Another Little Piece of My Heart is about Richard Goldstein – a budding journalist growing up in the 1960s. He became the rock critic for The Village Voice – when such a thing didn’t exist. As someone who wishes I had a job like this – I found it to be quite fascinating read, especially with so much going on in the 60s with our country. He ended up living in Connecticut on the coast near Rhode Island in a commune with his wife, until it all fell apart. Then he eventually returned to the Village Voice.
Goldstein mentions that now there are a lot more women and that rock criticism has changed a great day since he helped to found it.
I also appreciated his note at the end where he mentions that the book is a “collection of recollections” and that while many of the characters in the book are dead, they may have children who did not know as much about their parents as he did so he might have altered names / appearances.
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
From the man who invented rock criticism, a star-studded, deeply felt account of the rise and fall of the sixties counterculture.
In 1966, at the ripe age of 22, Richard Goldstein approached The Village Voice with a novel idea. “I want to be a rock critic,” he said. “What’s that?” the editor replied.
It was a logical question, since rock criticism didn’t yet exist. In the weekly column he would produce for the Voice, Goldstein became the first person to write regularly in a major publication about the music that changed our lives. He believed deeply in the power of rock, and, long before it was acceptable, he championed the idea that this music was a serious art form. From his unique position in journalism, he saw the full arc of events that shaped culture and politics in the 1960s—and participated in them, too. He toured with Janis Joplin, spent a day at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, and dropped acid with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. He was present for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the student uprising at Columbia, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He was challenged to a boxing match by Norman Mailer, and took Susan Sontag to her first disco. Goldstein developed close relationships with several rock legends––Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, to name two––and their early deaths came as a wrenching shock, fueling his disillusionment as he watched the music he loved rapidly evolve from a communal rite to a vast industry—and the sense of hope for radical social upheaval fade away.
Another Little Piece of My Heart is the intimate memoir of the writer as a young man with profound ambition. It is also a sweeping personal account of a decade that no one else could provide—a deeply moving, unparalleled document of rock and revolution in America.
Richard Goldstein is a founder of rock criticism, starting at the Village Voice in 1966, and has written on culture, politics, and sexuality for the New York Times, Harper’s, the Nation, and elsewhere. He served as executive editor of the Village Voice and was named GLAAD columnist of the year for his gay activism. His books include The Poetry of Rock, Reporting the Counterculture, and Homocons: The Rise of the Gay Right. He teaches at Hunter College of the City University of New York.