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Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and
Roll's Legendary Neighborhood
A Book by Michael Walker
(Faber and Faber)
First Appeared in The Music Box, June 2006, Volume 13, #6
Written by John Metzger
Given its proximity to Sunset Strip as well its prominence within Los
Angeles’ music scene, Laurel Canyon has more than a few stories to tell.
Admirably, author Michael Walker attempts to bind them all together into a
cohesive narrative for his recent book Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of
Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood. Told not chronologically but rather
via a series of vignettes, the tale — which in winding fashion covers a 17-year
span from 1964 until 1981 — slowly assumes an air of cinematic importance as the
lives of its central characters become entangled across Walker’s jumbled
spectrum of time. Initially, however, his nonlinear layout appears to be a
nearly fatal flaw as individual chapters about The Byrds, Frank Zappa, and Mama
Cass provide little traction while offering merely cursory examinations of their
subjects’ lives. Likewise, later segments on the drug trade, groupies, and the
transformation of the music business into a corporately controlled monolith have
been given more comprehensive examinations in other tomes.
Although the anecdotal details that Walker reveals don’t necessarily enrich
the individual stories contained in Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock
and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood, over the course of the entire book, they
do succeed in forming an overarching and extraordinarily insightful glimpse into
the sometimes chaotic but no less magical existence that Laurel Canyon provided.
He looks back upon the community’s formative moments with genuine affection, and
he chronicles its decline with such a journalistic eye that he captures in
bittersweet fashion the sad resignation of fate. In the end, he offers further
proof that each microcosm of popular culture has its own distinctive
characteristics that are shaped as much by time, place, and the personalities of
its inhabitants as they are by the world at large. As they are born, so must
they die, and try as it might, the music industry can’t create or replicate
them, though it surely can destroy them.  ½
Other Book Reviews at The Music Box
Robert Greenfield - Timothy Leary: An Experimental Life
Steve Martin - Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Michael Veal - Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae
Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary
Neighborhood is available in hardcover from Amazon.com.
To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please Click Here!
For UK orders, please
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Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary
Neighborhood is available in paperback from Amazon.com.
To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please Click Here!
For UK orders, please
Click Here!
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2006 The Music Box
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