Bill Mankin

Bill Mankin first fell in love with music listening to late 50s radio in a small suburban town north of Chicago.  That love blossomed and then exploded in Atlanta in the 1960s, and then got interesting:  from 1968-1973 Bill attended five rock festivals in Georgia and Florida, and worked on innumerable rock concert stage and security crews, in promotions, as a stage manager, and on concert tours as an equipment roadie, truck driver, and sound technician in charge of stage audio.  Via the great good fortune of world travel as an international environmental activist, Bill's musical tastes have significantly broadened over the years, and he is just as likely to fall in love with a new artist from Mali as he is to wax nostalgic over an old psychedelic San Francisco favorite.  In 1980 Bill won a Bronze Award from the Houston International Film Festival for his screenplay about dreams and desperation in the world of rock'n'roll.  He also wrote the liner notes for the Jimi Hendrix album release, "Freedom." He is currently researching and interviewing for a book on the December 1968 Miami Pop Festival.  In his spare time he occasionally recalls a favorite Leonard Cohen quote from Chelsea Hotel No. 2: "We are ugly, but we have the music."