By ROB PATTERSON
One could fill a small library with the plethora of books about the music and culture of the 1960s and the times to follow. For readers who wish to revisit or get acquainted with the era, Jonathan Taplin’s aptly-titled memoir, “The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life,” stands head and shoulders above the usual fare of memories and tales from that era.
When your associations are the likes of Bob Dylan, The Band, George Harrison and Martin Scorsese and you were in the hurricane’s eye at such landmark events as Dylan going electric rock at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Woodstock, the Concert for Bangladesh and The Last Waltz, you have stories well worth reading. But what makes Taplin’s book distinctive to me is as much his own life as those noted and celebrated people he’s worked and interacted with.
Admittedly, I identify with Taplin, who like me is an Episcopalian from an upper-middle class family who was enchanted by the bohemian musical and intellectual ideals of our youth and the Leftist political strains that aspired to imbue higher purpose and richer humanity into the culture at large. As well, we both landed by fate as much as our own pursuit into fascinating lives in the upper slipstreams of rock’n’roll (we spell it differently) and the times that were a-changin’ and continued to do follow that wind in the decades to follow. I’ve also been a road manager, as Taplin did with Jim Kweskin Jug Band and The Band. I grew up not that far behind him into the countercultural hopes for a better, fairer, more just and enlightened world.
When Taplin says “scenes,” he’s not kidding. The chapters and his remembrances of the events and movements he’s traveled through read rather much like the best advice I’ve ever run across for composing a film scene: Be like the best kind of party guest by arriving late and leaving early. To wit, after his earlier rock and folk music life he produced Martin Scorsese’s debut feature film, “Mean Streets,” as well as “Under Fire” and “To Die For,” plus TV documentaries for PBS.
The book travels at an efficient clip through some of the major cultural movements of the last six decades right up to our current rather dire and turbulent times. His previous book is “Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.” is a dive into a major skein that affects our contemporary culture, media commerce and politics. On finishing “The Magic Years,” I immediately checked it out from my local library as (fittingly) an ebook.
Taplin’s smarts and sagacity are to be treasured today. As a passage early in this tome reads, “[A]s I am finishing this book, those painfully functioning institutions are putting our society – savaged by a pandemic, a financial depression, and a racial justice crisis – into danger … This book is about the sense of possibility that allows culture to be at its most vital and powerful, even in difficult times. It’s about culture eating politics for breakfast.” Let’s hope it can.
Taplin is something of a Mr. Tambourine Man as a storyteller, enchanting the reader to follow him into the jingle jangle morning of what truly were “Magic Years.” His stories of his times among the celebrated at key cultural junctures are the appetizing breadcrumbs that make this book an eminently readable joy. But it’s the soulful resonances that mark it as important.
Without his explicitly saying so, I am confident that Taplin – even after a stint in the quite compromised realm of high finance – still holds to the ideals and aspirations that nourished the spirit of the ‘60s. I believe that his Episcopal faith, like mine, underlies that. At time when too often the “Christianity” of too many represents repugnant notions that contradict the teachings and mission of Jesus, we dearly if not desperately need more public voices like his.
Populist Picks
TV Documentary: “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power” – Coincidentally, I was viewing this 1992 six-part series produced by Taplin from Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book. The story of oil-based energy is the story of how our modern times came to be.
TV Documentary: “The Port of Last Resort” – A fascinating look at how some 20,000 European Jews were spared from the Nazi Holocaust and made it through World War II alive by emigrating to Shanghai, China.
Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.
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