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Transcript of Canyon of Dreams
C a n y o n
o f
D r e a m s
C a n y o n o f
D r e a m s
H a r v e y K u b e r n i K
F o r e w o r d b y r a y M a n z a r e K
a F t e r w o r d b y L o u a d L e r
T h e m a g i C a n D T h e m u s i C
o f L a u r e L C a n y o n
a L av i s h Ly i L L u s T r aT e D i n s i D e r ’ s L o o k aT 8 0 y e a r s o f m u s i C a n D C u LT u r e i n L a u r e L C a n y o nLaurel Canyon is a zip code with its own play list. To name just a few: sonny & Cher, The Doors, The Turtles, Canned Heat, The monkees, The Byrds, Buffalo springfield, Joni mitchell, Jackson Browne, Crosby, stills, nash & young, The eagles, Carole King—they all cultivated their immortal sounds in this L.a.-based musical fraternity. Canyon of Dreams, written by a long-time Canyon resident, Harvey Kubernik, who knows them all, traces the history of this community and its enduring legacy. Taking a deeply personal approach, he uses a multiple-voice narration based on exclusive interviews with the area’s musical elite. Because of their close and long-time connection with Kubernik, some of these stars are speaking openly for the first time.
This is the first full-color illustrated book dedicated to the Laurel Canyon scene. It features a foreword by ray manzarek of The Doors, and an afterword by Lou adler. and it contains more than 350 photographs, album covers, candid home photos, ticket stubs, and original flier artwork, including 100 photos—some never before seen—by acclaimed Woodstock photographer Henry Diltz, a Canyon fixture for the past 40 years.
eye-opening both visually and informationally, this is a book no music lover can be without!
I n T e r v I e W H I g H L I g H T s :
• randy meisner reminisces about the eagles first gig and the recording of “one of These nights.”
• graham nash reflects on life with Joni mitchell and describes writing “our House.”
• for the first time in years, the three surviving Doors members talk about performances, recordings, band dynamics, and, of course, Jim morrison.
• Lou adler discusses his legendary sunset strip venues—the Whisky a go go, roxy Theater, rainbow Bar & grill, and Tapestry—and, with michele Phillips, reflects on the monterey Pop festival.
• slash, a child of the Canyon, details the formation of guns n’ roses.
H a r v e y K u b e r n i K , a lifelong resident of Los angeles, is a veteran music journalist whose work has been published nationally in melody maker, The Los angeles free Press, Crawdaddy, musician, goldmine, miX, The Los angeles Times, and moJo, among others. He has been a record producer since 1979 and was a former West Coast Director of a&r for mCa records. as a West Hollywood and Laurel Canyon insider, Kubernik has unparalleled access to the sources and personalities still based in the beauty of the Canyon.
National publicity • 20-city morning drive radio tour • Features and reviews in music and general interest magazines Newspaper coverage in arts, entertainment, and book review sections • Online coverage and blog outreach
Author events in San Francisco, CA • E-blads available
MUSIC • October 2009 • $29.95 ($38.95 Canada) • Hardcover • 9 x 12; 384 pages; full color • ISBN 978-1-4027-6589-6
Reviewers are reminded that changes may be made in this uncorrected proof before books are printed. If any material from the book is to be quoted in a review, the quotation should be checked against the final bound book. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.
For more information, contact Megan Perritt at (646) 688-2526 or [email protected]. Cover design and collage by B
en gibson
Harvey Kubernik
Scott Calamar, editor
The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon
DreamsCanyon
of
STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarksof Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016© 2009 by Harvey Kubernik and LightSpeed Publishing, Inc.Foreword © 2009 by Ray ManzarekAfterword © 2009 by Lou Adler
Distributed in Canada by Sterling Publishingc/o Canadian Manda Group, 165 Dufferin StreetToronto, Ontario, Canada M6K 3H6Distributed in the United Kingdom by GMC Distribution ServicesCastle Place, 166 High Street, Lewes, East Sussex, England BN7 1XUDistributed in Australia by Capricorn Link (Australia) Pty. Ltd.P.O. Box 704, Windsor, NSW 2756, Australia
Packaged by LightSpeed Publishing, Inc.Interior design by X-Height Studio
Picture credits on page 360 constitute an extension of this copyright page
Product names mentioned in this book may be trademarks,registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective owners.Neither this book, nor its publisher, are authorized, endorsed,licensed or sponsored by, or affiliated in any with the productsfeatured herein.
Printed in ChinaAll rights reserved
Sterling ISBN 978-1-4027-6589-6
For information about custom editions, special sales, premium and corporate purchases, please contact Sterling Special SalesDepartment at 800-805-5489 or [email protected].
To Hilda and Marshall
Kubernik, who left Culver
City to move to the Fairfax
district. This book exists
primarily because of you.
Foreword by Ray Manzarek viii
Acknowledgments x
Introduction xiii
Chapter 1The Far Back Lot, Singing Cowboys, and All That Jazz 1
Welcome to the Garden 1
Chapter 2The Jazz Heads Were There First 9
The Birth of the Hot 9
Building to a Crescendo 14
The Dragon’s Lair 18
A Randi Musician 21
Voice Your Choice 25
Chapter 3Between Sunset and Mulholland 29
Born in Boyle Heights 29
Kentucky Woman 33
The Song Is You 36
Out of Their Heads 44
Chapter 4The Canyon Comes into Focus 49
Point and Click to the Music 49
Somewhere Friday Night 60
When New York Came to Town 64
Chapter 5Walking on Sunset 75
See You at the Go-Go 75
Love Street 83
Contents Chapter 6Swinging on the Vine 91
Hey, Hey, We’re Charting! 91
Where the Buffalo Roamed 101
Chapter 7The Storm and the Aftermath 107
Paranoia Strikes Deep 107
Powered by Flowers 115
Living the Blues 124
Chapter 8Candy for the Ears and Eyes 127
Invaders from the Inland Empire 127
Wizards of Oz 131
A Lot of Young Girls Are Coming to This Canyon 138
Chapter 9From the Canyon to the Bay 143
The Monterey International Pop Festival 143
Stormy Waters Ahead 154
Chapter 10A Melodic Menagerie 159
Wonderful, Wonderful 159
From Another Land 164
It’s the Song, Not the Singer 169
Chapter 11Underground, on the Airwaves 173
Flying on the Ground Is Wrong 173
The Crystal Ship Sets Sail 178
Chapter 12Blues Hit the Canyon 187
A ‘Spoonful’ of Laurel Canyon 187
Spill the Wine 194
Cielo Drive Blues 199
Chapter 13Country Comforts 203
On the Way Home 203
On a Carousel 212
Chatelaine of the Canyon 230
Chapter 14The Epicenter of a Sound Revolution 239
Your Mothers Should Know 239
I Feel the Earth Move 251
Chapter 15A Peaceful, Easy Feeling 263
Feat Don’t Fail Us Now 263
Browne-ian Motion 268
The Eagles Have Landed 272
Chapter 16Your Name Is on the List 285
Turn Up That Radio 285
Snow Falls in Laurel Canyon 289
Hollywood Nights 299
Clubland 304
Chapter 17Cultural Creatives 309
Home at Last 309
Elegant People 315
Chapter 18Detour Ahead 319
Even Paranoiacs Have Enemies 319
Rip This Joint 322
Buddha with a Beat 330
Chapter 19Laurel Canyon 2.0 337
Go for the Youth Market 337
Chapter 20Not Resting on Their Laurels 345
Long Promised Road 345
Summer Rain 348
Afterword by Lou Adler 357
About the Author 359
Photo Credits 360
Index 361
THAT CANYON. That deep green crease
that runs through the Hollywood Hills from
the Sunset Strip to the San Fernando Valley.
That curving, twisting boulevard of hipness and
psychedelia; of movie stars and mystics and jazz and folk
and rock; of Harry Houdini, Clark Gable, Shelly Manne, and
Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, and The Doors.
Not to mention the ladies—the flower children, the
witches, the punkettes, the starlets. The fine and sweet and
innocent chicks. Yes. The chicks. For that is what we called
them in the ’60s. All soft and bejeweled and feathered and
wrapped in their soft garments from antique clothing stores.
Clothes from another era, from a different place, from
anywhere else than where we were at the moment. From a
fantasyland of poets and knights and kings and queens of
the realm. Ahh, the girls. How loving and supportive they
were . . . and are to this very day. Taking care of their men;
their jazz musicians, their hippie guitarists, their poets, the
scribblers of tales.
And the men. Seeking fame, art, enlightenment. Seeking
knowledge. Knowledge of the world, of the human psyche, of
the machinations of the power elite of “show business.”
Seeking to make it! Seeking a way to subsist on the creations
of their minds, their brains, their hands, and finally and
truly, their guts. Pulling ideas free from the confines of their
souls. Their boiling and turbulent souls. Jim Morrison once
said, “A child is like a flower. His head is just floating in the
breeze.” And so are the men of the canyon. The men of
Laurel Canyon. The artists of Laurel Canyon.
And I was there. With Jim and John and Robby. With The
Doors. I spent many a day and night at John’s house up on
the top of Appian Way overlooking the City of Lights. He was
married to Julia Brose, and the gang would motor up to their
house for pool cue time, a touch of God’s good green herb,
bull sessions, and health food boozing. Julia was the Hostess
with the Mostest and kept the larder well stocked. Dorothy
(my wife and Doors muse), Lynn (the fox from New York)
and Robby, Jim and Pam (his cinnamon-sprinkled poetess
love) gathered up there, atop Laurel Canyon, to be young
and mad and in love.
