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Electric Eden (Faber Social) Paperback – August 13, 2019

by Rob Young (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 258 ratings
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Rob Young investigates how the idea of folk has been handed down and transformed by successive generations - song collectors, composers, Marxist revivalists, folk-rockers, psychedelic voyagers, free festival-goers, experimental pop stars and electronic innovators.

In a sweeping panorama of Albion's soundscape that takes in the pioneer spirit of Cecil Sharp; the pastoral classicism of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Peter Warlock; the industrial folk revival of Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd; the folk-rock of Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Shirley Collins, John Martyn and Pentangle; the bucolic psychedelia of The Incredible String Band, The Beatles and Pink Floyd; the acid folk of Comus, Forest, Mr Fox and Trees; The Wicker Man and occult folklore; the early Glastonbury and Stonehenge festivals; and the visionary pop of Kate Bush, Julian Cope and Talk Talk, Electric Eden maps out a native British musical voice that reflects the complex relationships between town and country, progress and nostalgia, radicalism and conservatism.

An attempt to isolate the "Britishness" of British music - a wild combination of pagan echoes, spiritual quest, imaginative time-travel, pastoral innocence and electrified creativity - Electric Eden will be treasured by anyone interested in the tangled story of Britain's folk music and Arcadian dreams.
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  1. Part of series
    Faber Greatest Hits
  2. Print length
    672 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Faber & Faber Social
  5. Publication date
    August 13, 2019
  6. Dimensions
    5 x 1.7 x 7.8 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    057134965X
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0571349654
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rob Young graduated in 1989 and was the editor of The Wire for 4 years up to 2004. He has recently been series editor of Black Dog's stylish monographs of influential record labels - including books on Warp Records and Rough Trade. He is currently in the middle of a novel based on the life of 17th century Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber Social (August 13, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 672 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 057134965X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571349654
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 1.7 x 7.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 258 ratings

About the author

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Rob Young

Rob Young

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Rob Young was born in 1968. He wishes he had been old enough to see his favourite group, Can, when they played at the Victoria Rooms, Bristol – 500 metres away from his home – in 1975. 43 years later, he would end up as Can's official biographer, with the publication of All Gates Open: The Story of Can (Faber & Faber, 2018).

He has worked as a music writer and editor since 1993, when he joined the staff of The Wire magazine. He edited the collections of Wire articles, 'Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music' (Continuum 2002), 'The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music' (Verso 2009), and a selection of commissioned pieces on a legendary musical genius, 'No Regrets: Writings On Scott Walker' (Orion 2012).

He wrote the first two in Black Dog Publishing's Labels Unlimited series of illustrated record company biographies: 'Warp' (2005) and 'Rough Trade' (2006). In 2010 he published his 650-page history of folk music and the British imagination, from the late 19th century to the present, 'Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music' (Faber and Faber).

He has contributed to many publications including Uncut, Sight & Sound, The Guardian, Frieze, Artforum, Art Review, London Review of Books and the New Statesman, as well as art catalogues on Jeremy Deller, Pink Floyd, Carsten Nicolai and Seb Patane.

allgatesopen.co.uk

Facebook: Rob Young

Twitter: @polyalbion

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
258 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Paul j Knotts
5.0 out of 5 stars Ultimate Resource For Resurgence of British Folk
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2014
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I bought this book based on an existing interest in British Folk and Folk Rock. My intentions were to fill in the gaps in my exposure and knowledge. From this perspective, this book will not let you down. Being an American, my exposure was based on what has been available to us, particularly during the time this book covers, that being from the 1950's through the 1980's. The beauty of this work is in the amount of information Rob Young gives the reader on those early pioneers who went to the trouble of finding this music in the remote areas of England and America, then archiving the work so that the songs didn't die with those who still knew them. These were all people I had heard of, like Cecil Sharpe, A.L. LLoyd, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Alan Lomax. Young gives ample details on all of these collector/musicians and many more of these early folk explorers.
The book then takes you a chronological journey through the movements, and performers in those movements, from the rural based artists such as Vashti Bunyan and Shirley Collins, to the industrial based, like Ewan MacColl, to the mystical balladeers like Mr. Fox and so on.
There is sufficient space given to the major artists of this genre, particularly The Watersons, Pentangle, Ashley Hutchings many projects, The Incredible String Band Etc. The most exciting discoveries for me were those artists that were new to me. Rob Young gave fairly thorough information on artists like Vashti Bunyan, Anne Briggs, The Trees, Mr. Fox, Kaleidoscope,etc. going into individual members backgrounds, their recordings, and subsequent works.
This all led to a rather lengthy wish list of new recordings to track down. If this a genre of music you have a taste for, this book is required reading.
5 people found this helpful
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Ian D. Griffin
5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed inventory of British folk-rock
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2012
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If you lived through the 1960s in Britain you might not, as they say, remember it. Rob Young's book is an excellent aide memoire. From the 19th century roots in pastoral music to the survivors of the 21st century, he takes us on a grand tour of the distinctly British form of folk-rock that filled the college dorms of the last 1960s and early 1970s. The writing shimmers on the page like the effervescent chords of an Incredible String band song ("stoned Noel Cowards preaching dropout gospel in the sapient tongues of the mystic Beats"). The peculiarly rural focus of British music is highlighted in contrast to American rock which celebrated the open road and limitless horizon: "the British road is a road to the interior, of the imagination rather than a physical coverage of distance. its poetic energy is supplied by lanes, forest spurs and hillside tracks, not motorways and slip roads."

