This week on the Rhino Podcast, director Allison Ellwood joined host Rich Mahan to discuss her latest documentary Laurel Canyon, centered around the cultural evolution of Laurel Canyon through the 60's and 70's. The two-part docuseries will premiere this month on television network EPIX on May 31st and June 7th at 9PM ET.
As Mahan explains in this new episode, Laurel Canyon uses "a truckload of rare and newly unearth footage and audio recordings," including interview with Jackson Brown, Don Henley, Michelle Phillips, Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Roger McGwynn.
ON SOURCING RARE ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHS FOR THE DOCUMENTARY:
ELLWOOD: "Well, luckily for us, we had been friends with Henry Diltz for quite some time. He worked with us on the Eagles documentary several years ago, and we've stayed in touch. And you know, he photographed everybody. So having his resources that he had were unbelievable."
"And then we reached out to other sources as well. And then of course, we had an Nurit Wilde who was our, you know, our two documentarians who are the only people who appear in on-camera, contemporary interviews."
ON THE HISTORICAL, CULTURAL SPIRIT OF LAUREL CANYON:
ELLWOOD: "Yeah, the music is extraordinary and what I've noticed so much and part of what was so wonderful about my process of discovery, because I know a lot about this time in this music, but it was how the artists interwove with one another. Those connections were so beautiful, I thought, in terms of how they learned from one another, took from one another, gave to one another. It was like a Petri dish."
MAHAN: "Very collaborative versus competitive. Yeah. I think now it tends to be a little more, people are more protective, and especially if they're on their way up, they don't want to give away something that would put them further behind the eight ball, so to speak, you know?"
ELLWOOD: "Well, the truth is, it was, you know, back then it was, I think there was a certain naiveté about it. It was much more about the art and the music and less about the business. And a lot of those folks didn't know much about the business end of it."
"And you know, as a result, some of them got ripped off by the business end of it. So there was sort of an innocence that, that fed that spirit, which was so lovely."
Listen to the rest of the podcast here.
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