Michael Walker on Laurel Canyon
“In the late sixties and early seventies, an impromptu collection of musicians colonized a eucalyptus-scented canyon deep in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles and melded folk, rock, and savvy American pop into a sound that conquered the world as thoroughly as the songs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Thirty years later, the music made in Laurel Canyon continues to pour from radios, iPods, and concert stages around the world. During the canyon’s golden era, the musicians who lived and worked there scored dozens of landmark hits, from California Dreamin’ to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes to It’s Too Late, selling tens of millions of records and resetting the thermostat of pop culture.
In Laurel Canyon, journalist Michael Walker tells the inside story of this unprecedented gathering of some of the baby boom’s leading musical lights–including Joni Mitchell; Jim Morrison; Crosby, Stills & Nash; John Mayall; the Mamas and the Papas; Carole King; the Eagles; and Frank Zappa, to name just a few-who turned Los Angeles into the music capital of the world and forever changed the way popular music is recorded, marketed, and consumed. It was Brigadoon meets the Brill building, and the reverberations from the unprecedented music being made–and the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle it created –profoundly shaped the attitudes and expectations of an entire generation…
Michael Walker has written extensively about popular culture for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and other publications. He lives in Laurel Canyon.”
Tim O’Shea: You’ve lived in Laurel Canyon for the past 10 years–did you have an interest in doing a book about Laurel Canyon before you moved there?
Michael Walker: No, but I was aware of Laurel Canyon growing up in Chicago in the ’70s from reading Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy and Creem and all those music magazines. After I moved to the canyon from New York I got interested in the history of the place and was surprised to find there was very little written about Laurel Canyon itself, or how and why it became such a hotbed of creativity in the ’60s and ’70s. So I wrote the book I wanted to read but couldn’t find; it turns out a lot of people felt the same way and were sort of waiting for it. The hardcover took off right away and hit No. 3 on the L.A. Times Book Review’s bestseller list and stayed there pretty much without a break for six months.
At one point the publisher completely ran out of books it was selling so fast.
O’Shea: When looking over the myriad interviews you did with Laurel Canyon residents for this book, can you point to one or two that you realized would be a major backbone of the themes and elements you hoped to address?
Walker: Henry Diltz, who was Laurel Canyon’s photographer-in-residence in the Sixties and Seventies and went on to become one of the first big rock photographers, is sort of the Greek chorus for the book’s themes–he’s really intelligent and also still flies his freak flag high, so to speak. Henry really imbibed the best parts of the Sixties canyon ethic–the freedoms, artistic expression, the whole peace and love bit–and lives by them to this day. So Henry became a useful voice to turn to, for perspective, when the canyon started becoming a colder and even dangerous place in the ’70s, when the drugs got harder and the money got truly out of hand. I end the book with him, sitting in his house, surrounded by the thousands of photographs he took in and around the canyon, writing down an old Spanish proverb I’d just told him that he hadn’t heard and wanted to remember: “The road to paradise is paradise.”
O’Shea: By the same token–were there folks that you had hoped to interview but were unable to, for whatever reasons?
Walker: I got to everybody I wanted to talk to, so I’m satisfied with that aspect of the book. I made the decision early on that I would not pursue most of the “big” names from the canyon, because then it would inevitably become more a book about them and less about the canyon. I wanted to write about what it truly felt like to have been there at the height, and I felt that the more reliable witnesses to that were people who lived there and interacted with the musicians as they were becoming stars, not the stars themselves. Having said that, I wanted to talk to Graham Nash and did. He was very articulate about the canyon and his and Joni Mitchell’s lives there and how it all fit together. I really felt the
book needed the perspective of someone whose life–both emotionally and creatively–really flowered in Laurel Canyon; Graham’s love affair with Joni at her cottage on Lookout Mountain and the music it inspired in both of them, not to mention Crosby, Stills & Nash singing together for the first time at Cass Elliot’s house, certainly qualified.
O’Shea: There are many artists that you clearly had a great appreciation for–is there any chance you might pursue writing a biography of anyone? One that comes to mind is Cass Elliot.
Walker: There already is an excellent biography of Cass Elliot, Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot, by Eddi Fiegel, that was published about the same time as my book. A biography of anyone, if done properly, is such an enormous undertaking–you’ve really got to inhabit their life and legacy to an extent that borders on compulsion, and there just isn’t a figure I can think of who compels me enough to take that on. I also prefer writing about all sorts of topics and so I want to tackle something unrelated to music for my next book. For example I’m writing a screenplay now for 20th Century Fox based on a magazine article I wrote about the world of cargo pilots.
O’Shea: How much have you heard from people that were there in the heyday of Laurel Canyon. I know for one, you mentioned Trina Robbins in the playlist you did for Paper Cuts (NY Times book blog). In general, can you point to any particular post-publication reactions that really stick out in your mind?
