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In the Seventies: Adventures in the Counterculture
Beginning with the Weathermen explosion in Greenwich Village and ending with punk, the Seventies was the age of extremes, sex, drugs and, of course, rock 'n' roll. Traveling between the underground scenes of London, New York, and California, Barry Miles remembers encounters with the legends of the decade. In the Seventies is a memoir that challenges modern perceptions of the Seventies with great anecdotes featuring a larger than life cast of characters.
Barry Miles is the author of the bestseller Hippie and has written biographies of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Frank Zappa, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg in addition to books on The Beatles and The Clash.
Barry Miles is the author of the bestseller Hippie and has written biographies of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Frank Zappa, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg in addition to books on The Beatles and The Clash.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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137 people want to read
About the author
Barry Miles
76 books152 followersBarry Miles is an English author best known for his deep involvement in the 1960s counterculture and for chronicling the era through his prolific writing. He played a key role in shaping and documenting the London underground scene, becoming a central figure among the poets, musicians, and artists who defined the decade’s rebellious spirit. A close associate of figures such as Allen Ginsberg and Paul McCartney, Miles not only witnessed the cultural revolution firsthand but also actively participated in it through ventures like the Indica Gallery and the alternative newspaper International Times.
In the early 1960s, Miles began working at Better Books in London, a progressive bookshop that became a hub for the avant-garde. While there, he was instrumental in organizing the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965, an event that marked the emergence of the British underground movement and featured prominent poets like Allen Ginsberg. The same year, Miles co-founded the Indica Bookshop and Gallery, which became a gathering place for creatives and countercultural icons. It was here that John Lennon first met Yoko Ono, at one of her art exhibitions.
Miles also played a role in launching International Times, one of the UK’s first underground newspapers, which Paul McCartney discreetly funded. Miles introduced McCartney to the people behind the project and facilitated many of his early connections with the underground scene. In 1967, he co-organized The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, a legendary multimedia event at Alexandra Palace featuring Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon, among others.
Later in the decade, Miles took on the management of Zapple Records, an experimental subsidiary of Apple Records. During this time, he produced poetry albums, including one by Richard Brautigan. However, his personal relationship with Brautigan became strained after Miles became romantically involved with Brautigan’s partner, Valerie Estes. The fallout led to communication only through legal representatives. Although Zapple closed before releasing the Brautigan album, it was eventually issued by another label in 1970.
Miles also produced a recording of Allen Ginsberg’s musical interpretation of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, which was released in 1970. He briefly lived with Ginsberg in New York before returning to England following the breakdown of his first marriage. He later married travel writer Rosemary Bailey and continued to live and work in London.
In addition to his memoirs In the Sixties and In the Seventies, Miles has written definitive biographies of cultural icons such as Paul McCartney (Many Years From Now), Frank Zappa, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and Allen Ginsberg. He is also the author of Hippie, a visual and narrative exploration of the 1960s counterculture. His writings often reflect a mix of personal experience and historical documentation, offering insight into the worlds of rock, literature, and art.
Miles is known not only for his historical accounts but also for his critical views, including pointed commentary on musicians like Rush and Frank Zappa, examining the political and commercial aspects of their work. With a career that spans over five decades, Barry Miles remains one of the most insightful chroniclers of the countercultural and musical revolutions of the 20th century.
In the early 1960s, Miles began working at Better Books in London, a progressive bookshop that became a hub for the avant-garde. While there, he was instrumental in organizing the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965, an event that marked the emergence of the British underground movement and featured prominent poets like Allen Ginsberg. The same year, Miles co-founded the Indica Bookshop and Gallery, which became a gathering place for creatives and countercultural icons. It was here that John Lennon first met Yoko Ono, at one of her art exhibitions.
Miles also played a role in launching International Times, one of the UK’s first underground newspapers, which Paul McCartney discreetly funded. Miles introduced McCartney to the people behind the project and facilitated many of his early connections with the underground scene. In 1967, he co-organized The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, a legendary multimedia event at Alexandra Palace featuring Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon, among others.
