Hollywood Eden

Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise
Joel Selvin
read by Peter Berkrot
Blackstone Publishing, April 06, 2021
$13.99 for Audible members, more for nonmembers
purchased with an Audible credit

If you would like an inside account of the Hollywood Music business in the late fifties and early sixties this is your book.

Author Joel Selvin opens the book with a portrayal of University High School in Los Angeles during the late 1950s. The children of Hollywood actors, directors, and producers attended the school. He describes members of the school football team singing in the locker room shower after a game, led by Jan Berry and his buddy Dean Torrence. The two eventually became the musical duo Jan and Dean. Nancy Sinatra was another University High graduate. Several University graduates were involved in music and worked together in various iterations.

The formation of some musical groups was delayed, or their makeup altered, by the threat of the draft. While this was in the pre-Vietnam era, the draft loomed large in the lives of the men then. Many joined the National Guard or the Navy Reserve to avoid full-time military service. Some enlisted directly while others drew the short straw and were drafted. Jan had another musical partner until Dean returned from his military service.

Selvin describes how the Beach Boys were a backup band, including for some of Berry’s ventures, before making it big on their own. Berry continued to collaborate with the group as they became headliners in their own right. The author talks about how Beach Boy Brian Wilson had a nervous breakdown on the road and limited his role to composing and studio work while the rest of the group performed on concert tours. He writes that the group which became the Mamas and the Papas arrived penniless from the Virgin Islands only to be introduced to a producer by the person with whom they were staying in Los Angeles.

Selvin writes about the management and business side as well. He tells the story of Herb Alpert and Lou Adler. The two had a small management company which was rather slim on assets. They had a falling out and liquidated the company, agreeing to split the assets. That amounted to Alpert taking the Ampex tape recorder and Adler management of Jan and Dean.

The Los Angeles rock music community was small and everyone knew everyone else. More or less the same group of session musicians played in the recording sessions at the small handful of studios in the city. Selvin reminds us that Glen Campbell was an in-demand session guitarist before he made it big as a country rock vocalist.

Ethical behavior was borderline at best. Producers regularly ripped off tunes and arrangements. Different groups would record the same song that would compete on the charts. A promoter would give a group a name and send one set of musicians out on tour while an entirely different group of musicians would record under the same name in the studio.

The sections on studio sessions are particularly interesting. Both Barry and Wilson were real perfectionists, cutting, rearranging, and remixing. They would do multiple, sometimes a dozen or more, takes on a single song. Wilson would have a recording done and complete while the Beach Boys were on tour, leaving only the vocals to be recorded when they returned.

Selvin provides many interesting trivia tidbits. Nancy Sinatra wanted to get married primarily so she could have sex in an honest and legal manner. She didn’t always follow her own rule, however. It seems that her mother helped her arrange an abortion at some point before she married. When Barry McGuire recorded “Eve of Destruction” it was the third song in the session and thrown in as an afterthought. Even though he didn’t get all the words right, the allocated session time ran out he didn’t get to do another take. It was that version that was released as the B-side of a single and which became that huge hit. Brian Wilson spent weeks working on “Good Vibrations” and it was one of the most expensive singles produced up to that time. The other members of the group were dubious. One of them suggested that either they would be washed up as a group when it came out or it would be the biggest hit ever. You know which one of those happened.

Peter Berkrot’s narration of Hollywood Eden is stellar. His voice and inflection capture the élan of the fifties and sixties Hollywood music scene perfectly. The audiobook version of Hollywood Eden is a superb choice for this book.