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November 16, 2020 by Simon Sweetman

Laurel Canyon: DVD

Laurel Canyon

Director: Alison Ellwood

Canyon Films, LLC / Madman

It’s hard to see this as anything more than a boomer circle-jerk: Oooh, we had the best music didn’t we…

Laurel Canyon is this near-mythical place in songs, in albums, in bands’ biographies. It is real. It was a place; a place where a large number of really great artists resided for a time. And it’s been the inspiration for fictional films, for books and now this documentary which is available as both a feature film (shortened) and a longer TV series. It’s hard to know, based on the two-part, two-hour documentary film why this was even made.

It’s got little bits of the Crosby, Stills, Nash story with no real teeth. It’s got a nice section about Linda Ronstadt but it seems to exist as a pre-cursor to mentioning the Eagles. Yes, there’s a connection, and we all know it – but the Eagles themselves never resided in Laurel Canyon and mostly only ever lived up their own arseholes from what I can tell.

Their hijacking of the narrative, or the filmmaker’s decision to include them as more than a mere footnoted-mention, is what makes me level the boomer circle-jerk charge: Picking these stadium-sell outs for the film’s conclusion feels as cynical as, well, almost any record or show by the Eagles.

I say this and yet I still watched this film – delighted in some of the still photos and home-video footage I hadn’t seen previously. But it also felt lazy and rather pointless. Like it wanted to edge toward meaning something and then couldn’t really find anything beyond some vague notion of designer-hippie ideals.

Hey, but The Turtles are in there! And Love! And those are really the best bits.

It’s worth your time if you’re a music tragic. But it’s not great filmmaking, nor is it necessary.

This review isn’t necessary either though. So, fuck knows…
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Posted in Blog, Reviews and tagged with 60s, 70s, Alison Ellwood, Canyon Films, Crosby Still and Nash, Doc, Doco, Documentary, Documentary Review, DVD, DVD Review, Eagles, Film, Film Review, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Laurel Canyon, Laurel Canyon: DVD, Linda Ronstadt, Madman, Movie, Movie Review, Music, Music Doco, Neil Young, You can support Off The Tracks via PressPatron. RSS 2.0 feed.
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