Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise

by Joel Selvin Narrated by Peter Berkrot

Overview

From the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean to the Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas, acclaimed music journalist Joel Selvin tells the story of a group of young artists and musicians who came together at the dawn of the 1960s to create the lasting myth of the California dream. From surf music to hot-rod records to the sunny pop of the Beach Boys and the Mamas & the Papas, Hollywood Eden captures the fresh blossom of a young generation who came together in the epic spring of the 1960s to invent the myth of the California Paradise. Central to the story is a group of sun-kissed teens from the University High School class of 1959-a class that included Jan & Dean, Nancy Sinatra, and future members of the Beach Boys-who came of age in Los Angeles at the dawn of a new golden era when anything seemed possible. These were the people who created the idea of modern California for the rest of the world. From the Beach Boys' “California Girls” to the Mamas & the Papas' “California Dreamin',” they crafted an image of the West Coast as the promised land-a sun-dappled vision of an idyllic life in the sand and surf. But their own private struggles belied the paradise portrayed in their music. What began as a light-hearted frolic under sunny skies ended up crashing down to earth just a few short but action-packed years later, as, one by one, each met their destinies head-on.

Compelling, evocative, and ultimately tragic, Hollywood Eden travels far beyond the music into the desires of the human heart and the price of living out a dream. A rock 'n' roll opera loaded with violence, deceit, intrigue, low comedy, and high drama, it tells the story of a group of young artists and musicians who bumped heads, crashed cars, and ultimately flew too close to the sun.

Editorial Reviews

Pop Culture Shelf

Selvin’s style and his arrangement of biographies, incidents, random meetings with immense consequences in the microcosm of Greater L.A. make it hard to put the title down, as it reads like an action-packed movie script.

San Francisco Chronicle

A jukebox musical of a book … If Altamont marked the premature end of the 1960s, Hollywood Eden is the decade’s origin story, capturing the lingering 1950s and the transition in Southern California music from surfing and hot rods to the singer-songwriters of the canyons.

The Second Disc

Hollywood Eden doesn’t shy away from the darkness that often boiled under the sun-flecked harmonies, but it ultimately celebrates these audacious young people and the enduring art they created … Hollywood Eden is a vivid and engaging snapshot of California in the 1960s — both the harsh reality and the fantasy world of song.

Los Angeles Review of Books - Greil Marcus

Forget the subtitle, which is its own myth. The book is in stray facts no one else would dig up, yet alone think of publishing … and, in this ten-years-on-the-strip tale of white people coming out of UniversityHigh in Los Angeles and making records, the way Selvin can cut right down to what really matters, over and over again.

Los Angles Times

For a tale of dreams, there’s a lot of hustle going on in Hollywood Eden … For every sonic visionary, be it [Brian] Wilson or Phil Spector, there are a dozen people scraping by … What Selvin does so well is focus on a specific community and what made it work … Selvin took a similar approach in his ’60s Bay Area pop book, Summer of Love. Here he zooms in tighter on less trodden ground, with more revelatory results.

Winnipeg Free Press

Selvin tells this inside story as if he were right there … Hollywood Eden is a lively and well-researched book.

Rock & Roll Globe

There’s a panoramic sweep to Joel Selvin’s Hollywood Eden. It’s a story told not as a history, but as a dramatic tale, an adventure, with scenes described so vividly, they become cinematic.

Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys

My life back in those days was truly ‘fun fun fun’ and Hollywood Eden beautifully captures our Fifties and Sixties California music scene. Please don’t change a word!

Kirkus Reviews

2020-12-23
Vivid look at the burgeoning Los Angeles rock-and-roll scene of the late 1950s and early ’60s.

The exuberant music created by groups like the Beach Boys with upstart record producers like Phil Spector reflected “a time and place [that] felt like it had been made for teenagers,” asserts veteran rock writer Selvin. Far from the established music-business center in New York City, kids barely out of high school basically stumbled into the record-making process through their love for rhythm and blues and the growing sense that they were part of a special culture. Avatars of this culture identified in the first chapter include blond, handsome Jan Berry, a rebellious rich kid whose taste for fast cars would later be voiced in the songs of his duo, Jan and Dean; and his University High School classmate Kathy Kohner, whose ecstatic diary entries about breaking into the male-dominated world of surfing inspired her screenwriter father to write a bestselling novel (later made into a movie) titled with her nickname: Gidget.Berry and Kohner were among those who created a “modern mythology…unique to the inspirations and aspirations of California,” writes Selvin. Unfortunately, they are also only two of the deluge of names he showers on readers in the first few chapters—fly-by-night record companies, songwriters, A&R men, shady managers, et al.—in such abundance that only the most fanatical rock history aficionado could keep them all straight. The confusion eases as the narrative progresses through such paradigm-setting hits as “Surf City” and “He’s a Rebel,” and Selvin’s less-than-elegant prose works well to capture the seat-of-the-pants brio of California record production. As the political and cultural mood darkened in the mid-’60s, songs like “Eve of Destruction” reflected a new seriousness and curtailed the sun-and-fun phase of California rock. The author uses Berry’s cataclysmic 1966 car crash, followed by recovery to an altered, more limited life, as an emblematic finale.

Could be more lucidly presented, but Selvin’s depth of knowledge is impressive and his enthusiasm contagious.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176264050
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos