Something to watch tonight: Thursday 14 August

Laurel Canyon (Ellwood, 2020)

Last Friday night, while I was wait­ing to go on air with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights, he played a little bit of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Our House” and men­tioned that it was writ­ten by Graeme Nash for his girl­friend at the time, Joni Mitchell.

I wanted to jump in and recom­mend that any­one inter­ested in the cul­tur­al scene of that peri­od should watch Allison Ellwood’s two-part doc­u­ment­ary about it, Laurel Canyon, but by the time I got to go on air the moment had passed.

It’s a bril­liant doc­u­ment­ary and I reviewed it for the RNZ web­site when it came out — five years ago this week, in fact.

Somehow, I have always had the idea that Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles was kind of remote and semi-rural. I ima­gined it much like the Spahn Ranch in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, a long drive from the lights of the city and a place where someone could get up to hijinks (or write beau­ti­ful songs) unin­ter­rup­ted by any­thing but bird­song. (Update: Turns out Spahn Ranch is only about an hour from Hollywood itself.)

I was half right – the com­munit­ies of Laurel Canyon are tucked away and often out of sight – but until I saw Allison Ellwood’s Emmy-nominated two-part doc­u­ment­ary Laurel Canyon I had no idea it was so close to those icon­ic LA loc­a­tions like Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard (on the Hollywood side) and Studio City and Universal Studios on the Valley side. Location, loc­a­tion, loc­a­tion, they say and for young musi­cians in the late 60s, new in town, a Laurel Canyon cot­tage was only a 15-minute drive to the fam­ous Troubador in West Hollywood where they might be dis­covered – like Linda Ronstadt or Jackson Browne before them.

…

With so many bands and artists to fea­ture – at some point Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the musi­cians who became the Eagles, The Monkees, Love and James Taylor all had pads in the hills of Laurel Canyon – it is amaz­ing how clearly told the stor­ies are.

Something that I don’t men­tion in the review, but the film makes clear, is that the heart and soul of that Laurel Canyon scene — the per­son who kept people con­nec­ted and found people places to stay when they arrived in town — was Mama Cass.

Editor’s note

Next week we cel­eb­rate 500 edi­tions of this news­let­ter. Blimey!

A mile­stone like that is always an excuse to try and secure more read­ers and — hope­fully — more paid subs. Every time I get a noti­fic­a­tion from Stripe that there’s some bread about to land in my jar, my heart sings.

We’ll be offer­ing some incent­ives — phys­ic­al media giveaways, per­haps? — and some spe­cial offers.

If you were think­ing about bring­ing some more read­ers here1, now is the time as there will be prizes for the most referrals.

Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada: Streaming on MGM Amazon Channel

Ireland: Not cur­rently avail­able online

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on Fubo or MGM+

UK: Digital rental