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

The definitive history of the rise and heyday of the revolutionary Greenwich Village music scene, based on new research and first-hand interviews with many of its legendary performers

Although Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area nurtured so many innovative artists and genres. Over the course of decades, Billie Holiday, the Weavers, Sonny Rollins, Dave Van Ronk, Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Phil Ochs, and Suzanne Vega are just a few who migrated to the Village, recognizing it as a sanctuary for visionaries, non-conformists, and those looking to reinvent themselves. Working in the Village’s smokey coffeehouses and clubs, they chronicled the tumultuous Sixties, rewrote jazz history, and took folk and rock & roll into places they hadn’t been before.

Based on over 150 new interviews (Judy Collins, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Eric Andersen, Suzzy and Terre Roche, Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, Arlo Guthrie, John Sebastian, Shawn Colvin, the members of the Blues Project, and more), previously unseen documents, and author David Browne’s longtime immersion in the scene, Talkin’ Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it’s long deserved. It takes readers from the Fifties jamborees in Washington Square Park and into landmark venues like Gerde’s Folk City, the Gaslight Café, and the Village Vanguard, onto Dylan’s momentous arrival and returns, the no-holds-barred Seventies years (West Village discos, National Lampoon’s Lemmings), and the folk revival of the Eighties (Vega’s enduring ＂Tom’s Diner＂).

In eye-opening fashion, Browne also details the often-overlooked people of color in the Sixties folk clubs, reveals how the FBI and city government consistently kept their eyes on the community, unearths the machinations behind the infamous ＂beatnik riot＂ in Washington Square Park, and tells the interconnected tales of Van Ronk, the seminal band the Blues Project, and the beloved sister trio, the Roches.

In also recounting the racial tensions, crackdowns, and changes in New York and music that infiltrated the neighborhood, Talkin’ Greenwich Village is more than just vivid cultural history. It also speaks to the rise and waning of bohemian culture itself, set to some of the most enduring lyrics, melodies, and jazz improvisations in American music.

David Browne is a senior writer at Rolling Stone and the author of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, So Many Roads, and Fire and Rain, as well as biographies of Sonic Youth and Jeff and Tim Buckley. He lives in Manhattan.