Up in that cool-air height, Jim worked on a batch of new
songs with Robby playing acoustic guitar. They would bring
them down from Laurel Canyon to The Doors’ workshop on
the corner of Santa Monica and La Cienega. Robby would
pick up his electric Gibson, plug it into his Fender amp, and
begin to play. Jim would sing into his Shure mike plugged
into his own Fender amp, as John and I would listen to their
latest creation and then join in on beats and organ chord
changes. They would always have something cool up their
sleeves, like two monks coming down out of the Himalayas
with some holy (or unholy) ideas, or like Zarathustra
coming down from his high to whisper in Nietzsche’s ear the
words he spake. There was always a sense of excitement
about what they had created, and John and I, whipped up to
a high state of spine-tingle, would put the mood and the kick
to the juice they carried.
And out of that Laurel Canyon stimulation came such
songs as “Road House Blues,” “The Soft Parade,” “Wild
Child,” “Peace Frog,” “Five to One,” “Riders on the Storm,”
“Shaman’s Blues,” and Jim’s autobiographical ode to that
green crease in the mountains, “Love Street.”
He sang, “I see you live on Love Street.
There’s the store where the creatures meet.
I wonder what they do in there.”
Jim and Pam lived just behind the Canyon Country
Store. Legend has it in the same apartment that Clark Gable
conducted his trysts. The Canyon Country Store was the
only market in the Canyon and it was loaded with provisions
for heads with the munchies. Jim would love to sit out on
his balcony and watch the comings and goings of both the
elite and the hoi polloi. Or, as he liked to call the
exuberantly dressed children of the light, “the creatures.”
Danny Sugerman was one of those creatures. He was The
Doors’ manager for the last fifteen years of his too-short and
too-wild life. The original “Wild Child,” he started out as our
office boy at the age of fourteen, became Jim’s friend, was my
publicist and manager after John, Robby, and I went splitsville
in ’73, and worked his way up—through sheer grit and wit—
to take on the whole ballgame: Doors’ chief cook and bottle
washing manager! And he did a fine job of keeping Jim alive.
viii
Foreword
ix
Danny and I both wanted people to know that The
Doors’ lead singer was a damn fine American Poet. In those
managing years, Danny lived at 8632 Wonderland Avenue
(dig the rhythm of that address!), and worked out of the
upstairs office while I rehearsed the band “Nite City” in the
soundproofed living room. What madness in that two-story
Spanish bungalow. Iggy Pop falling by for bouts of uptown
and downtown revelry—with Danny matching his bud’s
every excess. Paul Warren, guitarist extraordinaire, downing
raw eggs in his beer and downing anything else he could
sniff out of Iggy’s stash of medications. Noah James just
being the mad lead singer. Nigel Harrison being an absolute
“glamour boy” bassist. Jimmy Hunter, our drummer man,
laughing at everything like a blissed-out Buddha-like Dean
Moriarty. And Ritchie Wright, our dwarf-man from New
Jersey, dropping by to act as mascot and instigator
whenever things got slow. What times we had in Laurel
Canyon! Damn, I miss the Sugerman.
And I miss Paul Rothchild, Doors’ producer and fine New
York intellectual. He bought twenty acres in Laurel Canyon,
with a very woodsy chalet-like home, and sold off a couple
of acres every few years to keep a nice SoCal lifestyle going
through all his fifty-nine years. Paul was the fifth Door.
Couldn’t have made the records we did without him. He was
in charge of the studio and Jim’s resident psychiatrist at the
sessions. Easy at first and damned hard later in our career.
But he did a terrific job. And he knew his music. He was a
J.S. Bach maven and Greenwich Village folk music scene
luminary in the early ’60s. Knew his Miles and ’Trane, too. I
loved that cat.
And I loved Dick Bock, the head and founder of World-
Pacific Records! The man who brought the cool West Coast
jazz scene to America. All that super-cool Gerry Mulligan,
Chet Baker piano-less quartet jazz, and the Shorty Rogers
septet-octet recordings, and Shelly Manne and Barney
Kessel of smooth guitar—who also lived in Laurel Canyon—
as did Mr. Richard Bock. Now here’s the coincidence: I heard
a fair amount of World-Pacific records in my growing-up
years in Chicago and loved that California sound. I
especially remember a Kenneth Patchen poetry reading of
“Lonesome Boy Blues” with the Modesto Brisenio’s Chamber
Jazz Sextet backing him. It was cold mid-December and the
warmth of Patchen’s voice and the honey of Modesto’s
baritone sax made me want to get to California now! That
record was a Dick Bock production. So, I finally got to L.A.
and my brother’s surf-blues band—Rick and the Ravens—
got signed to, guess what, World-Pacific Records—the rock
subdivision, Aura Records. I finally met Dick Bock and we
got to talking about LSD and spirituality—he brought Ravi
Shankar to the American ear. He knew his Indian mysticism.
I told Dick I was in the throes of a bad acid meltdown after
having blissful experiences of oneness on the chemical. I
wanted that bliss back! Instead, I was lost in the paranoid
darkness of ego trap. A classic bummer. Dick said, “Why
don’t you try listening to this guy?” And he gave me two
discs by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi! He said a
class is going on in mantra meditation and maybe I should
take it. I listened, dug it, and took the class. I was going to
get high naturally. Well, I didn’t really get high but I did calm
down my jangled nerves. And the point of this story is,
guess who were in that small, maybe twenty-person,
class? John Densmore and Robby Krieger. Looking for
enlightenment! No Dick Bock, no Doors. Did somebody say
“serendipity”? Or was it Laurel Canyon?
There was always some kind of magic afoot in that
Canyon. The light and the sun infused that zone with a sense
of joy. There was always something spiritual about that slice
through the green earth, but never more so than in the ’60s.
A generation had opened the William Blake/Aldous Huxley
Doors of Perception. We had seen the oneness of all creation.
We had left behind the strictures of organized religion. We
had become the new tribe. Inter-racial, inter-generational,
inter-national. And it felt as if we were spreading the
message of (dare I say it today) “Love” to a new world.
Come, join us in this celebration of the planet we cried
out. Come, join us in this celebration of the light, of potency,
of magic, of enlightenment. We are all one! And for the time
that it lasted, we were golden. We were the precursors of the
Golden Race, of that time to come when the races and
religions of the earth will blend together to become the new
people of the planet. The lovers, not the killers. Born to
dance and sing and have great, golden copulations. The
caretakers of this Garden of Eden. Bedazzled by this
thousand-faceted diamond that we call existence. Nurturing
the soil. Honoring all the creatures we share this globe with.
Ultimately being the new Adam and Eve. Alive!
And that was the foundation of Laurel Canyon.
Ray Manzarek
March 2009
xiii
LIKE SO MANY characters who come to
Southern California in search of a new
narrative, even the eucalyptus trees are not
native. Imported from Australia as wind blocks, they serve
as vigilant sentinels deployed upon escarpments that define
so much of the topography of Laurel Canyon.
On this particular late summer night, the paradoxical
charms of the canyon reveal themselves; an eerie quiet
settles over the snaking boulevard that is choked daily by
beleaguered commuters desperate to reach West Hollywood
at one end or the San Fernando Valley at the other.
Sandwiched between these two ravenous cauldrons of
commerce, Laurel Canyon is both an escape into a bucolic
Neverland and a playground for real estate developers
anxious to sell the “canyon experience.”
It’s after midnight when the music kicks into high gear. It
is emanating from a decrepit stucco house perched near the
Laurel Canyon Store, the hitching post center-of-town for the
local denizens. Traipsing up its steep, shambling steps to a
surprisingly capacious terrace, past a throng of enraptured,
Introduction
Workers removing loose rocks from embankment alongLaurel Canyon Road, 1920.
xiv C A N Y O N O F D R E A M S
glassy-eyed bodies, one cannot help but submit to this mise-
èn-scene that screams, “Dude, you are where it’s at!”
Meanwhile, a middle-aged vinyl geek gleefully surveys
life-altering Phil Ochs, Chris Darrow, Gram Parsons, and
Flying Burrito Brothers LP sleeves while his buddy DJs from
behind a cranky turntable, spinning the snap, crackling
sounds to an appreciative crew milling outside.
An alluring Mex-Tex Aquarian emerges from the shadows
and asks for a light. With her long, radiant dark hair parted
willfully down the middle, a batik scarf masquerading as a
blouse, tanned coltish legs sheathed in boots of Spanish
leather, her sly, unspoken gestures promise more than just
a smoke.
“I’m just back from the Thai/Burmese border,” she
murmurs. “Peace Corps, y’know. South America’s next.
“God, I love the Canyon. It’s my first time here. I love
the vibes.
“Home? I’m from New Mexico but I could really love living
here. It’s got soul. I’m listening to a lot of Otis Redding . . . ‘Try
A Little Tenderness.’ Yeah!”
She starts to sway to music only she can hear, in a
motion that Tina Tuner calls “nice and eeeasy.”
