#70s pop stars full#

It just pushed me up against the back wall. I went into a coffeehouse in Coconut Grove, and Joni was singing “Michael from Mountains” or “Both Sides, Now,” and I was just gobsmacked. I’m very romantically inclined and I’d always wanted to get a sailboat and just sail away. MANY OF THEM HAD SEX WITH ONE ANOTHER,” SAYS DAVID GEFFEN.ĭAVID CROSBY, singer-songwriter-guitarist, the Byrds Crosby, Stills & Nash CSNY: After I got tossed out of the Byrds, I went to Florida. LAUREL CANYON “WAS A SCENE WITH TALENTED, ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE. He’s certainly proved to be an icon in rock and roll, but Stephen was the heart and soul of Buffalo Springfield. But I don’t think Neil ever really wanted to be in a band. Neil Young had been living in his Pontiac hearse, but he moved up to Lookout. Once we started playing at the Whisky, everybody moved to Laurel Canyon-it was the spot. RICHIE FURAY, singer-songwriter-guitarist, Buffalo Springfield, Souther Hillman Furay Band, Poco: Stephen Stills said, Come out to California-I’ve got a band together. My neighbors, who were six feet from my house, were junkies I was out of town and came back and their house had burned down to the ground. It had a fireplace and it was mysteriously protected by a force. I probably paid more for it because I paid it off. I paid $36,000 for it, but I paid it off.

#70s pop stars full#

The hill behind my house was full of little artificial man-made caves. I bought this little house, and David Crosby chided me for it he said I should have looked around. David was my agent Elliot was my manager. JONI MITCHELL, singer-songwriter-guitarist: Elliot, David, and I migrated from New York to Los Angeles. It certainly was a forerunner of today’s “Americana.” But in truth, it was an amalgam of influences that included blues, rock and roll, jazz, Latin, country and western, psychedelia, bluegrass, and folk. The music was mislabeled “soft rock” or “folk rock,” especially in the Northeast, where critics panned it as granola-infused hippie music-too “mellow” and too white. They took drugs together, formed bands together, broke up those bands, and formed other bands. Many of those houses were cottages with stained-glass windows, and fireplaces that warmed the living rooms in the chilly L.A. They made music together, played songs for one another with acoustic guitars in all-night jam sessions in each other’s houses. Souther, Judee Sill, the Mamas and the Papas, Carole King, the Eagles, Richie Furay (in Buffalo Springfield and Poco), and many more. What is undeniably true is that from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s some of the most melodic, atmospheric, and subtly political American popular music was written by residents of, or those associated with, Laurel Canyon-including Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, J. Nearly everyone who was there was, at one time or another, stoned nobody remembers everything the same way.

Still, misconceptions continue.įor a start, the scene was more metaphorical than geographical.

Books and documentaries have mythologized and romanticized this woodsy canyon nestled behind Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills. Michelle Phillips lived with John Phillips on Lookout Mountain in 1965 during the Mamas and the Papas’ heyday. The Doors’ lead singer Jim Morrison reportedly wrote “Love Street” while living behind the Laurel Canyon Country Store. Former Byrds bassist Chris Hillman recalls writing “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” in Laurel Canyon in 1966 in his house, on a steep winding street with a name he doesn’t remember.

Some say the Laurel Canyon music scene began when Frank Zappa moved to the corner of Lookout Mountain and Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the late 1960s. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people liveĪnd they’ll say Lookout Mountain. Hollywood where the craziest people live and they’ll say LaurelĬanyon. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where theĬraziest people live and they’ll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people liveĪnd they’ll say Los Angeles. , my friend Joel Bernstein found an old book in a flea market that said: AskĪnyone in America where the craziest people live and they’ll tell youĬalifornia.