Linda Ronstadt
Hollywood Eden is a detailed look at the hugely influential California music scene just before the arrival of folk rock and psychedelic music — a vital link in the chronicles of the American popular song. I found it fascinating; I love the book.
Van Dyke Parks
Hollywood Eden is a keeper! Startlingly moving, it features a cast of somehow sympathetic characters who are all looking for a fast buck, some luck of the draw, or intimations of immortality. I knew full well most of the subjects of this tumultuous time; I was also there in a hedge-row cameo. So I read the book through and through. I warrant every word of it is true.
From the Publisher
PRAISE FOR JOEL SELVIN AND HOLLYWOOD EDEN:
“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.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“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.” — Los Angles Times
“Selvin tells this inside story as if he were right there … Hollywood Eden is a lively and well-researched book.” ― Winnipeg Free Press
“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 University High in Los Angeles and making records, the way Selvin can cut right down to what really matters, over and over again.” — Greil Marcus, Los Angeles Review of Books
“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!” — Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys
“Hollywood Eden is a keeper! Startlingly moving, it features a cast of somehow sympathetic characters who are all looking for a fast buck, some luck of the draw, or intimations of immortality. I knew full well most of the subjects of this tumultuous time; I was also there in a hedge-row cameo. So I read the book through and through. I warrant every word of it is true.” — Van Dyke Parks, composer, songwriter, and lyricist of Brian Wilson’s renowned Smile album
“Hollywood Eden is a detailed look at the hugely influential California music scene just before the arrival of folk rock and psychedelic music — a vital link in the chronicles of the American popular song. I found it fascinating; I love the book.” — Linda Ronstadt, vocalist, songwriter, and bestselling author of Simple Dreams
“Those of us who grew up in the Darwinian slaughterhouse of New Jersey couldn’t have imagined the paradise so accurately described in Hollywood Eden. Through the years I became familiar with most of the characters in this book, yet I learned something new on every page. Joel Selvin’s special gift is putting you in the room to witness these unlikely events that became essential Rock History.” — Stevie Van Zandt, musician, actor, and syndicated radio host of Little Steven’s Underground Garage
“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.” — Rock & Roll Globe
“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.” — The Second Disc
“Behind the scenes it wasn’t always fun, fun, fun, but fans of late ’50s and ’60s pop will feel like they’ve caught the perfect wave.” — School Library Journal
Stevie Van Zandt
Those of us who grew up in the Darwinian slaughterhouse of New Jersey couldn’t have imagined the paradise so accurately described in Hollywood Eden. Through the years I became familiar with most of the characters in this book, yet I learned something new on every page. Joel Selvin’s special gift is putting you in the room to witness these unlikely events that became essential Rock History.
