Sixties – DaneCobain.com

Brian Epstein – A Cellarful of Noise | Review

Title: A Cellarful of Noise

Author: Brian Epstein

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 218

Rating: 3.5*/5

Brian Epstein – A Cellarful of Noise

I got really excited about this because this is the autobiography of Brian Epstein, the manager of The Beatles. He wrote this when The Beatles were just about getting into the height of their fame, three years before he died, and it’s an interesting insight into his mind and into how he got to where he got to.

Unfortunately, it’s fairly insubstantial, less like an autobiography and more like a series of blog posts, although Epstein died back in the sixties and so I guess that makes him ahead of his time. But this doesn’t really go into the kind of detail that I was hoping for, and it reads more like a collection of anecdotes than anything else. It still has a certain amount of historical significance, of course, but equally it wasn’t anywhere near as good as I was expecting.

If you’re a big Beatles fan then go ahead and grab yourself a copy of this if you can find one for a reasonable price. From what I’ve seen, copies of this book are pretty hard to find, which is a shame, I guess. People have just forgotten about it, but I haven’t.

Brian Epstein

Click here to buy A Cellarful of Noise.

Don Lattin – The Harvard Psychedelic Club | Review

Title: The Harvard Psychedelic Club

Author: Don Lattin

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 256

Rating: 4*/5

Don Lattin – The Harvard Psychedelic Club

Don’t let this book’s appearance fool you. At first glance, it looks more like a textbook than the stunning piece of investigative non-fiction that it is, but it’s eminently readable and a lot of fun to boot.

This book tells the story of four influential people – Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil – and promises to show you how they “killed the fifties and ushered in a new age for America”. It delivers on that promise, and it’s interesting to see how the formation of the Harvard Psychedelic Club rocked the establishment.

Of the four of them, Leary is the most well-known for psychedelia. He’s one of the primary people that helped to popularise the use of LSD in the 1960s, but the others all had their roles to play too. It’s interesting to see how their lives converged and then separated again, and while the majority of the action takes place in the 50s and 60s, it still takes you pretty much right up to the present date.

Because of that, it takes you on a journey through time that allows you to see how the actions of these four fascinating men changed the world – not just for the sixties but for good. And there’s no pretension – Lattin covers it impartially but passionately, and that’s just fine by me. Overall then, it’s the perfect read for people with varied interests.