Directed by Allison Ellwood — who recently worked on The Go-Go’s and the 2013 critically acclaimed History of the Eagles documentary — the 30-second clip features the legendary artists that inhabited the Hollywood Hills neighborhood in Los Angeles during the late Sixties and early Seventies.
“We were at the very center of this beautiful bubble of creativity and friendship,” Graham Nash says in the video, as images of musicians flash across the screen: the Byrds, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, the Doors, the Mamas and the Papas, and Bonnie Raitt, to name a few. “When a chemistry happens between people musically,” David Crosby adds, “it’s magic.”
The series includes original interviews with Browne, Nash, Raitt, Ronstadt, Don Henley, Michelle Phillips, Roger McGuinn, among others. It was executive-produced by the Kennedy/Marshall Co., Jigsaw Productions, Amblin Television, Warner Music Group, and Jeff Pollack.(ROLLING STONE)
The epic tales of Laurel Canyon’s heyday continues to linger like the warm smell of colitas rising up through the air… It’s here that the SoCal sound was born out of an era of relaxed morals (fucking sex), folks expanding their mental horizons (drugs), and a wave of eclectic misfits coming from all over to launch, reinvent, or escape their musical careers (rock ‘n’ roll) in this sleepy, smoky, winding hippy enclave. And the women, Mama Cass & Joni Mitchell, were the (wise and worldly beyond their years) matriarchs watching over over this peaceful, easy-feeling, community headquartered on Lookout Mountain. Henry Diltz was a friend and photographer to many in the scene those days, and his visual record and memories of these times is priceless
“When I first came out to L.A. [in 1968], my friend Joel Bernstein found an old book in a flea market that said, ‘Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they’ll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they’ll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they’ll say Lookout Mountain.’ So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain.” —Joni Mitchell
“Joni Mitchell was quite a true artist: deeply creative, very thoughtful. A lot of art is imitation but for Joni it was original, from her heart. She was really a poet, and she was a painter before she made music. She was lots of fun to photograph because she spoke so brilliantly about everything. It was fun to hang out with her and listen to her talk about whatever was on her mind.
She’s a grand lady now, she holds forth if there’s anybody nearby to listen. You’d see her at a party with a whole bunch of young people sitting at her feet listening to her hold forth about religion, art, the generations, life, everything.” photo by © Henry Diltz
.“David Crosby came to see Joni Mitchell at the Gaslight South, in Florida. ‘Right away I thought I’d been hit by a hand grenade,’ he later said. There was something about the way Mitchell combined naked purity with artful sophistication that shocked Crosby – the sense of a young woman who had seen too much too soon. He set Joni in his sights, bedding her that week.
The affair was never likely to last. ‘These were two very willful people. Neither was going to cave in. I remember being at Joni’s old apartment in Chelsea in New York and I heard this commotion on the street.
And it was Crosby and Joni screaming at each other on the corner. It gave me a real sense of the volatility of their relationship,’ recalled Joel Bernstein.
The volatility did not obscure David’s deep admiration for Joni’s talent, nor his awareness of the obstacles she and Elliot were encountering. ‘Everything about Joni was unique and original, but we couldn’t get a deal,’ said Elliott Roberts, who took tapes to Columbia, RCA and other majors.
‘The folk period had died, so she was totally against the grain. Everyone wanted a copy of the tape for, like, their wives, but no one would sign her.’
A demo session was green-lighted on condition that David Crosby produce it. ‘David was very enthusiastic about the music,’ Joni says. ‘He was twinkly about it. His instincts were correct: he was going to protect the music and pretend to produce me.’” ( selvedgeyard.com)
