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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Eight Miles High Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock by Richie Unterberger Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock by Richie Unterberger. About the book: Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock is the second volume of the first comprehensive history of one of the greatest movements in rock music, drawing upon interviews with more than 100 musicians, producers, managers, and journalists involved in the music. Where its predecessor ( Turn! Turn! Turn!: The '60s Folk-Rock Revolution ) documented the birth and growth of folk-rock through mid- 1966, its sequel, Eight Miles High , covers the branches and evolutions of folk-rock from mid-1966 to the end of the 1960s. Together, they form an epic history of the entire style as it evolved throughout the 1960s, following its growth chronologically from the streets of Greenwich Village at the dawn of the decade through the 1969 Woodstock Festival. The innovations of giants such as the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Fairport Convention, and Bob Dylan are covered, of course. But so are the contributions of lesser-known heroes, from Tim Buckley, Fred Neil, and Nick Drake to the labels, producers, session musicians, managers, and fans that helped made the music happen. Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock by Richie Unterberger. Eight Miles High documents the evolution of the folk-rock movement from mid-1966 through the end of the decade. This much-anticipated sequel to Turn! Turn! Turn! - the acclaimed history of folk-rock's early years - portrays the mutation of folk-rock into psychedelia via California bands like the Byrds and Jefferson Airplane; the maturation of folk-rock composers in the singer-songwriter movement; the reemergence of Bob Dylan and the creation of country-rock; the rise of folk-rock's first supergroup, CSN&Y; the origination of British folk-rock; and the growing importance of major festivals from Newport to Woodstock. Based on firsthand interviews with such folk-rock visionaries as: Dan Hicks Chris Hillman Jorma Kaukonen Jim Messina Roger McGuinn Judy Collins Donovan And dozens more. Richie Unterberger is author of Turn! Turn! Turn!, Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll, and Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of '60s Rock. Excerpt. If [Fred] Neil's problem was an inability to handle fame, Phil Ochs had almost the opposite predicament: Fame wasn't coming quickly enough. In particular, he couldn't match the fame of Bob Dylan, the competitor whose discarded topical song torch he was bearing, and who ruthlessly put Ochs down as a singing journalist. Although he remained an active performer in 1966 and 1967, Ochs sat out the folk-rock tempest for about a year-and-a-half as his Elektra contract expired and he shopped for another deal, moving to Los Angeles from New York. Aside from his fine, virtually unheard UK-only single with an electric version of his protest classic "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he hadn't released a single electric folk- rock recording on Elektra. (Intriguingly, however, Lee Mallory had a minor hit in 1966 with an elaborately produced harmony sunshine pop-rock version of a song written by Ochs and folkie Bob Gibson, "That's the Way It's Gonna Be.") "Phil Ochs was beset by a devil that was very difficult for me to deal with, and that was his Dylan fixation," says Holzman. "We did great records with Phil. But he didn't feel we were doing enough for him. When a person doesn't feel that we're doing enough, the right thing to do is give them their release, and let 'em go elsewhere." Eventually he hooked up with A&M, for whom he finally went decisively not just electric, but orchestral, with grandiose flamboyance. Pleasures of the Harbor (1967) and Tape from California (1968) were among folk-rock's most wide-ranging ventures, with erratic if generally worthy results. From Pleasures , "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," Och's most celebrated song, was inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, which eyewitnesses did nothing to stop. It proved the art of the topical song was far from dead, its jaunty mock-Dixieland-tack piano arrangement contrasting magnificently with Och's deadpan account of apathetic bystanders refusing to intervene in crimes to justice and morality. It probably would have been a hit single if not for a reference to marijuana, and although two subsequent edited versions were released, it became another victim of unofficial blacklist by AM radio. Producer Larry Marks put Och's songs in settings that were sometimes ideal counterpoints for the lyrics, as on "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" and "The Party," a cinematic eight-minute skewering of a socialite gathering with cocktail jazz backup. At other times, however, the rococo baroque-classical arrangements smothered the lyrics; the L.A. session-rock playing fell flat; or caution-to-the-wind experimentalism actually worked against the songs, as on "The Crucifixion," which fought against dissonant electronic treatments by arranger Joseph Byrd. Live, however, like several folk-rock singer-songwriters who'd already gone electric on record, Ochs usually continued to play solo acoustic. For those who felt songs such as "Crucifixion" were ill-served by their overambitious studio arrangements, the archival CD There & Now: Live in Vancouver, 1968 is a recommended alternative, featuring solo acoustic versions of "Crucifixion" and other songs from his late-'60s albums. Ochs was now dividing his time between topical songs and ever-more abstract poetry, leading Tape from California to change lanes as often as the L.A. traffic. "The War Is Over" was one of the great antiwar songs, with its martial fife-and-drums slamming home Ochs's reports of one-legged veterans whistling as they mowed their lawns; the 13-minute "When in Rome" was interminable, impenetrable, and dripping with syrupy strings. His greatest wish was for these albums to lift him into pop stardom. Yet although they were admired and sold more than most mid-'60s folk LPs had, they didn't come close to being hits. Ochs wanted fame and wide sociocultural influence, but seemed inherently unable to make the artistic compromises that might have gotten him more of it. The contradiction in shooting for high sales with highly literate, controversial anti-establishment manifestos that would have sailed over the heads of much of the great unwashed and been greeted with hostility by major radio outlets does not seem to have been one that he fully comprehended. "When I took over managing him in '67, he wanted to make his Sgt. Pepper album," says his brother, Michael Ochs. "Having grown up in the movie theaters, he wanted to make Pleasures of the Harbor the John Wayne movie Long Voyage Home . He wanted to do it full orchestral. When he wrote songs like 'Pleasures of the Harbor' and 'Crucifixion,' he wanted to do more with the songs. He wasn't, like, thinking about going into folk-rock. He wanted to be the Beatles. He wanted to be mixing every form of music, from classical to Hollywood-type to rock to you-name-it." Ochs also had made the leap, as Dylan had before him, of moving beyond protest songs to personal ones, although Phil differed in that he blended sociopolitical songs with introspective poetic ones rather than abandoning topical songwriting altogether. That widening of his repertoire actually dated back to the most popular song on his final Elektra album, the lovely romantic tune "Changes," which in Michael's view "surprised him [Phil]. It was like, 'Oh, this is totally different than anything else I've ever written.' Phil did not think this out. If he would still buy the news, and still get most of his material from that, he would have been just as happy. "But what happened was, the muse changed within him. He started writing more personal stuff, and that's something he'd never done before. When he wrote 'Changes,' he went, 'Boy, this is great stuff.' Then he opened himself up for more of that type of stuff. But I think it was also the hardest thing for him to do, 'cause emotionally, he played everything very close to the vest. It was very hard for him to get in touch with his emotions." By the end of the 1960s that difficulty and other psychological problems would begin to short-circuit his career as he came up against writer's block, though in 1968 he still seemed as prolific as ever. Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock by Richie Unterberger. My 2009 book White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day (now available on Jawbone Press), is by far the most comprehensive book on the Velvet Underground ever published. The 368-page volume covers the group's recording sessions, record releases, concerts, press reviews, and other major events shaping their career with both thorough detail and critical insight. Drawing on about 100 interviews and exhaustive research through documents and recordings rarely or never accessed, it unearths stories that have seldom been told, and eyewitness accounts that have seldom seen print, from figures ranging from band members to managers, producers, record executives, journalists, concert promoters, and fans. The July 2009 issue of MOJO magazine hails it as "an impressive means to reflect on the conundrum of what could be the ultimate cult band. detailed and anecdote-packed." Uncut magazine chose it as #4 in its list of the ten best music books of 2009.