Book Review: Laurel Canyon - The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood
Hoodoo
California dreaming
*Laurel Canyon The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary
Neighborhood Michael Walker Faber & Faber: 278 pp., $25
By Mark Rozzo, Mark Rozzo is an arts writer living in New York.
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-rozzo7may07,0,2658412.story
UP Laurel Canyon Boulevard at the corner of Lookout Mountain there
sits a walled-in postage stamp of lawn and trees. It's a primo slice
of real estate, curiously empty. There's no aging Craftsman bungalow,
no rustic-mod hideaway, no latter-day McMansion to glower down upon
the snaking progression of BMWs, Hummers and Mini Coopers traversing
between Hollywood and the Valley. It's as barely conspicuous as it is
unremarkable, the kind of thing you drive by all the time without a
second thought.
Yet the property in question was once the site of a massive log cabin
retreat built by silent-western star Tom Mix. Then, for a brief spell
in the latter half of the 1960s, the storied old pile was the home of
Frank Zappa and his wife, Gail: a gathering place for all order of
Sunset Strip freaks; the unofficial clubhouse of the GTOs, that
whimsical band of gypsy groupies (led by Pamela Des Barres) whose
Zappa-bestowed moniker stood for Girls Together Outrageously; the
creative nexus for Zappa's assorted projects, laced, as they were,
with satire, virtuosity and a generous helping of in-your-face
ambition; and, thanks to the Zappas' tireless sociability, the very
epicenter of the Laurel Canyon scene, a flowering of creative energy
that Michael Walker, in this gossipy and overdue account, likens to
Greenwich Village, to swinging London, to Paris in the 1920s and '30s,
to Bloomsbury, even to fin-de-siècle Vienna.
While the notion that the canyon ever produced an artist of the
magnitude of Jackson Pollock, the Beatles, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Virginia Woolf or Gustav Klimt is a bit dubious, the winding byways
that trace the Kirkwood Bowl and its environs did give birth to wave
upon wave of hit records. Starting with the Byrds, America's first
supergroup and, for a time, worthy rivals of the Fab Four, Laurel
Canyon went on to become the nursery for what could be called the
greening of postwar pop. It was along thoroughfares like Ridpath Drive
and, most famously, Lookout Mountain — where Graham Nash and Joni
Mitchell set up their sandalwood-perfumed love nest, depicted by Nash
in that durable baby boomer chestnut "Our House" — that the roster of
'60s and '70s American rock royalty sprouted.
Besides the Byrds and Zappa and Mitchell, there were the Mamas and the
Papas; the Turtles; Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young;
Jackson Browne; Carole King; and, later, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac,
those 1970s behemoths whose immoderate and unprecedented album sales —
"Rumours," for instance, has sold more than 18 million copies —
forever refocused the recording industry on the bottom line. As Walker
describes this enchanted sylvan hotbed, where candles dripped over
Mateus bottles and joints smoldered while money was virtually minted:
"It was Brigadoon meets the Brill Building."
Much like the mythic village and New York's legendary musicians' mecca
(and like the Zappa house, which later burned to the ground), the
canyon scene flickered for an incandescent moment and then faded away.
Even so, its offerings continue to clog the playlists of classic-rock
stations, not to mention iPods: "Eight Miles High," "California
Dreamin'," "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Take It Easy," "Hotel
California." If you include the extended family of L.A. musicians who
drifted in and out, you could add to the list "Good Vibrations,"
"Light My Fire," "I'm a Believer," "Cinnamon Girl" and even Alice
Cooper's schlock anthem "School's Out."
Except for the Byrds and Neil Young (and, perhaps, Love and the Flying
Burrito Brothers, iconic bands loosely associated with the canyon),
what Walker refers to as the former "musical capital of the world"
doesn't have the cachet of, say, the Memphis of Sun and Stax records
or New York in the CBGB era. But there is something eternally golden
about the canyon's idyll of "writing a song on a redwood deck on
Monday, recording it on Saturday, and having it hit the top of the
charts six weeks later."
