David Crosby was born in L.A. on August 14, 1941. His father, Floyd, was an Academy Award winning cinematographer. As a child, he was encouraged to play musical instruments, and along with his father and his brother Ethan, they would perform family concerts. Growing up, his musical love was not early rock and roll like the other kids around him, but jazz and classical music.

In his early 20's, he developed an interest in folk music and joined a Kingston Trio-like group called Les Baxter's Balladeers. While traveling with this group he met Cass Elliot, later of The Mamas & The Papas, who at that time was a member of a group called The Big Three. Cass would introduce him to a significant figure in his future, Graham Nash of the British group The Hollies. Nash, of course, would join with David and Stephen Stills in 1969 to form the legendary group Crosby, Stills & Nash.

In 1964 Crosby formed the folk-rock group The Byrds with Jim (later changed to Roger) McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke. They became the premiere folk-rock group when their version of Bob Dylan's song "Mr Tambourine Man" became the summer hit of 1965.

David's association with the Byrds ended during the recording of their sixth album in August 1967, when escalating tensions drove him from the group and he sought refuge in Florida. One evening he went to a local club, "The Gaslight South," and saw a beautiful, unique-sounding singer-songwriter. He immediately became infatuated with both the woman and her music. That singer was Joni Mitchell.

David told me:

David: I went looking for a sailboat to live on. I wanted to do something else. Find another way to be. I was pretty disillusioned. I walked into a coffee house and was just completely smitten. She was standing there singing all those songs ... "Michael from Mountains," "Both Sides Now," and I was just floored. I couldn't believe that there was anybody that good. And I also fell ... I loved her, as it were.

Wally: So you introduced yourself to her that first night. She knew who you were, of course?

David: Yeah, sure. We became fairly fast friends, you might say. I was extremely fascinated with the quality of the music and the quality of the girl. She was such an unusual, passionate and powerful woman. I was fascinated by her tunings because I had started working in tunings, and I was writing things like "Guinevere." So things like that made me very, very attracted to her.

Wally: Did you share alternate tunings?

David: Oh, I'm sure we learned things off each other. We used to play songs to each other all the time. But I think she just outgrew me.

Wally: So you were both experimenting with alternate tunings?

David: Yes, but she has since gone further with it than I have. I think she's gone further with it than anyone.

Wally: She's developed over 50 tunings over the years, which is truly incredible.

David: Well, it's either her or Michael Hedges, I think they're the two reigning kings of tunings.

Wally: He's from the San Francisco Bay Area. Are you a friend of his?

David: Yes.

Wally: He's a wonderful guitarist. I was introduced to his music a few years ago by my best friend, Jim, who is also a guitarist. Someone told me that Hedges was influenced by Joni.

David: I'm sure he was. I don't know of any singer/songwriter who wasn't. How could you not be?

Wally: That's true, she's definitely the best lyricist, and her melodies are so distinctive. I think she's incredible! Of course, that's why I started the Joni Mitchell Homepage. I didn't think she was getting the recognition she deserved. There wasn't anything out there on the web about her, so I figured if her record company wasn't going to promote her this way, then I'd better do it.

David: Well, the record companies never know what they've got, especially not when it comes to a singer/songwriter. They wouldn't know songs if they flew up their nose and died. They haven't yet got a clue what or who Joni is. In a hundred years when they look back and say, "Who was the best?" - it's going to be her.

Wally: I agree. Probably her and Dylan.

David: It's going to be her. She's a better poet than Dylan and without question a far better musician. I don't think there's anybody who can touch her. James Taylor comes close, but I think it's her, and I don't think the record companies ever realized that or have known what the story was.

Wally: Well, she's rarely been a big seller, and the record companies are about making more money.

David: Yes, I've noticed.

When David returned to Los Angeles in late 1967, Joni came along and moved into his Hollywood house. He enthusiastically presented her to his musician friends, and to influential people in the music business. She was soon noticed by the media, including well-known radio personality B. Mitchell Reed, who wrote and spoke of her talent. She played the Troubadour club during this period, and faced packed houses for three nights in a row.

David related the following:

David: We came back to LA together and yeah, I did bring her around to everyone I knew ... my favorite trick at the time was to invite everyone over, get a joint of dope that was stronger than they could possibly smoke and get her to play and they would walk out stupefied. They'd never heard anything like her and it was a lot of fun. It only stopped being fun when I started producing her first record. Joni is not a person that you stay in a relationship with. It always goes awry, no matter who you are. It's an inevitable thing. We were starting to have friction and at the same time I was starting to produce her record and I didn't really know how.

