Flashbacks

As a writer for Newsweek, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, Lydon covered the 60s and 70s rock and roll beat, interviewing the Beatles, the Who, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan, just to name a few. His first-person account of the Monterey Pop Festival, reprinted here, beat all the others to the punch, hitting the newsstands only 48 hours after the seminal musical extravaganza ended; his report on touring with the Stones offers a rare view into life on the road,""a tunnel of adventure through which you fall in wide-eyed but disoriented passivity."" Revisiting the lives and times of some of the personalities interviewed here can be almost haunting: Janis Joplin joyfully relates her 26th birthday party (""Me and roommate Linda and two guys for two days, man, best party I ever had""); Jim Morrison extrapolates that as the band ages, they might need to run off to a desert island to""start creating again""); and Jimi Hendrix reveals his intention to retire young and buy a lot of motels. Lydon's portraits, then, are sometimes endearing, and sometimes a sad reminder of the cost of a drug-driven musical era. An interview with B.B. King celebrates the survival of this blues legend who crossed over to mainstream, and an interview with Lennon and McCartney examines their songwriting process and future plans. Although Lydon's earnest and sometimes overheated writing style can feel as dated as a tie-dye, the sharpness of his insights and the wealth of anecdotes about some of the biggest names in rock history make an entertaining and nostalgic read. Baby Boomers will trip down memory lane in this collection of essays and articles by the original managing editor of Rolling Stone.