These three interesting books all deal with the music of the 60's, each from a slightly different angle. White Bicycles is written by producer Joe Boyd. It covers a period from 1956-1973, sweeping back and forth from London to Boston to Burbank, and ranging from blues to Dylan to British folk to Pink Floyd to Nick Drake. It is probably the best read of the three, written in a way that captures the vibe of the 60's without trying to hard to be hip forty years hence. Hotel California bills itself as a 60's book, but it's really more about how 70's confessional and country / folk came to be at the fore of the industry in one of its biggest boom periods to date. This book covers the likes of Joni Mitchell, Linda Rondstadt, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, The Eagles, Gram Parsons, and so forth. It's not as good a read as White Bicycles, but it is still much more palatable than the standard rock book. Laurel Canyon covers much of the same ground, focussing on, well, Laurel Canyon and its inhabitants. Although this book seems to have received the most publicity, I found it to be the least readable of the three.
While reading them I also watched the 2005 Scorcese documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home. While it started out a bit too ponderously for my tastes, it definitely picked up steam as it went on and turned out to be quite an interesting treatment not only of Dylan, but of the 60's more generally.
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