Reprise Records was interested in signing Joni but they wanted to have her album produced by someone who would give her the folk-rock sound that was the rage at that time. However, both David and Joni were intent on presenting her music as it was performed - simply, mostly just guitar and vocal. David told Reprise that he would take the production reins on Joni's first record, and the company agreed. They presumably thought "Who better to get the current sound than a former member of the group that started it?" By the time the company heard the session tapes, it was too late to go back and re-record. I think that this is a great debt that Joni owes to David. As she has stated in the past, the manner in which an artist is initially presented heavily influences the way they're perceived from then on.

I asked David about the sessions for the first album:

Wally: Did you spend a long time on Joni's first album or was it done in just a few quick weeks?

David: It was a fairly long process, as I remember.

Wally: By the way, do you call the first album "Song to a Seagull" or "Joni Mitchell?"

David: She originally called it "Song to a Seagull," which some people think is what she called it when she was still in love with me. I don't know. There are references to me on the album ... like "Dawntreader."

Wally: Oh, "Dawntreader" is definitely about you, I would think, with its references to sailing ships and seabirds.

David: But I think most people referred to the album as "Joni Mitchell."

Wally: In addition to the ten songs that made it onto the first album, were other songs also recorded? As an archivist, I know that there are a number of songs that never made it to any of Joni's albums. "Urge for Going," for example. Was that from the sessions for the first album?

David: No, I think that came later, but I'm sure there were more songs than we ended up putting on the record.

Wally: Do you remember any of those songs, like "Eastern Rain," "Carnival in Kenora," or "Just Like Me?"

David: I don't, man, it's been so long.

Wally: There are existing tapes of some of these songs from WDAS and WHAT, two Philadelphia FM stations popular in the late 1960's. They taped a bunch of shows with Joni at a club called the Second Fret, and also a few in-station appearances. Another Philly station, WMMR, rebroadcast them a few times in the '70's. For collectors like me, these unavailable-on-album songs are almost as familiar as the officially released songs.

David: Yeah, she wrote some beautiful things back then.

Wally: Yes, I've read that she was just bursting with creativity then, writing 5 or 6 songs a week sometimes. When she was with you was it like that?

David: Yes, it was very difficult for me. I'd sit there and struggle over one song, like "Guinevere" for a month, and she would have written 5 songs that week.

Wally: After you and Joni stopped being a couple, she moved in with Graham (Nash), and they wrote all those songs about their relationship like "Our House," "Willie," etc. It seemed as if you all were writing about and to each other.

David: You know, we did write a lot to each other back then. She was one of the three women I wrote "Guinevere" about.

Wally: I guess another was Christine Hinton? (Christine was David's lover who was tragically killed in an auto accident in 1969).

David: Uh-huh.

Wally: And who would the third one be?

David: Oh, someone that nobody knows.

Wally: Keeping that fact to yourself, David?

David: Yeah.

Although David was happy with the conception and performance on Joni's first album, he was dissatisfied with some technical aspects of the recording, and the resulting lack of clarity.

David commented on the sound quality of the album:

Wally: Can we talk a little bit more about Joni's first album? I've read that there was some kind of a problem with the master tape. It had a buzz or high-pitched hum or somesuch on it?

David: Yeah, I hadn't recorded it well enough. I had allowed too much noise - too much signal-to-noise ratio - too much hiss.

Wally: Was that because, as I understand, you miked the piano strings as well as her vocals?

David: Yes. I wanted to try and get the overtones that happen from the resonating of the piano and, of course, it recorded at way too low a level. If you use those mikes at all you get a hiss, so we had to go in and take those things out. It was just an idea and it didn't work. It shows you that I really didn't know enough to do it.

Wally: So how did you take out the hiss? Did you just turn it down?

David: We went back in and remixed it without all those tracks.

Wally: I understand that now there are better processes available for remastering the tapes. When they reissue the album, which Reprise is planning to do, it shouldn't sound so much like it's "under a bell jar" as it's been referred to.

David: Yeah, I'm sure they can make it better now. Like I said, I didn't know enough to know what I was doing but we did get the actual songs down without a bunch of other crud on it and that made me happy.

Wally: Well, it's a wonderful album, and a very intimate experience. I think the production served the material well.

David: It could have served it better. But it's what happened.

Wally: The greatest thing about you producing her is that it allowed you both to do exactly what you wanted to do, which was to present Joni's music just as it was performed live.

David: That's the thing I'm proudest of. With the exception of the one song that Stephen (Stills) played bass on. That's the only track anybody else played on.

Wally: That would be "Night in the City."

