Anyone who lived in late 1960's to 1970's LA or wishes they had been there when music changed changed this city forever - needs to read this. Now.

 Here is the opening of Lisa Robinson's article on Los Angeles, Laurel Canyon, and the music of the late 1960's and the early 1970's - and it is a great story superbly told.  Here is the opening - and then read the rest here.

 An Oral History of Laurel Canyon, the 60s and 70s Music Mecca

Joni Mitchell at home on Lookout Mountain Avenue, in Laurel Canyon, September 1970.

© Henry Dilitz/MorrisonHotelGallery.com.

 They made music together, took drugs together, formed bands together, slept together. But none of the legends of the Laurel Canyon scene that flowered in L.A. in the late 60s and early 70s—Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Linda Ronstadt, and others—remember it quite the same way.

by

• Lisa Robinson

 When I first came out to L.A. [in 1968], my friend [photographer] Joel Bernstein found an old book in a flea market that said: Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they'll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they'll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they'll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they'll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they'll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain. —Joni Mitchell

Some say the Laurel Canyon music scene began when Frank Zappa moved to the corner of Lookout Mountain and Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the late 1960s. Former Byrds bassist Chris Hillman recalls writing “So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star” in Laurel Canyon in 1966 in his house, on a steep winding street with a name he doesn't remember. The Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison reportedly wrote “Love Street” while living behind the Laurel Canyon Country Store. Michelle Phillips lived with John Phillips on Lookout Mountain in 1965 during the Mamas and the Papas' heyday. Books and documentaries have mythologized and romanticized this woodsy canyon nestled behind Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills. Still, misconceptions continue.

And here is the rest of the story.