Hotel California
The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends
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4.0 • 23 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
"Hoskyns brings a genuine love as well as an outsider's keen eye to the rise and fall of the California scene. . . . This is a riveting story, sensitively told."
—Anthony DeCurtis, Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone
From enduring musical achievements to drug-fueled chaos and bed-hopping antics, the L.A. pop music scene in the sixties and seventies was like no other, and journalist Barney Hoskyns re-creates all the excitement and mayhem. Hotel California brings to life the genesis of Crosby, Stills, and Nash at Joni Mitchell’s house; the Eagles’ backstage fistfights after the success of "Hotel California"; the drama of David Geffen and the other money men who transformed the L.A. music scene; and more.
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 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."
Customer Reviews
Good, but no functional listing or inclusion of photographs
...at least not in the iBook version. Index is included but without page numbers or hot links.
Hot Sheet Hotel + music
This book was so authentic about the Hollywood music scene in the 1960’s-..... it made me feel like I had to go to the clap clinic.