Don't You Want Somebody to Love: Reflections of the San Francisco Sound

Rating:
Summary: Great personal account of 1960's San Francisco scene
Review: Darby Slick, guitarist for the Great Society and brother-in-law of Grace Slick, has written an autobiographical account of the rise of the San Francisco Sound. Don't You Want Somebody to Love is a distinctly personal perspective on those times -- part self-deprecating, part self-aggrandizing, it's a priceless account, written in an authentic voice by an actual participant.

Much of the text concerns Darby's views on the development of the 1960's scene in San Francisco, and on the rise of the counter-culture in the USA in general, about which he often provides thoughtful commentary. There's also plenty of stuff on the music of the Great Society -- how they rehearsed, how and when songs were written, and who played what, on which song.

There's also a great Stanley Mouse cover, a bunch of reproductions of Great Society concert posters, and a decent, if somewhat random, selection of black and white photographs.

Rating:
Summary: A rambling account that could have been better
Review: My brother-in-law kindly loaned me his copy of this book. I was looking forward to reading about the genesis of the San Francisco music scene from a real insider's perspective. In it we learn that Darby Slick authored the first of the "hippie hits", Somebody to Love, and was in the vanguard of the embryonic San Francisco psychedelic music scene. We get to meet Bill Graham, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Jerry Garcia, and others while they were still nobodies just trying to follow their dreams. Unfortunately, the book needs massive editing to make it more than a rambling collection of anecdotes that often follow one another without segue. The author's priceless stories are often less than coherent, and it seems that he rarely finishes a thought before jumping to another in a stream of consciousness style. What we do come away with, though, is a tantalizing picture of some of the key players and events that somehow managed - without a plan - to push American culture from straight to hip (at least for a while!). I'm sure that nostalgia freaks will forgive the typographical errors and loose copy editing, but we all would have appreciated a sharper focus.

Rating:
Summary: Always read the stuff by the experts who really were there!
Review: What a great afternoon-and the book "Do You Want Somebody to Love;" the Reflections of the San Francisco Sound-this is what you have to read-to really put yourself into the picture. Both author Darby Slick; & artist, Stanley Mouse... "MADE" the scene here in the City. You'd see a poster by Mouse, (or compatriot) on a ubiquitous telephone pole-and stand there staring, trying your darndest to decipher the message. If you had gone in the early days to one of the shows around town-you probably would have bumped into "THE GREAT SOCIETY" which figured very prominently in our rounds. We just got left class on an afternoon like today-and were being driven by a buddy who just got a gig chauffering-in the Mecerdes, over to Darby's new place in ForestHills, they had just got back from India, the place was clean & airy. Splendid in its decor; a Tiger-Skin Rug hung on the plaster wall, there were Persian Carpets on Hardwood Floors and light colored Silk Curtains everywhere. And this was a nice place to set up the new studio with a magnificent looking Sound-System, the fancy Control Panel took up about half the room. It was a nice visit-with the local emerging music!