Laurel Canyon Music/Scene: circa 1965+ ...you set the scene. Dear forum friends, this thread is intended to loosely encompass everything specifically Laurel Canyon. The music, the scene, and the people who made it what it was! Stop in the Canyon Store for an OJ... Please share... Your memories (if you were there), Your imagined hippie dreams of being there, The Laurel Canyon themed books & pieces you've read, The stories from friends who were there, Photos of places, people of the Canyon, And of course, the music that was born there that you've grown up with & love still, to this day. If you were drawn into this "Laurel Canyon..." thread, you likely already love the music born in the Canyon, the varied multicolored Canyonites, and all the young folks irresistibly drawn there from across the world...in 1965 and beyond... and to the stunning surrounding environs...including the just-down-the hill Music Mecca: The Sunset Strip. Young Girls [& Boys] Are Coming To The Canyon... ............................................................................................................................. @rkt88 & myself, together felt it was due time to open this joint venture, a thread that allows us all here to share our collective stories, the music, the times, and our deep appreciation of Laurel Canyon... The Canyon...
This Rolling Stone piece gets us up and rolling: (Of note..@rkt88's pop is Interviewed in the article) Inside the Los Angeles Scene – Rolling Stone by Jerry Hopkins, June 22, 1968 "A tour of L.A. in 1968, home to everyone from Ray Charles to Herb Alpert, Tim Buckley to Don Ellis, Phil Spector to Lou Rawls" Mick Jagger lies in a hammock and strums a guitar at Stephen Stills’ house in Laurel Canyon in 1969. - Getty Images
A virtual photo exhibition is a ray of sunshine for music fans Henry Diltz talks 'Endless Summer' and how he got those great pictures By Lauren Daley Globe correspondent,Updated July 6, 2020, 5:16 p.m. Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, and Eric Clapton shown in 1968 in Mama Cass's Laurel Canyon backyard, with Cass's daughter.HENRY DILTZ In the summer of 1969, the phone rang in Henry Diltz’s Laurel Canyon kitchen. It was his pal, Edward “Chip” Monck — a Massachusetts native and noted lighting designer — telling Diltz he needed to come photograph a concert he was working in Bethel, N.Y. “My job was to show up at Yasgur’s Farm . . . and dig everything,” Diltz says by phone. A legend in the world of rock photography, Diltz is as colorful a character as you’d expect Woodstock’s official photographer to be, chock-full of tales about other colorful characters....more: A virtual photo exhibition is a ray of sunshine for music fans - The Boston Globe
I watched the series on youtube.It was very interesting and enlightening.From the bohemian carefree days to the darkness that came with Manson period.A great watch it was.
Arthur Lee, Jim Morrison and Pam Courson...at strange triad. Laurel Canyon, Jim Morrison, Arthur Lee, Pam Courson WEIRDLAND: The Doors' 13 compilation, Laurel Canyon, Jim Morrison, Arthur Lee, Pam Courson Arthur Lee: When I lived in Laurel Canyon, I used to walk from Brier to the Country Store on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. On my way down the hill, I liked seeing all the colorful people at the scene with their beautiful clothes. By then, it was fashionable to rent garages in the area as places to stay. I was coming up Kirkwood Drive one day and I noticed a girl dancing on the other side of the street. She had her garage door pulled up and I could examine her fixed-up garage home. She was a very nice-looking young lady, with shoulder-length red hair, freckles, and a cute figure. I don’t remember who made the first move, but both of us started talking. As I looked around her place, I noticed something was missing. I don’t remember if there was a refrigerator or not but I didn’t see any food around. When I asked if she would like me to buy her some groceries, she smiled and said “yes, thanks, my name is Pam.” And so it became a routine; as I walked or drove up Kirkwood, I would stop by her place and drop off some food and drinks for Pam. I told her about my group Love, and I asked her if she would like to come up to my place and trip with acid. She said she would, and that was my first date with Pamela Courson. She told me she was from Orange County and she was a go-go dancer in The [Sunset] Strip clubs. Our relationship was good until I saw her flirting with other guys. So it sort of played out after a while, but we remained friendly. She was a good kid, but too flirtatious for my taste. Later, I would see Jim Morrison in Laurel Canyon from time to time, and now Pam was living with him. I found Jim Morrison to be a very interesting guy, although the girls seemed to appreciate him a lot more than I did. After a while, with Ray Manzarek playing the organ in the band, I could see that The Doors were doing something quite different. I told Jac Holzman to go down and check them out at The London Fog. So it was then that The Doors became the second West Coast group signed to Elektra Records. