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

It’s actually despicable how fast and loose Mr McGowen plays with the facts. By continually doing so in the book, he tries to hypnotize you into his conspiratorial thinking. He looks at the facts and events, sees them through his own biases and reads into them with virtually no evidence for what he’s suggesting. He sees conspiracy in all of the deaths, when in many cases there is nothing to suggest it, like when he implies that the man importing rare animals from South America is doing so as as a front for intelligence gathering, when there is nothing at all to suggest this whatsoever. The book is a classic example of reading into events with out firsthand interviews or supporting evidence. Is his thesis therefore totally wrong? No, there may be some truth but his method is without rigour and lacks integrity. Especially if he’s wrong, then he is downright slandering these celebrities. Sadly, the huge amount of positive reviews indicates a demographic of readers who never were taught critical thinking!! C’mon people?!!!

Very well-researched, the author made super impressive connections to people, places, and things - not much occurs by simple coincidence there. All these famous people have so much in common while living, partying, and dying in Laurel Canyon, CA. Commonalities: old royal or soul blood lines (founding American fathers and other international key leaders/royalty ), solstice birthdays, incestuous and violent and drug-fueled family histories, married young female teenagers, high-profile government work and military service as well as espionage and coup-forming, delayed or non-reported and botched autopsies (inside cover-ups)...ALL these people seemed to be pre-selected and given multiple free-passes for any and all abhorrent, satanic activities. How did this all stay out of the mass, public media? - fake and censored news after being well-paid for protection, of course. Still..they did not seem happy or fulfilled despite such public success and infamous riches. Very interesting how these famous, sick-minded people seemed to be brainwashed and pull songs and tunes out of thin air rather than being gifted or trained or having much experience of any of their "assigned" famous activities and short-lived occupations. KUDOS to the author - amazing amount of research work and keen eye for making all the connections! Of course these folks were purposely bred, placed, connected, and publicized to shape the minds of the influential young in their formative years. Just look at the music, TV, and movies today - it seems to be okay to be violent, abuse people, and torture strangers.

A Staggering and convincing argument that the entire 60-70's music scene and hippie culture was a Military planned Psy-Op.I always wondered how and why these "Anti -Establishment" musical acts were signed soley to establishment music labels and appeared on all the Establishment networks?All your (and mine) favorite musicians are mentioned and are dealt a severe blow by the bizarre, violent and unlikely circumstances from which they arose- I often wondered how and Why such a tiny little hamlet like Laurel Canyon all of a sudden became an epicenter of the entire American Pop music explosion . Now I know why and it's a little more than unnerving. It was not an accident. Every chapter is ripe with excellent journalistic reporting and bizarre 'coincidences' that keep you wanting to read more and faster. Even if you don't believe the premise of the book which is hard to believe but WELL documented you will find this book very entertaining.

I loved this book! I kept a notebook of all of the names mentioned and I had volumes! I grew up in that area and that era so I know much of what he is talking about.My parents did not allow me to listen to Rock'n'Roll music. When I was away and near a radio, the all the songs sounded similar. The reason for that is many of the songs of the 1960s were played by the same musicians, sung by the same background singers, and produced in the same studio, that is, by the Wrecking Crew, Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. I noticed this the first time I was in college and went to a concert. The music was not the same and it was not because the music was played outside on stage - it was because all of the songs were done in the same studio with the same singers and musicians.Young people well connected wandered West to Laurel Canyon. Remember that Rick Nelson, John Holmes, Gov Brown, Marlon Brando, the Manson Family, and the world's largest film studio are in Laurel Cyn near Wonderland drive and Mulholland. Remember that all of these men were of draft age and many did not serve; the ones who did serve, were in black ops. Remember that there was lots of drugs up there and few were ever prosecuted for it. If the LAPD ever wanted to break up the lawlessness there, it would have been easy to block the north end of Laurel Cyn and the South end of Laurel Cyn and close off Mulholland Drive and drag all of those law breakers in. But that never happened. Why?Speaking of Charles Manson - he was on parole the entire time he was wandering around LA with underage girls and govt quality LSD.That and many other inside stories - if you ever wondered about some of these people, this is your book.

