The Aug. 30 edition of Greasy Tracks featured an interview with author Dennis McNally who discussed his recently published The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties (Da Capo).
Here’s the archive, while a playlist is here.
Coinciding with the holiday weekend, there was a variety of work-themed music threaded throughout McNally’s insight on the cultural transformation from the bohemian movement of the early 20th century to the rise of the hippie counterculture that defined the 1960s with San Francisco literally ground zero.
Drawing on his expertise in history and the music of the era, McNally examines how key figures from the beat generation, jazz/rock musicians and artists helped lay the foundation for the social revolution that followed.
The book highlights the intertwining of radical politics, alternative lifestyles and musical innovation that shaped the spirit of the 60s.
McNally also delves into the personal stories of key players, offering a narrative that blends history, biography, and cultural analysis. Each chapter, says McNally, could be the basis for a book.
The book could well be the “missing link” to a pair of McNally’s earlier works: his debut, Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation, and America (1979) and A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead (2003).
McNally also wrote On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom (2014) and was responsible for Jerry on Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews (2015).