Much later, Jim Kweskin is holding court, dosing the
room with his gentle acoustic reveries. He was one of the
headliners at the ’65 Newport Folk Festival, the infamous
event where Dylan went electrical bananas. It’s a trip to see
him up close. He’s surrounded by recording equipment that
even Pete Seeger could manage; an Ampex 2-track is
huddling with Leo Fender’s reverb unit while a honky-tonk
piano sits catty-corner from a Hammond organ.
Kweskin has the room singing in grainy harmony. And all
the girls, resplendent in their youth and beauty, have that
blissed-out look of enchantment that can drape this cruel
world in evanescent fantasy.
But this is not a ’60s flashback nor the feverish story-
boarding of a film school graduate high on his first feature.
This is the home of Jonathan Wilson: musician, guitar builder,
recording engineer, and all-American grounding wire from
North Carolina. He has set up shop in Laurel Canyon, in the
year of our gypsy renaissance 2008.
“I wasn’t tryin’ to re-create anything,” says Wilson on a
sunny late afternoon when the house is empty, silent, and
stoic. Guitars line the walls like blue ribbons from a county
fair, and the inclination is to sit a spell, unwind, repose, and
compose. “I wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout the history of Laurel
Canyon and all the great players livin’ round here. You can
throw a Frisbee from the porch and hit the vacant site of
the Frank Zappa cabin. I just learned about that. It’s just a
great place to get some work done, you know.”
Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes has been a recur-
ring presence as has Barry Goldberg, a keyboard maestro
from the halcyon ’60s.
“I don’t know what it is, but you just mention Laurel
Canyon and it gets everybody’s musical juices flowin’, like
there’s somethin’ in the air,” Wilson avers.
Laurel Canyon’s stature as a thrumming hub of creative
co-habitation places it in very rarefied company. Artists of
all stripes have historically clustered in metropolitan cul-de-
sacs, where rents were cheap, women plentiful, and dealers,
hustlers, patrons, and poseurs could generate critical mass
by stoking ambition and opportunity. From the shabby
studios of Montmartre, where Picasso and Modigliani
caroused with artistic impunity, to the third-floor walk-ups in
’50s Greenwich Village, where Beatniks bopped to the birth
of the cool, big cities have always provided sanctuary from
the straights and suits.
Unlike its kindred habitats in Paris and New York,
however, Los Angeles’ bohemian grove was no sheltered
oasis. Rather, it was part of the city’s all-consuming effort to
package and market a Mediterranean arcadia to land-thirsty
Easterners enthralled with the baronial prospects of owning
Spanish haciendas and Moorish estates. Providing water to
this blossoming splendor has filled reservoirs with both
myth and movies—most famously Roman Polanski’s
Chinatown, a paean to the black art of squeezing blood from
a rock. Against this morally dubious backdrop, Laurel
Canyon grew slowly, sprouting wood cabins among the
copious outgrowths of chaparral and sage. A spring-fed
stream provided the precious elixir.
As much a part of the native flora and fauna, the Canyon
attracted its share of cranks and kooks. Frederick Shaw, aka
“Crazy Shaw,” took hold of the local imagination in the
early 1900s. He was either prescient or a crackpot; probably
a little of both. His proposals careened wildly from Jules
Verne-like contraptions to a new Eden based on vegetari-
anism and nudity. He was, in historian and Shaw biographer
Ralph Shaffer’s view, “the first counterculture resident of
Laurel Canyon, an apt forerunner of the Zappas, Mamas and
Papas and all the other denizens of the canyon almost a
century later.”
xvI N T R O D U C T I O N
Shaw never made any money but he did acquire 160
prime canyon acres that are worth tens of millions today
(bursting real estate bubbles notwithstanding).
Charles Spencer Mann, engineer and land speculator,
raised the stakes, figuratively and literally, in furthering the
development of the canyon. Mann and his partners bought
property along the boulevard and up the hillsides. Historical
information provided by The Laurel Canyon Association
reminds us that “he installed the nation’s first trackless
trolley in 1913 to bring residents and prospective buyers
from the streetcar line at Sunset Boulevard to a roadhouse
tavern at Lookout Mountain Avenue. The fare was ten
cents.” It was this log cabin roadhouse that later became the
home of silent film star Tom Mix; eventually it morphed into
the antic playpen of Frank Zappa, who occupied it for a
crucial six month period in 1968. His residency has taken on
Alice-in-Wonderland proportions with Canyon mythologists
and gossips. It burned to cinders in the 1970s, taking all its
real (and imagined) secrets with it.
The trolley, like L.A.’s famous red cars, ultimately gave
way to automobiles, the boulevard providing asphalt
nourishment to the tracts of homes, many cantilevered atop
perilous hillside bluffs, which forever altered the physical and
psychic landscape of the Canyon. This, in turn, provided an
irresistible challenge to some of the world’s leading architects
to plant their visions on this most unorthodox canvas.
Rudolf Schindler’s “Fitzpatrick House,” for example, built
in 1936, is a tour de force of modern design, weaving the
deft symmetry of European classicism with the uniquely
improvisational nature of SoCal living. Space and form never
demonstrated such nerve.
Other distinguished architects who brought their talents
to the Canyon included John Lautner (check out his way
cool “Chemosphere” house off Mulholland Drive) and Walter
Gropius, founder of the fabled “Bauhaus School,” a design
movement of the early twentieth century, which promised
humanistic progress in the daunting machine age.
In the Fifties, Arts and Architecture magazine
commissioned a series of “case study” houses: steely-
efficient, unadorned models crafted with a Lego-esque logic
that anticipated the housing tastes of the Jetsons. Julius
Shulman’s shimmering photograph of Pierre Koenig’s case
study house #22 is as seductive to the eye as any David
Bailey fashion spread.
With its proximity to the Hollywood dream factory, it
wasn’t long before a parade of screen stars took possession
of these architectural jewels. Clara Bow, Ramon Navarro,
Errol Flynn, and Harry Houdini, among a cast of thousands,
closed escrows in this sumptuous new retreat. (Houdini
lived only briefly in the Canyon before departing this mortal
coil; his wife, Bess, continued to hold séances in their living
room for years after. Given the notoriously faulty cell
reception in the area, it’s unlikely she ever made contact.)
Producer, music mogul, and magician’s apprentice Rick
Rubin recorded the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Blood Sugar Sex
Magik multi-platinum album in his Laurel Canyon home
studio as well as albums by Audioslave, System of a Down,
and Linkin Park.
But where exactly does “Laurel Canyon” reside: in its
broken rows of sun-bleached, birds-eyed bungalows, which
creep up the granite terrain to the crest of Mulholland
Drive? Or is it found in the artists themselves, arriving each
decade like migrating swallows, endowed with new songs,
new beats, and a new vantage point from which to fix their
true north?
Laurel Canyon was the place where you ran away from
your parents, hid from authorities, wrote music, books,
screenplays, and hung with bands, chart-toppers, and
pretenders. A territory that promised breezy brunettes and
bottle blondes. And the music it gave birth to, from the early
’50s through the end of the ’70s—before swollen egos and
swollen nostrils brought a heavy rain down—through rising
rents, floods, fires, and earthquakes, somehow still informs
the soundtracks of our lives. It was an area where you
created by retreating, and did not flash your cash. To get
discovered or to get covered (a royalty being the biggest
high of all). It was where Los Angeles and Hollywood met in
a rollicking soul shake.
This book is a guided journey through the Canyon,
explored in the personal reminiscences of its longtime
residents, of native Angelenos, and even some survivors
of Hollywood High School and Fairfax High School in West
Hollywood (an institution I graduated from), which were the
staging grounds for so much of what came to be known as
the Canyon culture. These imagineers nurtured the soil for
the innocents and wannabes—those who came for fame and
then split when the good times turned sour. The locals, for
the most part, stayed. This is their story.
Canyon of Dreams focuses on the regional wordsmiths,
authors, musicians, photographers, rock bands, record label
xvi C A N Y O N O F D R E A M S
owners, careerists, poets, dancers, session cats, cool kittens,
hardcore record collectors, blues and folk-rock aficionados,
DJs, Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and the pure players—a
verdant field where the lyricist and the bassist are equals.
Many of the contributors are familiar and others are coming
forward for the first time.
We will follow the toe-tapping path of the jazz artists
who arrived in the post-war ’40s—like guitarist Barney
Kessel—to the scene-addled poets who set the table for the
newly-forming electric bands. Sharing street corners with
studio contract composers, a new breed of artists created
widescreen images with their words and music.
Much of the existing writing about Laurel Canyon
invariably runs toward a world of heedless sex, drugs, and
great heaps of money—in a word, the record business. One
reads the litany of police busts, rioting youth, empty
political gestures, and the drug-drenched comings and
goings of a pampered rock elite that brings a weariness to
the soul.
Canyon of Dreams presents and documents a different
side of Laurel Canyon. In this world, the local kids and
transplants regale us with their hitchhiking adventures; of
sharing a ride with a music legend heading down the hill for a
pack of smokes and a six-pack and a timeless melody. While
walking the dog you could stumble upon a jam that brings
tears to the ears of archivists and collectors. It was as much a
commune as a community—a zip code with its own play list.
The imperishable sounds of Sonny & Cher; The Doors;
Love; Turtles; Association; Canned Heat; Monkees; Byrds;
Jackie DeShannon; Poco; Buffalo Springfield; MFQ; Mamas
and the Papas; Joni Mitchell; Jackson Browne; Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young; Eagles; War; Carole King; John Mayall; The
Factory; Little Feat; Guns N’ Roses; and Piscean soul legend
Bobby Womack were cultivated in the Canyon.
