Among the many potholes on the road to releasing a book, by far the most jarring is that of coming up with a title. You’d think by the time the proposal sells to a publisher this would be resolved. But, believe me, on the eve of my 13th book, I’ve been down this road before.
My new book, due out in September, was initially called The Fall of Aquarius: 1969, The Year The Counter Culture Exploded. (I dismissed the previous The Aged of Aquarius as sounding too much like a collection of interviews with former heads of the ‘60s, who, as we all know, are renown for not remembering anything about that acid-washed decade). But when several editors mentioned that the proposal—and the title—was too negative, I brought it back to the shop to be revised. At this point I discovered a whole world of exciting, galvanizing music I’d previously buried under a bunch of sociological generalizations about draft dodging hippies.
After properly refocusing the book on music, I realized the new title should be from a song of the year I was writing about, 1969. The book’s title, if not the song itself, would have to be snappy and memorable; at least a cult classic, if not an out and out hit, and one that would encapsulate the message of the book. This message—that 1969, one of the great years for rock music, was also the end of an era, and the end of the “Revolution”—would be further reinforced by the (also hopefully snappy) subtitle.
For a long time No Easy Way Down: Rock, Rage and Revolution in 1969 filled the bill for me, for the editor, and most of all, for the marketing staff of the book company. That is, until the eleventh hour, when this title, inspired by a Goffin & King song cut by Dusty Springfield, among others, was deemed too obscure to convey the book’s meaning. If I Don’t Get No Shelter: The Explosive Rock Revolution of 1969 was then submitted as an alternative.
Putting aside the confusing meaning of the line (from the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”) and the notion that the revolution of ‘64-‘65 was all but over in 1969, I still didn’t see how it was any clearer than what was already in place. Still, it was under this kind of deadline pressure (my favorite kind) that I came up with By the Time We Got to Woodstock (and as a compromise): The Rock Revolution of 1969. Capitalizing on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, as well as the Joni Mitchell lyric, the title still left many things dramatically unsaid, which was fine with me. For instance, By the Time We Got to Woodstock….Altamont was inevitable. Or By the Time We Got to Woodstock….the Counter Culture was dead and buried.
My friends all love this new title (if not the subtitle). My editor is on the fence. As of this writing, the sales staff has not been polled.
Why do I get the feeling it may yet wind up being called Bummer of ’69: The Year My Head Exploded?
4 Responses to Naming the Book
Not to bring you down, man, but Bill Bentley neatly summed it up in the first sentence of his liner notes for a Skip Spence CD: “1969 sucked.”
Josh,
I agree completely. The whole point of the book is that although 1969 was a year of political and cultural repression, somehow a lot of great artists wrote and released a lot of great music.
Surely the slogan of 1969 was “Don’t take the brown acid”?
To which Frank Zappa added “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow.”