Tomorrow never knows Rock and psychedelics in the 1960s

Back in the '60s, "there was something weirdly rigorous and instructive in the act of getting stoned and listening to music as if it mattered," Bromell opines. To support that assertion, he deconstructs the era's rock music, especially that of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix. Contemporary fans may be mystified by Bromell's discourse, but boomers, those veteran navel-gazers, will appreciate his parsing and peeling of the decade's ditties like so many glass onions, and much of his spiel will ring true to Woodstock Nation survivors. After all, what's hearing Hendrix without psychedelic experience? Bromell's excellent pop-cultural history also sounds a wake-up call for parents who experimented with psychedelics then but support zero tolerance now. The best discussion of '60s rock culture since Joel Selvin's Summer of Love (1994), it suffers only from shortchanging black '60s musicians other than Hendrix, such as George Clinton, the Temptations, and the Chambers and Isley Brothers, who will have to wait for another incisive '60s sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll tome to tell their stories. --Mike Tribby