The Byrds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1991. This May's ceremony will be David's second induction into the Hall. This time, he goes in as a member of Crosby, Stills and Nash. The very short list of two-time inductees also includes John Lennon and Eric Clapton.

I asked David about his upcoming induction:

Wally: You're already in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for the Byrds. Are you the first person inducted for a second time?

David: No, I think there are a couple others, I think, maybe Clapton.

Wally: Stephen (Stills) will be going in twice this year (for Buffalo Springfield & Crosby, Stills & Nash).

David: Yes, he will be the only guy to ever get it twice in one night, I'm sure.

Wally: And of course, Neil's involved because of Buffalo Springfield, although it's only Crosby, Stills & Nash this time, not Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, right? (This year will also be Neil Young's second induction. He went in as a solo act last year and this time it's for his membership in Buffalo Springfield).

David: I don't think they will give it to CSNY separately.

Wally: Well, if they did, you could have three of them! Now that would be a record, huh?

David: I don't think they would do that.

Wally: After you met Joni in Florida, you mentioned that you took her out sailing. That must've been very romantic, I would imagine, being out there on the ocean, playing guitars together?

David: Yes, it turned out that way. We had some wonderful times together early on, when she went sailing with me. (He pauses) ...You have to understand, Wally, I still love her. She's the best, and if you quote anything from me, say that I said she was the best and I've always said that.

Wally: And what is she best at, David?

David: She's the best singer/songwriter there is, man. There isn't anybody close, I don't think.

Wally: Do you like the later material as well as the early stuff?

David: Oh, yes. I didn't enjoy some of the "Mingus"-era stuff as much as some of the others, but I don't think there's ever been a time when she's stopped being a complete master of her craft.

Wally: I agree, that's why I've been trying to give her her due on the Web, and I've worked very hard to build a quality homepage worthy of Joni's talent. The approving e-mails I receive mean a great deal to me personally, as this project is a part of my heart, you know, it's full of my love for Joni's music. She's the subject of the homepage, but there's a lot of me in it, too. My hope is that it helps to secure her the position that she deserves in music history. I mean, I'm not sure if most of the general public even knows who she is.

David: I think in the long run when they look back and say who really did it, it will be her.

Wally: Well, I agree with you on that, but I don't know how it's going to be for her in the next five, ten years or so.

David: Well, you know Shakespeare probably wasn't the most popular guy in England at the time that he was writing the stuff.

Wally: I get what you mean, David. In the summer of 1991, David contacted Joni and asked her if she'd consider producing a track on a solo album he was putting together. Joni responded that she had no interest in producing; she wasn't even sure what that term meant. David says that she then countered with "Let's write one together." So they did. Their collaboration on the song "Yvette In English" appeared on David's 1993 album "Thousand Roads." Joni's version was released a year and a half later on her 1994 album "Turbulent Indigo." I asked David about the song:

Wally: In 1991, you co-wrote "Yvette in English" with Joni.

David: I think that's the only time that's ever happened with her. Has she ever written a song with anyone else?

Wally: Let me think... There are tracks she co-wrote with drummer, John Guerin. He wrote the background track to "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" song, for example, but Joni set the lyrics and melody on top of what he did, so that's a different kind of thing than what you two did together. She also co-wrote a couple of songs from tracks written by Larry Klein, such as "Fiction" off of the album "Dog Eat Dog." But co-writing lyrics and melody, no. Did you co-write the melody as well as the lyrics?

David: Just the lyrics.

Wally: How did the process start?

David: I asked Joni if she would produce or write a song for my album "Thousand Roads" and she said "Oh ... let's write one together." So I sent her a set of lyrics that I thought she would like, and she did, oddly enough, and she pretty much took it from there. I changed the song again when she sang it back to me, in the way that I did it. I guess she changed it some in the way she did it, too. The two versions are quite different.

Wally: I do love the rhythm of your version. It's just great.

David: Yes, it lends itself to a Brazilian type of treatment, very naturally.

Wally: Joni's version is much more acoustic.

David: Yes. I'm very grateful to her for doing this with me. It was kind of her.

Wally: I thought it was wonderful to have you two working together again. It was a full circle kind of thing. For the fans, to hear you two working on something together again was very satisfying.

David: If you mention it, tell her that I'm very grateful to her for doing that.

Wally: Absolutely. I think it's a wonderful song, too. So it was your idea and she took it and then she'd would call you up and sing parts to you as she was writing it?

David: Yeah.

Wally: And I guess you got a final tape when she recorded it for you, and then you changed it from there.

David: I changed it only very slightly, just in treating the melody. Only what you would normally do in interpreting a song. I would only take credit for having written some of the words.

Wally: It's a great song, David, I really love it. Joni and you did a wonderful job.