The only disappointment was the scant mention of folk-rock genius Roy Harper, whose Lord's Prayer is the single best song ever recorded, ever, got it! But then, Roy Harper always was a minority interest. Sigh....
3 people found this helpful
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Badwolf
4.0 out of 5 stars A truly extensive book
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2016
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This book went back a little too far for my taste, but having said that it was exceptionally interesting, and in depth. Mr. Young went into great detail about every late sixties band that even stuck it's toe into folk music. A truly great book indeed.
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Jeffrey Z Rothstein
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book and it came on time and was in excellent condition--flawless
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2024
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Everything went perfectly. Great vendor, great book!
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J. Chambers
3.0 out of 5 stars Born too soon
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2012
Electric Eden, by Rob Young.

"Electric Eden" is the story of the revival and decline of English folk music in the 20th Century, with the focus on the peak decade overlapping the 1960s and 1970s.

Young starts the story in the obvious place, with the rediscovery of rural folk music by Cecil Sharpe and his school in the early years of the 20th Century. He writes well about the collectors and they way they used it as an inspiration for their own works. Most of these early collectors were classically trained, including the unruly likes of Peter Warlock and George Butterfield and the more mystically inclined Ralph Vaughan Williams. In the absence of recording technology, they transcribed the robust and untutored singing of the farm worker into structured and metrical song. They also began the philosophical investigation into what folk music is.

The genre remained the preserve of these collectors until after the Second World War until parallel growths of a more general interest in folk music were seen in the US and Britain. Many American folk musicians also spent time in Britain bringing in blues and Appalachian influences, but also invigorating the genre in Britain and stimulating the growth of folk clubs across the country. The growth attracted a share of pretenders, but also gave an audience to talented folk musicians and an array of musicians ranging from competent to brilliant. This led to significant commercial growth in the 1960s as newly prosperous youth with a hunger for novelty willing to listen to groups like Pentangle, Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, and Steeleye Span and buy their albums.

This peak lasted for the better part of a decade, but was blighted by mismanagement, an excess of the rock'n'roll lifestyle and too many human failings and left the leaders of the genre unable to fully develop their ideas and the folk community ill-prepared for the rise of punk rock and its revolt into style in the 1970s. Young then sees folk music rumbling on as some form of aftershock or subsurface river contributing occasionally to the mainstream

Young does a good job of tracing the spaghetti-like connections between generations of folk musicians and their ever-changing associations and ramifications of husbands and wives and groups. He also writes sympathetically, even movingly, about the unfortunate early loss of the great talents of Sandy Denny and Nick Drake. This historical and genealogical thread is the largest and strongest part of the book and does make the book worth reading.

My major concern with this book is the perspective of the author. If you are going to deal with events you perceive as historical, you either need to have experiences of the events, or be born after the event and be ready to research the events once the dust has settled. Judging from clues in the book, Young was born a little late, but not late enough. His perspective in this book is largely informed by his youth in the period immediately after the passing of the peak of the era he is writing about. The time of his youth largely rejected the music of the period immediately before it, which is the time he is writing about. Such rejection is quite typical, and in the case of the rise of the punk and post-punk period it was quite extreme, and noisy. The consequence of this is an unbalanced view of a period of great imagination and originality in popular music. Some of his ideas appearing to be imbibed from the error-filled NME Encyclopedia of Rock and the slavish devotion of the NME to punk. (I was genuinely offended by seeing Robert Fripp described as the guitarist with King Crimson. Robert Fripp was King Crimson, and as a music journalist, Young should have understood that.) By being dismissive of so much music of the period, he is trying to tell us the story of an arch, but only by looking at a couple of stones of the arch after he has pulled out the keystone. This has to be coupled with criticism of an idiosyncratic definition ofEnglish folk music. The book is centered on English folk music, but Scottish musicians, such as Donovan, John Martyn, the McColls, and the Incredible String Band receive extensive coverage, as does Van Morrison whose bloated, blues-centered music looks clearly towards the US, and some how he manages to justify including David Bowie, Marc Bolan, and Led Zeppelin in a folk music pantheon. At the same time, other Scots, Irish, and Welsh music is ignored when Celtic bands like the Chieftains and the Battlefield Band helped shake up the genre and attracted new audiences.

