Gettin' Home: An Odyssey Through The '60s

Description

CAN YOU GET HOME AGAIN? In the epic poem the Odyssey by the ancient Greek poet Homer, Odysseus (aka Ulysses) heads home to Ithaca after the Trojan war. His journey takes ten years, through trials and tribulations. In 1961, Cornell student Steve Nelson leaves Ithaca, NY to live among descendants of the Incas in the Peruvian Andes. They have survived for centuries as feudal serfs under harsh masters. Now they have a plan to win their freedom, but powerful interests stand in their way. Then Ted Kennedy shows up.When Steve leaves Peru, he finds himself on a ten-year journey of trials and tribulations, discovery and loss, triumph and failure, love and murder, sex and drugs, joy and sorrow amid the turbulent times and musical revolutions of the '60s. It takes him from high in the Andes to a surfing beach in southern California, to an historic courtroom at Harvard Law School, to a draft induction center at an Army base, and to running the legendary rock and blues club The Boston Tea Party. He becomes perhaps the foremost producer/promoter of concerts by The Velvet Underground, whom Rolling Stone magazine called "the most influential American rock band of all time."Along his journey he encounters Martin Luther King, B.B. King, Ted Kennedy, Eric Clapton, civil rights martyr Michael Schwerner, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Hillary Rodham, Lou Reed and other rockstars like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Sandy Denny, Van Morrison and Peter Wolf. Like a chameleon, his appearance changes as he moves from one place to another, until finally he must ask himself: who was I, who am I, who will I be? Only then can he get home.