DN:FILM Echo in the Canyon

Echo in the Canyon is a great-looking, cool-sounding mash-up, part informative doc, part fly-on-the-wall hangout with pals and legends, part passion project for writer/director/producer Andrew Slater and sometimes-interviewer/frequent singer Jakob Dylan. That Dylan is credited as “starring” in the doc maybe sums it up: Docs have stars? In this case, tons; and watching them trade stories and riffs across five decades is delightfully informative, or at least informatively delightful.

The doc serves as a celebratory investigation into the mythic days that birthed the Southern California sound that ended up nestling in Laurel Canyon—the Byrds, the Mamas & the Papas, the Turtles, Buffalo Springfield etc.—built around a one-off concert that Slater and Dylan brought forth in the fall of 2015, more or less on the 50th anniversary of the start of the sound. Because of the filmmakers’ generous way of connecting dots between influencers and influencees, you also get to see a lot from characters you wouldn’t immediately think of as SoCal—Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton—as well as ones who are absolutely seminal: Roger McGuinn, Stephen Stills. Speaking of Stills—who here just may be doing a dead-on impression of Eugene Levy’s Mitch Cohen character from Christopher Guest’s “A Mighty Wind”—one thing ECHO provides is evidence that male rock’n’roll veterans have, in general, proven to be a very fortunate lot when it comes to greying: For the most part, the locks of these septuagenarians maintain the youthful hues of yesteryear; that bow to continued youth-image-consciousness is a continuing reminder that the power-of-music ethos, for all its sun-dappled California sincerity, was never far removed from the marketable-rock-star economy, something a lot of these vets are still trading in. Slater implicitly makes that connection, which helps rather than undermines the case he and Dylan make for how important the Laurel Canyon movement was.

It all means there’s a lot of interesting musing about How It Happened and What It All Means; plus, natch, terrific music from two distinct directions: Springing from the 2015 concert are clips from the show as well as intimate snippets from its rehearsal and studio sessions (a soundtrack record is available) during which these acolytes—Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Beck, Cat Power, Norah Jones and others, not to mention Dylan—try to step into the shoes of their titanic forebears. There’s also a good supply of the original music that gives the doc its reason for being; there’s the thrill of a catching a charged moment like the one here where you hear a bit of “California Dreamin'” in conjunction with the hit's provenance being explained by today’s charming, country-club looking Phillips, her luminous mid-’60s’ folk-sex-kitten self presented synchronously. (By the way, there may be nothing more fantastically sexy in the whole film than the line of go-go dancers working it on a balcony above a vintage Byrds performance—blink and you’ll miss something transcendent.) Finally, there’s the extra kick when the past steps into the present: Brian Wilson dropping by to correct a song key, Neil Young tearing up a guitar solo.

Slater and Dylan clearly know or have worked with so many of the subjects and participants in the project in so many different ways—variously in management, production, collaboration—that their comfortable familiarity radiates off the screen and brings guards down. So it’s a treat to watch David Crosby call himself an asshole, to watch producer Lou Adler still rock a chapeau, to watch Phillips embrace the legacy of romantic turmoil she sparked by getting as busy as she did, to watch Starr say about anything. There’s a lot of bittersweet here, between the recollections of a bygone era when pop/rock music seemed so critical and life-changing; and the gaps left by the already-departed like Cass Elliot. Perhaps no one here provides more of that impact of affectionate sadness than they guy to whom the film is dedicated: The late Tom Petty, a student, practitioner and advocate of what Laurel Canyon wrought, is here a lot, talking about the right way to pronounce “Rickenbacker” and many other matters of import.

The interplay between generations, with reverential deference paid by the younger to the older, is what Echo in the Valley is all about: both a heady dose of nostalgia and a vigorous acknowledgment that the elements that came together in Laurel Canyon five decades ago did so in ways that continue to be of critical importance today, musically and perhaps otherwise. After all, when you hear Graham Nash testifying that he truly believes the power of music can change the world, with all the echoes of the ’60s’ faith in the form and the affection and respect these young disciples afford it, you want to believe—still—that he’s right.