LOS ANGELES
GEORGEROSE/GETTYIMAGES
SLASH, 1980
A majestic chronicle of early LA punk, influenced by rockabilly and Raymond Chandler. Ray Manzarek’s production steeps it in the city’s storied past JOHN DOE: When I arrived in Los Angeles in 1976, what hit me was the horizon, you could see for a hundred miles. In Baltimore, I’d learned to be a bohemian in training and Los Angeles had all of the elements to continue that, people like Charles Bukowski and Nathaniel West. I was interested in LA’s contribution in movies and literature as well as The Doors and Love.
EXENE CERVENKA: It still had traces of the old glory days, the hippies and the weird mansions. I met John at the Venice Poetry Workshop. He and I started singing and playing, and we got married a little while after that. I wrote most of the songs I sang. I think he’d already written “Los Angeles” when I met him. It all happened pretty fast. Ray Manzarek happened to see us at the Whisky. His wife Dorothy said, “Hey, they’re playing your song – ‘Soul Kitchen’.”
DOE: Ray was a mentor to me. I was a huge Doors fan. They didn’t compromise, they didn’t use tricks. With his guidance as producer, we didn’t either. We didn’t make records that sounded like other records of the time. We tried to make them more timeless. Ray was good with arrangements, confident and decisive. You need that when you’re making a record in 10 days. CERVENKA: The sessions were very difficult. I’ve never really had any kind of commitment like that. I was drinking too much. We didn’t have much time. We were happy with Ray, but we weren’t happy with the engineering, and the way the record sounded. I was really happy with it until I realised people were gonna listen to it!
DOE:
Los Angeles was all about the LA punk scene. That community, that landscape, the characters, their desires and how they played them out. It was fertile ground. We wanted to put a stake in the ground with the title. A lot of people looked down on Los Angeles and thought it was an also-ran, but it had an eclectic sound of its own.