Later in the decade, Miles took on the management of Zapple Records, an experimental subsidiary of Apple Records. During this time, he produced poetry albums, including one by Richard Brautigan. However, his personal relationship with Brautigan became strained after Miles became romantically involved with Brautigan’s partner, Valerie Estes. The fallout led to communication only through legal representatives. Although Zapple closed before releasing the Brautigan album, it was eventually issued by another label in 1970.
Miles also produced a recording of Allen Ginsberg’s musical interpretation of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, which was released in 1970. He briefly lived with Ginsberg in New York before returning to England following the breakdown of his first marriage. He later married travel writer Rosemary Bailey and continued to live and work in London.
In addition to his memoirs In the Sixties and In the Seventies, Miles has written definitive biographies of cultural icons such as Paul McCartney (Many Years From Now), Frank Zappa, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and Allen Ginsberg. He is also the author of Hippie, a visual and narrative exploration of the 1960s counterculture. His writings often reflect a mix of personal experience and historical documentation, offering insight into the worlds of rock, literature, and art.
Miles is known not only for his historical accounts but also for his critical views, including pointed commentary on musicians like Rush and Frank Zappa, examining the political and commercial aspects of their work. With a career that spans over five decades, Barry Miles remains one of the most insightful chroniclers of the countercultural and musical revolutions of the 20th century.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 8, 2014
I found this book both interesting and hard going at different times, depending on which chapter I was reading. Miles can certainly name drop, and has plenty of interesting anecdotes of his experiences with many big names from the counter culture of the sixties and seventies, and was a pretty big fish himself in the realms of the underground press at the time.
I particularly enjoyed reading about his experiences living at the Chelsea, attending early gigs in the NYC glam and London punk scenes and recounting life on the Bowery in the early 1980s. It was also interesting to read of his personal experience of the 1977 NYC blackout.
However, sections like those featuring Wilhelm Reich and Harry Smith just didn't grip me enough to make me want to read his similar memoir on the 1960s.
I particularly enjoyed reading about his experiences living at the Chelsea, attending early gigs in the NYC glam and London punk scenes and recounting life on the Bowery in the early 1980s. It was also interesting to read of his personal experience of the 1977 NYC blackout.
However, sections like those featuring Wilhelm Reich and Harry Smith just didn't grip me enough to make me want to read his similar memoir on the 1960s.
July 23, 2017
Actually 2.5 stars, rounding up to be nice.
A few typos and incorrect place names for example: El Coyote for El Quijote in NYC is pretty unforgiveable, especially since the author spent time hanging out at the Chelsea. The back cover page mentions encounters with "legends of the decade" including Ian Dury who was not mentioned in this book.
What is in this book -- various first-hand tales mostly involving Ginsberg and Burroughs, and random tales of other personalities like Harry Smith, the memory of Wilheim Reich, underground magazines published in the UK in the mid-seventies, living in the Chelsea Hotel, Tim Leary, and other odd tidbits. The last two chapters focus on NYC Bowery Scene mid-seventies -- about 30 pages total.
A few typos and incorrect place names for example: El Coyote for El Quijote in NYC is pretty unforgiveable, especially since the author spent time hanging out at the Chelsea. The back cover page mentions encounters with "legends of the decade" including Ian Dury who was not mentioned in this book.
What is in this book -- various first-hand tales mostly involving Ginsberg and Burroughs, and random tales of other personalities like Harry Smith, the memory of Wilheim Reich, underground magazines published in the UK in the mid-seventies, living in the Chelsea Hotel, Tim Leary, and other odd tidbits. The last two chapters focus on NYC Bowery Scene mid-seventies -- about 30 pages total.
August 17, 2014
In another mood I might have rated this only at 3 stars. Its not wonderful, or greatly informative, but my rating acknowledges the gentle pleasure I had gliding through this memoir of some of Miles' eperiences in the chronological seventies. Its been a while since I read or read about Ginsberg, Burroughs, Sanders, etc or about the NY punk/glam scene. I particularly enjoyed the calfornian section, staying in Ferlinghettis cabin in the creek gorge where Kerouac wrote Big Sur (still sitting waiting on my shelf) and the visit to Wilhelm Reichs old house/lab was a great artcle in its own right.
