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Review
‘Hoskyns impresses with the sheer weight of testimony he has amassed and the skill with which he has woven it into a tightly coiled and elegiac narrative.’ Christopher Silvester, Sunday Times
‘A terrific account of the interface between idealism and squalor, art and commerce.’ Guardian
‘The author skillfully teases out the complex web of relationships between the artists, managers, and record executives who made up the West Coast’s self-styled bohemian elite.’ Ben Thompson, Independent
‘if you are looking for the ingredients traditionally required of a good rock'n'roll story, then “Hotel California” has got the lot… An ambitious and authoritative account which makes overdue sense of a spectacularly decadent period of pop history’ David Sinclair, Guardian
Product Description
The story of a remarkable time and place: Los Angeles from the dawn of the singer-songwriter era in the mid-Sixties to the peak of The Eagles’ success in the late Seventies.
‘Hotel California’ is an epic tale of songs and sunshine, drugs and denim, genius and greed, and is the first in-depth account of the LA Canyons scene between 1967 and 1976.
Hoskyn's history of this vital period in the development of today's great musical influences spans the rise of Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, The Eagles, James Taylor and Jackson Browne, and focuses on the brilliance and determination of David Geffen, the man who linked them all.
Covering genius, drug-crazed disintegration, and the myriad relationships between these artists and the songs that issued from them, and drawing on extensive interviews with countless stars, singers, writers, managers, executives and scenesters, ‘Hotel California’ is a pop-culture classic.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
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If you have any interest at all in the Byrds/Crosby Stills Nash & Young/Joni Mitchell/Eagles era then this book explains a lot and fills in many of the gaps in your education. It doesn't just focus on the main characters either, all the associated artists turn up. Few are good and most come across as first rate jerks with Crosby and Stills as the the two biggest.
Cocaine features heavily indeed and it seems everyone was addicted to it and I never really understood the impact that this had on the artists and less so in the creativeness but more in their inability to keep it together. Throwing people out of bands because they were doped up seems an everyday occurrence.
What a superb read, I really couldn't put it down, unusual for me unless it is thriller fiction.
The straightest guy? well Frank Zappa apparently. I suppose if you were the only normal one amongst the drug crazed canyon then I guess you would be seen as very weird.
Totally recommend it.
Cocaine features heavily indeed and it seems everyone was addicted to it and I never really understood the impact that this had on the artists and less so in the creativeness but more in their inability to keep it together. Throwing people out of bands because they were doped up seems an everyday occurrence.
What a superb read, I really couldn't put it down, unusual for me unless it is thriller fiction.
The straightest guy? well Frank Zappa apparently. I suppose if you were the only normal one amongst the drug crazed canyon then I guess you would be seen as very weird.
Totally recommend it.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Hotel California deals with the weirdly incestuous West Coast muso community of the late 60s/ early 70s, living in Laurel Canyon, getting increasingly wasted, fried, bombed and laid and - somehow - producing music of often exquisite quality. How they managed to do this at the same time as all the extra-mural activity so lovingly detailed here (and not forgetting the two-timing, backstabbing and Machavellian business strategems pioneered by the likes of David Geffen) is never adequately explained and it's really the book's major shortcoming. A great read if Neil, Joni, Jackson, the Eagles et al are your bag, really quite boring if you're not, but at the same time, oddly compulsive, once picked up hard to lay down. A little like cocaine itself, it occurs to me. I wonder if that was intentional.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Subtitled "Singer-Songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons, 1967-1976", this is a dip into one of the fascinating periods of rock history - but also one of the most neglected.
It's the story of the talented but dysfunctional men and women who swirled through the boho milieux of the canyons surrounding LA in the 60s and 70s, and of the business brilliance of men like David Geffen who made so many of them into stars.
Ex-NME and Mojo scribe Barney Hoskyns is a thorough researcher and an elegant wordsmith. He offers a compassionate glimpse into the maverick genius of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, follows the drugged downward spiral of David Crosby, Gram Parsons and Cass Elliott as though he were tracing the whole decade's gradual descent into decadence and destruction. He describes the rise of country-rock through the stories of The Eagles and Little Feat, and how the glamorous decadence of LA imports like Led Zeppelin embraced the hedonistic past of the city's mainstream.
