Laurel Canyon Country Store

Located halfway up Laurel Canyon, the store was immortalized by The Doors in the song Love Street as the “store where the creatures meet.” It was originally built in 1919 as a lodge for local hunters accessible only by trackless trolley.  Wild with coyotes, rattlesnakes, deer, and rabbits, the area became a prime hunting spot, and Charles Spencer Mann began developing the area with small cabins catering to hunters and dubbing it Bungalow Land. The Bungalow Lodge and Tavern opened at Kirkwood and Laurel Canyon, serving mostly the hunters visiting the area. In 1929 the lodge burned, and the following year it was rebuilt using brick and stones from the old riverbed and turned into the market we see today.

By the 1960s, a new wave of canyon residents arrived, with their guitars, drugs, and free love attitudes. A short drive to the Sunset Strip, Laurel Canyon became a haven for the musicians of the time. Jim Morrison of The Doors was among them, living behind the Canyon Country Store on Rothdell Trail with his girlfriend Pamela Courson. It’s said that a fight broke out and those at the store could see Morrison’s belongings such as books and clothes being tossed from the windows. Morrison also wrote the song “Love Street” about Laurel Canyon, and the Canyon Country Store is the “store where the creatures meet” as the store became a place for impromptu jam sessions with the various artists. 

The Mamas and the Papas would also contribute the song “Twelve Thirty” which is about the canyon and the groupies who would walk through. “John [Philipps] began that song in New York but he didn’t know what to do with it. When we moved out here, the canyon fit the bill perfectly. Everybody was up there, and all the young girls were looking for the rock stars. They’d wander the hills calling out their names,” Denny Doherty of the Mamas the Papas recalled. 

Not only did the canyon provide a certain sound, it also provided literal lyrics, and sometimes whole albums. As mentioned, The Doors’ “Love Street” and the Mamas and the Papas song “Twelve Thirty” are both in reference to Laurel Canyon, but they aren’t the only ones. Crosby, Stills, & Nash wrote “Our House” about their home in the canyon. Joni Mitchell dubbed one of her albums, Ladies of the Canyon, after the area and John Mayall also had an entire album inspired by the canyon called Blues from Laurel Canyon, and it included the track “Laurel Canyon Home.”

Many of the musicians who lived there had an open door policy, with people crashing on couches, jam sessions, and parties. However nearly of that would change as the 1960s came to a close. The end of the era is often blamed on the drugs, success, burn out, the disaster of Altamont, and the Manson murders. 

Yet the mythos of Laurel Canyon’s heyday lives on in the sounds that originated here.

While many of the pioneering musicians have left, a walk through the winding eucalyptus lined roads with their tunes playing in your head will still give you the same feeling as if they are still here.