Long driving day today so that I could fit in all the places I wanted to see around LA. I started by making the 50-minute trip to Hawthorne to see the monument commemorating the house where the Beach Boys grew up. It's a brick structure with a sculpture of the five of them holding a surf board on the top. It's a generally low-class (by LA standards) suburb near Inglewood and the airport. I hope that one day a more appropriate tribute is constructed to Brian Wilson's genius. But I'm glad I've seen it nevertheless.
From there I drove to the corner of Doheny Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard and parked in Beverley Hills so I could get out and see The Troubadour, which was the club where The Byrds first formed and a key venue for the late sixties / early seventies singer-songwriter scene. The place itself was nothing notable but it had to be visited.
After a stroll round the locality (and a fruitless search for a toilet, often an issue in LA) I drove north along Doheny Drive and then up into the hills before coming down again into Sunset Boulevard. I then went up Laurel Canyon Boulevard, found Lookout Mountain Avenue, and located no. 8217. This was Joni Mitchell's house in the late sixties which she shared with Graham Nash, an arrangement celebrated in the latter's song "Our House" on the C,S,N, & Y Deja Vu album (this song is much derided by critics but appeals strongly to the soppy romantic in me.). I annoyed a few drivers by stopping on the narrow road to take some pictures.
I then drove through the rest of the canyon, observing the hyper-plush houses and the spectacular views. It's hard to imagine a bunch of hippy musicians living there now as they did in the late sixties. I stopped on Mulholland Drive at the top of the canyon, mainly to take some pictures but also to find a secluded spot to address the now-pressing bladder imperative. Once relieved of this I drove along Laurel Canyon Boulevard to the north and eventually to Ventura Boulevard. After a stop for petrol I turned left into Topanga Canyon Boulevard and drove through the canyon.
Topanga Canyon has its own music history with the likes of Neil Young, Canned Heat, and Spirit having lived there. The views were again spectacular but there were not enough parking places to enable me to get pictures. I stopped at the Topanga Gallery and looked round the gift shops, but it was all a bit "new-agey" for me. From there I drove south down the Pacific Coast Highway, then east on I-10 and then south on the I-5 back to Anaheim.
Loads of music playing of course - the 3rd Grateful Dead CD, new albums by Robyn Hitchcock and Ty Segall, and two Martin Newell CDs. I enjoyed them all, with maybe the pick of the bunch being the Ty Segall. The songs had a few interesting twists and turns in them and some of the guitar work grabbed my attention.
All in all a very successful day. I can now agree with Randy Newman that "I Love LA".
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