Paul A. Rothchild, Lester Koenig, Richard Bock, Dusty
Springfield, Johnny Echols, Alice Cooper, Saul Hudson,
Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Anthony Kiedis, Barry McGuire,
Humble Harve, Larry Williams, David Carradine, Sky Saxon,
former Governor of California Jerry Brown, Chris Bunch,
Toni Stern, and Mama Cass Elliot have called it home.
B. Mitchel Reed, Les Carter, Don Randi, Derek Taylor, Wayne
Shorter, and members of the Firesign Theatre bunked in the
area. Meanwhile, Jack Nitzsche, Gerry Goffin, Quincy Jones,
and Dr. James Cushing all resided nearby, just off the
melodic intersection of Coldwater Canyon and Mulholland.
Marilyn Manson, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lili Haydn,
Tom Morello, Mark Mothersbaugh, the Telacasters, Bill
Mumy, Geoff Emerick, Danny Hutton, Jeremy Toback, Barry
Goldberg, Entrance, Zowie Scott, Gary Calamar, Ione Skye,
Ben Lee, Jan Henderson, and Dweezil Zappa continue the
tradition in today’s digital wonderland.
Once, there was a world consisting of guileless true
believers living in a woodsy cloister. They drove ten minutes
down Sunset Blvd. to earn their keep: plentiful studio work,
publishing deals, a robust club scene. And, as the smog-
shrouded daylight gave way to the vermilion dusk,
musicians tuned their—and our—expectations to a jingle-
jangle “A,” which resulted in a body of work that continues
to be played, parsed, sampled, siphoned, stolen,
repackaged, re-released . . . revivifying.
Laurel Canyon.
Come. Listen to this neighborhood.
Harvey Kubernik
Hollywood, California
The Garden was a place for Hollywood people to stay or
just to hang out. They could pull their escapades out of the
public eye, even though you could stand at the corner of
Sunset and Crescent Heights and toss a rock into the place. In
that regard, it was what Laurel Canyon itself would become: a
little semi-private area that was very close to Hollywood itself.
Anthony Quinn first saw the complex in 1939, looked around
at all of the trysting going on, and pronounced it “The Riding
Academy.” John Barrymore went on drinking binges there.
1
Welcome
to the Garden
THE GARDEN OF ALLAH apartment
complex was a three-and-a-half acre oasis
for Hollywood people, right near Sunset
Blvd. and Crescent Heights, at the entrance to Laurel Canyon.
It had been built by one of Rudolph Valentino’s wives—the
actress Alla Nazimova—and boasted a swimming pool
shaped like the Black Sea. It opened in 1927 as a private
housing and hotel complex with a Moorish-styled main
building and twenty-five little bungalow villas.
The Far Back Lot, Singing Cowboys, And All That Jazz
The Song
Is You
36
PRIOR TO THE BEATLES, pop singers
were primarily distinguished by their
interpretive skills. From Sinatra to Presley,
from Peggy Lee to Patsy Cline, the voice was put at the
exclusive service of a professional songwriter’s felicitous
marriage of words and music.
Lennon and McCartney, however, shifted the paradigm,
wherein the artists themselves composed and performed
their own material. Their unprecedented success threat -
ened to extinguish the careers of mere singers.
In this grave new world an interpreter could chart a hit
course provided that the song demonstrated a challenging
edge—one that subverted the commercial mainstream. Glen
Campbell became the voice to songwriter Jimmy Webb’s
wholesale assault on the tyranny of the verse/bridge/chorus
structure; Danny Hutton championed such iconoclasts as
Randy Newman and Laura Nyro; and Van Dyke Parks, like a
surrealistic Schubert, wrote and arranged music for artists
Glen Campbell racked up a number of gold records in the 1960s.
Campbell is most acclaimed, of course, for his sterling
renditions of composer Jimmy Webb’s mini-masterpieces:
“By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” and
“Galveston.” These songs have secured for Campbell the
rare distinction of being both a musicians’ and audience
favorite. His television show for CBS, Glen Campbell’s
Goodtime Hour, further endeared him to a generation of easy
listeners. Now in his seventies, Campbell is enjoying a
healthy reappraisal of his early work. Like Johnny Cash, he
has been “rediscovered” by younger, fresher ears, for whom
the charge of MOR [Middle of the Road] artist carries no
disrespect. Glen Campbell has never played an inauthentic
note. Few can make that claim.
Born in Billstown, Arkansas, April 22, 1936, Campbell
moved to Los Angeles in 1960 from Albuquerque, New
Mexico. His first job was playing guitar on a demonstration
recording songwriter Jerry Fuller wrote for Sam Cooke.
37T H E S O N G I S Y O U
who took no prisoners. Together, they represented the next
wave of interpretive voices and, providentially, renewed the
art itself.
By the Time I Get to . . . Sunset
Glen Campbell arrived in Los Angeles in 1960, a young man
with as much gumption as talent. He could play guitar with
natural ease, an all-rounder who fit effortlessly into the
studio industrial complex. You would be hard-pressed to
name a hit from the tunedex that he didn’t play on circa
1962 to 1967.
During that period, Campbell was a much in-demand
studio session guitarist and his credits include dates for The
Monkees, Merle Haggard, Nat Cole, Ricky Nelson, Johnny
Cash, Dean Martin, Gene Clark, The Mamas and the Papas,
Jan & Dean, Bobby Darin, Nancy Sinatra, Phil Spector, Brian
Wilson, and Lou Adler. He’s heard on The Beach Boys’ LP
Pet Sounds, The Crystals’ “He’s A Rebel,” and Elvis Presley’s
“Viva Las Vegas.”Legends Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens alongwith Glen on his CBS TV show
174 U N D E R G R O U N D , O N T H E A I R W A V E S
Neil Young in Laurel Canyon, 1967
Neil was already telling Teen Set magazine-type people he
was working on a ‘mini-opera.’
“Neil had two incredible abilities which impressed a guy
like Nitzsche, who had listened to hundreds of songs and
countless singer-songwriters. Jack was used to everyone
with a little Martin acoustic guitar just strumming. Neil really
took into consideration going to a minor chord, which few
people liked to do. And he also was very good—like on their
debut Buffalo Springfield album and ‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t
Even Sing’—playing with time changes. Like where Frank
Zappa could throw my ass a curve ball anytime he wanted
to: ‘Okay, we’re going to 6/8 time.’ And I only knew 4/4. I
heard that song and said to Neil: ‘You need to do this song.
Forget about The Everly Brothers. You need to cut this.’”
Bruce eventually attended a few sessions when
“Expecting to Fly” was being recorded at Columbia and
Sunset Sound studios.
“A whole lot of it focused on the drummer really being
able to give it a flow,” explains Bruce. “There were stops in
that song. Nitzsche was famous for his Wagner-like
arrangements and brought Wrecking Crew musicians into
the mix like Don Randi, Jim Horn, and Hal Blaine. They spent
a lot of time on it.
“Neil oftentimes didn’t like going out per se. A lot of it
had to do with his epileptic condition. There were some
nights where he would say, ‘I need to be contained by the
four walls here.’ And I saw all the anti-seizure yellow pills
he was taking. And later, on the way to Buffalo Springfield
shows, Stephen Stills would say to him, ‘Don’t forget your
medicine, Neil.’”
Denny Bruce can be heard banging tambourine on the
Nitzsche-arranged “Porpoise Song,” from the soundtrack to
The Monkees’ feature film Head. Neil Young played with
Bruce on “As We Go Along” from Head as well.
In 1967, John Densmore was living on Utica in Laurel
Canyon, directly next door to Neil Young.
“The landlord was Kiyo. She had this rambling Hobbit-
like place with two or three guest houses,” Densmore
175F L Y I N G O N T H E G R O U N D I S W R O N G
Felix Cavaliere (of The Young Rascals) with Stephen Stills and Neil Young (seated) shopping for clothing at De Voss on Sunset Blvd.
Neil was really upset. You know, the
vibration, the ignorance. That did it.
At that moment, he started writing
‘Southern Man.’ I was there; I
experienced the same moment. I knew
what was going on in Neil’s head.
“During the tour, Steve Stills,
knowing the band was on the way out,
said, ‘Hey listen, Dennis. We’re starting
a new band. Do you want to be the
drummer?’ ‘Thanks anyway, Steve, but
I have to hang at the beach. I have my
own thing to do.’ And the band that
emerged out of that was Crosby, Stills
& Nash. I later visited Neil Young in
Topanga a couple of times. One of our
tour photos was included in his
Decade album.”
176
remembers, “and Neil was in one and I
was in the other. I can remember when
Neil said, ‘Come on over. I want to play
you something.’ And he played me
‘Expecting to Fly.’ He mentioned that
he had bought a house in Topanga. He
had just quit Buffalo Springfield and
was moving out. And he said, ‘Well, I
got forty grand, that’s what I got out of
Buffalo Springfield and bought this
house. I’m out of here!’
“One night at the Whisky, Buffalo
Springfield was playing and they
flipped on some strobe lights in the
middle of their set and Neil stopped
playing and put his forearms over his
eyes. ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ ’Cause
that stuff messes up epileptics, you
know. Maybe ‘Expecting to Fly’ is a
little bit about that,” reflects Densmore.
