Austinist Book Review: Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker

Rather than retelling the Canyon's history chronologically, Walker builds each chapter around a pivotal person, place, or event. In Chapter 2, "Uncle Frank's Cabin," Walker describes the various roles that Frank Zappa played, from his stint with the Mothers to his incubating seemingly talentless acts like the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously) to his four-month dominion over the Zappa Cabin. In the subsequent chapter, Walker examines both the role of women in the hippie counterculture and the difficulties of dealing with near-overnight success through the microcosm of Mama Cass Elliott, "one-half of the female half" of the Mamas and the Papas, whose first hit single "California Dreamin'" ("a meditation on the West Coast utopia written during a dismal winter in New York City") skyrocketed them to fame. Another chapter recounts how a failed musician and ex-convict by the name of Charles Manson established his cult following from within the hippie ranks and orchestrated a series of brutal murders in 1969 that forced canyonites to "confront the possibility that not everyone with long hair under thirty was their brother." In another chapter, Walker describes the heyday of LA's original hipster haven, the Troubadour, where the likes of Elton John and Carly Simon cut their teeth. Most engaging, though, is the chapter wherein Walker describes the eventual toll that cocaine exacted on these musicians in the early seventies:

In the canyon, the lifestyle havoc abetted by cocaine was decimating personal relationships---[The Turtles' Mark] Volman's marriage collapsed---but the singer-songwriter juggernaut plowed on with songs about peaceful, easy feelings and romantic succor, even as the songwriters stayed up till dawn with fifty-dollar bills shoved up their nostrils making desperate conversation.

What makes Laurel Canyon particularly intriguing is its exhaustive cast of characters and the manner in which Walker is able to string together the lives of these iconic individuals: David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Graham Nash, Don Henley, and Chris Hillman (The Byrds) are but a tenth of the titans whose successes either were linked with or hinged on those of everyone else. Many of these interdependencies are bolstered by interviews with the likes of Nash, Hillman, Zappa's widow Gail, and Mark Volman (The Turtles). The end result, then, is a credible and fascinating account of Laurel Canyon's ascension to the pantheon of popular culture and its eventual, disheartening denouement.

Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood
by Michael Walker
(Faber & Faber, $25)
[amazon] [bookpeople]