Audiobooks by David Browne

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

The definitive history of the revolutionary Greenwich Village music scene, which fostered some of the most iconic musicians in American history--and fought for its identity every step of the way. Although Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area supported and nurtured so many groundbreaking artists and genres. Over the course of decades, Billie Holiday, the Weavers, Sonny Rollins, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Ornette Coleman, the Blues Project, and Suzanne Vega are just a few who realized the Village was a sanctuary for innovators, non-conformists, and those looking to invent or reinvent themselves. Those musicians, and so many more, used the Village's smokey coffeehouses and clubs to chronicle the tumultuous Sixties, rewrite jazz history, and take folk and rock & roll into eclectic places it hadn't been before. Based on over 150 new interviews with surviving participants, previously unseen and unheard documents and archives, and author David Browne's years immersed in the scene, Talkin' Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it has long deserved. It takes readers from the Fifties fountain sessions in Washington Square Park and into landmark venues like the Gaslight and the Village Vanguard, with stops along the way into the scene's carousing Seventies years (National Lampoon's Lemmings), and Dylan's momentous arrival and numerous returns. In eye-opening fashion, the book chronicles the overlooked people of color who sang alongside Dylan and his peers, reveals how the federal and city government consistently kept its eye on the community and artists like Van Ronk, unearths new aspects of the infamous "beatnik riot" in Washington Square Park, and spins untold stories of the beloved sister band the Roches, who laid the groundwork for so many of today's female singer-songwriters, as well as the falafel joint that begat a new community in the Eighties. In also chronicling the racial tensions, ongoing crackdowns and changes in New York and music that infiltrated the neighborhood, Talkin' Greenwich Village is more than just vivid music history. It also tells the story of the heyday and waning of bohemian culture in America, set to some of the most enduring words, folk songs and jazz jams in music history.

David Browne (Author), Sean Runnette, Tbd (Narrator)

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Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock's Greatest Supergroup

'In what is the most comprehensive biography of the group to date, Browne compiles a fun and fast-paced music history.... an authoritative chronicle.' --Publishers Weekly The first and most complete narrative biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, by acclaimed music journalist and Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne Even in the larger-than-life world of rock and roll, it was hard to imagine four more different men. David Crosby, the opinionated hippie guru. Stephen Stills, the perpetually driven musician. Graham Nash, the tactful pop craftsman. Neil Young, the creatively restless loner. But together, few groups were as in sync with their times as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Starting with the original trio's landmark 1969 debut album, the group embodied much about its era: communal musicmaking, protest songs that took on the establishment and Richard Nixon, and liberal attitudes toward partners and lifestyles. Their group or individual songs--'Wooden Ships,' 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,' 'After the Gold Rush,' 'For What It's Worth' (with Stills and Young's Buffalo Springfield), 'Love the One You're With,' 'Long Time Gone,' 'Just a Song Before I Go,' 'Southern Cross'--became the soundtrack of a generation. But their story would rarely be as harmonious as their legendary and influential vocal blend. In the years that followed, these four volatile men would continually break up, reunite, and disband again--all against a backdrop of social and musical change, recurring disagreements and jealousies, and self-destructive tendencies that threatened to cripple them both as a group and as individuals. In Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock's Greatest Supergroup, longtime music journalist and Rolling Stone writer David Browne presents the ultimate deep dive into rock and roll's most musical and turbulent brotherhood on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Featuring exclusive interviews with David Crosby and Graham Nash along with band members, colleagues, fellow superstars, former managers, employees, and lovers-and with access to unreleased music and documents--Browne takes readers backstage and onstage, into the musicians' homes, recording studios, and psyches, to chronicle the creative and psychological ties that have bound these men together--and sometimes torn them apart. This is the sweeping story of rock's longest-running, most dysfunctional, yet pre-eminent musical family, delivered with the epic feel their story rightly deserves.

David Browne (Author), Kevin Collins, Kevin T. Collins (Narrator)

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So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead

No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anti-corporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock ’n’ roll—both sonically and psychically—So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.

David Browne (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)

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Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970

January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who's just completed Sweet Baby James. Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives—and the world around them—will change irrevocably. Fire and Rain tells the story of four iconic albums of 1970 and the lives, times, and constantly intertwining personal ties of the remarkable artists who made them. Acclaimed journalist David Browne sets these stories against an increasingly chaotic backdrop of events that sent the world spinning throughout that tumultuous year: Kent State, the Apollo 13 debacle, ongoing bombings by radical left-wing groups, the diffusion of the antiwar movement, and much more. Featuring candid interviews with more than one hundred luminaries, including some of the artists themselves, Browne's vivid narrative tells the incredible story of how—over the course of twelve turbulent months—the '60s effectively ended and the '70s began.

David Browne (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)

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