I might have grown up in Laurel Canyon in the 1960's if my sister had gotten her way in the house selection process. Instead we bought a home in boring Woodland Hills, plain old suburbia, though with a number of newscasters and movie technicians, where I lived from 1961-1973.
The story here is incredible. I had never realized so many famous rock musicians and bands lived and made music in Laurel Canyon, just a few miles from where I was growing up. And the other part of the story is how very many of them had connections to the military industrial complex, most often through their parents, but also sometimes through their own activities.
Jim Morrison's father was the admiral of the fleet of ships where the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident was manufactured out of whole cloth to justify the Vietnam War. Frank Zappa supported the war, and forbid all drugs except strong coffee (which does indeed help in listening through some of his more obscure works), and his father was a chemical warfare specialist who worked at the Edgewood Arsenal where Frank spent the first 7 years of his life. Stephen Stills probably did actually serve in Vietnam as he has always claimed, as a CIA advisor prior to 1963. And on and on.
Short list of bands/musicians from the canyon with military connections:
Jim Morrison (Doors)
Frank Zappa
Gail Zappa
Herb Cohen (Zappa's manager)
Papa John Phillips (Mamas and the Papas)
Stephen Stills (Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young)
David Crosby
Mike Nesmith (Monkees)
Cory Wells (3 Dog Night)
That's a very short list of the hundreds of musicians and bands from the canyon. But it includes some of the most influential (Zappa) and well known (Morrison, Stills, Crosby). Zappa was a major producer who recorded many other well known musicians also.
Actually, the article linked above which discusses these musicians is just the first of a 20 part series given here. (Scrool down to the Laurel Canyon section.)
The story here is incredible. I had never realized so many famous rock musicians and bands lived and made music in Laurel Canyon, just a few miles from where I was growing up. And the other part of the story is how very many of them had connections to the military industrial complex, most often through their parents, but also sometimes through their own activities.
Jim Morrison's father was the admiral of the fleet of ships where the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident was manufactured out of whole cloth to justify the Vietnam War. Frank Zappa supported the war, and forbid all drugs except strong coffee (which does indeed help in listening through some of his more obscure works), and his father was a chemical warfare specialist who worked at the Edgewood Arsenal where Frank spent the first 7 years of his life. Stephen Stills probably did actually serve in Vietnam as he has always claimed, as a CIA advisor prior to 1963. And on and on.
Short list of bands/musicians from the canyon with military connections:
Jim Morrison (Doors)
Frank Zappa
Gail Zappa
Herb Cohen (Zappa's manager)
Papa John Phillips (Mamas and the Papas)
Stephen Stills (Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young)
David Crosby
Mike Nesmith (Monkees)
Cory Wells (3 Dog Night)
That's a very short list of the hundreds of musicians and bands from the canyon. But it includes some of the most influential (Zappa) and well known (Morrison, Stills, Crosby). Zappa was a major producer who recorded many other well known musicians also.
Actually, the article linked above which discusses these musicians is just the first of a 20 part series given here. (Scrool down to the Laurel Canyon section.)
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