Robert Greenfield

Sam Shepard's Life, Work, and Times

True West

"The creator of the dancing bear logo and designer of the Wall of Sound for the Grateful Dead, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known by his nickname, Bear, was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both America and the world during the 1960s ... Convinced that the Grateful Dead were destined to become the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, Owsley provided the money that kept them going during their early days. As their longtime soundman, he then faithfully recorded many of the Dead's greatest live performances"--Amazon.com.

The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III

Bear

the life and times of Ahmet Ertegun

The last sultan

A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

S.T.P.

As the founder and head of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun signed and/or recorded many of the greatest musical artists of all time, from Ray Charles to Kid Rock. Working alongside his older brother, Nesuhi, one of the preeminent jazz producers of all time, and the legendary Jerry Wexler, Ertegun transformed Atlantic Records from a small independent record label into a hugely profitable multinational corporation. In successive generations, he also served as a mentor to record-business tyros like Phil Spector, David Geffen, and Lyor Cohen. Brilliant, cultured, and irreverent, Ertegun was as renowned for his incredible sense of personal style and nonstop A-list social life as his work in the studio. Blessed with impeccable taste and brilliant business acumen, he brought rock 'n roll into the mainstream while creating the music that became the sound track for the lives of multiple generations.--From publisher description.

The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun

The Last Sultan

Recorded during the blazing hot summer of 1971 at Villa Nellcôte, Keith Richards's seaside mansion in southern France, Exile on Main Street has been hailed as one of the greatest rock records of all time. Yet its improbable creation was difficult, torturous...and at times nothing short of dangerous. In self-imposed exile, the Stones-along with wives, girlfriends, and an unrivaled crew of hangers-on-spent their days smoking, snorting, and drinking whatever they could get their hands on, while at night, Villa Nellcôte's basement studio became the crucible in which creative strife, outsized egos, and all the usual byproducts of the Stones' legendary hedonistic excess fused into something potent, volatile, and enduring. Here, for the first time, is the season in hell that produced Exile on Main Street.

A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones

Exile on Main Street

A collection of reminiscences and anecdotes by family, fellow musicians, members of the Grateful Dead, and fans celebrates the life and career of the late Jerry Garcia.

An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia

Dark Star

A collection of reminiscences and anecdotes by family, friends, fellow musicians, members of the Grateful Dead, and fans celebrates the life and career of the late Jerry Garcia. Original. 25,000 first printing.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A revelatory biography of the world-famous playwright and actor Sam Shepard, whose work was matched by his equally dramatic life, including collaborations with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan as well as tumultuous relationships with Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, and Jessica Lange “What [True West] achieves in its finest pages is placing the artist in his time. . . . I was filled with excitement, envy and reverence for the New York City that embraced the young Shepard in the 1960s and early ’70s.”—Ethan Hawke, The Washington Post True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times is the story of an American icon, a lasting portrait of Sam Shepard as he really was, revealed by those who knew him best. This sweeping biography charts Shepard’s long and complicated journey from a small town in Southern California to become an internationally known playwright and movie star. The only son of an alcoholic father, Shepard crafted a public persona as an authentic American archetype: the loner, the cowboy, the drifter, the stranger in a strange land. Despite his great critical and financial success, he seemed, like so many of his characters, to remain perpetually dispossessed. Much like Robert Greenfield’s biographies of Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, this book delves deeply into Shepard’s life as well as the ways in which his work illuminates it. True West takes readers through the world of downtown theater in Lower Manhattan in the early sixties; the jazz scene at New York’s Village Gate; fringe theater in London in the seventies; Bob Dylan’s legendary Rolling Thunder tour; the making of classic films like Zabriskie Point, Days of Heaven, and The Right Stuff; and Broadway productions of Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love. For this definitive biography, Greenfield interviewed dozens of people who knew Shepard well, many of whom had never before spoken on the record about him. While exploring his relationships with Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Jessica Lange across the long arc of his brilliant career, Greenfield makes the case for Shepard as not just a great American writer but a unique figure who first brought the sensibility of rock ’n’ roll to theater.

