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Touched by the Presence: From Blondie's Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult
• Traces the author’s journey from bassist and founding member of Blondie to writer on consciousness and the esoteric tradition
• Explores his involvement in Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, Crowley’s Thelema, and his relationship with the bestselling author Colin Wilson
• Reveals how an early love of comic books, science fiction, and fantasy led him to the esoteric tradition
Not many members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are also recognized authorities on the western inner tradition. Gary Lachman is. In 1978, Blondie released the top-ten hit, “(I am Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear.” Gary Lachman (then Gary Valentine) had written the song for his girlfriend after the series of shared dreams and telepathic experiences they had. Thus started his life-long obsession with the potentials of consciousness.
In this memoir, Gary recounts how he went from being a successful rock and roller to a writer on consciousness and the western inner tradition. He shares encounters with rockers such as the Ramones, New York Dolls, Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and also Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Living with Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein on New York’s Bowery, a block from the birthplace of punk rock, CBGB, Gary discovered occultism via a follower of Aleister Crowley. Post rock and roll, Gary’s occult studies brought him to the Golden Dawn, Manly P. Hall, Gnosticism, and a stint in Crowley’s O.T.O. He details his time in the Fourth Way, including a visit to the site of Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, and his years studying philosophy and literature and working as a Science Writer, while managing a famous metaphysical bookshop at the height of the New Age. Excursions to Stonehenge, Avebury, and Glastonbury in search of ley lines, and pilgrimages to Colin Wilson’s home in Cornwall, are a few of the highlights of this introspective, humorous account of a nascent writer’s struggle from rock and roll to individuation.
• Explores his involvement in Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, Crowley’s Thelema, and his relationship with the bestselling author Colin Wilson
• Reveals how an early love of comic books, science fiction, and fantasy led him to the esoteric tradition
Not many members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are also recognized authorities on the western inner tradition. Gary Lachman is. In 1978, Blondie released the top-ten hit, “(I am Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear.” Gary Lachman (then Gary Valentine) had written the song for his girlfriend after the series of shared dreams and telepathic experiences they had. Thus started his life-long obsession with the potentials of consciousness.
In this memoir, Gary recounts how he went from being a successful rock and roller to a writer on consciousness and the western inner tradition. He shares encounters with rockers such as the Ramones, New York Dolls, Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and also Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Living with Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein on New York’s Bowery, a block from the birthplace of punk rock, CBGB, Gary discovered occultism via a follower of Aleister Crowley. Post rock and roll, Gary’s occult studies brought him to the Golden Dawn, Manly P. Hall, Gnosticism, and a stint in Crowley’s O.T.O. He details his time in the Fourth Way, including a visit to the site of Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, and his years studying philosophy and literature and working as a Science Writer, while managing a famous metaphysical bookshop at the height of the New Age. Excursions to Stonehenge, Avebury, and Glastonbury in search of ley lines, and pilgrimages to Colin Wilson’s home in Cornwall, are a few of the highlights of this introspective, humorous account of a nascent writer’s struggle from rock and roll to individuation.
392 pages, Hardcover
Published November 18, 2025
3 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Gary Lachman
62 books455 followersGary Lachman is an American writer and musician. Lachman is best known to readers of mysticism and the occult from the numerous articles and books he has published.
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February 13, 2026
When I finished reading this book, I faced a bit of a quandary when Goodreads prompted me to rate it. On one hand, I usually reserved a five-star rating for books that significantly altered my knowledge or thinking, or that were extraordinarily artful. This book didn’t change my mind. I am already a fan of Gary Lachman. And I already knew the broad outlines of his career, so any new revelations didn’t bowl me over. It’s not that I knew everything about him—far from it, but I knew that before authoring a slew of fine books, he’d been with Blondie during their heyday. So why the quandary? So, although it didn’t break significantly new ground for me, I nevertheless enjoyed it immensely. How Gary*went from a disaffected teenager (a common trope) to a rock star to an outstanding author provides quite a tale. And, in a bit of a spoiler, he doesn’t fully commit to his calling until age 40. How did he do it?