David: Yeah, I love it too. THE "YVETTE IN ENGLISH" STORY

Crosby went through a life-saving and much-publicized liver transplant in November 1994. Joni was in England on the day he had the operation, performing a rare show for press and record folks, and she told the gathered group: "Let's all pray for Crosby. That Leo's already used up seven of his nine lives."

During his stay at UCLA Medical Center, David received two pieces of startling but wonderful news: He found out that his wife, Jan was pregnant, and he got a letter from the adoptive father of the son that David had given up for adoption in the early 1960's.

During his recovery, David set up a meeting with this son whom he'd never met and both men felt quickly connected. They talked about music within the first few minutes of their meeting, and they're now working together as a band named CPR (Crosby, Pevar, & Raymond).

I asked David about meeting and working with his newly found son (BTW this interview took place before the word got out about Joni and her daughter, Kilauren being re-united):

Wally: You've just found out that you have a grown son.

David: Yes.

Wally: How's that for you?

David: Quite wonderful. He's a fantastic musician.

Wally: And you guys have been playing gigs together?

David: Yes. He's a keyboard player and a singer/songwriter. His name is James Raymond and he's absolutely fantastic. He and a guitar player named Jeff Pevar, who I've been working with for quite a while, and who I think is the best in the world. The three of us have been playing as Crosby, Pevar & Raymond which is CPR, naturally.

Wally: We all need a little CPR every once in a while (Laughs).

David: It's music for the heart (Laughs). Over the last 25 years, David has both recorded and performed various Joni Mitchell compositions, including a version of "For Free" which he released on the 1973 Byrds reunion album and a take on "Urge for Going" recorded with Graham Nash in 1971, which was finally released on the CSN boxset in 1991.

I asked him about his favorites:

Wally: Over the years you've recorded and featured live a few of Joni's songs. You and Nash recorded "Urge for Going," for example, and that made it to your box set. Do you like that version?

David: Yes, I do, in particular. My favorite one of hers to sing though, and I still do it all the time, is "For Free." I'm doing it now with my new band. We do a version that is probably the best ever.

Wally: With CPR?

David: Yeah.

Wally: I'll have to hear that. Are you performing right now, or are you between gigs?

David: Next time we play is at the Telluride Festival. Then in the fall we're going to go out and do about a month or two of work.

Wally: Are you writing new songs, David?

David: Mmm-hmm, a lot!

Wally: Is it true that you're generally not very prolific?

David: Well, I've been given a wonderful shot in the arm by my son, who is more prolificeth than I and kicketh my butt!

Wally: (Laughs) Have you written anything together?

David: Yeah.

Wally: Great. So will we next see a CPR album or another solo album by you?

David: Oh, no, it will be a CPR album.

Wally: I read that you're not on the Atlantic label anymore with CSN. Is that good?

David: Very!

Wally: Were they holding you guys back from doing other projects?

David: Yeah, we would've never recorded another record for them.

Wally: So CPR will be looking for another label deal then?

David: We'll be looking for something. You don't always have to have a label.

Wally: Meaning you can just do it live?

David: Meaning you can be Ani DiFranco, too.

Wally: ...and release things independently, you mean?

David: Yeah.

Wally: I've been hearing a lot of good things about her but I haven't actually heard her music yet.

David: She's very stylized and you might be offended at how stylized she is, at first. But if you listen to the poetry it will knock your socks off.

Wally: Kind of like Kate Bush?

David: No, I think this is a different bird.

Wally: Well, musicians are all different birds and that's what makes it such a rich world. I'll have to listen to Ani DiFranco sometime soon.

David: I think you'll like her.

{Note from Wally - I recently purchased Ani's live double album "Living in Clip" and she is certainly an emotional vocalist and a muscular, inventive guitarist.}

David and I talked briefly about a few other points including the 1969 and 1974 tours where Joni was the opening act for headliners CSN (David said: "Those were turbulent times but the music was very high grade"), his liver health ("From the time you get it, you are constantly in treatment to keep it working, but I feel great!"), the reasons that the Byrds split up ("It was just egos. You know, I wanted my songs in there, rather than just to be Roger's wing man, and I wanted more than I was getting. That band had pretty much used up its fun. We just weren't getting along. I was the odd man out, so they decided to toss me out.").

My conversation with David Crosby concludes with this short but satisfying exchange:

Wally: Let me ask you a bit more about how it is to have a grown son come into your life.

David: It's absolutely wonderful!

Wally: And you have a new baby boy, too?

David: Yes, his name's Django.

Wally: And how old is he?

David: 2 years old.

Wally: This must be a magical time for you.

