Hotel California: Singer-songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the L.A. Canyons 1967–1976. Barney Hoskyns
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Название: Hotel California: Singer-songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the L.A. Canyons 1967–1976
Автор: Barney Hoskyns
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Музыка, балет
isbn: 9780007389216
isbn:
Paul Rothchild, who produced both Love and the Doors for Jac Holzman, was already established as one of the canyon’s leading lights. The house on Ridpath that Rothchild shared with engineer Fritz Richmond became a de rigueur drop-in for anyone interested in sex, drugs and music. ‘Paul really believed in the canyon,’ says Carl Gottlieb. ‘He had a real hippie house, and the more money he made the more he expanded it. That was the quintessential canyon house.’ Like Rothchild, Barry Friedman was a Jewish wild man running riot in the nascent rock industry. ‘People like Paul and Barry contributed a huge amount,’ says Jac Holzman, ‘mostly as sous-chefs who stuck very large spoons into the pot of Laurel Canyon and stirred it up.’
‘It was always open house at Paul Rothchild’s and Barry Friedman’s,’ says Jackson Browne, a protégé of both men. ‘People were constantly dropping in.’ Among them was a gaggle of girls who mainly lived at Monkee Peter Tork’s house. ‘They kept coming over with these big bowls of fruit and dope and shit. They’d fuck us in the pool.’ In his pad at 8524 Ridpath, Friedman pushed a bunch of beds together and staged semi-orgiastic groupings involving Browne and other good-looking corruptibles. A Keseyesque ringmaster of depravity, Friedman could often be seen around town in a King Kong suit bequeathed to him by a hooker in Las Vegas. ‘Barry was off the scale of craziness,’ says Jac Holzman, ‘but always there was a kernel of something worthwhile to what he did.’
Holzman himself dipped the occasional toe into the canyon craziness but remained wary of fully letting go. ‘Jac would make his royal visits,’ remembered Elektra engineer John Haeny. ‘We all gave him denim points.’ Former MGM A&R man David Anderle competed with Paul Rothchild to see who could roll the best joints for Holzman. He himself made another interesting addition to the Elektra family. ‘LA was all about hanging in those days,’ he reminisces. ‘It was the constant hanging at other people’s houses, which was the magic of the hills and canyons. All you had to do was drive up into Laurel Canyon and so much would happen en route.’
‘David Anderle, Paul Rothchild, Bruce Botnick, John Haeny were a combination of loners and orphans,’ Elektra staffer Michael James Jackson reflected later. ‘All of immense gifts, all uniquely fucked up, bound by mutual dysfunction…’
In 1965, Billy James moved from Beverly Hills to a funky house on Ridpath Drive. Uninterested in playing the corporate game at Columbia, he wanted an alternative lifestyle and Laurel Canyon seemed to offer it. ‘Billy got very heavily into the Bob Dylan mentality, which was anti-corporate,’ says David Anderle. ‘He was never somebody I would have picked to make that step into the corporate world and sit behind a desk.’
The original ‘house hippie’, James had played a key role in the success of the Byrds but wasn’t sufficiently empowered to build on the group’s success. Weary of heading the publicity division, he asked Byrds co-manager Eddie Tickner if there might be a job for him within Jim Dickson’s management stable. Tickner instead urged him to ‘get his piece’ from Columbia. The upshot was that James switched from publicity to ‘artist development’ at the label.
As much as Columbia wanted new acts, James was frustrated in his attempts to sign such talent as Tim Hardin, Lenny Bruce, Frank Zappa, the Doors and the Jefferson Airplane. The one act he did get signed in the wake of the Byrds – the blues-rock band the Rising Sons – never got the backing they deserved. ‘Columbia never gave people like Billy and me the control we needed,’ says Michael Ochs, who worked under James in 1966 and was the brother of folk singer Phil. ‘I couldn’t stand the New York bureaucracy, which was why I was fired.’
‘At the time the industry was as risky and guess-filled as anything is,’ says Judy James, then Billy’s wife. ‘It was Billy’s job to say “Listen, listen, listen” and Columbia’s job to resist. He went nuts trying to sign Lenny Bruce.’ Judy saw how unhappy Billy was at Columbia and suggested they form a management company together. Working out of their home, the couple made 8504 Ridpath a de facto HQ for the coalescing canyon community. ‘I wasn’t the first to move into the canyon, but there weren’t too many here then,’ James told Rolling Stone in 1968. ‘Arthur Lee lived nearby, and that was about it. It’s all happened in the last year or so. If creative artists need to live apart from the community at large, they also have a desire to live among their own kind, and so an artistic community develops.’
‘Billy’s house was a gathering place for musicians, some of whom became his clients and some of whom were sort of budding clients,’ says LA writer Tom Nolan. ‘You could go up there for social conversation and a meal.’ In addition to her role as stepmom to Billy’s son Mark, Judy became den mother to a number of musical strays and protégés. Many hailed from the unlikely climes of suburban Orange County. ‘We would go to hoot nights at the Golden Bear down in Huntington Beach and Billy would roam around the back of that room watching these kids,’ Judy remembers. ‘They were sixteen and seventeen.’
For a year, 8504 Ridpath was home to the young Jackson Browne, who hailed from a middle-class Orange County background. Almost old enough to be his father, Billy was determined to get the teenage troubadour a deal. ‘Billy was sort of a hipster cat, something like a dancer,’ Browne remembered. ‘And he was very funny, very smart…somewhere in between a James Dean and a Mort Sahl.’ An artlessly handsome boy with a repertoire of pure and prescient songs, Browne slept in the Jameses’ laundry room. One of a precocious group of strumming youngsters that included Jimmy Spheeris, Pamela Polland and Greg Copeland, he had already received press attention as one of ‘the Orange County Three’, a label Tom Nolan bestowed on him, Steve Noonan and Tim Buckley in the pages of Cheetah. ‘Jackson was very talented and a class act,’ Judy James says. ‘He had this perspective and wisdom that were extraordinary for a boy of that age.’
As much as he enjoyed his new freedom, Billy James jumped when Jac Holzman asked him to head up Elektra’s West Coast office in the fall of 1966. ‘Billy was extremely bright,’ says Holzman. ‘He was sort of a pleasant Iago, always moving around in the root system of what was going on.’ It was no surprise that Jackson Browne was one of the first artists James brought to Holzman. Yet Jac was unsure of the boy’s voice. ‘Jackson was not a terribly good singer at that point,’ says Barry Friedman. ‘He came close to the notes, some of the time.’ Early in 1967, Browne demoed no less than thirty songs for Elektra, among them ‘Shadow Dream Song’, ‘These Days’, and ‘Colors СКАЧАТЬ