Wounds to Bind

A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution

Jerry Burgan, Alan Rifkin

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2014
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798216249221
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Folk Music

The dawn of folk rock comes to life in Jerry Burgan's unforgettable memoir of the pre-psychedelic 1960s and the summer that changed everything.

As a naïve folksinger from Pomona, California, Burgan was thrust to the forefront of the counterculture and its aftermath. The Byrds, the Rolling Stones, the Mamas and Papas, Barry McGuire, Bo Diddley and many others make appearances in this 50th Anniversary reminiscence by the surviving cofounder of WE FIVE, the San Francisco electro-folk ensemble whose million-seller, "You Were On My Mind," entered the world two months before Bob Dylan plugged in an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. Vying with the Byrds to record the first folk-rock hit, Burgan and his lifelong friend Mike Stewart embarked on a road they thought well paved by the latter's older brother, Kingston Trio member John Stewart. Little did they realize that they would join the largest-ever American generation in an ecstatic, sometimes tortured, journey of invention and disillusion.

Wounds to Bind bears witness to a lost and hopeful convergence in American history—that missing link between the folk and rock eras—when Bob Dylan and Sammy Davis Jr. were played on the same radio station in the same hour. A survivor of the human realignments, tragedies and triumphs that followed, Burgan tracks down the demons that drove the genius of We Five cofounder Mike Stewart and sheds light on the 40-year enigma of what became of the band's reclusive lead singer, Beverly Bivens, a forerunner of Grace Slick, Linda Ronstadt, and Stevie Nicks.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Permissions
• PART ONE
• Chapter 1. Foreshocks
• Chapter 2. 1965: When Folk Met Rock
• Chapter 3. 1956: Kids with Guitars
• Chapter 4. The First Time Ever
• Chapter 5. If You’re Going to San Francisco
• Chapter 6. Convergence
• Chapter 7. When I Woke Up This Morning
• PART TWO
• Chapter 8. Awe and Shock
• Chapter 9. Trouble Every Day
• Chapter 10. Appalachian Thanksgiving
• Chapter 11. The Lonely Crowd
• Photospread
• Chapter 12. Ad after Ad after Ad
• Chapter 13. C’mon People Now
• PART THREE
• Chapter 14. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• Chapter 15. Jackpot, Nevada
• Chapter 16. Long Time Gone
• Chapter 17. Wounds Not Bound
• Chapter 18. Funeral for a Friend
• Chapter 19. Folk Songs and Stories
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Authors