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jim Morrison. I just didn’t really know him as a friend. I had enough friends hanging around me at that time. One time, I was at the Tropicana Hotel, on Santa Monica, and out of my window I saw Jim and Bryan MacLean standing, face to face. All of a sudden, Jim socked Bryan in the mouth, pretty hard. Bryan made the mistake of mentioning Pamela or something else. I actually thought that was the best thing I’d ever seen Jim Morrison do. Bryan said that they were arguing and Jim hit him square in the mouth. I said to myself, “Regardless of what I think, Jim Morrison’s got a heart.” Bryan could really get on your nerves and it didn’t come off too good with Jim. After that, I lost sight of him. I think Jim Morrison was a very lonely person. He was always searching for something. Now that I think about it and put it all together, it seemed like he didn’t have a real self. He only lived on what he was told it was happening. He portrayed something that he thought was great but I don’t think he got a chance to be his true, natural self – or perhaps he didn’t like his natural self. He tried to become someone else. And it caught up with him. You finally catch up with yourself, you look in the mirror and you have to face yourself. —"Arthur Lee: Alone Again" (2001) by Barney Hoskyns
as per usual I am getting my usual fleeting but passing name checked mention in that RS article as well as a number of R&R books. Actually my pop is interviewed as "Billy of Ridpath Drive" which is a bit odd given his deep involvement. Hopkins made him sound like the Sherrif of Nottingham of Laurel Canyon ha So, I've got a ton of vignettes I can add although many if not all have already been posted here in some form or fashion. it was suggested I also include a rambling page of what is the prologue to my as yet unwritten BOOK which I have been urged to write going on at least 40 years. it outlines chronologically not only the commercial launch of The Bob in NYC in 1961 by my pop at Columbia records. but also my first foray as the youngest record producer in the history of the music business. this claim was made by Al Kooper in his own book about me. not by me. again. yet another fleeting and passing mention. enjoy ( and the thread! thx to @lemonade kid ) I *may* send him some pics to include also as I am unable to figure out this rather archaic tech vis a vis posting pics. the "Prologue" To: "Almost Infamous" ( I was an illuminati reject ) then begins to segue to my first job as hired by the still living Walt Disney for his "Wonderful World of Color TV show on NBC" in 1965 as we moved first to Beverly Hills then to Laurel Canyon as remembered in the Rolling Stone article I provided. many of you old timers would have seen them as kids in 1965. so again, thanks lets have some fun in the wayback machine and enjoy! or not. lol
"ALMOST INFAMOUS" ( MY Life as an Illuminatti Reject ) So my story begins in NYC in 1957. I was born in the Doctor’s Hospital, which is no longer standing, and coincidentally is the same hospital where Robert Mueller (our favorite not-so-special prosecutor) was born a year earlier. For whatever reason that fascinates me to no end because I have never been able to figure out who exactly that guy works for. BEGINNING at the beginning, I was born at 200 East 2nd Avenue, which is the Lower East Side, in a five story walkup. That is about as gritty and cheap as an apartment in Manhattan could be at the time. If you understand the Lower East Side in the late 1950s you will know exactly what I am talking about. For reasons unknown, in my first years -still mostly crawling around - my mother took a liking to Ocelots, which are small but very wild cats, and I tussled with them on a fairly regular basis. I still have a facial scar to prove it. I call them my totem animal because the minor scar on my face was caused by an Ocelot. I think my mother hoped I’d be eaten. Winters in Manhattan are brutal. We lived in a very small two bedroom apartment and it was kind of my parents to afford me my own small room. With the windows all shut and the old steam heaters cranked and the fact that between the two of them they must have smoked 4 packs of cigarettes daily…nobody could figure out why every winter I would develop pneumonia. Presumably they would take me to a doctor and the doctor would say the kid needs some fresh air, but again this was back when doctors said - Smoke Camel. Camels are good for your throat! My father was an actor and managed to talk his way into the “actors corps” of the US army. One of his acting buddies in the US Army was Frank Gorshin, later the Riddler on the Batman TV show. I always thought my dad should have been cast as the Joker. After leaving the service he took classes in “The Actor’s Studio” with Lee Strasburg. He got some bit parts but he was not having the the type of success he had hoped for, this in spite of the fact that one of his best pals at the time was a young James Dean when together they attended the Actor’s Studio. He went from a couple of two line parts on live TV and some things he did Off Off Broadway. I am not sure he ever even made it to OFF Broadway, so not much of a resumé. He had gone to NYU on the GI bill after his stint in the Korean Conflict or whatever “they’ve” choose to call it now. Shortly thereafter, my dad, a bright, verbal, witty