Join us for a book talk with author David Browne to discuss his new book, Talkin’ Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capital in conversation with Stephen Petrus.

More than just the location of some of music’s most historic venues, Greenwich Village symbolized the convergence of music, politics, reinvention, and bohemian culture—a safe space that, for decades, attracted misfits and outsiders, iconoclastic folk singers and rockers, jazz musicians, and poets before forces beyond its control crushed the scene by the dawn of the ’90s.

Talkin’ Greenwich Village is the first panoramic history of a now-mythical music community that welcomed everyone from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix to Dave Van Ronk. During his four years reporting the book, David Browne – whose personal connection to the scene dates back to his days as a college student at NYU when he embedded himself in the scene for a journalism class. He interviewed more than 150 people associated with the scene, including legendary musicians from its earliest days (Judy Collins, Herbie Hancock, Tom Paxton, Sonny Rollins, John Sebastian, and members of the classic band the Blues Project) to those who emerged during its last great era (Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, Terre, and Suzzy Roche, Steve Forbert, actor/musician Christopher Guest). Browne also uncovered previously unseen documents and recordings, including efforts to curtail folk singing in Washington Square Park in the ’60s that led to the “beatnik riot” and how the FBI and city government tracked Dylan, Van Ronk, and others.

In recounting the racial tensions, crackdowns, and changes in New York City and the music that infiltrated the neighborhood, Talkin’ Greenwich Village is more than just vivid cultural history. It also speaks to the rise and waning of bohemian culture itself around the country. Today in the Village, many of those once-iconic venues are occupied by banks or chain drugstores. What happened? Why had such a vibrant scene been reduced to this? Browne’s book answers those questions while also reminding us of the powerful impact of the Village on music and culture.

About the Author:

David Browne is a senior writer at Rolling Stone and the author of Fire and Rain and biographies of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; the Grateful Dead; Sonic Youth; and Jeff and Tim Buckley. A former reporter at the New York Daily News, he was also the music critic at Entertainment Weekly for more than 15 years. He lives in Manhattan.

About the Speaker:

Stephen Petrus is Director of Public History Programs at LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College.  Petrus received his Ph.D. in history from the CUNY Graduate Center and specializes in New York City history.  Since 2017, he has co-curated six LGBTQ exhibits at LaGuardia, including  A Seat at the Table, on LGBTQ elected officials in the New York City Council and the State Legislature.  Prior to his work at LaGuardia, he held Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships at the New-York Historical Society and at the Museum of the City of New York, where, in 2015, he curated the exhibition Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival and co-authored the accompanying book, published by Oxford University Press.  His next public history project at LaGuardia will examine AIDS policy in New York City from 1981 to 1996.