Post by the Scribe on Jun 11, 2020 12:39:09 GMT
Review: ‘Laurel Canyon’ a sumptuous visual feast of music
Joel Selvin May 29, 2020Updated: May 31, 2020, 6:55 pm
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young from the Epix docuseries “Laurel Canyon.”
Photo: Henry Diltz
To the creators of “Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time,” the sylvan neighborhood in the Los Angeles County hills between the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood is more a state of mind than a ZIP code. The impressive two-part documentary, which premieres Sunday, May 31, on Epix, salutes a clique of like-minded musicians who collected in the neighborhood during the late 1960s and early ’70s, beginning with the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, L.A.’s answer to the British Invasion.
Director Alison Ellwood, a longtime documentary editor, stitched together a consistently stimulating collection of previously unseen film clips, home movies and television appearances — with barely a talking head in sight — for a sumptuous visual feast, even for people who think they’ve seen it all already or felt satiated by the lightweight appetizer, Jakob Dylan’s “Echo in the Canyon,” the 2018 documentary also focusing on the topic.
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-echo-in-the-canyon-mandatory-viewing-for-music-fans
The “Laurel Canyon” miniseries, co-produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, is a big-budget, first-class Hollywood production. Mining vast amounts of archival material — visual and audio — the principals tell the story in voice-over, including many long-deceased subjects. Jim Morrison of the Doors, for instance, is featured not only in voice-overs but also in charming home-movie footage of him tooling around the neighborhood on a bicycle smoking a cigarette, the Doors’ “Love Street” playing on the soundtrack, a song, the film says, inspired by his home in the canyon.
“We were living in the very center of this beautiful bubble of friendship, sunshine, sex, drugs and music,” says Graham Nash, the British Invasion veteran who defected to Southern California, where he became a charter member of Laurel Canyon society, hooking up with David Crosby of the Byrds and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield at the Laurel Canyon home of Joni Mitchell, Nash’s girlfriend at the time, to form Crosby, Stills & Nash.
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/graham-nash-left-his-wife-and-broke-up-csny-he-says-he-has-no-regrets
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-david-crosby-goes-full-confessional-mode-in-excellent-new-documentary
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/review-joni-mitchells-friends-admirers-pay-sweet-tribute-on-joni-75
Joni Mitchell, David Crosby and Eric Clapton at Cass Elliot’s picnic.
Photo: Henry Diltz
Ellwood uses Woodstock as the pivot point in the two parts, following the Byrds, Springfield, the Monkees, the Mamas & the Papas and the beginnings of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to the August 1969 upstate-New York rock festival. It traces the back end of the scene’s bell curve in the second part, in which the Doors, Gram Parsons, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt and the Eagles define the action, as these musicians, who lived in the Hollywood Hills, exploded in the marketplace and became the gold standard for the new commercial rock sound around the world.
datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/baron-wolmans-woodstock-photo-exhibition-kicks-off-anniversary-fest
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/linda-ronstadt-finds-her-voice-announces-retirement-at-northern-california-chat
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/eagles-push-back-hotel-california-tour-dates-yet-again-due-to-coronavirus-pandemic
With “Take It to the Limit” as the underscore, Eagles drummer Don Henley explains the downfall of success: “You get caught in a whirling vortex of money and fame and pressure.”
“Laurel Canyon” treats these loosely affiliated artists like a sociological phenomenon; Crosby even compares them to Paris in the 1920s or the Italian Renaissance. This Bloomsbury group of folk musicians did come to define a certain aesthetic in ’70s pop music, and their relative physical proximity serves as a substitute for narrative drive in the series, continually reinforced with street maps scrolling across the background. When the dense, often abrasive music of Frank Zappa, who lived in Laurel Canyon splendor long before the others arrived, fails to fit the scheme, it is simply ignored.
Glenn Frey and Linda Ronstadt.
