California Dreaming: The LA Pop Music Scene and the 60s

by Andrew Hickey

In 1960, a group of young men in California recorded an instrumental single, Moon Dawg, and started what would become known as surf music. Within a few years, those young men would have been important parts of records by the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, Canned Heat, the Monkees, and many more. In this book, Andrew Hickey takes a look at the LA pop music scene of the 60s through the lens of its greatest records, loking at the interconnections between seemingly disparate bands and performers. Discover the song Davy Jones of the Monkees wrote about Captain Beefheart, or the member of the Mothers of Invention who named Buffalo Springfield and wrote songs for the Beach Boys. California The LA Pop Music Scene and the 60s takes you from the Gamblers' surf instrumentals, through sunshine pop by the Mamas and Papas and the Beach Boys, to Little Feat and Randy Newman, and shows how all these different artists influenced and inspired each other, in ways that might surprise you...

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History

400 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 6, 2015

About the author

I had a biography here but it was very out of date. Currently my main work is my podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. The New Yorker compared that to the Bible, Oxford English Dictionary, and the works of Gibbon and Pepys, and said it "will eclipse every literary project in history". So that's nice.

Reviews

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of you probably know Andrew Hickey for his comics writing (a book-length study of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers for instance), but his music writing - informally at least - goes back at least two decades when he focused largely on Brian Wilson/the Beach Boys. CALIFORNIA DREAMING is a remarkable production that proceeds chronologically, largely through Singles, and is like nothing else in showing the connections - some of theme *strange* (David "Goodbye Girl" Gates and Captain Beefheart?) - between the various personalities, musicians, and hustlers on the scene. And the connections are key to the story: while there's considerable material on members of Arthur Lee's LOVE, there's practically nothing on the Doors. Simple enough: Love's story crosses over into multiple others, while the Doors - as musicians - were a mostly self-contained phenom (and, sure, Doors aficionados are already well versed in all the minutia, so ..). And the MUSIC is central: "scene" books like Michael Walker's Laurel Canyon are wide-ranging, gossipy, and sometimes infuriatingly shallow (no mention of Judee Sill?). The late David McGowan's Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, on the other hand, are share more in common with the Fortean excursions of John Keel than with music journalism. In short, Hickey - an infectuously enthusiastic and obsessive listener - is writing for other obsessive listeners. The material ranges from some of the era's most famous recordings - and AM mainstays to this day ("Good Vibrations," "Happy Together") - to lesser-known, but *fascinating* singles (by the Modern Folk Quartet, by Lowell George & the Factory). And Hickey's studio-centric essays on the Big Hits are anything but rote: I had never connected the musical dots between the Byrd's "Eight Miles High" and John Coltrane's "India." Mind-blowing stuff that changes the way you hear songs you may have heard a thousand times before.

[Richard Haynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very detailed book written like essays on each performer with credits to songwriters and studio musicians.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an easy book to read. It's subject matter is about a time I didn't experience -- I was barely listening to pop music in my grade-school years in the '60s -- but it nevertheless brings back a lot or memories as many of these songs and artists entrenched themselves in first, AM, then FM radio for decades afterwards. For music historians, and just fans like me who have always had an outsized interest in music in general and southern California in particular, it's a gold mine. Hickey goes through almost 100 songs, describing their creation, the musicians who played on them and how they were received then and now. A lot of information about the relationships among band members, producers, song writers, company execs, and how many occupied more than one role as the 1960s wore on. A lot of the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Frank Zappa, CSN (and Y) but not just them. It's remarkable the cross-pollination among all of these bands, as well as how fragile and short-lived many of their combinations were, given ego, drug use, greed, and....primarily ego.

But we get "Barbara Ann," "Woodstock," "Mr. Tamborine Man," "Be My Baby," "For What It's Worth" and a host of songs Hickey claims are great, forgotten or unheard classics on obscure albums. To help with those, he includes an index that lists every song, who wrote it, who was on the recording (frequently not the named band members) and, as of the book's printing, where you can find it.

Hickey is faithful to the era, finishing with Little Feat's "Willin'," and then doing a short epilogue on why few women appear in book, trashing the chauvinism and misogyny that dominated the era.
There is a chapter per song, none probably more than 2 pages (I read it on Kindle so hard to tell for sure). For music geeks of all ages, especially boomers like me.

[michael jencik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite sure what to make of this book

If you like trivia or minutiae about music of the '60s, this may be the book for you. It did provide some interesting information and facts I had never heard before about artists I love. I'm the kind of reader who will actually check out the music described in these stories and although I realize everyone has different taste, I have to say that some of these songs, a!bums and artists are an acquired taste, if not just plain awful. The great thing about the book is that it is made up of 7 minute essays, perfect for before bed time reading.

[Nancy Neville · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone with a musical background will love this book. I don't know the technical side, but I still enjoyed this book. Got a better understanding of the connections in the 60's LA music scene. This is not a tell all of all the dirt of the musicians, but an exploration of their genius. It also points out the role luck played in the success of some of the artists. If only.... It was also interesting learning how they borrowed and fed off each other. The book showed what an exciting time in music innovations it was. Totally missing in music today.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in a style familiar from his A History Of Rock In 500 Songs (excellent, by the way), this explores the highly influential LA music scene using key recordings to illustrate the many interconnected songs, writers, artists and producers of this key decade. As with many such books, I would have liked more details, more stories and a deeper analytical narrative. However, I am a nerd. The book is enjoyable, informative, deeply researched and is well written. It serves as an invaluable oversight and a good jumping off point for further, more specialised, reading.

[J.J. Lair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Rather than a long narrative, we have shorter essays that tell the bigger story. As a fan of his podcast, A History of Rock in 500 songs, this book felt like I read transcripts. There are details of what song inspired what, who worked with who. The Beach Boys were still relevant even when they weren’t relevant nationally. I looked up some songs as I read about them. I looked up some musicians

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very much in the style of Hickey’s pod cast. These essays are just shortened versions of his scripts. The advantage of the pod cast is that he plays excerpts of the music he’s talking about. I found myself needing to do the same as I read along. It adds to his narrative. Overall, very informative. I learned a lot about those LA 60s bands that I didn’t know much about and also the Wrecking Crew.

[Don Fischer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unless you want a lot of music composition digression and personal opinion this is not the book for you. Some interesting factual background, but of the type that is covered elsewhere with greater sophistication.

[Jesse R Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this read, although not a fan of Zappa, Randy Newman, so I found myself skipping over the pages describing them. Enjoyed the pages on The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Association, The Byrds, The Monkees etc.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, this is pretty much a chronicle of who performed on the studio sessions of 1960s pop. Didn't really explore the scenes or the reasons for their existence. Did get to appreciate the Beach Boys though.

[Ty Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much detail for me

If you enjoy details regarding the making of California song making during the 60’s in LA, this is your book.

[Susan Stoepel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on the history of the LA poo scene in the sixties.