Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon : Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream

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A true conspiracy-archivist to the end, McGowan chose to highlight this morbid synchronicity in one of his last messages to loyal supporters.

Classic rock conspiracy theory: ‘Weird Scenes Inside the

McGowan notes how so few of the Laurel Canyon artists really demanded an end to the war, killing so many of their peers. Jim Morrison? ‘Fraid not. Mr. Mojo Risin’s dad, U.S. Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison was the man in charge of the naval ship, the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard, which was involved in the very Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to escalation of the Vietnam War. In fact, McGowan includes a photo of a clean-cut Jim Morrison on the bridge of the infamous ship with his dad in early 1964. Just a few years later he would be asking the world to ‘break on through to the other side” and to “light his fire.” All the while, he largely ignored the politics of the day and had seemingly no musical training or interest. How convenient. I looked into this and sure enough, Tork (then known as Peter Thorkelson) was in South America for a month or so, allegedly visiting family. But was he really? Or was he on some sort of “secret mission” as his pal Stills has implied in the past? Oddly, I have found no official biographical book on Tork and he is decidedly the most mysterious Monkee of the quartet. There is also much made of certain dates which have occult significance like the fact that Tom Mix died on October 12, Alistair Crowley's Birthday. Mix had once owned the "Log Cabin" (future home of Frank Zappa) and Spahn Ranch (where the Manson Family lived). The Log Cabin burned down on Halloween, 1981. This was 22 years to the day after Houdini's estate located nearby burned down. Houdini himself also died on Halloween in 1926. Spooky! Parts of it also read like a giant game of "Six Degrees of Separation." For instance, how to connect comedian Phil Hartman and Charles Manson? Well...Hartman designed the CSNY Logo and was the brother of John Hartman, a label exec with David Geffen. John Hartman got his start in the music business with Colonel Tom Parker. Tom Parker worked with Tom Mix in the 1940s. In addition to the aforementioned Spahn Ranch connection, Phil Hartman also attended high school with Squeaky Fromme. As was the custom with big events in the mid- to late-1960s, particularly in the northern California area, Altamont was drenched in acid. And as was also the custom at that time, that acid was provided free-of-charge by Mr. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, also known as The Bear. At the so-called “Human Be-In” staged in January of 1967, for example, Owsley had kindly distributed 10,000 tabs of potent LSD. For the Monterey Pop Festival just five months later, he had cooked up and distributed 14,000 tabs. For Altamont, he did likewise. Also present that day, and featured in the Maysles brothers’ film gyrating atop a raised platform near the stage, was the King of the Freaks himself, Vito Paulekas.”A series of tragic events in a highly populated area where many creative types lived during a culturally-transformative time; combined with musicians coming from military families apparently constitute some type of compelling evidence, asserts the author:

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON - Darkness Is Falling WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON - Darkness Is Falling

Although his literary work was only one part of David’s life—among other things he was also a father, son, brother and businessman (he worked in construction—which may come as some surprise to readers of his books)—it was of course the part that Headpress knew him for, and we sincerely feel that he was one of the most talented authors we have had the privilege to publish, and that Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon was one of the best books we’ve ever released. There were something very strange indeed with the 60s america, maybe the world, but often camouflaged by beauttiful images of "the summer of love", "the beatles", "the flower power"... Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-06-01 05:25:07 Autocrop_version 0.0.13_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA40529106 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifierI had previously read and enjoyed Tom O'Neill's epic book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, and wondered if the writing here would dovetail with the writing there. Unlike the Haight-Ashbury scene that followed it, the Laurel Canyon music/hippy scene of the 1960s and 1970s is a story that remains largely unknown;

RIP David McGowan - Headpress RIP David McGowan - Headpress

Also, he seems to labouring under the misapprehension that hippies were all Gandhi-style pacifists, and that when a musician owned or enjoyed guns there’s some sinister double standard at work, meaning they’re not who they say they are. The murders were not an anomaly, there were the normal consequence of weird vibes, drugs, ways, sexual acts, satanic acts and very very very disturbed people. And with this, I am not putting Manson and his "sect" as some kind of super-evil-power that came from nowhere to end the "love, peace and understanding" society of aquarius, no...If, for example, just a few prominent Laurel Canyon musicians happened to come from military/intelligence families, then we could probably safely write that off as an interesting but largely inconsequential aberration.

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon - Audible UK

I am definitely adding it to my "Classic Trash" shelf along with my Brian Jones conspiracy books and Hollywood Babylon. Contributing to the mystery was an ominous online comment that was posted months prior to Dave’s cancer diagnosis: “ ... this David McGowan fella really ought to quit smoking. With all the elitist feathers he’s ruffling, he’s likely to come down with a spontaneous case of hitherto undiagnosed stage 4 inoperable Pancreatic cancer. ” And while Peter Tork, for instance, worked the coffeehouse folk scene in Greenwich Village and was friends with folkie Stephen “The Sarge” Stills, a guy who boasted he had spent time in Vietnam, likely before troops were sent there in the mid-1960’s. Later chapters touch upon New Wave and punk music’s Copeland brothers (which includes Police drummer Stewart Copeland) and the family’s connection with intelligence agencies and another (inexplicably, perhaps) going into illusionist Harry Houdini’s possible link to the early days of Laurel Canyon.I started reading this guys blog posts several years before the book was published. The book itself is full of interesting facts and anecdotes about the area surrounding Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. The book is a fun read if you are a lover of history, conspiracy, and musical biography. At times the author jumps around a little. The book might have benefited from a little more editing, but over all for what it's worth I really did enjoy the conspiracy aspect of it all. For all things to converge in one place and one time, kinda interesting, kinda creepy. Sure, there could be a lot of coincidences (the writer of The Association's '66 cult-and-drug-flavored hit "Along Comes Mary," Tandyn Almer, just so happens to split L.A. and die in the spooky D.C. suburb of McLean, Virginia, where Morrison, John Phillips, Mama Cass Elliot, Peter Tork and others hung out in their early years), with all these covert ops, serial killers running around and funding that seems to come from nowhere. After all, who paid for all of this for so many years? As the story is usually told, the 1960s countercultural movement posed a rather serious threat to the status quo. But if that were truly the case, then why was it the “pillars of the establishment,” to use Unterberger’s words, that initially launched the movement? Why was it ‘the man’ that signed and recorded these artists? And that heavily promoted them on the radio, on television, and in print? And that set them up with their very own radio station and their very own monthly magazine? It” It was with some personal interest I read this tapestry of biographical sketches, historical vignettes, digressions, and leading questions asked with dramatically-raised eyebrows. My mother and father were almost -- though not quite -- part of the "scene." They were living only one canyon over from Laurel when I was born in 1968. They long remembered the massive influx of unwashed and drug-addled young searchers and the resulting Sunset Boulevard riots in '66. At the time, my father was an impresario trying to get a young ingenue (my mother) into the LA music free-for-all. They spent time in the clubs McGowan profiles -- places like Whiskey a Go-Go and Pandora's. Hell, they might have crossed paths with some unsavory characters like Vito Paulekas and Elmer Valentine -- or even Charles Manson himself. It was a wild time, though the real wildness lasted for only two years or so. Admittedly, most of the music is forgettable. With the exception of ‘Californa Dreaming’, Love’s Forever Changes, and ironically, Charles Manson, it’s dreary stuff. Only the most slovenly, beer-gutted boomer crying demented tears of nostalgia over the memory of his first joint could possibly find pleasure in the likes of Frank Zappa, or Crosby, Stills and Nash.