| Book Review - Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll'sLegendary Neighborhood [message #283609] |
So, 25 Juni 2006 17:29 |
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Book Review - Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's
Legendary Neighborhood
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.
This is an excerpt. To read the complete review, please visit:
http://www.musicbox-online.com/bookreviews-2006/laurelcanyon -michaelwalker.html
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| Re: Book Review - Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood [message #283611 ] |
So, 25 Juni 2006 20:22 |
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John Metzger said the following:
> Book Review - Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's
> Legendary Neighborhood
> This is an excerpt. To read the complete review, please visit:
> http://www.musicbox-online.com/bookreviews-2006/laurelcanyon -michaelwalker.html
Official blog of the author and for the book:
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/
Which includes:
Uncle Frank’s Cabin
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/2006/06/05/uncle-franks-c abin/
I dropped by 2401 Laurel Canyon Boulevard yesterday. It’s the
site of the legendary log cabin where Frank Zappa presided over a
bizarre rock and roll salon for a few frantic months in the
spring and summer of 1968.
The cabin’s tenants, guests and hangers-on included the GTOs
groupie clique; the blues titan John Mayall (who wrote the song
“2401″ about the place), Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful, Jeff
Beck, Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix and other Sixties luminaries,
plus various and sundry members and roadies associated with the
Mothers of Invention, Zappa’s band. The original Alice Cooper
band was signed to Zappa’s Straight Records at the cabin
following what was purported to have been a 7 a.m. audition.
As Frank’s widow, Gail Zappa, told me:
“The place was huge and vaultlike and cavernous. It was so
dark. I think the oldest eucaluptus tree in Southern California
overshadowed the whole property. There was no floor in the
kitchen, just this sort of platform in one corner that had the
stove sitting on it. It was infested constantly with bus groups
of rock and roll bands looking for a place to crash—they would
just show up at all hours of the day and night…There were no
locks on any of the doors. It was insanity.”
The property has been for sale for some time—it includes a
1926-vintage cottage built around the trunk of a towering confier
and three acres of woods, caves, splashing waterfalls and an
atresian spring.
The Zappa cabin burned on Halloween night, 1981. Here’s about
where it would have stood:
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/0 6/P1010021.JPG
Built as a roadhouse complete with basement bowling alley, the
cabin was later the home of cowboy and silent movie star Tom Mix,
who supposedly buried his “Wonder Horse,” Tony, underneath the
alley. By the time Gail Zappa rented the place in ‘68, it was
serving as an all-purpose crash-pad-cum-performance-space for
Carl Franzoni and his brother, who wrote the Fraternity of Man’s
burnout classic “Don’t Bogart That Joint” downstairs.
Upstairs was an 80-foot-long living room, dominated by a
fireplace of feudal proportions where the Franzonis staged rock
and roll dance parties that prefigured by two years the club
scene about to explode on the Sunset Strip.
While I was at 2401 I ran into some fellow canyonites who were
having a party and playing a mix tape inspired by my book. Here
they are on the deck of the aforementioned “Bird House”:
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/0 6/P1010005.JPG
And here are some random shots from the property. It’s traced
with trails set out in hand-carved stone. Art Weeks (in the blue
shirt, above) was nice enough to send along his shapshot of the
shroud-of-Turin-like fresco from a cave near the arch, below.
Note the hangman’s noose, bottom.
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/0 6/P1010010.JPG
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/0 6/IMG_7924.jpg
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/0 6/P1010009.JPG
http://www.laurelcanyonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/0 6/P1010014.JPG
It’s yours for $2,685,000 (reduced!) through Sotheby’s
International Realty’s Nadio Villarreal http://www.homesbynadia.com/.
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