Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution

by Jerry Burgan, Sylvia Tyson (Foreword), Alan Rifkin (Primary Contributor)

The dawn of folk rock comes to life in Jerry Burgan’s unforgettable memoir of the pre-psychedelic 1960s and the summer that changed everything.

As a naïve folksinger from Pomona, California, Burgan was thrust to the forefront of the counterculture and its aftermath. The Byrds, the Rolling Stones, the Mamas and Papas, Barry McGuire, Bo Diddley and many others make appearances in this 50th Anniversary reminiscence by the surviving cofounder of WE FIVE, the San Francisco electro-folk ensemble whose million-seller, "You Were On My Mind,” entered the world two months before Bob Dylan plugged in an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. Vying with the Byrds to record the first folk-rock hit, Burgan and his lifelong friend Mike Stewart embarked on a road they thought well paved by the latter's older brother, Kingston Trio member John Stewart. Little did they realize that they would join the largest-ever American generation in an ecstatic, sometimes tortured, journey of invention and disillusion.

Wounds to Bind bears witness to a lost and hopeful convergence in American history—that missing link between the folk and rock eras—when Bob Dylan and Sammy Davis Jr. were played on the same radio station in the same hour. A survivor of the human realignments, tragedies and triumphs that followed, Burgan tracks down the demons that drove the genius of We Five cofounder Mike Stewart and sheds light on the 40-year enigma of what became of the band’s reclusive lead singer, Beverly Bivens, a forerunner of Grace Slick, Linda Ronstadt, and Stevie Nicks.

Genres: History, Music, Memoir

270 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Bruce Overby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerry Burgan passed away unexpectedly on March 29th of this year, and from that very dark cloud arose two magical silver linings: my discovering and reading this terrific book, and with it, my rediscovering sounds from my youth that had been locked away in repressed memory since the 1970s. Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution is Burgan's chronicle of a life centered around music, and more specifically, around the band We Five that he co-founded in 1964 with guitarist, arranger, producer, and subsequent digital music pioneer Michael Stewart. Burgan's account of We Five's burst onto the scene with their smash 1965 hit "You Were On My Mind" is the story not only of a simpler time in the music industry, but also of a strain of popular music in America that has long been overshadowed by immortal talents of rock and roll like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Few will remember, for instance, that "You Were On My Mind" finished 1965 at No. 3 on the Billboard Top 100, just one spot below the Stones' "Satisfaction," and three spots above "Help" by the Beatles. Though I was just a child of 6 then, my father was a 30-year-old fan of folk music, and reading Burgan's account and immersing myself in the folk and folk-rock music chronicled in the book, I realized that in my youth I would have been much more likely to hear "You Were On My Mind" on our family radio than any of the British Invasion hits that were emerging at the time. By the time I became a teen myself and actually started buying records, the folk-rock of We Five had been swept away by dozens of new strains of electric and electronic rock that rendered those old acoustic strumming sounds not just passé, but worse, painfully uncool.

But as we all know, music that is uncool when you're 15 can take on a whole new meaning when you're in your 60s. Reading Wounds to Bind with my AirPods in, and tapping my phone to pull up and listen to songs as they appeared in the text, drew out memories and emotions that I hadn't experienced in years. A book with a built-in soundtrack: what a gift.

But the most beautiful attribute of Wounds to Bind is not, in fact, its rich array of musical memory. It is instead its brutal yet tender honesty and candor. Burgan throws his life open for the reader, serving up the awkward emergence of two California kids discovering musical escape, the dizzying blows of the instant success those kids had in their teens, and the painful enlightenment of the slow decline that followed, into depths that never quite reached obscurity. None of us who lived through them were quite prepared for the tumultuous final years of the 1960s, and Jerry Burgan, he would happily admit, was no exception. And in Wounds to Bind, this artist who spent two formative years of his life on the cusp of a musical revolution that coincided with the social, political, and cultural revolutions of the time, gives us a unique, humane, and in-depth look at the ways those years challenged and changed all of us.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burgan’s lush writing perfectly captures the cultural shift from early to mid-60s. His use of language is poetic; rich similes, and word choices that nail an emotion. He shares the joys and frustrations of teenagers who long to be musicians. He invites readers into the creative process of We Five, and openly allows us to see the angst as the group tried and failed to recapture the magic of “You Were on My Mind.” Through the lens of We Five, Burgan captures the changing culture in a way that resonates with those of us who came of age then. The struggle to remain relevant, to stay true to ideals and beliefs, and to follow a dream, is universal. The need for compromise to achieve all of that can be painful, as Burgan writes of changes and the final decision to break up the group.

References to drug use and relationships don’t dominate this book; the music is the predominant theme. The descriptions of recording with the technology available then are fascinating. The feeling of amazement after listening to the playback with over-dubbing is palpable. Listening to those incredible harmonies that ride over and under and around, that dance and soar, takes on a heightened appreciation.

[Mark Silverstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching. Scratches an itch I’ve had since 1965.

I’m a fan of many performers. But We Five is at the very top of the list and has been for more than 50 years.

Mr,. Burgan helped me get to know a bit about the human beings I idolize. They, and their stories, do not fail to satisfy my curiosity and, more importantly, make me respect, and love even more, the craftsmanship and talent, the iconic genius of We Five.

[Josh Salter]

Never thought this book would mention Xiu Xiu but here we are.

[Elizabeth Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published 2014. Memoir by a cofounder of We Five about their meteoric rise to fame with “You Were On My Mind” and their experiences in the music business. The author, Jerry Brugan, and his schoolmate Mike Stewart formed the band in the mid-1960s. We Five appeared on Hollywood Palace and toured with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars 1965 with The Byrds, Bo Diddley, Paul Revere and the Raiders and others. We Five had a singular style drawing on folk, jazz, rock and other elements. This is a fascinating story and an important record of the music and culture of 1960s San Francisco.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Largely uneventful memoir by the least interesting, squarest member of mediocre sixties group We Five. I was enticed by the promise of Byrds anecdotes...they went on tour together, once; he sat on their bus for one leg, and wound up making small talk with the roadie driving it while the Byrds got stoned and subsequently passed out in the back.

He took acid once ("I never took acid again"), and speed once as well ("I never used speed again"), and had nothing interesting to say about either.

If you're way into We Five, for some reason, it is illuminating as far as that goes, and sincere enough to make me feel vaguely guilty for trashing it on Goodreads.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

To have been in the right place at the right time certainly fits this excellent memoir from a cat who didn't completly buy into the acid rock scene, but had a tremndous influence on those about to go into it. The road memories of playing on the road in an integrated band in the 1960's South are, as most told by others, typical and sad. But things did change.