Foreword by Tom Petty
Prologue
Chapter 1: The South Central Shuffle
Chapter 2: The Birth of the Cool Cats
Chapter 3: The Dotted Line
Chapter 4: The New Kids on the Block
Chapter 5: Tape Is Rolling
Chapter 6: Legends in Their Spare Time
Chapter 7: A Sandbox As Big As an Ocean
Chapter 8: Go East, Young Man
Chapter 9: Powdered Sugar
Chapter 10: When Sonny Met Cher
Chapter 11: Folk Rocks
Chapter 12: Götterdämmerung
Chapter 13: And the Hits Just Keep On Comin’!
Chapter 14: Safe and Warm in L.A.
Chapter 15: A Loon and a Bear
Chapter 16: Colored Balls Falling
Chapter 17: The Left Hand of Darkness
Chapter 18: Expecting to Chart
Chapter 19: Circus Boyz
Chapter 20: Up, Up, and All the Way
Chapter 21: It Was a Mellow Yellow Year
Chapter 22: Meet Me at Sunset and Fairfax
Chapter 23: The King Has Entered the Building
Chapter 24: It’s the Singer and the Song
Chapter 25: On His Carousel
Chapter 26: The Swamp
Chapter 27: Go West, Young Clan
Chapter 28: The Soul Survivor and the Maestro Arrive
Chapter 29: Make It a Little Louder
Epilogue
Afterword by Roger Steffens
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Oral History Credits
Photo Credits
Index
Harvey Kubernik, a native of Los Angeles, California, has
been a noted music journalist for over forty years. A former West
Coast A&R director for MCA Records, Kubernik is the author of
five books, including This Is Rebel Music, A Perfect Haze: The
Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival
(co-authored by Kenneth Kubernik), and Canyon of Dreams: The Magic
and the Music of Laurel Canyon. Kubernik’s writings on popular
music have been published nationally and internationally in the Los
Angeles Times, MOJO, Goldmine, Musician, Melody Maker, Treats!, the
Los Angeles Free Press, Crawdaddy!, Record Collector News, and many
other periodicals and online outlets. His work has also been placed
in several book anthologies, including The Rolling Stone Book of
the Beats and Drinking with Bukowski. Kubernik has penned liner
notes for a dozen albums by a diverse group of recording artists,
most notably Elvis Presley, Allen Ginsberg, Carole King, and the
Ramones.
Tom Petty is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and
multi-instrumentalist. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released
their debut album in 1976. Petty has received numerous prestigious
awards, including seventeen Grammy nominations. In 2002, he was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was also a member
of the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. Petty and his
collaborators have sold over sixty million records. He lives in Los
Angeles.
Roger Steffens is the author or co-author of seven books on
Bob Marley and reggae history, including Bob Marley and the
Wailers: The Definitive Discography and The Reggae Scrapbook. He is
also the founder of the award-winning Reggae Beat radio show with
Hank Holmes on Santa Monica’s NPR affiliate, KCRW. Steffens lives
in Los Angeles.
Music journalist Kubernik (A Perfect Haze) takes readers on a
nostalgic tour of the L.A. music scene at a pivotal period in pop
music history. Compiling over 200 interviews (both original and
borrowed) with musicians and behind-the-scenes personnel, Kubernik
constructs the narrative as an oral history, sewing together
anecdotal snippets by radio DJs like Art Laboe, songwriters like
Mike Stoller, Jerry Leiber, and Lou Adler, and producers like Phil
Spector. There are behind the scene tales of up and coming artists
at work, who went on to become icons, such as Elvis Presley, The
Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, The Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, and
more, including lesser known but highly respected players like
singer Betty Jane Baker. Illustrated with candid photos, concert
posters, newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, the book projects the
enthusiasm of a personal scrapbook. Less of an authoritative
history in scope, Kubernik hones the creative energy of the era and
successfully presents the era's atmospherean era where music
transcended race, the summer of love and iconic festivals were in
full swing, and music pioneers on the stage or behind the radio and
labels were facing the ups and downs of the business. Color
Photos."Publishers Weekly
"Music journalist Kubernik, building upon his excellent Canyon of
Dreams (2012), captures the excitement of rock in Los Angeles from
its inception to the early 1970s. Using more than 200 interviews,
some previously published, which he conducted over the past 38
years, he pieces together an intriguing oral history of the
musicians, songwriters, managers, producers, and DJs who dominated
and shaped the L.A. scene....A lavishly illustrated and
comprehensive view of rock and roll in Los Angeles by the people
who created it that will interest all types of readers."Library
Journal
"Gargantuan and sprawling, just like the City of Angels. . . .
