The Downtown Pop Underground

“McLeod’s deft and generous book tells of a constellation of avant-garde squatters, divas, and dissidents who reinvented the world.” —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times-bestselling author of Motherless Brooklyn

The 1960s to early ’70s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. The Downtown Pop Underground takes a kaleidoscopic tour of Manhattan during this era and shows how deeply interconnected all the alternative worlds and personalities were that flourished in the basement theaters, dive bars, concert halls, and dingy tenements within one square mile of each other. Author Kembrew McLeod links the artists, writers, and performers who created change, and while some of them didn’t become everyday names, others, like Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry, did become icons. Ambitious in scope and scale, the book is fueled by the actual voices of many of the key characters who broke down the entrenched divisions between high and low, gay and straight, and art and commerce—and changed the cultural landscape of not just the city but the world.

“The story of underground artists of the 1960s and ’70s, an amalgam of bustling radical creativity and fearless groundbreaking work in art, music, and theater.” —Tim Robbins

“Breathes new fire into a familiar history and is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how American bohemia really happened.” —Ann Powers, critic, NPR Music

“Honors those who were at the forefront of a movement that transformed our understandings of sexuality and artistic freedom.” —Lily Tomlin