Wind up Laurel Canyon Boulevard from the Sunset Strip and, in the space of a few minutes, Los Angeles disappears. In the mid-1960s the canyon's cheap rustic cottages filled up with an improbable concentration of songwriters: members of The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield first, then The Mamas & The Papas, Joni Mitchell on Lookout Mountain, Frank Zappa at the log cabin, Carole King, Jackson Browne, and the young men who would become the Eagles.
They wandered into each other's kitchens, borrowed each other's guitars, fell in and out of love with each other — and out of that tangle came Ladies of the Canyon, Déjà Vu, Tapestry, Sweet Baby James and the California sound that carried American music through the 1970s.
Crosby, Stills & Nash sang together for the first time in a Laurel Canyon living room. "Our House" was written about one. The canyon wasn't a scene built by an industry — it was a neighborhood that happened to change the world.
