Laurel Canyon

The Inside Story of Life in L.A.'s Legendary Rock and Roll Neighborhood

By: Michael Walker

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Laurel Canyon was the neighborhood perched above the clubs and record companies of Sunset Strip where Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Graham Nash, Cass Elliot, Carole King, Don Henley, and Peter Tork, just to name a few, lived and collaborated to make an indelible mark on our music and our culture. This is the story of an important period in rock music, but also of the harsher results of the sixties, as hard drugs and easy sex began to take their toll and the gruesome Wonderland murders signaled the end of the era.©2006 Michael Walker (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"Laurel Canyon is hilarious and true and bittersweet. Michael Walker catches the mood in the air, and gets it right....The interviews are wonderful....It's a beautifully written document of that time and place when the personalities were as big as those stony dreams that fueled some of the greatest masterpieces in rock." (Cameron Crowe)

Captivating

A legendary cultural time is brought to life, warts and all. Highly recommended to anyone that is interested in this LA oasis of a coming of age for free living baby boomers. Events that permanently changed our society from a circumspect perspective to true liberty in terms of success and failure.

FASCINATING, BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN!!

I loved every second of this smartly written and cleverly conceived book.
Lloyd James made this book come alive!

Stunning Social History

Gorgeous overview of the forces that created the cultural phenomenon known as Laurel Canyon. From the macro to the micro, an incredibly insightful look at the myth makers who formed this urban utopia in the 1960s and beyond.

Half of This Story Takes Place Outside the Canyon

Let's stipulate that if you're at all interested in this book, you're probably a fan of the musicians who made Laurel Canyon famous, or at least interested in pop-rock music history. If so, like me, you'll probably feel lukewarm about this take. If you're interested in cultural history, though, this will be much more to your liking, especially if you're looking for insight into the 1960s and 70s.

The book gets off to a great start. The first three chapters are about the Byrds, who catalyzed the folk rock scene that landed in Laurel Canyon during the 60s, Zappa, who briefly but spectacularly lit up the Canyon with experimental music and living, and Mama Cass Elliott, who nurtured the Canyon culture, most famously introducing Graham Nash to Steven Stills and David Crosby in Joni Mitchell's house. Zappa and Mama Cass typically get overlooked, but here they get full chapters.

But then the book leaves the Canyon, with entire chapters devoted to coke, groupies, rock festivals and Charlie Manson. Yes, all of these subjects intersected with Laurel Canyon, but not enough to merit this much attention. Clearly, once you get past the heyday of CSN and Joni and then the singer-songwriter wave that ensued (not adequately covered), there was too little of interest going on to fill up an entire book (the recent movie Echo in the Canyon likewise suffered disappointingly from a lack of material, devoting half its running time to contemporary artists putting on a tribute concert).

But the big issue is music vs. culture. Both were huge parts of the story, but the music gets shortchanged here, other than naming names (and addresses), while Canyon culture in its several incarnations is the focus. No doubt that is a result of Michael Walker (himself a longtime Laurel Canyon resident) getting more interviews with non-musical denizens of the Canyon than those directly involved in the music scene. On one hand, that's actually great (although the number of groupies liberally quoted is more that a little uncomfortable). But it comes at the expense of the raison d'etre of the book: the music.

The narration is surprisingly mediocre. At first I thought it must be the author reading his own work, that's how amateurish it sounds, with its stilted cadence that defies the printed punctuation and its mispronunciations galore. But Lloyd James is a pro with hundreds of audio titles to his credit! How does that happen? All in all, a lot of good things here, but in sum total, disappointing.

Well done!

Arc of the story was well laid out. Good insight. Would recommend. It is hard to write a story with so many true characters and achieve a cohesive result but this author achieved that.