All language subtitles for SIMON & GARFUNKEL - Bridge - part 1 -Rom

This programme contains
some strong language.

The impetus to move West and
blast all that open and be free,

being in that gorgeous state
of California.

You smoked a big one, took the
shrink-wrap off, put the record
on the record player

and you were gone.

There were things that we all
felt were right

and the truth is, I don't think we
were wrong about hardly any of them.

I had to watch the fights, the egos,
the drugs, the alcohol,

the...the...paranoia that came along
with all of that.

And it scared me.

10 million girls
and 2,000 bumps down the line,

you don't know who you are any more.

What's happening in the process,
which I served gladly,

is the corporatisation of rock.

We just...

took it to the bank.

# On a dark desert highway

# Cool wind in my hair... #

In 1965, Manhattan and London
monopolised the music business.

A decade later, for musicians
and moguls alike,

there was only one place to be,

and it wasn't rain-soaked England
or uptight New York.

This is the story of how a small
community of singer-songwriters,

exiled in a rustic paradise
at the heart of the metropolis,

transformed Los Angeles into
the music capital of the world.

#..This could be heaven
or this could be hell... #

It's a tale of artistic brilliance
and decadent decline,

of how a bunch of hippies gave rise
to the biggest-selling record
of all time,

of the birth of corporate rock music
and the death of a dream.

#..Welcome to the Hotel California

# What a nice surprise
What a nice surprise

# Bring your alibis... #

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At 3am on 18th August 1969...

..a new group from Los Angeles
took the stage at the Woodstock
music festival.

Thank you.

They faced an audience
of several hundred thousand

and a cross-section
of their musical heroes.

This is the second time we've ever
played in front of people, man.
We're scared shitless.

There's that remark by Stephen,
"This is our second gig and
we're scared shitless."

I mean, he was right.

We'd played a couple of nights
before in Chicago

and that was our second gig.

Everybody that we really thought
was good was there.

Hendrix, Airplane, Grateful Dead,
the Band.

The Band.

Did I mention...the Band?

Uh...all standing around
right behind us.

"OK, the record was OK.
Come on, show us."

We knew who we were and what
we could do, but nobody else did.

# It's getting to the point

# Where I've no pride any more

# I'm sorry

# Sometimes it hurts

# So badly I must cry out loud

# I'm lonely... #

Woodstock marked the collective
climax of the hippy dream

and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young,

along with their friend Joni
Mitchell and manager David Geffen,

were the alternative generation's
hip new disciples.

# By the time we got to Woodstock

# We were half a million strong
and... #

We arrive at LaGuardia airport
and the New York Times says,
"400,000 people sitting in mud,"

and I said, "Forget it,
I'm not going."

#..We are stardust... #

Joni and I stayed in New York
at my apartment, where she wrote
the song Woodstock.

#..And we got to get ourselves

# Back to the garden... #

David Crosby, Stephen Stills,

Graham Nash, Neil Young,

David Geffen, Joni Mitchell.

Six rising stars
of the counterculture

who came together in a city
where ambition and idealism
went hand in hand

and helped put Los Angeles
on the musical map.

That man on the end is Jim McGuinn.

The one playing bass is
Chris Hillman.

The one playing the drums is
Michael Clarke.

And I'm David Crosby and, when we are
together, uh, they call us the Byrds.

MUSIC: "Mr Tambourine Man"
by the Byrds

You'd be driving down Sunset Strip
in your car

and you'd hear the beginning notes
of that and think, "Wow!"

It'd just be such a rush.

The quintessential folk-rock music.

# Hey, Mr Tambourine Man

# Play a song for me

# I'm not sleepy and there ain't
no place I'm going to... #

In May 1965, the Byrds,
a Los Angeles beat group,

released Mr Tambourine Man,

a song written by
the definitive hero of '60s folk.

#..I'll come following you... #

The convincing case, the QED
for the singer-songwriter...

..was Bob Dylan.

Would you say that the words were
more important than the music?

