A mind-expanding dive into a lost chapter of 1968, featuring Van Morrison and the origins of one of the most beloved albums of all time.
Ryan H. Walsh is a musician and journalist. His culture writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, Vice, and Boston Magazine. He was a finalist for the Missouri School of Journalism's City and Regional Magazine Award for his feature on Van Morrison's year in Boston, from which this book developed. His rock band Hallelujah the Hills has won praise from Spin magazine and Pitchfork; collaborated on a song with author Jonathan Lethem; and toured the U.S. extensively over their 10-year existence. The band won a Boston Music Award for Best Rock Artist, and Walsh has twice won the award for Best Video Direction. He lives in Boston with his wife, the acclaimed singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler.
“One of the finest books written about Boston. . . . Walsh weaves
the stories of luminaries who had crucial experiences in
Boston—Morrison, Lou Reed, Timothy Leary, James Brown—around the
forgotten and often astonishing history of the city when it was
old, weird, and grimy.”—Boston Magazine
“Astral Weeks unearths the time and place behind the music. . . . A
book full of discoveries. . . . A fantastic chronicle.”—Rolling
Stone
“Many a writer has aimed to unlock the mystery of Van Morrison’s
abstract, early masterpiece, Astral Weeks. But no one before Ryan
Walsh thought to center the investigation in the time and place of
the album’s inspiration: Boston’s teeming music scene in 1968. . .
. The result must be read to be believed.”—Billboard
“Ryan H. Walsh’s new book, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968,
takes up Morrison’s sui-generis masterpiece and unearths the
largely forgotten context from which it emerged. . . . In
documenting the milieu out of which the album came, Walsh also
argues for Boston as an underappreciated hub of late-sixties
radicalism, artistic invention, and social experimentation. The
result is a complex, inquisitive, and satisfying book that
illuminates and explicates the origins of Astral Weeks without
diminishing the album’s otherworldly aura.”—Jon Michaud,
NewYorker.com
“Wonderfully oddball.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times Book
Review
“Astral Weeks is a brilliant, beautiful tribute to a long-lost era
of free-form radio, communal living, underground newspapers,
burgeoning musical scenes in their pristine form before being
captured by the ‘star making machinery,’ and the birth of a
visionary album by a 22-year-old Irish singer/songwriter that
remains terrifying in its untouched beauty. . . . This book is a
masterful end result of research, patience, and love for a time and
sensibility sorely missing today.”—PopMatters
“Walsh describes Boston as ‘the true birthplace of American
hallucinogenic culture.’ By the end of his colorful, highly
illuminating history of the city's late-60s freak scene, it’s hard
to argue. . . . Astral Weeks is a book worthy of the
name.”—Uncut
“A ‘secret history’ of a proud old city caught in the throes of
cultural hysteria. . . . Walsh’s book recreates a time and place
that attracted an impressive array of characters.”—The San
Francisco Chronicle
“The secret history unspools like an endless bar yarn, an
almost-impossible tale in which obscure and famous figures are
tethered in conspiracy and coincidence. Walsh’s voice is casual,
his prose accessible, and his humor occasionally eviscerating. . .
. Astral Weeks is another right-on-time reminder of how crucial
participation is in keeping art and music alive.”—Jessica
Hopper, Bookforum
“The book is rich with details on what was then an incredible
fertile time for the arts. . . . Walsh was drawn to write this book
because he was so moved, as is anyone with a soul, by what became
Morrison’s masterpiece. He honors that art with his own.”—Charles
P. Pierce, Esquire
“Walsh’s book recaptures much that might otherwise fade away. . . .