Kubernik is like the music super fan who saved all his Top 40
surveys and concert tickets, posters and celebrity photos, and
found a perfect repository: this book. A bonus: The guy can write,
and he includes interviews, of both stars and
behind-the-scenestersrecord producers, engineers and songwriters,
as well as his beloved pop stars and DJs."Ben Fong-Torres, San
Francisco Chronicle
"A golden-age coffee table book, and memorable for all sorts of
left-field comment."Greil Marcus
"The book is filled with stories and photos of home-grown L.A.
legends such as the Beach Boys, the Doors, the Byrds and the Mamas
and the Papas. But it also includes acts such as Arthur Lee and
Love, East Los Angeles legends Thee Midniters, the Little
Richard-esque duo Don and Dewey and dozens more. And, in the area
that most distinguishes it from nearly every other book on the L.A.
scene, Kubernik focuses attention on the behind-the-scenes
maestros, producers such as Phil Spector, Sonny Bono, and Kim
Fowley, influential radio DJs such as Dave Hull, Art Laboe, and B.
Mitchell Reed, as well as studio owners, recording engineers and
music publishers and promoters."Orange County Register
"A love song to L.A.'s rock 'n roll history, Turn Up The Radio! is
a must-have book for any music-loving Angeleno."Los Angeles
magazine
Turn Up the Radio! takes a trip back in time to the roots of rock
in Los Angeles. Veteran music journalist and local native Harvey
Kubernik’s coffee table tome is a treasure trove of vintage pics
and historical anecdotes.”Hollywood Reporter
A massive, and massively cool collection of L.A. rock ephemera and
recollections from classic acts of the 50s-70s, with an emphasis on
the importance of local radio in the development of the
groundbreaking music of that era. It’s one of those books where,
right when you think every rare photo and nutty story has been
unearthed, you open it and are blown away. Especially noteworthy
are the loads of backstage and studio images. The book itself is
doorstop big and heart-stop packed.”CMJ.com
The Doors, The Beach Boys, Phil Spector and The Monkees helped
establish L.A. as America’s rock and roll capitol. Harvey
Kubernik’s book Turn Up the Radio! doesn’t just look at the songs
and the frontmen, but the talent throughout the recording and radio
industries that created and promoted this enduring era of music.
Drawn from over 200 interviews blending music industry figures with
the radio personalities that brought this music to the public and
adding first-rate photography makes this coffee-table-sized book a
comprehensive chronicle of the center of the American rock and roll
universe.”Hot Wax Daily, Premiere Radio Network
"This fine tribute to the musicians, DJs, movers and shakers who
filled the Hills and Canyons with rock’n’roll noise between 1956
and 1972 is a fine addition to the West Coast canon. Containing
stacks of rare and unpublished photographs and memorabilia, Turn Up
The Radio! justifies the screamer, as it brings characters such as
Dave Diamond, Art Laboe and The Real Don Steele to life just as
they’re about to unleash new sounds on an unsuspecting audience.
Kubernik’s knowledge of the scene is vast and he shares it with a
generous passion and vivid eye for detail as his snapshots cajole
Frank Zappa, The Doors and The Byrds to name but three of the
thousands cavorting inside these pages into focus, providing an
embellished oral history en route. There are also memorable
recollections of The Beach Boys, with Brian Wilson surfacing like
a great white whale from some unfathomable depth” as he rejoins the
group at Long Beach Arena in 1971. Because he hung out and dug the
scene, Kubernik makes you feel like you’re sharing a hot dog with
The Monkees or waving at Jack Nitzsche outside RCA Studios.
Brilliant. 5 stars."Record Collector magazine
Fans of classic rock will flip over this treasure trove of photos,
interviews and other insider info about how the sizzling sounds of
Southern California spread to the rest of Americaand the rest of
the world. This lovingly detailed illustrated narrative shines the
spotlight on the Doors, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Rolling
Stones, Frank Zappa, Sonny & Cher, The Monkees, Elvis Presley and
other acts that made the L.A. scene such a hotbed for performers of
the era, plus the producers, recording engineers, studio musicians,
DJs and others pivotal to the popular music’s formative West Coast
years.”Neil Pond, American Profile magazine
"Once again, music historian Kubernik puts an intense focus on his
hometown's contribution to rock history, resulting in an attractive
cloth-bound book that spotlights the city's radio DJs, producers,
engineers and musicians, both famous and obscure. The book is a
revelatory anecdote-filled ride."Music Connection
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