In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea - Softcover

Danny Goldberg is a longtime music business who began his career as a journalist. The New York Times called his memoir Bumping into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business "an engaging, droll and...largely demystifying look at the evolution of the rock trade from Woodstock to grunge." Since 2007 Goldberg has been president of Gold Village Entertainment. He is also the author of Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit.

"Written with the acuity of someone who lived through the times he writes about, this is a thoughtful and wide-ranging exploration not just of one year in history but also of a culture and a way of thinking that continues to reverberate today."
--Booklist

"[Goldberg] conducts a survey of the hippie universe of that particular moment, touching on the rival hippiedoms of San Francisco and New York, the philosophical avatars of LSD, the wisdom of Allen Ginsberg, the grandeur of the Grateful Dead and other exemplars of the 'San Francisco Sound,' the New Left radicals and Black Power militants (as seen from a hippie standpoint), and the underground press."
--Tablet Magazine

"[Goldberg's] analysis of what it meant to be a hippie in 1967--sans cartoon clichés--recounts the pursuit of wisdom and joy, as well as a crazy quilt of counterculture cool. And despite the demarcation insisted on by some, he shows that spirituality, activism and business are not incompatible..."
--High Times

"A reminiscence of the time that brought us St. Pepper and the Summer of Love...[A] genial you-were-there memoir of a golden age."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Danny Goldberg is a relentless tracker of people. However elusive this Lost Chord may be, Danny G. searches it out and nails it to the tree flesh. Eternity now! 1967 forever!"
--Wavy Gravy

"[Goldberg] explores how the political, mystical, psychedelic and musical fused to create that memorable year."
--Toronto Star, included in Sarah Murdoch's "Arrivals" column

"Goldberg's book is what one might call a survey of the period. His narrative skillfully weaves the music, the drugs, the politics and the spiritual searching of the hippie counterculture into a tale that moves quickly and smoothly...What Goldberg has achieved in In Search of the Lost Chord is laudable. Not only has he provided his contemporaries with a very readable and fairly wide-ranging look at an important time in their youth, he has also given today's younger readers a useful and well-told historical survey of a subculture and time they hear about quite often."
--CounterPunch

"Goldberg, a longtime music industry executive and journalist, takes the reader through the history of the year 1967 and the social transformations that led up to it. The book is full of names and references and tales that stir memories of the time...The book is a tribute to a time gone by that helps us better understand who we are today."
--Progressive, A Top Book of 2017

"This wide-ranging, deeply personal narrative by journalist and music executive Danny Goldberg subjectively and perspicaciously explores the ongoing relevance of the political and counter-cultural movements that emerged in the pivotal year 1967."
--Big City Rhythm & Blues Magazine

"In his new book In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea, author Danny Goldberg interviewed dozens of people who were touched by that summer."
--AARP Magazine

"A neat compendium."
--New York Journal of Books

"Entertainment industry executive and raconteur Danny Goldberg's new book tackles 1967, the most promising but confusing year of that era, straight on. It's a veritable literary head rush, and he delivers some tasty and tantalizing details along the way. The Vietnam War, race relations, psychedelic rock, LSD, the first Be-In, various counterculture groups: All get plenty of attention, and Goldberg's personal connection to several key figures allows him to get quotes and new thoughts on the era, 50 years later."
--Capital & Main

"Though the dream appeared to end, what Goldberg describes as a 'mystical experience' for many participants continues to reverberate a half century later in everything from the environmental movement to the push for organic food."
--Shepherd Express (Milwaukee)

"In Search of the Lost Chord takes a refreshing new look at 1967, offering up a unique perspective and personal analysis of the counterculture era itself."
--Night Flight

"Long a gloried mover and shaker in the music industry, Danny Goldberg knows whereof he speaks in his iconoclastic history of American popular culture...Based on his own exhaustive research, including interviews with luminaries ranging from Allen Ginsberg to Baba Ram Dass (aka Richard Alpert), the book drills deeply into sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, and much else besides."
--Jewish Journal

"[In Search of the Lost Chord is] a standout for its approach, which documents the experiences of events, people, and the changing tides which swept the nation and changed its direction forever."
--Donovan's Literary Services, included in Prime Picks Selection

"Danny Goldberg takes us back to 1967 and gives us a complete and panoramic look at the culture, politics, media, music and mores of the year."
--Reviews by Amos Lassen

"Danny Goldberg's deeply personal and political history of 1967 and the hippie idea weaves together rollicking, rousing, wonderfully colorful and disparate narratives to remind us how the energies and aspirations of the counterculture were intertwined with protest and reform. There is a direct line from many of the events, movements, and people of 1967 to our times. Goldberg draws the line for us with mesmerizing storytelling, characters, and conversations."
--Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation

"Danny Goldberg has written a lively, well-researched, kaleidoscopic account--at once openhearted and levelheaded--of a spiritual, pharmacological, political, and musical supernova whose reverberations are still strongly felt a half-century later."
--Hendrik Hertzberg

"Danny Goldberg is probably one of the purest, most reasonable guides you could ask for to 1967."
--Andrew Loog Oldham, author of Rolling Stoned

"Hippie 101--a kaleidoscopic snapshot of the Big Bang fifty years ago, three parts social and musical history, one part personal memoir, a sweeping overview that also manages to be up close and personal. Bravo."
--Joel Selvin, author of Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day

"Danny Goldberg has done something I would not have thought possible: with diligent research, sharp prose, a clear mind, and an open heart, he has rescued a period of history from the clichés that had previously defined it. I began this book thinking hippies ridiculous. I ended it with a far more complex view, and one that showed me how little I had known or understood--a truly impressive achievement."
--Eric Alterman, author of The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama

"This extraordinary book transports us back to a 'moment' when, as Goldberg writes, the phrase '"peace and love" was not meant or taken ironically.' Beginning at sixteen, Goldberg was a participant in the rise and cresting of the hippie movement, the hippie ideal, which has been trivialized and disparaged in later decades. He cuts through the obfuscation and recreates the sense of magic, wonder, intimacy, and community that was in the air and you could breathe it in. If you want to know, or remember, what it was like to be alive and part of that historic wave, I can think of no better guide than In Search of the Lost Chord."
--Sara Davidson, author of Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties

"In a time of the harshest dissonance, Danny Goldberg's In Search of the Lost Chord arrives like soma from a heaven that is still up there if you look hard enough. One the great gambits of the rightist culture has been to paint the 1960s, and the hippie movement in particular, as some stammering, slothful stoner movie. As an eyewitness, I can testify it was much, much more. Danny Goldberg's highly informative missive from that long, strange trip not only reminds veterans of the glorious possibilities of the age but also serves as an excellent primer to onward generations."
--Mark Jacobson, author of The Lampshade