Michael Walker. Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood. Farrar Strauss Giroux. 2006
David McGowan. Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream. Headpress. 2010.
Which is more appealing to you?
A story of an aligning of the stars to bring extraordinary talents — Joni Mitchell, Crosby Still Nash & Young, The Eagles, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, Frank Zappa, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, James Taylor, The Mamas & the Papas, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Three Dog Night, The Monkeys, The Animals, and O So Many Others — to the very same Los Angeles neighborhood, where music was born that changed the country?
Or a story of a bunch of military kids — Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, John Philips, Jim Morrison, Stephen Stills, Gram Parsons and O So Many Others — mediocre musicians who were in effect deployed to LA, assigned to manufactured bands, and thrown into a neighborhood canyon just below a mostly secret military installation, with the unspoken assignment of breaking up the hippie movement?
That’s the difference between Walker’s and McGowan’s approach to the Laurel Canyon scene over a decade in the 1960s and 70s, the mystical time and place that shaped the music of every generation to follow.
Michael Walker is a cultural observer; David McGowan is a conspiracy theorist.
Walker speaks in tones of reverence and mystique — how did all these wonderful musicians arrive here at the same time?
McGowan speaks in tones of suspicion and mystery — how did people who could not really play music become famous musicians, and why did so many end up dead?
I kept hearing of Laurel Canyon, and, as I am just a bit too young to have fully formed memories of the times, I wanted to learn more.
I read Walker’s book first. Walker, now himself a resident of Laurel Canyon, writes as a story teller, enjoying the collaborations, the music, the marijuana, the joy of free-form life in a particular moment. He isn’t oblivious to the underbelly; he makes the point that cocaine and unimaginable amounts of money finally transformed the utopia into something ugly and unsustainable.
But what a pleasure to read of Joni Mitchell, discovered in Florida by David Crosby; the two of them playing in Mitchell’s Canyon backyard while an admiring Eric Clapton watched and enjoyed; Mitchell and Nash sharing a home and a love, where Nash wrote Our House about their idyllic life.
Or the mothering presence of Cass Elliott and her matchmaking that formed CSNY, or her marriage to Jim Hendricks that helped him avoid the draft (even as we grieve her unrequited love of another bandmate, who later acknowledges he made a poor choice in the unrequiting, and her early death).
Joni Mitchell is said to have asked someone where the craziest people in America lived. California. Where do the craziest people in California live? LA. Where do the craziest people in LA live? Laurel Canyon. Where do the craziest people in Laurel Canyon live? Lookout Mountain. “So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain.”
Which brings us, not unreasonably to McGowan’s conspiracy theories…
How did Joni Mitchell, a budding musician not yet at her stride, afford a house on Lookout Mountain? How did any of these not-yet-discovered folks, for that matter?
Three themes thread through Weird Scenes: the military connections and/or wealth and privilege of so many of the musicians of Laurel Canyon; the lack of musical ability of any of them; and the high numbers of murders, suicides, suspicious deaths that occurred in those years.
Jim Morrison’s father was involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the attack that never happened but justified America’s engagement in the Vietnam war. John Philips, formerly a student at Annapolis, was in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution. Stephen Stills spoke of being in Vietnam, but the tracking the timetable would mean he was there during covert pre-war operations — part of CIA/Special Forces, perhaps? Neil Young spent time in Central America during American operations there. David Crosby descended from Hamilton himself. Peter Tork of the Monkees went to Venezuela before moving to Laurel Canyon.
Jim Morrison and his Bandmates in the Doors had never sung a note, written a song, nor wanted to when they released a fully formed vinyl LP that went to the top of the charts. David Crosby had to be taught how to play guitar and contributed very little musically to any band in which he played. The Byrds were a manufactured band who didn’t own any musical instruments, mostly had never played before and were together only days before they played prestigious clubs and went on tour. And oh, Buffalo Springfield’s ostensibly anti-war anthem, For What It’s Worth, was actually about the “overflow crowds that would frequently spill out onto (Sunset) boulevard, blocking traffic and endangering pedestrians.”
Both writers included Altamont, Woodstock and the Manson murders. Walker notes that these events, all in 1969, really signaled the end of the era; McGowan goes to greater depth to connect Manson with the musicians and the spirit of the Canyon. (Manson auditioned for Neil Young, who said “he had this kind of music that nobody else was doing. I thought he really had something crazy, something great. He was a living poet.”) Speaking of auditions, according to McGowan, Stephen Stills was turned down for the Monkees because “his bad teeth and thinning hair would render him unfit for a leading role on primetime TV.”
At Altamont, wrote Walker, the Rolling Stones were playing Under My Thumb at the moment Hells Angels stabbed to death Meredith Hunter, a Black 18-year-old audience member. But according to McGowan, the song was Sympathy for the Devil. Which must mean something, right?
Both writers recount the development of the music business, how producers became and labels became and contracts became and career-making clubs became. Both also spend a great deal of ink on groupies of the era, which was less interesting to me. And both books seemed to peter out rather than build to any grand conclusion.
In fact, I kept waiting, especially for McGowan to formulate whatever his conspiracy was about. He spent a lot of time presenting “facts,” but to what conclusion? I hoped the epilogue would wrap things up, but instead it was more of an appendage — the story of a serial killer who was apparently wrongly accused.
Walker offered endnotes, citing sources for specifics; McGowan; while including an extensive bibliography, made a lot of crazy assertions without foot- or endnotes, so I have no idea what to believe; he also in his own voice added smart-ass comments frequently throughout — sarcasm, mostly, or skepticism of “official accounts” — suggesting that we readers weren’t sharp enough to assess for ourselves.
Both writers went beyond the 60s and 70s into an era of music that I cared less about.
From Walker, I wanted more from the early years — tender stories from The Mamas & the Papas to the Eagles.
McGowan went beyond the era in recounting stories of mysterious deaths, but also had a bit of a prequel in the middle, with stories from the first half of the 20th century (how it came to be the “place where the craziest people in LA lived,” plus a drawn-out story of Houdini, complete with suggestions that Houdini was a spy and his death wasn’t accidental). Of 300 pages, 200 were probably enough.
It’s a lot.
If you want to revisit the dream, choose Walker; if you want your bubble burst, choose McGowan. Either way, enjoy.