Berlin-based public radio network RBB’s KulturRadio awards the German-language edition of LAUREL CANYON five “C’s”, its highest ranking, above. (Those C’s look more like the K’s from KulturRadio’s logo to me, but maybe something got lost in translation.)
Whatever. Five C’s—which denote “great”—suit me just fine and are a far sight better than the alternatives: “acceptable” (three C’s), “ambivalent” (two) and “failed (one).
From the December 4 Austin Chronicle’s Rock & Roll Books Gift Guide…
Walker eschews personal musings and lets the inhabitants reflect on the magic that lined streets with names like Wonderland Avenue. Graham Nash, Michael Des Barres, Mark Volman, Henry Diltz, and Gail Zappa are among the glittery whose memories of it are untarnished by time.
[He] excels in making the canyon come alive at its best, with the sounds of the Byrds drifting through the trees, Crosby, Stills & Nash lifting their voices together for the first time, and a particularly warm portrait of Cass Elliott of the Mamas & Papas. It was the Doors, Steppenwolf, Joni Mitchell, the Turtles, Frank Zappa, John Mayall – the California dreamers who rode the peaceful canyon breeze, if only until the idyll was shattered by the dark shadow of the Manson Family.
If you loved Positively 4th Street, about adventures of Dylan, Baez, Farina, et al in the West Village, LAUREL CANYON is its bookshelf neighbor.
Check out this thoughtful review of LAUREL CANYON, posted yesterday, from Mayday Books in Minneapolis. Here’s an excerpt…
This book is about the effect this L.A. canyon, and the people who lived in it, had on rock and folk music in the 60s, 70s and beyond. The issue relates to what I consider to be the essence of creativity – an environment where like-minded people can work together to increase the value of their art.
History is replete with this happening - the Bloomsbury group in London, the writers and painters of the 20s and 30s in Paris, the groups of U.S. transcendentalists and other writers in Concord MA and Hartford, CT; the Bolshevik culturalists after the revolution in Moscow; and the later bohemians of Greenwich Village, the Algonquin Hotel and North Beach. Musically, there were the hippie bands of San Francisco, and all the music incubator cities, like Memphis, Nashville, New York, Athens, Seattle and, even, Minneapolis. And there was Laurel Canyon in LA.
Why does this matter? Because essentially, when a local music or cultural scene matures, it has more power over the corporate controllers of culture than it would if the corporations ‘created’ the music, or they ‘discovered’ the talent, or they ‘decided’ on the trends. The best music comes out of local roots. So does the best literature and painting. It is the answer to corporate culture. Local scenes can ‘explode’ on a national and international level. To paraphrase, it takes a village to raise a good art form…
I did not really understand the interrelationships between the bands and musicians in LA until this book. I viewed LA rock as somewhat sterile, and isolated, and more driven by commercialism. I thought the situation of a creative enclave was reserved for San Francisco at the time. However, a similar scene happened in LA, close to the music clubs of the Sunset Strip, and also Hollywood and the mainstream music industry.
Laurel Canyon musicians and those in the industry jammed together constantly in the houses of the canyon, mixing with artists and dancers, then went down to the “Strip” clubs, to play, watch other musicians, or plan deals. All this outside of Hollywood or the record factories churning out Vic Damone. And they slowly changed those industries….
LAUREL CANYON certainly has international appeal—the German language edition will be published in October—plus is a hit with the multilingual around the world, among whom I unfortunately do not number.
So, what to do with blogger Elcrowley’s apparently very nice writeup of LAUREL CANYON?
Es innegable el peso e influencia que ha tenido en la música de los 60 y 70s ésta singular zona de Los Angeles. Por aquí ha pasado todo cristo. Los Doors, Mamas and the Papas, Elvis, Beatles, Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, estrellas del porno como John Holmes, lugar de reunión para hippies de la época, ajustes de cuentas y asesinatos (el más conocido en el que estuvo implicado John Holmes), Houdini…..Aquí empezaron Crosby, Still & Nash. Con eso te lo digo todo.
