Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laurel Canyon is a canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, and like Topanga Canyon very oriented to the central thoroughfare, Laurel Canyon Boulevard. There are many side roads that branch off the main canyon, but most of them are not through streets, reinforcing the neighborhood as self-contained. It was first settled in the 1920s, and became a part of Los Angeles in 1923. Unlike other canyon neighborhoods, Laurel Canyon has houses lining one side of the main street most of the way up to Mulholland Drive. Some of the main side streets are Mount Olympus, Kirkwood, and Lookout Mountain Avenue. The zip code for at least part of the neighborhood is 90046.
It is an important transit corridor between West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, specifically Studio City. The division between the two can roughly be defined by the intersection of Laurel Canyon & Mulholland Drive. As of the first few months of 2005, the first section of the road on the Hollywood side had been partially washed away in a rainstorm, and traffic was still being redirected to a normally quiet residential side street going along the main drive.
Laurel Canyon found itself a nexus of counterculture activity and attitudes in the 1960s, becoming famous as home to many of L.A.'s top rock musicians, such as Frank Zappa, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Love. Joni Mitchell, inhabiting the home in the Canyon immortalized in the song written by Graham Nash, "Our House," would use the area as title and inspiration for her third album. The bohemian spirit from that time period endures to this day, and every year residents gather for a group photograph at the country market.Laurel Canyon has been mentioned in many films and novels of Los Angeles, including Laurel Canyon written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko in 2002, and is the subject of a book by Michael Walker, Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood, published by Faber and Faber in May of 2006.
Among the famous places in Laurel Canyon are the Log Cabin house once-owned by silent film star Tom Mix that became home to the Zappa clan, and one that may or may not have been owned by Harry Houdini.
Between 1912 and 1918, a trackless electric trolley ran from Sunset Boulevard to the top of Lookout Mountain Road.
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[edit] Famous residents
- Anthony Kiedis, 1990s-present
- Robert Mitchum, 1940s-'60s
- Errol Flynn, early to mid 1950s
- Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. 1960s - present
- Cass Elliot, 1960s
- Peter Tork, mid 1960s
- Jim Morrison, late 1960s
- Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski, 1968-1969
- Frank Zappa, 1968-1993
- John Mayall, 1969-1979
- Joni Mitchell & Graham Nash, early 1970s
- Roman Gabriel, former quarterback of the Los Angeles Rams, lived on Skyline Drive, 1970s
- Alice Cooper, 1971-1976
- Eric Burdon, 1970s
- Jerry Brown, 1970s.
- Dusty Springfield, 1970s
- Keith Richards, 1970s
- Marilyn Manson, 1997-present (residence is on Appian Way at the famed 'Mary Astor House', built in the 1920s as a 'Hills hideaway for the silent film starlet, Mary Astor, who used the home secretly for her romantic trysts with studio execs and other notables; Marilyn Manson wrote the entire Mechanical Animals album at this house, and much of it was recorded at 'The White Room'--Manson's home recording studio in his pool house)
- The Rolling Stones, 1970s (interestingly, The Rolling Stones occupied the same house mentioned above, the 'Mary Astor House' in which Marilyn Manson lives today; their film, Cocksucker Blues was filmed here)
- Keith Moon, mid-1970s (Studio City side of Laurel Canyon)
- Orson Welles, lived on Greenvalley Road, late 1970s.
- Slash, 1976-mid-'80s
- Jennifer Aniston, early-mid 1990s
- Christina Applegate, present
- Meg Ryan, present
- Ian Thorpe, present
[edit] Deaths in Laurel Canyon
- George Augustus Phillips (d. 1966)
- Luther Williams (d. 1978)
- Paul Scotch (d. 1980)
- Keith Raymond (d. 2001)
- Bryan Collins (d. 1994)
- Frank Zappa (d. 1993)
- Leonardo DiFondo (d. 1956)
- Peter J (d. 2005)
- Laurel Johnson Canyon or known as The Founder of Laurel Canyon (d. 1940)
[edit] Notes
- LA_a-z LA_a-z2 "Laurel Canyon". Los Angeles A to Z (1). (1997). by Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt, published by the University of California Press, Los Angeles.
[edit] External links
- "Music and Mayhem in 'Laurel Canyon'", from NPR.org broadcast September 6, 2006
