Astral Weeks
A Secret History of 1968
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Hoye
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By:
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Ryan H. Walsh
About this listen
A mind-expanding dive into a lost chapter of 1968, featuring the famous and forgotten: Van Morrison, folkie-turned-cult-leader Mel Lyman, Timothy Leary, James Brown, and many more.
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is an iconic rock album shrouded in legend, a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. In his first book, acclaimed musician and journalist Ryan H. Walsh unearths the album's fascinating backstory - along with the untold secrets of the time and place that birthed it: Boston 1968.
On the 50th anniversary of that tumultuous year, Walsh's book follows a crisscrossing cast of musicians and visionaries, artists, and hippie entrepreneurs, from a young Tufts English professor who walks into a job as a host for TV's wildest show (one episode required two sets, each tuned to a different channel) to the mystically inclined owner of radio station WBCN, who believed he was the reincarnation of a scientist from Atlantis. Most penetratingly powerful of all is Mel Lyman, the folk-music star who decided he was God, then controlled the lives of his many followers via acid, astrology, and an underground newspaper called Avatar.
A mesmerizing group of boldface names pops to life in Astral Weeks: James Brown quells tensions the night after Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated; the real-life crimes of the Boston Strangler come to the movie screen via Tony Curtis; Howard Zinn testifies for Avatar in the courtroom. From life-changing concerts and chilling crimes, to acid experiments and film shoots, Astral Weeks is the secret, wild history of a unique time and place.
©2018 Ryan H. Walsh (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“One of the finest books written about Boston.... Walsh weaves the stories of luminaries who had crucial experiences in Boston - Morrison, Lou Reed, Timothy Leary, James Brown - around the forgotten and often astonishing history of the city when it was old, weird, and grimy." (Boston Magazine)
“Ryan H. Walsh’s new book, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, takes up Morrison’s sui-generis masterpiece and unearths the largely forgotten context from which it emerged.... In documenting the milieu out of which the album came, Walsh also argues for Boston as an underappreciated hub of late-60s radicalism, artistic invention, and social experimentation. The result is a complex, inquisitive, and satisfying book that illuminates and explicates the origins of Astral Weeks without diminishing the album’s otherworldly aura.” (Jon Michaud, NewYorker.com)
“Astral Weeks unearths the time and place behind the music.... A book full of discoveries.... A fantastic chronicle.” (Rolling Stone)
“Walsh’s book recaptures much that might otherwise fade away.... The mini-histories embedded throughout are often entertaining.” (The New York Times Book Review)
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Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.
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Descent Into Madness
- By Chris on 06-11-12
By: Mick Brown
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Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?
- Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock
- By: Gregory Alan Thornbury
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1969, in Capitol Records' Hollywood studio, a blonde-haired troubadour named Larry Norman laid track for an album that would launch a new genre of music and one of the strangest, most interesting careers in modern rock. Having spent the bulk of the 1960s playing on bills with acts like The Who, Janis Joplin, and The Doors, Norman decided that he wanted to sing about the most countercultural subject of all: Jesus.
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Hagiography not Biography
- By Keith Howard on 10-29-18
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1965
- The Most Revolutionary Year in Music
- By: Andrew Grant Jackson
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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During 12 unforgettable months in the middle of the turbulent '60s, America saw the rise of innovative new sounds that would change popular music as we knew it. In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, music historian Andrew Grant Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers) chronicles a groundbreaking year of creativity fueled by rivalries between musicians and continents, sweeping social changes, and technological breakthroughs.
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Seems like a good overview
- By wylie smith on 01-12-23
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So Many Roads
- The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead
- By: David Browne
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anticorporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock 'n' roll both sonically and psychically, So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.
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Great first book on the Dead
- By robert on 10-30-15
By: David Browne
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The Walrus and the Elephants
- John Lennon’s Years of Revolution
- By: James A. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 1971 John Lennon left London behind and moved to New York, eager to join a youth movement rallying for social justice and an end to the Vietnam War. Lennon was quickly embraced by radicals and revolutionaries, the hippies and Yippies at odds with the establishment. Settling in Greenwich Village, the heart of Manhattan's counterculture, the former Beatle was soon on the frontlines of the antiwar movement and championing a range of causes and issues.
