
Laurel Canyon
The Inside Story of Life in L.A.'s Legendary Rock and Roll Neighborhood
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Narrated by:
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Lloyd James
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By:
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Michael Walker
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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)
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Captivating
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Lloyd James made this book come alive!
FASCINATING, BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN!!
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Stunning Social History
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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.
Half of This Story Takes Place Outside the Canyon
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Well done!
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Not Surprising
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Very personal
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Intuitive and works, what more do I need?
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Interesting book. Poor reader.
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Whimsically melancholy.
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