David: Yes it is. I'm a very happy man.

Wally: Well, your music is a part of the soundtrack to so many people's lives. I was going back this week and listening to stuff I hadn't heard in years and it's just incredible the amount of wonderful music that you've made, David. I want to thank you for that.

David: It's my pleasure, man.

David Crosby - Santa Cruz, Ca., January 20,1997

SANTA CRUZ  MY STOMPING GROUNDS......

部落格 摘要 排列方式： 日期 類別 Food and drink Computers and Internet Organizations Travel Hobbies Health and wellness Games News and politics MY FAVORITE SPACES LOVE OF ANIMALS ALOHA! ALL ABOUT HAWAII DREAMS, GOALS AND BELIEFS Time Various Art Entertainment What is Matter? What is this world? SPACE HACK INFORMATION my poem my thoughts my poems ON THE PATH... BEST MOM AWARD Special Friends Books Music	<< 第一頁   < 上一頁   下一頁 >   最後一頁 >> 2007/1/31 My Most Exciting M Bolton/Birthday Concert Party...Just one typical evening hehehe!   Darlings Darlings this is more like it.... I say it with a sweet drawl, from exotic european country.   I take a deep breath, settling into the fold out chair and thought back...way back to 1991 ooooh ya! You are going to enjoy this story:  let me get a sort of setting for you to understand why this night is one of a "GIRLS NIGHT'S NEVER TO FORGET!" iT WAS October 19th and it was pre~planned for the girls and to celebrate my up coming birthday... because of the veriorty of types of women coming.. we settled on sexy Michael Bolden in Concert at Shoreline Amplitheater in Mountain View California .  A great be glorious circle of seating up front and a sloped green grass free for all party area.  OH OH you must know!  they have like speakers the size of spaceships, and Visual Screen in three directionssssss........and LIQOUR! I was stunning is a to die for silver top, and a black Velvet (Yum) jacket with black tights and big spiked black boots ( YES! believe it I do not lie ....) My best friends Nina, and Jean both gorgous blondes drove me to a home I did not know the lady.  We were to meet Joy (the incredible , incredible!) and this lady looked just like a famous singer with wild soft red hair, she was delightful and Barbara wasin her bedroom , she took off her hair! yeah... she was bald, she was born with no hair on her whole body but she was so comedic, I was laughing and laughing..... this was a real girls night out. easy to get to know,  I knew already I was going to have fun fun fun.  Then arrived Diana ( her long full hair glittered with ok NEXT:my birthday party all decorated outside this fabulous home, with deck and pool and all gorgous decor... and there it was on the patio table......ooooooh ya! BIRTHDAY CAKE WITH LITE CANDLES.... YOUKNOW I JUST ABOUT CRIED ... NOBODY REALLY HAD DONE SO MUCH FOR MY BIRTHDAY BEFORE , ATLEAST FOR AWHILE (because i have had some fabulous birthdays that     could     make you   laugh your #$% and  wish you was me he he he......oh WHAT A GOOD LIFE I HAVE HAD! THIS IS SO WEIRD.... i BLEW ,  AND BLEW AND THE CANDLES JUST WOULD NOT GO OUT!  THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME I HAD EVER KNEW OF THESE MAGICAL CANDLES. SO I WAS LAUGHING MY GUTS OUT. WE HAD DRINKS AND SOME CAKE WITH ICE CREAM............THEN MARTHA ARRIVED WITH HER GIANT LUXERIOUS RECREATIONAL VEHICLE..............OH LA LA LA      LIVING GOOD!       gold and she was fresh faced clean and like a goddess in statue)     下午 03:16:55 | 新增回應 | 永久連結 | 檢視引用通告 (1) | 發佈至您的部落格 | Music 2006/6/22 FOREVER YOUNG I HAVE A COUPLE OF VERSIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE SING THIS , INFACT MY FAVORITE VERSION IS BY BOB DYLAN       Happy Birthday Sis pick the day we are going to the Titantic show ... WOOHOO !!!!!                 Hi, happy weekend to yo all... that sounds so southern,  anyway I vaccum the carpets, did launry, clean kitchen and draws, then we pulled so weeds and watered the yard (because the sprinkler system is insane, goes on and off all the time) the house looks spectaclur!     I now need to rest but to excited because tomorrow is my sisters birthday and her and the kids are coming for a BAR B QUE  I have to still go the the store and get salad makings, garlic bread, and cake mix with sprinkles, i have candles.   My nephew he never got a real birthday so we are combining them togather .   I blew up the small swimming pool from last year and it holds the air!  I got him a fighting robot fish, you fish and the fish fights as you try and catch it!  the weather is to be 87 degrees hot.  just having chicken, salad, bread and cake.  I am broke so I don't have a gift for my sister but I am taking her to the TITANTIC EXPOSITION IN SAN FRANCISCO AT THE METREON ... IT HAS LOTS OF THE TITANTIC STUFF, AND HISTORY AND KIDS ARE WELCOME... SO THAT WILL BE HER GIFT SOON WE WILL SET THE DATE................OH I AM SO EXCITED AND MY HUBBY TOOK DAY OFF AND HE IS DONE WITH ALL THE HOUSE WORK AND WE WILL NOW RELAX.........LATER I GO STORE AND BAKE CAKE.    LOVE TO ALL OF YOU HOPE YOUR WEEKEND BRINGS YOU MANY SMILES AND LAUGHS.....BYE          下午 09:54:24 | 新增回應 | 讀取回應 (4) | 永久連結 | 發佈至您的部落格 | Music A CONVERSTATION WITH DAVID CROSBY ABOUT JONI MITCHELL AND BEING A MUSICIAN  A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID CROSBY    March 15, 1997
Mixon

