Customer Reviews

Legends of the Canyon: Classic Artists

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I waited months for this to finally be release. I received today & went right in my DVD player. I found this video fresh, & loved hearing stories being told first hand, by the musicans, fans & supporting cast. These historic bands made West Coast 60's - 70's rock legendary. We already know the on-going effect they have on popular music, even today.
The beauty here is Henry Diltz knew these performers before they were stars, before they lost some of their shine. He was able to share stories & pictures that only an insider's would have had access. Sit back and enjoy the stories, some we already knew & some brand new to me, a music lover of 35 years. At times Henry sounds much like a proud grandparent, speaking about his grandkids, but I'd bought into his subjects long before this DVD arrived.

I found this by accident while browsing on Amazon. I just finished watching it and thoroughly enjoyed it. A warning to potential viewers - the focus is heavy on Crosby, Stills and Nash and their various incarnations/relationships. There are others mentioned and included but CSN is the focus. It is not even across the all the "legends". As I am a huge CSN/Y fan, this was fine with me but I put it as a heads up to others.

I have read and viewed a great deal about these bands but still found that this included some new materials. Some of the interviews seem quite recent.

At first,I thought this was going to be a boring documentary,rehashing old stories based on half-truths.This is an excellent documentary on the short-lived,yet lively musical flower-power explosion of the late 1960's.As the New York folkie bands headed west-ward,they settled into the artistic enclave of Laurel Canyon.Mama Cass was said to be the den mother of the psychedalic pride.Others have said she was the Gertrude Stein of that intense Lost Generation of ecletic musical artists.Many of the stories are well known,yet this video documentary expounds upon the legendery tales.Lots of great footage from Henry Diltz's collection,seldom scene.I have always thought Henry was the paragon of pacific coast photographers ,during that '60s zeitgeist.He was in fact, a real folkie himself,who bought a camera by happenstance one day.As a painter paints on a canvas,or a weaver looms a tapestry; Henry captured amazing images of the people and their environs.The Dvd is almost two-hours,and many extra specials added.I felt the dvd ends too quickly,for such an amazing video montage tribute to those SoCal bands.One thing is made clear,by Henry Diltz,two bizarre things were happening that hazy summer of 1969.One,wide-spread use of cocaine around and secondly whatever petals left on the flower-power stalks,were gleaned and reaped by Manson and his brethern.And one thing is for certain,the music lives on.Eventhough the various forces of vain egos and dope abuse,eventually caused seperations and divisions among themselves.Their music mirrors the thoughts and feelings of that brief era of questioning social norms.

My wife, who is younger than I am and a music fan like I am, sometimes refers to me as a hippie. She says this to exaggerate our age differences, and to point out that we are from different generations, as if we were decades apart (As a point of fact, she was born six years, nine months and seven days after me, but who's counting?). In a sense, I can understand her point, because a lot happened in those six-plus years. For example, I can remember Beatlemania, but she wasn't born until after "Help!" was released. Although I was much too young to be a hippie, I identified with the youth movement, especially the music, while her point of reference usually dates back no further than the Clash. I may have only been seven years old during the `Summer of Love', but that didn't stop me from buying love beads and bell-bottom jeans (My Dad made me return the love beads). That is why I anticipated watching "The Legends of Laurel Canyon," while she remained skeptical.
As it turns out, I am very happy to report that she enjoyed this documentary as much as I did. For me, it reaffirmed my love for what I already knew, but for her, it was revelatory. The story begins with theories regarding how the circumstances surrounding the Kennedy assassination led the youth of the time to become skeptical of the older generation, and provided the impetus for Beatlemania as a means of rejecting the status quo. By leading us through Dylan's influence on folk music, it follows Stephen Stills and a few other key players as they settle in Laurel Canyon and form bands that emulated both the Beatles and Dylan. The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield were first, and a scene developed around clubs like the Whiskey a Go-Go and the Troubadour. Along the way, we meet the Mamas and the Papas, Joni Mitchell and others, and through their collective work, we discover a generation defined by its pursuit of intelligence, self-awareness, curiosity and sensuality.
Before I go too much further, I should point out that this documentary could be subtitled "Stephen Stills and his Influence on the California Culture of the Sixties." Stills is by far the primary focus of this story, and it is his music that provides much of the soundtrack. The footage covering the birth of Crosby, Stills and Nash is revelatory and beautiful, covering details that I had not previously known. It also allows the story to move smoothly from the highs of Woodstock, to the subsequent lows of the Manson murders and the Kent Sate shootings.
Back then, there was a phrase about never trusting anyone over thirty. Now that I'm 51, I have a different perspective on that axiom. I still identify strongly with this music, as if it were frozen in amber while I continued to age. In a sense, that is true, and happily, I believe the same is now true for my wife. Maybe I've become entirely too old, but I'd prefer to think that our time has come, and this music lives on in the spirit of all the people who experienced it firsthand when it happened, as well as those who are just now discovering its essence. As I reread this paragraph, I recognize that I need to confess to something after all: OK, so I'm a hippie.
A Tom Ryan

