This is not a history of the sixties. It is a collection of recollections. Fortunately, there’s a published record of my encounters with rock stars and other celebrities during those years. The quotes from these people, and the descriptions of events I witnessed, are taken from those articles. But I didn’t report everything I saw or knew—no journalist does—so I’ve pieced together conversations that were off the record or edited out of my pieces. I’m confident in the truthfulness of these passages because I remember nearly everything that famous people said to me. I can’t make the same claim about people who weren’t famous. I didn’t take notes on our personal encounters, and it’s impossible to recall precisely what occurred between us fifty years ago. I’ve done my best to reconstruct incidents involving those people in a way that feels authentic to me.
I’ve also taken steps to protect the privacy of those who had no idea that they would ever be written about, and in some cases I’ve altered their names or appearances so they aren’t identifiable. I don’t believe in ambush journalism, or in reporting that violates privacy, and the details of my intimate relationships are not for publication. So you won’t find nearly as much here about the woman I was married to in the sixties as she deserves. Far too many characters in this book are dead, but some of them have children who may not know everything I do about their, parents’ lives, and in those cases I’ve omitted information that might hurt the survivors. In addition I’ve compressed or combined some scenes and sequences for dramatic effect.
I don’t intend this memoir to be a definitive account. Nearly everything of importance that happened in the sixties is heavily contested, so I’m sure that much of what I saw and believed can be disputed. I’ve related my perceptions as they were, and owned up when they changed. As for my opinions of rock, they are what they are. There’s no such thing as the truth about a piece of music; only a consensus. Sometimes I shared it, and sometimes not. So sue me!