Trips: Rock Life in the Sixties

by Ellen Sander

"Name an iconic Sixties rock moment and Ellen Sander was probably there. A beautifully written, sweeping yet intimate account of America's cultural awakening in that decade. Massively entertaining" — Rolling Stone

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As a pioneering rock journalist for Hit Parader, Vogue, Saturday Review, and other publications, Ellen Sander had a backstage pass to the hottest music scenes of the 1960s. In this feast of juicy anecdotes and keen social commentary, she draws upon her professional and personal experiences to chronicle pop culture's highs and lows during the turbulent decade. Join her for weird and wild road trips with companions ranging from Yippies to the members of Led Zeppelin. Stops along the way include the folk music clubs of Greenwich Village, Haight-Ashbury in its riotous heyday, and the euphoric festivals at Monterey and Woodstock.
"It is a memoir, a sourcebook, and a love letter," Sander writes, "a recollection of a time, parenthesized by ambivalence and apathy, a search for the ultimate high, a generation with an irrepressible vision, its art, artists, its audience, and the substance of its statement." This expanded edition of Trips adds "The Plaster Casters of Chicago," Sander's seminal piece on groupie culture, the lengthy "Concerts and Conversations," as well as a new Preface and chapter postscripts.

"Simply one of the best pieces of rock reportage ever written." — Los Angeles Review of Books

Genres: Music, Journalism

320 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2019

Reviews

[Wyatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming, intelligent tour of the decade that birthed generation-defining ideals and then almost immediately set about corroding them. Sanders’ tone and settings neatly track the decade: we start with the rat-a-tat cadence of an excited middle American teen with her face inches away from a TV playing the Ed Sullivan show; proceed to stream-of-consciousness descriptions of life on Bleecker Street amid the poets, beatniks, and folkies; and finally breeze on to the West Coast for lemonade in Laurel Canyon and drinks on the strip. As the decade comes to a close and the music of resistance has become commoditized (who knew Led Zeppelin was a marketing gimmick? not me!), the writing largely shifts to traditional journalistic reportage - magazine profiles, interviews, concert reviews. Perfect. Although not explored at great length of depth, having this story told from the perspective of a rare woman working in rock journalism at the time is appreciated, particularly now that time has shown how the era often overlooked women in its cultural revolution.

[CJM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ellen Sander was there at the beginning of Rock’s renaissance in the mid-1960’s and reported from the front lines as the music became the engine that drove international culture into the next decade. She wasn’t a dispassionate observer, so this book reads more like a memoir than a critical history, and that’s not a bad thing at all. There are enough of those to be found elsewhere. Give me a series of personal recollections any day. Sander’s insights and recollections are sharp and fun to read. The Appendix of record reviews, reprinted from various publications circa 1968-70, is another matter. Soaked in hyperbole, the reviews shed little light on the music she loves, taking on the character of press releases instead of thoughtful analysis. One wonders how the New York Times and the Saturday Review let these into print without asking Sander to toughen and tighten them up a bit. In any case, they squeak by as period pieces and in no way diminish the insights of the reportage in the main body of the book.

[Trace Reddell · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half of the book was pretty great, but the story about touring around with Led Zeppelin and then the added piece on the Chicago Plaster Casters got a little sordid but not in an involving kind of way. The book felt increasing dull and disconnected from there on. A few of the "odds and sods" interviews, short pieces, and reviews that make up most of the second half of the book are of course hit-and-miss, but mostly the feeling just gets depressing as the '60s wraps up into the early '70s. Worst of all, I just started feeling bored with the book as Ellen Sander's observations became increasingly repetitive.

[Googoogjoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author's retrospective introduction to this book describes it as "a memoir, a sourcebook, and a love letter," and that about sums it up. As an early rock journalist, Sander was present at many major events in the history of popular music and the counterculture, and she provides evocative anecdotal descriptions of the Greenwich Village folk scene, the West Coast folk rock scene, the Newport Folk Festival, the Monterey International Pop Festival, Woodstock, a cocky Led Zeppelin on an early American tour, the formation of the Yippies, the coalescence of Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and then also Young), the (in)famous Plaster Casters of Chicago.... There's a lot of detail and flavor, but the tradeoff for the work's immediacy is that there's not a ton of analysis- the book was originally published in 1973, before the requisite distance was possible, probably.

The "Augmented Edition" currently in print features intermittent retrospective comments from Sander (and inserts the Plaster Casters chapter, and a bunch of contemporary concert and album reviews and interviews), but preserves the original text basically unretouched.

[Teresa Traverse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sander’s writing is excellent. Reading this is like having a front row seat to some of the best, most exciting shows of the time. The Led Zeppelin story is so effective and harrowing. The Q&As with John Lennon and Mama Cass are also great.

[LRKK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fine anecdotes, sharp reviews, and a snapshot of the sixties. Nonetheless, the prose, and the authorial voice, have not aged well.