A friend of mine, younger than I, who works for a hip reissue label out of San Francisco, told me of an encounter with a member of a prominent San Franciscan band of the '60s. My friend, aided perhaps by the fact that he is not a native of the city, enjoys good relations with and access to most of the band members and scenesters of this time. He's done many formal interviews, and has strong connections with them through his work and his passion as a fan. The interview with this particular band member was frosty and stiff from the start, my friend's enthusiasm brought to a swift close (after one too many questions about life in Haight-Ashbury, perhaps). He was dismissed with a sneering "Man, you're just one of those people who just weren't there."

Memoirs of the '60s can be a bit like that, and to be fair it must be hard to keep that tone out of any recollection of a decade so tumultuous, blasted and candy-coloured. But it does creep in, and for those of us enthralled by the era and especially its music, it can be a little bit galling to hear, yet again, that true understanding comes only to those with Woodstock tickets still in their back pockets. No such problem with Joe Boyd, though, who was at Woodstock and yet has written a lucid, clear-eyed account of his life during the '60s, light on the Man-you-should-have-been-theres and full of good, elegant prose.

So who's Joe Boyd? If you have an early Fairport Convention album, or either of the first two Nick Drake albums, or know the first Pink Floyd single, ‘Arnold Layne', or have boogied to Maria Muldaur's AM hit ‘Midnight at the Oasis', then you know Joe Boyd. He produced them. But there's more to his story than late-night studio tales, and that's what makes White Bicycles (Serpent's Tail, 224 pp; $32.95) such a breathtaking read. We've come to see and know a lot of the '60s through rock-star and rock-mogul and rock-groupie biographies, and many of them have the protagonist famous and well kitted-out by '66. That's when Boyd gets his first record-producer jobs, but before that there's a story that has your head shaking, as the Zelig-like Boyd bounces from the US to England to Europe, seemingly fitted with some radar device that's going to drop him into the hottest music scene going.

Boyd's book is subtitled ‘Making Music in the 1960s', and from its enigmatic opening line - "The sixties began in the summer of 1956, ended in October of 1973 and peaked just before dawn on 1 July, 1967 during a set by Tomorrow at the UFO Club in London" - that's what you get. No childhood moments. No leafy Boston reminiscences. Not even his parents' first names. The book leaps straight into the music, with the author at age 12 hooked on doo-wop and early R&B on American Bandstand. The next jump is to Harvard in 1960, where Boyd is listening to the blues. How he got into this university and what he studied there is never revealed. He graduated in early '64 and in any other decade would have gone into a cosy professional niche for life, but this is the '60s, so his first job is tour-managing Muddy Waters.

This is where the fun begins. Boyd lives a charmed life, a music aficionado's dream. Being from Boston means instant immersion in that city's incredible folk scene; it also puts him in a proto-'60s environment of bells, Zen texts, marijuana, visits to Mexico, and strummin' guitars that are going to ride out the decade. The local music is Joan Baez, Eric Von Schmidt, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band (Maria Muldaur on lead vocals) and informal visits from Bob Dylan, up from New York. It's a swirling world, with Boyd - at this point barely more than 20 - hustling as concert promoter for old blues legends Lonnie Johnson and Sleepy John Estes, while simultaneously trying to manoeuvre himself onto the budding Elektra recording label as an A&R man and working as both booking agent and dogsbody for the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals. Talk about being at the centre of things.