Waiting for the Sun: A Rock & Roll History of Los Angeles

I've read several books recently about the history of rock 'n roll, and Waiting for the Sun belongs in the top echelon. There are areas in the book, like Charles Manson's connections to the L.A. pop music scene, that fascinated me with information I hadn't previously known or considered. For example, I didn't realized until reading this book why the Manson murders were such a big deal, other than scaring the heck out of us who lived in the San Fernando Valley and other Southern California locales. I never knew how the murders so profoundly affected the Sunset Strip music scene. The author weaves many interesting stories into every phase of the L.A. music scene. This book is so well researched and so full of relevant details that I've been able to completely reconstruct popular music from my teenage years.

Amazingly thorough review of this scene. I actually started listening to the Doors again ( after about 20 years) since reading this. Lol. There were other gems buried in this book including Gary Usher's sunshine pop Sagittarius project that I had never heard but is now my discovery of the year. Also a lot of Terry Melcher, Dennis Wilson, and Charles Manson stories which are always fascinating. Well worth the cost and time to read. Several new revelations.

This book took me a month to finish, I usually rip through books like this in a couple of days but this is a hard one to work through. Tons of info about major and minor characters, the interrelations and the intermingling. If you came of age in the 60's and 70's and ARE a fan of the music of that era you will find a wealth of little nuggets. However the chronology and bouncing back and forth made this a tiresome read. When you throw in the author's biases and disdain for certain aspects of LA and the music it really becomes annoying. If the book did not have some redeeming qualities I would have never finished it. The book covers the music scene in LA from the 20's through the 90's with the majority of the book covering the sixties and the seventies and I still have many of the albums I purchased during those years. It was nice that he gave Arthur Lee and Love the props that they do not always get and was glad that Gene Clark of the Byrds was given suitable recognition. When you consider the number of musicians and songwriters that needed to be included that was a nice touch. All in all a worthwhile although at times a tiresome read.

highly opinionated, snarky and fraught with factual innaccuracies (alice cooper is from arizona?), but nonetheless excellent and very comprehensive history of popular la-centric music from charlie parker to beck (who he oddly reveres). considering the breadth of the subject matter (he covers everything from jazz, blues, rap to power pop to hardcore punk), the book's surprisingly in-depth--you get some a clear sense of the characters and the social context. hoskyns' musical tastes tend to the effete--he's enamored of the avant-but-unlistenable captain beefheart/tom waits/steely dan and generally dismissive of anything mainstream--but, hell, it's his book. highly recommended.

There's a clear agenda throughout this book. Every paragraph mentions how bad white people are. At least allude to race in the title.

Reading this book was a blast. Thoroughly researched and beautifully written; this is classic Barney Hoskyns. It certainly added to my love/hate relationship I have with Los Angeles, and after reading this it only made me want to go visit there even more. If you love music bio's you're gonna love this one.

I really wanted to like this book but it never really met my expectations. The book is more a history of the music business rather than a history of the music. Lots of material on corporate executives and A&R men; not that such material isn't necessary or important, but I was expecting more information regarding the artists and their work. More about the musical culture involving the artists would have been appreciated, instead of the inner working of the various record companies and their employees.Hoskyns also imbues the narrative with his own personal biases in regards to the quality of the music and/or artists. He does this to the point of annoyance and actually comes off sounding fairly pretentious and even a bit childish. I would have preferred a more objective and even-handed journlaistic approach, allowing me to make my own judgements.I also have to agree with another reviewer that Hoskyns seems intent on finding racism around every corner and under every rock in LA. Much like his comments regarding the quality of the music, these rants soon start to annoy and detract from the overall narrative.As I said, I really wanted to like this book but ended up disappointed.

This is a good book covering the history of rock and roll in Los Angeles.Although not the best book by Barney Hoskyns, it does include good information about the people thataren't written about often. I feel that the author is too opinionated at times. In my opinion the author's book 'Hotel California'is much more interesting about the music in Los Angeles.

I have been listening to music from L.A. since I was a student back in the 60s and was really looking forward to reading an overview of the "sound of L.A" and finding out more about the music and musicians from there. I expected this to be another of Hoskyns carefully researched and illuminating books.Unfortunately I was very disappointed with this one. Hoskyns does a reasonable if perfunctory job of covering the pre 1955 music scene in the first chapter - missing out a lot of context that would be useful for readers - but follows this with a very patchy set of chapters covering the time when the area became a focus for music and musicians. There are lots of glaring omissions. For example Phil Ochs only rates one sentence.Worse still there are a lot of factual inaccuracies about bands (which seem unforgivable) and he inserts huge chunks of his own opinions about the music rather than citing contemporary sources. As he was born in 1959, so was very young when a lot of this happened, a little contemporary criticism of the music and musicians may have added balance but a lot of sneering and quite vicious personal opinion seems out of place in something that claims to be a history. This would be bearable if it was counterbalanced by some enthusiasm but he really does not seem to like anything very much and the whole tone of the book is sour and depressing. There are a lot of interesting photographs, many supplied by Michael Ochs- Phil Ochs brother, which were the best part of the book for me but even these would have been improved by giving a date to them. This, like so much else in the book seems slipshod and scamping.I wanted a history of the music of L.A and got an uneven and poorly researched book that seemed mainly about the author's retrospective evaluation of the music of the past, which misses so much and gets so much wrong.

could have been longer

Recipient enjoyed this very much . Impressed by the condition

Bok came up to expectations and prompt delivery

It's a book for reading. Excellent condition.