Camelot in LA

I have always thought that "The 60s" is a somewhat misleading phrase, at least when used to define a cultural phenomenon. The problem is that the early 60s were much more like the 50s, and much of what we think of as the counterculture and social revolution that defined the era occurred in the early 70s. I always think of the 60s as beginning with the JFK assassination (1963) and ending with the release of Saturday Night Fever (1977), which ushered in the era of disco. Woodstock, arguably the seminal event of the 1960s, didn't occur until August, 1969, a mere four months before the end of the decade. So, THE 60s and the 60s are not precisely the same thing.

I like to think of the 60s as divided into two parts, pre-Beatles and post-Beatles. Since The Beatles broke up in a horribly acrimonious mess just as the decade came to an end, the event provides a useful bookmark. Yes, there were many other sources of musical genius in the 60s--Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Stones come to mind. But as immortalized in Don McClean's American Pie, The Beatles so dominated their era that it was difficult for others to capture the attention they perhaps deserved.

Enter The Troubadour

In many ways, I find the post-Beatles era the more interesting. I was fascinated by the southern California, easy-listening, country rock movement of the early 1970s. What I did not realize until last night was that virtually all of the musicians that I loved at that time all knew one another and worked closely together, all getting their start in a relatively small club in Los Angeles called the Troubadour.

I was enlightened by a documentary that is part of the great PBS series American Masters entitled Troubadours: Carole King / James Taylor & The Rise of the Singer-Songwriter. It can viewed in its entirety online here. If you have 90 minutes to spare, I strongly recommend viewing it. It is a wonderful time capsule capturing a magical era in American music. If you were to browse through the albums that I loved in the early 1970s, most would have been a product of the artists profiled in this documentary. James Taylor's Sweet Baby James and Mud Slide Slim? Check. Carole King's Tapestry? Check. Linda Rondstadt's Heart Like a Wheel, Prisoner in Disguise, and Hasten Down thew Wind? Check. Jackson Browne's For Everyman, The Pretender, and Running on Empty? Check. Eagles' Eagles and Desperado? Check. CSN&Y's Deja Vu? Check. Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark? Check. This list goes on and on--Elton John, J.D. Souther, Karla Bonhoff, The Byrds, Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, and Bonnie Raitt to to list just a few. Even Steve Martin got his start at the Troubadour.

The strange part of this story is how insular this community of singer/songwriters were. All of the these people knew each other. Well. They played on each other's albums. Many lived in the same Laurel Canyon neighborhood in Los Angeles.

It all ended when the intimate collection of friends and collaborators went their own ways when they got huge record deals and began making unimaginable sums of money for kids in their 20s. The transition from marijuana to cocaine also played a role in the dissolution of the idealism and camaraderie that was the Troubadour.

Watching the video, I couldn't help but think of that line from Camelot, "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." As one of the players interviewed in the documentary--I forget who--pointed out, usually reality fails to live up to the legend, but in the case of the Troubadour in the early 70s, it did.