When I was drafted in 1969, I always questioned why so many of the cultural icons of the 60s were untouched by the war. David McGowan suggests that there was much more to the 60s than Peace, Love, and Rock and Roll. I do not know if McGowan is onto something big, or if he is just lining up a number of coincidences. that can be explained away.. The problem is that there are so many connections among these characters, that they cannot be explained as random chance. I knew several of the people he mentions in his book, and I always wondered what their stories were. This book shines light on them.

This is a great read, well-written and painstakingly researched by the author, who clearly has a great love and knowledge of west coast music of the Sixties.It is certainly thought-provoking but is left somewhat open-ended, with the reader rather abandoned to draw their own conclusions. It is like hearing a good joke but without the punchline and is the only reason I did not give the book five stars. The individual tales of the characters that inhabited (and in some cases still inhabit) Laurel Canyon are compelling but it is hard to grasp the author's underlying theories, if indeed there are any. Sadly many people in the entertainment industry do die relatively young so it is not altogether surprising that there have been several premature deaths in a suburb populated by more than it's fair share of entertainers. And the author does himself no favours by throwing into the mix names like Keith Moon, John Lennon and Rory Storm - celebrities with at best only slim connections to the Canyon scene. Yes, it is surprising how many pop stars living in the Canyon had parents in the US military but you are left to speculate yourself why that might be and what it might mean. It would have been nice to read a little more about the author's own suggestions, but maybe there is another book coming?All in all, a fascinating read for music-lovers but don't expect too many earth-shattering revelations.

Really, this is a very poor book, that, despite the author's protestations, deserves to be filed among the minimal evidence, wild surmise, category of "Conspiracy Theories". Laurel Canyon, and Los Angeles in general had a dark side during the sixties and seventies, without any shadow of a doubt, what else might you expect of a place founded on the entertainment industry in America. It lacked depth, cohesion, and was a real slog.

I have a habit of buying books (buy a lot and love them around me, but have a habit of start to read, but then find difficulty finishing reading them). It takes a lot for me to ever fully finish reading one. Must be a name for this.BUT after a lot of my usual stop start, with this book I have gotten to the end. I’ve found all the dark happenings that have gone on in this, the music scene, this time period and location, darkly fascinating.Born in ‘55’, so maybe am 10 years young to have properly been around at the main time it all happened. But a lot of the ‘artists and characters’ still around now and their artistic offerings legendary etc still to this day. As an ‘oldie’ now, I find I have a lot of ‘their’ music around me.Fabulous read. A bit repetitive in parts. But well written. There surely can’t be a better account of the dark events of / in this location?Buy and enjoy. Don’t think you will regret it.

A great read for fans of the 60s and 70s singer songwriters and rock bands. McGowan explores the laurel canyon scene of that time in real page turner fashion. He presents some very interesting theories about what was going on back then. You won't agree with all of them (at least I didn't), but there's no doubting his meticulous research, and I enjoyed his informal, almost irreverent style of writing. I really liked it.

This is a highly unusual book. I had never heard of Laurel Canyon before reading it. But 'Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon' is a pretty bizarre and definitely weird book. It is also massively entertaining and manages to convey a sense of wonder and awe about the 60's and 70's in this suburb of Los Angeles.Whether you understand the nature of coincidence or are a massive fan of the music that epitomises the hippy movement, 'Weird Scenes' manages to convey a worrying angle to the amount of people who met up with a sometimes violent end and coincidentally resided at one time in Laurel Canyon.David McGowan's style of writing I really liked and thought his humorous approach to the subject helped the book to become deeply fascinating. It's an entertaining read, that makes the reader become aware that something strange was definitely going on at this point of music and film in America, but what or who was behind it, is left to the reader's imagination.