Think "Woodstock" and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock—the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident—was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape.
In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren—and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title).
Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene—and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s—Hoskyns has produced an Eats Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.
EDITORIAL REVIEWS AND PRAISE FOR SMALL TOWN TALK
FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Hoskyns (Across the Great Divide) offers readers an absorbing glimpse into events that shaped Woodstock, N.Y., into a haven for musicians. He takes the title from a song by Bobby Charles, who arrived from Tennessee, and who recorded with Maria Muldaur and Rock Danko of the Band; their collaboration is just one facet of what Hoskyns calls the “quintessential Woodstock of the early ’70s.” Drawing on interviews with many of the artists, their friends, and the inhabitants of the town, Hoskyns paints a brilliant portrait of the colorful characters that turned this little patch of woods in upstate New York into a hotbed for much of the music that changed America. He chronicles the history of Woodstock from its earliest days as an artist colony in the late 19th century, through its heyday in the late 1960s, and right up to the death of Band drummer Levon Helm in 2012. Along the way, Hoskyns shares the tales of Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan (at the beginning of Dylan’s career) and Janis Joplin, and who inspired the character of the megalomaniac manager Bob Grossman in the movie Inside Llewlyn Davis; the rise and fall of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; and the infighting among the Band, perhaps the group most associated with the town in popular imagination. In the end, Hoskyns’s stunning book highlights some of the most memorable music in American history.
Praise for Small Town Talk Graham Parker - "Peace and love are rare interlopers in Barney Hoskyns's excellent Woodstock opus. Instead the machinations of power emanating from Dylan's first manager, Albert Grossman, ripple through the story like a shark's fin, calmly interspersed with frenzied bouts of bacchanalia. There was some music as well. Wish I'd been there."
David Browne, author of So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead - "Woodstock has never simply been about Dylan, the Band, and a certain large nearby festival. That small town has played host to some of music’s greatest, quirkiest, and most self-destructive talents, along with several barn fulls of industry gossip, and Barney Hoskyns has unearthed all of it to tell one of rock’s last great untold stories.”
Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation - "Few writers know more about the essence–and the magical geography–of the rock world than Barney Hoskyns. Small Town Talk does for Woodstock what his Hotel California did for Woodstock's SoCal sister community. In both cases, these historically special places, where recent American culture was born and flowered, are lucky to have this wise, witty, knowledgeable Englishman getting them not just spot-on right but also so much fun to read."
Richard Williams, author of The Blue Moment - Barney Hoskyns leads us off the tourist trail to reveal the lives, loves, lies, and legends of a rock 'n' roll Peyton Place."
Kirkus Reviews, 12/15/15 - “Hoskyns peels back the layers of a musical Shangri-La that has plenty of dark corners…The cast of characters is stellar…Fans of 1960s and '70s rock and music history buffs will find this a pleasure.”
Library Journal, 1/1/16 - “A fascinating history and behind-the-scenes examination of life in the small town of Woodstock…This title will appeal to those who are looking for a detailed account of the bohemian lifestyle, as well as to fans of Sixties rock.”
Mojo, March 2016 -“Barney Hoskyns has come up with something novel in Small Town Talk. Instead of focusing on the concert—which actually took place 60 miles from Woodstock—he nails the magic, and mayhem, of the town which inspired the festival’s organisers to co-opt its name…Hoskyns offers a pitch perfect East Coast corollary to his classic tome on the Laurel Canyon scene, Hotel California. Better, he chronicles the seeds of the Americana movement, whose fetish for rural music resonates louder today than ever.”