All language subtitles for FRANK ZAPPA - (Classic Albums)-en

This programme contains
some strong language.

The impetus to move West and
blast all that open and be free,

being in that gorgeous state
of California.

You smoked a big one, took the
shrink-wrap off, put the record on the record player

and you were gone.

There were things that we all
felt were right

and the truth is, I don't think we
were wrong about hardly any of them.

I had to watch the fights, the egos,
the drugs, the alcohol,

the...the...paranoia that came along
with all of that.

And it scared me.

10 million girls
and 2,000 bumps down the line,

you don't know who you are any more.

What's happening in the process,
which I served gladly,

is the corporatisation of rock.

We just...

took it to the bank.

In 1965, Manhattan and London
monopolised the music business.

A decade later, for musicians
and moguls alike,

there was only one place to be,

and it wasn't rain-soaked England
or uptight New York.

This is the story of how a small
community of singer-songwriters,

exiled in a rustic paradise
at the heart of the metropolis,

transformed Los Angeles into
the music capital of the world.

It's a tale of artistic brilliance
and decadent decline,

of how a bunch of hippies gave rise
to the biggest-selling record of all time,

of the birth of corporate rock music
and the death of a dream.

At 3am on 18th August 1969...

..a new group from Los Angeles
took the stage at the Woodstock music festival.

Thank you.

They faced an audience
of several hundred thousand

and a cross-section
of their musical heroes.

This is the second time we've ever
played in front of people, man. We're scared shitless.

There's that remark by Stephen,
"This is our second gig and we're scared shitless."

I mean, he was right.

We'd played a couple of nights
before in Chicago

and that was our second gig.

Everybody that we really thought
was good was there.

Hendrix, Airplane, Grateful Dead,
the Band.

The Band.

Did I mention...the Band?

Uh...all standing around
right behind us.

"OK, the record was OK.
Come on, show us."

We knew who we were and what
we could do, but nobody else did.

Woodstock marked the collective
climax of the hippy dream

and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young,

along with their friend Joni
Mitchell and manager David Geffen,

were the alternative generation's
hip new disciples.

We arrive at LaGuardia airport
and the New York Times says, "400,000 people sitting in mud,"

and I said, "Forget it,
I'm not going."

Joni and I stayed in New York
at my apartment, where she wrote the song Woodstock.

David Crosby, Stephen Stills,

Graham Nash, Neil Young,

David Geffen, Joni Mitchell.

Six rising stars
of the counterculture

who came together in a city
where ambition and idealism went hand in hand

and helped put Los Angeles
on the musical map.

That man on the end is Jim McGuinn.

The one playing bass is
Chris Hillman.

The one playing the drums is
Michael Clarke.

And I'm David Crosby and, when we are
together, uh, they call us the Byrds.

MUSIC: "Mr Tambourine Man"
by the Byrds

You'd be driving down Sunset Strip
in your car

and you'd hear the beginning notes
of that and think, "Wow!"

It'd just be such a rush.

The quintessential folk-rock music.

In May 1965, the Byrds,
a Los Angeles beat group,

released Mr Tambourine Man,

a song written by
the definitive hero of '60s folk.

The convincing case, the QED
for the singer-songwriter...

..was Bob Dylan.

Would you say that the words were
more important than the music?

Uh...

the words are just as important
as the music.

There would be no music
without the words.

I got turned on to the Byrds
because...I was a Dylan fan.

And the music was important
all of a sudden.

Music was saying something,
something that might move you, might change you, might change the world,

might...push buttons.

And there was a sense that something
very important was going on.

The Byrds transformed Dylan's
acoustic folk ballad

into a number-one pop single,

directly inspired by another
revolutionary team of songwriters.

George Harrison, John Lennon,
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

We just were in awe of them.

They were SO good.

They'd put out a song like Paperback
Writer and I'd wanna just give up

cos I could never do that,
I could never get close.

Probably the thing that John and I
will do will be write songs,

as we have been doing
as a sideline now.

We'll probably develop that more.

You could be an artist who did songs
that were written for you

but you really wanted to be the kind
of artist that the Beatles were

because they wrote all their stuff
and you could - ha-ha! -

you could really express yourself
if you could do it.

Everyone was so thrilled,

and nobody was thrilled about
folk music at all.

It was as if it didn't exist,
and pretty soon it didn't.

For a generation schooled in the
folk tradition of the East Coast,

the Byrds' artistically credible
but commercially successful pop

opened up a whole new world
in which the singer-songwriter reigned supreme.

Musical life in Los Angeles would
never be the same again

and a small stretch of Hollywood
became the only place to be.

The Sunset Strip is just this
bizarre anomaly,

physically part of the city
but politically unincorporated,

and from the '30s and '50s,
essentially governed by the Mob.

By the early '60s, the Strip was
in decline

and so what happened is that
the folk-rock scene inherited

what was the ruins of the glamorous
Strip of the 1930s and '40s.

The place where the musicians and
songwriters felt they could be most in touch with

the kids who represented the shape
of things to come.

