Riot On Sunset Strip
Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand In Hollywood
Domenic Priore
Foreword by Arthur Lee of Love
288 pages
Over 100 B&W and colour photos
ISBN: 978-1-906002-04-6
£19.95 / $29.95
June 2007
On the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1966 an electrifying scene appeared out of nowhere, exploded into creativity, and then, just as suddenly, vanished. So much remarkable music, art, and social revolution came from one place at one time, it's difficult now to grasp how it all happened. In that moment, rock'n'roll displaced movies as the centre of action in Hollywood. This book tells the story of that astonishing time.
The nightlife was a heady mix of modernist design, pop art, and beat aesthetics. From the moment The Byrds debuted at Ciro's on March 26th 1965 - with Bob Dylan joining them on stage - right up to the demonstrations of November 1966, Sunset Strip nightclubs nurtured and broke The Doors, Love, Buffalo Springfield (featuring Neil Young and Stephen Stills), Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, The Turtles, The Mamas & The Papas, and many others. The Strip was a hotbed for garage punk bands such as The Standells, The Seeds, The Music Machine, The Electric Prunes, The Leaves, and The Bobby Fuller 4. Folk-rock and psychedelia were born there, and it was a favourite hangout and inspiration for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Them, The Velvet Underground, and The Yardbirds. Pop art and rock'n'roll combined, and the new fusion quickly permeated television, animation, and New Hollywood's indie cinema.
Riot On Sunset Strip: Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand In Hollywood captures the excitement of this great artistic awakening, telling how the scene came together and then fell apart at the Monterey Pop festival, an event destined to be recalled as the tragic finale of the Summer Of Love. Domenic Priore's book serves as an inspiration for contemporary youth culture, chafing at corporate domination. For those who lived through those times, it will be a startling evocation of the social and artistic revolution that was the 1960s.
Domenic Priore is a writer and television producer specialising in pop culture and music. He is the author of Beatsville (with Martin McIntosh) and Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece (with forewords by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks), and was the main writer on the AMC documentaries Hollywood Rocks The Movies: The Early Years 1955-1970 (hosted by Ringo Starr) and Hollywood Rocks The Movies: The 1970s (hosted by David Bowie). A native of Los Angeles, Priore has now returned there after living in New York City and San Francisco.
Edited by - mikeb on 11/03/2007 17:07:35