Uh...

the words are just as important
as the music.

There would be no music
without the words.

I got turned on to the Byrds
because...I was a Dylan fan.

And the music was important
all of a sudden.

Music was saying something,
something that might move you, might
change you, might change the world,

might...push buttons.

And there was a sense that something
very important was going on.

The Byrds transformed Dylan's
acoustic folk ballad

into a number-one pop single,

directly inspired by another
revolutionary team of songwriters.

George Harrison, John Lennon,
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

We just were in awe of them.

They were SO good.

They'd put out a song like Paperback
Writer and I'd wanna just give up

cos I could never do that,
I could never get close.

Probably the thing that John and I
will do will be write songs,

as we have been doing
as a sideline now.

We'll probably develop that more.

You could be an artist who did songs
that were written for you

but you really wanted to be the kind
of artist that the Beatles were

because they wrote all their stuff
and you could - ha-ha! -

you could really express yourself
if you could do it.

Everyone was so thrilled,

and nobody was thrilled about
folk music at all.

It was as if it didn't exist,
and pretty soon it didn't.

For a generation schooled in the
folk tradition of the East Coast,

the Byrds' artistically credible
but commercially successful pop

opened up a whole new world
in which the singer-songwriter
reigned supreme.

Musical life in Los Angeles would
never be the same again

and a small stretch of Hollywood
became the only place to be.

# So you want to be
a rock'n'roll star

# Then listen now to what I say

# Just get an electric guitar

# And take some time and learn
how to play... #

The Sunset Strip is just this
bizarre anomaly,

physically part of the city
but politically unincorporated,

and from the '30s and '50s,
essentially governed by the Mob.

By the early '60s, the Strip was
in decline

and so what happened is that
the folk-rock scene inherited

what was the ruins of the glamorous
Strip of the 1930s and '40s.

The place where the musicians and
songwriters felt they could be most
in touch with

the kids who represented the shape
of things to come.

All these kids would come,
and they'd be underage kids,

wearing bell-bottoms and beads
and flowers and all that stuff.

There was this flowering of feeling
and reverence for life,

like a carnival midway.

And so the music scene was happening
right in the middle of all of that.

There was a magical quality to it.

We suddenly found ourselves
in the centre of a vortex.

Somehow, music became

a medium for an entire generation.

You know, they're shooting this
for television.

I'm sure that they'll edit this out.

I want to say it anyway,
even though they WILL edit it out.

When President Kennedy was killed,
he was not killed by one man.

He was shot from a number
of different directions
by different guns.

The story has been suppressed.
Witnesses have been killed.

And this is your country,
ladies and gentlemen.

Nobody articulated the values
of the Sunset Strip's
burgeoning counterculture

with as much swagger
as the Byrds' David Crosby.

David was the mouthpiece
for our generation.

In Rolling Stone, he was the one who
had the mouth - he was speaking out

and saying stuff,
politically speaking.

I certainly wasn't anybody's guru,
man. I'm not smart enough.

Er...and I...

..I was certainly outrageous.

I probably helped tilt it
towards outrageousness.

So outrageous and so outspoken

that it was no surprise
when David Crosby was kicked out
of the Byrds in 1967

and began to look for a new band.

I like eclectic music, you know.

I like things that have roots.

# New Jersey turnpike
in the wee, wee hours

# I was rolling slowly
cos of drizzling showers

# Here come a flat-top
He come movin' up with me

# Waving goodbye
to some little old souped-up... #

When my group was playing in
New York, we played at a jazz club
and we sang four-part harmony.

And we discovered him down the block
playing in a little coffee house.

#..Bye-bye, New Jersey
I'd become airborne... #

Wow! This young guy with the guitar
is really neat.

#..And you can't catch me... #
My group moved to LA

and, soon after,
Stephen moved to LA.

He'd stand at the edge of the stage
and watch us singing
and he loved the harmonies.

