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(More customer reviews)An amazing amount of research and organization went into this, including gazillions of interviews. Mr. Untermeyer, who at the outset adopts a healthy reverential attitude towards his subject, didn't actually live through the period (he was only around three years old when "Mr. Tambourine" hit). I think that this helps to explain why sometimes his sympathies aren't as glowing as they otherwise might be. Here and there his aesthetic judgements and character assessments fall somewhat flat; in some spots his prose (temporarily) gets thin and ragged. But in his defense, he had to backtrack to 'learn' this music, and in the process discovered how to genuinely love a good deal of it. What we end up with here is a serious and useful piece of journalism, almost a 'biography' of the period.
Here's one example of the kind of minor gaffs we encounter here: even at 15 years old, I sort of knew that Sonny and Cher weren't the profound artists that some of the others seemed to be, and neither was I ape[] crazy about them. But hey, they sounded really good anyway. And when DJ's Boots Bell ("your bearded buddy Bootsy"), Al Knight and others from WHOT radio ("the Hot Spot") in Youngstown, Ohio said that they were folk rock, none of my age group had any problem with the idea; in fact it seemed perfectly obvious to us. Having bassoons rather than 12-string Rickenbackers playing those staccato'd ostinados made no difference to us . . . it was all part of the new sound, which was [and it still does sound so] fresh, brilliant, and above all beautifully arranged. Most of all, it felt really right at the time. It really was aimed at us, not at the critics, and we didn't know nor would we probably have cared what they thought/wrote about "our" music.
Here's another minor one: Mr. Unterberger seemed [am I wrong here?] to make light of McGuinn's remark that the Beau Brummels sang out of tune. Well, the Beau Brummels had maybe a better overall sound even than [McGuinn's] Byrds, but they also really did sing out of tune. Not far out of tune, but enough that might have kept them from greater success, their four [or so] brilliant singles notwithstanding (the author missed citing "You Tell Me Why" and "Don't Talk to Strangers"). With a better engineer and/or producer, they might have been able to get past this (or even fix it in some way); but Autumn records was a small outfit, and its personnel were probably relatively inexperienced as compared with the guys from the big studios.
The author's treatment of Simon and Garfunkle is particularly weak, seeming almost like a brush-off. Have a good listen to the albums 'Sounds of Silence' and 'Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme' (their two folk-rock albums) on a good set of headphones. Take your time. You'll be amazed (stunned?) at the depth of sound in the arrangements, the melodies and lyrics . . . everything. I myself didn't notice the genius that went into their work, way back when. But it's there for us all to hear, to rejoice in, and to learn from. Even "A Simple Desultory Philippic" doesn't at all deserve the negative criticism Unterberger directs its way. It's pretty hilarious, especially Paul Simon's Dylan imitation. Mr. Zimmerman in all likelihood found it extremely amusing himself. Would he have actually fallen off his chair laughing? Heck, I don't know! But it's known that S&G and Dylan dug each other quite a bit.
I'd say that for anyone else (like me) who was in their teens (or thereabouts) when "Tambourine" and "Like a Rolling Stone" hit, and still really loves the period . . . take it slow reading this book. That way, the relatively few jaded pronouncements won't come at you quickly enough to be much annoying. For there is an abundance of very good writing here - and some of it is poetic. To his credit, Mr. Unterberger doesn't become nearly so harsh as does another (otherwise brilliant) rock journalist (Mark Brend) working under the aegis of the same publisher.
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