LA's Laurel Canyon music scene has been well documented through a variety books and movies. Laurel Canyon was where Miss Pamala found her super-groupie training wheels trying to shag Byrd Chris Hillman. Every LA music history has a chapter (or more) devoted to the goings on in this 'Eden above Sunset." This now almost-mythic place was where Frank Zappa was regualarly providing a place to crash and David Geffen was getting knotted up with business before becoming a Free Man in Paris (and billionare in the process).

Canyon of Dreams by Harvey Kubernick is the best book on this topic. Kubernic provides some well researched context (and photographs) for how and why the canyon developed into the So Cal hippie epicenter it became. From the red cars to beatniks, to the pothead hippies and then the mainstream - it is quite a story. One that is distinctly LA. All captured quite well in Dreams.

Haight Ashby had the Dead, and LA had the Monkees. SF had Janis and Grace Slick and LA had Mama Cass and Van Dyke Parks. Major contrasts. In Laurel Canyon Joni Mitchell's house had "two cats in the yard." Graham Nash met Crosby and Stills for the first time. John Lennon walked around with a Kotex on his head. It was all happening, at least for a time, in Laurel Canyon.

It would have been great to have burned a few doobies with some of those musicians who had to "work" down the hill at the Roxy or Troubadour - ending the evening at Barney's Beanery. It really was quite a scene, and before everyone got spooked by the Manson family, the Canyon was a bit of nirvana where hitchhikers could get a ride and pot was everywhere. Music was everywhere. This was before the coked out success-excess-ed-stressed artists became robotic hit-makers who made the break to clam down in Malibu (after detox).

Legends of the Canyon - a new DVD from Classic Aritists captures some of this time with a documentary featuring a narrative spun primarily by rock photographer Henry Diltz. Dlitz seemed to be at the center of it snapping pictures of everyone en route to his over 80 album cover photos. Clearly he was there, is articulate, and has perspective that isn't overly hyperbolic. Diltz is the kind of hippie you wish was your neighbor today. Someone loaded with stories and whose brownies need consideration before ingestion.

Legends of the Canyon offers some unfamiliar vintage video footage along with photo montages of some more familiar pictures. The talking heads do a good job of at the zeitgeist of the Canyon. The only problem is the narrative focus gets a bit lost and the film forgets it is about about the Canyon, not just the history of Crosby, Still, Nash & Young.

Anyone who has read Michael Walker's Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood or Barney Hoskyn's Waiting for the Sun: A Rock and Roll History of Los Angeles knows there is a lot of great stories and details missing from this earnest documentary (a common problem with any documentary BTW). Almost all of what is there is interesting.

Legends of the Canyon, while not brilliant, succeeds at conveying the magic that was at the Brill Building of the Southern California music scene, Laurel Canyon, which fittingly for LA was up in the mountains.