In 1968, Dennis Dragon was
playing percussion with The Beach
Boys as part of a tour of the South,
along with The Strawberry Alarm
Clock and Buffalo Springfield. One
night after a show in Alabama, Dragon,
Neil Young, and Dragon’s brother
Doug—The Beach Boys’ pianist, went
to a local restaurant.
“This was during the time of Easy
Rider, that cracker mentality. I went out
to eat with my brother Doug and Neil,”
recounts Dennis, “and some guys were
in the room, sitting near us, bugged by
our long hair. We overheard them
saying, ‘Now, you take the one with the
curly hair and I’ll take the other one
and we’ll do ’em up!’ We had to split.
Luckily one of the big guys from the
crew appeared, a big roadie who came
in and said, ‘I think it’s time to leave.
We’re outnumbered.’ And they didn’t
want to fuck with him. You know what I
mean. Neil had been having epileptic
seizures and I saw one onstage. And
The poster for Buffalo Springfield’s last concert
U N D E R G R O U N D , O N T H E A I R W A V E S
“I went to the last Buffalo
Springfield concert in Long Beach in
1968 where they played with Canned
Heat and Country Joe & the Fish,”
recalls Denny Bruce. “I rode in the
limo with Neil Young and Jack
Nitzsche. We gave Jim Messina, who
was in the band at the time, a ride
home back to Hollywood that night.
Jim was crying like a baby. Neil was
not bummed out Buffalo Springfield
was ending. He was relieved. That’s
why he rented the limo. He liked the
whole experience. I don’t remember
the show. They were better at earlier
gigs than they were that night.”
“At the Troubadour I ran up to
Neil Young after he left Buffalo
Springfield and when he was starting
his solo career in 1968,” says Kim
Fowley. “Neil was visiting the room
and I mentioned, ‘I think your song,
“Broken Arrow,” is great!’ And he
replied, ‘So do a lot of people.’ ‘And it
means a lot to a lot of people.’ ‘Right.’
That was it.”
“I did the PR photos for Neil
Young when he did his first solo LP,”
Nurit Wilde recalls. “He had already
left Laurel Canyon and was living in
Topanga. Part of it was achieving the
kind of success that they did in a high
profile industry; it makes a lot of
people crave privacy. And Neil was
always a bit of a loner. And I never
knew this at the time, but Neil liked to
micromanage everything.”
177
The House That Barney Buil t
Barney Kessel’s “Music World” in Hollywood on Vine
opened in July 1967. The store was so close to the hub of
the record business that guitarists could park in the Capitol
Records lot—with validation, natch—if they couldn’t find a
spot on the street. Milt Owen was the premiere guitar repair
person in town. Frank Zappa, Chris Darrow, and members of
The Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield would trek to the
store for new equipment or repairs. Visiting English music
royalty like Eric Clapton and John Lennon were customers, too.
Barney’s son David Kessel still has the Kay bass that was
used on The Association’s “Windy.”
“For some reason they had no bass for the session and
someone came over from Capitol Records where they were
recording and asked to borrow a bass. The thing about the
Kay bass is that it’s a hollow body/solid body instrument. It’s
like a Hofner without the ‘F’ holes. It has air inside a solid
outer covering. I got it for my fifteenth birthday and still
have it.”
F L Y I N G O N T H E G R O U N D I S W R O N G
182
Manzarek has another Laurel Canyon Morrison memory
to share:
“I’m picking up Jim at his house that overlooked the
Laurel Canyon Store, the place that ‘Love Street’ is about.
You could look down and see all the hippies going in and
out. It’s middle of the afternoon, and we’ve got a flight at 4
p.m. at LAX.
“I go upstairs and knock on the door. ‘Hi Jim. It’s Ray.
Let’s get going.’ I’ve come in a limo. We’re big-time now. It
picks me up and off we go to Laurel Canyon to pick up Jim,”
Manzarek continues. “I walk in and somebody says ‘Come
in.’ There’s a girl and Jim. He’s sitting on a chair, rocking
back and forth. His bag was packed for a two-niter. ‘Come on
man, let’s go. We have to get to the airport.’ ‘Ray, Ray,’ his
eyes were blank and he was staring into the future and his
voice was soft. ‘Hey, what’s wrong,’ I said, and he said, ‘Ray,
what do you think happens when you die?’ And I said to
myself, ‘Oh no, not a philosophical discussion now. No.’ I
said, ‘I’ll tell you what man, I don’t think you ever die.’
“And the girl who was sitting there responds with, ‘Oh
yes. That’s it. That’s it. You never die.’ And Jim said, ‘I don’t
know about that, man. I just want to know what happens
when you die.’ ‘Well, that’s all I can say on the subject dude,
’cause we’ve got to catch a plane, man.’ ‘All right.’
“So I lift him up by the arm and off we went down the
stairs and never discussed it again. There was that
existential moment where he scared the shit out of me. My
insides dropped. The angel of death passed by, flapping its
wings, and hit me in the gut. And I had psychic bowel
evacuation and the angel of death moved on. And, you know,
he only lasted about three more years after it.”
The Doors began recording The Soft Parade in November
1968, and completed it in July 1969. The album was recorded
in West Hollywood at Elektra Records studios on La Cienega
Blvd., produced by Paul Rothchild, who brought in arranger
Paul Harris to do the string and horn overdubs.
“When we started The Soft Parade,” explains Robby
Krieger, “it was after The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s. I never liked
U N D E R G R O U N D , O N T H E A I R W A V E S
183T H E C R Y S T A L S H I P S E T S S A I L
the idea myself of strings and horns. It was an experiment.
But once we decided to do it, we did it. In fact, we knew
going in that the arrangements we made for the songs were
actually tailored to have strings and horns. I would work with
Paul Harris ’cause I knew very little about orchestration. I
would give him ideas for a horn line here and there and hope
for the best. But he really did most of the work.”
Krieger and The Doors were particularly thrilled about
the participation of well-regarded jazz veteran Curtis Amy
on the project. “On ‘Touch Me,’ Curtis took the sax solo.
That was the first time that happened. It served the song.
That was another example of egos not getting in the way for
the sake of the song. Doug Lubahn and Harvey Brooks were
the bass players on The Soft Parade.
“When we did the first Doors album, Jim was totally
inexperienced in the studio as far as recording his vocals.
He had a year with his voice playing live every night. He had
never done anything in the studio. And I think by the time
The Soft Parade came around, his voice had matured a lot as
far as low notes and range. I don’t think he could have sung
‘Touch Me’ nearly as good if that was on our first album,”
Krieger speculates.
That same month, The Doors were asked to headline the
17,505-seat “Fabulous Forum” in Inglewood, California. “The
Doors were the first to feature ’50s rock ’n’ rollers on our
shows,” says John Densmore. “For the Forum we got to
choose the second act; initially we suggested Johnny Cash,
but the promoter said no because ‘he was a felon.’ We then
secured Jerry Lee Lewis, because he was ‘acceptable.’”
In 1969, The Doors booked a couple of shows at the
Aquarius Theater on Sunset Blvd.
“I used to go there for midnight shows when it was the
Kaleidoscope,” Densmore continues. “I remember The Fool,
who were from Holland, and they were painting the
Aquarius. I saw HAIR there. It had an influence on some of
my theater work.
“When The Doors played the Aquarius, it was my idea
for the second set, I said to Jim—this is after Miami, and it
“When we did the first
Doors album, Jim was totally
inexperienced in the studio
as far as recording his
vocals. He had a year with
his voice playing live every
night. He had never done
anything in the studio.”—Robby Krieger
184 U N D E R G R O U N D , O N T H E A I R W A V E S
was a small venue for us and we didn’t have a lot of gigs:
‘You know, you see that rope from the balcony that they
used to swing around in HAIR, you might, in the middle of an
instrumental, go around there, and he fuckin’ did it. He
swung on a rope down to the stage like Tarzan. And
everybody went nuts. It was a great moment, a little scary.
He was gaining some weight and had a beard, ‘hang on
tight.’ But it was great,” Densmore reminisces.
“The best show I ever saw was The Doors in 1969 at the
Aquarius Theater,” claims Kim Fowley. “I had seen them in
1966 at Ciro’s. I also went with my driver, Warren Zevon, in
’69 to see Morrison read poetry with Robby Krieger at a
Nancy Chester and the Dutch band, The Fool, painting the psychedelic wall at the Aquarius Theater
185T H E C R Y S T A L S H I P S E T S S A I L
benefit for Norman Mailer’s political campaign at a place on
Sunset Blvd. I had met Pamela Courson, Jim’s wife, at the
Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Morrison later said to me,
‘When you fall in love, you’ll be a better poet.’”
Doors producer Paul Rothchild lived on Ridpath Drive in
Laurel Canyon. Rothchild worked closely with Elektra
Records’ President Jac Holzman and helmed the recording
console on The Doors’ first five albums. Ray Manzarek sheds
some light on how their albums were “taste-tested” by
Rothchild and the band members before public
consumption.
“Paul Rothchild was a stone-cold intellectual. A fan of
Bach. Out of New York City. One of the most intelligent guys
I ever met in rock ’n’ roll. Great ears. Rothchild had two
types of marijuana. Paul had these little vials. One was ‘WD,’
called ‘work dope,’ and the other was ‘PD,’ ‘playback dope.’
