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White Bicycles

By Joe Boyd

(Serpent's Tail, 286pp., £11.99)

white-bicyclesBooks about the 1960s open themselves to the obvious jibe: if you were there, you don't remember etc. Joe Boyd was there, he does remember everything, and he has come to considered conclusions about the death of the optimism he so beguilingly charts in his memoir White Bicycles (Serpent's Tail, 286pp., £11.99).

Like a music-business Zelig, Boyd seems to have been present at an astonishing number of defining moments: Dylan's electric Newport performance; Eric Clapton's first version of 'Crossroads'; Coleman Hawkins's tour of Europe with Harry 'Sweets' Edison; the first gigs at the UFO and Roundhouse; the recording of 'Arnold Layne' by Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd; the beginnings, astonishing rise and eventual loss to Scientology of the Incredible String Band; the birth of English folk-rock involving Fairport Convention and Sandy Denny; the making of the film biography of Jimi Hendrix; the recording sessions of Nick Drake; the first ventures of Abba into songwriting; the list goes on and on.

Serious, thoughtful and compulsively readable, Boyd's book is packed with fascinating insights, revealing (but never tawdry or merely gossipy) anecdotes, and a wealth of incidental period detail; in short, it's a model of its type, and should be read by anyone with even a passing interest in 1960s music, from blues and jazz to folk and rock and all the myriad subgenres to which they have (often with Boyd's midwifery) given birth.