Walker - Laurel Canyon: the inside story of rock-and-rolls legendary neighborhood

PRAISE FOR

LAUREL CANYON

A winding, inviting... portrait of a bohemian quarter that played a prominent role in the foundation of rock music.

Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times Book Review

Hilarious and true and bittersweet. Michael Walker catches the mood in the air, and gets it right... A beautifully written document of that time and place when the personalities were as big as the dreams that fueled some of the greatest masterpieces in rock.

Cameron Crowe

Likely the definitive account of this locale and its impact on pop music and culture... A fun, dishy read.

Christopher Schobert, The Buffalo News

Michael Walkers 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 hes 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.

Rolling Stone

[A] music-focused social history of the period... Will resonate with boomers who lived through it all.

Chris Morris, The Hollywood Reporter

Meticulously researched... 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... 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 suprisingly unsentimental eye.

Mikael Wood, Time Out New York

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. [He] evokes the magic of the place wonderfully, particularly the mythic birth of CSN.

Steve Matteo and Jeff Tamarkin, Harp

Walker has constructed an... interesting Los Angelescentred history of rock in the 60s and 70s... Music [has] moved on. The musicians [have] moved out. But as Walker passionately argues in Laurel Canyon, the memory of what the place represented should not fall into a deep pit.

Bill Harris, Toronto Sun

Loaded with anecdotes, insights and observations rendered in crystalline prose that... presents a history of what is perhaps Los Angeles most renowned music neighborhood... conveying with precision and clarity the key turning points in the Canyons fortunes.

Mark Nardone, Music Connection

[A] fascinating study of the Los Angeles neighborhood... and its relationship to developments in American popular music in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Throughout, Walker makes a strong case for Laurel Canyon being at least as important as San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury in defining the sound of pop music.

James E. Perone, Library Journal

Offers candid, insightful glimpses of Frank Zappas bizarre, brief tenure in early cowboy movie star Tom Mixs old log cabin; the jangly social and musical interaction of the Byrds, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Joni Mitchell; the rise of the singer-songwriter marketing label; and the scourge of casual cocaine abuse that pervaded the era and, soon, much of the rest of Woodstock Nation.

Mike Tribby, Booklist

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 when 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, 19902003

MICHAEL WALKER

LAUREL CANYON

Michael Walker has written extensively about popular culture for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, and is the author of four screenplays. He lives in Laurel Canyon.

THE INSIDE STORY OF ROCK-AND-ROLLS LEGENDARY NEIGHBORHOOD

MICHAEL WALKER

FABER AND FABER, INC.
AN AFFILIATE OF FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK

Faber and Faber, Inc.

An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright 2006 by Michael Walker

All rights reserved

Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.

Printed in the United States of America

Published in 2006 by Faber and Faber, Inc.

First paperback edition, 2007

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material: Lyrics from For Free by Joni Mitchell, 1974 Crazy Crow Music. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Lyrics from Bang a Gong (Get It On) by Marc Bolan, 1974 (renewed) Westminster Music Ltd., London, England. All rights administered by Essex Music International, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Lyrics from Cocaine, words and music by Rev. Gary Davis, additional lyrics by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey. All rights administered by Chandos Music. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Lyrics from Laurel Canyon Home and 2401, words and music by John Mayall, 1968 (renewed) Unichappell Music, Inc. Lyrics reprinted by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Walker, Michael, [date]

Laurel Canyon : the inside story of rock-and-rolls legendary neighborhood / Michael Walker. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-571-21149-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-571-21149-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Rock musicCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory and criticism. 2. Popular cultureCaliforniaLos Angeles. 3. Laurel Canyon (Los Angeles, Calif.)I. Title.

ML3534.W285 2006

781.66'09794'94dc22

2005025569

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-86547-966-1

Paperback ISBN-10: 0-86547-966-6

Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott

Map designed by Joe LeMonnier

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For my mom and dad...
and for Hilary