The Canyon was on fire
In 1969 the scene in Laurel Canyon was about as cool
as a scene could be. It didn't last.
By Victor Krummenacher
Love is coming to
us all.
Crosby, Stills, Nash,
and Young, "Carry On"
They say that Laurel
Canyon is filled with famous stars
But I hate them worse
than lepers, and I'll kill them in their cars
Just to keep the population
down.
Neil Young, "Revolution
Blues"
HE SHOULD HAVE
known, Neil Young. When "Revolution Blues" turned up on
his 1974 album, On the Beach, playing darkly on the echoes
of the Tate-LaBianca murders, he'd already blown off David Crosby,
Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash twice, maybe three times, but who
was counting? The irony and hypocrisy of that statement – Young
was one-fourth of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, which at the
time was arguably the best-known rock band on the planet –
was intriguing. Three decades later, it's still pretty amusing.
Looking back, it's hard
to believe the hype that was showered on the "American Beatles,"
as CSNY were hailed. The first supergroup (an odious phrase if ever
there was one), they sold millions of records during the period
when corporate music had finally understood how to effectively market
rock. Crosby, Stills, and Young were all veterans of Los Angeles's
notorious Sunset scene. Nash was a handsome British hippie transplant
from the Hollies. You really couldn't get more California than CSNY,
who in 1969 and 1970 were about as with it as could be. The nexus
of their activity was up in the Hollywood Hills in Laurel Canyon.
The Canyon was the pinnacle
of L.A.'s new "mellow" cool. Crosby was a Canyon regular,
as were Stills, Nash, and Nash's then-partner Joni Mitchell, who
bought a house in the Canyon and named an album after it. The L.A
music scene around the turn of the decade included bands like Poco,
the Eagles, America, Seals and Crofts, Loggins and Messina, the
Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Gram Parsons. "Mama"
Cass Elliot was in the Canyon; so was Dennis Wilson of the Beach
Boys, and Charles Manson too. By contrast, Young – always the
outsider in this grandest of dysfunctional rock and roll families
– haunted granola-damaged Topanga Canyon, farther west and
somewhat removed from Hollywood, and in 1970 split to La Honda in
the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Canyon's odd blend of talent –
though it left an indelible mark on the California sound and myth
– didn't last much more than a year.
And it's strange how
key figures have aged. Young has defined himself as a (sometimes
muddled) visionary, and Mitchell has reinvented herself over the
years with a long line of challenging, critically acclaimed albums.
CSNY haven't stood the test of time as well. CSN, well, they hardly
really register without Young. Not that they lack talent (ex-Byrd
Crosby and Nash are remarkable singers, and Stills is a blistering
guitarist who once ran with '60s heavies like Hendrix and Clapton),
but because their repertoire – so much a product of the moment
– has not aged well. In retrospect their music is better understood
as a time capsule of Vietam-era America than as a catalog of timeless
songs.
Mitchell, who had already
established her own identity before coming to California, was managed
by Elliot Roberts (who also handled Young and was a crony of Hollywood
megashaker David Geffen – whose legacy includes the certainty
that he was not a man to be fucked with). The Canadian native had
already had a hit with "Both Sides Now," covered by Judy
Collins (who had also dated Stills). Her unique narratives and guitar
stylings (to this day she is the reigning goddess of alternate tunings)
were very much her own invention. She checked into Laurel Canyon
as a voyeur as much as a participant: she absorbed the vibe, but
she didn't stick around.
Crosby, Stills, and Nash's
eponymous debut was a bona fide hit (including "Suite: Judy
Blue Eyes"; c'mon, you know it: "doodoodoodoodoo dodododododo
..." – unforgettable whether you want to remember it or
not. Hendrix called it "western sky music"). The group's
success makes it hard to understand why Stills showed up at a Long
Island dive to catch a Neil Young and Crazy Horse gig and asked
his former Buffalo Springfield bandmate to come on board ("I
didn't want us to be another Simon and Garfunkel" Stills, who
always seemed overly concerned with the judgment of history, is
quoted as saying in Dave Zimmer's Crosby, Stills, and Nash: The
Biography). Young had just launched a solo career, his new band,
Crazy Horse, was in its infancy, and their memorable debut, Everybody
Knows This Is Nowhere, was not exactly blistering the charts.
Nevertheless, the mercurial relationship between the two was already
legendary. It's possible the trio merely wanted a potent guitarist
to flesh out their sound (as if 10,000 Maniacs had asked Billy Zoom
to sign on). No matter what the motive was, Young held out until
the "Y" was added to the "CSN," and during the
summer of 1969, the trio became a quartet.
Nash wasn't so sure about
choosing Young, who had a reputation as a bail-out artist (he quit
the Buffalo Springfield twice), but Stills pushed ahead. CSNY hired
a rhythm section that included 19-year-old veteran Motown bassist
Greg Reeves and drummer Dallas Taylor, and as the band hit the road
– commanding unheard-of fees – the inevitable tension
started to build. Their second appearance happened to be at Woodstock,
the first great rock festival. Young wanted nothing to do with the
camera crew (shooting what eventually became the Woodstock
documentary) and told them to stay out of his way (he doesn't appear
during CSNY's performance). The rest of the boys played to the camera.
The buzz was huge, and
the band – led by Stills and Crosby – had a reputation
as outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War, although the public record
included on the appalling 4 Way Street live album from 1970
shows how young and naive they were (yep, the war sucks and the
man is going to stick it to you). Another perspective was
captured by footage from 1969's Big Sur Folk Festival, in which
Stills, wearing a fur coat and toting a Gretsch White Falcon (the
maker's premier and most expensive guitar), attacked a fan for calling
him a sellout – while Crosby protested, "Peace and love,
man, peace and love."
