In the ’60s and ’70s, Greenwich Village was the musical heart of New York

Talkin’ Greenwich Village — Author David Browne’s new book takes readers into the neighbourhood’s creative heyday, where a generation of artists and poets including Bob Dylan, Billie Holliday and Dave Van Ronk cut their teeth.

In a tiny pock­et in down­town Man­hat­tan, peo­ple crowd the his­toric Green­wich Vil­lage each day, strolling past charm­ing brown­stones and bou­tiques dressed in styl­ish garb, hop­ping between high-end restau­rants and bars. In 2025, The Vil­lage is known for being afflu­ent and res­i­den­tial. But for most of the 20th cen­tu­ry, it was known for Ker­ouac and Dylan. Mail­er and Hen­drix. It was a hotspot for bohemi­an cul­ture, with youth at the cen­tre of it. With weary beat poets in smoky base­ment bars and nomad singers with har­mon­i­cas, the Vil­lage was a home for any­one and everyone. 

In his lat­est book Talkin’ Green­wich Vil­lage: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemi­an Music Cap­i­tal, David Browne traces the rise and fall of the neighbourhood’s music scene. Pub­lished in Decem­ber, the book came out only a month before A Com­plete Unknown hit the­atres in the UK on 17 Jan­u­ary. The film fol­lows Bob Dylan’s (played by Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met) arrival in the Green­wich Vil­lage folk scene from 1961 to his con­tro­ver­sial 1965 per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Festival.

While the biopic only dives into four years of The Village’s cul­tur­al rel­e­vance, Browne tack­les the 50s through the 80s, detail­ing the ori­gins of the scene when a young gen­er­a­tion of musi­cians and poets moved to the neigh­bor­hood at a height­ened time of polit­i­cal tur­bu­lence in New York City, before chron­i­cling its decline in the mid 80s as famed venues closed. Browne inter­viewed over 150 peo­ple for the book, includ­ing musi­cal lumi­nar­ies like Son­ny Rollins, Ram­blin’ Jack Elliott, Joan Baez, John Sebas­t­ian, and mem­bers of The Blues Project.

We spoke to Browne from his home in New York City, where he dis­cussed the recent online fas­ci­na­tion with The Vil­lage, the remark­able cul­tur­al pow­er of the neigh­bour­hood, and if there could ever be a revival.

July Collins at Gerde's Folk City ca. 1961 © Irwin Gooen Collection
John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City ca. 1961 © Irwin Gooen Collection

You’ve writ­ten books about The Bea­t­les, Jeff Buck­ley, and Son­ic Youth. What made you decide to tack­le the artists that rev­o­lu­tionised the vil­lage for this book?

David Browne: The idea had been in the back of my mind for a long time. The seeds for it were prob­a­bly plant­ed decades back when I moved into the Vil­lage to be a col­lege stu­dent at NYU — I was­n’t there in the 60s, I was there much lat­er in the 80s. But even then, I saw there was still a music scene. It was start­ing to revive in the late 70s and ear­ly 80s. But when I start­ed work­ing for The New York Dai­ly News in the late 80s, I start­ed see­ing it crum­ble. One club after anoth­er would close, and often they wouldn’t be replaced by anoth­er club. The idea was def­i­nite­ly fes­ter­ing there and then I also wrote some sim­i­lar arti­cles for Rolling Stone. One was about Ram­blin’ Jack Elliott, who was part of that scene for a bit and anoth­er was about David Blue, who was also part of the Dylan crowd. So all that research plus I was look­ing for a new book to do – it just seemed like a nat­ur­al time. Also, no one had real­ly done a nar­ra­tive his­to­ry of this scene, so I felt like it was a good time for me to look back on that period.

Why do you think there is such a fas­ci­na­tion with the Vil­lage and its music scene?

It’s been so inter­est­ing to see The Vil­lage come back into pop cul­ture in the last decade. First, there was Inside Llewyn Davis, then The Mar­velous Mrs. Maisel, which was part­ly set there, and now we’re see­ing The Com­plete Unknown. Espe­cial­ly in the last few years, there has been a new­found fas­ci­na­tion and allure to the idea of this small, tight­ly knit com­mu­ni­ty where you can club hop prac­ti­cal­ly from one door to the oth­er while hear­ing ground­break­ing folk, jazz or rock. You would hear poets in these small, cozy spaces where you could smoke or drink and there were no cell phones. There were no dis­trac­tions and I think it speaks to a long­ing for a com­mu­ni­ty and for hear­ing music that you had­n’t heard before. I think one of the allures of The Vil­lage back then is that peo­ple went there to hear music that was real­ly fresh and not every city had a Bob Dylan. If you went to The Vil­lage Van­guard or the Five Spot Café, you could see Ornette Cole­man or John Coltrane and hear some­thing you’d nev­er heard before. 

The Vil­lage had a very spe­cif­ic ener­gy in the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. How would you describe its ener­gy and do you think it still has that today?

