Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood

Michael Walker

May 2010 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

Michael Walker’s Laurel Canyon presents the inside story of the once hottest rock and roll neighborhood in LA.

In the late sixties and early seventies, an impromptu collection of musicians colonized a eucalyptus-scented canyon deep in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles and melded folk, rock, and savvy American pop into a sound that conquered the world as thoroughly as the songs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had before them. Thirty years later, the music made in Laurel Canyon continues to pour from radios, iPods, and concert stages around the world. During the canyon's golden era, the musicians who lived and worked there scored dozens of landmark hits, from "California Dreamin'" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" to "It's Too Late," selling tens of millions of records and resetting the thermostat of pop culture.

In Laurel Canyon, veteran journalist Michael Walker tells the inside story of this unprecedented gathering of some of the baby boomer's leading musical lights—including Joni Mitchell; Jim Morrison; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; John Mayall; the Mamas and the Papas; Carole King; the Eagles; and Frank Zappa, to name just a few—who turned Los Angeles into the music capital of the world and forever changed the way popular music is recorded, marketed, and consumed.

Ratings and reviews

This book was very interesting to me. The author has a great vocabulary and must have put in many, many hours interviewing his various informants, since he himself never actually lived in Laurel Canyon during the years he writes about. It's all second-hand information, rather like the memoirs of many people all strung together. Or all strung out together. In part, the book is absorbing to me because I grew up west of Laurel Canyon during the 60's, actually about twenty miles west, in Pacific Palisades, overlooking what was then called State Beach. I was the infamous (to a few, unknown to everyone else) Class of 1965. And here's what I found most fascinating in this book (or rediscovered, I should say): How quickly people age. Really, it seems just like yesterday that the Byrds, Turtles, and the rest were playing the Troubadour and the Whiskey. Even my brother was in a rock band and they actually recorded a song, but it was not a big hit so they became among the also-played. Look at those former hippies, flower children, pranksters, Girls Outrageous, Manson and his girls, all of them, the agents, the record moguls: They are all old now, if alive. They are now the elderly money-holders that they once hated, feared, or denigrated, or so claimed, but they lied to themselves and others. They just wanted to get ahead. Only now do I know how quickly life goes by, and it is revealed in the faces, if you can find them among search engine images, of the survivors of those days in the 1960's and 1970's, all the so-called musicians and hangers-on the author mentions in this book. I was a music fan in those days, too, especially of the Stones, not so much the Turtles or Joni Mitchell. The Byrds had some hits and I was a teenager, so you know how teens behave: They like what the crowd likes. Although I fashioned myself an independent thinker, obviously I fooled myself. I think many of the subjects of this book, the survivors, may feel the same, that they fooled themselves, as Gail Zappa points out, at least for herself. She, of the many who looked but did not see, could perceive the underlying hypocrisy and chasing Mammon that these young men (mainly) tried to hide or deny. In that, they were not unlike other young men from earlier, and later, generations. They were hormone-driven, insecure strivers. Frank Zappa and a few others stand out as the strong exceptions, according to Walker's depiction. Look at some before/after pictures of those folks Walker writes about. It's been 50 years, a lifetime for some, but you still may not believe how people aged. Of course, the Manson girls, the several in prison, could not be fashion plates in the joint, and it truly shows. Turtle Mark Volman may be the exception. He actually looks better as an older person than he did when he was young. I was never in Laurel Canyon during those years, nor would I have had concourse with these types of people. Most of them were selfish, narcissistic brats who cared nothing for the rest of the world, future generations, past generations, or their own bodies. Notice, for example, there really is no soul in this book. Miles Davis is mentioned a couple of times, but Miles was trying so hard to win over the big white audience I guess he was the exception. The real soul music makers are not mentioned, nor do any of these Laurel Canyon residents venture south of Olympic Boulevard or east of the Central City at any time (where the minority neighborhoods are). They are an insulated self-absorbed clique, and Walker does try to make this clear, but I don't know if the point is salient. Nonetheless, read the book and laugh: be glad you are not one of these people and realize how quickly your lifetime passes, whether you're rich and famous or barely getting by and unknown to anyone besides your own family.

Music. 2007. 304 pages long. A REVIEW BY: LORRAINE TAUSON April 17, 2010. Dear Reader: You MUST READ LAUREL CANYON! This is a page turner and a not put down book. You will either relive the 1960's with a mixture of romanticized memories or you will remember all the hate, the turmoil, the violence, the murders that ensued in the 1960's of many prominet leaders of the world. Vietnam and the draft, and the youth fleeing to Canada to escape the draft to Vietnam was the main issue all through the 1960's and part of the 1970's. The hippie youth I am happy to say were not all bad and actually did stop the Vietnam War! The youth proved that anything can be done in a peaceful, positive way, without further conflict. Right on! I was a flower child myself. I too even lived in a commune. I remember the most amazing music that I have ever heard in my life and saw live in concerts. All of the greatest bands and their fabulously talented muscians are highlighted in this book. I can see and hear them all now with great fondness. Of course, my favorites will always be The Beatles. I still remember seeing them on an old black and white TV set with rabbit ears. That's how young I was. The drug culture terrified parents and my parents as well. All this and so much more is illustrated in each year of the 1960's. The book begins in 1960 and ends in the early 1970's. Not until the Manson murders were the hippie youth consider anything more than street kids hanging out peacefully. After the murders, no more were everyone's doors open for everyone to enter freely as they left. Everything changed after that. My parents followed suit. The Manson Murders are explained here but more so clearly explaining what role Manson really had in the killings as he was physically not there either night. The case is highlighted. Than it is 1969 and just in that summer alone...man landed on the moon and the decade was over. Please read this most fascinating telling of a most fascinating era that I personally grew up in and thankfully never took the drugs that made people a vegetable or result in their too early death.

About the author

Michael Walker has written extensively about popular culture for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He lives in Laurel Canyon.