#..You can't catch me
No, baby

# You can't catch me

# Cos if you get too close, you know
I'm gone like a cool breeze. #

In 1965, Stephen Stills,
a folk-singer from Texas,

joined the musical exodus from
Greenwich Village to Sunset Strip.

The following year,
another precocious songwriter
from Canada arrived,

chasing sunshine and stardom in LA.

Everybody having a good time,
or what?

# I think I'll pack it in
and buy a pickup

# Take it down to LA

# Find a place to call my own
and try to fix up

# Start a brand-new day... #

I was sitting on the trunk of my car
and he saw me and he pulled in

and, er...

"How are you, man?"
And he dug out his guitar

and sang me four or five of the best
songs I'd ever heard in my life.

#..See the lonely boy

# Out on the weekend

# Trying to make it pay... #

If he'd been a girl,
I would have kissed him!

His power as a songwriter
is undeniable.

#..Can't begin to say... #

In April 1966, Neil Young
and Stephen Stills

came head to head in a traffic jam
on Sunset Strip.

Well, we, er...came to Los Angeles
in an old hearse to, er...start...

to try and make the stars -
you know, we're gonna be stars.

So, er...we were just about to leave

and I saw him in a van
going the other way on Sunset

and he stopped and we stopped and
we all stopped and then we started.

Stephen Stills had found the band
that he'd always wanted.

# I don't tell no tales
about no hot, dusty roads... #

They were widening the street on
Franklin - a street in Hollywood.
I went outside

and they were all arguing
about what to call the group.

And on a bulldozer, I saw the words
"Buffalo Springfield".

Buffalo Springfield represented a
hip, new wave of musical emigres -

more a collective of mutually
ambitious individuals

than the uniform pop groups
that preceded them.

Er...my name is Neil Young... Neil.
How do you do?..lead guitar player.
How do you do? This is Richie Furay.

Big Dewey Martin - Buffalo Dew.
Hello, Dewey.

Bruce Palmer from Toronto,
Canada. OK.

Steve Stills from New Orleans.

#..I don't like being alone. #

Buffalo Springfield
brought a new musical momentum
to the Sunset Strip.

And when their audience provoked the
city's reactionary establishment,

their response was a pop protest
that, like LA,

was both cool and commercial.

Los Angeles was the scene of one
of great culture wars in US history.

They want everybody to do the same
thing and live their own life.

They want you to grow up, get an
education, raise children and die.

From the coming of Hollywood,
with its sinful lifestyles,

into a city into which a million
pious, Protestant mid-Westerners
had moved during the 1920s...

Because you don't have a job
because you don't have a direction,

you're not a part of
the super-society called "America".

And in a sense, the battle
of the Sunset Strip in the late '60s

was the last battle
in this 40-or-50-year-long clash

between Hollywood Babylon on one
hand and the kind of main-street
puritanism on the other.

Why do they think they can put down
on our music?

They say it's bad. They say it's
noise - "Turn down the noise."

But do they ever listen
to the words?

# Somethin' happening here

# What it is ain't exactly clear

# There's a man with a gun over there

# Tellin' me I've got to beware... #

In the daytime, Sunset Strip had
all these posh clothing stores.

Those people didn't like the kids
hanging out at night.

And so, pretty soon,
the police would come down.

They'd park a big bus in the middle
of the Strip and take everyone that
was underage on the bus to jail.

Pulling these beautiful young girls
and throwing them on the bus.

What is that about? You know.
Everybody... "That's crazy!

"It's the man. It's the pigs.

"It's the other side.
It's the same people
that are trying to send us to war.

"It's the older generation that
doesn't know what life is about."

#..Battle lines being drawn... #

They were worried
about the counterculture.

#..If everybody's wrong... #

Godless communism.

#..Young people speaking
their minds... #

Corruption of youth.

#..So much resistance... #
Drugs.

# I think it's time we stop
Hey! What's that sound...? #

He's communicating with his peers
and the cop says, "You can't do it.
Get off the street!"

