Post by the Scribe on Sept 11, 2020 23:34:50 GMT
Bernie Leadon: Down the Hill at the Troubadour Bar
from: stephenkpeeples.com/news-and-reviews/bernie-leadon-henry-diltz-and-epix-laurel-canyon-rockumentary/
Speaking of Henry Diltz, Bernie Leadon, Eagles, and Laurel Canyon: Along with The Whisky, located a few miles west of the canyon on the Sunset Strip at Clark Street, Doug Weston’s Troubadour nightclub a few blocks away was a favorite local hangout for canyon-dwelling folk-rockers, singer-songwriters and music biz hipsters from the early ’60s well into the ’70s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour_(West_Hollywood,_California)
The Troubadour is on Santa Monica Boulevard just east of Doheny Drive and the Beverly Hills-West Hollywood border, and just a couple doors west of Dan Tana’s fine Italian restaurant and bar.
There’s always been lots of artist and entourage and industry traffic between the two venues, and back then the Troubadour bar especially was a more public version of Cass Elliot’s place, where musicians known and unknown met and mingled, formed bands and plotted conspiracies to take over the world.
Multi-instrumentalist and folk-bluegrass specialist Bernie Leadon, originally from Minneapolis and partly raised in Florida and San Diego, spent a lot of time, professionally and personally, at the Troubadour after he moved to L.A. in the mid-’60s, as he recalled in our interview in April:
“The Troubadour (scene) in the early ’70s came directly out of the ’60s when the Troubadour was one of the clubs on the folk circuit. Back then an act was booked in for an entire week, and you did one show on Tuesday through Thursday, two shows on Friday, two shows on Saturday, one show on Sunday and then Monday was dark – that was a travel day.
“I had a group on Capitol called Hearts & Flowers and I joined them in ’67 for their second album, that had a minor hit, in I guess early ’67, called ‘Rock and Roll Gypsies.’
“Larry Murray, the lead singer in my group, was also the so-called master or the head of the open mic night on Monday nights (aka “Hoot Night”) at the Troubadour. He determined who got to play and which time slot they got, so he was kind of a sought-after guy because of this power that he had to put acts in front of an industry crowd on Monday night.
“On Monday night it seemed like everybody in town showed up at the Troubadour bar, because it was everybody’s dark day, a night off. All the established acts would turn up from time to time. Aspiring acts, sometimes they would showcase at the Hoot Night on Monday.
“But here’s the cool thing: The Troubadour bar was the scene in the front, but there was the showroom in the back that held, I would say, 350 people. And it had a restaurant that served food. But the only bathrooms in the building were at the back of the showroom, so from the bar you had to walk through the showroom to get to the bathrooms.
“They had a ticket-taker at the door to the showroom, and nobody could get in without a ticket, unless you said, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ And they’re like, ‘Okay.’ And then there was a stairway to upstairs and you could stand on the stairs or find a little alcove to stick your butt in and watch the show.
“I saw hundreds of shows there for free. And also because my group was would be the opening act. We opened for Gordon Lightfoot for a couple of weeks, and we were the opening act for Arlo Guthrie on his first tour. But I just saw so many acts there. And then you’d see other Hollywood people, too. One night, kind of a quiet night, there was Natalie Wood sitting in the back of the bar by herself, waiting for somebody to meet her.
“Roger Miller, the Nashville singer, was in there one night and Gene Clark and I went up to his suite and hung out with him for half a night. So the Troubadour was a place where all kinds of connections would be made. And for me as a young musician, I could run into producers and other musicians that I could get recording sessions booked, just out of showing up. So I got a lot of work out of it.”
Indeed: As “Laurel Canyon” details, in the three head-spinning years between the summers of 1968 and 1971, Leadon was one of the long-haired hippie musicians who helped spark the era’s country-rock explosion. He went from Hearts & Flowers to Dillard & Clark to Linda Ronstadt’s band (assembled from various underemployed musicians/Troubadour bar regulars including Leadon, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, and Randy Meisner) to the Flying Burrito Brothers to Eagles (the latter as a co-founder with his aforementioned Ronstadt bandmates).
Linda Ronstadt at home in Santa Monica, 1968. The four original Eagles first played together in her band. Photo © Henry Diltz/Henry Diltz Photography. Used with permission.
And of course, there’s the famous story of the freshly minted Eagles partying at the Troubadour bar one night until closing time, then driving in the wee hours with Henry Diltz and his cameras in tow to Joshua Tree, where the bleary-eyed wild bunch all took peyote and tripped out watching the sun come up.
One of the images Henry captured that day became the cover pic for Eagles’ eponymous debut album, out in spring 1972. But some of the Joshua Tree outtakes were keepers, too.
Bernie Leadon, Don Henley, Randy Meisner and Glenn Frey: up all night, just after sunrise in Joshua Tree, before peyote. Photo © Henry Diltz/Henry Diltz Photography. Used with permission.
Morning laughs in Joshua Tree, after peyote. Photo © Henry Diltz/Henry Diltz Photography. Used with permission.
The photo gracing the graphic for “Laurel Canyon” was shot seven years later, as Leadon told Rolling Stone:
“I was going to use it for an album that never got made. We had to stage it because you have the landscape down below. We looked at the city lights from different parts of the Santa Monica Mountains and decided you had to be pretty close. So we went into Hollywood and found a place to put me.
