Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cocaine Cowboys - but not for the US edition, 27 April 2006
For those of us lucky enough to live in the Los Angeles canyons - and for anyone interested in the particular brand of distinctive folk/country/FM rock (as it progressed from one to another) that emerged from LA in the late 1960s and early 1970s - Barney Hoskyns' book, Hotel California is essential reading.
Here in the US, it bears the somewhat cumbersome subtitle, The True-life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends, whereas the British edition, which I read (and which was published some months in advance of the US edition), has the far snappier - and provocative - Singer-Songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons, 1967-1976.
The book is a fascinating reminder of the music that mutated first from East Coast protest folk - largely through the influence of Doug Weston's Troubadour club on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood - into LA's own brand of mostly Laurel Canyon-based country-folk, then went on to achieve huge mainstream success through such musicians as Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (in their various incarnations), James Taylor and Jackson Browne, before becoming an FM radio behemoth with such acts as the Eagles - from whose signature album, the book's title is taken.
Along the way, Hoskyns' book dishes the dirt on the tangled relationships - and partner swapping and stealing - between many of the musicians, and the manner in which the music business, with no small help from a young and highly ambitious David Geffen, co-opted the LA sound into a massive money-making machine.
There are also intriguing historical asides about Los Angeles itself: the fact that Laurel Canyon had an experimental "trackless trolley" that ran from Sunset Boulevard to Lookout Mountain between 1909 and 1915; that much of the land in the canyon was bought and developed by such early movie stars as Charlie Chaplin and W C Fields, and that Harry Houdini built a stone castle there, with underground tunnels; that, due to the labyrinthine nature of the winding hillside lanes, the canyon was home to brothels and speakeasies during Prohibition and after; and that "the store where the creatures meet" in the Doors' song, Love Street, is none other than Laurel Canyon's very own Country Store.
Then there is the exodus of musicians from Laurel Canyon in the late 1960s, farther west to the more rural and remote Topanga Canyon, in search of more personal freedom (not least the freedom to get high) and a dream of western/country living - and, as the 1970s progressed and the hippie ideals of the 1960s faded, the increasing blight of drugs, particularly cocaine, on personal relationships, health (several drug-related deaths are recorded) and the music itself.
The book ends with an appendix: Mellow Gold: The Tape From California, which lists Hoskyns' choice of the essential music of the era. I must confess that it made me listen to some music that I hadn't heard for many years, some of which sounds great - and some of which sounds very much of its time.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential companion to the west coast soundtrack of the 70's, 30 Dec 2005
I would not typically buy this type of book, expecting it to be written for the real enthusiasts. But, having enjoyed the words and music of so many of the artists written about-The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell and CSN to name but a few-and then to read how good it was in the Xmas press, I bought a copy.
And it is an excellent read. A real page turner. Personal stories, business stories, the high's and the low's, and the ultimate success that all these artists eventually brought to creating one of the most distinctive periods in US music history.Their stories are much more intertwined than I first realised, but the graphic 'family tree' from Rolling Stone Magazine dated February 3rd 1972 at the beginning of the book sets out the plot clearly for all.
WIth many of the artists still performing and producing excellent material, it's an interesting look back at how they all began.
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46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
5 star overview of a popular but critically neglected scene, 13 Nov 2005
The American west coat music of the seventies is sometimes unfairly denigrated as bland material peddled by coked out superstars with too much sunshine at hand. This isn't really the case as a number of classic albums 'Late For The Sky', 'Starsailor', 'Hissing Of Summer Lawns', 'On The Beach','Hotel California' etc came out of this scene. And any scene that included 3 of the best songwriters ever (Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young) has to be worth a look at. It's therefore good to see this area at last getting properly documented. Hoskyn’s book is thorough, (sometimes the sheer weight of reminisces and quotes from various artists and label execs forces you to re-read passages) and engaging. There's a lot to cover in this book and it's not for the short of attention span. It traces the roots of this scene describing how folk artists mutated into sensitive singer songwriters who in turn mutated into west coast americana. The book largely begins with the rise of Laurel Canyon in the late sixties as a sort of artist's colony and moves on from there through the rise of David Geffen's asylum label, and to the internecine rivalries of the Eagles at the height of their popularity. The book also reveals the inspirations and love affairs etc behind the songs - you learn some of the real life identities of the characters who populate Mitchell's and Browne's songs for instance.In summation, anybody interested in Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, The Byrds, Gene Clark, Neil Young, Tim Buckley, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt etc. will get something out of this book. Now a plea - will somebody please do properly remastered and documented reissues of the Asylum label classics. Oh, and as others across this site have asked for , can we have reissues of Tim Buckley's ‘Blue Afternoon’ and ‘Starsailor’ as well.
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