Photo: Courtesy of Epix
But looking for cultural or musical through lines in “Laurel Canyon” is beside the point; the breathtaking cavalcade of vintage footage speaks beyond story. Young, unknown and mustachioed, Jackson Browne is seen strumming an acoustic guitar at an art gallery opening, singing his song “Take It Easy,” which would shortly catapult the Eagles into the Top 40, while Mitchell watches dumbstruck across the room. The fresh-faced, miniskirted, 23-year-old Ronstadt burns down Bob Dylan’s “Walkin’ Down the Line” on Hugh Hefner’s long-forgotten TV show, “Playboy After Dark.”
Ellwood unearths gem after gem of archival footage, although, like all too many music documentarians, she often drowns out incredible music performances with narration right when they get going (cutting away from Parsons and Lowell George of Little Feat vocals at the exact moment they step on the gas, for instance).
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/james-taylors-sf-tour-stop-with-jackson-browne-moved-to-2021-in-the-face-of-covid-19
www.sfchronicle.com/music/article/Linda-Ronstadt-back-in-public-eye-and-it-s-not-12948003.php
This Laurel Canyon of the mind has been celebrated almost since Nash wrote “Our House.” More than simply an inevitable snarl in traffic on the road to the valley, the Laurel Canyon of Ellwood’s commendable history is a place that exists only in memory, if it ever existed at all.
M“Laurel Canyon”: Two-part docuseries. Directed by Alison Ellwood. (Roughly 80 minutes per episode.) First episode debuts at 9 p.m. Sunday, May 31. The final episode premieres at 9 p.m. June 7. Available to stream on Epix.
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Review: ‘Echo in the Canyon’ mandatory viewing for music fans
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-echo-in-the-canyon-mandatory-viewing-for-music-fans
Jakob Dylan resurrects ’60s folk scene in ‘Echo in the Canyon’ documentary
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Joel Selvin May 29, 2020Updated: May 31, 2020, 6:55 pm
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young from the Epix docuseries “Laurel Canyon.”
Photo: Henry Diltz
To the creators of “Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time,” the sylvan neighborhood in the Los Angeles County hills between the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood is more a state of mind than a ZIP code. The impressive two-part documentary, which premieres Sunday, May 31, on Epix, salutes a clique of like-minded musicians who collected in the neighborhood during the late 1960s and early ’70s, beginning with the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, L.A.’s answer to the British Invasion.
Director Alison Ellwood, a longtime documentary editor, stitched together a consistently stimulating collection of previously unseen film clips, home movies and television appearances — with barely a talking head in sight — for a sumptuous visual feast, even for people who think they’ve seen it all already or felt satiated by the lightweight appetizer, Jakob Dylan’s “Echo in the Canyon,” the 2018 documentary also focusing on the topic.
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-echo-in-the-canyon-mandatory-viewing-for-music-fans
The “Laurel Canyon” miniseries, co-produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, is a big-budget, first-class Hollywood production. Mining vast amounts of archival material — visual and audio — the principals tell the story in voice-over, including many long-deceased subjects. Jim Morrison of the Doors, for instance, is featured not only in voice-overs but also in charming home-movie footage of him tooling around the neighborhood on a bicycle smoking a cigarette, the Doors’ “Love Street” playing on the soundtrack, a song, the film says, inspired by his home in the canyon.
“We were living in the very center of this beautiful bubble of friendship, sunshine, sex, drugs and music,” says Graham Nash, the British Invasion veteran who defected to Southern California, where he became a charter member of Laurel Canyon society, hooking up with David Crosby of the Byrds and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield at the Laurel Canyon home of Joni Mitchell, Nash’s girlfriend at the time, to form Crosby, Stills & Nash.
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/graham-nash-left-his-wife-and-broke-up-csny-he-says-he-has-no-regrets
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-david-crosby-goes-full-confessional-mode-in-excellent-new-documentary
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/review-joni-mitchells-friends-admirers-pay-sweet-tribute-on-joni-75
Joni Mitchell, David Crosby and Eric Clapton at Cass Elliot’s picnic.