guy, realized acting wasn’t going to pay the bills was hired as a publicist at Columbia Records. This was back when William Paley, the founder of CBS, - or should I say the CIA ? - ran the company. The eye, the logo of CBS, is not to be confused with anything other than what everyone suspects. One of his early supporters at the label ( in addition the Dylan ) was John Hammond, a scion of the Vanderbilt family and already a renowned A&R “legend” within the recording industry. So my paterfamilia began his short but illustrious career as a publicist from 1960-61, so 1961 was a pivotal year for him and the beginning of my burgeoning awareness of the rarified air and the milieu that I landed within, merely by virtue of my birth. In spite of the five floor tenement walkup, in many ways it seemed I was “to the manor born” relative to my entree into the music business. This all began with a phone call my father received one night from John Hammond, who was the premier A&R executive at Columbia. A&R is an acronym for Artists and Repertoire. These are the people ( once ) responsible for talent acquisition, song selection, and matching artists with producers - kind of the back end, creative aspect of recording artists at the time. Now I suspect that the devolution of the once important function and responsibility has fallen from “product managers” to purely “artificial intelligence”. But, I digress. One night he got a call from Hammond ( as reported in Hammond’s autobiography and vis a vis my father’s anecdotes ) and he said "Billy, I have a great artist we just signed to the label and his name is Bob Dylan. I really want you to meet with him and see if we can get together and begin to build something to launch his career.” Now, granted, this is 1961 when Dylan was literally doing harmonica demos for people in-studio whose names I don’t remember. It was a very incestuous scene at the time in New York with folk music being de riguer and ubiquitous in the greenwich village and and everyone played with everyone and they all “passed the hat” - a sort of musical chairs environment. The acoustic clubs were all in the Village with Bleecker and MacDougal being ground zero. It was like the Sunset Strip without electric guitars. Those who were fortunate enough to secure record deals ( aided by the likes of Albert Grossman, Dylan’s early manager ) and folk music being what it was at the time, if you had a label behind you like Columbia, your chances at success were increased exponentially. So. The Dylaesque aspect of the story begins with the “first known and recorded interview” with Bob Dylan was conducted by James on his trusty reel to reel Wollensak, which I later used at 8 or 9 in output mode to plug in my electric guitar. Crude but effective, it didn’t sound great. The interview ( still possible to find on the internet ) was my conducted by Billy James with the nascent Bob Dylan in October 1961. For perspective, that’s two years before “Blowin’ in the Wind” (which blew UP - arguably launching Dylan as the superstar he later became) and long before he went electric - certainly before that brouhaha created when Dylan suddenly plugged in at Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Like a Rolling Stone, indeed. I have early memories of crawling around on the floor of Columbia Records at 51 West 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan - that was Black Rock, which was CBS - an appropriately named mecca for the entertainment business. CBS was the premier entertainment conglomerate at the time. CBS was radio, television, records, movies for television - the whole ball of wax. Dylan was a frequent visitor to our tiny apartment and soon we made a vertical move from the Lower East Side to to 171 W. 79th at Central Park West - from a two bedroom walk-up to a place that came with a doorman and an awning in what is probably now a 2 million dollar apartment. That was where I first remember Dylan. There was something about him, it’s cliché to say, but I had a very distinct sense that this guy was special - somehow someway. I remember the chair he sat in. He was wearing a buck skin jacket and scuffed boots. In all of his early photographs that was the one thing about him that was genuine - his wardrobe was not contrived, if even his name was. In his very first interview with my pop he recounted his background and history - he talks about joining the circus, and being a wandering minstrel at 12 years old. He was totally full of ****. He was a middle class Jewish guy from Minnesota. At the time people said "Robert Zimmerman" just won’t work for a folk singer. He borrowed a new name from Dylan Thomas, and said **** IT - I am Bob Dylan. The rest is history. My mother had, by then, the presence of mind and survival skills to extricate herself from the marriage. My dad, for the most part, took me with him almost everywhere he went. It was cheaper and easier than getting a babysitter. These were places a young child of five or six would not ordinarily be taken, but it was either drag me along or deal with finding someone to look after me which shortly thereafter he neglected to do altogether I was being schlepped around, as we said in New York, to places like the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals