Laurel Canyon

February 20, 2006
Beginning in the mid-1960s, a string of successful rock bands emerged out of Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood of Los Angeles tucked away in the hills north of Sunset Boulevard. From the success of bands like the Byrds and the Mamas and the Papas, and singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Jimmy Webb, Walker proposes Laurel Canyon as rock's answer to Jazz Age Paris. It's a plausible concept, but one he stumbles to elaborate past the length of a magazine feature. The journalist, who lives in Laurel Canyon, delivers strong material on some of the musicians he cites, particularly in early chapters about Crosby, Stills & Nash and Frank Zappa, but offers little about other equally significant acts. Instead, he pads the story with lengthy sections on groupies and the music scene in other parts of the city, the Altamont concert (which was hundreds of miles away) and a digression on the history of cocaine. Furthermore, his enthusiasm for the Laurel Canyon legend leads to shaky critical pronouncements. If "the folk stars of the early 1960s were the first rock stars," for example, then what was Elvis? 8 pages of b&w photos.

Baby Boomers aren't the only ones who will appreciate this account of one of rock and roll's most famous L.A. neighborhoods, home to Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King, among others. This production should also appeal to any reader eager to study artistic flashpoints and to understand how artistic breakthroughs--whether the unique harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas or the dissonant chord progressions of Frank Zappa--are sometimes grounded in multigenerational influences. Narrator Lloyd James is no stranger to nonfiction about the music business. His crisp tenor voice also served him well as the narrator of biographies of Kurt Cobain (HEAVIER THAN HEAVEN) and Jimi Hendrix (ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS). R.W.S. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine