It has taken an English writer from across the Big Water to help us define and understand our own culture. The author, a longtime afficianado on all things American, has unravelled the mystery of California's music scene from the late
'60s through the late '70s. He points his pop stick at The Eagles, Crosby, Stills, Nash
and Young, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and a host of other paisley cowboys dotting the landscape of the hills Hollywood.
During the mid-'60s, the musical center of the world shifted from the East Coast to the West Coast and landed in the heart of California - and more specifically Laurel Canyon. This beautiful and remote setting - though it was nestled only minutes away from the the revolution taking place down on the Sunset Strip - was home to these musical cowboys, and here Hoskyns takes his sharp-eyed needle and threads it through the music that developed and thrived in these softly rolling hills.
There are interviews galore here, a mind-numbing amount of research and profound insights
- and, more than anything, a wonderfully written book. No one does this better; if you want to find out what it was like to soar in the golden sunlight of the Hollywood Hills some three-plus-decades gone, check this out.