From the author of the bestseller, Samphire Coast. The boathouse had been built by an Edwardian aristocrat - from a single cedar of Lebanon - as a retreat, maybe even a cage, for his glamorous American bride. But in 2008, just weeks after moving into this dream home, Bertie starts to feel uneasy about living inside someone else's fantasy. Obsession takes hold when he becomes convinced that a carpenter, commissioned to fulfil Lord James Newton-Grey's vision, was murdered in the boathouse. His investigations immerse him in a sinister web of family secrets, as tangled and treacherous as the Norfolk marshlands that lie beyond his windows. Readers of The Cedar Cage - like its characters - must make up their own minds: is Bertie's strange, unquenchable imagination running riot...or has something genuinely supernatural been at work? 'Robert Greenfield's cleverly crafted thriller is a real page-turner!' - Christopher Warwick, royal biographer and broadcaster.

The Cedar Cage

A daringly candid over-the-counter view by the owner of a unique boutique 'staycation'. Robert Greenfield a former British fashion designer risks everything for a 'No Going Back' adventure that turns his and Michael Bell's comfy city life upside down; as a dramatic new life beckons the budding hoteliers... After an awe-inspiring renovation of a rundown ancient house, the word quickly spreads and their books are FULL to overflowing. Anecdotes abound of the dreaded hotel inspector, and eye-popping 'Guests from Hell' that will have you laughing and gasping at their blatant turgid audacity... A real life Boy's Own spirited 'derring-do...' epic roller coaster ride that will have you crying out for a sequel with these two uber-stylish hosts, and their urbane hippy dog, Barnaby-Boo. Entertaining, and spellbinding; maybe you will be packing your bags and heading for the hauntingly scenic North Norfolk coast... "The Best Little Bed and Breakfast in England" - The Daily Telegraph. "Gothic renaissance" - Eastern Daily Press.

Samphire Coast

A Day in the Life is the story of how the ideal marriage between two young and extraordinarily beautiful members of the English upper class fell apart as the psychedelic dreams of the sixties gave way to the harsh, hard-rock reality of the seventies. A tender, moving, and often harrowing look at the moment in time when the counterculture collided with the international jet set, A Day in the Life captures the spirit of that era and the people who lived through it with unerring accuracy and heartfelt precision. When Tommy Weber and Susan ''Puss'' Coriat, London's most beautiful couple, were married in 1964, it was the fitting end to a storybook romance. But the fast cars Tommy loved to race, their celebrity friends, and the huge trust fund Puss had inherited masked a tortured truth - both had suffered through oppressive and neglectful childhoods and were now caught up in a wildly extravagant lifestyle that neither Puss' inheritance nor Tommy's increasingly desperate schemes could support. Six years later, Puss found herself wandering around India with her two sons while Tommy, who was now smuggling drugs to survive, lived in London with a stunning young actress. A Day in the Life is also the stirring account of how the couple's tow sons - one of whom is the well-known actor Jake Weber - somehow managed to survive a childhood that would have destroyed those of lesser spirit. An unbelievable true-life tale that often reads like a novel, A Day in the Life follow the fortunes and misfortunes of one remarkable family while also introducing us to an extensive cast of supporting characters that includes Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Charlotte Rampling, as well as many of the movers and shakers who helped create the ''swinging London'' scene.

One Family, the Beautiful People, and the End of the Sixties

A Day in the Life

The creator of the dancing bear logo and designer of the Wall of Sound for the Grateful Dead, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known by his nickname, Bear, was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both America and the world during the 1960s. Owsley's high octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. It also powered much of what happened on stage at Monterey Pop. Owsley turned on Pete Townshend of The Who and Jimi Hendrix. The shipment of LSD that Owsley sent John Lennon resulted in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album and film. Convinced that the Grateful Dead were destined to become the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, Owsley provided the money that kept them going during their early days. As their longtime soundman, he then faithfully recorded many of the Dead's greatest live performances and designed the massive space age system that came to be known as the Wall of Sound. Award-winning author and biographer Robert Greenfield’s definitive biography of this Grateful Dead legend masterfully takes us through Owsley's incredible life and times to bring us a full picture of this fascinating man for the first time.

The Spiritual Supermarket

Documents the life and achievements of the mid-twentieth-century Harvard psychologist who studied the effects of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s, describing his controversial research into human consciousness and his personal transformation into a counterculture icon. Reprint.

