Mother American Night

April 15, 2018
Wondrous tales of the hippie highway by Grateful Dead lyricist and internet pioneer Barlow.The author died recently after a long series of illnesses that form a moody counterpart to the general anarchist fun of his memoir. That may be a good thing considering that the statute of limitations may not yet have run out for various of the hijinks he recounts here. The son of a prominent Wyoming rancher, Barlow was packed off to a Colorado prep school, where he met a classmate named Bob Weir, later to become renowned as a Dead's guitarist and singer. Later, at Wesleyan, Barlow came into the orbit of Timothy Leary, who inducted him into the mysteries of LSD. These and many other confluences make for the narrative bones of a story that the author tells with zest and no small amount of self-congratulation--in part for having survived where so many others fell, such as pal Neal Cassady, who died of exposure in Mexico. "Exposure seemed right to me," writes Barlow. "He had lived an exposed life. By then, it was beginning to feel like we all had." A lysergic pioneer, Barlow initiated young John F. Kennedy Jr. into the cult; had the young man not died in a plane crash, as Barlow warned him it was all too easy to do, he might have changed the shape of American politics. The author was steeped in politics, renegade though he might have been; he was a friend of Sen. Alan Simpson, a sometime associate of Dick Cheney, and a confidant of Jackie Kennedy. The storyline is a bit of a mess, but so was Barlow's life, the latter part of which was devoted to internet-related concerns. But he writes with rough grace and considerable poetic power, as when he describes a 1993 Prince concert: "the place was full of all these bridge and tunnel people who were swaying in their seats like kelp in a mild swell."A yarn to read, with pleasure, alongside Ringolevio and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

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May 15, 2018

Barlow, who died in February 2018 after lengthy battles with various health problems, was a modern-day Renaissance man: Grateful Dead lyricist, cattle rancher, political campaign manager, digital rights pioneer, and much more. It also turns out that he's a great storyteller, with a tendency toward "stretchers" (Mark Twain's shorthand for stretching the truth). Though this reviewer came to this debut memoir knowing the author primarily as one of the Grateful Dead's lyricists, the most fascinating parts turn out to be Barlow's chronicle of his association with early hacker culture and cofounding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a sort of ACLU for the Internet. Stories about the Dead do appear throughout; however, Barlow's musings on love frame his narrative and it becomes clear that for him, love means accepting what the world has to offer, not simply passion and romance and loving others. VERDICT Though the style is breezy and doesn't go too deep emotionally, Barlow's memoir tells such riveting stories on a variety of topics that it's hard to resist. Essential for Deadheads, fans of Wired, and Internet technology mavens.--Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 4, 2018
In his entertainingly unruly memoir, the late Barlow (1947–2018) takes stock of his maverick life as a cattle rancher, counterculture spokesman, and songwriter for the Grateful Dead. Scion of a prominent Wyoming ranching family, Barlow had an independent streak that served him well in the tumult of the 1960s counterculture. Encounters with Timothy Leary and psychedelics diverted him to India, the Summer of Love in San Francisco, and a musical partnership with fellow prep school misfit Bob Weir. In 1978, he got involved in local politics after moving back to the family ranch, and eventually became the campaign coordinator for Dick Cheney’s successful 1978 run for Congress. Self-aware and self-aggrandizing, dynamic and indolent, Barlow embodies the triumphs and failures of his baby boomer cohort. Shrewd insights into Leary and Jerry Garcia (whom he almost persuaded to do a photo shoot with President George H.W. Bush) mingle indiscriminately with observations of JFK Jr., Daryl Hannah, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and other celebrities. Barlow, however, barely touches on his family life: his wife and three daughters rate no more ink than his insistence that the administration and the radicals at Wesleyan thought he was cool. Barlow’s blend of charisma, ability, and dissipation makes for a great narrative from a complex public figure.

Starred review from June 1, 2018
He came from political power, ran a cattle ranch while he wrote wrote rock songs, befriended pop-culture icons and political movers-and-shakers, and became an internet pioneer. Barlow, a man of many identities (the single most famous of which is probably songwriter for the Grateful Dead), who died in February 2018, lived the kind of life it would normally take a handful of people to live, and this autobiography?cowritten with the author of biographies of Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, both of whom were friends of Barlow?contains one fascinating story after another, a glorious exploration of America's counterculture, its political underpinnings, its spirit of adventure. Barlow takes us behind the scenes of the Grateful Dead at the height of their popularity, Dick Cheney's first gubernatorial campaign, the childhood of John F. Kennedy Jr., and Andy Warhol's famous Factory (among other things); his stories are full of laughter and bittersweet memories and?occasionally?some dark moments. Readers will be swept up in this man's amazing life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)