Small Town Talk

When I was growing up, the fabled 1969 Woodstock music festival was a byword for the alternative drop-out culture of hippiedom then at its height.

Even today, people remember it and the town that gave it its name (although it's actually located 40 miles from the site of the festival). What’s perhaps less well known is that Woodstock first became Hippie Central several years before, after Bob Dylan and his manager Albert Grossman moved there, and it continued to attract musicians and artists long afterwards.

This book tells an often shocking tale of excess – drink, drugs, and sexual shenanigans.… show more.

While not just a Bob Dylan book, his presence and that of his powerful manager, Albert Grossman, dominate this history of the period in the sixties in the artist’s retreat, which gave its name to the Woodstock Festival.

Hoskins reveals a wealth of fascinating details of Dylan’s sojourn between his last UK tour of 1966 and his Isle of Wight concert three and a half years later. This was the most crucial period of his artistic development after achieving superstardom in the mid-decade. Holed up in Woodstock with The Band, he remained there until the notorious festival effaced the privacy… show more.