Eenjoyed, now filed.
Eenjoyed, now filed.
May 2, 2016
Barry Miles was a major figure in the London counterculture of the late 1960s, responsible for such legendary things as the 1965 poetry reading at the Albert Hall, the Indica bookshop, and the alternative newspaper International Times. (And he recounted some of his experiences in his first memoirs In the Sixties, as well as being prominent in many other peoples’ memoirs.) But Miles continued to be active with countercultural projects in the following decades, and he even claims that for him, “the Sixties” as a movement lasted all the way to the end of punk in 1977. In the Seventies, published in 2011, are his memoirs of that time.
As the book opens in March of 1970s, we find Miles in New York. He and his first wife Sue, tired after putting so much of themselves into the London scene, wanted something new. (It is remarkable how many of Miles’ peers in the London counterculture also ended up in the United States in the years following.) One of Miles’ close friends was Allen Ginsberg – Miles had adored Beat literature since he was a schoolboy – and Ginsberg invited Miles to catalogue his massive tape collection with the aim of eventually publishing a large set of Ginsberg’s poems read by the poet himself. Thus Miles stayed for a few months at Ginsberg’s farm in rural New York state, meeting there an array of other luminaries of the Beat generation who came to dry out or rely on Ginsberg’s charity. He then visited San Francisco for a while in Ginsberg’s company, and he describes a city where the hippie scene with its myriad communes and (this was pre-AIDS) free love was still strong.
For the rest of the Seventies, we find Miles going back and forth between the US and Europe. In London he helped organize the papers of William S. Burroughs, and he describes in depth this complex man who. In New York, Miles lived for a time in the famous Chelsea Hotel with its huge array of famous tenants, and he offers a poignant portrait of folk-music collector/occultist Harry Smith. Back in Britain again, he worked for the short-lived literary magazine Bananas and describes encounters with Emma Tennant and Harold Pinter. Miles spent the second half of the 1970s as a rock journalist for Britain’s music mag NME, and he witnessed the birth of punk. He describes Patti Smith gigs in New York (he had known her since they both lived at the Chelsea in ’69), and he tells of being close enough to The Clash to be offered the position of their manager.
Miles is a curious narrator, as he is quite dispassionate and a seemingly uninvolved witness. He can be very frank about the character flaws of the famous people he met, noting how Hubert Huncke was a liar, while Gregory Corso was drunken and violent, but this disapproval is always put into gentle, analytical wording. We get little sense of Miles’ inner emotions at the time. Did he feel a part of the communities he described, or did he feel himself to be a privileged outsider? He describes people doing enormous amounts of drugs and alcohol through the decade, but he never says if he partook himself and if so, if he regrets his youthful misadventures. We get little of the self-examination that one finds in autobiographies by other members of the counterculture.
The book could have been longer – it may well be that Miles was asked by his editor to restrict the book solely to accounts of famous people, because those sell, even if it made it feel incomplete as a memoir. It is also a disappointment that the photographs are few, black-and-white and printed in dot matrix. I wish that the publisher had included more photos and printed them on plates. Still, I think that the book does have value as a chronicle of the era. Miles was close enough to the Beats to give us a fuller picture of their quirks alongside the other biographies.
As the book opens in March of 1970s, we find Miles in New York. He and his first wife Sue, tired after putting so much of themselves into the London scene, wanted something new. (It is remarkable how many of Miles’ peers in the London counterculture also ended up in the United States in the years following.) One of Miles’ close friends was Allen Ginsberg – Miles had adored Beat literature since he was a schoolboy – and Ginsberg invited Miles to catalogue his massive tape collection with the aim of eventually publishing a large set of Ginsberg’s poems read by the poet himself. Thus Miles stayed for a few months at Ginsberg’s farm in rural New York state, meeting there an array of other luminaries of the Beat generation who came to dry out or rely on Ginsberg’s charity. He then visited San Francisco for a while in Ginsberg’s company, and he describes a city where the hippie scene with its myriad communes and (this was pre-AIDS) free love was still strong.
