Talkin’ Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capital

Almost three-quarters of a century has passed since Greenwich Village’s rise to prominence as a cultural juggernaut. Yet, its longevity, capacity for reinvention, and musical fertility have never really been rivaled anywhere else in the United States. Browne (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock’s Greatest Supergroup) seeds his narrative with significant anecdotes, serendipitous meetings, and local politics, against the backdrop of four decades of American history. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, the Village turned out a veritable who’s-who of jazz and folk musicians. Reputations were made or enhanced on the venues’ stages, many of which became legendary, from the Village Vanguard to CBGB. Browne’s emphasis on the sense of community, that community’s persistence through decades of transformation and hardship—up to and including September 11—and its lightning-in-a-bottle nature brings home what made the Village so special. Much of the material is based on over 150 new interviews Brown conducted (with Judy Collins, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Suzanne Vega, Arlo Guthrie, Shawn Colvin, and others).