{"id":20906,"date":"2021-04-30T05:30:34","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T09:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20906"},"modified":"2021-04-22T11:03:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T15:03:41","slug":"pop-musics-terrestrial-paradise-joel-selvins-hollywood-eden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/30\/pop-musics-terrestrial-paradise-joel-selvins-hollywood-eden\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop music\u2019s Terrestrial Paradise: Joel Selvin\u2019s \u2018Hollywood Eden\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Many authors have sought to chronicle the cultural ferment that gave rise to the Southern California pop music explosion of the 1960s. And while some efforts have yielded worthwhile books, Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise<\/i> stands apart. The newest book from Joel Selvin \u2013 author of nearly 20 music and pop culture books, and music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle<\/i> for nearly four decades \u2013 Hollywood Eden<\/i> presents a narrative of the late \u201850s and early-to-mid 1960s that reveals the interconnectedness of key figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy books tend toward these ensemble pieces,\u201d says Selvin, who notes that his own personal musical axis has long been based in part on the Beach Boys. He says that the genesis of Hollywood Eden<\/i> can be traced back to a meeting with his longtime friend Kevin P. Walsh, a 1958 graduate of University High School in West Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe showed me his yearbook collection,\u201d Selvin recalls. \u201cAnd the University High yearbook blew my mind.\u201d Students at the time included Jan Berry and Dean Torrence, later to find fame as Jan and Dean; Frank Sinatra\u2019s daughter Nancy; scenester Kim Fowley; drummer Sandy Nelson, future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, and Kathy Kohner, the real-life Gidget<\/i>.<\/p>\n

For many, high school spans the most formative years in their lives. And greater Los Angeles of the late \u201850s marked a time when producer Terry Melcher (future producer of the Byrds, Paul Revere and the Raiders and others), Lou Adler (co-organizer of Monterey Pop), Brian Wilson, Herb Alpert, Phil Spector and others were all heading toward graduation. The manner in which their stories interweave and color each others\u2019 development is expertly showcased in the pages of Hollywood Eden<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe locus of the book was this University High class,\u201d Selvin says. \u201cThat was what tied everything together: discovering that all those people not only went to school together but knew each other and started their careers together, right there.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the book \u2013 and its author\u2019s accompanying curated music playlist \u2013 features a dazzling cast of familiar characters, Selvin believes that Hollywood Eden<\/i> is about much more than that. \u201cIt\u2019s really more of a time and a place,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a totally different world from now: there was no 405 freeway, and the Sunset and Sepulveda intersection [had] a four-way stop sign.\u201d<\/p>\n

In those days, the high schoolers profiled in Hollywood Eden<\/i> were facing a future ripe with possibilities. Selvin emphasizes, too, that \u201cthe whole American phenomenon of \u2018teenage\u2019 was coming into its own in the prosperity of the post-war [period]. These were golden opportunities to be a teenager on the west side of Los Angeles in the late \u201850s.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many ways for a writer to tackle the sort of subject matter explored in Hollywood Eden<\/i>. Selvin\u2019s chosen method is to write in a style that reads like a novel, yet steers clear of the kind of manufactured dialogue (between Brian Wilson\u2019s great-grandparents in the 1920s) that characterized Timothy White\u2019s similarly-themed 1994 book, The Nearest Faraway Place<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Some of the characters in Selvin\u2019s book \u2013 Brian Wilson, in particular \u2013 have been the subject of illuminating biographical works before now. But Selvin\u2019s storytelling adds depth, nuance and \u2013 most important of all \u2013 context to their stories. And he shines a light on several figures whose names \u2013 but not their stories \u2013 are well-known. A prime example is Dunhill Records founder Lou Adler. \u201cHe\u2019s this figure who has loomed over music history for years,\u201d Selvin says. \u201cBut because of his own personal distaste for publicity, nobody has researched or revealed his story at all. And it’s consequential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also of cultural consequence is the story of Kathy Kohner; her experiences hanging out with members of the then-nascent surfing community would inform the cultural lexicon of a generation when her father, novelist-screenwriter Frederick Kohner wrote Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas<\/i> in 1957.<\/p>\n

Another character whose tale serves as a kind of connective tissue uniting seemingly separate stories is Jill Gibson. For much of the period covered in Hollywood Eden<\/i>, Gibson was dating Jan Berry. \u201cBut Jill Gibson was anything but \u2018somebody\u2019s girlfriend\u2019\u201d Selvin explains. Drafted as a replacement for Michelle Phillips in the Mamas and the Papas, Gibson was an accomplished songwriter and photographer as well. \u201cI was really proud to bring Jill out of the background,\u201d Selvin says. \u201cI think she\u2019s an archetypal California personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Selvin\u2019s gravitas as a journalist and writer means that he gained up-close access to key people whose stories inform the richly textured Hollywood Eden<\/i>. He laughs as he acknowledges that Bruce Johnston \u201cis constantly busy and not too interested in participating in somebody\u2019s book project.\u201d Nonetheless, Selvin says that the Beach Boy \u2013 who had hits of his own before joining that group in 1965 \u2013 granted interviews for the book. And his perspective proved valuable, Selvin laughs again, \u201cbecause he\u2019s the only guy I met who liked Kim Fowley!\u201d<\/p>\n

Fowley was ubiquitous in the L.A. scene of the era covered in Hollywood Eden<\/i>. \u201cHe was also a creep,\u201d Selvin adds. \u201cHis talent, such as it was, had to do with being able to see things and making things happen. He didn’t write any songs we care about, and he didn’t really produce any great records. But somehow he always had his finger in the pie somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Selvin admits that during research, he made the occasional discovery that wouldn’t find its way onto the pages of the book. He provides an example: \u201cWhen Sandy Nelson crashed his motorcycle into that school bus, 13-year-old Bonnie Raitt was on the bus.\u201d But including that detail would have distracted from the larger story. \u201cIt would stick out of the narrative like some kind of extraneous spoke,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I just left that fascinating little tidbit on the cutting room floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Hollywood Eden<\/i> is full of relevant detail, bringing a kind of order to the disparate stories of its young cast of characters. And the book makes much of what would eventually happen in Southern California music seem preordained, in a way. Because as Selvin notes, \u201cin 1958, teenagers understood rock \u2018n\u2019 roll better than the people who owned the record companies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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