LAUREL CANYON—We’ve been fortunate enough to have two books devoted to the Rock 'n' Roll music born in Laurel Canyon. What’s happening now? Has the gentrification of the canyon changed us so that we are no longer inspired to write or play music?

I recently wandered down to Lily’s Porch; that’s what I call the front patio at the Canyon Country Store. Chatting with some of the morning regulars, I was surprised to learn that plenty of them were musicians, and even more of them had sound recording and editing equipment at their disposal.  Computers apparently have changed the composition world.

Then I got an invitation to a recital by Charlie McCord.  I knew him as a teenage head-banging, guitar-playing rocker with long hair; he had it going on. The invitation didn’t say much, but rockers have concerts and shows, not a recital - right?

The recital, as it turned out, was on a classical guitar. Charlie still had the long hair, but it was discreetly tied back. Apparently he had added classical guitar and composition to his repertoire since I last saw him. The young man took center stage, bathed in warm spotlights. He took the audience through their paces.

He opened with a highly technical baroque piece originally composed for the lute by the well-known Sylvius Leopold Weiss, a contemporary of Bach, who played for the Polish Court.  What I later learned is that the guitar, like the lute, is a soft instrument, so that when Andrés Segovia [1894-1987] sought to bring the guitar into the music mainstream he elected to work with the rigid classical baroque lute compositions and transpose them for the guitar in a conscious effort to elevate the instrument by demonstrating its breadth and technical equivalency to the widely accepted lute. Charlie played five movements from the Weiss Sonata in E minor. I also learned that these classical sonatas were written to accompany dances, and each one was played in the same key – that explains the E minor in the title. The one dance that seems to have stuck in people’s minds over the years is the Minuet. We’ve forgotten the other dances such as the Allemande (maybe not if you’re into square dancing) and Sarabande. Charlie played the guitar with the clarity of a harp and the authority of a rider competing in classic dressage. The guitar took center stage. We tend to think of it as an instrument to accompany other musicians. He ripped that assumption right out of my head, and his guitar said, “Take that!”

Charlie played his way around the world from Eastern Europe to Spain and Brazil, through the centuries from the 1600s to his own compositions, “Ocean Tide” and “Mountain Dance.”  In the first composition he strummed the guitar from the bottom to the top. It was very oriental. I was surprised at how easily he accomplished this trope. As he played I could envision his music adding drama and tension to a movie.

The musicians on Lily’s Porch represent today’s highly synthesized music. Where do Charlie and his musical training fit in? Will he wear the mantle of tomorrow’s musicians with the same magnetic pull that Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Still, Nash and Young held?

Will Laurel Canyon be Charlie’s muse and the home of the next resurrection of music that touched its generation?

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