1960s

Rock historian Ed Ward says that bands like the Rolling Stones helped popularize the distinctly African American genre. Interest in blues led more musicians to picking up the electric guitar, including Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, who would take rock music in a new direction.

The San Francisco-based Graham organized and promoted concerts for several important bands in the 1960s. He worked hard to create diverse lineups, and balance the needs and desires of artists and record labels. Graham closed his iconic Fillmore Theater in 1971.

Writer Geoffrey O'Brien. His new book, Dream Time: Chapters from the Sixties, is an exploration of the phenomena of the 60s, from strobe lights and miniskirts to Be-Ins and Transcendental Meditation. O'Brien attempts to capture the cultural, social and political ferment of the era, as opposed to an objective, historical accounting. O'Brien is also the author of Hard Boiled America," a survey of paperback crime fiction.

Book critic John Leonard reviews Dream Time by poet and literary critic Geoffrey O'Brien. The book is a meditation on the turbulence of the sixties.

Book critic John Leonard reviews The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Through 1968 by the English journalist and historian David Caute.

Journalist and media critic Todd Gitlin whose new book, The Sixties - Years of Hope, Days of Rage, is a social history of the culture and politics of that time from a writer who participated in the freedom and turmoil of the era.

Writer Jay Stevens has a new book about the creation of LSD in the 1940s, research into its therapeutic and weaponized potential in the 1950s, and its role in the 1960s counterculture--fueled in part by the influence of people like Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and Aldous Huxley.

Rock historian Ed Ward remembers the black Detroit musicians who made their mark with the city's smaller record labels.

Rock historian Ed Ward looks at how record labels tried--and failed--to market second-rate bands from San Francisco's psychedelic rock scene.

Rock historian Ed Ward profiles the 1960s California band, fronted by African American singer and songwriter Arthur Lee.

Language commentator Geoff Nunberg considers which phrases and slang from the 1960s endured, and which ones sound dated today.

Music publicist Derek Taylor was the press agent for the Beatles; he also ghost wrote the memoir of their manager, Brian Epstein. His new book, about 1967 -- when he started working for Apple Records -- is called It Was Twenty Years Ago Today.

Peter Max is an artists whose "psychedelic" posters and graphics were popular in the 1960s and early 1970s, and he designed the appearance of the film "Yellow Submarine." He switched to painting in the mid-1970s, and his recent paintings of the Statue of Liberty were featured in Reagan's White House. A retrospective of his paintings, drawings, lithographs and etchings will open at the Hallowell Gallery in Conshohocken.