Martin Torgoff

Martin Torgoff is an award-winning and best-selling music and pop culture author and documentary filmmaker. A former contributing editor at Andy Warhol?s Interview magazine and a producer for CNN?s Worldbeat, Torgoff’s latest book is Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000, a landmark history of illicit drug use in America.

Beginning with the avant-garde worlds of bebop jazz and the emerging Beat writers, Torgoff journeys through the second half of the twentieth century to tell the epic tale of how the American Century turned into the Great Stoned Age. From Timothy Leary to the rave culture of the 1990s, Can’t Find My Way Home weaves together first-person accounts and historical background into a narrative vast in scope yet rich in intimate detail. The Washington Post called the book “brave” and “pleasantly and richly intoxicating.”

Illegal drugs changed the cultural landscape of America, and they continue to shape our country, with enormous consequences. At the podium, Torgoff gives audiences an in-depth insider’s look at the world of substance abuse and drug culture throughout American society. An eye-opening and provocative discussion that challenges audiences to rethink preconceived ideas about the war on drugs and the effects drugs have had on mainstream America.

The son of basketball legend Irving Torgoff, Martin Torgoff grew up in Glen Clove, New York. After graduating from the State University of New York and the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, he became an Associate Editor at Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, where one of his assignments included The Woody Guthrie Songbook, which is now considered a definitive collection of Guthrie’s music and art.

Torgoff wrote the best-selling Elvis: We Love You Tender and began writing for many national magazines. He became a contributing editor to Interview after writing stories on such diverse personalities as Jack Nicholson, Yoko Ono, Mel Gibson, Jeremy Irons, Joan Didion and Don King. Torgoff also wrote American Fool: The Roots and Improbable Rise of John Cougar Mellencamp, which was awarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.

Turning to film and television, Torgoff wrote, directed and produced pieces about musical and pop cultural subjects that have appeared on CBS, HBO, Cinemax, public television and other cable channels. Over the years, his work has spanned the entire spectrum of musical culture, including such diverse artists as Phillip Glass, Ravi Shankar, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, the Highwaymen and Aerosmith. His films and TV specials include Elvis  – 56, Non Stop for singer Julio Iglesias, and The Making of Pump for Aerosmith.

Torgoff lives in New York City with his wife and son.