and every club in the Village as a kid. I spent a lot of time in late night haunts and we frequented the world-famous Village Vanguard, owned by my dad’s cousin, Lorraine. If you wanted to see Thelonious Monk, the Vanguard was the place to be. I got free cokes with maraschino cherries - all I could drink! I can still see and smell the smoky dim-lit cavernous ambience of the room with red velvet curtains. Between these experiences and the apartments I grew up in, I figure I technically started smoking at the age of three. Later, my first stepmother, who became a very well known TV actress who also came out of the New York theater scene, told me that my father had the distinction of being diagnosed a functioning psychotic by a renown New York psychiatrist -a diagnosis I never had cause to doubt. Her name was Sandra Smith and eventually starred in her own ABC series among many others. It was cool having a step-mom on episodes of the first years of TV’s Star Trek, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason and other PROGRAMMING of the time that was force fed America. When she married my dear ‘ol dad, she actually went through the process of legally adopting me, and I thank her to this day for her early influence in my life, as she was solely responsible for teaching me to read using what were then called “flash cards” prior to my entering the "scholastically gifted programs for damaged kids".. I don’t know that flash cards still exist. I imagine Fisher-Price now makes kid sized I-Phones instead as "learning aides”. One shocking afternoon, I returned from school to find a stretcher and ambulance at our apartment, and my step-mom Sandy being wheeled out and she didn’t look good. It turns out - as she explained to me, years later - That living with my father was so psychologically damaging, that in spite of her genuine love and concern for me and finally too much for her to bear - she felt the only option was an attempted “exit stage left” by consuming an unknown quantity of barbiturates. She survived and indeed flourished, once divorced from my father. I, on the other hand, was beginning to feel the aggregate trauma of first my birth mother, and now step mother - to whom I had grown attached and quite fond of - abandoning me to once again, live with my alone with my father. I must have been some kind of prize for him to go to all this trouble, what with his career on the rise, and all. Nonetheless, a kid of my age at the time, has no choice but to feel these “departures” are “their fault”. They weren’t. When we went to festival events like Newport Folk and Jazz (my father by now being very well-connected) we were backstage for everything. There was no getting trampled in the audience for me. We saw Dylan, Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and the like. As I was only six years old at the time, I must admit that at the Newport Jazz Festival all the horns sounded the same to me. I vaguely remember Miles Davis. I guess I wasn’t all that sophisticated. As a young child in Manhattan, it occurred to my father very early on, recognizing my innate capacity and potential, that sending me to Public School 109 so that I might have my lunch money taken from me on a daily basis probably wasn’t going to be the best course of action for my early education and development. As a result of his having recently been promoted at Columbia / CBS he decided that I should be in one the West Side private schools that the well-bred Upper East Side children attended. These were schools with names like Lycée Français, and part of their curriculum, even back in the early 1960s was to have seemingly well-adjusted children dressed in leotards and wearing Capezio’s in ballet classes. Upon reflection, and given as much as I hated it at the time, it strikes me that this was really the beginning of indoctrinating children into gender fluidity. You will have to take me at my word. I did not fancy myself, a six year old Baryshnikov. After a number of false starts at Riverside Drive private schools, it was decided that Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School was where I would begin my education in Manhattan. The school was an extension of Columbia University on the Upper West Side, and many really gifted children had the good fortune to be educated there. That this was an institution very highly esteemed may or may not be evidenced by the fact that Barron Trump just graduated from there some 55 years later. Unlike our 44th President who attended Columbia University for law school, my classmates actually remember my having attended the school. There was one particularly noteworthy event at Columbia that remains in my memory to this day, and it has to do with a general assembly that also included upperclassmen. As everyone assembled, my name was suddenly called to receive a basketball award. My classmates, as surprised as I, urged me emphatically to go up to accept my award. I, being the dubious and circumspect child that the world had already made of me, turned to them and said - “I am three and a half feet tall. I have not won the basketball award.” Turned out, a classmate who shared my name, presumably older and taller than I, excelled at basketball. While my father was at