Customer Reviews

Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you turn your nose up at early-'70s LA music, but really know more about the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac, etc. than you'd like to admit, then "Hotel California" is a recommended guilty pleasure.

On the other hand, if you've grown to admire the craftsmanship and durability of the songs that came out of that era, you probably deserve a more thorough and mature account of the "cowboy canyon" scene (to use Walter Becker's phrase).

Barney Hoskyns deftly covers a lot of historical ground in about 250 pages. But the quick pace leaves more than a few loose ends hanging. Early major players Barry Friedman and Mama Cass fade away fast, while Fleetwood Mac has its meteoric rise crammed into two pages. Disappointingly, Hoskyns spends more time on faves Gene Clark of the Byrds and Lowell George of Little Feat.

This leaves the usual chronicling of mega-players David Geffen, Irving Azoff, The Eagles, Linda Rondstadt, CSNY, Jackson Browne, et.al. At least novices will find out why JD Souther was so integral to the scene, even if his solo albums aren't well known.

That said, there is some bitchy fun to be had reading less-than-flattering accounts of Joni Mitchell (high-living snob), Gram Parsons (rich-kid hanger on) and even Neil Young (whose mercurial career changes seem less heroic than self-centered). These irreverant portraits are refreshing, if one-dimensional.

Wait until this comes out in paperback. Crack open a bottle of Cuervo and a few other refreshments from the era and enjoy a frivolous afternoon.

The definitive book on the California sound from the Laurel Canyon 60s to the cocaine addled 70s, it's all here. Special emphasis is paid to David Geffen's venture from agent to music record company owner and his specific group of artists, Jackson Browne, Eagles, JD Souther and Linda Ronstadt. The rest of music history also is here like the singer/songwriter hangout, the Troubadour. This is a fascinating period that celebrates political upheaval and the influence of songs written with meaning vs. pop love songs. For anyone with an interest in popular music, American culture or Los Angeles specifically, this is worth the read and I strongly recommend it.

Hoskyns new book isn't the masterpiece that his previous 'Waiting for the Sun' was but it's a fine job, nonetheless. The Laurel Canyon scene in the '70s is a much-derided smorgasbourg of drugs, sex and oh-so-mellow California rock whose major exponents (The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Crosy Stills and Nash, etc.) have been forgotten in the past few decades by those who never got past their punk obsessions. While not exactly considered "hip" in 2006 this music actually has a lot to offer.

Joni and Jackson were responsible for a succession of excellent singer songwriter LPs spread out amongst the entire decade. The Eagles were perhaps the biggest selling US band of the time. Linda Ronstadt--the most popular female rocker (if you can call her that) of the second half of the decade, never wrote her own material but recorded some better than average records which were unavoidable on '70s FM radio. Other luminaries such as J.D. Souther, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks and many others get generous coverage.

So pick it up. If this kind of music interests you at all you won't be dissapointed.

It is hard to describe to someone the meaning of serendipity if they have never experienced it. And it happens rarely enough in life. But the purchase and subsequent reading of this book happened at exactly the same time as David Geffen's emergence as a news story presence in the past month.

Geffen is a major part of the story of Hotel California. His influence and drive helped to make the emergence of the left coast as the "new music capital" of America possible. But the story is so huge and involves so many figures that the book would have to be three times as long in order tell more than a cursory overview of the California music scene.

I also don't know if the book does particular homage in a good light to certain personalities of the day, especially Joni Mitchell. The rest of the cast of characters are all very familiar to anyone over the age of 45 and this book is a good introduction to the California scene. When combined with several other excellent book that are currently available about The Byrds, Gene Clark, Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young as well as Crosby, Stills and Nash, the picture becomes more focused. Otherwise, this book is like watching the history of a decade or more of music in a two hour special by Ken Burns. It leaves you wanting more.

Buy it, read it and then keeping reading other accounts of the time. It can take you back and take you forward... just like the music and the scene in 70's California.

This is a guilty pleasure. I loved the music that came out of the LA country rock scene of the early '70's. This book revisits that scene with some "beyond the music" type perspective. Mr. Hoskins takes us into the legendary Troubador club, the drugged out parties and into the recording sessions of Ronstadt, Browne, the Eagles, CSNY, Joni Mitchell, and the incomparable JD Souther. Mr. Hoskins can cram more names into one paragraph than any writer I know. If you are not familiar with the names it might make for some tough sledding. Most of the material seems to come from interviews (most of which were conducted by Cameron Crowe - he should get co-author credit). It was a fun, easy read that took me back to a time when some of the greatest music ever was created. I found myself needing to listen to JD, Jackson, Linda, etc. while reading this fun book.

