IV: Big Tit Sue and Bigger Tit Sue
5 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Escape from Sin City
I: Home Is What Makes You Happy
II: Ain’t No One for to Give You No Name
6 Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung: A Case of Me
IV: All We Are Saying Is Give Smack a Chance
V: You Probably Think This Song Is About You
7 Sittin’ In: With a Little Help from Our Friends
III: ‘WHO IS DAVID GEFFEN AND WHY IS HE SAYING THOSE TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT ME?’
IV: Don’t Even Try to Understand
8 Paradise and Lunch: The Machinery vs. the Popular Song
9 I Hate Them Worse than Lepers: After the Thrill Is Gone
II: Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow
III: The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get
10 Go Your Own Way: Los Angeles in the Long Run
I: You’ll Never Eat Pussy in This Town Again
Appendix Mellow Gold: The Tape from California
Heart Food and Dark Peace: The Genius of Judee Sill
If You Loved This, You Might Like…
On a baking day in August 1971, five naked young men sit in a sauna in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. Four are musicians, three on the cusp of unimaginable success. Two are out-of-towners, come to sunny Southern California to find fame, glory, girls. All are lean, rangy, good-looking –‘like Jesus Christ after a month in Palm Springs’, in the words of their friend Eve Babitz.
The fifth naked man in the sauna is the one who owns it: a short, skinny agent who’s moved to LA from New York and established himself as a talent-broker of fearsome repute. Among his clients are Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. As the sweat pours off their suntanned limbs, David Geffen tells the four musicians – Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Jackson Browne and Ned Doheny – about his plans for his record