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I just finished reading a book by Michael Walker titled Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood. Walker traces the history of area musicians who lived in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Laurel Canyon in the mid-sixties through the seventies. This group of hippie singer-songwriters included Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, James Taylor, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Mamas and The Papas, Jackson Browne, Carol King, and the Eagles.

This group of aspiring musicians frequently wandered up and down the canyon, often ending up at Mama Cass Elliot’s place, where it wasn’t out of the ordinary to find Eric Clapton, Mitchell, and David Crosby playing songs together. They frequently left their doors unlocked and open as many people, including the young David Geffen and the famous groupie Pamela Des Barres, filtered in and out throughout the day and night. 

According to Walker, Ron Stone, who was Mitchell’s manager, “has a clear memory of driving [through] Laurel Canyon Boulevard and hearing song after song from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wafting down from the cabins and bungalows all the way home.”

Walker not only traces the history of the musicians, but he also explains how they went from playing small gigs at L.A.’s the Troubadour, to setting records selling out arenas and eventually surpassing millions of record sales, that to this day have not been beat.  As the seventies wore on, the influx of music that poured out of Laurel Canyon forever changed the way popular music is recorded, marketed, and consumed.

I made a “Laurel Canyon” playlist on my iPod with over fifty songs that feature artists that lived in the canyon in the vibrant decade when the creative juices were exploding.

The Mama’s and the Papa’s “Creeque Alley” tells the story of the formation of the band, which included John and Michelle Phillips, Denny Doherty and “Mama” Cass Elliot. The lyrics tell the stories behind many musicians they knew from Laurel Canyon, like Roger McQuinn from The Byrds and John Sebastion from The Lovin’ Spoonful. The quartet seamlessly wrap and blend their voices around each other, creating impressive harmonies over an acoustic guitar, while a harmonica dances in and out throughout the song.

Both “Ladies of the Canyon” by Joni Mitchell and “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were written by the songwriters while living in the canyon. Mitchell wrote the stories of three women who hung out in the canyon – Trina “with her wampum beads,” Annie who had “cats and babies ‘round her feet,” and Estrella “circus girl” were all real-life women who “pour[ed] music down the canyon” and inspired Mitchell to pen a song. I included a link to the lyrics and by clicking on the lines that are in red, you can learn about the real-life ladies and even get the brownie recipe that Mitchell sings about in the song.

Gram Nash’s “Our House” was written about his love affair with Mitchell. The simple melody with the always beautiful harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young paint a picture of “a cozy room” where the “windows are illuminated by the sunshine through them.” Nash is obviously content and ready to settle down with Mitchell in their house “with two cats in the yard” where “everything is easy” because of the love between him and Mitchell.

The peace and love that pulsated through Laurel Canyon came to end with the Manson Murders and the maddening, personality-changing consumption of cocaine. The Eagles wrote “The Sad Café,” a metaphor for their humble beginnings playing at the Troubadour, a song which ended the decade with the last creative breath from the canyon in 1979. The Troubadour was a place where the canyon musicians could go and ‘sing right out loud the things [they] could not say,” and according to Don Henley, they would often break out and sing “Amazing Grace.” The Eagles were one of the few acts from inside that “holy place” that made it big, and essentially every dream they ever imagined came true.

I highly recommend this book to those that want to re-visit these songs and learn about the inspirations behind them. I also recommend it to those that missed this decade worth of music –songs that changed lives and eventually ended in rage as bands and managers were destroyed by drugs and the loss of that freedom that was sung about in the beginning when peace and love could change the world.

Here are a few of my favorite albums that are a must have to listen along to as you read the book:

Crosby, Stills Nash, and Young – So Far

Joni Mitchell – Ladies of the Canyon

Eagles – One of These Nights

Jackson Browne – Saturate Before Using

The Mamas and the Papas – Deliver

The Byrds – The Essential Byrds

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