‘WD’ was not too strong, you could get a little buzz, a little
mellow, and enter into a proper space and you had your wits
about you and had your energy, and could play your
instrument. And then after the evening’s recording you
could sit back and have something a little bit stronger. ‘This
is the listening dope. Light up a joint, have a couple of puffs.’
“The Doors weren’t potheads or dope addicts or
anything,” Manzarek continues. “All it took was a couple of
tokes and you were stoned. ‘Now let’s hear what we’ve
done.’ And we would give it the pot test. The takes that
218 C O U N T R Y C O M F O R T S
In December of ’68, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Paul
Rothchild went into the studio and recorded two songs:
“You Don’t Have To Cry” and “Helplessly Hoping.” “And
they’re pretty stunning,” Graham feels.
Ultimately, the band decided on producing themselves
at Wally Heider’s in Hollywood with engineer Bill Halverson.
“I must tell you that Stephen Stills was an incredibly
impressive musician at that point,” says Nash. “He played
everything. He was an amazing musician. And generous. And
one of the things that we loved was that there were no rules.
And there have never been any rules. And there will never
be any rules in CS&N. It doesn’t matter who sings, maybe we
switch in the chorus, ‘you sing the high part and I’ll sing the
low part.’ There were never any rules.
“Joni (Mitchell) loved Crosby, Stills & Nash as much as
we did. She was the very first person on this planet to hear
that sound. We did go and sing for Cass but the very first
time was in Joni’s living room.
“It’s not lost on me that I am coming from Laurel Canyon
into Hollywood to record. And sometimes I would walk from
Joni’s house to the studio. I was in heaven. I was a musician
making music with incredible people with a bunch of
incredible songs and the freedom to keep everybody out of
the studio that would fuck it up.”
They also knew that they needed high-powered
management to do the dirty work and heavy lifting required
to get their album promoted and marketed in the radio and
retail universe. Graham Nash initially wanted Larry Kurzon,
who was then affiliated with the William Morris Agency and
a good friend of his from London.
Kurzon had already heard the Paul Rothchild-produced
two-song demo of CS&N and wanted desperately to be their
manager. He met with them, as did Albert Grossman, Bob
Dylan’s manager. David Geffen and Elliot Roberts, however,
were warming up in the bullpen and angling to take over
the game.
“Larry was completely blown out of the water by Geffen
and Roberts,” Nash admits. “Because they were sharks. I
loved Elliot. He was an incredibly funny man. You know,
he should have been a stand-up comedian. He really should
have. With any balls he should have. He loved the music.
Don’t forget, he was already managing Neil and he
was already managing Joan. So we knew that he had
incredible taste.
“When David (Crosby) was producing Joni’s first record,
obviously he was one of Elliot’s best friends. And so it made
sense that Elliot, who managed Joni, managed Neil, was best
friends with David, knew Stephen, it was obvious that he
would be our manager. Then we needed business acumen
that wasn’t there in Elliot at that point.
“So we arrange a meeting with this guy, David Geffen. I’m
David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash
219O N A C A R O U S E L
in New York. We go to this building that is fifty-eight
thousand stories tall and go to the twenty-eight-thousandth
floor. When we get out and meet Geffen in his office, well,
there’s no desk. And I loved that. I thought, ‘Wow, this guy is
fuckin’ cool. He doesn’t even have a desk. He’s not sitting
behind some throne and looking down on us. This guy is
real.’ It’s only years later I find out that not only did he not
have a desk but it wasn’t even his fuckin’ office! Geffen had
borrowed it for the meeting.”
And what was the clincher for the team of Geffen and
Roberts?
“When they both said to us, ‘Listen. Do what you do.
230
Chatelaine of
the Canyon
IT IS ONE OF rock’s most poignant images: a fair-
haired, anxious, young performer, seated at a
piano on a makeshift stage; a near-riotous crowd
of 300,000-plus drug-addled music fans hovering ever nearer.
Only the palpable force of her fraught yet resolute appeals
for calm keeps this sea of madness at bay.
It’s August 1970, at the Isle of Wight, which is playing
host to the biggest pop music festival ever held. Appearing
just prior to the inscrutable Miles Davis and his wall of
electric voodoo, Joni Mitchell is accompanied only by her
elastic soprano voice, an oddly tuned acoustic guitar, and
the aforementioned piano. Preserved for posterity by
documentarian Murray Lerner in his film, Message to Love,
Mitchell walks a fine line between a professional’s need for
composure and the sensitive artist’s quest for emotional
authenticity. That she restores order by virtue of her
songcraft is a testament to the unique position this
Joni Mitchell playing dulcimer in Laurel Canyon, October 1970
Canadian-born poet of the open
wound held at the turn of that decade.
Just three years earlier, Mitchell
was busking around Greenwich
Village’s folk club scene. There she
met Elliot Roberts, a true believer,
who quit his job to take the reins of
her inchoate career. Roberts, who
would later join forces with music
impresario David Geffen to form the
most powerful artist management
company in the business, followed
Mitchell to a gig in Florida, where a
serendipitous encounter with David
Crosby led her to forsake the Big
Apple for the ripening prospects in
the city of lights, Los Angeles.
Mitchell signed with Reprise
Records, an affiliate of the much-
admired Warner’s family. Her debut
recording was cut at Sunset Sound
Studios, with David Crosby producing,
and Buffalo Springfield tracking across
the hall. It was heady times, indeed, to
be young and gifted.
Such acute proximity to rock ’n’
roll’s reigning stallions led Mitchell
into a series of professional and
personal partnerships that have
acquired mythic proportion. In 1969,
she famously set up house with the
gentlemanly Graham Nash—their
Lookout Mountain cottage becoming
the epicenter of Laurel Canyon’s hip-
geoisie. Nash would write “Our
House,” one of the most enduring
songs on CSN&Y’s Déjà vu, about
his illustrious co-habitation with
Mitchell.
Mitchell’s every release delivered
striking musical vistas—peculiar
chord voicings, obtuse rhythms—that
cast the arch-intimacies of her lyrical
flights into a sui generis whole. From
Ladies of the Canyon, through Blue,
Court and Spark, and The Hissing of
Summer Lawns, Mitchell held queenly
sway over the ’70s; a totemic
presence for impressionable young
women, a giantess in the ears of
seasoned musicians and the next
wave of striving singer-songwriters.
“The first time I saw Joni Mitchell
was when she opened for Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young at the Greek
Theatre in Los Angeles,” offers Robert
Hilburn, former pop music critic for
the Los Angeles Times, who reviewed
Mitchell’s work in the paper for several
decades, “and I’m sorry to say I didn’t
think she had all that much of a future.
Even though she sang such exquisite
songs as ‘Both Sides Now’ and
‘Chelsea Morning’ that 1969 night, I
couldn’t imagine any female ego in a
rock ’n’ roll world filled with sexism.
Some people in the audience thought
the only reason she was on the
bill was that she was Graham Nash’s
girlfriend.
“But all that changed in the 1970s
when Joni turned out a series of
albums as insightful and well-crafted
as any in pop history,” Hilburn
continues, “Ladies of the Canyon, Blue,
For the Roses, and Court and Spark
each brought us new levels of
231C H A T E L A I N E O F T H E C A N Y O N
232 C O U N T R Y C O M F O R T S
“‘Our House’ was the house with Joni,” explains
Graham Nash. “It was on Lookout Mountain. It
was owned by Joni and still is. And we lived together
there for at least a year and a half. We were together for
about two years. I have nothing but warm feelings about
that house. Joni is obviously an incredible artist and so
surrounds herself with beauty as she should do. Hers was
a very simple beauty: ‘Our House . . . ’ I think every
musician that writes a good song that he thinks is worth a
shit wants to broadcast it out there. We’re communica-
tors, after all.
“Joni and I had been to breakfast at Art’s Deli on
Ventura Blvd. and were walking back to the car and she
passed a small antique store and saw a small beautiful
vase in the window, and Joni, you know, probably still
has her first Canadian dollar. She does not spend a lot of
money frivolously. It was expensive then. About $150 and
she loved it. So we went in and bought it and put it in her
bag and then put it on the table. And I said, ‘You know
what? Why don’t you put some flowers in there and I’d
light a fire.’ Because it was one of those Los Angeles
Graham Nash on His Song “Our House”mornings where it’s not quite raining but it’s cold and
damp and stuff. And so I’d lit a fire and I said, ‘What a
fuckin’ ordinary moment that was. But wait a second.
We all have these ordinary moments and this one I
want to celebrate.’ So it was one of the only times when
she was putting flowers in the vase that she wasn’t at
the piano. By the time she’d finished making this
beautiful flower arrangement and the fire was ready to
go, the song was born.
“The house had a large, life-size, wooden carousel
pig in the corner. Bricks, wooden floors, lace curtains, a
couple of stained-glass ornaments in the window, which
were the jewels that I was talking about in the song. The
piano was a small dark Steinway. Maybe five and a half
feet long. I became a better songwriter there because I
was free. I was free of all the silly stuff with The Hollies
and I was in a brand new place that was exciting. I was
hanging out with David and Stephen and Joan who
were tremendously involved in a new kind of
communication. I was on top of the world. And every
time I go past that house, I smile.”