The mini-histories embedded throughout are often entertaining.”—The
New York Times Book Review
“Walsh does a strong job of dramatizing the interpersonal
tensions informing the album’s creation, adding grit and depth to a
story often transmitted with a more facile investment in the notion
of individual genius. . . . Walsh is a chatty and engaging writer,
and his research is impressive. . . . The most compelling reason to
read Astral Weeks is not to learn about Van Morrison or his vaunted
record. This is a book about the hub of a very weird universe.”—Los
Angeles Review of Books
“The story Walsh has unearthed is so mind-boggling, so full of
extraordinary detail and coincidence, and strange, now impossible
ambitions, that one can only share in his delight at the sheer
improbability of it all. . . . Possibly if you were to spend years
investigating a crucial period in the life of your city, you would
find stories as good and as rich as these, but even then you would
have to have an eye as keen as Walsh’s, a nose as sharp, an ear as
sensitive and as attuned to the frequency of the times. This is a
wonderful book, I think, funny and interesting and completely
absorbing, if you have any interest in just about anything this
magazine holds dear—art, politics, fun, music, chaos.”—Nick Hornby,
The Believer
“A rich evocation of the momentous year when Van Morrison, feeling
from the breakup of his R&B band Them, found himself in Boston.
. . . The music book of the moment.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
"You don’t have to be a fan of Van Morrison’s staggeringly unique,
near-perfect album to appreciate Walsh’s strange, engaging history
of a time and place in America (Boston, 1968), and what it reveals
about the forces (political, cultural) altering the fabric of the
entire nation. (If you do happen to like Astral Weeks, this book is
definitely for you.)"—Jonny Diamond, Lit Hub
“That Walsh has taken on the milieu surrounding a beloved album is
impressive—and his holistic approach, encompassing a host of
countercultural figures and groups in late-1960s Boston, offers a
bold blend of the familiar and the unknown.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“Walsh writes with the enthusiasm of a fan and the precision and
depth of an expert. A first-rate book about a piece of music and
the time in which it was created.”—Booklist
“An energetic history. . . . A fine-grained and wide-ranging
portrait of the album’s gestation. . . and of life in the city’s
counterculture in that raucous year. . . . Offers deep insight into
the creative process of this mysterious work. . . . The late ‘60s
counterculture in New York in San Francisco is a well-known story.
What happened in Boston ‘has gone largely unremarked.’ Astral Weeks
fills that void with gusto.”—Shelf Awareness
"Astral Weeks is many things: a deeply-reported illumination of the
Boston underground of the late '60s; an investigation of a
mysterious cult leader; the skeleton key to a canonical album by
Van Morrison. But at its heart is a journalist's quest to
understand the very air that was breathed in a single moment in
time, a personal reading of the poetry of history, and a yearning
to trace the invisible byways of inspiration itself."— Joe
Hagan, author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner
and Rolling Stone Magazine
“The lost story behind a timeless album—a wandering Irish
songwriter named Van Morrison, stuck in a strange town called
Boston in 1968. Ryan H. Walsh digs deep into all the moment’s
cultural and spiritual chaos, with a bizarre cast of
characters—making the music sound even weirder and more beautiful
than it already did. There’s no rock and roll story quite like
Astral Weeks.”—Rob Sheffield, author of Dreaming the Beatles and
Love is a Mix Tape
“Astral Weeks is a veritable time machine to the folly and ferment
of 1968 Boston—a time when James Brown could stop a riot, a movie
star could get mixed up in bank robbery, and a high school kid
could find himself backing one of rock’s great bands.”—Paul
Collins, author of The Murder of the Century
“In this incredible new book, Ryan H. Walsh takes us through late
‘60s Boston in all its splendid morning glory. The forgotten hippie
band Ultimate Spinach. The psychedelic TV show What’s
Happening, Mr. Silver? The story of how Don Rickles’s mafia
connections helped Van Morrison break a contract. Astral
Weeks is filled with fascinating new information and page
after page of mind-blowing, psychedelic revelations.”—Kliph
Nesteroff, author of The Comedians
“A magical mystery tour into an untold chapter of countercultural
history—the ivy-walled, lace-curtained city of Boston, it turns
out, concealed an underground scene as offbeat as anything found on
the Haight or the Lower East Side. Ryan H. Walsh takes us down all
of its rabbit holes in this lushly told historical portrait.”—Mitch
Horowitz, PEN Award-winning author of Occult America
Ask a Question About this Product More... |