Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon - Hardcover

Harvey Kubernik

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402765894 ISBN 13: 9781402765896

Publisher: Sterling, 2009

Synopsis

HardCover. Pub Date: October 2009 Pages: 384 in Publisher: the Sterling A lavishly illustrated insiders look at 80 years of music and culture in Laurel Canyon Laurel Canyon is a zip code with its own play list: to name just a few. Sonny & Cher. The Doors. The Turtles. Canned Heat. Monkees. Byrds. Buffalo Springfield. Joni Mitchell. Jackson owne; Crosby. Stills. Nash & Young; Eagles and Carole King all cultivated their immortal sounds in this LA-based musical fraternity. Written by a long-time Canyon resident who knows them all. Canyon of Dreams traces the history of the community and its enduring legacy. Eye-opening both visually and informatively. this is a book no music lover can be without! Interview highlights include: Randy Meisner reminisces about the Eagles first gig and the recording of 'One of These Nights'; Graham Nash reflects on life with Joni Mitchell and descri...

About this title

Review:

Having been there myself, I can confirm that short of hopping a jet to Los Angeles and sparking one up at the intersection of Mulholland Drive and Laurel Canyon Boulevard, this luscious tome offers armchair travellers by far the most enjoyable way to immerse yourself in that old Laurel Canyon hippy vibe. From the first glimpse of the cover, all got out in the same colours and texture as the original Crosby, Stills & Nash album, you know you're in for a long, leisurely tie-dyed ride. Flowers in your hair are optional, but I'd say go for it. Kubernik, lest you know it not, has long been a byword for the most glorious kind of been-there, done-that, on-the-spot densely researched music history insights available to the musically-smitten, especially where the California Coastline is involved. He's run record companies, written for just about every major rock publication you can name, hung out with everyone who was anyone in the West Coast music biz and, best of all, kept notes and can remember it all. You might have trouble actually getting round to reading the damn thing, though, because Canyon Of Dreams is so captivatingly beautiful that vast tracts of cosmic time can be spent just leafing through the pictures and ephemera contained therein. You want to touch the lovingly reproduced Whisky A Go Go tickets, step right into those pix of Doheny Drive and hitch a ride in Gene Clark's Ferrari. You can hear those West Coast vocal harmonies in your head, along with McGuinn's twelve-string acoustic jangles intermingled with Jonathan Wilson's tastefully plucked banjo. Hell, if ever a book was crying out for scratch'n'sniff, this is it. You can almost smell the coffee in Gazzari's on the Strip, the dope smoke wafting out over the canyon, and the trace of patchouli that no doubt still lingers in Joni Mitchell's pretty dresses. And, then, of course, there are the words. Kubernik's commentary is enriched with evocative eyewitness recollections not just from all the obvious superstars, but from insiders like Van Dyke Parks, Glen Campbell (a session player back then) and photographer Henry Diltz. To paraphrase the well-known song, this book doesn't rain. It pours. Johnny Black --www.rocksourcearchive.com

About the Author:

Harvey Kubernik, a lifelong resident of the Canyon area, is a veteran music journalist whose work has been published in The Los Angeles Free Press, The Los Angeles Times and MOJO among others. He has been a record producer since 1979 and was a former West Coast Director of A&R for MCA Records.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sterling
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1402765894
• ISBN 13: 9781402765896
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Scott Calamar