Solution: Feed Elcro’s euphonious Spanish into a free web translation site. The result:
He is undeniable the weight and influence that it has had in the music of 60 and 70s this one singular zone of Los Angeles. This way it has passed everything Christ. The Doors, Breasts and the Popes, Elvis, Beatles, Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, stars of porno like John Holmes, place of meeting for hippies of the time, adjustments of accounts and murders (the plus known in which was implied John Holmes), Houdini…..Here Crosby, Still & Nash began. With that you I say everything to it.
Anybody feel like translating Elcrowley’s piece without the Borat-like malapropisms? Jes’ email the atelier: michael@laurelcanyonthebook.com
“In the late ’60s, musicians like Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Carole King, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Eagles hooked up to meld their different styles of music together. It was in the Canyon that Graham Nash (Mitchell’s lover) hooked up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. The king and queen of the neighborhood were Frank Zappa and Cass Elliott. The dreamy nature of things came to a halt around about the time Robert Kennedy was shot and Charles Manson went crazy in nearby Benedict Canyon.”
From Booklist…
I just finished Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker.
Laurel Canyon was the nexus of the late-60s to mid-70s singer-songwriter, hippie bohemia world where Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash lived in a “very, very, very fine house” and Frank Zappa’s living room was the site of a four-month long party. Walker talks to some stars and some hangers-on, and they all pine for a place that, they seem to realize, never really existed.
This fascinating, fun book highlights our need to mythologize places and times. Follow it up with the DVD of Monterey Pop Festival….
From The Age, Australia’s national newspaper. Full review here.
CHARLES MANSON didn’t blow everybody’s minds. Laurel Canyon resident Gail Zappa, widow of freak-magnet Frank, foresaw the sinister end of the ’60s long before their flower-powered neighbours started bolting their cottage doors in terror.
“If you were surprised by the Manson murders, you were not connected to what was going on in the canyon,” she tells Michael Walker at the tilting point of this authoritative counter-cultural history. “Those people were dangerous . . . If you took drugs and dampened your perception, then that’s why you didn’t notice. But for those of us who were drug-free? Oh, we noticed.”
Her testimony crystallises an ominous sense of inevitability that cuts through Walker’s book like a cold shiver. Seen from the artistically fertile hill community just north of Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the ’60s cultural revolution was a tragedy in the classic sense, one born sowing the seeds of its destruction in the form of blind hedonism…
Walker’s story spans from the seminal folk-pop purity of the Byrds circa ‘65 to the pestilence of cocaine and pornography that perverted the last shreds of their hippie dreaming in the early ’80s. Between 17 years and a surprisingly few square miles of winding road, he recounts a truly epic arc of human achievement, folly and destruction…
For all its significance as a microcosm of human ambitions and cultural evolution, LAUREL CANYON is also a fast and wild ride, strewn with A-list celebrity anecdotes and affectionate contextualising of some of the great rock records of the ’60s and ’70s, from the Byrds’ Mr Tambourine Man to Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon to the blockbuster debuts of Jackson Browne and the Eagles and beyond. Between their grooves is a fable of innocence versus greed that still aches with squandered promise.
From the new issue of Harp Magazine…
In Laurel Canyon Michael Walker takes the loose geographical map of the Canyon and nearby Sunset Strip as the Bloomsbury of the eras sound and shows how the idyllic hilly enclave became the musical and lifestyle incubator of everyone from the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield to the entire L.A. singer-songwriter mafia. Walker, who resides in the Canyon, evokes the magic of the place wonderfully, particularly the mythic birth of CSN. The inclusion of figures like Frank Zappa and the Mothers, whove often been left out of histories of the time, serves to prove that the scene was not just filled with peaceful, easy, harmony-happy country-rock bands.
The books not merely a history of the artists but a survey of the Strips musical shrines, such as the Whisky A Go-Go, the Troubadour and the Continental Hyatt House hotel (here, the setting for the looning of Led Zeppelin), and of the various marginal denizens of the Canyon whose main claim to fame might be their history of having bedded famous rock stars or of owning the best stash. Walker balances the sweet aroma of sandalwood and eucalyptus with the acrid stench of burning wildfires which plagued the area then as they do today. He doesnt gloss over the fact that the eras star faded quickly, ravaged by the invasion of harder drugs and musical artists and record company and management figures deluded by ego, power and greed. Sound familiar?
