Prisoner of Woodstock
by Dallas Taylor

There's no shortage of Woodstock-era survivor stories, nor much demand lately for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) gossip; nonetheless, Taylor's story is a valuable addition to pop-music literature because of its insight and detail. An original member of CSNY (the drummer), Taylor also recorded with many other sixties and seventies rock icons and ended up a destitute junkie. He cleaned himself up but was stricken with terminal liver disease in 1989; a benefit concert provided funds for an operation that saved his life. In rudimentary but clearly organized style, he recounts intimate stories about some of the Woodstock generation's best-known personalities, portraying his subjects in absolute terms, as either good or bad, and frequently, he sounds like ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman in his contrary observations on events chronicled elsewhere. That the reality of the lives of the creators of some of the most commercially successful, supposedly noncommercial music didn't reflect the laid-back images in their lyrics is an important subtext of Taylor's story, which is, finally, another cautionary tale about attaining one's sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll dreams.