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I wish you were still here
- By Kazuhiko on 12-09-13
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Thelonious Monk
- The Life and Times of an American Original
- By: Robin DG Kelley
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 25 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Thelonious Monk is the critically acclaimed, gripping saga of an artist's struggle to "make it" without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the 20th century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers.
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The definitive bio of Monk
- By ricardo on 12-27-17
By: Robin DG Kelley
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John Lennon
- The Life
- By: Philip Norman
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
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Philip Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, here is the definitive portrait of John Lennon. This biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into almost a secular saint.
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Really Bad Abridgement Job (slash job)
- By Let's Be Reasonable on 12-04-08
By: Philip Norman
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Brian Jones
- The Making of the Rolling Stones
- By: Paul Trynka
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Brian Jones is a forensic, thrilling account of Jones' life, which for the first time details his pioneering achievements and messy unraveling. With more than 120 new interviews, Trynka offers countless new revelations and sets straight the tall tales that have long marred Jones' legacy. His story is a gripping battle between creativity and ambition, between self-sabotage and betrayal. It's all here: the girlfriends, the drugs, and some of the greatest music of all time.
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Great story, exceptionally well narrated
- By M. Graham on 11-17-15
By: Paul Trynka
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The Never-Ending Present
- The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip
- By: Michael Barclay
- Narrated by: George Stroumboulopoulos
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From our talent-rich neighbor to the north comes this biography of one of the most successful Canadian rock bands, The Tragically Hip, which announced a year-long tour after sharing the news of lead singer Gord Downie’s inoperable cancer. Now available to US listeners, The Never-Ending Present details what led up to the memorable night when music fans all over the world watched Downie’s heroic final performance.
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Hometown Heroes
- By Tommy Garou on 12-13-18
By: Michael Barclay
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Uncommon People
- The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn't stay the course.
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INSIGHTFULL!
- By CLAUDIA R KENNEDY on 02-18-18
By: David Hepworth
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The Comedians
- Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy
- By: Kliph Nesteroff
- Narrated by: Kliph Nesteroff
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Comedians, comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. Based on over 200 original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff's groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past 100 years.
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Performance issues
- By E. A. Smith on 09-02-19
By: Kliph Nesteroff
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Unchained
- The Eddie Van Halen Story
- By: Paul Brannigan
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment their hugely influential 1978 debut landed, Van Halen set a high bar for the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, creating an entirely new style of post-'60s hard rock and becoming the quintessential rock band of the 1980s. But the high-flying success was fraught with difficulty, as Eddie struggled with alcohol and drug addiction while simultaneously battling David Lee Roth over the musical direction of the band, eventually taking the band in an entirely new direction with Sammy Hagar and scaling new heights, before that iteration of Van Halen disintegrated.
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Please don't read other audible books
- By Mike on 02-01-22
By: Paul Brannigan
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Paul McCartney
- A Life
- By: Peter Ames Carlin
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of the definitive biography of former Beach Boy Brian Wilson offers new insight into the life and music of Paul McCartney, one of the world's most popular and influential musicians. Informed by new, exclusive interviews with friends, bandmates, and collaborators, the book describes McCartney's many triumphs as well as his failures, from the Beatles era through his decade with Wings and his subsequent solo career.
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Great...But
- By Diego on 05-02-10
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The Ballad of Bob Dylan
- A Portrait
- By: Daniel Mark Epstein
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The Ballad of Bob Dylan is a vivid, full-bodied portrait of one of the most influential artists of the 20th-century - a man widely regarded as the most important lyricist America has ever produced. Acclaimed poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein frames Dylan against the backdrop of four seminal concerts - all of which he attended. Beautifully written, The Ballad of Bob Dylan is a unique, eye-opening portrait of an artist who has transformed generations and continues to inspire and surprise today.
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Excellent book, excellent narration
- By L chandler on 12-22-11
What listeners say about Astral Weeks
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeth Mill
- 08-17-22
Disappointed
I expected to learn more about Van Morrison and the making of the music for the album “Astral Weeks,” but that was just a sidebar to the story of Mel Lyman, the Fort Hill Community, and the Boston subculture of the 1960’s.
