Growing up in the New York suburbs in the 1960s, Danny Goldberg was a self-confessed mediocre student —“today they would call me ADD” — useless at sports and awkward around girls.
Then came 1967’s Summer of Love, whose heady amalgam of hippies, LSD, Sergeant Pepper and other key LPs had a transformative effect on the then 17-year-old, who after graduating at 16 let his hair grow for a year.
“It’s when the world changed from black and white to colour,” muses Goldberg, whose new book, In Search Of The Lost Chord, marks the Summer of Love’s half-century anniversary.
A detailed account of the counter-culture movement’s major players and activities in a country riven over Vietnam, it also incorporates his considered reflections on the hippy legacy — be it civil rights, Steve Jobs or Bernie Sanders — and his own young life.
“I was not part of the anti-war movement although I supported its rallies,” he tells the JC. “I was more into LSD than SDS [Students for a Democratic Society]. I couldn’t get into clubs until I was 18 so I got high with my friends. But I was inspired by the civil rights movement — the courage of people who were beaten up or even killed was incredible.”
Goldberg’s own journalistic break was being assigned to cover Woodstock for Billboard magazine in 1969. He went on to forge a career in the music industry, working with seminal acts from Led Zeppelin to Nirvana, the latter as president of Gold Mountain Entertainment.
His company is now called Gold Village and his London visit has been felicitously timed to allow him to see a current client — crowd-pleasing Swedish rockers the Hives — at one of the Hyde Park British Summer Time concerts.
We meet in the lobby of his Kensington hotel on what I learn a fair way into our conversation is his 67th birthday (he was planning to celebrate with his girlfriend at a favourite Indian restaurant).
Dressed casually in jeans and light knitwear top, he’s both affable and equable, coming across as chilled as one might expect from someone who meditates daily. When pondering an answer, he runs a hand through an enviably foppish mane.
A response which requires scant consideration is that much of the music of the time has worn particularly well, unsurprising given that the class of 67 included Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, the Doors, the Lovin’ Spoonful and Jimi Hendrix — and the year also saw the release of enduring anthems such as Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale and the Turtles’ Happy Together.
“Every college dorm had a stereo,” he recalls. “And producers had learnt to make stereo records that were artistic.”
Goldberg adds that documentaries about the period “always emphasise the protests — and there were a lot of things to protest about. But it was so much more.”
As for the leading activists, many were Jewish, among them anarchist and revolutionary Abbie Hoffman, who co-founded the Youth International Party, the Yippies. Goldberg writes that although Hoffman described himself as an atheist, he was proud to have been born Jewish and mentioned it frequently.
Probably the book’s funniest passage records Hoffman and others trying to gain admittance to the New York Stock Exchange for a publicity stunt. When told by a guard that hippies were not allowed in, Hoffman’s riposte was “Well look, we’re Jewish. You don’t let Jews in the Stock Exchange?”
The guard relented and escorted the group to the visitors’ gallery just above the trading floor, whereupon they threw handfuls of dollar bills over the railings, relishing the ensuing chaos as traders grappled to pick up the money. To Hoffman, the scene both demonstrated the avarice of Wall Street and served as a piece of conceptual art.
Others to emerge from the era included Michael Lerner, one of the Berkeley radicals’ free speech movement, who became an Orthodox rabbi, and Todd Gitlin, “who wrote probably the most acclaimed history of the radical left”.
1967 was also the year of the Six-Day War,causing serious divisions in the protest movement which time has not healed.
“There were blacks who identified with liberation struggles around the world,” Goldberg says. “They saw the Palestinians as in the same category as some of the Africans and others who were fighting colonialism — and who saw what happened, even then, as an occupation. Some of them said things which were very offensive to Jews, including people like me.
“Some Jews reacted very strongly to that and moved to the right. I write about Marty Peretz, who is probably the most well-known person who made that shift and became a pretty influential thought leader in American politics as a neo-Conservative editor and philanthropist.”
Did the Summer of Love last? Barely, Goldberg suggests. He considers 1966 a truer manifestation of the hippy ethos. The death knell was the mainstream media interest. By the time the drug dealers and fast buck makers had descended on Haight-Ashbury, the essence had been lost. And 1968 saw the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Although its leaders’ desire to counter materialism and greed was admirable, “that’s a long-term problem. It’s childish to think you could get rid of it in one generation.”
He believes the Trump presidency is explained by mistakes made by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. “The cliché is true. The one per cent did very well. The upper 20 per cent did pretty well. But that leaves the 80 per cent who have been stuck and very fearful.
“The economic philosophy that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton championed left out too many. People who were previously natural leftists felt abandoned by what they perceived as an elite left and were susceptible to demagogues who lie to them but who still at least seem to be talking to them.”
In contrast, Bernie Sanders was “the perfect embodiment” of 1967 ideal —“the scale of protest and notion that people can make a difference.”
Like Jeremy Corbyn, Sanders attracted young supporters.“He became the carrier of what he called Democratic Socialism. I would call it the New Deal, the Great Society.”
Musically, who does he currently rate? “Whoever I’m working with at the moment is my favourite, so it’s the Hives,” he replies enthusiastically, if diplomatically.
But looking back he is in no doubt of the most brilliant — Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain. “In my experience, he was on a level of his own.”
This earned him serious flak from Led Zeppelin fans but he justifies it by reasoning that Cobain did everything Zep’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant did, and a great deal more; from designing album sleeves to coming up with the treatment for every video.
“Much as he hated some results of fame, he wanted to be successful at the highest level.” He was also “the sweetest guy”.
For Goldberg, Cobain’s suicide was as “a shock but not a surprise. He was a drug addict, he was prone to depression. He had a split personality. In his life as an artist, he was brilliant and in complete control. In the rest of his life he was a mess.”
Goldberg’s 26-year-old daughter Kay is a member of the Prettiots, an all-female alternative band. “I almost fainted when [Rough Trade boss] Geoff Travis signed them,” he says with pride.
Raised by parents who were not part of a shul or Jewish organisation, he too does not belong to a temple, although he does attend on Yom Kippur. For him, it is the meditation which is important. “I believe there are many roads to the same truth.”
In Search Of The Lost Chord is published by Icon
