May 4, 2021
ISBN-13: 9781597145251
Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band in the 60s, producer of major films in the 70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the 80s, creator of the Internet’s first Video-on-Demand service in the 90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. His is a lifetime marked not only by good timing but by impeccable instincts—from the folk scene of Woodstock, to Hollywood’s rebellious film movement and beyond, Taplin is not just a witness but a lifelong producer, the right-hand man to some of the greatest talents of both pop culture and the underground.
With cameos by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Martin Scorsese, and countless other icons, The Magic Years is both a rock memoir and a work of cultural criticism from a key player who watched a nation turn from idealism to nihilism. Taplin offers a clear-eyed roadmap of how we got here and makes a convincing case for art’s power to deliver us from “passionless detachment” and rekindle our humanism.
Praise for The Magic Years
“This is a unified story, from Taplin’s time as road manager for Bob Dylan and the Band to movie producing to investment banking to technology writing, and what makes it so is thinking: someone always wondering what’s behind the curtain, if only because what’s behind it is almost certainly going to make a better story than what’s in front of it. So in a concise and burrowing manner, he tells you about the music business, with Meyer Lansky behind both MCA and Warner Communications; Michael Milken as the architect of the media landscape that Donald Trump harvested; how with their version of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Do It” the Band, having “trapped themselves within a sort of puritan destiny,” at least for a few minutes “shed the hair shirt”; or for that matter why Gaye’s What’s Going On “was as politically symbolic as track star’s John Carlos’s raised fist at the 1968 Olympics.” And a hundred other tales and grace notes.”
—Greil Marcus, music journalist and cultural critic
"Great book — it’s rare that someone can tell a first-person account of the earliest Dylan concerts, the civil rights movement, JFK’s assassination, MLK’s rallies, the Beatles’ first arrival in America."
—Scott Galloway
"A rock and roll tour of all the great cultural shifts of the last half century!"
—Thomas L. Friedman
“Coolest Book Of The Week! The Magic Years! Get it now! Action packed! The Band! Scorsese! Mean Streets! The Last Waltz! George Harrison’s Bangladesh! And a lot more!”
—Steven Van Zandt
"Readers will ride shotgun as Taplin journeys through some of the great moments in late ’60s and ’70s popular culture, with a significant coda on the forces that drive today’s artistic output. There is much to savor here."
—Library Journal 'Starred Review'
"A really important book... The Magic Years is not nostalgia. It really puts you front and center, where we are."
—Robert Scheer, Scheer Intelligence, KCRW
The Magic Years is an extraordinary autobiography, in that it isn’t just the chronicling of a life, but it is an extended meditation on the artistic, social, political, and cultural changes that have taken place in the last forty years. Taplin grapples with some truly big ideas in this book—and he condemns in robust terms the present cynical and dystopian age, in which the contemporary left is compared, unfavorably, with the left of the Sixties.”
—Douglas Preston, President of the Authors Guild, author Lost City of the Monkey God
“The Magic Years remarkably shares how Jon Taplin was on the front lines of so many pivotal and historic events. He has a helluva story to tell. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen a lot of it with my own eyes.”
—Robbie Robertson
“Jonathan Taplin and I had our share of conflicts and disagreements, but he was the one who made Mean Streets and The Last Waltz possible, for which I will always be grateful. We had quite a few adventures on both projects, and they’re all chronicled in this memoir of his colorful life in show business.”
—Martin Scorsese
“Jonathan Taplin has lived many lives and all of them have intersected with greatness. In this candid, insightful memoir, he chronicles his collaboration with seminal artists. This is a fascinating insider perspective of a time that forever changed music and film.”
—Don Henley
“Jonathan Taplin has lived many lives and all of them have intersected with greatness. In this candid, insightful memoir, he chronicles his collaboration with seminal artists, including Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm and Martin Scorsese. This is a fascinating, insider perspective of a time that forever changed music and film.”
“The Magic Years reads like a Magical Mystery Tour of music, loss, beauty, family, justice, and social upheaval. It contains true magic, and true inspiration, as do the years, the people, and the story Taplin recalls.”
—Rosanne Cash
“Jon Taplin has lived an extraordinary life during an extraordinary time. I have watched him land on his feet again and again after completing death-defying midair acrobatics. I don’t know if the things in this book actually happened, but I know all of it is true.”
—T Bone Burnett
“The Magic Years disproves Robin Williams’s famous line: Jon Taplin remembers the sixties (and seventies and beyond) and he was definitely there, as a maker and impresario. It’s an enviably rich life that he chronicles with unfailing charm and menschy generosity.”
—Kurt Andersen, author of Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America
“Taplin is a formidable writer whose wit, attention to detail, and gift for turning a phrase makes The Magic Years a book worthy of its legendary subjects.”
—Danny Goldberg, author of Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain
“In 1968, when the Band’s Music from Big Pink was released, it felt like the incense and acid haze hanging over the music had been blown away by a cool mountain breeze. Jon Taplin was present for those days, and for everything that came afterwards. His memoir is as clear and strong as an Adirondack stream. Catch this cannonball.”
—Charles P. Pierce, author of Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
“It’s uncanny to find someone closely involved in so many iconic events, and with such understanding. That’s why you have to read this vital book: despite losses, exhaustion, and compromise, the love and faith in it call us to make a new, glad day.”
—Nigel Smith, William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature, Princeton University
Press Contact at Heyday: Julie Coryell - julie@heydaybooks.com