Dig it, Daddy-o

Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970 by David Browne

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fire and Rain is a great book on a pivotal year in rock music, 1970. The subtitle is The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970. It not only covers the aforementioned musicians and, in most cases, the disintegration of the groups, but also the political climate of the times. In many ways it is a "lost story" or, at best, an often overlooked story of that year. We tend to forget or, maybe, try to forget, the bombings by radicals and the campus unrest and shootings.

This book dovetailed nicely with two other books I've read recently. It was like a sequel to Michael Walker's Laurel Canyon, picking up right where that book ends and being about many of the same musicians. It also covered the accidental bombing of a Fifth Avenue brownstone by the Weathermen that was part of the history of Greenwich Village by John Straugsbaugh, The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, which I'd read just three weeks ago.



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