Laurel Canyon in the '60s and early '70s was a magical place where musicians gathered to create much of the soundtrack to those times. The Doors, the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, James Taylor, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and more lived and jammed together here. But the scene had a dark side. Many didn't make it out alive, and many of those deaths remain shrouded in mystery. Far more integrated into the scene than most would like to admit was Charles Manson and his infamous Family. It also seems these colourful characters all coexisted alongside a covert military installation.
“"If ignorance is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?" -David McGowan”
"David McGowan is among the smartest and funniest researcher/writers in our intrepid Alternative Media." -- Revolutionary
"If ignorance is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?" -- David McGowan
McGowan is a freelance writer/researcher living in the Los Angeles area.
As a native Angeleno who was born in 1960 and came of age in the 1970s, the music produced by the artists who populate this book provided the soundtrack to my youth, so it is a subject matter that is close to my heart. But what really set the hook was discovering, early on in my research, that there were a number of aspects of the Laurel Canyon scene that didn't really seem to fit in with the prevailing image of a hippie utopia that was ostensibly all about peace and love.Having grown up right alongside this scene, I was shocked to learn that I didn't even know that it had existed at all! And after asking around, I discovered that no one else that I know in this city did either. After the passage of nearly 50 years, it seemed that this was a story that was long overdue for greater exposure.Even more overdue, it seemed to me, was an expose of some of the hidden truths of Laurel Canyon. Though a few books exploring the scene have popped up over the last several years, all of them have a certain sameness to them, with the same stories told in much the same way. I felt it was time to tell a different version of the story the one that can be found hiding in the details that are usually left out or glossed over.
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