1966

The Year the Decade Exploded

Paperback, 672 pages

Published Jan. 2, 2018 by Faber & Faber Social.

ISBN:
978-0-571-27763-6
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5 stars (2 reviews)

1966 was a year of noise and tumult, of brightly colored patterns clashing with black and white politics, of furious forward motion and an outraged, awakening reaction. There remains an urgency that marks the music and movies of that year, counterbalanced by traces of loss, disconnection and deep melancholy.

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A time machine disguised as a book

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There is a certain orthodoxy derived from summarising the events since any given date. Andy Warhol for instance, is seen as a world-beating artist whose paintings fetch millions at auction. But in 1966 his crew were on a gruelling national tour with their multimedia show The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, meeting rivalry on the west coast where Haight Ashbury happenings were a world away from Warhol's New York weirdness. There was hostility and indifference in other venues across the USA.

Jon Savage tells you that other, lesser known story. It's still epic, like a tale from Mount Olympus, but it's an alternative version of the classics. And Savage's research is like physical evidence for the existence of Zeus and Poseidon and Hera. Rather than archetypes, summaries of certain emotions or events or human traits they have come to represent, Savage gives our heroes real life, everyday drama, like Robert Graves fleshing …

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