About five years ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Michael Walker, the author of "Laurel Canyon, The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood." In the book, I'm quoted as saying the following about the Troubadour, which I visited many times from 1970-1975ish.
FROM LAUREL CANYON THE INSIDE STORY OF ROCK AND ROLL'S LEGENDARY NEIGHBORHOOD. BY MICHAEL WALKER FABER & FABER 2006
As the Troubadour's fortunes declined and its prestige faded, the musicians who gave the club its specialness drifted away. "I stopped going to the Troubadour in 1974-75," says Stevens. "That was the last time you sensed that it was a place you'd still run into the old crowd. By then they were all kind of rich and famous. People were on the road, everyone was always out of town, so you didn't see anybody." The days were over when Stevens could pass an afternoon with Janis Joplin at the Troubadour bar, 'Just the two of us getting mildly bombed and hitting on this surfer guy who got frightened off because we were getting a bit much for him, so we went outside and some people had left a couple bicycles against the wall, and we started riding around on the railroad tracks, screaming and falling off, having a great time. It seemed like every time you went down there something like that was going on, some little drama."
But she also remembered the jockeying of young musicians at the bar, looking for an opening, anything to get ahead. "It wasn't, 'Oh, let's go down and we'll hang out and have a merry old time at the Troubadour.' There was absolutely an agenda going on. Glenn Frey - I've never seen a guy work a room like that guy could - whatever he could get, to get himself going for his career. He was very, very career-oriented. They all were. Anyone who pretends they weren't doing that is fooling themselves."
Michael's book went into millions of sales world-wide, and presaged what appears to be a revival of interest in the Troubadour club and what it means to the history of music, as well as Laurel Canyon and its influence.
The first blip on the radar was the lovely Reunion concert, featuring James Taylor and Carole King, which for me really recaptured the musical spirit of the place as it used to be, before younger bands of a different ilk took over and made it theirs, altering the architecture, changing the showroom, removing the tables and chairs, once set sideways on to the stage, [where everyone sat shoulder to shoulder, all able to see the stage without someone's head in the way], putting another bar in there, and so on. Standing room only nowadays, and they charge you to come in and drink in the bar. In the old days, you could drink at the bar and have your two drink minimum - or whatever your mileage was - and no need to see the show if you couldn't afford it. There were ways around that. The restrooms had to be visited, after being in the bar for a while, and then you could lurk about at the back of the showroom, catching however many minutes you could of the on-stage action, before Bob Marchese marched down from his post by the door to remind you to either get back to the bar or go buy a ticket. He was usually pretty fair about lurking, though.
The club had an excellent management team in the days before 1975, and Doug Weston generally left them to it, preferring to hold court at night, and hammer out legendary and hard-nosed deals during the day, with artists who turned out to be the biggest in the business, most of whom still recall the terms of Doug's contracts with a certain wry resignation. There was no place quite like the Troub for presenting an endless flow of talent, and no club owner quite like Doug Weston.
On March 2, PBS aired "Troubadours, The Movie," after it's successful screening at Sundance. It should first be noted that this is more of a continuance of the initial James and Carole DVD, and spends considerable time on Carole's early days songwriting with husband Gerry Goffin at the Brill Building and her move to Los Angeles in the late 60s, and James's formative years in Massachusetts, New York and the UK. While this is absorbing and presents terrific early footage of both artists in their very young days, it really has little or nothing to do with the Troubadour club.
James and Carole were two of many talents who graced the Troubadour stage, though not by any means regulars in the bar - James never maintained a residence in Los Angeles, and Carole was not a bar type. I never saw either of them there except in concert, though my then-old man was out on the road with the James, Carole and Jo Mama tour in the early 70s, so I got to know most of Jo Mama socially in those days.
As far as the Troubadour story, we hear from a sprinkling of the usual commentators, i.e. photographer/musician Henry Diltz, David Crosby, and Jackson Browne who is puzzingly interviewed in the guitar room at McCabe's.
Robert Hilburn (the highly-respected Los Angeles Times music editor), Kris Kristofferson, and former artist manager Dickie Davis provide insightful comments, and Lou Adler shows up to explain, among his reminscences of working with Carole, why he found it necessary to open the Roxy on Sunset, to directly challenge and ultimately close down the Troubadour. As for the mean-spirited commentary from former Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau, why? It's well-known that the east coast critics hated the music coming out of California in those days, so why belabor the point? And really who cares? I agree with Kootch on that one.
The Eagles are awkwardly stuffed in towards the end, using BBC footage of the band in the early days, and standard photos from the brimming Diltz archive, but without their personal commentary it fell flat for me. And why open with a great comment from Graham Nash, and then never see him again? I particularly missed commentary from Louise Goffin, Carole's other daughter, a successful studio owner and singer/songwriter.
I also wanted to hear from a lot more people who were club regulars in the day, i.e. Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones, Chuck E. Weiss, Harry Dean Stanton, Douglas Dillard, Van Dyke Parks, Don Henley and Glenn Frey, David Geffen, Linda Ronstadt, a few more of the staff besides just manager Paul Body and Weston's p.a. Ursula Britton, who at least tried to provide a glimpse of the club itself and the working relationship with the unique Doug. Even a word from Mike, the perennial bar-tender at Dan Tana's, the Italian restaurant next door, who knew all the denizens of the Troub in the early days, would have been interesting. Unfortunately, this didn't happen, and so, in my estimation, the definitive documentary on the Troubadour itself still remains to be made.
This particular documentary had great moments, but for me it failed as a whole, simply because it was two movies attempting to be one. James and Carole, top-flight seminal musicians of the era, both hailing from NYC though, deserve documentaries all their own, at the very least, as does the Brill Building, that great New York factory of pop music in the early 60s. And as does the Troubadour.
Ultimately, one story canceled the other out, and I constantly found myself figuratively pleading, "Could we get back to the Troubadour story, please?" as Danny Kortchmar held forth on James and Carole's early days, and we got to hear about The Section and so on, which really had nothing to do with the club at all, wonderful though The Section are.
So, until such time, as far as a real recounting of the glory days of the Troubadour is filmed, this movie is an entertaining and enjoyable stop-gap, which continues to promote the worthy Troubadour Reunion Tour franchise.
Photo of Glenn Frey - Deborah Chesher.
Great review!
We're linking to your article for Academy Winners Monday at SeminalCinemaOutfit.com
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Seminalcinemaoutfit | 03/03/2014 at 08:28 AM
Hi! Please send me all relevant links. I didnt remove anything from your original - better check that out. I can just take it down as well. Nice photo. not worth a lot of aggro though!
Posted by: Sally Stevens | 08/17/2011 at 07:20 PM