Columbia Records, contractually he was not allowed to do work for other labels in any other capacity, but he had befriended a group called The Blues Project, the legendary Al Kooper’s first band out of NYC - a kind of electrified blues band. Their first recording on Verve Folkways Records, a great label back then, was being produced by the also-legendary Tom Wilson. Wilson had produced the early Dylan - Blowin’ in the Wind and Subterranean Homesick Blues - the great early stuff. There were two cuts produced at the time and my father, being signed to Columbia, was not allowed to use his name as producer. In 1964 in New York pretty much all that was required to be a producer was a good studio, a functioning and competent recording engineer and the ability to procure corned beef sandwiches at 2am. All of those things were apparently at his disposal at the time and I was ultimately credited as the producer Marcus James. I would argue that I probably had more creative input into the recording of “Flute Thing” and “Flyaway” ( on the album produced primarily by Tom Wilson ) than my father did, but he would probably quarrel with that. In any event, It marks the only major label recording from that period and he never produced anybody else in spite of the fact he couldn’t find a producer a year later for the Doors, a group he had signed. Interestingly, later on my father being the publicist that he was, took umbrage to the fact that on the internet my name is credited for those two tracks. Flute Thing was later sampled by the Beastie Boys on their seminal debut “License to Ill” produced by Rick Rubin. Again. No one gets paid. Later in Al Kooper’s autobiography Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock 'N' Roll Survivor he lists me as the first credited, and youngest music producer in the history of the record business. An honor which I wear proudly. I was there. All the witnesses are dead. At some point my father said -This is ridiculous, It’s not enough that my son became a Disney actor when I couldn’t get arrested in theater, but now he’s been credited as a producer? He tried to scrub mentions of me on the internet for that record. But the internet is “forever”. At the end of this period of my early life in New York City (1957-1964) one of the things that occurred serendipitously for my father and certainly for me personally, was that because of Dylan’s success with Blowin’ in the Wind and him becoming THE counter-culture icon of the world and really the progenitor of protest music on a mass commercial scale, Goddard Lieberson, the then-president of Columbia Records, for whom my dad worked ( and the immediate predecessor of Clive Davis ) called for a meeting with my father, and said, in essence, “Billy, you have done great work with Dylan and everyone else on the roster here on the East Coast. I’d like you to consider a move to our offices on the West Coast since you have your finger on the pulse, and your ear to the ground.” As a result of that meeting with Goddard (or God, as he was known to sign his memos) my father went on to create the very first “Artist Development” Department within a major record company - a department that still exists at every major label in some form or fashion, if even there is such thing as a major label today. There is a memo floating around somewhere - a publicity release - that says Billy James was promoted by Columbia Records to the new Talent Acquisition and Development department. He will be headquartered at the CBS Los Angeles offices. The promotion within Columbia was a result of the suggestion of my father who said to Goddard Lieberson in one of their conversations: Billy said “Look, every company has research and development. We have the research, we do talent acquisition, sign artists, all that, but what we don’t have is the development aspect of R&D. That was the beginning of artist development, whereby someone would work with a fledgling artist that needed time to incubate and develop, rather than just throwing them into a studio with a producer that they didn’t know with a bunch of songs and other musicians they didn’t know - which really was the template for how music was being recorded at the time. The timing of my father’s promotion happened to occur at the end of 1964, best known in pop culture as the time that the Beatles arrived on our shores - and the beginning of the subsequent “British Invasion.” My father, being the sole caretaker of a rather precocious if not psychologically damaged child had no choice but to leave me with my paternal grandfather and step grandmother in Paterson, New Jersey while he went to Los Angeles to secure us a new home. Stranger in a Strange Land. My grandfather was a furrier, and at the time Paterson was a nice working class neighborhood consisting primarily of Italian and Jewish families. It was very safe. These days one would be ill-advised to go out at all after dusk in Paterson, if one were unfortunate enough to still live there. I have to say those were the worst weeks of my life, and probably the worst weeks of my grandfather’s life as well. The point is that began our sojourn and migration westward. Go west, young man! Next up. Chapter One: Los Angeles 1965. Walt Disney and Beach Blanket Bingo.