Roxy (and Troubadour) music: Stills, Young, Greg Reeves, Dallas Taylor and Nash rehearsing for Woodstock, 1969 (Photos by Henry Diltz)

Money may not buy you love, but $2.4 million can buy you prime real estate on “Love Street” — as in the song Jim Morrison wrote about living in Laurel Canyon in the ’60s. The Doors’ singer and his girlfriend rented a house near “the store where the creatures meet” (the Canyon Country Store) but nobody remembers exactly where. “It’s like bars where Hemingway drank,” says Laurel Canyon author Michael Walker as he opens the gates of 2401 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, marked with a Sotheby’s “For Sale” sign. “Jim Morrison lived in every house.”

Morrison did not live at this corner of Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain Avenue, where a huge log cabin built by Tom Mix stood until it burned to the ground in 1981. Frank Zappa did though, with his wife, Gail, and daughter Moon Unit, their in-house nannies the GTOs, and a host of rock royalty and freaks who streamed in at all hours of the night and day. (Alice Cooper auditioned for Zappa’s record label at 7 a.m. and got signed.)

From what was once a bowling alley, the rambling, bucolic property rises up unmortared stone steps dotted with colorful tile, to seating nooks built into the hillside, where visitors would get stoned before entering Zappa’s strict no-drugs zone. Artesian waterfalls flow into ponds, and there are caves big enough to sleep in if you don’t mind bats. “It was just magical,” recalls groupie goddess and former GTO Pamela des Barres (who remembers exactly where Morrison lived). “It was like going into what I would imagine to be a forest where Pan frolicked around. It was my playground, but I was still in awe of it.”

The golden years of the Laurel Canyon scene, roughly 1967-’74, saw the birth of the singer-songwriter movement and the rise of huge stars, from folk-rock bands like the Byrds and the Mamas and the Papas to Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Carole King, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, the Flying Burrito Brothers, America, and the Eagles — many of whom played on each other’s records and slept in each other’s beds. This concentrated blitz of creativity and passionate entanglements has been compared to Paris in the ’20s, and although that’s a stretch, it was certainly as influential as the Greenwich Village folk scene and Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. Although other musicians lived in the neighborhood, including Love’s Arthur Lee, the signature canyon sound was folky and introspective, representing a deliberate retreat from the darkness of the late ’60s and the chaos of the Sunset Strip.

Two new books, Walker’s Laurel Canyon and British music journalist Barney Hoskyns’ Hotel California, delve into the myths and the music created during this era. While taking different paths, both chart the scene’s idealistic, communal beginnings in the late ’60s through its devolution into crass commercialism, drug binges and broken friendships by the mid-’70s.

“In a way it’s a death-of-’60s-utopianism story,” says Hoskyns, who previously explored Los Angeles’ music history in 1999’s Waiting for the Sun. “When you look back down the corridors of rock & roll time there aren’t that many homogenous scenes that you can write about, that are like stories of dysfunctional families where there’s a real coherence in what a group of artists is trying to do and say. It seemed to be crying out for an overview. Plus you have this great setting, this rural oasis right in the midst of freeway hell.”

