The New Republic

Johnny Mercer, one of the master artisans of pre-rock popular music, was driving with some friends to the Newport Jazz Festival one summer in the early 1960s when a Chuck Berry song came on the radio. Mercer listened closely and grinned, as one of his car mates, the film-maker Jean Bach, recalls. Soon he was singing along, beaming. Mercer leaned his face into the rushing air and slapped out the beat of the song on the side of the car that Bach's husband had rented for the weekend--a big red convertible, ideally suited to the moment. READ MORE >>

What if they had an anti-war movement and nobody came? READ MORE >>

DAVE DOUGLAS: STRANGE LIBERATION (RCA) READ MORE >>

Thomas Paine: Collected Writings edited by Eric Foner (The Library of America, 906 pp., $35) Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom by Jack Fruchtman Jr. (Four Walls Eight Windows, 557 pp., $30) Thomas Paine: A Political Life by John Keane (Little, Brown, 644 pp., $27.95) I. READ MORE >>

Going to Woodstock was interesting. Getting out of there was ecstasy. Four of us set out on the morning of Friday. August 16. 1969--me, fresh out of the Navy; my college friend Phil; and our girlfriends, Karen and Mary. We had spent Thursday night at my sister's farm in Rockland County, not too far from where the festival was to be held. She and her husband wanted to come with us, but they had a small child and decided to stay home. They waved goodbye to us from their porch as we pulled out in Phil's beat-up Volkswagen bug. We knew we were in for an adventure of some sort. READ MORE >>

The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman   (Morrow, 719 pp., $22,95)   Yesterday: The Unauthorized Biography of Paul McCartney   by Chet Flippo   (Doubleday, 400 pp., $18.95)    I. READ MORE >>

READ MORE >>

In writing not a few studies of literary history, I haven't said much about the new generation of the 1960s. There is a reason for the oversight. I like to write about situations that I have known at first hand, whereas from 1963 to 1973, the years when the Love Generation flowered and faded, I was a detached observer, a deaf man gardening in the country and writing about books. READ MORE >>

“Blood on the Tracks” by Bob Dylan (Columbia Records; $6.98) READ MORE >>

"Goat's Head Soup" by the Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones Records; $5.95) Rock: From Elvis Presley to the Rolling Stones by Mike Jahn (Quadrangle; $9.95) Mick Jagger by J. Marks (Curtis;$1.50) READ MORE >>