And through the stories of Geffen and his world, he shows how the dream of social change in the idealistic 60s was gradually transmuted into a business proposition; in the words of poet Jeff Nuttall, "how the market saw that these revolutionaries could be put in a safe pen and given their consumer goods."
In many ways, the story Hoskyns tells is a tragedy, a story of the death of youth and of hope in arguably the most decadent city on earth. But he never takes the easy route, never typecasts his subjects as either hero or villain. One of the book's most touching moments is Geffen's flash of insight into the artistic condition: "Artists tend to be difficult...by that I don't mean more difficult for me - I think their lives are more difficult for them."
It's the story of the talented but dysfunctional men and women who swirled through the boho milieux of the canyons surrounding LA in the 60s and 70s, and of the business brilliance of men like David Geffen who made so many of them into stars.
Ex-NME and Mojo scribe Barney Hoskyns is a thorough researcher and an elegant wordsmith. He offers a compassionate glimpse into the maverick genius of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, follows the drugged downward spiral of David Crosby, Gram Parsons and Cass Elliott as though he were tracing the whole decade's gradual descent into decadence and destruction. He describes the rise of country-rock through the stories of The Eagles and Little Feat, and how the glamorous decadence of LA imports like Led Zeppelin embraced the hedonistic past of the city's mainstream.
And through the stories of Geffen and his world, he shows how the dream of social change in the idealistic 60s was gradually transmuted into a business proposition; in the words of poet Jeff Nuttall, "how the market saw that these revolutionaries could be put in a safe pen and given their consumer goods."
In many ways, the story Hoskyns tells is a tragedy, a story of the death of youth and of hope in arguably the most decadent city on earth. But he never takes the easy route, never typecasts his subjects as either hero or villain. One of the book's most touching moments is Geffen's flash of insight into the artistic condition: "Artists tend to be difficult...by that I don't mean more difficult for me - I think their lives are more difficult for them."
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Superb
Perhaps the artist in these pages I was initially most interested to read about was Joni Mitchell, but there's The Eagles as well, and loads more, including big names like Neil... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Sebastian Palmer
Californication
I bought this book for my nephew having already read it previously. Anyone interested in music of a certain genre and/or the music industry will not help but be fascinated by the... Read more
Published 15 months ago by R. A. Starczewski
rockwriting at its best
For a rockreak a must.If you never where in LA you start packing when you read this book. Even if places like the Troub nolonger exist this is the story....
Published 20 months ago by Jan Stenstrom
The Way Thins Were
I bought this after seeing BBC's documentary of the same name. A very interesting insight into the working of the music scene at the time - a time before contracts and legal... Read more
Published on 19 April 2010 by N. Clarke
on the flossy side
This book is entertaining enough, and did provide a lot of information, but Hoskyns isn't in the same literary class as music writers such as Mike Barnes and Ian McDonald, so... Read more
Published on 30 Mar 2010 by Hugh Crawford
Tough going for the casual enthusiast
As a fan of Joni Mitchell and CSN(Y) particularly, I thought this would make an interesting read during the captive audience phase of plane/rail travel - and it definitely does. Read more
Published on 30 Dec 2009 by Slam
A Must-Read for Musos
Barney Hoskyns has cleverly strung together a sheer plethora of quotes to paint quite a luminous picture of a fascinating place and period. Read more
Published on 14 Oct 2009 by J. Marshall
Barney Hoskins does it again
After reading the magnificent 'say it one more time for the broken hearted'I thought Barney wouldn't be able to better his account of a place in time of modern music history,but he... Read more
Published on 8 July 2007 by Glenn Ellaby
Wish I was there
This is a superb read for anyone interested in the music of CSN, Joni Mitchell, The Eagles, Neil Young, Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Linda Ronsdalt, Gram Parsons, Little Feat, and... Read more
Published on 25 May 2007 by jol legend
An excellent read
I thoroughly enjoyed this as indeed I have enjoyed all of Barney Hoskyns' other books. If you are interested in the music of this time and place, it really is the definitive... Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2007 by Michael Lamont
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