Well made & well-intentioned documentary is about 2/3rd Crosby Stills & Nash and the rest all the other artists featured on the cover. The DVD cover art tips one off that the film is an overview of the Laurel Canyon music scene of the 1970's. The DVD's Main Menu states "Crosby, Stills & Nash IN Legends of the Canyon" and the film's Opening Credits read "Legends of the Canyon - Origins of West Coast Rock". Its like the producers of this DVD cannot make up their mind what this film is really about. Film is disjointed & ends very abruptly. Very little of Joni Mitchell or Neil Young. nothing about America (although Gerry Buckley gives an opinion on other artists). What about Frank Zappa, Jackson Browne, Jimmy Webb, The Monkees, Tim Buckley, and on & on. Fans of CS&N will enjoy, other folks wishing for a better view of LC scene, stick w/Henry Diltz's companion book "Canyon Of Dreams".

This is not what I was expecting when I starting to play it as the cover is just covered with the names of popular 60's groups that started out in Laurel Canyon and I was half expecting a concert.
What I found was a beautifully woven narrative of some of the greatest names in Rock and Rock along with some awesome video, some I had seen, others I had not and interviews with most of the band members.
This video does concentrate heavily on CS&N so if you don't like them, you might not like this video.
For me this ties up alot of lose ends as I was not really old enough to go to Woodstock (close however) and this fills in many of the gaps and in my opinion is a welcome addition to my video collection. One that will be listened to time after time.

I enjoyed watching this but it has some problems:

1) The cover and title makes you think it's going to go into the history of all these groups but it barely touches on the Byrds, Mamas and Papas and Joni Mitchell.
I'd say the percentage is about 75% Crosby Stills and Nash and the other 25% is divided between all the others.

2) For whatever reason they did not give Neil Young his say (or he refused to participate?) even though the implication from the others is that he ruined CS&N by being egotistic and wanting to do his own thing and not being a "team player". I feel that even if this is "true", he should have had a chance to give his thoughts.

3) This goes back to 1) but there were no interviews with Joni Mitchell, Roger McGuinn, or other L.A. musicians - it was all about CS&N

4) the documentary just was not directed or edited that well. If you watch Joni Mitchell "A Woman of Heart and Mind" you can see how great this documentary COULD have been, had they interviewed more of the main players and put a little more production value into it. Where was Jackson Browne? Roger McGuinn? Joni?

Okay, those are the reasons this gets only 4 stars (and in reality I'd have probably given it only 3 and 1/2 if I could have).

The good:

Very interesting stuff about Crosby Stills Nash (and sometimes Y). I learned a lot about how they got together and how they worked together. The interviews with those people were great to hear!

The verbal history from Diltz about who lived in the canyon at that time and how they all interacted was interesting as well - I just wish they'd have had some interviews with some of the principles.

All in all if you're a classic rock fan and love CS&N and sometimes Y then this is well worth renting or buying. If, however, you are looking for an overview of the L.A. sound, well then you'll have to wait for someone to make one, and hopefully they will before McGuinn, Joni and others kick the bucket. While it was a different sound, I still think it's hard to mention L.A. and not talk about the Doors. At least there are some good dvd's about the Doors out there.

This is good but I wouldn't buy it. It's more the kind of thing to rent once and that's enough.

Personally I was really interested in it and I loved it. I am/was a fan of all of these musicians. Unfortunately the people I was watching it with saw it as very pedantic, very boring. None of us really liked the narrator. But I will keep on watching it to the end. For me, it has really interesting factoids. but if you are not totally interested in that time/place of music, you will probably be bored and not want to watch it all the way through.

The movie was concise and able to summarize the events during the collaboration of Crosby, Stills and Nash. The interviews with Henry were great and I wanted the footage to continue. There are some rare silent gems as extras on this DVD. Overall great movie- wish it could be longer- may be that will be saved for Legends of the Canyon part 2??