Echo in the Canyon

Any film that opens with Tom Petty strumming the Rickenbacker he just pulled off a shelf in a guitar store has my immediate approval.  With him is Jakob Dylan, best known as a famous offspring and lead singer of the Wallflowers.  The son of Bob will play host (of sorts) to the 2018 documentary ECHO IN THE CANYON, and it is because of him that I don't rate this movie higher.  Honestly, he's a real bore.  Manages several forms of expressionless-ness as he interviews folks like David Crosby, Graham Nash, Eric Clapton, Stephen Stills, and Michelle Phillips.   Each time, I felt deflated watching him.

But this does not entirely sour the experience, especially if you love the music and time period depicted.  Mid '60s Los Angeles.  Groups like The Beach Boys and The Byrds were plugging in and creating genre defining folk/rock hybrids.  Extremely influential.  Even on The Beatles, who modeled Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band after Brian Wilson's seminal BB's album Pet Sounds.  Absolute genius.  Jackson Browne and others agree, and share their insights into this important period for music.  Many of them lived in the Laurel Canyon area, making classic music in each others' living rooms.  All describing the time and place as incredibly fertile for creativity.  Someone remarks that even the classical composers of earlier centuries would've admired Brian Wilson, who is viewed at the piano in one scene but whose rather complex life is not covered here.

But we do get some candid interviews from Crosby and Phillips, both unafraid to discuss the sex and drugs that seemed to be catalysts for and by-products of the music and the bands that created it.  Actually, no one is shy here.  Crosby also even admits that he was an asshole to his fellow musicians.  I can listen to these people for days on end, recalling studio sessions and house raids.  I can also watch and listen to them noodle on their instruments for just as long.  ECHO IN THE CANYON alternates among that and Dylan and his contemporaries (including Beck, Jade, and Cat Power) discussing the history and doing (fair) covers of great tunes like Buffalo Springfield's "Questions."  The doc is highly entertaining, more than just Baby Boomer nostalgia, and the use of clips of MODEL SHOP, possibly the best document of L.A. in the late 1960s, is wise and very well utilized.

But, Jakob.  No screen presence.  No personality.  His non-reactions to so many great memories were infuriating.  I also found his duet with Norah Jones a wee bit awkward.

P.S.:  The film is dedicated to the late Mr. Petty, who describes here how The Byrds influenced his wonderful music.