Photo: Henry Diltz
Ellwood uses Woodstock as the pivot point in the two parts, following the Byrds, Springfield, the Monkees, the Mamas & the Papas and the beginnings of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to the August 1969 upstate-New York rock festival. It traces the back end of the scene’s bell curve in the second part, in which the Doors, Gram Parsons, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt and the Eagles define the action, as these musicians, who lived in the Hollywood Hills, exploded in the marketplace and became the gold standard for the new commercial rock sound around the world.
datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/baron-wolmans-woodstock-photo-exhibition-kicks-off-anniversary-fest
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/linda-ronstadt-finds-her-voice-announces-retirement-at-northern-california-chat
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/eagles-push-back-hotel-california-tour-dates-yet-again-due-to-coronavirus-pandemic
With “Take It to the Limit” as the underscore, Eagles drummer Don Henley explains the downfall of success: “You get caught in a whirling vortex of money and fame and pressure.”
“Laurel Canyon” treats these loosely affiliated artists like a sociological phenomenon; Crosby even compares them to Paris in the 1920s or the Italian Renaissance. This Bloomsbury group of folk musicians did come to define a certain aesthetic in ’70s pop music, and their relative physical proximity serves as a substitute for narrative drive in the series, continually reinforced with street maps scrolling across the background. When the dense, often abrasive music of Frank Zappa, who lived in Laurel Canyon splendor long before the others arrived, fails to fit the scheme, it is simply ignored.
Glenn Frey and Linda Ronstadt.
Photo: Courtesy of Epix
But looking for cultural or musical through lines in “Laurel Canyon” is beside the point; the breathtaking cavalcade of vintage footage speaks beyond story. Young, unknown and mustachioed, Jackson Browne is seen strumming an acoustic guitar at an art gallery opening, singing his song “Take It Easy,” which would shortly catapult the Eagles into the Top 40, while Mitchell watches dumbstruck across the room. The fresh-faced, miniskirted, 23-year-old Ronstadt burns down Bob Dylan’s “Walkin’ Down the Line” on Hugh Hefner’s long-forgotten TV show, “Playboy After Dark.”
Ellwood unearths gem after gem of archival footage, although, like all too many music documentarians, she often drowns out incredible music performances with narration right when they get going (cutting away from Parsons and Lowell George of Little Feat vocals at the exact moment they step on the gas, for instance).
datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/james-taylors-sf-tour-stop-with-jackson-browne-moved-to-2021-in-the-face-of-covid-19
www.sfchronicle.com/music/article/Linda-Ronstadt-back-in-public-eye-and-it-s-not-12948003.php
This Laurel Canyon of the mind has been celebrated almost since Nash wrote “Our House.” More than simply an inevitable snarl in traffic on the road to the valley, the Laurel Canyon of Ellwood’s commendable history is a place that exists only in memory, if it ever existed at all.
M“Laurel Canyon”: Two-part docuseries. Directed by Alison Ellwood. (Roughly 80 minutes per episode.) First episode debuts at 9 p.m. Sunday, May 31. The final episode premieres at 9 p.m. June 7. Available to stream on Epix.
Related articles
Review: ‘Echo in the Canyon’ mandatory viewing for music fans
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-echo-in-the-canyon-mandatory-viewing-for-music-fans
Jakob Dylan resurrects ’60s folk scene in ‘Echo in the Canyon’ documentary
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/jakob-dylan-resurrects-60s-folk-scene-in-echo-in-the-canyon-documentary
Review: David Crosby goes full confessional mode in excellent new documentary
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-david-crosby-goes-full-confessional-mode-in-excellent-new-documentary
Review: Scorsese’s ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ resurrects a Bob Dylan mythology
datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-scorseses-rolling-thunder-revue-resurrects-a-bob-dylan-mythology