Joni Mitchell’s Laurel Canyon home was ‘Our House’
achievement and ambition. Though her melodies were as
original and absorbing as anyone in the singer-songwriter
movement, it was her words that connected most strongly.
The lyrics she spoke moved beyond the surface of romance
and heartache to speak with breathless delicacy about the
contradictions and frustrations in the search for a
relationship.
“Her greatest strength—also the hallmark of such later
albums as The Hissing of Summer Lawns and the
incomparable Hejira—was her ability to look at life with a
fearless honesty that ruled even the thought of trying to
filter, soften, or glamorize what she saw and felt. In the
decade of singer-songwriters, she was rivaled only by
Dylan,” he concludes.
Musician-guitarist Slash, of Guns N’ Roses fame, first
heard Mitchell’s early albums as a young child growing up in
Laurel Canyon. “Joni is an amazingly convincing poet who
sings with a soothing delicate vocal delivery that
is very warm and comforting in a strangely distant kind of
way, which makes her haunting. But, just as important as her
voice, she is an amazing songwriter and guitarist, using fan-
tastic chord voicings to support her ethereal melodies. I love
all her records but Ladies of the Canyon is definitely one of my
favorites.”
UK author, Eddi Fiegel, who penned the book, Dream a
Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot, also feels that, with
the exception of Mama Cass Elliot, “Joni Mitchell held a
unique position at the heart of Laurel Canyon, accepted not
only as a lover by lynchpins of the
community David Crosby and Graham
Nash, but more importantly as a
fellow artist and equal. Her combina-
tion of vocal purity, musical artistry,
and sophisticated lyrics resonating
with sage observations on life, love,
and loss was as striking then to the
musicians of the Canyon as it remains
several decades on. Ladies of the
Canyon and Blue are not just snap-
shots of an era when there were ‘lots
of pretty people,’ but captivating
reflections on life itself.”
Ola Oliver was a Hollywood High
School girl who struck out for England
in the ’60s, in quixotic pursuit of all
the glittering prizes. She found them,
not there, but back in Los Angeles, as
a fashion designer for some of the
leading female voices in pop—Joni
Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt among
many others. Her husband, Tony
Hudson, exercised his artistic gifts as
the designer of the some of the most
memorable album covers on Geffen
Records. But the Hudsons’ most
ballyhooed creations are undoubtedly
their sons Albion (aka Ash), a noted
clothier himself who owns Conart,
and Saul, who goes by the more
recognizable moniker: Slash. Yes,
that’s right; underneath that black top-
hat and Rapunzel-esque cascade of
curls is the dutiful son of a mixed-race
couple who allowed this Laurel-
Canyon-raised stripling to go for the
gold in bad-boy behavior with Guns
N’ Roses.
Ola Hudson came back from
Europe in 1968. Her mother had
gotten a house in Laurel Canyon on
233C H A T E L A I N E O F T H E C A N Y O N
‘Can we please pack up all this food.’
That was mortality speaking. I swear I
remember Frank needing me to
literally carry him up the stairs after I
gave the food to Gail and pretty much
got him into the bedroom. And that
was really verboten. I mean, if there
was one place you never went that
was in the Zappa house, it was the
bedroom. I had been to that house
one hundred times and never saw
the bedroom. On this trip I’m in the
friggin’ bedroom. And I know I
realized, and it all hit me, that this
would probably be the last time I
would ever see him. And I remember
Frank, and I’ve never told anybody
this, I remember him laying there and
reaching out to me and he put his
hands on me and said, ‘I just want you
to know how great it was to have you
guys singing with me.’ And I wanted to
say, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ And then he
said, ‘I want you to tell your partner
that he was just the best singer that I
ever had.’ I said to him, ‘You know
248 T H E E P I C E N T E R O F A S O U N D R E V O L U T I O N
music than Jackson Browne and The
Pretender. No disrespect intended—
he’s a genuine part of Laurel Canyon
history, too. But even that would have
never happened without Frank Zappa.
“In our Flo & Eddie show, we
did satire and parody, and carried on
Frank’s mission to make fun of
what? You tell him. I can’t tell him.
You’re gonna have to be around just a
little bit longer ’cause you’re gonna
have to do that. I don’t want to be the
bearer of any bad news and I’m not
gonna do that.’”
Volman confirms that Zappa never
bothered with such vanities as his
musical and cultural legacy, let alone
the undeniable influence his vast
catalogue had (and still has) over
generations of players and listeners.
“Frank never worried about what
impact he had. He never worried
about what reviewers thought of him.
He was constantly working. We
would finish an album and it would
get released. He would work, tour,
do promotion, and he was already
working on the next thing.
“Alice Cooper was Zappa’s
invention, too,” reminds Mark Volman.
“With his Bizarre/Straight record label,
Frank opened the door to Captain
Beefheart, the GTOs; he created a
more exciting period of American
“Frank was not like any rock person I
knew. He didn’t go out to the movies;
he didn’t go to Starbucks; he wasn’t
pining for attention like every other
star. He felt best when he was at home
in Laurel Canyon.”—Mark Volman
celebrity. We were one of the first acts in pop music to say,
‘This is not all it’s cracked up to be. Look behind the
curtain.’ I know that Frank worked with a shitload of great
musicians, but I think the difference was that we were the
only two people allowed to traverse that line you did not
cross. It was an unspoken thing. Frank at home was one
thing—when you were on stage, that was business. The
question I am always asked the most is, ‘What was Frank
like offstage, out of the image?’ And I always say, ‘There was
no image.’”
Volman marveled at Zappa’s non-stop work ethic.
“Frank was not like any rock person I knew. He didn’t go out
to the movies; he didn’t go to Starbucks; he wasn’t pining
for attention like every other star. He felt best when he was
at home in Laurel Canyon. He was there to sleep, he was
there to write, and he was there to raise a family. He was
249Y O U R M O T H E R S S H O U L D K N O W
Frank Zappa on the set of The Monkees back in 1966
Engineer Hank Cicalo, Carole King, and Lou Adler (right) recording Tapestry
256
Lou Adler on theBirth of Tapestry
“The climate of the late ’60s had no women in the Top Ten
charts, except Julie Andrews on The Sound of Music
soundtrack,” Tapestry producer Lou Adler explains. “Before the
Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, I flew to New York and
tried to sign Laura Nyro. I invited her to perform at the Festival.
Carole was in a group, The City, who I produced for Ode in 1968.
The LP was called Now That Everything’s Been Said. The City
album was supposed to be a group, even though it sounds a little
like Tapestry, not so much in the subtleties, but in the way the
group plays off of each other.
“At the time Carole did not want to be a solo artist. She
wanted to be in a group and she was more comfortable in a
group. She didn’t want to tour that much or do any interviews.
And we started to get those kinds of songs that would then
lead us to Tapestry. Toni Stern, a writer for Screen Gems,
collaborated with Carole earlier on the Monkees’ Head
soundtrack and Carole’s City album, and her debut album
Writer. I knew her a little bit. She was introduced to Carole
by Bert Schneider of RayBert Productions, producers of
The Monkees. I saw her when the songs were presented with
Carole to me for Tapestry.
“Danny Kootch [Kortchmar] and Charlie Larkey were on
The City album, they are the core certainly of Tapestry—
Larkey on both electric and acoustic stand-up bass and his
relationship with Carole at the time, husband. And father
of babies to be. His bass was very important to the sound
and feel of Tapestry.
“As music often does, it becomes the soundtrack of the
particular time. What I think happened in ’70 or late ’70 to
’71—James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Carole—is that
the listening public and the record-buying public bought
into the honesty and the vulnerability of the singer-
songwriter, naked in the sense—you know, what James
was singing about, “Fire and Rain.” Their emotions that
they were laying out there allowed the people to be okay
with their own (emotions). And I think the honesty of the
records—there was a certain simplicity to the singer-
songwriter’s record because they either start with vocal-
guitar or piano-voice.
T H E E P I C E N T E R O F A S O U N D R E V O L U T I O N
could visualize the musicians that were playing the
instruments. And also tie Carole to the piano so that you
could visualize her sitting there, singing and playing the
piano, so that it wasn’t ‘just the piano player,’ it was Carole.
And that came from the demos, which would start with
Carole playing and singing, as well as doing some of the string
figures, always on piano.”
James Taylor contributed acoustic guitar to “So Far
Away,” “Home Again,” “Way Over Yonder” and “You’ve Got A
Friend,” in which he and Joni Mitchell provide background
vocals. Taylor covered “You’ve Got A Friend” on his
257I F E E L T H E E A R T H M O V E
June Christy’s Something Cool did infuse Adler’s
approach to Tapestry—Adler calls the former “a smooth
ride,” resulting from the sequencing and continuity of songs.
He also pays homage to jazz-great George Shearing who,
especially when working with Peggy Lee, doubled his piano
with other instruments such as the guitar. Adler said he did
the same, doubling King’s parts with Danny Kortchmar’s
guitars.
“Carole’s piano playing on the demos dictated the
arrangements,” Adler explains. “What I was trying to do was
to re-create them in the sense of staying simple so that you
CLYDE JACKSON BROWNE was born in
Heidelberg, Germany to American parents.
He and his family returned to the United
States, to the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, when he
was three. The clan then moved to Orange County where
Browne attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton,
California.
