A district in the Hollywood Hills above Los Angeles that became the cradle of a genre-bending sound in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Canyon Country Store, a small grocery, served as a community hub—Chris Hillman, the bass player for The Byrds, went there in 1964 to find a room to rent.
The young musicians who congregated in the canyon came to dominate popular music. Joni Mitchell, The Mamas & the Papas, Jackson Browne, the Eagles and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) created a counterculture scene that rivalled Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. They helped establish Los Angeles as the entertainment capital of the world. Those five acts alone still garner more than 40m monthly listeners on Spotify.
What drew performers was proximity to the Troubadour and Whisky a Go Go, clubs in West Hollywood just down the hill, where folk singers tried out new material at "hootenanny nights" and hoped record-label executives were in the audience. Young and broke, musicians could retreat after a night on the strip to the kind of rural isolation that appealed to back-to-the-land hippies, where rents were cheap and coyotes prowled among the chaparral.
The canyon's musicians took the searching lyrics of folk music, added an electric guitar and fused that with honky-tonk and the soulfulness of the blues. The Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys were all powerful influences. Three and four-part harmonies were practised in backyards. Mitchell wrote one of her earliest albums, "Ladies of the Canyon" (1970), in the house she shared with Graham Nash of CSNY. Henry Diltz, a folk musician and the scene's unofficial photographer, took psychedelics seriously as part of the creative process.
Spotify maintains a "Laurel Canyon Legends" playlist, which includes Carole King and Carly Simon. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac just after the canyon's heyday, but their harmonies evoke that earlier time. More modern disciples include Phoebe Bridgers, Father John Misty and Tom Petty. Haim, a trio of sisters from the Valley who idolised Mitchell as children, carry the tradition forward.
The canyon lost some of its lustre after the Manson Family murders in 1969. The violence shattered the illusion of a neighbourhood defined by peace and love. As musicians got rich and famous, they moved away.
Michael Walker is the author of "Laurel Canyon", a history of the music scene.
A man is known by the company he organizes.