Books:
Author Peter Doggett has assembled a vivid
documentary of tempestuous times. His topics
include the collision between rock and revolution
operations ostensibly not simply as profit-driven
at Woodstock (‘Fuck off my stage!’ – the Who’s
economy but also as ‘creative’ experience.
Pete Townshend to activist Abbie Hoffman);
In the last chapter of Riot, Doggett leaves
student protests in the USA, UK, France,
us in the mid-1970s, with Nixon still in the White
Czechoslovakia, Mexico and beyond; John
House and long before the incorporation of
Lennon and women’s liberation; the Rolling
the counterculture. But for all the loose ends
Stones and Jean-Luc Godard; Black Panthers,
(only partially tied up in an epilogue), Doggett’s
White Panthers – the whole kingdom of late-
narrative has an oddly closed character.
1960s/early-70s revolutionary fervour and the
Closure occurs not at the end of the story but
music which was its soundtrack.
throughout.
There’s a Riot Going On is a marvellous
In Doggett’s listing of them, the events of
jigsaw. From quotes, anecdotes and original
the decade are boxed up as a finished product.
interviews, Doggett reconstructs the precise turn
Of course he chronicles the contestation that
of events in the counterculture from 1965 to 1972.
occurred then – whether ‘revolution’ existed in
In his detailed narrative there are shootouts and
the head or on the streets, for example – but
love-ins alongside subplots, counterplots and
there is little sense of these occurrences being
plenty of people who lost the plot.
contested now. Is this because Doggett doesn’t
In order to get his multistory, Doggett
realise there is a debate going on today about the
has gone way beyond typical sources on the
riot that happened then? More likely he chose
usual suspects. He cites not only Red Mole but
not to have much of a debate about ‘the Sixties’
also Old Mole. He refers not only to the sexual
and their legacy, since opening up this sort of
fantasies of Oz magazine (infamously indicted
discussion would have demanded a different
for corrupting the young in 1971) but also to the
book and another kind of writing. The irony is that
political reporting of The Realist. Doggett really
open-endedness of this other kind is just what the
is a dogged reporter.
Sixties are rightly famous for.
The tensile strength of the book is provided
Imagine the events of the period as a stack
by the real tension of the times between those
of LPs, and each LP has its sleevenotes. In effect,
who sought to seize public power by any means
Doggett has sampled the notes to thousands
necessary, including music, and those who found
of albums (events) and composed them into a
their revolution ‘in the head’, where music and
narrative. Perhaps this – no more and no less – is
other stimulants were expected to bring about
what we should expect from someone who was
the transformation of private consumption and
editor of Record Collector for 15 years; which is
individual consciousness. As the fervour of the
not to suggest that either his selection or collation
period subsided, the second of these loosely-
falls short. Doggett’s shortcoming is that he has
formed groups gained the upper hand; but to
not presumed to remix the events or sought to
many the eventual winner was capitalism itself, in
conceptualise them in an original way. Reading
its newly acquired capacity to reconfigure its own
his Riot is like leafing through old LPs: there is the
pleasure of recognition and recollection, but little
sense of new possibility. Andrew Calcutt
TheRe’s A RiOT
GOinG On
By Peter Doggett
Canongate Books, £25 (hardcover)
Artreview 146
DEC_books 1.indd 146 2/11/07 11:38:40
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