Goodnight, L.A.

August 14, 2017
In this breezy look at the golden age of the L.A. studio scene, music writer Hartman (The Wrecking Crew) dishes on the boomer artists whose fortunes rose in the mid-1970s. Loosely structured around renowned producer Keith Olsen and guitarist extraordinaire Waddy Wachtel, the book opens with Charles Manson brandishing a .38 handgun in a Van Nuys recording studio and ends with Nirvana’s release of Nevermind. Between those events, the Eagles, Chicago, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, and plenty of others crafted songs that perpetual rotation branded onto the limbic system of the nation. While this is hardly uncharted territory, the focus on lesser-known figures provides fresh takes on musician lore that keep the pages turning (Kenny Loggins showed up at an audition for Jim Messina without a guitar or tapes, and still got the job). Hartman’s gossip chasing, however, torpedoes narrative coherence and any slim chance of thematic unity: Wachtel and Olsen vanish for entire chapters, and Hartman makes too much of the fact that Boston, the Grateful Dead, REO Speedwagon, Rick Springfield, and other notable bands worked with the same circle of session players and producers. Given his evident familiarity with the social and technological shifts of the era, Hartman might have shaped a thought-provoking overview of the last musical mass culture; instead, readers get one-too-many anecdotes about Rod Stewart acting like a jerk. Hartman has written an entertaining look into the recording industry, however, he does little to support his claim that “the album-rock era... brought a previously unheard level of human emotion, storytelling, and expansive musicality to the masses.”