“Then — this is kind of cool — in order to have it be just the city lights behind but to get enough light on me, there was a time-lapse to expose the photograph. Henry was the photographer, but Gary Burden was the art director, and he was down in the bushes below me with a flashlight. The lens was open for a second or longer. Gary was painting my face with a flashlight, just illuminating it, while the lens was open. It was a neat effect.”
from: stephenkpeeples.com/news-and-reviews/bernie-leadon-henry-diltz-and-epix-laurel-canyon-rockumentary/
Speaking of Henry Diltz, Bernie Leadon, Eagles, and Laurel Canyon: Along with The Whisky, located a few miles west of the canyon on the Sunset Strip at Clark Street, Doug Weston’s Troubadour nightclub a few blocks away was a favorite local hangout for canyon-dwelling folk-rockers, singer-songwriters and music biz hipsters from the early ’60s well into the ’70s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour_(West_Hollywood,_California)
The Troubadour is on Santa Monica Boulevard just east of Doheny Drive and the Beverly Hills-West Hollywood border, and just a couple doors west of Dan Tana’s fine Italian restaurant and bar.
There’s always been lots of artist and entourage and industry traffic between the two venues, and back then the Troubadour bar especially was a more public version of Cass Elliot’s place, where musicians known and unknown met and mingled, formed bands and plotted conspiracies to take over the world.
Multi-instrumentalist and folk-bluegrass specialist Bernie Leadon, originally from Minneapolis and partly raised in Florida and San Diego, spent a lot of time, professionally and personally, at the Troubadour after he moved to L.A. in the mid-’60s, as he recalled in our interview in April:
“The Troubadour (scene) in the early ’70s came directly out of the ’60s when the Troubadour was one of the clubs on the folk circuit. Back then an act was booked in for an entire week, and you did one show on Tuesday through Thursday, two shows on Friday, two shows on Saturday, one show on Sunday and then Monday was dark – that was a travel day.
“I had a group on Capitol called Hearts & Flowers and I joined them in ’67 for their second album, that had a minor hit, in I guess early ’67, called ‘Rock and Roll Gypsies.’
“Larry Murray, the lead singer in my group, was also the so-called master or the head of the open mic night on Monday nights (aka “Hoot Night”) at the Troubadour. He determined who got to play and which time slot they got, so he was kind of a sought-after guy because of this power that he had to put acts in front of an industry crowd on Monday night.
“On Monday night it seemed like everybody in town showed up at the Troubadour bar, because it was everybody’s dark day, a night off. All the established acts would turn up from time to time. Aspiring acts, sometimes they would showcase at the Hoot Night on Monday.
“But here’s the cool thing: The Troubadour bar was the scene in the front, but there was the showroom in the back that held, I would say, 350 people. And it had a restaurant that served food. But the only bathrooms in the building were at the back of the showroom, so from the bar you had to walk through the showroom to get to the bathrooms.
“They had a ticket-taker at the door to the showroom, and nobody could get in without a ticket, unless you said, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ And they’re like, ‘Okay.’ And then there was a stairway to upstairs and you could stand on the stairs or find a little alcove to stick your butt in and watch the show.
“I saw hundreds of shows there for free. And also because my group was would be the opening act. We opened for Gordon Lightfoot for a couple of weeks, and we were the opening act for Arlo Guthrie on his first tour. But I just saw so many acts there. And then you’d see other Hollywood people, too. One night, kind of a quiet night, there was Natalie Wood sitting in the back of the bar by herself, waiting for somebody to meet her.
“Roger Miller, the Nashville singer, was in there one night and Gene Clark and I went up to his suite and hung out with him for half a night. So the Troubadour was a place where all kinds of connections would be made. And for me as a young musician, I could run into producers and other musicians that I could get recording sessions booked, just out of showing up. So I got a lot of work out of it.”
Indeed: As “Laurel Canyon” details, in the three head-spinning years between the summers of 1968 and 1971, Leadon was one of the long-haired hippie musicians who helped spark the era’s country-rock explosion. He went from Hearts & Flowers to Dillard & Clark to Linda Ronstadt’s band (assembled from various underemployed musicians/Troubadour bar regulars including Leadon, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, and Randy Meisner) to the Flying Burrito Brothers to Eagles (the latter as a co-founder with his aforementioned Ronstadt bandmates).
Linda Ronstadt at home in Santa Monica, 1968. The four original Eagles first played together in her band. Photo © Henry Diltz/Henry Diltz Photography. Used with permission.
And of course, there’s the famous story of the freshly minted Eagles partying at the Troubadour bar one night until closing time, then driving in the wee hours with Henry Diltz and his cameras in tow to Joshua Tree, where the bleary-eyed wild bunch all took peyote and tripped out watching the sun come up.
One of the images Henry captured that day became the cover pic for Eagles’ eponymous debut album, out in spring 1972. But some of the Joshua Tree outtakes were keepers, too.
Bernie Leadon, Don Henley, Randy Meisner and Glenn Frey: up all night, just after sunrise in Joshua Tree, before peyote. Photo © Henry Diltz/Henry Diltz Photography. Used with permission.
Morning laughs in Joshua Tree, after peyote. Photo © Henry Diltz/Henry Diltz Photography. Used with permission.
The photo gracing the graphic for “Laurel Canyon” was shot seven years later, as Leadon told Rolling Stone:
“I was going to use it for an album that never got made. We had to stage it because you have the landscape down below. We looked at the city lights from different parts of the Santa Monica Mountains and decided you had to be pretty close. So we went into Hollywood and found a place to put me.
“Then — this is kind of cool — in order to have it be just the city lights behind but to get enough light on me, there was a time-lapse to expose the photograph. Henry was the photographer, but Gary Burden was the art director, and he was down in the bushes below me with a flashlight. The lens was open for a second or longer. Gary was painting my face with a flashlight, just illuminating it, while the lens was open. It was a neat effect.”