Having enjoyed Hoskyns' story of L.A. rock's origins and evolution in his Waiting for the Sun, and having read Michael Walker's overlapping (in subject matter, time of study, and time of publication) Laurel Canyon [also reviewed by me], I approached Hotel Cal with anticipation. Although I was still in childhood/adolescence at the time of the early 70s that Hoskyns' new book surveys, and although much of the music was not so much liked by me as simply absorbed from its immensely popular and understandably nearly ubiquitous presence on the local L.A. radio stations at the time, I found myself recalling dozens of songs that I have not heard since three decades ago!

Hoskyns's skill in this book, as in his previous Los Angeles music book, is an ability to sift through anecdotes, interviews, his own and others' journalism, and to present a clearly told, accessible, and entertaining read. It's neither too gossipy nor too clinical; he manages, I think, to find pretty much the right balance. Walker and Hoskyns agree that the rise of the early 70s musicians party and pleasure ethos by its hedonism, navel gazing, and focus on self-satisfaction tolled the death knoll for Summer of Love idealism. Figures who bridged these two eras (pre-Woodstock to post-Watergate) such as Crosby and Stills come off the worse for wear after this chemically fueled race to the top of the charts. Those who followed the politicized folk-rock with a complacent ruralized mid-tempo rock soon eclipsed their addled forebears, at least as judging by Henley and Frey! As in Walker's story, the ubiquitous Pamela Des Barres, the enigmatic Joni Mitchell, and the old timer Henry Diltz all recall their own escapades at length. Those talents who were discarded by the side of the fast lane by their more calculating one-time bandmates and pals emerge poignantly. The Brothers Gosdine, Dillard, and Berline all had their supporting roles to play in establishing the bluegrass foundations that younger musicians would adapt into folk-rock and then country-rock in the later 60s. Gene Clark, Chris Hillman (who also is extensively quoted in Walker's book), Ned Doheny, J.D. Souther, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner are among those lesser-known pioneers of the country-rock fusion that the Eagles would take from Doug Weston's Troubadour club within a few years to take it to the stadium tour limit.

The escapades of CSNY, Linda Ronstadt's savvy knack for choosing material and her too-little credited level-headedness, Gram Parsons' trust-fund banked decadence, and Jackson Browne's energetic ability (shared with Joni Mitchell) to hook up romantically and musically with celebrity mates all make the characters here (un?)reliably engaging. What is less documented are the roles that the more unsung Lady of the Canyon, Cass Elliot, played as a sort of matchmaking yenta who brought talents together (her complicated but still largely unsung role is slightly increased in Walker's book, but not enough to delve fully into her evident influence), as well as not enough detail to capture on the page what the "Warner-Reprise" mentality of the "Burbank Sound" represented. Still -- in an astute observation of Hoskyns-- best of all as the template for the design of the new L.A. starmaking machinery was the blueprint of the little-heralded debut by Little Feat. The author also notes correctly that such talents as Lowell George and crew, as well as Browne or Parsons or Clark, in the current bottom-line record business would not have ever been given the chance by today's WB perhaps to even make a second album.

Egregiously, Michael Walker in his book misspelled twice Beachwood Canyon (just below the Hollywood sign and a few canyons to the east of Laurel--neither writer adds that at its end lies a working horse ranch, the last of such among now McMansion-blighted chaparral); Hoskyns misspells it as "Beechwood" five or six times, three on one page. Since both men have lived in L.A. quite a while, it puzzles me why this persistent yet easily corrected (by anyone who'd claim to know the Hollywood Hills this is like an adopted hipster New Yorker telling us about when he hung out in "Greenwitch Village") mistake exists in either supposedly thorough chronicle. There's also a sizable street by the punning name that goes down from the canyon into the heart of Hollywood, so it is not an obscure nomenclature. I do not know which author to originally charge this error to; one curious aspect to Walker's book is the complete absence of references to Hoskyns' "Waiting for the Sun"; perhaps resentment at Hoskyns' new book arriving about neck-and-neck with Walker's own is to blame? True, a minor glitch, but how could it be coincidental to both authors, experts on this musical period and cultural terrain? The country-psych-rock revivalists Beachwood Sparks a few years ago provide a salutory reminder both of the legacy of the time Walker and Hoskyns describe and a helpful mnemonic for how to spell that canyon correctly!!!

Actually, given that Waiting for the Sun did hint more at the WB-Reprise-Elektra-Asylum stable's own knack at crossbreeding fine racehorses as well as dobbins like Van Dyke Parks or Warren Zevon, the shortcomings of this longer book disappointed me. I give both Walker and Hoskyns four stars rounded up for their welcome efforts, but the explorations in both cases still lack depth. I wish Hoskyns had interviewed more than the musicians, studio heads, and managers at WB, for example. Why not hear from the graphic designers, photographers, producers, and clever PR marketers who sold millions calling themselves the counterculture on their Burbank-born early 70s brand of anti-capitalist, pro-hedonist anthems? The cultural legacy of WB and its labelmates needs to be investigated at much more length: how they and not, say, Capitol, was able to position their label as the hip proto-alternative deserves space. One used to buy a WB album then based on the label, even if the artist had not yet been familiar to you: customers trusted that label's roster.

Hoskyns delves into a lot of oral history and written interviews (although he himself, judging from the endnotes, does not offer his own "three decades" of interviews but rather mixes his own largely from 1993/4 and 2004/5 with those by other journalists-- contrary to the bookjacket's inside front blurb). However, if you have not heard the actual music under discussion or if you remember it less than precisely now, the quick skims of key album's contents and especially the sound of the records that made these musicians rich or left them poor are insufficient to convey what made the L.A. singer-songwriter and country-rock hybrids so perennial-- at least three decades ago. Hoskyns rushes through the actual songs and the feel of the music in his haste to pile on more stories, list yet another sly move by David Geffen, or how many drugs some twenty-four-year old instant celebrity superstar consumed.

Yes, Geffen, coke, cash, groupies, and debauchery belong here. But these, not the musical styles or their development, tend to dominate the results on the page. So, while you will not learn about the wonderful copywriters who on the inner sleeves of WB albums would trumpet bargain-rate label samplers called by such titles as "Schlagers!", you will gain from this book, especially if read after Waiting for the Sun and Walker's Laurel Canyon account, a better understanding of a type of music that now seems about as far away as the hippie roots from which cocaine cowboys and denim-skirted sirens blossomed.

I knew some of the history of all the artists written in this book (they are some of my favorite musicians).

What I didn't know is how intertwined their lives were and how pervasive the drug culture eked into their lives.

This book is actually a cautionary tale... while some of these artists made it out alive, some did not. There were a lot of music people that did not survive the sex drugs and rock and roll. There is something to be said in the old adage "Don't wish for something that hard... you might get it"

After reading this book, I was amazed that any of these artists could write or play any of the memorable tunes that they did considering the amount of illicit substances in their respective systems.

Some of the incidents described in the book are scenes that most rock fans know... the chance meeting on Sunset of Richie Furay and Steve Stills with a hearse-driving Neil Young that led to the formation of Buffalo Springfield, but a lot of the inside dynamics and interpersonal relationships described in this book were new to me as an avid rock fan.

This book was easy reading, and perhaps eye opening. I recommend it for all music fans.

This book is filled with information on the LA singer song writer music scene focusing on the late sixties to the eighties. For me the scope was too broad with too many artists featured. The timelines get layered and out of synch. And there is way too much information on the music moguls to be of much interest to anybody but music business insiders. Complex relationships are reduced to the simplist: who slept with who, egos clashing, who was doing what drugs...My biggest complaint was the redundancy: the point that money, drugs and fame corrupts gets beaten to death.. There is really not enough focus on the music..saying all that, the book was chock full information and did a decent effort to capture the LA singer song writer scene of that time. That the author felt the music was that important to write this much detail is well... indulgent..Only a hand full of the artists he tracks thru time are worth the mention today...

If you're a fan of CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Eagles you may find this an interesting read. It does not read as a narrative given from an inside view. It appears to be a montage of info collected from various interviews with the players involved and those around them. The best part is the Laurel Canyon beginnings of the singer-songwriter movement in L.A.
It stops rather abruptly in the early 80s, although he occassionally makes mention of happenings in the 90s and 2000s. I got the book from the library and enjoyed it. If I had paid for it, I probably would have been disappointed.

This book is certainly entertaining and informative. You get an insight to those magical days when rock was innovative and fun. You can see how drugs and greed brought that entire experience to a halt. The author gives you tremendous insight into the many interesting characters that inhabited that time period. There are also a great many photographs which enhance the story.
If there is a fault with the book it's that the author spends far to much time talking about Joni Mitchell. It might be because I'm not a big fan of hers but I just don't find her or her music that interesting. Otherwise, this is a very enjoyable read.