Book Review: Hotel California by Barney Hoskyns

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 in scope. Hoskyns, a British music writer and critic, traces the history and development of 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. Managers David Geffen and Elliot Roberts played a huge role, with Geffen founding Asylum Records in 1971. Asylum, which would eventually merge with Elektra Records, had a stable of artists synonymous with the genre, such as Browne, Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. Hoskyns notes that things were so laid back at that time, Browne and the Eagles didn't even have lawyers when they signed their contracts.

Close behind in popularizing the music were Mo Ostin and Joe Smith at Warner-Reprise. They initially signed Mitchell and also released albums by Young, Ry Cooder, Crazy Horse, Gram Parsons and James Taylor.

Whether considered part and parcel or an offshoot of the singer-songwriter style, Laurel Canyon and Topanga Canyon also fostered the emergence of country rock. Depending on how narrowly the genre is defined, country rock may not have been as widely popular or as long-lasting. Still, it reflected the roots and troubadour nature of canyon counterculture. Yet even occasional commercial success didn't make country rock a record label favorite. When the Eagles moved from the folk-rock balance of their debut album to the explicit country rock theme of Desperado, Atlantic Records label president Jerry Greenberg reacted: "They made a fucking cowboy record."

Article Author: Tim Gebhart

Tim Gebhart lives in Sioux Falls, SD, where he practices law in order to provide shelter for his family, his dogs, and his books. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and his blog de guerre is A Progressive on the Prairie.

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