Another Little Piece of My Heart

Starting out as the first rock critic for the Village Voice in 1966, just twenty-three years old, Richard Goldstein had the perfect entrée to the exploding music scene of the era. And he was soon at its center. He toured with Janis Joplin, spent a day at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, got stoned with the Beach Boys, and watched the Doors record.

In his vivid memoir, we see some of rock's greatest icons like never before. But Goldstein also carries us far beyond the music, charting the arc of an entire turbulent decade. As the Summer of Love hits the wall of the Vietnam War, Goldstein gradually relinquishes his critical distance, swept away in the violent politics of the day.

Befriending radicals such as Abbie Hoffman and the Black Panthers, he witnesses the student uprising at Columbia University and the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. His battle becomes, as for so many others, to fend off disillusionment and protect the idealism that had flowered so dramatically only years befor.