The L.A. Sensation on Rock N' Roll and the Birth of Hip

While hippiedom was synonymous with San Francisco, hip grew up in Los Angeles fueled by Hollywood's need to mimic, amalgamate and create culture at the cutting edge. Until the 1960s, the music business, which goes hand in hand with pop culture, was based in New York. The media took the New York pulse to gauge the latest taste. Tastemakers came from the New York scene. Then the Beatles visited the Hollywood Bowl. The Beatles' label was Capitol, and Capitol was in Hollywood. Soon the California sounds of the Turtles, the Mamas and the Papas, Sonny and Cher and the Byrds were beaming melodic tunes to a hungry nation, and the Sunset Strip became the place to play your way into rock 'n roll history.

It is generally not known outside the music business that singers as diverse as Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, the Doors and Fleetwood Mac recorded many of their top hits in L.A. Los Angeles is at the forefront when it comes to first-rate recording studios and has a rich recording tradition. The fanciful Capitol Records building, which now has landmark status, was completed in 1956 at Hollywood and Vine. Its distinct structure, resembling a stack of records on a turntable, was a whimsical suggestion about the music success to follow within. But no one could have predicted that Capitol Records would be a harbinger of the incredibly vibrant L.A. music scene that ensued.

Capitol Records had been founded by singer Johnny Mercer, music store owner Glen Wallichs and Paramount movie producer Buddy De Sylva. The Capitol Records building was quickly used by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in the 1950s. Meanwhile, Columbia, Warner Bros, RCA, Elektra, and Decca all opened recording studios in L.A. At a happier time, Phil Spector (arrested in connection with a death of a Hollywood starlet found in his home in 2003) produced the Ronettes' 1960s hit "Be My Baby" in Hollywood. Elvis Presley recorded "Jailhouse Rock" and "All Shook Up" in L.A., and the Rolling Stones cut "Satisfaction" in Los Angeles.

Music producer Lou Adler, producer of the famous Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 that launched the careers of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix among others, comments on the Sunset Strip of the 1960s, "Kids would drive by, hanging out the car windows playing tambourines." You could barely walk the sidewalks as you tried to get into the Whiskey-A-Go-Go or some other club to see the next up and coming performer. And Adler saw something else even more marvelous as a result of the rock explosion in L.A. in the go-go 60's: The mutual courting of Hollywood and the record industry. When the Mamas and the Papas played the Hollywood Bowl, Hollywooders such as actor Steve McQueen were in the audience. Actor Peter Fonda hung out with David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash. Mia Farrow bought Mama Cass silk robes in Beverly Hills. Jack Nicholson dated Michelle Philips of the Mamas and the Papas.

L.A., almost overnight, it seems, had become a trendsetter. An L.A. entertainment juggernaut was set in full motion. Joni Mitchell's 1970 album "Ladies of the Canyon" highlighted this concentration of rock vocal and guitar power in L.A. Regular residents of Laurel Canyon, from Carole King to Joe Cocker and others too numerous but no less important to recount, were joined by a host of visiting groups: The Stones, the Beatles, the Animals and so on. A taste of the '60s canyon lifestyle: Judy Collins is introduced to Stephen Stills. They have a love affair and Stills writes "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes."

By the 1970s the Sunset Strip, once the place Hollywood stars would dine, had become the absolute center of American pop music, according to L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn. Elton John, Tom Petty and Bette Midler all had gigs on the Strip in those years. Music hip had combined with Hollywood trendy. Elton John described his engagement at the Troubadour in August 1970 when he was introduced to an American audience by singer Neil Diamond: "My whole life came alive that night, musically, emotionally... everything... I was a fan who had become accepted as a musician..."