This is Rebel Music

Book excerpt: Veteran record producer and journalist Harvey Kubernik is a Los Angeles insider with ties to some of the most influential performers and producers in the music business. In this examination of the music and pop culture of the 1960s, we read Kubernik's conversations with famous people who speak very freely: Ray Manzarek, Berry Gordy, Grace Slick, Andrew Loog Oldham, Jim Keltner, Jack Nitzsche, Chrissy Hynde, Ravi Shankar, and Keith Richards. There is also an epilogue on Roger Steffens, a renowned scholar of reggae music. No matter how much you think you know about the pop culture of the 1960s, you will find new information here. Certain predictable topics -- the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan -- come up in almost every interview. Other names prominent in the interviews are Phil Spector and Sonny Bono. Reading Kubernik's interview with Marianne Faithfull, we learn that she and Mick Jagger often listened to Vivaldi and Marvin Gaye in the mornings; Steven Van Zandt reveals that he is the son of a Goldwater Republican; Allen Ginsberg discloses that Bob Dylan tried, unsuccessfully, to get Phil Spector to produce a recording by Ginsberg.