You Know What You Could Be: Tuning into the 1960s

Billy Connolly, Joe Boyd, and Andrew Greig offer two harmonizing memoirs of music making in the 1960s, featuring Mike Heron's formative years in dour, Presbyterian Edinburgh and his formation of the Incredible String Band.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 19 April 2018
Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Mike Heron, a member of the Incredible String Band, revolutionized my perspective on music. You should read it!

Billy Connolly's writing is always filled with wit and warmth, and his prose is a delightful continuation. The book transports you to a smoky, unheated eccentric Edinburgh that was a breeding ground for so much creativity.

Joe Boyd, author of "White Bicycles," praised this singular book, which offers two harmonizing memoirs of music-making in the 1960s. Mike Heron, for the first time, writes vividly about his formative years in dour, Presbyterian Edinburgh. Armed with a love for Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, and Hungarian folk music, he plays in school cloakrooms, graduates to rock, discovers the joy of a folk audience, starts writing songs, tries to talk to girls, wishes he was a Beatnik, and all while training as a reluctant accountant.

When asked to join Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer, the Incredible String Band is formed, and their wildly innovative, astounding music became indelibly linked with the latter Sixties.

Andrew Greig was a frustrated provincial schoolboy when he heard their songs. It changed everything. Undaunted by a lack of experience and ability, he formed a band in their image.

Fate & Ferret populated back-country Fife with Pan, nymphs, and Apollo, met the String Band, and caught the fish lorry to London to hang around Joe Boyd's Witchseason office, watching at the fringes of the blooming Underground scene. It was forty years later that he and Mike became friends.

These entwined stories will delight anyone who has loved the Incredible String Band, and their differing portraits of that hopeful, erratic, and stubborn stumble towards the life that is ours will strike a chord with everyone.

Weight: 286g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780857054876