From a review of LAUREL CANYON just posted by Rev. Keith A. Gordon on the Alt.Culture.Guide Reading List:
With Laurel Canyon, Michael Walker has not only done a wonderful job of documenting the cultural currents that still influence popular music today, but he manages to put a human face on the canyon’s legendary status, imbuing the participants — both well-known and otherwise — with distinctive personalities, desires and emotions.
Doing so, he has managed to legitimize the often-told tales of Laurel Canyon and put them in proper perspective. A mesmerizing story, Laurel Canyon is an entertaining and informative history of one of rock music’s most fabled eras, a once-in-a-generation alignment of talent, fate and circumstance that may never again be seen.
Gordon also becomes the first reviewer to give proper props to Jermaine Rogers‘ bitchin’ psychedlic cover.
From the new Music Connection, just published…
Journalist Michael Walker’s new book is loaded with anecdotes, insights and observations rendered in crystalline prose that, in just under 250 pages, presents a history of what is perhaps Los Angeles’ most renowned music neighborhood…
While Walker provides fascinating anecdotes from people “who were there,” the book’s socio-political “what it all meant” observations are its true value, conveying with precision and clarity they key turning points in the canyon’s fortunes.
Click here for the full review.
And while we’re at it, here’s a snippet from a review in the Buffalo News:
California’s Laurel Canyon area has seen it all. Raging fires, bloody homicides, a lot of drugs, a lot more sex and the creation of some of the most beloved music of the 20th century from the likes of the Byrds, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joni Mitchell, the Mamas and the Papas and oodles more.
All are on display in various states of genius and idiocy in Michael Walker’s “Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood,” which is likely the definitive account of this locale and its impact on pop music and culture.
Walker lives in the heart of the canyon, but doesn’t allow his residency to sway his writing. While he justifiably raves about “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and “California Dreamin’,” he is quick to point out the flaws of the canyon crew and their fractured personal lives. That’s why even if one could care less about Jackson Browne or the insufferable Eagles, “Laurel Canyon” is a fun, dishy read…
Reading about Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and David Crosby singing together for the first time in Mitchell’s living room is fascinating and a rare window into a time that seems as distant as the Renaissance…
From the Bookshelf feature in RS 1004/1005, out this week:
Michael Walker’s book operates off the intriguing premise that there was something psycho-geographically special about [Laurel Canyon] that helped create the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
His historical framing devices add depth, whether he’s writing about the liberated “ladies of the canyon” of the Sixties upsetting social conventions, or the fact that Ulysses S. Grant and Pope Leo XIII were both “partisans of a cocaine-laced wine called Vin Mariani”….
Nice review of LAUREL CANYON on Americana UK.
Meanwhile…
I’ll be appearing tomorrow night as the fog rolls into Marin County on KWMR-FM/Pacifica radio’s fetchingly alliterative “The Roots and Routes of Rock n’ Roll” with host Jeff Morrison.
Gather ’round at 7 p.m. on 90.5 FM.
From Vox Online…
Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood, by Michael Walker (Faber & Faber) - Though Walker spends the requisite amount of time titillating with frank talk of cocaine usage and groupie usage, for fans of early rock and its foundation, Laurel Canyon offers an insightful and fairly comprehensive view of one of the core venues in the history of rock.
Many of the key players were there: Zappa, CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, the Eagles among others. Walker does a commendable job telling the tale without making it feel like a history lesson, even though it essentially is, while allowing the characters of the time to seem as vivid now as they were then. He gives the street a voice, and shows that, somehow, the place provided a breeding ground for an entire generation of music. Walker then ties it all together by taking the reader there now and showing the reality of what it has become, which isn’t a bad outcome at all.
A moment, if you will, to gather some of the very nice notices LAUREL CANYON has received in the first days since its publication:
“By the end of Walkers wistful narrative you begin to wish that the old log cabin at Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain would rise again, Brigadoon-like, in this dire era of American Idol and Clear Channel. But even so, the next time you pass that leafy crossroads, just fiddle with the FM dial: A quick scan of the airwaves still redolent of jingle-jangle mornings, riders on the storm and yesterdays gone suggests that you can check out of the canyon any time you like, but you can never leave.”