*Throughout, I refer to Lachman as “Gary.” I usually don’t assume this degree of familiarity, but here I will. I met him briefly after he gave a talk in NYC, and we’d passed some online messages back and forth as well. At my request, he was even so kind as to make some suggestions for a London book crawl my wife and I (well, mostly me) wanted to undertake. And, to be honest, he’s the only member of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame that I can claim to have met. You can forgive a guy for doing a little name-dropping, can’t you? And besides, he’s younger than me. :)
In preparing to write this review, I did a bit of research on my history as a Gary Lachman reader. In doing so, I found some useful information, which I’ll share here (I swear, this may be the first time I’ve ever quoted myself. Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself. I’ve written a lot, one benefit of age, so why not use it?) In my review of The Secret History of Consciousness that I posted in March, 2015:
I enjoy reading Gary Lachman. There are several reasons that I think explain this. First, we were born only a few years apart, so we grew up in the same general cultural milieu in the United States in the 60’s and 70’s, although he grew up in New Jersey, whereas I grew up in more culturally conservative small-town Iowa. He was brought up as a Catholic, although he walked away from the Church as a teenager. Finally, despite a very successful career as a Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame member of the band Blondie, he became interested in spiritual, esoteric, and metaphysical writings. Finally, after a lucky browse at a used bookstore in Berkley when I had some extra time there after a deposition, I, too, discovered Colin Wilson (Religion & the Rebel), whom Lachman admires. Since developing his interest in these topics, Lachman has transformed himself from a rocker into a formidable author on human consciousness and culture. I believe that he wears the mantle of successor to Colin Wilson, with whom he developed a friendship and from whom he received a foreword to his book, A Secret History of Consciousness.
Reading this again, I was reminded of some of the factors that led me to Lachman. (Also, I suspect some algorithms took note of my interest in Colin Wilson and thought I might enjoy Lachman. If so—and it was not just a matter of serendipity—a hat tip to the algorithms.) Reading this book, I was constantly mumbling my own memoir of what I was doing then, or what I was reading when. (The reader needn’t worry, this won’t turn into my memoir, as my life has been one of inordinate good fortune, but not great excitement.) And while I was comparing my reading choices and accomplishments to Lachman’s, I realized that he was Flint McCullough while I’m back in the wagon train attempting to follow his path-breaking reports. He was way out ahead of me exploring the wide open terrain of various thinkers, traditions, and phenomena. And as a member of the wagon train, mossying along behind him, I was slowly gathering occasional tantalizing reports of what lay ahead, trying to find authors and books of value.
Of course, people play a not small role in his journey. He was not a hermit (although he reports having a book in hand most of the time). He hung and toured with rock stars (literally); he belonged for a while to a Fourth Way group; and he had various friends (some named, some cloaked in anonymity), who aided or hindered his way. While I don’t think Gary intends to hide anything in particular, he also doesn’t grind his ax on old grudges or tell tales out of school, a refreshing divergence from some artistic memoirs that tantalize with tell-alls of human foibles.
A few random thoughts:
Growing up in New Jersey, looking across the river, I think he might have thought that he was seeing The Emerald City. (As I now live in western Queens, I get a sense of that looking over to Manhattan, although I have the advantage of age and a better sense—I hope—of the lures and drawbacks of life in the Emerald City.) Lachman’s tale might have been captioned “A Tale of Three Cities: NYC, LA, & London.” However, in the first four decades of Gary’s life, London makes little more than a cameo appearance in this first installment (I hope) of Gary’s life story. His tale ends with him headed to London to make a new start and commit to the writing life. Each of these three locations prompts archetypal associations: making it big time in the Big Apple after periods of poverty and despair; living the (sometimes) good life in LA; and then to London, an exotic locale in which to pursue his ambitions to write about the exotic as manifest in magic, the esoteric, the occult, and consciousness.
The role of serendipity in life: I encountered Lachman’s works, as I noted above, perhaps through an algorithm. But I had to encounter Colin Wilson first, which I did while perusing a used bookstore in Berkley on a business trip. Gary repeatedly mentions that he often haunted used bookstores, and later he worked at The Bodhi Tree, which has since become a well-known alternative bookstore in LA. Will the great used bookstores, usually a bit musty-smelling and often poorly organized, remain with us in the age of e-books and audiobooks? If not, it will be a loss, although I say this sheepishly, because I’ve come to prefer e-books for their readability, portability, affordability, and lack of need for more shelf space. Life is full of trade-offs.