#..Paranoia strikes deep

# Into your life... #

The Sunset Strip riots provided
the perfect showcase

for Buffalo Springfield's
socially conscious folk rock -

a distinctive sound

that was sending shockwaves through
LA's new musical establishment.

# Stop! Hey, what's that sound?

# Everybody look
what's going down... #

I saw dollar signs. I thought,
"These guys will do something great!"

#..Stop! What's that sound...? #

There was sort of
a whole marketplace.

These guys were doing something
purely unique and wonderful

that I really loved.

That was it.
It was like the moment of truth!

Whether or not any one group
could hold that much talent...

Don't forget, in Buffalo Springfield,
on top of Neil and Stephen you had
Richie Furay and Jim Messina

and, er...

It was...

It was explosive!

Despite producing three albums
and a hit single,

a combination of incompatible egos
and bad management

made Buffalo Springfield's demise
inevitable.

And by 1968,

Stephen Stills and Neil Young
were once again solo artists.

If you're political, I guess
it means a political revolution

and, to some people,
it's a spiritual revolution.

I like to believe that maybe people
are getting more together.

# I've looked at clouds
from both sides now... #

When Judy Collins sang, "I've looked
at life from both sides now..."

#..It's clouds' illusions
I recall... #

"Clouds' illusions".

We'd never used words like that,
and so we discover a new songwriter

named Joni Mitchell.

# Rows and flows of angel hair... #

#..And ice-cream castles in the air

# And feathered canyons everywhere

# I've looked at clouds that way... #

By 1967,

Joni Mitchell, a Canadian
folk singer based in New York,

had already found success
as a writer.

But a chance meeting
with David Crosby, following his
unceremonious exit from the Byrds,

would draw her west to LA.

#..Oh, I've looked at clouds
from both sides now... #

Walked in to a coffee house
in Florida.

She was singing.

My heart nearly stopped.

#..I really don't know life... #

I'd never heard anybody play
like her, anybody sing like her.

I most especially had never heard
anybody write like her,
and I still haven't.

For about a year after that, we...

..stayed together. It was good.

David Crosby had been thrown out
of the Byrds

and hadn't found Crosby,
Stills And Nash yet,

so he was bumming around town
in a VW bus with a Porsche engine.

And one night, David says, "Come on
up to the house and we'll get high."

He always had the best dope.

It was like being invited for a
wine tasting at Baron Rothschild's.

About three or four in the morning,
we're pretty wasted and David said,

"Oh, there's someone
I want you to hear..."

..and comes back downstairs

with Joni Mitchell -
live, with a big guitar.

# Light up

# Light up

# Light up your lazy blue eyes

# Moon's up, night's up

# Taking the town by surprise... #

She played songs
that hadn't even been recorded yet.

Nobody had heard that music.
Nobody had heard that voice.

For us, it was like a hallucination.

But by the time Crosby had finished
producing her first album,

everybody in LA knew
about Joni Mitchell.

I did not do a very good job
of producing her record.

But I did do one wonderful thing,
which was keep everybody else
off it.

THAT'S a good thing.

We have the power.
We have the tolerance.

We can go in front of a TV camera,
we can go on the air

and we can say with definition that
Hitler was wrong, Rockwell is wrong,

people who hate Negroes are wrong.

We can get up there
and shout it to the world, Pete!

# I thought I was dreaming
But I was wrong, yeah, yeah, yeah

# Oh, but I'm gonna keep on schemin'

# Till I can make you

# Make you my own... #

I spent years with the Hollies
perfecting the pop song.

#..Yeah, yeah, yeah... #

Frivolous is not the right word,

but certainly a little shallower than
the stuff I was feeling personally.

#..Oh, oh

# Just one look... #

So, at one point, the Hollies
were not wanting to do my stuff -

I'm talking about Marrakesh Express,
Teach Your Children,

Lady Of The Island, the first Sleep
Song - and it kinda made me feel bad,

because I thought
they were decent songs.

At the beginning of 1968,

Graham Nash was a highly successful
but thoroughly discontent
Mancunian pop star.