Always a bohemian enclave, Lookout Mountain Avenue was settled before building codes existed, on an impossibly narrow, winding road with a couple of flimsy wooden guard rails that “wouldn’t even stop a skateboard,” notes Walker as we drive past. Tiny, Hobbit-like cottages are piled on top of modern boxes, and the views are some of the best in Los Angeles. Here, Joni Mitchell, herself “discovered” by David Crosby, bought a cottage that her boyfriend Graham Nash would later immortalize in the song “Our House.” According to lore, it was at this cottage with the two cats in the yard that Crosby, Stills & Nash harmonized together for the first time, although some insist the historic moment took place at Cass Elliot’s, nearby. Mama Cass, true to her nickname, hosted regular salons where musicians and freeloaders would come to swim in the pool, get high, eat and jam, and she definitely did play musical matchmaker, asking the newly formed duo of Crosby and Stills if they might need a third voice. As Nash recalls the moment in Laurel Canyon, it took them three tries to get Stills’ “You Don’t Have to Cry” perfect, and then they all started laughing because it sounded so amazing.

These artists were tapping into the public’s desire for a softer sound. “After 1968 I think there was a sense in the global music community that we need to slow down and chill out,” says Hoskyns. “We’ve got to get ‘back to the garden,’ to use Joni’s phrase. And I think what Laurel Canyon represented was a place of refuge. And it happened to be right in the middle of the city. The recording studios were there, the clubs, down on the Strip. I think it was a place to stop and take stock. What did the seismic ’60s phenomenon mean? People had not looked inward up to that point; everyone was looking outward, usually through the prism of drugs. And now it was like, ‘My god, we really need to look inside and ask ourselves some questions.’ ”

And the answers happened to sound like hit records. In 1969, David Geffen, then a 26-year-old talent agent who managed Laura Nyro, took on Crosby, Stills & Nash. Soon he partnered with Joni Mitchell’s manager Elliot Roberts; Lookout Management became Geffen-Roberts and in 1971 the multitasking Geffen launched Asylum Records with the backing of Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun. Says Hoskyns, “In essence what people like David Geffen did was to market the very non-commercialism, turn that kind of laid-back, patched-denim dropout thing into a product.”

Joni Mitchell in ''Our House,'' which she shared with Graham Nash

Laurel Canyon scenesters found a regular hangout in The Troubadour, which opened as a folk club in 1957. “It was like the clubhouse,” says the scene’s unofficial photographer, Henry Diltz, who also played on its stage with his band the Modern Folk Quartet. “It was a place you would go and all your friends would be there. You knew all the groups that were playing, you had affairs with the waitresses, and Harry Dean Stanton would be sitting at the bar.” For ambitious singer-songwriters, this was also the only game in town; multi-night runs bestowed instant stardom on both Joni Mitchell and Elton John. And for the period of time that the scene was small and new enough to be contained inside the club’s doors, the Canyon’s idyllic feel was carried down into Hollywood.

But in 1973, the Roxy opened in direct competition with the Troubadour. Its owners were Geffen, Roberts and Lou Adler, so naturally they had money on their minds. “The Roxy was very symbolic of a shift toward something that was more glitzy and in-crowd and movie-star oriented,” says Hoskyns. “Maybe this was the dawn of the celebrity era. You think of it in terms of Cher and people like that. It certainly isn’t about banjos anymore.” Geffen was changing — dating Cher, for one thing — and with him the scene.

In Hotel California Hoskyns tells the story of a legendary summit in Geffen’s sauna, during which he informed his guests — Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Jackson Browne and Ned Doheny — that he was starting a small record label: “I’ll never have more artists than I can fit in this sauna.” Yet just two years later Geffen sold Asylum to Warner Bros., and then in 1973 the label merged with Elektra. Geffen immediately cut Elektra’s artist roster and soon he was racking up enemies almost as quickly as the zeros in his paychecks. By the early ’80s the Bronx entrepreneur’s ruthless business practices had led to his falling out with Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Henley.

In 2000 Geffen told his biographer that if he never spoke to Joni Mitchell again he “wouldn’t miss her for a minute.” Yet he tells Hoskyns that his Laurel Canyon experience was “the greatest ride that one could possibly imagine.” Hoskyns is touched by Geffen’s sentiment: “The era still means way more to him than anything that happened subsequently. I’m convinced that he did care about these artists, he did care about their music. At the same time he saw them as a stepping stone to far greater riches.”

Mitchell, Crosby and Eric Clapton in Cass Elliot's backyard, 1968.

Voices of a generation or not, by the mid-’70s some of the leading lights of the scene — including Crosby, Stills, Henley, and Frey — began, says Walker, “to behave very much like Nero on his way to the vomitorium.” Hoskyns doesn’t spare us the sordid details, and it gets a little tedious. But then, for some, it was always tedious. A string of early ’70s feel-good hits like America’s “Ventura Highway,” Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes,” and the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” (co-written by Browne), made the Hollywood hippies easy targets. Frank Zappa came up with the derisive term “navel gazers” to describe his former neighbors. Tom Waits, whose song “Ol’ 55” was covered by the Eagles, said the band was “about as exciting as watching paint dry.” Taking those sentiments a few steps further, Lester Bangs wrote the essay “James Taylor Marked For Death,” declaring, “I call it I-Rock . . . because most of it is so relentlessly, involutedly egocentric that you finally actually stop hating the punk and just want to take the poor bastard out and get him a drink, and then kick his ass.”

