![]() And the second day I was in California I met J. He was dressed exactly the way he was on the second Byrds album-that cape, and the flat wide-brimmed hat. GLENN FREY, singer-songwriter-guitarist, the Eagles: My very first day in California, I drove up La Cienega to Sunset Boulevard, turned right, drove to Laurel Canyon, and the first person I saw standing on the porch at the Canyon Store was David Crosby. And pretty soon a scene started in Joni’s house-that was the center where we would go all night. Neil was leaving the Springfield-he had left two times before, but this was his final leave. So I started working with Neil, and pretty soon I had Neil and Joni. That night we all went to Ben Frank’s, which in those days was one of the only places open around midnight. Joni said you’ve got to meet Neil-she knew him from Canada. When we were doing that first album, at Sunset Sound, the one Crosby produced, Buffalo Springfield was recording next door. I just found my little rhythm in there somewhere, kind of the glue that would hold it together.ĮLLIOT ROBERTS: We went out to California for Joni to record, and that’s when we took houses on Lookout Mountain, about four houses down from each other. I think that’s one of the things that made Buffalo Springfield musically click-the different styles that Neil and Stephen played. A lot of people tried to copy him but couldn’t. RICHIE FURAY: Stephen was quite a stylized musician. I brought her back to California and produced her first album. Even at the beginning she was very independent and already writing better than almost anybody. It just pushed me up against the back wall. I went into a coffeehouse in Coconut Grove, and Joni was singing “Michael from Mountains” or “Both Sides, Now,” and I was just gobsmacked. I’m very romantically inclined and I’d always wanted to get a sailboat and just sail away. MANY OF THEM HAD SEX WITH ONE ANOTHER,” SAYS DAVID GEFFEN.ĭAVID CROSBY, singer-songwriter-guitarist, the Byrds Crosby, Stills & Nash CSNY: After I got tossed out of the Byrds, I went to Florida. LAUREL CANYON “WAS A SCENE WITH TALENTED, ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE. It certainly was a forerunner of today’s “Americana.” But in truth, it was an amalgam of influences that included blues, rock and roll, jazz, Latin, country and western, psychedelia, bluegrass, and folk. The music was mislabeled “soft rock” or “folk rock,” especially in the Northeast, where critics panned it as granola-infused hippie music-too “mellow” and too white. They took drugs together, formed bands together, broke up those bands, and formed other bands. Many of those houses were cottages with stained-glass windows, and fireplaces that warmed the living rooms in the chilly L.A. They made music together, played songs for one another with acoustic guitars in all-night jam sessions in each other’s houses. Souther, Judee Sill, the Mamas and the Papas, Carole King, the Eagles, Richie Furay (in Buffalo Springfield and Poco), and many more. What is undeniably true is that from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s some of the most melodic, atmospheric, and subtly political American popular music was written by residents of, or those associated with, Laurel Canyon-including Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, J. Nearly everyone who was there was, at one time or another, stoned nobody remembers everything the same way. Still, misconceptions continue.įor a start, the scene was more metaphorical than geographical. Books and documentaries have mythologized and romanticized this woodsy canyon nestled behind Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills. Michelle Phillips lived with John Phillips on Lookout Mountain in 1965 during the Mamas and the Papas’ heyday. The Doors’ lead singer Jim Morrison reportedly wrote “Love Street” while living behind the Laurel Canyon Country Store. Former Byrds bassist Chris Hillman recalls writing “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” in Laurel Canyon in 1966 in his house, on a steep winding street with a name he doesn’t remember. Some say the Laurel Canyon music scene began when Frank Zappa moved to the corner of Lookout Mountain and Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the late 1960s. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people liveĪnd they’ll say Lookout Mountain. Hollywood where the craziest people live and they’ll say LaurelĬanyon. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where theĬraziest people live and they’ll tell you Hollywood. ![]() ![]() Ask anyone in California where the craziest people liveĪnd they’ll say Los Angeles. , my friend Joel Bernstein found an old book in a flea market that said: AskĪnyone in America where the craziest people live and they’ll tell youĬalifornia.
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