By the end of the year,

he'd joined Joni Mitchell,
David Crosby and Stephen Stills
on the musical trail to LA.

# Don't you know we're riding
on the Marrakesh Express...? #

Stephen is at loose ends
after Buffalo Springfield.

David has been thrown out
of the Byrds.

He and Stephen tried
to cut some songs.

Graham, as it turns out,
meets up with Joni

while he's on tour with the Hollies.

#..I smell the garden
in your hair... #

Joni and I spent the night together
in Ottawa

and I fell completely in love.

Listening to his high harmonies
on the Hollies records,
David and Stephen

have conspired to kidnap him.

#..Let me hear you now... #
"That's just the thing we need!"

#..On the Marrakesh Express... #
David shows up at a Hollies show
in England.

Crosby came, with his cape
and his cane and his attitude.

"Hmm. Having a hard time with all
these drinking guys who don't wanna
cut Marrakesh Express."

He had the best drugs.
He had the best grass.

He had the prettiest women,
who were always naked.

#..All aboard the train... #

Crosby said,

"They're crazy. We'll record it.
Come on over."

#..Come aboard... #

If Nash had any doubts, they were
banished after a musical gathering
in the Hollywood Hills.

My memory is
that we were in Joni's living room

and David said, "Hey, Stephen,
play that song."

And it was, um...
You Don't Have To Cry.

#..Cry, my baby

# You don't have to cry... #

And he said, "Sing it again.
That's fabulous!"

#..You don't have to cry... #

"OK, one more time.
Just sing it one more time."

#..You don't have to cry... #

The third time, I put my harmony
in there and my world changed.

#..In the morning... #

Stephen and I both had the same
thought, which rarely happens.

We both thought, "Oh! We know
what we're gonna be doing."

I heard that sound and that's what
I wanted. I wanted that sound.

And I left everything. I left
the Hollies, I left my band, I left
my family and I went to America.

#..Cry, my baby

# You don't have to cry... #

Graham Nash was the latest addition
to a communal Who's Who of LA music

that had made its home in
the most tranquil of city settings.

Los Angeles is unusual in that it has
a mountain range running through it.

There are several canyons that slice
through it in a more or less north
to southerly trace.

Laurel Canyon was settled
at the turn of the 20th century -

in the early 1900s -
by land speculators.

It was a place where, mostly, people
would come to hunt on the weekends -

a bucolic canyon in the middle
of this unsparing urban environment.

Since the 1920s, Los Angeles
had traded on the contrasting
allure of sun and surf by day

and Hollywood glitz by night.

But the spiritual Shangri-La
for a generation

collectively committed
to going back to the garden

was Laurel Canyon,
a rural paradise nestled
right behind Sunset Strip.

# I'll light the fire... #

I lived across the street

from Mark Volman of the Turtles.

On my street alone

was Mama Cass, Henry Diltz,
Joni Mitchell, Carl Wilson.

Jim Morrison right up the hill.

#..Staring at the fire... #

Tim Hardin was living there.

There was Frank Zappa and the
Mothers. There was Frazier Mohawk.

Stephen Stills, David Crosby.

I'd been living there
since the Byrds. Jackson Browne.

Micky Dolenz lived round the corner.

#..Such a cosy room... #

Tim Buckley

and Larry Beckett
lived somewhere else,

but they were at our house really,
really a lot.

Eric Burdon was living
in the canyon.

The Doors had a place in canyon.
John Mayall lived in the canyon.

Crazy Horse had a house
in the canyon.

The late, great record producer Paul
Rothschild had a house in the canyon,

with the late Fritz Richmond,
who was the jug player...

#..Our house

# Is a very, very, very fine house

# With two cats in the yard

# Life used to be so... #

Graham Nash found himself in the
midst of an extraordinary community
of songwriters.

But his alliance with David Crosby
and Stephen Stills was hampered

by a series of contracts binding
all three to their previous bands.

They needed professional help.

We knew that we needed a manager,

and we thought we had met one
that was intelligent, that we liked,
in Elliot Roberts.

