Ever heard the old joke “If you remember the sixties, you weren’t there?” Well, it’s funny, but not only is it part of a plethora of cartoonish references and notions about this very complicated era, it’s definitely not true! Journalist and music executive Danny Goldberg has written In Search in the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea (Akashic Books, 2017), and it is a very thorough and moving analysis of the political and musical history of 1967. His timing couldn’t be better – as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, the summer 100,000 or more young people invaded Haight Ashbury, San Francisco with an idea that life could be more than the pursuit of money and success. As Sheila Weller says in her NY Times review, “Over the decades, that year and the “hippie idea, as Danny Goldberg calls it – “when ‘peace and love’ was not meant or taken ironically” – were at first solipsistically ballyhooed and then retired to a permanent state of ridiculed cliché. Thus writing about the time without cynicism carries risk.” Goldberg presents a remarkably balanced view – he admits to nostalgia, but also describes the dark side of the era. As Todd Gitlin wrote: “The sixties were like a cyclone in a wind tunnel.”

It was a pleasure to have Goldberg as a guest on A Miniature World. I too, remember.