Echo in the Canyon

Too many variations of shit.

- That's a Fender amp. - Mm hmm.

I wouldn't recognize that one, Bassbreaker 45.

I have a good question for you, though.

In the 80s it was... we said "Rickenbacher".

- You guys all say Rickenbacker. - "Rickenbacker"

- It's "backer". - Yeah.

We already had a small debate earlier.

We were from the South.

- It's "backer", yeah. - I think so.

There's no "bachers." No.

Is that one yours, Jakob?

No, we used this one on the record, though.

- This is Andy's. - Yeah, that's Andy's.

- Want to have a look? - Bring it over here.

This was the folk rock special.

All you had to do is move your little finger.

You can't afford the rest.

They gave it the name Laurel Canyon

because it was the locus for all these musicians.

It's where a lot of musicians lived.

But they came to L.A. from everywhere.

They came from England and from all overAmerica.

And probably because of the record companies in L.A.

They had to come to L.A. and this was the one place

that you could live and it was the antithesis

of this sort of plastic, straight world

that you saw on television.

To be that close to the Sunset Strip

and yet you had a feel that you were in the country

and, you know, and totally different feel. It's beautiful.

I think I might have been the first one to move there.

I was living in one place, some... some place way up the canyon.

There was a lot of camaraderie in the bands.

We got to know Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys

and, of course, The Mamas & Papas

when they came along.

I'd known John and Michelle from New York

and Mama Cass was great, a great social hostess.

Laurel Canyon was always like a hangout for,

ah, bohemians and actors.

It was full of charming little houses

and it was a very joyful time.

I loved it, because I've always loved eccentricity.

I mean I'm attracted to eccentrics and they were there.

And they were all there.

Everyone was writing and writing together.

And you'd go over to someone's house

and you always brought your guitar

and you'd sit around and you'd start playing,

and pretty soon you were writing a hit.

People would not even call.

They'd just knock on the door and go

"Listen, hey, listen to this!"

That's an incredible environment for a musician to be in

because it's incredibly healthy and incredibly forward-looking

and incredibly creative and that's how I was feeling.

There was so much great music floating around

that you got little snippets of it and they...

they just filtered through you, you know?

Good evening.

The great Los Angeles songwriter Warren Zevon

once said that...

I miss him every day.

He said if Roger McGuinn had just played the opening notes

to The Byrds' debut album and dropped dead,

he would have still exercised the most pronounced influence

over the folk rock movement in 25 years.

And he was right.

Because in 1965 when those songs went on the radio,

it was the first time a song of poetic depth and grace

had become a hit song and it inspired a whole generation

of writers to write differently and to come to California,

which gave birth to the Laurel Canyon scene.

So, the fiftieth anniversary of that moment was this summer.

So Jakob and I decided,

'cause nobody else was doing anything,

that we would make a record of those songwriters.

So now we're doing a show and you're all a part of it.

And thanks for coming and enjoy the show!

You guys ready to go to the 60s?

This is so great because the music that

came out of the Laurel Canyon scene in the 60s

was not only inspiring to other bands at that time,

but it also became inspiring to my generation

of musicians and songwriters.

And tonight is an opportunity, like folk music,

to pass it on to a new generation

and keep the echoes of that music growing.

- Can we start over? - I think I know it. We ready?

I was gonna for a harmony but then I...

What is the refrain, though? Is it... just "will you go"?

I like the way you're doing it.

I just go "Will you go, will you go?"

Sorry.

Well, we can do it again.

I think the refrain just comes around again.

We just... these just kind of repeat.

Oh, we never... what is all this?

I never saw any of this!

Why did we start all this?

Well, we'd seen this movie "Model Shop".

It reminded us of a lot of music from the 60s

so we decided to go back and record some of the songs

from the mid-60s

and we got more and more curious on what brought everybody here.

Who came out here first?

Was it people from the east coast coming out here?

Or was it people here that started it just independently?

Beach Boys were already here.

I think The Byrds came out first and everybody else followed.

And how did The Byrds come to be?

It started so innocently.

The Beatles came out.

And I heard this on the radio...

And I said wow, you know, they're using folk music chord changes,

all these passing chords.

So, it gave me an idea of taking an old folk song

and suping it up with a Beatle beat.

And I took it down to the village

and played it at the Café Playhouse.

And they didn't like it.

They didn't like the rock 'n' roll

and folk music combined.

They thought it was kind of a bad idea.

You know, the coolest thing about Roger, and I...

it was like the first day I met him,

he came into the Playhouse Café with a Gibson 12-string,

and he plays "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".

Hmm.

And I went "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"

as a one guitar folk thing?

And it was really a remarkable, ballsy thing.

- And he did take abuse for it. - Yeah.

I know a lot of people were going what's he doing?

So I went out to L.A.

and I got gig at the Troubadour opening up for Hoyt Axton

doing the same thing.

And they didn't like it there, either.

And that's when I got together with Gene Clark

and David Crosby and we got The Byrds together.

There was a lot of funny shit that happened.

Ah, we were rehearsing

in an old recording studio down on Third Avenue,

ah, World Pacific I think it was called.

Used to be a jazz studio.

After they were through using the studio at night,

we would go in there and rehearse.

And it did The Byrds a great deal of good because

we would have to listen to it back.

If you hear how awful you are then you work harder!

Mm hmm.

And so, that's exactly what we did.

And then, after we started getting good with it, ah,

Dylan showed up.

You have to be more specific.

No, I'm kidding!

You mean there's more than one?

Yeah!

- Bob showed up. - Okay.

And he, 'cause he had heard we were doing "Tambourine Man".

He listened to us play it electric

and he you can hear the gears turning, you know.

He knew he wanted to do that immediately.

With The Byrds the real accomplishment is the melding

of, you know, folk music and rock 'n' roll

and I mean all the bands you think of that

as that California sound.

Really none of them sound exactly like The Byrds.

That 12-string riff is pretty spectacular.

That's a pretty big moment in rock music.

That's really, you know, two things clashing together

in a huge wave.

And it would create a whole genre of music quickly.

I loved the sound that McGuinn got out

of the 12-string and I thought that the way he placed that,

and Crosby's rhythm, you know, underpinning it,

they were the powerful band that we all wanted to be!

I liked The Byrds a lot

and I liked their kind of philosophy,

the musical philosophy, really, of, you know, folk rock.

Folk rock to me was... it was the songwriting, too.

- Yeah, it was good. - It was beautiful.

Folk music is just an older form of songwriting.

You learn a song from somebody,

maybe it was your uncle or somebody who learned it from

a knife sharpener who traveled through the South

sharpening knives and scissors who also played banjo and fiddle.

When The Byrds came out, there were people who disapproved

of doing those folk songs with a band.

But it was very infectious.