He was already managing Joni,
and we liked him.

But we also knew that we were going
into the big leagues,

and, essentially, the big leagues
are a shark pool,

so we thought it would be good if
we had our own shark.

I think I liked music.
Whatever strikes me as being good
is something that I wanna record.

I don't think that every record
we make is a hit,

or that every artist that we record
is going to be a star,

but I think that all the music we
put out is very valid.

First of all, I had
no contracts with my clients.

They could all leave at any time.

As it happens,
none of them ever left.

It was my job to stand like a dam
against the river of shit that was
coming down on these people,

and that was a difficult job.

I don't think THEY had a sense of how
difficult it was,

but I certainly did
and, given how young we were,

how inexperienced we were,
I think we did a pretty great job.

David Geffen and Elliot Roberts
set up shop on Sunset Strip in 1969,

and set about challenging the
balance of power

in LA's increasingly outdated
music industry.

Most of the business was still
centred in New York,

so...we had an advantage
over the people

who were surfing
and smoking a lot of pot out here.

Our metabolisms ran
at a much higher speed.

New York's Tin Pan Alley
and Brill Building -

songwriting factories churning out
hits for artists considered
disposable by their record labels -

had dominated the industry
for decades.

Geffen and Roberts had
a different model,

in which the artist was the centre
of the musical world.

There were deals for artists
with the record companies
that were, you know, horrible,

and David and Elliot, in particular,
changed the dynamic.

Up until then, the artists were
getting screwed in a profound way.

After them, they only got screwed
in a less-than-profound way.

In 1969, David Geffen set about
negotiations

to release David Crosby, Graham Nash
and Stephen Stills from
their previous commitments,

and allow them to begin work on
their eagerly anticipated
first album.

He's a rapacious businessman.

Once you give him
something to work with,

he will, you know, tear it up,
and he did.

Elliot and I were baby doctors
helping them deliver their baby,

but it was about them.

They were genuinely exciting.

When you heard them sing,
you were blown away.

When Stephen wrote Suite -
Judy Blue Eyes, about Judy Collins,

who he was having a relationship with
at the time,

and you heard them sing that song,

it was awesome.

# Friday evening

# Sunday in the afternoon

# What have you got to lose? #

They had wonderful songs,

exquisitely roving melodies,

and the simplest of arrangements.

The whole thing was so pure.

And it sang.

And it worked.

And it touched your heart.

Just like their LA predecessors,

the Beach Boys
and the Mamas And Papas,

Crosby, Stills And Nash were
a harmony group,

but they encapsulated a new spirit -

the laid-back acoustic sound
of Laurel Canyon.

We wanted to engage the listener
and put the listener on a journey

where you smoked a big one,
took the shrink-wrap off,

put the record on the record player,
and you were gone!

# Guinevere had green eyes

# Like yours, milady, like yours... #

People say, "I don't know how many
hours I stared at that picture."

I had a musician from England say,
"We used to sit and look at
that Crosby, Stills And Nash cover

"and say, 'What is it like
to be there in California?'

"and just stared at that thing
while the music played."

#..Peacocks wandered aimlessly
underneath... #

The '60s counterculture
had been dominated
by the strident psychedelia

of acts like Jimi Hendrix, Cream
and the Grateful Dead,

but LA had produced a new sound
that was both commercial
and politically credible.

FM radio, which was our path
to the marketplace,

was all hard-ass rock'n'roll,
you know,

and then along came acoustic guitars
and three harmonies,

and it just changed everything.

# Da-da
Da-de-dum-de-dum... #

They had a hit album,
a formidable manager

and were planning a live tour,

but Crosby, Stills And Nash
also had a problem.

Stephen played both guitar
and keyboard on the record,
and you can't do that on stage.

Stephen talked to Ahmet Ertegun, who
owned Atlantic Records at the time,

a dear friend and a great supporter
of Crosby, Stills And Nash, and he
said, "Why don't you talk to Neil?"

