Where's Jonh Ingham when you need him? And Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California
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Artist:
Rock Shrines, razor sharp and hilarious Britishicisms, an unparalleled knowledge of rock history, bring it back Sir Jonh!
Jonh turned me on to his friend Barney Hoskyns a few months back and I'm now digging in to Hotel California: The True Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, The Eagles, and Their Many friends.
Leave it to the American publishers to come up with a title that long and ridiculous.
The rest of the world gets this one....Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys In The L.A. Canyons.
Anyway, I'm thoroughly enjoying the ridiculous adventures of these narcissistic juggernauts of songsmithery.
As Barney recounts, there was a time when you could convince record executives to bankroll ludicrous ideas like putting up a few musicians, Jackson Browne included, in a luxurious mansion in Northern California under the guise that they might actually pump out a hit song rather than snort their brains out and fuck til the cows come home.
A young Glen Frey professes to taking a year to learn how to stand in a hip manner at The Troubador, where all the cool kids hang. Steve Martin gets drunk at the bar after he's led a line of singing audience members out on to the street and back to close his show.
You would think that reading a tome like this would be smooth and easy like the the tunes these artists pumped out, but it rivals Hammer of the Gods and No One Here Gets Out Alive in it's accounting of general debauchery and silly posing. And comes near A Saucerful of Secrets for the incredible arrogance and self importance indulged in by these folks.
But good tunes are good tunes and of course we're all touched by so many of these artists.
When it comes to the true beginnings of alt country and country rock in general, not to mention love and heartbreak, I'm partial to Rick Nelson and The Stone Canyon Band, who I believe Mike the Knife turned me on to originally.
And i could listen to this tune over and over again.
Man, listen to that drum sound, i want that engineer!
Locating MOG account...
Comments (15)
You do an excellent job of bringing Sir john's vibe to the piece.
Although those So Cal cats "fooled" their corporate paymasters, at least some of the paymasters recognized the need to let them "go off and work it out." Nowadays, I think the paymasters would be sending folks out to the studio in a day or two, if that long.
yup
there are no paymasters for the most part
you need to deliver the hit to them and have fans already chomping at the bit and have payed for everything yourself
back then you had a few records to work out your sound and find your hit
unfortunately, that is simply no longer the case
I love me some Barney Hoskyns. He writes of the era in which I lived and the city in which I grew up with the intimate knowledge of a resident but also the critical distance of keen observer.
I had the great and distinct pleasure to have commissioned pieces from him in the mid/late 90s when I worked at VH1 - I relaunched VH1's web presence and was morphing the stagnant online 'zine they had into the closest thing we could do (given the corporate oversight) to compare to the best of the British music mags --- for a few months, I was able to feature UK writers like Barney and Vivien Goldman and home-grown scribes such as Amy Linden and Cathay Che as well as rocker Steve Wynn, who had always wanted to be a journalist (albeit he wanted to write about baseball).
It is what it is,right? And in reality it's been that way for awhile now..I always enjoy reading about the way things were done back then or hearing from the pioneers.
How do you think the changes in the business have affected the music?
baseball and rock n roll are two distinct american pleasures which i indulge in aggressively
and bizarrely enough the triple a radio compilation i just signed on to, features john fogerty, who would agree!
Cody, I think there's a plethora of great music and artists out there, I just think they have to grind it out in a way that requires a skill set which would make a renaissance man shake in his boots
That just happens to be how I feel about it..and have said so often. I'd rather have the artists do the art and business folk do the business. I realize there are some artists who enjoy the control over all aspects of their career, and some are great at it..some, I'd say Prince for instance, are not.
I tried to blend baseball and rock here ..It's funny the comp is called a AAA comp (in a baseball way anyway).
yeah cody, loved that post when you did it, thanks for reminding me
i'm gonna forward it to the triple a compilation guy, who is also a big baseball fan
groovy.
must read
nice post neil... I wish I could hear the song I only have the garden party record but one I have been wanting to listen to is a covers album which I think is just before the garden record.
you can hear it
just click on the play button at the end of the post
i used musicuploader.org on the reccomendation of musicrx, while we wait out this new improved mog
funny, i was listening to the greatest hits collection and had no idea some of them were covers until i saw the time life golden age of country infomercial!
i want that thing, but it's way too much money
i'm hoping the library will have it
I love that tune! I had not heard that one before. I think the days of the carefree lifestyle on the label's dime, for most artists, is a thing of the past, right? It's amazing what they got away with back then.
Neil, you may want to check this site out too, untill MOG relaunches with uploading capabilities.
<blush> Thanks.... Made me count up the unpublished Rock Shrines. There are 22 of them - time to get a move on!
You remind me once again that my 3 good Eagles stories need to get written. I told them all to Barney but he didn't use any of them. It's a great book isn't it? You never know when you're in a Golden Age, it just seems normal.
When I clcik the button I don't get a drums, I get a piano, but I'll settle for an engineer who can mic it like that! Way back in the dark ages I read an interview with Jackie DeShannon where she was going on about how great the piano sound is on Elton John's 'Honky Chateau', because "it's really hard to mic a piano well'.
Anyway, I heard this and thought of you. Dig the playing and the harmonies. They were definitely flying on this night - the whole concert is worth a listen.
Glad the man of honor has weighed in!
Yes, you must write the The Eagles posts Jonh
I'm very much enjoying the book, a very smooth read
Keep listening to that Rick Nelson tune, the drums do come in eventually
Funny that you mention Honky Chateau, it's the album staring me right in the face in my living room at the forefont of my vinyl collection, and has been the whole summer, looks like it's going to be a fall selection
Thanks for the concert, currently consuming it with gusto!