Gary reports that he was an uneven student in high school and during a brief early stint in college: he was quite good at what he enjoyed and indifferent about the rest. I can relate. He later (in California) went on to earn an undergraduate degree in philosophy and then went on to graduate school in English. However, he didn’t find the new critical attitudes, all Foucault and deconstruction and such, to his liking, so he left the program. And how thankful we should be that he did! Not that I have anything against academics; to the contrary, I admire a great many academic writers. However, I don’t believe he would have written the books that he did if he’d pursued a career in academia. (I believe that Wilson was as close to a true autodidact as they come.) His subject matter would have been a hard sell in academia, and he would have undoubtedly encountered resistance to his interests from academic colleagues. I contend that Colin Wilson’s lack of academic credentials allowed him the free-wheeling writing career that he had. I also believe that Wilson was at times too unconstrained by more formal standards of inquiry and proof, so it’s a mixed result. But I find that Gary is more self-constrained. I find that he bridges the gap between academic formality and standards and free-wheeling inquiry better than Wilson did.
While I feel some connection with Gary around the books he and I enjoy reading or learning about, I must admit that his career with Blondie and Izzy Popp is all mostly new to me. My 1970s were about education (and marriage), and early 80s about starting a career and family; in short, I don’t know that I could identify a Blondie or Izzy Popp tune. When I informed my eldest daughter that I had read this book and that Lachman belonged to a group in the late 70s called Blondie that she’d probably never heard of, she interrupted me to say that he had a Blondie t-shirt. I’m out of it now; I was out of it then. Those more conversant with rock history may enjoy parts of the story that are all new to me.
There are several authors and thinkers whom Gary explores in the course of this memoir that I’d love to ask him about further; for instance, his opinion of the work of James Hillman. Gary reports that he finds him a bit too opaque (my term), too into depression and the vales and not enough into the peaks, and lacking an accurate understanding of Maslow’s work. Fair enough, but Hillman’s later works, intended for a popular audience, display his ability to see “psychologically” and to frame individuals and groups in unique and insightful ways. This is but one example of how reading this book (and all of his books) have spurred me to further reflections and assessments of various writers, movements, and events. Coming back to the beginning of this post, I found myself engaging in imaginary dialogues with Gary about this or that, which I consider (and intend) a high compliment indeed.
*Throughout, I refer to Lachman as “Gary.” I usually don’t assume this degree of familiarity, but here I will. I met him briefly after he gave a talk in NYC, and we’d passed some online messages back and forth as well. At my request, he was even so kind as to make some suggestions for a London book crawl my wife and I (well, mostly me) wanted to undertake. And, to be honest, he’s the only member of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame that I can claim to have met. You can forgive a guy for doing a little name-dropping, can’t you? And besides, he’s younger than me. :)
In preparing to write this review, I did a bit of research on my history as a Gary Lachman reader. In doing so, I found some useful information, which I’ll share here (I swear, this may be the first time I’ve ever quoted myself. Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself. I’ve written a lot, one benefit of age, so why not use it?) In my review of The Secret History of Consciousness that I posted in March, 2015:
I enjoy reading Gary Lachman. There are several reasons that I think explain this. First, we were born only a few years apart, so we grew up in the same general cultural milieu in the United States in the 60’s and 70’s, although he grew up in New Jersey, whereas I grew up in more culturally conservative small-town Iowa. He was brought up as a Catholic, although he walked away from the Church as a teenager. Finally, despite a very successful career as a Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame member of the band Blondie, he became interested in spiritual, esoteric, and metaphysical writings. Finally, after a lucky browse at a used bookstore in Berkley when I had some extra time there after a deposition, I, too, discovered Colin Wilson (Religion & the Rebel), whom Lachman admires. Since developing his interest in these topics, Lachman has transformed himself from a rocker into a formidable author on human consciousness and culture. I believe that he wears the mantle of successor to Colin Wilson, with whom he developed a friendship and from whom he received a foreword to his book, A Secret History of Consciousness.
Reading this again, I was reminded of some of the factors that led me to Lachman. (Also, I suspect some algorithms took note of my interest in Colin Wilson and thought I might enjoy Lachman. If so—and it was not just a matter of serendipity—a hat tip to the algorithms.) Reading this book, I was constantly mumbling my own memoir of what I was doing then, or what I was reading when. (The reader needn’t worry, this won’t turn into my memoir, as my life has been one of inordinate good fortune, but not great excitement.) And while I was comparing my reading choices and accomplishments to Lachman’s, I realized that he was Flint McCullough while I’m back in the wagon train attempting to follow his path-breaking reports. He was way out ahead of me exploring the wide open terrain of various thinkers, traditions, and phenomena. And as a member of the wagon train, mossying along behind him, I was slowly gathering occasional tantalizing reports of what lay ahead, trying to find authors and books of value.