# He's a perfect stranger

# Like a cross of himself

# And a fox... #

Less than a year after the collapse
of Buffalo Springfield,

Neil Young had already begun
to make his mark as a solo artist.

Now he was the fourth front man
in a supergroup
overflowing with individual talent.

Even then,

Neil was powerful.

You weren't sure if you wanted
to be competing with that power
or co-operating with it.

# It's the loner... #

It was inevitable that
that band would be as big
as it turned out to be.

No question about it.

And it was also inevitable
when Neil joined the group

and it became
Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young,

that, inherent in that greatness,

was the seeds of its destruction.

# I'm not going back to Woodstock
for a while... #

Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young's
mutual ambition

had brought them fame and fortune,

but over the next ten years, their
early potential would be squandered

amid clashing egos, drug addiction
and the trappings of celebrity,

and as the collective spirit of the
'60s gave way to an age that would
come to be known as the Me Decade,

LA's solo singer-songwriters
found their voice.

When listening to music,

look at the social forces that
surrounded it when it came out.

Look at what happened that year.

In the summer of 1969,
there was a genuine feeling

that the collective values
of the Woodstock generation
might change the world.

By the end of the year, that
optimism would be all but shattered.

The assassinations
of Martin Luther King

and Robert F Kennedy

so shook our world in America...

..but in '69...

Charles Manson
visited Los Angeles,

and that changed the entirety
for ever.

# Now we live in a trailer
at the edge of town

# You'd never see us
cos we don't come around... #

'The Manson family has become the
most notorious of hippy groups...

'It is said they were
a pseudo-religious cult.

'People who worked on the ranch said
they were heavy users of drugs.'

We went horseback riding out there
at that farm.

We knew some of the people.

It was just terrifying.

'Among his followers,
members of the family,

'Manson is regarded as a saint.

'Many call him Jesus.'

It was the commune gone wrong,
wasn't it?

# Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon

# Is full of famous stars

# But I hate them worse than lepers

# And I kill them in their cars... #

I don't have any big illusions.

I know what I have done,
and no man can judge me.

I judge me.
What have you done, Charlie?

This crazed, misguided, drug-driven
cultism...Satanism...

touched the irrationality of the very
thing that sustained flower-power,

and that was the sense of
unbridled optimism
and social integration and trust,

and all of that was shattered.
It was like the snake
that came into the Garden.

The Manson gang's killing spree
shamed and terrorised LA's
alternative artistic community,

of which he'd been a well-known
if barely tolerated presence.

Three months later, at a free
Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont,
near San Francisco,

the counterculture was dealt
another devastating blow.

It was crazy, man.

The Hell's Angels were the security.

The were all drinking cheap red wine.

They were all loaded on PCP...

and acid.

And it got really ugly.

Can everybody just clear out!

Will you clear out, everybody!

Altamont's defining moment was
the murder of an audience member
called Meredith Hunter

by a Hell's Angels gang member.

People have been killed
in sight of the stage, you know.

While the Stones sing Sympathy
For The Devil, everybody went,
"This is a little NOT OK."

That was death in your own backyard.

It happened where people
were congregating.

It became larger than life.

And it all occurred within months
of the Woodstock festival,

where everything had bloomed,

and the sense of real possibility,
suddenly you were brought up short
at Altamont.

There was a sense, in a way,

like the discovery of AIDS,
that the party was ending.

It was time, it seemed,
for the comedown.

The new decade brought a shift
in the emotional landscape
of LA's emerging singer-songwriters,

as the failure of the collective
gave way to the
power of the personal.

Here's another really new one that
isn't quite finished, just for fun.

I think, if you listen to the
material, you can see
how everyone was forever changed.

In 1970, Joni Mitchell,
who two years earlier
had penned the theme to Woodstock,

recorded a collection of
startlingly autobiographical songs.

It was the basis of an album
that would become
the definitive statement

of confessional songwriting.

In my first week of college,

she called and asked would I
come out to California

to do some photos of her.
She was writing the songs for Blue.