Explored Laurel Canyon a few years ago with the musicians homes as a focus. Went in the Country Store and bought a bag of peanuts, cramped quarters in there.
have done "pre-coffee" even! vignettes later. must have baguettes first! lol thx for putting this up. waiting on you to finally do it reminded me of Joe Smith nagging the Eagles for the Hotel California follow up record LOL. Talk about a "long Run"! whew. I kid it looks great! you've already posted pics of my old homes without knowing it!
This is a "Walking Tour" of Ridpath Drive. I will correct the hosts * minor historical* mistakes in the clip later possibly. Notice their awe as they stop in front of my old house on Ridpath. I almost fell on the floor when I found this YT clip. its a gas lol
here's the aforementioned amazing 1968 article by the legendary rock writer ( RIP ) Jerry Hopkins. If you blink - you'll miss the "mention" of yours truly ha Inside the Los Angeles Scene – Rolling Stone
this is gonna take days and you dropped this early on a Monday ack. I'll be living here ( hopefully ) throughout the week posting and sharing actual "events" of my life from the time, as time permits. I'm already late for table tennis lol
Laurel Canyon: Hippie heaven In the 1960s, artists like Carole King, “Mama” Cass Elliot, and Joni Mitchell found space in Laurel Canyon to form their own counterculture family and create their own kind of music By Hadley Meares Jan 10, 2019, 11:30am PST In Laurel Canyon, you’d “look out the window and write songs in a flannel shirt.” It was summer 1968 in Laurel Canyon. “Mama” Cass Elliot, the big-hearted den mother of the LA music scene, was having a picnic at her rambling estate on Woodrow Wilson Drive, a not uncommon occurrence. “My house is a very free house,” Elliot told Rolling Stone. “It’s not a crash pad and people don’t come without calling. But on an afternoon, especially on weekends, I always get a lot of delicatessen food in because I know David [Crosby] is going to come over for a swim and things are going to happen.” That afternoon, Crosby had indeed come calling, bringing with him his newest find, Joni Mitchell... Read more here: The musical heyday of Laurel Canyon “It had a smell of eucalyptus, and in the spring, which was the rainy season then, a lot of wildflowers would spring up. Laurel Canyon had a wonderful distinctive smell to it.” Carole King posed in her Appian Way house, before moving in. - Photo by Jim McCrary/Redferns
I've been to that house! it was across from John Phillips rented house. I sadly admit to having spent some time with him there during his well known decline. sad and I won't offer details on that! yo7've done some great research. alas, I have but my addled memory to rely upon lol
I can begin by telling you that when Zappa had the Log Cabin I used a small room in the basement next to the BOWLING ALLEY! ( built by Tom Mix in 1919??! ) as my very first office of a company I began when I was 16 with my first car which was an old chevy pickup truck. It was called "Starving Students" and did quite well. If we broke any of your stuff? I am sorry lol