By the end of the year,
CSNY played Altamont with the Stones and the Dead, and six months
after they started, so too did cocaine use (writer Judith Sims alleged
in a Rolling Stone profile that Stills used up to $18,000
worth of the stuff a day), although Young stayed aloof. And differences
emerged in the band while they recorded Déjà Vu
in San Francisco. Young despised Taylor's drumming; his now-legendary
notes for the song "Helpless" (far and away the album's
standout tune) on his Decade retrospective are telling: "recorded
at 4AM ... when everybody could play at my speed." Overdubbing
created an overblown mess, leaving the album with few choice moments.
"Carry On" is a dated classic, and Crosby's "Almost
Cut My Hair" and the cover of Mitchell's "Woodstock"
have their moments. But not even Jerry Garcia's tasty pedal steel
could save Nash's odious "Teach Your Children."
Déjà
Vu shipped two million copies upon release, but the accompanying
tour was a disaster. Reeves melted down after the band's first show,
in Denver, and was fired for wanting to play his own songs. Taylor
followed – cut loose, allegedly, for his heroin addiction.
In the middle of this, the band cut the notoriously pithy "Ohio"
in response to the shootings of four student protesters at Kent
State University. They finished the tour with a new rhythm section
and a shaky center, due in part, according to Jimmy McDonough's
Shakey: Neil Young's Biography to Stills's drug use, which
had reached enormous proportions – although Crosby would trump
him years later with a well-chronicled freebase habit that led to
jail and a liver transplant. Young, who had seen enough, split.
Mitchell, who passed
on Woodstock to appear on the Dick Cavett Show – which
didn't stop her from composing the festival testimony recorded by
CSNY – had released Clouds in April 1969. It had great
songs like "Chelsea Morning," her version of "Both
Sides Now," and "Tin Angel," and she did a stretch
as CSNY's opening act. By year's end, her relationship with Nash
was on the rocks, and she was ready to release the quintessential
Ladies of the Canyon, which rendered the hippie enclave mythic
and marked a real transition in her writing. As much as she was
exploding musically, she was imploding emotionally, and with her
reputation cemented, she split – first for Europe and then
bouncing back to settle in British Columbia, where she announced
her decision to quit performing. In 1971, still raw from her breakup
with Nash, she released Blue, her first masterpiece. As quickly
as they had arrived, the glory days of Laurel Canyon had come to
an end.
Young's solo career (documented
in vivid detail by McDonough in Shakey) blossomed when he
released After the Gold Rush, recorded at his Topanga Canyon
home. Songs like "After the Gold Rush" and "When
You Dance I Can Really Love" became essential listening for
fans and remain staples of his live shows.
Members of CSNY worked
with each other during the '70s in various combinations with varying
degrees of success (check out the self-titled debut album by Manassas,
featuring Stills and Chris Hillman from the Byrds and Flying Burrito
Brothers, for something interesting). Although they were established
superstars, they were for the most part unable to maintain coherent
momentum. These days CSN play county fairs and, from time to time,
the Fillmore. They collaborated with Young on 1989's wretched American
Dream, and 10 years later on Looking Forward, which was
not much better. They set the record (two) for most liver-transplant
survivors in one band – Crosby and Taylor – and in recent
years they have played moderately successful reunion tours with
shows that felt like Neil Young with special guests Crosby, Stills,
and Nash rather than CSNY.
Mitchell recently released
Travelogue, a fantastic two-CD album featuring orchestral
versions of her classic songs. She's been quoted as saying she won't
be dealing with the music industry again anytime soon.
As Young noted to McDonough,
"The event is nothing. It's what made the event happen –
which is no longer where the event is. The event is the leftovers
– it happens so the entity, the spirit, or what made the shit
happen can move on." Laurel Canyon, like any so-called scene,
was largely myth – a joint production staged by musicians,
the media, the music business, and the fertile imaginations of music
fans swept up in the gold rush. The music – there was a lot
of it – was at that moment the hippest sound coming out of
L.A, and that's saying a lot. And today reunion tours by the Eagles
and CSN (the money's got to be good) prove Young's adage that "rust
never sleeps" by showcasing bands who burned out but lack the
grace to fade away. Thankfully, Young and Mitchell have kept moving
– ghosts from those days are hard to escape. Crosby,
Stills, and Nash play July 16, 7:30 p.m., Mountain Winery, 14831
Pierce Road, Saratoga. (415) 421-TIXS. Neil Young and
Crazy Horse perform July 18, 7:30 p.m., Shoreline Amphitheatre,
1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View. $33.25-$78.75. (650) 541-0800.
Young also plays July 20, 7:30 p.m., Chronicle Pavilion, Concord.
$33-$68.50. (415) 421-TIXS.
Laurel Canyon essential
listening
Crosby, Stills and Nash,
Crosby, Stills and Nash (1969, Atlantic)
Crosby, Stills, Nash,
and Young, Déjà Vu (1970, Atlantic)
Neil Young and Crazy
Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969 Warner Bros.)
Neil Young, After
the Gold Rush (1970, Warner Bros.)
Joni Mitchell, Clouds
(1969, Warner Bros.)
Joni Mitchell, Ladies
of the Canyon (1970, Warner Bros.)
Essential reading
Jimmy McDonough, Shakey:
Neil Young's Biography (Anchor Books)
Karen O'Brien, Joni
Mitchell: Shadows and Light (Virgin Publishing)
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