The 60s were all about neighborhoods. Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village, Berkeleys Telegraph Avenue, Watts, Tu Do Street, Harlem, Woodstock for Americans, at least, the decade was divided into a series of remarkable communities, some utopian and others nightmarish, each with a strong claim to being the epicenter of that turbulent epoch. After reading Michael Walkers Laurel Canyon, I am tempted to present that honor to a few square miles of winding streets and aromatic scrubland just above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, home to a mind-blowing concentration of the eras great musicians. After all, given our current reactionary political and cultural situations, the only undisputed area in which the 60s can still be said to remain ascendant is in the music it spawned. Today, even in the most backward-looking precincts of the republic, one can find the Doors or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young playing somewhere along the FM dial. The lasting legacy of the 60s may wind up being nothing more than its music, and nowhere in America not Jerry Garcias Haight or Bob Dylans Village generated more of it than Laurel Canyon
Walker, who has written about pop culture for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone, has created an exhaustively researched and richly anecdotal book that will fascinate both rock aficionados and cultural historians
Walker is a dogged fact-finder, and the details he assembles here about various members of the L.A. rock royalty constitute essential reading for music fans whove always wondered how true to life Our House was, or why Zappa abstained from drugs while making records seemingly designed to soundtrack the act of getting stoned.
Walkers especially good at uncovering the unsavory: His look at the establishment of the business-side infrastructure that now underpins the music industry is fascinating, and he examines Laurel Canyons late-70s decline with a surprisingly unsentimental eye. For every anecdote involving Nash and Mitchell cohabiting in bohemian domestic bliss, the book offers grisly counterweight, such as the 1981 Wonderland Avenue massacre involving porn star John Holmes. Mitchell called that ebb and flow the circle game, and for the most part, Walker plays it well.
As befits the authors credentials, the book is less about day-to-day-life in Laurel Canyon (although there is a good measure of that) and more about its effect on American culture, and of American culture on it. The books chapters are arranged not so much in chronological order of events, but more as groupings of people and events that intertwined and influenced one another over the decades of the 60s and 70s…the book is a largely pleasurable read. The author manages to convey the moods, thoughts and feelings as well as he does the sights, sounds and smells of the place…
“….the Laurel Canyon contingent essentially changed the way that the popular music industry functioned, usually for the betterment of the artists themselves. Instead of selling their souls to record labels and losing their shirts to management, the businessmen intermingled with the artists, and lived among them. As this book makes plain, the idealistic hippie values that were shared by most everyone erased the dividing line between artists and their professional representation.
LAUREL CANYON is a well-written representation of a specific time and place that influenced the popular music scene forever. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? The book lets you decide, but it also paints an extraordinarily colorful picture of a very unique time and place - in music history.”
…what makes Laurel Canyon particularly intriguing is its exhaustive cast of characters and the manner in which Walker is able to string together the lives of these iconic individuals: David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Graham Nash, Don Henley, and Chris HillmanMany of these interdependencies are bolstered by interviews with the likes of Nash, Hillman, Zappas widow Gail, and Mark Volman (The Turtles). The end result, then, is a credible and fascinating account of Laurel Canyons ascension to the pantheon of popular culture and its eventual, disheartening denouement.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ‘LAUREL CANYON’…
Laurel Canyon is hilarious and true and bittersweet. Michael Walker catches the mood in the air, and gets it right the interviews are wonderful its a beautifully-written document of that time and place when the personalities were as big as those stony dreams that fueled some of the greatest masterpieces in rock. - Cameron Crowe, Oscar-winning writer and director, Almost Famous.
Laurel Canyon captures all the magic and lyricism of an almost mythological geographical spot in the history of pop music. The book lovingly limns the story of a more melodious time in rock and roll where the great talents of the 60s and 70s cloistered together in a sort of enchanted valley populated by an all-star cast of characters, including Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass and Brian Wilson. - Stephen Gaines, author of Philistines at the Hedgerow.
In Laurel Canyon, rock and roll history is urban history, California history, American history, global history through the songs and scandals coming from a canyon on the coast of dreams running through the labyrinthine center of our times. - Kevin Starr, Professor of History, University of Southern California and author of Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge.
To read the full-length reviews, click “REVIEWS” in the PAGES column at right…
The word on LAUREL CANYON, from TimeOut New York’s summer reading picks.
“…Walker is a dogged fact-finder, and the details he assembles here about various members of the L.A. rock royalty constitute essential reading for music fans whove always wondered how true to life Our House was, or why Zappa abstained from drugs while making records seemingly designed to soundtrack the act of getting stoned.
Walkers especially good at uncovering the unsavory: His look at the establishment of the business-side infrastructure that now underpins the music industry is fascinating, and he examines Laurel Canyons late-70s decline with a surprisingly unsentimental eye. For every anecdote involving Nash and Mitchell cohabiting in bohemian domestic bliss, the book offers grisly counterweight, such as the 1981 Wonderland Avenue massacre involving porn star John Holmes. Mitchell called that ebb and flow the circle game, and for the most part, Walker plays it well.”
Read the full review…
A nice review in Salon today…
“The ’60s were all about neighborhoods. Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village, Berkeleys Telegraph Avenue, Watts, Tu Do Street, Harlem, Woodstock — for Americans, at least, the decade was divided into a series of remarkable communities, some utopian and others nightmarish, each with a strong claim to being the epicenter of that turbulent epoch. After reading Michael Walker’s “Laurel Canyon,” I am tempted to present that honor to a few square miles of winding streets and aromatic scrubland just above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, home to a mind-blowing concentration of the era’s great musicians. After all, given our current reactionary political and cultural situations, the only undisputed area in which the ’60s can still be said to remain ascendant is in the music it spawned. Today, even in the most backward-looking precincts of the republic, one can find the Doors or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young playing somewhere along the FM dial. The lasting legacy of the ’60s may wind up being nothing more than its music, and nowhere in America — not Jerry Garcia’s Haight or Bob Dylan’s Village — generated more of it than Laurel Canyon…
“…Walker, who has written about pop culture for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone, has created an exhaustively researched and richly anecdotal book that will fascinate both rock aficionados and cultural historians…”
Read the full review…
Here’s what people are saying about LAUREL CANYON…
By the end of Walkers wistful narrative you begin to wish that the old log cabin at Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain would rise again, Brigadoon-like, in this dire era of American Idol and Clear Channel. But even so, the next time you pass that leafy crossroads, just fiddle with the FM dial: A quick scan of the airwaves still redolent of jingle-jangle mornings, riders on the storm and yesterdays gone suggests that you can check out of the canyon any time you like, but you can never leave.–Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Laurel Canyon is hilarious and true and bittersweet. Michael Walker catches the mood in the air, and gets it right the interviews are wonderful its a beautifully written document of that time and place when the personalities were as big as those stony dreams that fueled some of the greatest masterpieces in rock. - Cameron Crowe, Oscar-winning writer and director of ‘Almost Famous’ and ‘Jerry Maguire’
Laurel Canyon captures all the magic and lyricism of an almost mythological geographical spot in the history of pop music. The book lovingly limns the story of a more melodious time in rock and roll where the great talents of the 60s and 70s cloistered together in a sort of enchanted valley populated by an all-star cast of characters, including Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass and Brian Wilson. - Steven Gaines, author of ‘Philistines at the Hedgerow’
In Laurel Canyon, rock and roll history is urban history, California history, American history, global history through the songs and scandals coming from a canyon on the coast of dreams running through the labyrinthine center of our times. - Kevin Starr, Professor of History, University of Southern California and author of Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge
LAUREL CANYON is featured today in a very nice piece in the Los Angeles Times Book Review.
Critic Mark Rozzo writes:
“By the end of Walker’s wistful narrative you begin to wish that the old log cabin at Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain would rise again, Brigadoon-like, in this dire era of “American Idol” and Clear Channel. But even so, the next time you pass that leafy crossroads, just fiddle with the FM dial: A quick scan of the airwaves � still redolent of jingle-jangle mornings, riders on the storm and yesterdays gone � suggests that you can check out of the canyon any time you like, but you can never leave.”
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