Young Girls are Coming to the Canyon

The wooded Los Angeles neighborhood of Laurel Canyon was "the door to paradise". Members of all the key L.A. rock bands - the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, Love, the Doors , Joni Mitchell - found a rural refuge in the canyon, which was five minutes from the Sunset Strip, the heart of Hollywood nightlife. Musicians gathered in one another's houses, living an upscale version of the hippie dream: "Sometimes I would wake up to find Denny Doherty and David Crosby swimming in my pool, with a half-empty gallon of wine floating in the pool that they would take occasional hits from," says Monkees member Peter Tork, whose mansion in Studio City, on the north side of Laurel Canyon, was a major gathering place."Mama" Cass Elliott's cozy canyon house functioned as a sort of rock salon; she played host to locals and visitors such as Eric Clapton and Graham Nash, then in the Hollies. "There was something happening in '67 and '68 in Los Angeles," Nash has said. "A lot of walking over to people's houses with a new song. We'd be smoking heavily and talking, and a lot of incredible music was being made." Elliott introduced Nash to former Byrd David Crosby and former Buffalo Springfield leader Stephen Stills; the trio joined forces in 1968 as Crosby, Stills and Nash, defining the Laurel Canyon sound.

The Mamas and the Papas