Walker: After the book had been published a car picked me up at LAX and when the driver figured out my address was in Laurel Canyon, he started talking about his time there in the ’70s and that he’d just read this great book about it. When I told him I’d written it, he stopped and stuck his hand over the seat and shook hands and congratulated me–he said I got it exactly right. It was incredibly flattering and also reassuring because I was reconstructing a 40-year-old scene I’d never personally witnessed mostly through interviews, and sometimes I had to draw conclusions where people’s recollections varied. At a certain point you can’t equivocate and rely on the impressions of others; you’ve just got to say, based on the body of knowledge you’ve built: “This is what it was like.” I’ve been told again and again by people who were there that I got it right and really captured the emotional reality of Laurel Canyon quite accurately. And for me there couldn’t be a higher compliment, because that’s what I set out to do.
O’Shea: The German edition of the book was recently released. When you wrote the book did you expect that it would have been published in any European editions?
Walker: The book has done quite well in Germany; it’s into its second hardcover printing and gotten a lot of press. I had certainly hoped there would be foreign editions published but you never know how that’ll play out. From the beginning I’ve gotten a lot of traffic on my book’s website from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Switzerland and Scandinavia, so I know the interest is there. Plus the Continent was and remains such a stronghold for the musicians covered in the book. It’s a great honor to have one’s book translated and I hope we’ll see more foreign-language editions soon.
O’Shea: Are you fearful or hopeful that more up-and-coming musicians might be drawn to Laurel Canyon as a creative outlet after reading your book–or do you think those days are gone for good?
Walker: I’m actually hopeful–I’ve talked to many musicians since the book was published who told me that it inspired and frustrated them because they desperately want to be part of scene like Laurel Canyon in the ’60s but can’t find one. The answer of course is that they need build their own, but the conditions that allowed Laurel Canyon the thrive in the ’60s–mostly cheap rent–don’t exist today. But there are signs that younger players are moving to the canyon and getting together and interacting pretty much the way they did in the ’60s. There’s a house down the road from me where members of some of the big Sixties bands like the Electric Flag and Crazy Horse get together with members of bands like Wilco and the Black Crowes and just woodshed all night. I’m certain the canyon will always have a strong constituency of musicians, but that scene in the ’60s and ’70s probably can’t be replicated–nor should anyone expect it to be. That was a once-in-century collision of timing, talent and opportunity–the stars really did align for that one, and they happened to align over Laurel Canyon.
O’Shea: This book focuses upon the music scene for the most part–but Hollywood also clearly plays a role. How many movies do you think were inspired on some level by Laurel Canyon–clearly Frances McDormand’s 2002 film Laurel Canyon and Cameron Crowe’ Almost Famous just to name two.
Walker: The movie Wonderland was a re-creation of the drug murders on Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon; parts of The Trip were shot in Laurel Canyon, at Arthur Lee’s old house; some of the scenes in Heat I believe were shot at the top of the canyon. There’s probably a bunch more I’m forgetting.
O’Shea: How satisfying is it when your opinion on musical history elicits passionate responses like this?
Walker: Very satisfying. That link is to an online debate over an essay I wrote for the Op-Ed page of the New York Times about the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love. My thesis was that the music made in L.A. and Laurel Canyon during and leading up to the summer of ‘67 had more impact and has aged much better than a lot of what came out San Francisco, which got all the hype. I knew it would piss people off and stir things up because you’re messing with one of the Baby Boom’s sacred cows–the whole Haight-Ashbury legacy–and a lot of people don’t want those sort of golden memories disturbed. But I felt L.A. and the canyon had never gotten their due in this regard whereas San Francisco had gotten too much credit, and I had the facts to back it up. It was a very popular story–the second-most-emailed story in the entire New York Times–and was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune and the San Francisco papers, too. It’s great when you can lob an idea, carefully considered, into the marketplace and suddenly have hundreds of people going at it like wolverines.
O’Shea: Did cocaine play a major role in the changes that occurred in Laurel Canyon, or was cocaine merely a symptom of the bigger problems facing the area at one point?
Walker: Cocaine was both a symptom and a cause. It had been around in the ’60s, of course, but in the ’70s, when people’s records started coming in and the money they were earning just went through the roof, it became sort of this accoutrement of one’s success–it was vastly more expensive than pot or acid and was something you therefore shared, if you shared at all, with only your inner circle. The arrival of coke as the main drug of choice coincided with and reinforced the walls that fame and money were building between people who before had wandered in and out of each other’s lives serendipitously. Also, careerism was replacing the naive collectivism that had marked the canyon in the ’60s, and coke–being a stimulant–was very much in step with the times in that regard, too, in that it allowed you to work all night long.
O’Shea: Laurel Canyon is the home to many celebrities. Are you anesthetized to the presence of celebrities in your life, or do you get excited when you see photos like Mischa Barton reading the book?
Walker: In L.A. it’s pretty common to see celebrities buying gas, etc. so it’s not that big a deal–although these days the bigger celebrities are constantly mobbed by paparazzi every step they take. It’s a little unnerving to watch. But in the canyon it’s pretty low-key–some of my neighbors are very famous actors but I’ve yet to see the photographers staking out their houses or hanging out at the Canyon Store, which is like the town square of Laurel Canyon. But, sure, it was a blast to open Us magazine and see a photo of Mischa Barton reading my book–it was funny because I was doing a reading in Malibu once and she ducked into the bookstore for a moment, presumably to lose the mob of photographers following her.
Tags: interview, laurel canyon, rock and roll