All these kids would come,
and they'd be underage kids,

wearing bell-bottoms and beads
and flowers and all that stuff.

There was this flowering of feeling
and reverence for life,

like a carnival midway.

And so the music scene was happening
right in the middle of all of that.

There was a magical quality to it.

We suddenly found ourselves
in the centre of a vortex.

Somehow, music became

a medium for an entire generation.

You know, they're shooting this
for television.

I'm sure that they'll edit this out.

I want to say it anyway,
even though they WILL edit it out.

When President Kennedy was killed,
he was not killed by one man.

He was shot from a number
of different directions by different guns.

The story has been suppressed.
Witnesses have been killed.

And this is your country,
ladies and gentlemen.

Nobody articulated the values
of the Sunset Strip's burgeoning counterculture

with as much swagger
as the Byrds' David Crosby.

David was the mouthpiece
for our generation.

In Rolling Stone, he was the one who
had the mouth - he was speaking out

and saying stuff,
politically speaking.

I certainly wasn't anybody's guru,
man. I'm not smart enough.

Er ... and I ...

..I was certainly outrageous.

I probably helped tilt it
towards outrageousness.

So outrageous and so outspoken

that it was no surprise
when David Crosby was kicked out of the Byrds in 1967

and began to look for a new band.

I like eclectic music, you know.

I like things that have roots.

When my group was playing in
New York, we played at a jazz club and we sang four-part harmony.

And we discovered him down the block
playing in a little coffee house.

Wow! This young guy with the guitar
is really neat.

and, soon after,
Stephen moved to LA.

He'd stand at the edge of the stage
and watch us singing and he loved the harmonies.

In 1965, Stephen Stills,
a folk-singer from Texas,

joined the musical exodus from
Greenwich Village to Sunset Strip.

The following year,
another precocious songwriter from Canada arrived,

chasing sunshine and stardom in LA.

Everybody having a good time,
or what?

I was sitting on the trunk of my car
and he saw me and he pulled in

and, is ...

"How are you, man?"
And he dug out his guitar

and sang me four or five of the best
songs I'd ever heard in my life.

If he'd been a girl,
I would have kissed him!

His power as a songwriter
is undeniable.

In April 1966, Neil Young
and Stephen Stills

came head to head in a traffic jam
on Sunset Strip.

Well, we, er...came to Los Angeles
in an old hearse to, er...start...

to try and make the stars -
you know, we're gonna be stars.

So, er...we were just about to leave

and I saw him in a van
going the other way on Sunset

and he stopped and we stopped and
we all stopped and then we started.

Stephen Stills had found the band
that he'd always wanted.

They were widening the street on
Franklin - a street in Hollywood. I went outside

and they were all arguing
about what to call the group.

And on a bulldozer, I saw the words
"Buffalo Springfield".

Buffalo Springfield represented a
hip, new wave of musical emigres -

more a collective of mutually
ambitious individuals

than the uniform pop groups
that preceded them.

Er...my name is Neil Young... Neil.
How do you do?..lead guitar player. How do you do? This is Richie Furay.

Big Dewey Martin - Buffalo Dew.
Hello, Dewey.

Bruce Palmer from Toronto,
Canada. OK.

Steve Stills from New Orleans.

Buffalo Springfield
brought a new musical momentum to the Sunset Strip.

And when their audience provoked the
city's reactionary establishment,

their response was a pop protest
that, like LA,

was both cool and commercial.

Los Angeles was the scene of one
of great culture wars in US history.

They want everybody to do the same
thing and live their own life.

They want you to grow up, get an
education, raise children and die.

From the coming of Hollywood,
with its sinful lifestyles,

into a city into which a million
pious, Protestant mid-Westerners had moved during the 1920s...

Because you don't have a job
because you don't have a direction,

you're not a part of
the super-society called "America".

And in a sense, the battle
of the Sunset Strip in the late '60s

was the last battle
in this 40-or-50-year-long clash

between Hollywood Babylon on one
hand and the kind of main-street puritanism on the other.

Why do they think they can put down
on our music?

They say it's bad. They say it's
noise - "Turn down the noise."

But do they ever listen
to the words?

In the daytime, Sunset Strip had
all these posh clothing stores.

Those people didn't like the kids
hanging out at night.

And so, pretty soon,
the police would come down.

They'd park a big bus in the middle
of the Strip and take everyone that was underage on the bus to jail.

Pulling these beautiful young girls
and throwing them on the bus.

What is that about? You know.
Everybody... "That's crazy!

"It's the man. It's the pigs.

"It's the other side.
It's the same people that are trying to send us to war.

"It's the older generation that
doesn't know what life is about."

They were worried
about the counterculture.

Godless communism.

Corruption of youth.

He's communicating with his peers
and the cop says, "You can't do it. Get off the street!"

The Sunset Strip riots provided
the perfect showcase

for Buffalo Springfield's
socially conscious folk rock -

a distinctive sound

that was sending shockwaves through
LA's new musical establishment.