All quotations in this book are from interviews conducted by the author except as noted.
PREFACE
xiv “There was amazing tribal life”: Jackson Browne, in Holzman and Daws, Follow the Music, p. 224.
xvi “This is God speaking”: Barry Friedman, ibid., p. 226.
1. SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROCK-AND-ROLL STAR?
5 “In the strictest sense”: Gene Shay, in “Folk Music,” http://www.humanitiesweb.org.
8 “I can remember”: David Crosby, in Crosby and Gottlieb, Long Time Gone, p. 85.
13 “standing in front of a mirror”: Ibid.
14 “It was like winning”: Gene Clark, ibid., p. 111.
2. UNCLE FRANK’S CABIN
24 “The rent was seven hundred dollars”: Zappa with Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 101.
28 “except for plastic clip-on curlers”: Des Barres, I’m with the Band, p. 40.
36 “there were 6,000 people”: Alice Cooper, in Cooper and Gaines, Me, Alice.
36 “He was our hero”: Ibid.
36 “All right, all right”: Ibid.
36 “Even hippies hated us”: Ibid.
38 “He handed me a bottle”: Zappa, in Zappa with Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 102.
41 “powerful white middle-class matriarch”: Ann Douglas, in Terrible Honesty, p. 6.
41 “aimed to ridicule and overturn everything”: Ibid.
42 “Christian beliefs and middle-class values”: Ibid., p. 8.
42 “Plumpness [would] never again”: Ibid.
42 “her notions of middle-class piety”: Ibid.
42 “modern America, led by New York”: Ibid.
43 “[Elvis] won over the children”: Bobbie Ann Mason, in Dugan, Picturing the South, p. 142.
44 “absolutely certain that no matter which way”: Thompson, Hell’s Angels.
46 “There was a place for women”: Dalton, Piece of My Heart, p. 44.
47 “It’s true, honest to God”: Cass Elliot, in Jerry Hopkins, “The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone, Oct. 26, 1968, p. 20.
47 “That’s when Harvey showed up”: Denny Doherty, Dream a Little Dream:The Nearly True Story of the Mamas and the Papas, http://www.dennydoherty.com.
47 “When I heard us sing together”: Elliot, in Hopkins, “Rolling Stone Interview,” p. 20.
49 “My house is a very free house”: Ibid.
50 “I said, ‘Cass, I don’t know’”: Gary Burden, in “Mama Cass,” Under the Covers, DVD (Triptych Pictures, Lightyear Entertainment, 2002).
52 “before any of us were anybody”: Stephen Stills, in “Crosby, Stills & Nash,” Ibid.
53 “David and I were messing around”: Ibid.
54 “Cass called me”: Graham Nash, ibid.
54 “That was a moment,”: Ibid.
55 “My role in the Mamas and Papas”: Elliot, in Hopkins, “Rolling Stone Interview,” p. 20.
56 “I was told”: Ibid.
56 “They’re paying me an outrageous amount”: Ibid.
57 “Cass Elliot is the only fat person”: Phillips, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, p. 153.
57 “I wonder . . . how they knew”: Ibid., p. 154.
57 “Cass had started it all”: Ibid., p. 155.
57 “I’m not,” she thought to herself: Ibid., p. 156.
4. EVERYDAY PEOPLE
66 “The band sounds really good”: Waddy Wachtel, “The Penguin Biographies,” http://www.fleetwoodmac.net/penguin/waddy.htm.
5. BUSINESSMEN, THEY DRINK MY WINE
107 “She had a backlog”: Elliot Roberts, in Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind, DVD (Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2003).
108 “Elliot became wildly excited”: David Geffen, ibid.
109 “I took her around to people”: David Crosby, ibid.
109 “David set it up”: Roberts, ibid.
111 “There was a camaraderie”: Ibid.
113 “Don’t be stupid”: Geffen, in Crosby and Gottlieb, Long Time Gone, p. 145.
116 “Wait until they make some money”: Joni Mitchell, radio interview by Jim Ladd, Inner View, Dec. 29, 1980.
6. 1969
130 “sitting there, taking a long hit”: Taylor, Prisoner of Woodstock, p. 34.
132 “It’s creating a sort of microcosmic society”: Mick Jagger, quoted in Gimme Shelter, directed by Albert and David Mayles, 1970.
137 “Tens of thousands of people”: Stan Goldstein, quoted in Michael Sragow, “Gimme Shelter: The True Story,” Salon, Aug. 10, 2000.
7. TROUBADOURS
142 “The Troubadour was the first place”: Don Henley, in Joe Smith and Mitchell Fink, Off the Record (New York: Warner Books, 1990).
147 “I really didn’t know anybody”: Ibid.
147 “I said my group’s not”: Ibid.
150 “The Troubadour has been a gold mine”: Doug Weston, in Robert Hilburn, “A Man Who Had a Passion for Art of the Troubadour,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 1999, p. 1.
153 “My whole life came alive”: Elton John, in Myrna Oliver, “Doug Weston, Troubadour Founder, Dies,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 15, 1999, p. 1.
8. SHE DON’T LIE
155 “A little snow”: Shapiro, Waiting for the Man, p. 229.
160 “My senses were lit up”: The Vaults of Erowid, http://www.erowid.org.
160 “In less than five minutes”: Ibid.
161 “Some of my dearest friends”: Cab Calloway, in Shapiro, Waiting for the Man, p. 91.
172 “At first it seemed OK”: Paul McCartney, in Jon Wilde, adapted by David Edwards, “McCartney: I Have Tried Heroin,” Mirror, June 2, 2004.
176 “You know, I didn’t write this song”: Jackson Browne, in Ralph Bowling and Rick Bowen, FrontRowNews, http://www.frontrownews.com.
177 “Look at me now”: Ibid.
9. THE L.A. QUEENS
183 “The waitresses were known”: Stuart-Ware, Behind the Scenes on the Pegasus Carousel, p. 40.
183 “Keep walking hippie”: Ibid.
184 “The Hyatt House was one of those places”: Neal Doughty, A Decade of Rock and Roll—Liner Notes, http://www.speedwagon.com.
187 “If a cash transaction”: Morgana Welch, Shameless Archives, http://www.hollywooddiaries.com.
189 “There were more girls”: Ibid.
191 “Robert fancied Tyla”: Ibid.
191 “They asked me if I wanted”: Ibid.
10. ALL THE YOUNG DUDES
200 “bangs that curled under”: Nikki Sixx, in Lee et al., The Dirt: Mötley Crüe, p. 27.
209 “made us very paranoid”: Joe Walsh, in Robert Hilburn, “The Eagles: The Long Run Is Over,” Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1982.
213 “There was a time”: Glenn Frey, in Anthony DeCurtis, “The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone, Sept. 20, 1990.
213 “Those kinds of record sales”: Don Henley, ibid.
214 “it’s hard to be an underdog”: Ibid.
214 “The dream was unfulfilled”: Ibid.
11. EVE OF DESTRUCTION
225 September 16, 1979: Details of the 1979 Laurel Canyon fire were taken from a report in the Sept. 24, 1979, Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Staff writers Rudy Aversa, Ellen Futterman, Carol Gulotta, Andrew Jaffe, Robert Knowles, Sarai Ribicoff, and Joel Sappell spent five days hiking through the ruins assembling a house-by-house reconstruction of the fire.
237 “I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Tales of the Jazz Age, p. viii.