Although Walker says his most revelatory musical discovery during the writing of Laurel Canyon was Arthur Lee’s dark, orchestral psych pop, he believes in the lasting influence of the navel-gazing singer-songwriters. “Whether you like it or not a whole generation defined itself by the music that was made here during the late ’60s and early ’70s. It was an ongoing history while they were living it, and that really helped people shape their lives and understand their values.” And who can argue with the lasting testimony: Young’s “Ohio” (written in Nash’s backyard), or King’s Tapestry or Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon, Blue and Court and Spark; or even the Eagles’ canonical (if overplayed) Hotel California, which chronicles the scene’s decline into nihilism.

Laurel Canyon, born of personal curiosity about the neighborhood Walker has lived in for the past nine years, doesn’t wallow too long in this dirt. “I was trying to write about the psychology of what it was like to be here,” he says. “I deliberately stayed away from certain stories.” So we don’t meet Crosby or Stills clutching their freebase pipes in the ’80s, but we do get a somewhat long-winded — and not especially relevant to Laurel Canyon — social history of cocaine, from the Incas to Coca Cola and Cole Porter lyrics. One former Elektra employee says that doing lines was so routine within the Hollywood music industry, the label handed out promotional coke mirrors to announce the release of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” Promotional coke mirrors that is wild.....

These sorts of distinctions make the two books interesting companion reads. Hoskyns the music historian clues us in to lesser-known talents like Judee Sill, a folkie junkie whom he believes “should be rediscovered like a Nick Drake . . . I think she was really nothing short of a musical genius.” Walker, meanwhile, introduces us to then-16-year-old Morgana Welch, a second-generation Sunset Strip groupie and Laurel Canyon dweller who was a preferred consort of Led Zeppelin.

“I tried to interview as many people that were on the periphery of these music stars as the music stars themselves,” says Walker, “because Graham Nash and those guys had created this sort of popular-culture hurricane, and they were in the eye of it. And the eye of a hurricane is a pretty good place to be — it’s calm and balmy. But right on the edges of it is where the maelstrom is, and that’s where a lot of these people found themselves.” maelstrom of a hurricane, you must be really spinning?

Photo Courtesy Numero Group

There was, however, one peripheral figure who brought the edge, the maelstrom, right into the hurricane’s eye. Both Walker and Hoskyns retell the saga of an aspiring singer-songwriter named Charlie Manson, a hippie hanger-on who was befriended by Dennis Wilson and Byrds producer (and Doris Day’s son) Terry Melcher, and whose fractured lo-fi folk was championed by Neil Young. Young even recommended Manson to Mo Ostin, who wasn’t impressed, but Melcher made the fatal mistake of backing down on a promise to connect Manson with Columbia Records. This slight wasn’t the only source of Manson’s wrath, but it was one of them, and as it happened the house in Benedict Canyon that Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate rented during the summer of 1969 was owned by Terry Melcher.wow, so Manson hated Terry Melcher, for not giving him a music contract and that was where Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate rented a doomed house.... It’s unclear whether Manson had put a hit on the producer and his friends or whether he was just sending him a message. Either way, a chill set in, and doors in the canyons were locked at night for the first time.

There are some who say “the sixties” didn’t end until mid-way through the ’70s, others who believe Helter Skelter in August followed by Altamont in December slammed the book on the decade the minute the clock struck 1970. The hippie look and lexicon certainly lasted well into the ’70s, but purity in any movement is fragile and fleeting. Born of isolation and insulation, the Laurel Canyon scene couldn’t survive the scrutiny or the influx of drugs and money. By the end of 1969 the royalties from CSN’s massively successful debut album had already bought the musicians new homes in other, more upscale neighborhoods.

Yet the magic of recorded albums is that they are, truly, a record — of a mood, a time and a place. Gorgeous specimens like Crosby, Stills & Nash can exist separately from the flops and the feuds, the rehabs and the reunion tours. Happening upon “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” on the car radio, you can still feel the electric thrill of a moment that was less about dropping out than tuning in. I think the end of the sixties movement, was when helter skelter in august and then altamont and the Stones in December made it all ugly and destroyed the decade ....YES that is what I think. From beauty to beast.

I think