The Legends of Laurel Canyon: Sunset, Hippies, The Byrds | EYE ON L.A.

the music icons who called LA's Laurel Canyon Home Jimi Hendrix there's nobody like Jimmy playing the guitar like that the doors Jim Morrison was one of the people that was always part of our Google click the monkeys I'm told I had a great time now Tina molave has the inside stories ion La presents the legend of Laurel Canyon hi everyone I'm ion LA's Tina malabay now it's fitting that the first time that I ever heard about the music legends of Laurel Canyon was when I was doing a story here at the Houdini estate the because what happened in Laurel Canyon in the mid 60s and into the early part of the 70s was truly magical now there's no way I could tell all of her tales in one hour or Spotlight every band and musician who spent time here so tonight I'm going to share some of my favorite stories that I've learned over the past year about a very special place during a very important time in music history [Applause] Once Upon a Time there was this place called Laurel Canyon and if you had been fortunate enough in the mid to late 60s to have lived there you would have found yourself among the most magical of people Laura Canyon was the epitome of The Summer of Love I mean people girls and boys hitchhiked up and down the road we saw the possibility of a way we could live all the hit people moved there because it was right by the Sunset Strip but it was in the forest at the same time so you could have both a city country and city Town and Country effect I think initially musicians kind of congregated here is because it was inexpensive to live you had all of these people from like the doors the birds Buffalo Springfield I lived across the street from Mark Wallman of the turtles Jackson Browne right up the hill from Mickey Dolan's and and Joni Mitchell and Frank Zappa and never never occurred to me that you know 20 30 years later this would be a you know a part of a history my neighbors were Linda Ronstadt John Mayall Cass Elliott the guys from Three Dog Night the band love the Crosby Stills and Nash you know there were some girls too of course I paid attention to the boys what was the vibe like when you were living there with all these people oh I'm told I had a great time you know it just seemed normal to us at the time but looking back it was unbelievable in 1964 the Laurel canyon-based group The Birds were made up of David Crosby Michael Clark Gene Clark Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn and their new folk rock sound was the Talk of the Town we saw the birds play at Ciro's it just kind of really knocked us out seeing them and I remember when the birds finally had their big hit with Mr Tambourine Man it was like yeah great I mean our good friends and finally they're on the radio I can't believe it you know and then one by one each person started getting played people lived on Lookout Mountain we also live on Kirkwood maybe half mile loves these two identical houses and we had both houses and we lived there for quite some time they play something like a hundred dollars a month or something for each house which is incredible founded by Arthur Lee and Johnny Eccles along with band members Brian McLean Ken Forsey albon Snoopy fisterer and Michael Stewart Ware the band love was groundbreaking in many ways including being one of the first racially mixed bands we couldn't play lots of places in this country like in the South which had huge Rock audience but being that we were a racially mixed group we couldn't play them because of this many of Love's album covers featured drawings of the group rather than their actual pictures the red states were basically off limits so awesome though hugely popular on the west coast love never achieved the worldwide success many believe they deserved we were having problems with our record company we've been offered a really fantastic deal to leave and go with MCA which was a much larger record company than Elektra was at the time and they just were not going to let us go and so we came up with the dumbest idea we could we thought if we hooked them up with the doors they'll let us go so we hooked them up with the doors and instead of letting us go they kind of used the money that they would have used to promote us for the doors so basically we shot ourselves and but loves groundbreaking album forever changes is listed in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of all time coming in at an impressive number 40 ahead of Meet The Beatles and Bob Marley Legend still ahead on the legends of Laurel Canyon the 1966 Sunset Strip Revolt that inspired a Buffalo Springfield Anthem a longtime Jim Morrison controversy is put to rest and the Jimi Hendrix disaster on the monkeys tour [Music]

Channel: ABC7

Views: 79,694

Keywords: eye on l.a., legends of laurel canyon, laurel canyon, the byrds, vito paulekas, sunset club, hippies, music history, houdini estate

Id: lAl6vxrKfuc

Length: 5min 16sec (316 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2019