of that event was Miles). The featured poets were Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso. Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky did not read, but sat in the audience along with Indira Gandhi, the future prime minister of India. Controversial psychiatrist R.D. Laing brought along a dozen of his patients to dance and blow bubbles.

If that was the beginning of the four-year summer of love, Woodstock's protest celebration in 1969 was the culmination.

The book covers the era through text, illustration, photos, a time-line across the bottom of many of the pages and the wonderful recollections of the people who were involved. The photographs capture posters, clothing and paraphernalia from the era in addition to the musicians, artists, poets and celebrities of the time. There are memories from Grace Slick, Boz Scaggs, Bob Weir, Country Joe McDonald, Donovan, Ginsberg and many more. A double-page spread features a pschedelic-colored Buick painted by artist David Vaughan for the design group Binder, and Country Joe, Joplin and Santana are captured in action at Woodstock.

From the time-lines the reader learns that on January 24, 1967, San Francisco police chief Thomas Cahill coined the term "the Love Generation" to describe the folks living in Haight-Ashbury, and on the 27th of the same month, the United States, the Soviet Union and 58 other nations signed a treaty banning nuclear weapons in outer space.

If you can't make it to the exhibit, or the traveling show at the Mall of America from July 4 to 6, this catalog is the next best.

About this edition

• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0811817008
• ISBN 13: 9780811817004
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208