the republic of rock first edition: a few corrections.
As any author knows, a good number of errors can slip into any manuscript. It’s just the way it goes. Like hitting a few clams in a guitar solo, one makes mistakes in writing and revising a book. Future editions of The Republic of Rock will incorporate corrections of typos and the like. But there are a few gaffes worth fixing immediately here on the blog, for historical accuracy. If readers spot any other errors, particularly any factual mistakes, please let me know. I will work with my publisher to correct them in any future editions of the book.
Crucial Republic of Rock corrections:
- p. 23: J. Hoberman’s use of the term “dream life” to discuss cinema in the 1960s comes originally from Norman Mailer’s coining of the term in The Presidential Papers (New York: Putnam, 1963), 38.
- p. 26: Country Joe McDonald was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Los Angeles suburb El Monte before moving to the Bay Area in the early 1960s.
- p. 35, 37, 47: Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters attended the Cow Palace concert by The Beatles in the fall of 1965, not 1964. (The Beatles played at the Cow Palace both of those years, and the dates in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test confuse the matter a bit. Also, the fact that the Merry Pranksters saw the Beatles in 1965 and quite quickly started their own Acid Tests is a reminder of how rapidly events moved between 1965 and 1967.)
- p. 52: “Stuart” Brand is, of course, Stewart Brand (thanks to Sandy Rothman for catching this typo).
- p. 124-128: “The Common,” not “The Commons,” was the name of Chet Helms’s short-lived effort to transform the Family Dog on the Great Highway into a collectively run performance venue and countercultural community center (thanks to the author and wonderful researcher of the fabulously named “Jerry Garcia’s Middle Finger” blog for this correction).
- p. 138: “We Gotta Get Outta This Place” was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, not their fellow Brill Building songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King (thanks to historian Craig Werner for catching this one).
- p. 218: For some reason the name of Frank Ford, who was so kind and helpful (and necessary) in helping me contact the CBC Band and tell (my version of) their story, is missing from the photograph caption. Frank, I salute you here even if your name is missing there!