Between the release of the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" in 1965 and the
Eagles' swan song, "The Long Run," in 1979, the canyon generated no
end of mythology, charted here with breezy affection by Walker, a
longtime denizen (and a former editor at the Los Angeles Times Sunday
Magazine) enthralled by the kinds of tales you still overhear in the
aisles of the Canyon Country Store: a Byrds-era David Crosby roaring
down Laurel Canyon on a Triumph given to him by Peter Fonda, his
Hobbity cape flying behind him; Mama Cass Elliot, the ultimate Jewish
Earth Mother, providing sympathy in the form of cold cuts and
introducing Nash to Crosby and his friend Stephen Stills of Buffalo
Springfield; assorted run-ins with Charles Manson and his "family," a
social unit that eerily resembled a rock star and his groupie retinue;
Brian Wilson showing up and doing one kooky thing or another; endless
binges and orgies and freakouts; and heady Hollywood nights down at
the Troubadour, where a young Elton John first wowed the canyon's
hippest in 1970, John Lennon rampaged through his sodden "lost
weekend" with a Kotex taped to his forehead and a denim-clad dude from
Texas named Don Henley arrived to encounter Linda Ronstadt in a Daisy
Mae dress, barefoot and scratching her backside: "I thought, 'I've
made it,' " Henley recalls. " 'I'm here. I'm in heaven.' "
It was a heaven that couldn't last. By the mid-1970s, the promise of
the canyon — a jasmine-scented Valhalla where rock bands could smoke
as much weed as their brethren up in Haight-Ashbury and yet make music
that was more cogent, appealing and lasting — had been buried under
what Walker calls a "great fluffy pile": Cocaine and the canyon became
so synonymous that locals drove cars emblazoned with bumper stickers
declaring "My Other Car Is Up My Nose." (Stills, Walker reports,
nearly perished from the effects of a cocaine-related "mucus mass.")
For a scene already skewed toward deadly self-involvement — achingly
earnest singer-songwriters plucking 12-string guitars and proclaiming,
as CSN did in "Carry On," that "Love is coming to us all" — the coke
avalanche covered the lords and ladies of the canyon in further layers
of narcissism and paranoia and unseemly ambition. As Walker notes, the
"juggernaut plowed on with songs about peaceful, easy feelings and
romantic succor, even as the songwriters stayed up till dawn with
fifty-dollar bills shoved up their nostrils."
There were other bummers too: the Manson killings, Altamont and, in
1981, the Wonderland murders. At some point in the last 20 years, a
proposition must have passed making it unlawful not to hang your L.A.
narrative on these horrors. Walker's prominent placement of them feels
rote, an effort to load pop-historical ballast onto a story about a
bunch of great pop records — many of them relegated to the irony bin
after the rise of punk rock in the late 1970s. (Perhaps this is why
canyon music has lately reemerged as a forgotten treasure, receiving
benediction from artists like Beck, Matthew Sweet, the Thrills, and
the Autumn Defense. And rumor has it that Adam Schlesinger of
Fountains of Wayne and James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins will produce
a comeback album by the group America.)
You wonder, at times, why Walker doesn't explore the recriminations
coming from within the canyon scene itself; take, for instance, Young
in "Revolution Blues" (1974): "Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon / is
full of famous stars / But I hate them worse than lepers / and I'll
kill them / in their cars." And Walker remains oddly incurious about
the links between the canyon's music scene — that Bloomsbury, that
Paris in the '20s — and other creative milieus from L.A.'s golden
moment: the gallery world (Ed Kienholz was a neighbor of the Byrds'
Chris Hillman), young Hollywood (didn't Fonda drop acid with the Byrds
and the Beatles?) and writers like Joan Didion (who famously
chronicled her quality time with onetime Rothdell Trail resident Jim
Morrison).
If we yearn for first-hand accounts from such heavy hitters as
Mitchell, Young and Roger McGuinn (the book suffers from a troubling
lack of access), Walker makes up for it with a vivid cast of unsung
hangers-on sprawling around the booths at Ben Frank's or getting up to
no good at the Continental Hyatt House, the notorious rock hotel on
Sunset where bands like Led Zeppelin tossed water balloons and
televisions out the windows. There's Morgana Welch, the ringleader of
the "L.A. queens," a clique of Beverly Hills high schoolers who
offered their bodies to '70s British rockers; Kim Fowley, the Ichabod
Crane-like scenester and sometime producer, a font of withering
sarcasm and sleaze; and a kid roadie named Marlowe Brien West, who
became a kind of all-purpose Laurel Canyon mascot and fixture at the
Zappa pad.
By the end of Walker's wistful narrative you begin to wish that the
old log cabin at Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain would rise again,
Brigadoon-like, in this dire era of "American Idol" and Clear Channel.
But even so, the next time you pass that leafy crossroads, just fiddle
with the FM dial: A quick scan of the airwaves — still redolent of
jingle-jangle mornings, riders on the storm and yesterdays gone —
suggests that you can check out of the canyon any time you like, but
you can never leave.
