Having just read the John Hammond bio that I purchased at the same time, I was not as impressed with this book. Even though I am familiar with many of the artists, it just didn't hold my interest that well. The author did seem to know his material, though. I just saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young again this summer. I wonder how they feel about each other now with so much gone on in decades before! It's a wonder more of these people didn't die of drug overdoses or std's! If you want an uplifting experience, this isn't for you!

Having enjoyed Hoskyns' story of L.A. rock's origins and evolution in his Waiting for the Sun, and having read Michael Walker's overlapping (in subject matter, time of study, and time of publication) Laurel Canyon [also reviewed by me], I approached Hotel Cal with anticipation. Although I was still in childhood/adolescence at the time of the early 70s that Hoskyns' new book surveys, and although much of the music was not so much liked by me as simply absorbed from its immensely popular and understandably nearly ubiquitous presence on the local L.A. radio stations at the time, I found myself recalling dozens of songs that I have not heard since three decades ago!

Hoskyns's skill in this book, as in his previous Los Angeles music book, is an ability to sift through anecdotes, interviews, his own and others' journalism, and to present a clearly told, accessible, and entertaining read. It's neither too gossipy nor too clinical; he manages, I think, to find pretty much the right balance. Walker and Hoskyns agree that the rise of the early 70s musicians party and pleasure ethos by its hedonism, navel gazing, and focus on self-satisfaction tolled the death knoll for Summer of Love idealism. Figures who bridged these two eras (pre-Woodstock to post-Watergate) such as Crosby and Stills come off the worse for wear after this chemically fueled race to the top of the charts. Those who followed the politicized folk-rock with a complacent ruralized mid-tempo rock soon eclipsed their addled forebears, at least as judging by Henley and Frey! As in Walker's story, the ubiquitous Pamela Des Barres, the enigmatic Joni Mitchell, and the old timer Henry Diltz all recall their own escapades at length. Those talents who were discarded by the side of the fast lane by their more calculating one-time bandmates and pals emerge poignantly. The Brothers Gosdine, Dillard, and Berline all had their supporting roles to play in establishing the bluegrass foundations that younger musicians would adapt into folk-rock and then country-rock in the later 60s. Gene Clark, Chris Hillman (who also is extensively quoted in Walker's book), Ned Doheny, J.D. Souther, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner are among those lesser-known pioneers of the country-rock fusion that the Eagles would take from Doug Weston's Troubadour club within a few years to take it to the stadium tour limit.

The escapades of CSNY, Linda Ronstadt's savvy knack for choosing material and her too-little credited level-headedness, Gram Parsons' trust-fund banked decadence, and Jackson Browne's energetic ability (shared with Joni Mitchell) to hook up romantically and musically with celebrity mates all make the characters here (un?)reliably engaging. What is less documented are the roles that the more unsung Lady of the Canyon, Cass Elliot, played as a sort of matchmaking yenta who brought talents together (her complicated but still largely unsung role is slightly increased in Walker's book, but not enough to delve fully into her evident influence), as well as not enough detail to capture on the page what the "Warner-Reprise" mentality of the "Burbank Sound" represented. Still -- in an astute observation of Hoskyns-- best of all as the template for the design of the new L.A. starmaking machinery was the blueprint of the little-heralded debut by Little Feat. The author also notes correctly that such talents as Lowell George and crew, as well as Browne or Parsons or Clark, in the current bottom-line record business would not have ever been given the chance by today's WB perhaps to even make a second album.

Egregiously, Michael Walker in his book misspelled twice Beachwood Canyon (just below the Hollywood sign and a few canyons to the east of Laurel--neither writer adds that at its end lies a working horse ranch, the last of such among now McMansion-blighted chaparral); Hoskyns misspells it as "Beechwood" five or six times, three on one page. Since both men have lived in L.A. quite a while, it puzzles me why this persistent yet easily corrected (by anyone who'd claim to know the Hollywood Hills this is like an adopted hipster New Yorker telling us about when he hung out in "Greenwitch Village") mistake exists in either supposedly thorough chronicle. There's also a sizable street by the punning name that goes down from the canyon into the heart of Hollywood, so it is not an obscure nomenclature. I do not know which author to originally charge this error to; one curious aspect to Walker's book is the complete absence of references to Hoskyns' "Waiting for the Sun"; perhaps resentment at Hoskyns' new book arriving about neck-and-neck with Walker's own is to blame? True, a minor glitch, but how could it be coincidental to both authors, experts on this musical period and cultural terrain? The country-psych-rock revivalists Beachwood Sparks a few years ago provide a salutory reminder both of the legacy of the time Walker and Hoskyns describe and a helpful mnemonic for how to spell that canyon correctly!!!

Actually, given that Waiting for the Sun did hint more at the WB-Reprise-Elektra-Asylum stable's own knack at crossbreeding fine racehorses as well as dobbins like Van Dyke Parks or Warren Zevon, the shortcomings of this longer book disappointed me. I give both Walker and Hoskyns four stars rounded up for their welcome efforts, but the explorations in both cases still lack depth. I wish Hoskyns had interviewed more than the musicians, studio heads, and managers at WB, for example. Why not hear from the graphic designers, photographers, producers, and clever PR marketers who sold millions calling themselves the counterculture on their Burbank-born early 70s brand of anti-capitalist, pro-hedonist anthems? The cultural legacy of WB and its labelmates needs to be investigated at much more length: how they and not, say, Capitol, was able to position their label as the hip proto-alternative deserves space. One used to buy a WB album then based on the label, even if the artist had not yet been familiar to you: customers trusted that label's roster.

Hoskyns delves into a lot of oral history and written interviews (although he himself, judging from the endnotes, does not offer his own "three decades" of interviews but rather mixes his own largely from 1993/4 and 2004/5 with those by other journalists-- contrary to the bookjacket's inside front blurb). However, if you have not heard the actual music under discussion or if you remember it less than precisely now, the quick skims of key album's contents and especially the sound of the records that made these musicians rich or left them poor are insufficient to convey what made the L.A. singer-songwriter and country-rock hybrids so perennial-- at least three decades ago. Hoskyns rushes through the actual songs and the feel of the music in his haste to pile on more stories, list yet another sly move by David Geffen, or how many drugs some twenty-four-year old instant celebrity superstar consumed.

Yes, Geffen, coke, cash, groupies, and debauchery belong here. But these, not the musical styles or their development, tend to dominate the results on the page. So, while you will not learn about the wonderful copywriters who on the inner sleeves of WB albums would trumpet bargain-rate label samplers called by such titles as "Schlagers!", you will gain from this book, especially if read after Waiting for the Sun and Walker's Laurel Canyon account, a better understanding of a type of music that now seems about as far away as the hippie roots from which cocaine cowboys and denim-skirted sirens blossomed.