It has­n’t changed that much phys­i­cal­ly. For the most part, you can walk those same streets and many of the same build­ings are still there. The streets are still nar­row and tiny, and they zigzag and inter­sect. While there are more NYU build­ings than there were in the 60s — a clas­sic club called The Bot­tom Line became an NYU build­ing – you can still walk those streets and feel the ghosts of the past. You can walk the steps lead­ing down to The Gaslight Café, even if that’s now a restau­rant. When most peo­ple go out today in the neigh­bour­hood, they are main­ly going to the bars and restau­rants because only a hand­ful of music clubs are left. But it’s still a mag­net for young peo­ple because there’s still noth­ing quite like it in New York City. The Vil­lage was always a vil­lage with­in the city. I think what it needs is some more music venues but we’ll see if that happens.

A Com­plete Unknown fol­lows a few of the same years and events that you cov­er in the book. What were your thoughts on the film?

Much like Inside Llewyn Davis, it cap­tures what it was like to live there in these tiny apart­ments and con­gre­gate in these base­ment clubs with not a whole lot of peo­ple. A lot of the spaces like Gerde’s Folk City and Gaslight Café bare­ly held 100 peo­ple. And I think both of those movies, espe­cial­ly A Com­plete Unknown, put you right there and depict it pret­ty accu­rate­ly. Of course, cer­tain things were a bit head-scratch­ing. For exam­ple, Mac­Dou­gal Street is not a two-way street and Joan Baez did­n’t stum­ble into Gaslight and see Dylan singing Mas­ters of War’ the night of the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis. It’s the Hol­ly­wood ver­sion where they con­dense every­thing. But putting that aside, I think the movie does a ter­rif­ic job of cap­tur­ing his tran­si­tion from Min­neso­ta kid to rock star. In a way, it cap­tures the tran­si­tion of The Vil­lage, show­ing how that neigh­bour­hood became pret­ty com­mer­cialised and touristy with­in that time frame. It’s not a doc­u­men­tary, but cer­tain­ly gives a sense of what those venues and places looked like and felt like.

“You would hear poets in these small, cozy spaces where you could smoke or drink and there were no cell phones. There were no distractions and I think it speaks to a longing for a community and for hearing music that you hadn't heard before.” David Browne

When peo­ple think of the Vil­lage music scene, they often think of Bob Dylan. But in your book, Dave Van Ronk is the main focus.

I knew right from the begin­ning the arc of the sto­ry had to go from when things real­ly start­ed to kick off as a scene in the late 50s to when it peaked in the 80s, as I sort of wit­nessed myself. There were lots of hills and val­leys in between there, but I felt like the 50s to the 80s was the time frame because the Vil­lage exist­ed before Dylan and it exist­ed after him. I think the big­ger arc of the sto­ry is the Vil­lage as a metaphor for bohemi­an cul­ture in Amer­i­ca itself ris­ing and slow­ly crum­bling and being replaced with drug stores and high-end restau­rants. But I did­n’t want it to just be a list of which clubs opened and which clubs closed and it be like a Wikipedia page. I knew Dave Van Ronk was going to have to be a major char­ac­ter in the book because he’s one of the first peo­ple in the scene and he was in the Vil­lage through­out it all until he died in 2002. Oth­er peo­ple came and went, but Van Ronk stayed the whole time. He was this sort of griz­zled elder states­man of the scene but also as I talked to peo­ple, it became appar­ent just how many peo­ple inter­sect­ed with him, took gui­tar lessons with him, picked his brain, or crashed on his couch. Even­tu­al­ly, it became appar­ent that I could have Van Ronk be a recur­ring char­ac­ter and a foun­da­tion of the book and then do off­shoots of peo­ple who were his pro­teges in one way or another.

Do you think a neigh­bour­hood hav­ing that sort of cul­tur­al pow­er was only pos­si­ble dur­ing that era?

The time when the Vil­lage music scene was coa­lesc­ing, espe­cial­ly at the very end of the 50s and through­out the 60s coin­cid­ed with such a tumul­tuous time in Amer­i­ca. Not every­one in the Vil­lage was singing protest songs and there were a lot of bal­lads and love songs com­ing out of there too. But with the con­ver­gence of the civ­il rights move­ment in the coun­try and the Viet­nam War com­ing into focus, there was a younger gen­er­a­tion of musi­cians who were ques­tion­ing all of it and start­ing to write songs reflect­ing it. They were writ­ing about their own feel­ings, about what was going on around them, and how it was affect­ing them. That was very new at the time and it real­ly all start­ed in the Vil­lage. When you fac­tor all of those cir­cum­stances togeth­er, it’s unclear if it could hap­pen in the Vil­lage again. Just because it’s so expen­sive to live and pay rent there. Cer­tain­ly, the real estate mar­ket is one of the major vil­lains in the book, with one club after anoth­er clos­ing, not just because peo­ple weren’t going there, but because the rents would be jacked up, or they would have to be sound­proofed — that had a major impact on that world. So it’s unclear if that will hap­pen in the Vil­lage again, but it could hap­pen some­where. That’s the mag­ic and mys­tery of music scenes.

Talkin’ Green­wich Vil­lage: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemi­an Music Cap­i­tal is pub­lished by Hachette.

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