I saw Joe Boyd

Last night I went to see legendary producer Joe Boyd read from his new autobiography White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. The impressive list of records he produced in that decade included Pink Floyd's debut single, Nick Drake's first two albums, and almost everything by Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band.

Joe Boyd’s name evokes a certain time and place for me. I spent a few weeks in London in the Summer 1985, when Boyd’s profile was at a high point for producing R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction. Peter Buck said in an interview that they’d asked Boyd to produce the album because they liked the sound of the Nick Drake and Fairport Convention records he’d produced. Those artists were just random entries in Christgau’s Consumer Guide to me, but I was enough of an R.E.M. obsessive to want to learn more. Anything that inspired Peter Buck had to be great. I found cassette copies of Fairport’s Unhalfbricking and Drake’s Bryter Later (both way out of print in the USA but easily available in England at mid-line prices) a few days later, and those two tapes ended up spending more time on my Walkman than even Fables. I especially couldn’t get enough of Drake’s Bryter Later, and played nonstop that summer.

I brought the inlay card for that Bryter Later tape (which doesn’t play anymore) for Mr. Boyd to sign last night, told him the story of how I got it, and how grateful I was that I was to him for keeping Nick Drake’s legacy alive, and his music in circulation for all those years. A few folks asked him about Drake, but most of the audience at Booksmith seemed more interested that Boyd was the stage manager at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (aka when Bob Dylan went electric). I like Dylan too, but this guy worked with Syd Barrett and Nick Drake! During the post-reading Q&A, after the fourth Dylan-goes-electric question, Boyd asked “are there any questions that aren’t about Bob Dylan?”.

I've only started reading the book, but it makes for fascinating reading for any fans of the artists Boyd worked with in those days. It focuses on the making of the music, and what it was like to be there at the time. On the front cover, Brian Eno calls it "the best book about music I have read in years", and after three chapters, I'm inclined to agree with Eno.