Of course, people play a not small role in his journey. He was not a hermit (although he reports having a book in hand most of the time). He hung and toured with rock stars (literally); he belonged for a while to a Fourth Way group; and he had various friends (some named, some cloaked in anonymity), who aided or hindered his way. While I don’t think Gary intends to hide anything in particular, he also doesn’t grind his ax on old grudges or tell tales out of school, a refreshing divergence from some artistic memoirs that tantalize with tell-alls of human foibles.
A few random thoughts:
Growing up in New Jersey, looking across the river, I think he might have thought that he was seeing The Emerald City. (As I now live in western Queens, I get a sense of that looking over to Manhattan, although I have the advantage of age and a better sense—I hope—of the lures and drawbacks of life in the Emerald City.) Lachman’s tale might have been captioned “A Tale of Three Cities: NYC, LA, & London.” However, in the first four decades of Gary’s life, London makes little more than a cameo appearance in this first installment (I hope) of Gary’s life story. His tale ends with him headed to London to make a new start and commit to the writing life. Each of these three locations prompts archetypal associations: making it big time in the Big Apple after periods of poverty and despair; living the (sometimes) good life in LA; and then to London, an exotic locale in which to pursue his ambitions to write about the exotic as manifest in magic, the esoteric, the occult, and consciousness.
The role of serendipity in life: I encountered Lachman’s works, as I noted above, perhaps through an algorithm. But I had to encounter Colin Wilson first, which I did while perusing a used bookstore in Berkley on a business trip. Gary repeatedly mentions that he often haunted used bookstores, and later he worked at The Bodhi Tree, which has since become a well-known alternative bookstore in LA. Will the great used bookstores, usually a bit musty-smelling and often poorly organized, remain with us in the age of e-books and audiobooks? If not, it will be a loss, although I say this sheepishly, because I’ve come to prefer e-books for their readability, portability, affordability, and lack of need for more shelf space. Life is full of trade-offs.
Gary reports that he was an uneven student in high school and during a brief early stint in college: he was quite good at what he enjoyed and indifferent about the rest. I can relate. He later (in California) went on to earn an undergraduate degree in philosophy and then went on to graduate school in English. However, he didn’t find the new critical attitudes, all Foucault and deconstruction and such, to his liking, so he left the program. And how thankful we should be that he did! Not that I have anything against academics; to the contrary, I admire a great many academic writers. However, I don’t believe he would have written the books that he did if he’d pursued a career in academia. (I believe that Wilson was as close to a true autodidact as they come.) His subject matter would have been a hard sell in academia, and he would have undoubtedly encountered resistance to his interests from academic colleagues. I contend that Colin Wilson’s lack of academic credentials allowed him the free-wheeling writing career that he had. I also believe that Wilson was at times too unconstrained by more formal standards of inquiry and proof, so it’s a mixed result. But I find that Gary is more self-constrained. I find that he bridges the gap between academic formality and standards and free-wheeling inquiry better than Wilson did.
While I feel some connection with Gary around the books he and I enjoy reading or learning about, I must admit that his career with Blondie and Izzy Popp is all mostly new to me. My 1970s were about education (and marriage), and early 80s about starting a career and family; in short, I don’t know that I could identify a Blondie or Izzy Popp tune. When I informed my eldest daughter that I had read this book and that Lachman belonged to a group in the late 70s called Blondie that she’d probably never heard of, she interrupted me to say that he had a Blondie t-shirt. I’m out of it now; I was out of it then. Those more conversant with rock history may enjoy parts of the story that are all new to me.
There are several authors and thinkers whom Gary explores in the course of this memoir that I’d love to ask him about further; for instance, his opinion of the work of James Hillman. Gary reports that he finds him a bit too opaque (my term), too into depression and the vales and not enough into the peaks, and lacking an accurate understanding of Maslow’s work. Fair enough, but Hillman’s later works, intended for a popular audience, display his ability to see “psychologically” and to frame individuals and groups in unique and insightful ways. This is but one example of how reading this book (and all of his books) have spurred me to further reflections and assessments of various writers, movements, and events. Coming back to the beginning of this post, I found myself engaging in imaginary dialogues with Gary about this or that, which I consider (and intend) a high compliment indeed.
Displaying 1 of 1 review