Influenced by Led Zeppelin and other acts who had precious little to do with the gentle folk rock of the Byrds or the avant-garde theatricals of Zappa's posse, "The canyon in the 70s more closely resembled a Dionysian playground with no compensating worldview beyond having a really, really good time."

Um, I don't know about all of the other hard rock acts of the '70s, but Led Zeppelin were heavily influenced by the whole Laurel Canyon crowd, Joni Mitchell in particular. The song "Goin' To California" even references La Mitch. The Laurel Canyon crowd also had a huge, obvious influence on '70s hitmakers like Fleetwood Mac, essentially a depoliticized Crosby, Still, Nash & Young that featured all of the romantic tension the Mamas and the Papas had sported about a decade before.

Led Zep was heavily influenced by the band Spirit, too. So influenced that they lifted whole sections of the band's 1967 song "Taurus" and turned them into "Stairway to Heaven." I was just listening to Spirit today in my car, "Topanga Windows" and "The Great Canyon Fire." OK, so it's a differnt canyon. But Topanga claims Joni Mitchell too, as well as Neil Young and Jim Morrison.

It was just two days ago that I was educating my boss about the mythology of Joni Mitchell's time in Laurel Canyon and her "Blue" album. I was introduced to Joni Mitchell in college through a "Women in Pop Music" course offered as an elective through the music school. Our professor, a spunky Irish woman, play "All I Want" and gave the class a brief rundown of Mitchell's career. Immediately after the class let out that day, I made a bee-line to the local music store to buy the album. While at the music store I bumped into a fellow classmate who had the same idea in mind. We were both so enthralled by the thumping guitar and journey-like tale of the first track off of "Blue." I often think of Patricia Clarkson's character from Six Feet Under as a modern-day Joni Mitchell. An artist who lives in the canyon (albeit Topanga, not Laurel) who smokes pot and makes art and gets high on the crisp mountain air. We're captive on the carousel of time indeed.

That might be a passage the writer would want to reconsider. Zep's third, fourth, and Physical Graffiti albums show heavy folk-rock influences. As you say, they loved Joni Mitchell, and Page spoke glowingly of Court and Spark. If you look, you can find bootlegs of early Zeppelin doing covers of Buffalo Springfield and CSN&Y songs, and I think even Woodstock.

Whenever I go to Los Angeles, I enjoy nothing more than a drive throughout the area. I get unjustifiably nostalgic about the time and place, though I was too young and too far away to experience it first-hand. The review tells me that this is a book for me. Driving around the canyons there I feel an odd bittersweet feeling. There are times I swear I can feel the moment that the hippie-dippie, harmonious, and non-threatening group of like-minded musicians turned into the haunt of the rancidly deranged, the psychotic hangers-on, and those for whom dope became an all-consuming avocation.

I think that is what I find so fascinating about that time and place. I have not the faintest connection to it (not even really a fan of the music) but it seems the very hills hold secrets and remain saddened at the way the scene played itself out.

"The lasting legacy of the '60s may wind up being nothing more than its music."

So, I guess civil rights, the women's movement, antiwar movement, gay rights, the sexual revolution, groundbreaking works of literature, theater, poetry and film don't count as "lasting legacies," eh?

This is as absurd a statement as claiming that the '60s were "all about neighborhoods."

AU: You might try extending your reach just a bit beyond music...

Damn those hippies! If they didn't create a perfect utopia, then it was all for nought. And if some porn stars living in the same city had a violent episode? Then it was clearly all wrong from the start.

The British Blues musician John Mayall released "Blues from Laurel Canyon" in 1968. The album captures the energy and spirit of the moment and manages to document some of the denizens, particularly in such songs as "2401" and "The Bear." In "2401" Mayall sings about The Mothers, the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously, a Zappa side project), and groupies like "Pam," or Pamela Des Barres. "The Bear" must me a veiled reference to Owsley Stanley III, the infamous LSD chemist. While overlooked in this article, this album should be considered by anyone who is interested in the Laurel Canyon scene.

The reason the Laurel Canyon scene wasn't as revered as The Village or Haight Ashbury is simply because, as cool and inventive as it was, it was an exclusive social club. You needed an invite, you couldn't just wander into it fresh off the bus from Ohio or where ever.

The lasting legacy of the '60s may wind up being nothing more than its music, and nowhere in America -- not Jerry Garcia's Haight or Bob Dylan's Village -- generated more of it than Laurel Canyon.

Bull. Berry Gordy's Detroit generated about a thousand times more good music than Laurel Canyon's residents could ever dream of doing.

And let's not forget Don Kirshner's Brill Building, while we're at it.

Or Curtis Mayfield's Chicago.

Or Allen Toussant's New Orleans.

I assume that all of these locations were sent down the memory hole because each subscribed to a division of labor among songwriters, producers, arrangers, musicians, and singers that serves as an inconvenient rebuttal to the myth of the solitary poetic genius that drove the Laurel Canyon scene.

Whatever the reason - I suspect it's plain old ignorance - this is a prime example of the kind of blinkered, uninformed music criticism that creates a totally false image of music in the 1960s.