A Biography

Timothy Leary

Bill Graham

The national best-selling autobiography of Bill Graham, the colorful, larger-than-life architect of the modern concert industry

My Life Inside Rock And Out

Bill Graham Presents

A Journey Through America with The Rolling Stones

‘A compelling account of the Stones trashing America during 1972… Greenfield was allowed the kind of access journalists can only dream of today’ The Times The Stones’ 1972 tour of the States was perhaps their best – and certainly most notorious – ever. Their previous visit in 1969 had ended in the nightmare of Altamont; now, three years later, they had just recorded their two finest albums, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, and were musically in their prime – if also personally at their most dissolute and debauched. Robert Greenfield, one of America’s finest writers, went along for the ride and came back with a riveting account of high living, excess and rock & roll fury, from the Playboy Mansion to the jail cells of Rhode Island. This was an extended tour Party, capital P, to which all America’s hip, rich and glitzy were invited, from Truman Capote to Stevie Wonder, Annie Liebowitz to Hugh Hefner. The result has been acclaimed as one of the all-time classic music books. Published for some years by Helter Skelter under the title A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones, it is now reissued by Aurum under its original title with a new introduction by the author. Robert Greenfield is also the author of Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones and biographies of Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia. He lives in California.

A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones

Stones Touring Party

John Perry Barlow

John Perry Barlow’s wild ride with the Grateful Dead was just part of a Zelig-like life that took him from a childhood as ranching royalty in Wyoming to membership in the Internet Hall of Fame as a digital free speech advocate. Mother American Night is the wild, funny, heartbreaking, and often unbelievable (yet completely true) story of an American icon. Born into a powerful Wyoming political family, John Perry Barlow wrote the lyrics for thirty Grateful Dead songs while also running his family’s cattle ranch. He hung out in Andy Warhol’s Factory, went on a date with the Dalai Lama’s sister, and accidentally shot Bob Weir in the face on the eve of his own wedding. As a favor to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Barlow mentored a young JFK Jr. and the two then became lifelong friends. Despite being a freely self-confessed acidhead, he served as Dick Cheney’s campaign manager during Cheney’s first run for Congress. And after befriending a legendary early group of computer hackers known as the Legion of Doom, Barlow became a renowned internet guru who then cofounded the groundbreaking Electronic Frontier Foundation. His résumé only hints of the richness of a life lived on the edge. Blessed with an incredible sense of humor and a unique voice, Barlow was a born storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. Through intimate portraits of friends and acquaintances from Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia to Timothy Leary and Steve Jobs, Mother American Night traces the generational passage by which the counterculture became the culture, and it shows why learning to accept love may be the hardest thing we ever ask of ourselves.

My Life in Crazy Times

Mother American Night

A Day in the Life is the story of how the ideal marriage between two young and extraordinarily beautiful members of the English upper class fell apart as the psychedelic dreams of the sixties gave way to the harsh, hard-rock reality of the seventies. A tender, moving, and often harrowing look at the moment in time when the counterculture collided with the international jet set, A Day in the Life captures the spirit of that era and the people who lived through it with unerring accuracy and heartfelt precision. When Tommy Weber and Susan “Puss” Coriat, London’s most beautiful couple, were married in 1964, it was the fitting end to a storybook romance. But the fast cars Tommy loved to race, their celebrity friends, and the huge trust fund Puss had inherited masked a tortured truth—both had suffered through oppressive and neglectful childhoods and were now caught up in a wildly extravagant lifestyle that neither Puss’ inheritance nor Tommy’s increasingly desperate schemes could support. Six years later, Puss found herself wandering around India with her two sons while Tommy, who was now smuggling drugs to survive, lived in London with a stunning young actress. A Day in the Life is also the stirring account of how the couple’s tow sons—one of whom is the well-known actor Jake Weber—somehow managed to survive a childhood that would have destroyed those of lesser spirit. An unbelievable true-life tale that often reads like a novel, A Day in the Life follow the fortunes and misfortunes of one remarkable family while also introducing us to an extensive cast of supporting characters that includes Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Charlotte Rampling, as well as many of the movers and shakers who helped create the “Swinging London” scene.

Robert Greenfield

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