Product Description

At the beginning of the sixties Barry Miles was at art school in Cheltenham; at the end he was running the Beatles' Apple label and living in New York's legendary Chelsea Hotel. This is the story of what happened in between. In the Sixties is a memoir by one of the key figures of the British counterculture. A friend of Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Miles helped to organise the 1965 Albert Hall poetry reading. He co-founded and ran the Indica Bookshop, the command centre for the London underground scene, and he published Europe's first underground newspaper, International Times (IT), from Indica's basement. Miles's partners in Indica were John Dunbar, then married to Marianne Faithfull, and Peter Asher. Through Asher, Miles became closely involved with the Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, and In the Sixties is full of intimate glimpses of the Beatles at work and play. Other musicians who appear in its pages include the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen and Frank Zappa. But Miles's greatest love is for the written word and his book includes memorable portraits of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Charles Olson, Richard Brautigan and Charles Bukowski. This is the book that everyone interested in the sixties counterculture has been waiting for. The real story, from the inside.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #416232 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From the Publisher
The insider's book on the sixties that everyone has been waiting for.

About the Author
Barry Miles is the author of Allen Ginsberg: A Biography, William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now and The Beat Hotel. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

The next best thing to being there
Miles uses his considerable writing skill and vantage point as a member of the underground to give a closely observed view into avant-garde London of the sixties. Miles communicates a real sense of the possibilities, the experiments, the energy, along with the amateurism and the disasters that were all characteristic of the time. There is a sense of what it was like to be in the middle of a small group of people who were able to influence the world, and who were not necessarily aware that they were doing so. Paul McCartney was his friend and occasional patron, so the occasional insights into the Beatle world are enlightening, and show how they were able to reflect and broadcast the cultural inputs around them to a much wider stage. The contrast Miles shows from the beats, (William Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg and co.) who were "counter" and the rising popular culture (Hendrix, psychedelia, etc.) is dramatic. Miles makes accessible an intimate view of a small community which created cultural reverberations we still feel. Hang on, not to over intellectualise: This is a fun book. You won't get this perspective anywhere else, and it is worth having.

When England Swung
In Swinging London of the 1960s, Barry Miles was always in the right place at the right time. He was like that character in Woody Allen's Zelig, always present at pivotal moments in history, off at the edge of the picture. It's a wonder his face isn't among those on the cover of Sgt Pepper because Miles was at the photo shoot. Paul McCartney was one of his best friends - Miles ghost-wrote McCartney's autobiography Many Years from Now - and Miles co-owned the hip Indica Gallery where Yoko Ono pursued John Lennon. ("Pursued" because although Yoko claimed to have never heard of the Beatles, that's how Miles observed it.) In the pre-Yoko period when Lennon was living in the woody stockbroker belt outside London, Miles was introducing McCartney to avant-garde music, underground theatre and politics, counter-culture literature.
But the inside stories about the Beatles are only a small part of what makes this such a fascinating memoir. Miles also befriended William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, writing several books about them and other Beat authors. He co-founded the legendary underground newspaper International Times, and was involved in the UFO - London's first psychedelic venue, where Pink Floyd got their start - and most of the other watershed events of the period, almost anything at the cutting edge: drugs, rock'n'roll, high art, pop culture, banned books.
When the '60s began Miles was a teenage art student in Cheltenham, living in squalid flats that were centuries old, throwing parties in which bohemians fought off teds, bopping to jazz and smoking pot. By the end of them he's living in New York's Chelsea Hotel working for the Beatles Zapple Records (the short-lived avant-garde wing of Apple), hanging out with Leonard Cohen, Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan, Timothy Leary, Frank Zappa and a teenage Patti Smith.
But it is London that he writes most evocatively about: when dissolute heirs of the aristocracy and art world shared the sacraments of rock'n'roll, hashish and LSD with pop culture ratbags such as Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull. When establishment barriers on sexuality, drugs, and freedom of speech meant the streets literally became a battleground. ('Street Fighting Man'? Miles talked with Mick on the topic the night before the song was written.)
Although Miles played his part in history, he doesn't make himself the hero of his stories; he is a humble recordist, matter-of-factly sharing his memories rather than indulging his ego. (Being a good listener probably helped him befriend such notorious ego-maniacs.) So engrossing is his account of this world that I got out my London A-Z map to follow his path through this fabled psychedelic universe.

Excellent
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book. Miles is an extremely funny, interesting and fascinating author. I came to the book via being a Beatles fan and having enjoyed his wonderful biography of Paul McCartney. However, I have to admit that I enjoyed this book even more. There is lots of background on the Sixties art scene and every story and person is presented in an enthusiastic way. Miles really makes you feel as though you are there and his style is open and chatty - as though he were talking to you, rather than writing to anonymous people. It was lovely, also, to see a book which discusses 'famous' people without feeling the need to belittle them, or to discuss things which are overly private or intrusive. Every person mentioned in this book could feel good about reading it and that is a tribute to the author in itself.