Laurel Canyon — the scene

Laurel Canyon is a residential neighbourhood in the Hollywood Hills, a winding mile of canyon road lined with wooden houses, steep driveways, and dense eucalyptus, that became in the late 1960s the geographical centre of the most influential community in popular music. The concentration of musicians who lived within a few blocks of each other in the canyon between 1967 and 1972 produced records that shaped the sound of American music for the following decade: Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young, the Mamas and the Papas, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Carole King. The canyon's geography — isolated from Hollywood below, intimate enough that neighbours became collaborators — seems to have been as important as the talent it contained.

Frank Zappa's house on Lookout Mountain Avenue became a particularly significant gathering point: Hendrix was a regular visitor, as were members of the nascent LA rock community and, in the early days, the GTOs — a musical collective Zappa was producing. Jim Morrison lived in the canyon for a period, as did members of the Doors. The country-rock strand that would produce the Eagles and the Flying Burrito Brothers had its roots in the canyon's informal sessions and shared rehearsals. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young essentially formed through the relationships built in these hills.

Laurel Canyon today is largely unchanged in its physical character — the same narrow roads, the same small wooden houses, the same sense of being separated from the city below. Property values are now extraordinary. Most of the specific houses associated with the scene are private residences with no public access or acknowledgment. The Country Store at 2108 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, where musicians gathered for groceries and gossip, is still there, still operating on the same corner.