I found the performance of the narrator to be most annoying.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-27-23
Reader is atrocious - book is marvelous
This book is fabulous, and I cannot believe that this man was chosen to be the narrator. He sounds like a game show host and his mispronunciation of various words and names is cringe worthy. If I were the author of this informative, wonderful book, I would make sure it gets re-recorded with someone else, ideally the author himself.
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- Graham T.
- 10-15-19
Engaging and intense history!
Such an amazing story and look into the history of music and counterculture in Boston. There’s a wealth of information here, and a great many characters.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-16-18
Loved it!#
I have lived in Boston since 1970 and been involved with various bands and entertainment venues and I never heard anyone ever mention the amazing overlapping stories in this book. A compelling and eye-opening chapter in Boston's history that I knew nothing about. Wow!
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3 people found this helpful
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- M Fitzgerald
- 06-17-18
long and fantastic exploration of a musical scenew
great story
filled in some gaps and offered up some new ones of an era that influenced and shaped so much without realizing they were doing so
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- D. Lichtenstein
- 04-25-18
Not what I expected
If you are looking for a book about Van Morrison, this is not it. I should have looked closer at the information and reviews prior to making this purchase. Although interesting at times, there was minimal coverage of Van Morrison and the production of Astrel Weeks. It is mostly based on the times, and heavily based on Mel Lyman and his "family". It did hold my interest, most of the time, as this time period is something I enjoy learning about. I would have preferred more about Morrison though, less about the commune and people. The minimal history of Morrison and the production of the Astrel Weeks recordings were insightful and at times surprising. So it wasn't a complete waste of time.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Patrick King
- 07-27-18
If you lived it you will probably want to read it.
I enjoyed reliving my youth in Boston but I found this book and the reader a bit too sarcastic. Both author and reader lack, in my opinion, a foundation for the culture around which the book is written.
While it's true Van Morrison never achieved the artistic heights of Astral Weeks again, he frequently came very close. Veedon Fleece, Common One, Beautiful Vision, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, No Guru etc. and Sense of Wonder are all as beautifully constructed as Astral Weeks. What they lack is the erotic element. I think the real power of Astral Weeks is that it may be the most erotic album of all time. Without being vulgar it expresses the passion of erotic love and its apparent spiritual component in a way no one has ever matched. It's predecessor, Brown Eyed Girl, and successor, Moondance, both contain much of the same power but the operatic quality to AW makes a work like Tommy seem contrived. Nobody's done it better.
I knew Mark Frechette personally and owed him $10 at the time of his death. I never had the impression that he really believed Mel Lyman was god. There was an element of goof to the whole Fort Hill experience. A friend of mine, fresh from Billerica house of correction btw, went up there to see what was going on. He was quickly assigned to "the vault," escaped and returned to Cambridge. His assessment was that the vault was very easy to escape and served as a type of initiation to determine how badly one really wanted to be in that community. There was a huge element of fun to that whole group until they started make real money at construction. I don't know how the author can take their religious and political commentary so seriously as he seems to. Watch Bob Dylan's film, Don't Look Back, for a better understanding from where Mel Lyman's attitude was coming.
On the whole I enjoyed the book but wish the reader was not so breathlessly snide and the author a little older and closer to his subjects.
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2 people found this helpful
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- William M.
- 07-05-18
Like Boston? Then maybe this book is for you.
More like the Boston history of Boston in 1968 Boston. I obviously didn't read the summary. The starting chapter about Van Morrison also made me quickly dislike Van Morrison. Then there was a lot of information about Boston.
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- Strobinski
- 12-27-18
Misleading Title
Thought I was buying a book about Van Morrison and the making of Astral Weeks. Wrong! Unless you have a hankering for local Boston politics and music 50 years ago, this book is probably not for you.
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- Robert Stevens
- 09-12-19
Disappointing
Meandering and unfocused. If this were a 5 episode miniseries about the course of events leading Van Morrison to Astral Weeks, he would have appeared in only 2 episodes. The book covers a broad swath of 1968 in Boston, in strokes following fleetingly interesting moments. It focuses its energy on Mel Lyman and the Fort Hill Community to depict the cultural atmosphere of Boston at the time. But the book indicates minimal cross-pollination of the Lyman and Morrison. The resulting text feels highly disjointed and unsatisfying.
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