Chris Darrow is one of Jackson Browne’s favorite
songwriters and has known Jackson since 1966 when
Darrow was in the band Kaleidoscope. Darrow was later a
member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
“Jackson would show up at our gigs,” Darrow recalls.
“Always the singer-songwriter, he set himself apart from his
contemporaries at the time. His boyish good looks and his
ability to write lyrics that were beyond his age gave him an
identity all his own. He had both memorable lyrics and
hooks that made his music stand out against the more
sensitive singer-songwriters of the time, who tended to be
more introspective and insular. The great singer-songwriters,
from Dylan and James Taylor to Leonard Cohen, all have the
ability to write personally in a way that makes their words
268
Browne-ian
Motion
seem to speak to everyman. Jackson’s second album was
called For Everyman, and he became, along with the
aforementioned, the front man for the singer-songwriter
movement in California in the 1970s.”
Back in 1966, Browne performed on the Southern
California coffeehouse circuit and then joined the Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band himself for a few months. The group did
some of his songs on two of their albums.
In 1967, Browne landed a publishing deal with Nina
Music/Elektra Records, which placed his tunes in 1968 on
Jackson Browne in 1966
269B R O W N E - I A N M O T I O N
Jackson Browne,April 1972
albums by Joan Baez, Tom Rush, and
Steve Noonan. During that time
period, Browne split to New York and
backed Tim Buckley while also
teaming with Nico, who recorded
three of his compositions, including
“These Days,” on her Chelsea Girl LP.
Browne then returned to Los
Angeles. He quickly found accommo-
dations on the laundry room floor of
industry-mensch Billy James’ Laurel
Canyon retreat. James, not for the first
(or last) time, provided unwavering
support to an artist who ran counter
to the prevailing winds. Browne
unsuccessfully tried to record a solo
album and formed a folk group with
Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce.
And, like so many other aspirants,
Browne stood dutifully in line at the
Troubadour’s open-mic Monday Night
hootenanny—a showcase that years
later would take on biblical import,
but, in 1970, it was the last train to
nowhere for almost all who took the
stage. Browne was among the eager
wannabes—a prolific composer of
earnest, brown-eyed soul who watched
with increasing frustration as his
window of opportunity began to close.
Browne continued to play local
clubs and music venues, and his
reputation as a songwriter continued
to grow around the business and
among recording artists. David Crosby
touted his songs around town and
during interviews.
Local DJ Johnny Hayes on radio
station KRLA would mention Browne’s
name over the airwaves between
1969 and 1971 when spinning Nico or
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band records on his
Collage program. Linda Ronstadt and
The Byrds then did Jackson’s songs.
By late 1971, partially on the
270 A P E A C E F U L , E A S Y F E E L I N G
strength of a widely circulated demo tape,
Browne signed to David Geffen’s fledgling
Asylum Records label.
Henry Diltz first met Jackson Browne at
the Troubadour in the late 1960s. “I first
knew Jackson Browne when he lived around
the Hollywood Bowl. Gary Burden, my
partner and graphics artist, and I were hired
by David Geffen to go over to this young
songwriter’s house and take pictures of him
around 1971.
“We had a beer and talked for a few
minutes. Jackson said, ‘You want to hear
some of the music?’ And we went to the living
room and he sat down at a grand piano and
played a chord. ‘Holy shit!’ Being a musician
I loved the music and was enthralled by it. He
sat down there and played ‘Rock Me on the
Water.’ Blew my mind. My jaw dropped. I got
chicken skin. Goose bumps.”
In 1972, Jackson Browne, his debut album
of all original songs, was released. “Rock Me
on the Water” and “Jamaica Say You Will”
featured David Crosby on harmony vocals,
while “Doctor My Eyes” included background
vocals from Crosby and Graham Nash.
Browne’s voice had a callow, post-
adolescent yearning that struck many industry
ears as amateur, but his songs were finely tuned
to the emerging ethos of the confessional that
would soon become all the rage.
For Everyman was issued in 1973 and included “These
Days” and “Take It Easy,” which he had co-written with
Eagles’ Glenn Frey. It had been their debut single and a hit
record in 1972. “Take It Easy,” with its polished veneer of
country comfort and gritty guitar interplay, was Browne’s
ticket to ride. He wasted no time in establishing himself as
the most sensitive singer-songwriter in the newest wave of
rock sensations.
Then came 1974’s Late For The Sky, followed by The
Pretender in 1976 and 1977’s Running On Empty.
The plaintive For Everyman, the scouring self-scrutiny of
The Pretender, and the painterly ambition of Running On
Empty were all pieces of a contemplative musical mind. This
one-time student of Canyon shaman Lowell George made it
safe to “feel” the music more deeply than ever before.
Running into the sun wasn’t just a metaphor; it was a call to
urgent action, a time to lay open your heart.
271B R O W N E - I A N M O T I O N
“In 1971, The Byrds on their Byrdmaniax album did
a rendition of Jackson Browne’s ‘Jamaica Say You
Will’ while he attended the recording session,” Kim
Fowley recalls. “I was also present at the Columbia studio
when The Byrds covered three songs I had written with
then Byrds-member, Skip Battin: ‘Tunnel Of Love,’
‘Citizen Kane,’ and ‘Absolute Happiness.’ Terry Melcher
was one of the producers of the album. I was in the studio
with Jackson and J.D. Souther. I remember The Byrds cut
a version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like A Woman’ at our
session and Jackson played piano on that track.
“I had heard of Jackson earlier. I had known about
him from a music publisher, Mickey Goldsen, who was
Johnny Mercer’s publisher and had Lee Hazelwood
copyrights at Criterion Music. His son Bo Goldsen told me
about Jackson and they had Jackson Browne as a writer
in those days. I think they had a few of his songs like
‘These Days.’
“Souther was in the Columbia studio and said, ‘Hey,
me and Jackson are writing a song called ‘James Dean.’
Come down and finish it with us in Silver Lake.’ ‘No. I’ll
stay here. You guys grab it.’ I had a date that night with
Kate Taylor, the sister of James Taylor. Well, the Eagles
ended up covering it and that would have been a pension
fund for me. That was my bad choice.”
Kim Fowley Joins the Flight
C a n y o n
o f
D r e a m s
C a n y o n o f
D r e a m s
H a r v e y K u b e r n i K
F o r e w o r d b y r a y M a n z a r e K
a F t e r w o r d b y L o u a d L e r
T h e m a g i C a n D T h e m u s i C
o f L a u r e L C a n y o n
a L av i s h Ly i L L u s T r aT e D i n s i D e r ’ s L o o k aT 8 0 y e a r s o f m u s i C a n D C u LT u r e i n L a u r e L C a n y o nLaurel Canyon is a zip code with its own play list. To name just a few: sonny & Cher, The Doors, The Turtles, Canned Heat, The monkees, The Byrds, Buffalo springfield, Joni mitchell, Jackson Browne, Crosby, stills, nash & young, The eagles, Carole King—they all cultivated their immortal sounds in this L.a.-based musical fraternity. Canyon of Dreams, written by a long-time Canyon resident, Harvey Kubernik, who knows them all, traces the history of this community and its enduring legacy. Taking a deeply personal approach, he uses a multiple-voice narration based on exclusive interviews with the area’s musical elite. Because of their close and long-time connection with Kubernik, some of these stars are speaking openly for the first time.
This is the first full-color illustrated book dedicated to the Laurel Canyon scene. It features a foreword by ray manzarek of The Doors, and an afterword by Lou adler. and it contains more than 350 photographs, album covers, candid home photos, ticket stubs, and original flier artwork, including 100 photos—some never before seen—by acclaimed Woodstock photographer Henry Diltz, a Canyon fixture for the past 40 years.
eye-opening both visually and informationally, this is a book no music lover can be without!
I n T e r v I e W H I g H L I g H T s :
• randy meisner reminisces about the eagles first gig and the recording of “one of These nights.”
• graham nash reflects on life with Joni mitchell and describes writing “our House.”
• for the first time in years, the three surviving Doors members talk about performances, recordings, band dynamics, and, of course, Jim morrison.
• Lou adler discusses his legendary sunset strip venues—the Whisky a go go, roxy Theater, rainbow Bar & grill, and Tapestry—and, with michele Phillips, reflects on the monterey Pop festival.
• slash, a child of the Canyon, details the formation of guns n’ roses.
H a r v e y K u b e r n i K , a lifelong resident of Los angeles, is a veteran music journalist whose work has been published nationally in melody maker, The Los angeles free Press, Crawdaddy, musician, goldmine, miX, The Los angeles Times, and moJo, among others. He has been a record producer since 1979 and was a former West Coast Director of a&r for mCa records. as a West Hollywood and Laurel Canyon insider, Kubernik has unparalleled access to the sources and personalities still based in the beauty of the Canyon.
National publicity • 20-city morning drive radio tour • Features and reviews in music and general interest magazines Newspaper coverage in arts, entertainment, and book review sections • Online coverage and blog outreach
Author events in San Francisco, CA • E-blads available
MUSIC • October 2009 • $29.95 ($38.95 Canada) • Hardcover • 9 x 12; 384 pages; full color • ISBN 978-1-4027-6589-6
Reviewers are reminded that changes may be made in this uncorrected proof before books are printed. If any material from the book is to be quoted in a review, the quotation should be checked against the final bound book. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.
For more information, contact Megan Perritt at (646) 688-2526 or [email protected]. Cover design and collage by B
en gibson