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Astral Weeks
- A Secret History of 1968
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
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Astral Weeks
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Summary
A mind-expanding dive into a lost chapter of 1968, featuring the famous and forgotten: Van Morrison, folkie-turned-cult-leader Mel Lyman, Timothy Leary, James Brown, and many more.
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is an iconic rock album shrouded in legend, a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. In his first book, acclaimed musician and journalist Ryan H. Walsh unearths the album's fascinating backstory - along with the untold secrets of the time and place that birthed it: Boston 1968.
On the 50th anniversary of that tumultuous year, Walsh's book follows a crisscrossing cast of musicians and visionaries, artists, and hippie entrepreneurs, from a young Tufts English professor who walks into a job as a host for TV's wildest show (one episode required two sets, each tuned to a different channel) to the mystically inclined owner of radio station WBCN, who believed he was the reincarnation of a scientist from Atlantis. Most penetratingly powerful of all is Mel Lyman, the folk-music star who decided he was God, then controlled the lives of his many followers via acid, astrology, and an underground newspaper called Avatar.
A mesmerizing group of boldface names pops to life in Astral Weeks: James Brown quells tensions the night after Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated; the real-life crimes of the Boston Strangler come to the movie screen via Tony Curtis; Howard Zinn testifies for Avatar in the courtroom. From life-changing concerts and chilling crimes, to acid experiments and film shoots, Astral Weeks is the secret, wild history of a unique time and place.
Critic reviews
“One of the finest books written about Boston.... Walsh weaves the stories of luminaries who had crucial experiences in Boston - Morrison, Lou Reed, Timothy Leary, James Brown - around the forgotten and often astonishing history of the city when it was old, weird, and grimy." (Boston Magazine)
“Ryan H. Walsh’s new book, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, takes up Morrison’s sui-generis masterpiece and unearths the largely forgotten context from which it emerged.... In documenting the milieu out of which the album came, Walsh also argues for Boston as an underappreciated hub of late-60s radicalism, artistic invention, and social experimentation. The result is a complex, inquisitive, and satisfying book that illuminates and explicates the origins of Astral Weeks without diminishing the album’s otherworldly aura.” (Jon Michaud, NewYorker.com)
“Astral Weeks unearths the time and place behind the music.... A book full of discoveries.... A fantastic chronicle.” (Rolling Stone)
“Walsh’s book recaptures much that might otherwise fade away.... The mini-histories embedded throughout are often entertaining.” (The New York Times Book Review)