Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends

I loved this book by British journalist Barney Hoskyns. Published in 2006 in hardcover, it is an oral history of the Southern California scene from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, which I read while listening mostly to music on You Tube from the very same artists quoted in the book. It describes in vivid detail the artists, their music, the movers and shakers, the cash, drugs, and sex that defined and ultimately destroyed the idealism and optimism of the time as the Sixties rolled into the Seventies. A fascinating roller coaster ride.

Certainly full of interesting facts, but suffers from too many of them. The cast of characters is huge and unwieldy, with many people doing what I felt were unnecessary walk-ons. The writing was magazine-like with extra trivia shoehorned in. I enjoyed parts of it very much, especially how songs came to be written. On the whole, though, I can't recommend it to anyone but the stone Laurel Canyon junkie.

Finished on Jul 4, 2013

The time: mid 60's to late 70's
The place: Los Angeles, California, specifically the Laurel Canyon (and beyond) music scene.

Barney Hoskyns is a writer, editor and British music critic, who ushers us through a rise and fall era in the California musical scene.

Behind the songs we loved, we're given an informative look at a myriad of relationships (both professional and personal).
We're given snapshots of the singer/songwriters with their backgrounds, their personalities, their genius, their quirks.

In an era of decadence and discovery, Hoskyns proposes that "two things had effectively killed the sixties hippie dream"
One was cocaine; the other was big money.

One reviewer call it "an epic tale of songs and show more sunshine, genius and greed. "

You'll also find list of the albums referred to in the book, suggested readings and numerous interview notes.

This is another Hoskyns offering that proves he has a keen eye for the musical scene.

4.5★ show less

a fun read about an interesting time in music history. It was interesting to see all the ins and outs of the early California music scene, as well as learn more about the times, people and places that inspired so many great songs.

It began in the late 1960s in a bohemian, artistic enclave in the canyons near Los Angeles. It spawned the singer-songwriter era of rock music and produced what would be called "the Southern California sound" and "country rock." It essentially ended in the 1970s as commercial success and millionaire lifestyles led to the disintegration of an edifice symbolized by "Hotel California."

That song title also serves befittingly as the title of Barney Hoskyns' exploration of that era. While subtitled "The True-life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends," the book is far broader. Hoskyns, a British music writer and critic, traces the history and development of show more what began as a mellow, acoustic and literate style of introspective music.

Hotel California begins where the music did -- in Laurel Canyon. There, musicians influenced by rock, folk and politics gathered into what would become a melting pot of styles and sounds. Among the first trends to emerge from this mélange was the singer-songwriter. According to Jackson Browne, who would be among those to epitomize the sound, when Neil Young and Joni Mitchell released their debut albums in 1968, "you started to get songs that only the songwriter could have sung -- that were part of the songwriter's personality."

But the songwriters weren't alone in developing and promoting what would broaden and eventually become known as the Southern California sound.

Balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=744 show less

This is a pretty good book. If you're interested in or like music from the westcoast in the late 60's and 70's, you'll find it higly informative.

Publishers Weekly
As musical scenes go, it would be hard to come up with a less dramatic one than that of the singer/songwriters who dominated Southern California from the mid-1960s through the mid-'70s. Nevertheless, British music journalist Hoskyns gamely tries to make the "denim navel-gazers and cheesecloth millionaires of the Los Angeles canyons" exciting in his no-nonsense account of those musicians' rise and fall. Jumping right in with little introduction, Hoskyns relays the particulars of the burgeoning scene that drew sensitive musicians west from Greenwich Village, limning the differences between those who lived in Topanga and Laurel Canyons and detailing the explosive shocks to their insular world (like the Monterey Pop show more festival and the Manson murders), all leading up to the cash-register mentality that formed the Eagles. The cast is robust-ranging from the intense Joni Mitchell and mercenary David Geffen to neo-beatnik Tom Waits-but not deeply examined. Hoskyns has a better ear for the music, letting his record-critic side take over with adjective-riddled prose. Still, Hoskyns's account shows how the "back-porch folkies" of the scene's early days eventually morphed into "Lear-jet superstars." show less