Another Little Piece of My Heart

December 22, 2014
As a writer for the Village Voice who covered music and culture in the 1960s, author Goldstein (The Poetry of Rock, Reporting the Counterculture, and Homocons) was in the right place at the right time, as he explains in this entertaining music memoir. A shy, fat kid from the Bronx suddenly found himself hanging out with Andy Warhol and John Lennon, crashing at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, and spending time Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin when they were still young and naive. While anecdotes such as these are more than enough to fill a book, Goldstein uses them as set pieces to chart his rocky road to his own sense of self. Artfully integrating a number of story lines—his murky grasp on his own sexuality, the vapidity of the peace movement, and the death of rock as a revolutionary force (he points a finger straight at “MacArthur Park”)—Goldstein takes a fluid approach that may irritate those expecting a linear tale. However, Goldstein’s confessional tone gives significant warmth to the book, encouraging the reader to settle in as Goldstein recalls a tumultuous culture with humility and a healthy perspective.