--
.... --- --- -.. --- ---
Smelly Billy
found at:
http://www.buccaneerpublishing.com/Cmelak.htm
Here's a photo that another one of Cemlak's "fans" posted in the Zappa
newsgroup, saying that this was Fat Billy Cmelak, a/k/a the Hoodoo
troll. Charming, isn't he?
http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/handsomebeasts.jpg
~~~
This Cmelak asshole is:
William Cmelak
N9340 Pickerel Creek Rd
Pearson, WI 54462-8140
Described by his neighbors as looking like Haystacks Calhoun with bad
teeth, and smelling like the north end of a southbound yak, Bill Cmelak
lives a lonely existence in the woods inside a 20 year old mobile home.
Except for the minimum wage job cleaning floors that he is too
embarrassed to admit that he holds down Cmelak's only contact with the
outside world is through newsgroups and email.
Cmelak owes everyone in the little hick county that he lives in money
and doesn't have any friends. Consequently, he doesn't get out much.
Cmelak barely got out of high school and flunked out of his local
community college, so consider the intelligence level of this idiot
when you read his nonsense.
>From the Psychology of the Stalker:
" Stalkers tend to be unemployed or underemployed, but are smarter
than other criminals. They often have a history of failed intimate
relationships. They tend to devalue their victims and to sexualize
them. They also idealize certain people, minimize what they are doing
to resist, project onto people motives and actions that have no basis
in truth, and rationalize that the target person deserves to be
harassed and violated. ""
Cmelak is one sick fuck. Hell, even the cops said that he was a sick
fuck. His neighbors and anyone that associates with you needs to be
warned about him.
~~~
Details on Karen Anderson, who writes much of the garbage that the
Hoodoo Troll posts:
Karen Anderson
3590 Narrows View Lane NE #102
Bremerton, WA 98310
As posted by one of her victims:
I and several other guys over the last decade have been stalked by a
woman named Karen Anderson. She claims a residence in Bremerton,
Washington (and, indeed, the Bremerton police found her there last
year) as well as connections to Wisconsin. I HAVE NEVER MET THIS WOMAN.
She stalks and trolls online and I lost count after discovering over
100 identities that she uses, along with tales of dozens of her
victims.
In my case Anderson developed a crush on me after telling me that she
had cancer and was depressed and suicidal. After two years of
correspondence during which she would repeatedly confess that she was
in love with me, and I would repeatedly tell her that I was NOT
interested in her in that capacity but was concerned for her mental
health, she insisted on meeting me when she claimed to be visiting
Florida to see other folks. One thing lead to another, I REFUSED to see
her, and she subsequently followed me and my new girlfriend around for
several days, taking clandestine photos.
In approximately May of 2004 I received a package in the mail with
Anderson's return address containing the clandestine photos of my
office, my house, and my girlfriend, and about 40 pornographic photos
of Anderson and her vibrator. You also have to understand that I have a
long history of doing charitable works. I have been an active Red Cross
Disaster Volunteer, have been actively involved in a local breast
cancer charity for
several years, and it is not out of character for me to try to
encourage someone who tells me that they are depressed and potentially
suicidal.
Following the receipt of the package of photos I received several
online death threats from a clown in Wisconsin who was hiding his
identity but who checked out as a character named William Cmelak. His
newsgroup provider verified that the threats were coming from the
Antigo, Wisconsin area.
Cmelak went on to post in public newsgroups how he had a desire to
sexually assualt men during Bike Week. Really strange, psycho stuff.
The police in three states investigated and interviewed Anderson and
tried to interview Cmelak, who vanished for several weeks, but were not
able to make a case. Yet.
Since then I have discovered that Anderson stalked a handicapped
gentleman who lives in New Orleans. Her methods were very similar in
that case. He has MS, is confined to a wheelchair, and was another
sympathetic correspondent to Ms. Anderson, who at the time claimed to
have MS. According to this gentlemen she showed up completely
unannounced one day after driving from Washington to Louisiana. This
gentlemen went on to say that Anderson seemed to be talking to herself
and answering herself, and scared him so badly that he excused himself
from his own house, left her behind, and was afraid to return until
sometime the next morning when he was sure that she had left.
I have also since heard that Anderson was a mental patient and
hospitalized for about 2 years in the general Pearson, Wisconsin area.
There have been a string of other guys that have been haunted by this
crazy woman. In fact, there are a couple of newsgroups where, for a
while, the chief form of entertainment was to tell their horror tales
about Karen Anderson. But I think that the reader gets the picture.
This woman is simply not 'normal' by any stretch of the imagination.
Considering the rambling writings and murky logic of both Cmelak and
Anderson, one has to wonder if they aren't both escaped mental
patients, which was the rumor in the case of Anderson a few years ago.
>From CrimeLibrary.com, of the woman who stalk men, 50% have an acomplice. Cmelak is Anderson's accomplice. According to the FBI's Crime Classification Manual, Anderson and Cmelak would most likely be classified as delusional stalkers.