For the rest of the Seventies, we find Miles going back and forth between the US and Europe. In London he helped organize the papers of William S. Burroughs, and he describes in depth this complex man who. In New York, Miles lived for a time in the famous Chelsea Hotel with its huge array of famous tenants, and he offers a poignant portrait of folk-music collector/occultist Harry Smith. Back in Britain again, he worked for the short-lived literary magazine Bananas and describes encounters with Emma Tennant and Harold Pinter. Miles spent the second half of the 1970s as a rock journalist for Britain’s music mag NME, and he witnessed the birth of punk. He describes Patti Smith gigs in New York (he had known her since they both lived at the Chelsea in ’69), and he tells of being close enough to The Clash to be offered the position of their manager.
Miles is a curious narrator, as he is quite dispassionate and a seemingly uninvolved witness. He can be very frank about the character flaws of the famous people he met, noting how Hubert Huncke was a liar, while Gregory Corso was drunken and violent, but this disapproval is always put into gentle, analytical wording. We get little sense of Miles’ inner emotions at the time. Did he feel a part of the communities he described, or did he feel himself to be a privileged outsider? He describes people doing enormous amounts of drugs and alcohol through the decade, but he never says if he partook himself and if so, if he regrets his youthful misadventures. We get little of the self-examination that one finds in autobiographies by other members of the counterculture.
The book could have been longer – it may well be that Miles was asked by his editor to restrict the book solely to accounts of famous people, because those sell, even if it made it feel incomplete as a memoir. It is also a disappointment that the photographs are few, black-and-white and printed in dot matrix. I wish that the publisher had included more photos and printed them on plates. Still, I think that the book does have value as a chronicle of the era. Miles was close enough to the Beats to give us a fuller picture of their quirks alongside the other biographies.
May 28, 2019
Heavy going in places. But none the less excitng and made you feel you were there.
April 4, 2013
Great read, Miles always has a friendly, gentle and generally non-judgemental style of writing. The first 3/4 of this book deals predominantly with the Beats, with whom he feels a deep infinity. It is only in the last part of the book, dealing with punk, that Miles seems somewhat out of his depth.
I particularly enjoyed the chapters at Ginsberg's farm which are deeply evocative and his time spent with William Burroughs in London.
I particularly enjoyed the chapters at Ginsberg's farm which are deeply evocative and his time spent with William Burroughs in London.
September 11, 2012
Nice little vignettes about people in the 60's and 70's counterculture but nothing very deep or lasting in these gossipy portraits of Ginsberg, Burroughs, and the early punk movement.
January 5, 2020
Godibilissimo brogliaccio di appunti di viaggio ed esperienza accanto ad alcune delle figure cardine della controcultura (spiccano Ginsberg e Burroughs). Molto più eterogeneo di quanto suggerisca la copertina (di rock e pop si parla soprattutto nell'ultimo quarto, a dominare la scena sono i beat o personaggi unici come Harry Smith), ricco di aneddoti e senza troppe pretese enciclopediche.
November 5, 2023
Very well written book by a man who was obviously in the mix and obviously quite bright. A shame I completely detest Burroughs, Punks, Zappa, Ginsberg and the human rot that makes up 90% of the content. I should try his book on McCartney.
April 20, 2019
Briefly interesting from about 80 percent into the book.
July 19, 2025
3,5 Interesting look at the non-mainstream side of seventies (and sixties) music, poetry and literature scenes mainly in the UK and US through the author's own experiences.
April 26, 2014
Miles seems to have been in the middle of or witness to lots of interesting and exciting things, but he manages to make almost all of them seem remarkably flat. Nothing seems to really impact or involve him emotionally or intellectually, and he rarely evokes the feeling of the times (unless that feeling was flatness).
Perfectly readable and maybe interesting if you're fascinated by Ginsberg or Burroughs, but otherwise a bit dull.
Perfectly readable and maybe interesting if you're fascinated by Ginsberg or Burroughs, but otherwise a bit dull.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews