L. A.'s Laurel Canyon Singer-Songwriters And Cocaine Cowboys
"For those of us lucky enough to live in the Los Angeles canyons - and for anyone interested in the particular brand of distinctive folk/country/FM rock (as it progressed from one to another) that emerged from LA in the late 1960s and early 1970s - Barney Hoskyns' book, Hotel California is essential reading.
Here in the US, it bears the somewhat cumbersome subtitle, The True-life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends, whereas the British edition, which I read (and which was published some months in advance of the US edition), has the far snappier - and provocative - Singer-Songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons, 1967-1976.
The book is a fascinating reminder of the music that mutated first from East Coast protest folk - largely through the influence of Doug Weston's Troubadour club on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood - into LA's own brand of mostly Laurel Canyon-based country-folk, then went on to achieve huge mainstream success through such musicians as Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (in their various incarnations), James Taylor and Jackson Browne, before becoming an FM radio behemoth with such acts as the Eagles - from whose signature album, the book's title is taken.
Along the way, Hoskyns' book dishes the dirt on the tangled relationships - and partner swapping and stealing - between many of the musicians, and the manner in which the music business, with no small help from a young and highly ambitious David Geffen, co-opted the LA sound into a massive money-making machine.
There are also intriguing historical asides about Los Angeles itself: the fact that Laurel Canyon had an experimental "trackless trolley" that ran from Sunset Boulevard to Lookout Mountain between 1909 and 1915; that much of the land in the canyon was bought and developed by such early movie stars as Charlie Chaplin and W C Fields, and that Harry Houdini built a stone castle there, with underground tunnels; that, due to the labyrinthine nature of the winding hillside lanes, the canyon was home to brothels and speakeasies during Prohibition and after; and that "the store where the creatures meet" in the Doors' song, Love Street, is none other than Laurel Canyon's very own Country Store.
Then there is the exodus of musicians from Laurel Canyon in the late 1960s, farther west to the more rural and remote Topanga Canyon, in search of more personal freedom (not least the freedom to get high) and a dream of western/country living - and, as the 1970s progressed and the hippie ideals of the 1960s faded, the increasing blight of drugs, particularly cocaine, on personal relationships, health (several drug-related deaths are recorded) and the music itself.
The book ends with an appendix: Mellow Gold: The Tape From California, which lists Hoskyns' choice of the essential music of the era. I must confess that it made me listen to some music that I hadn't heard for many years, some of which sounds great - and some of which sounds very much of its time."
--by Singleword
Inspired by this post on LuxLotus: Lux Lotus: Windowlicker.
Jackson Browne, above. Rolling Stone magazine angered Joni Mitchell during this era by creating an illustrated chart depicting her path through many of the young men listed above. I'm dying to see it, I shamefully confess, and I'd like to see one for Mighty Kate Moss as well.
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