Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of R&R's Legendary Neighborhood

[DudeAsInCool]

LAUREL CANYON: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood, by Michael Walker, will be published in hardcover by Faber and Faber on May 25, 2006.

In the late sixties, musicians like Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Carole King, Frank Zappa, the Eagles, and the Mamas and the Papas came together for the first time to meld folk, rock, and American pop into something completely new, something that would launch a generation into history. LAUREL CANYON is the account of what happened behind the scenes to make that generation of music blow up and out of Laurel Canyon, California. Walker recreates jam sessions at the home of Joni Mitchell and then drives down the streets of Laurel Canyon today, listening as those same songs waft out of bungalow windows

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The author also has a pretty cool blog to give readers a sense of the neighborhood he is talking about.

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Imagine the country in the city with deer and what not, and that is Laurel Canyon. I have friends who live there - Harrison Ford did their cabinet work and its stunning. Here is the Houdini house... recently, it looks like someone is trying to put it back together...but then again, they have been working on it for the last couple years...

[DudeAsInCool]

Here is an excerpt from Salon.com's review - "Forget the Haight and Woodstock":

The roster of musicians and songwriters who set up camp there in the latter half of the decade is jaw-dropping. Perhaps most notable among them was Joni Mitchell, whose 1970 masterpiece "Ladies of the Canyon" ("Estrella circus girl/ Comes wrapped in songs and gypsy shawls") perfectly captures the community's heady bohemianism. Her lover Graham Nash lived with her there, and it was in Laurel Canyon that he hooked up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Others in residence included John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Don Henley and Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of the Byrds, John Densmore and Robby Krieger of the Doors, John Kay of Steppenwolf, Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees and Mark Volman of the Turtles. Instead of Little League, pot luck dinners and PTA meetings, it was the sort of community where, according to one longtime resident, people had "listening parties," in which neighbors would "sit around the record player and smoke dope … When 'What a Day for a Daydream' came out, there was a party at somebody's house. People would dress up in their bangles and leather and buckskin and bring food and you'd sit there like it was a religious experience … and they'd play the damn thing for five hours. Then we'd have discussions about it."

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