When the book finally comes to a working definition of folk music, after 400 pages, it is only half-right. Young appears to conclude that folk music (and other folk activities) are defined by their mode of transmission. For folk music, content also has to be a component. The topics of songs include history, myth, the burdens of everyday life, and cautionary tales. It is a way in which in an oral history of a culture is transmitted.

My second concern is that he simply does not understand the period he is writing about. It was a period of massive social change, some in Britain happening almost overnight, and some in the US being the fruits of a decade of bravery in the face of bigotry. He makes no mention of the perception that we were standing at the edge of the apocalypse and the apocalypse was staring back at us during much of the 50s and 60s. There is no mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, of the great events of 1968 that made US society stagger, or of the Vietnam War. All of these events, and many others brought a whole generation to the point of wanting to change the world, or flee from it. This is what gave rise to the explosive changes in ideas, and in dress, music, philosophies and behaviors. Folk music was carried by this wave of change, and it deserves more recognition than it gets.

Finally, Young uses the idea of a mystic Albion as one of the linchpins of his narrative, as if the yearning for a mythical golden age is a uniquely British thing. It isn't. On top of this, he misunderstands some of the mysticism he does talk about. He says that the Beatles were influenced by Buddhist mysticism, although it was largely Hindu. His comments about modern druids are patronizing at best, and the one person in the book who does understand neopaganism is not the author.

The descriptive aspects of the book, the discographies, biographies, and musicographies are well done, but there are too many failures of understanding of the world where these events took place.
11 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Afandi Fiedorowicz
5.0 out of 5 stars English Folk music
Reviewed in Germany on April 29, 2022
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The most comprehensive history of English Folk and the people behind the scenes. Fascinating
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in Italy on February 5, 2019
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Libro in ottimo stato. La Bibbia del Folk inglese.
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tom meszaros
5.0 out of 5 stars “LISTEN-THERE’S THE MUSIC, TELLING US WE ARE COMING HOME.”
Reviewed in Australia on September 13, 2023
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Electric Eden is expansive, exhaustive, enlightening yet an eminently readable examination of English folk music: its origins and development. Rob Young is to be commended for his research, insights, analysis and sheer grit.
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therealus
5.0 out of 5 stars A valuable insight
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2016
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Rob Young’s sprawling, erudite Electric Eden takes the long road around the history of British folk music since the early 20th Century, tracing it from the likes of Cecil Sharp, Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams through to more recent aficionados like David Sylvian and Julian Cope and on into a panoply of names which may or may not be familiar to his readers.

En route he takes in Ewan McColl, Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, Steeleye Span, The incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Marc Bolan, and Yes, the incidental introduction of which, due to a personal experience, allows him to segue into the challenge of punk (and the tale of how in 1977 Sid Vicious insulted John Martyn during a poker game, for which Martyn took him outside and gave him a duffing).

He has a sharp eye for the ridiculous, such as when he notes the criticisms by “traditionalists” of the use of electric guitars (by, inter alia, Bob Dylan), but that they nevertheless accept the use of concertinas and melodeons, which were themselves barely a century old at the time of the infamous “Judas” moment.

Usefully for me, he also delves into the obsessions of various folkies with Tolkien. While I enjoyed the films, I never got my head around this particular predilection, and tended to distance myself from those who took it seriously, sometimes to the point where they treated it as real history.

Another interesting sideroad takes him into an account of how outdoor music festivals such as the Isle of Wight, Windsor and Glastonbury (with further explorations of English mythology and legend) got started. In the case of the latter, it appears, through the hard work of a descendant of Winston Churchill.

At times, admittedly, Young gets it wrong. The Angel pub, former Fairport Convention HQ, is in Little Hadham, not Ware (on a wicked dogleg bend which, when you see it, helps you understand how a truck could crash into it). When I visited Camber Sands, which is in East Sussex, not Kent, earlier this year they must have temporarily moved the cliffs he mentions. He has a rather frazzled view of the chronology of some events at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival: he treats the intervention of an audience member on-stage as separate from Joni Mitchell’s performance, when in fact it was at the root of Mitchell’s distress. And The Strawbs’ Part Of The Union was emphatically not a celebration of union power, but a satire of it: in an interview at the time Dave Cousins explained it stemmed from his frustrations working in a unionised factory due to the restrictions the union placed on him, which he saw as destructive, hence “the rise of the company’s fall.”

These are minor points though in the scheme of things. This is an excellent book, constantly holding the interest with both its subject matter and the author’s extrovert style, and providing a valuable insight into British music and culture of the past hundred or so years.
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ambrogiounknown
5.0 out of 5 stars Eden
Reviewed in Italy on May 9, 2013
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is a beautiful book on folk.
is very important for lovers of the subject,
as there are the big names and works of history.
to be read
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