Another Little Piece of My Heart

As columnist for the Village Voice newspaper in New York, Richard Goldstein was in the vanguard of writing seriously about rock music at a time when most regarded it as disposable ephemera. His memoir (a curate’s egg) is pithy and touching on the foibles of Sixties idealism and counterculture **** -- <b>Mick Brown</b> * <b><i>Sunday Telegraph</b></i> * Writing about pop in the ‘60s and ‘70s was a brilliant new art form, and Richard Goldstein was one of the original artists. His Poetry of Rock was one of the books that made me want to be a rock critic * <b>Paul Morley</b> * Richard Goldstein was the first rock critic worth reading. This book is a wonderful description of how it felt to change lives, including his own, in the '60s * <b>Richard Williams</b> * A deeply felt and compelling portrait of an age that indelibly marked everyone who took part in it. Indispensable for understanding the culture of the ’60s and the music that was at its heart * <b><i>Kirkus</b></i> * This memoir provides unique views of some of the time’s most colourful figures, including Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol. But most of all, it shows us how one electric consciousness – Goldstein's own – emerged and evolved as America itself became new * <b>Ann Powers</b> * A pithy memoir of the Sixties counterculture by a rock critic who saw beyond the hype … A fond eulogy to misplaced idealism and expectations **** * <b><i>Daily Telegraph</b></i> * His advantage as fan, street freak, political rad and literate academic distinguished him from trade and teen rag rats. Given this singularity, he invented his gig – and his description of the process is fascinating … Interactions with John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson and – especially – his friendship with Janis Joplin bring the reader intimately into the time -- <b>Michael Simmons</b> * <b><i>Mojo</b></i> * The book charts his transformation from a tubby, sexually-confused Jewish kid from the Bronx to a razor-tongued, silver-booted, reviewer-about-town, working for The Village Voice in New York and rubbing shoulders with Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix * <b><i>Esquire</b></i> * The memoir pick through Goldstein’s memories of the drug-enhanced hope and sourness of Sixties America and is particularly effective as his job put him in the centre of the youth movement. Unsurprisingly, it’s very well written ***** * <b><i>Western Mail</b></i> * Tinged with an autumnal sense of loss and the self-examination of a 70-year-old man looking back on his life … As well as being very funny, Another Little Piece of My Heart is an affecting meditation on the author’s “budding queerness” and acceptance, finally, that he was gay -- <b>Ian Thomson</b> * <b><i>Independent</b></i> *