conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'Hotel California'?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Hotel California
  For decades Los Angeles was synonymous with Hollywood—the silver screen and its attendant deities. L.A. meant palm trees and the Pacific Ocean, despotic directors and casting couches, a factory of illusion. L.A. was "the coast," cut off by hundreds of miles of desert and mountain ranges. In those years Los Angeles wasn't acknowledged as a music town, despite producing some of the best jazz and rhythm and blues of the '40s and '50s. In 1960 the music business was still centered in New York, whose denizens regarded L.A. as kooky and provincial at best.
  Between the years 1960 and 1965 a remarkable shift occurred. The sound and image of Southern California began to take over, replacing Manhattan as the hub of American pop music. Producer Phil Spector took the hit-factory ethos of New York's Brill Building songwriting stable to L.A. and blew up the teen-pop sound to epic proportions. Entranced by Spector, local suburban misfit Brian Wilson wrote honeyed hymns to beach and car culture that reinvented the Golden State as a teenage paradise. Other L.A. producers followed suit. In 1965, singles recorded in Los Angeles occupied the No. 1 spot for an impressive twenty weeks, compared to just one for New York.
  On and around Sunset, west of old Hollywood before one reached the manicured pomp of Beverly Hills, clubs and coffeehouses began to proliferate. Although L.A. had always been geared to the automobile, the Strip now became a living neighborhood—and a mecca for dissident youth. Epicenter for L.A.'s dawning folk scene was Doug Weston's Troubadour club, south of the Strip at 9081 Santa Monica Boulevard. Weston had opened his original Troubadour on nearby La Cienega Boulevard, but had jumped across to Santa Monica east of Doheny Drive in 1961. The more commercial-minded members of the folkie crowd went with him. Typical of the tribe was a cocky kid from Santa Barbara called David Crosby. A lecherous teddy bear with a playful brain, David warbled plangent protest songs in emulation of Woody Guthrie.
  For all the lip service it paid to folk protest, the Troubadour always had one beady eye on success. The clubhouse for the more commercial folk music epitomized by the Kingston Trio, it rapidly became a hootenanny (small gathering of folk singers) hotbed of vaunting ambition. Pointedly different was Ed Pearl's club, the Ash Grove, which had opened at 8162 Melrose Avenue in July 1958. L.A.'s self-appointed bastion of tradition, the Ash Grove held fast to notions of not selling out. It was where you went to hear Doc Watson and Sleepy John Estes—blues and bluegrass veterans rescued from oblivion by earnest revivalists. "The Ash Grove was where you heard the roots, traditional stuff," says Jackson Browne, then an Orange County teenager. "Lots of people went to both clubs, but you didn't stand much of a chance of getting hired at the Ash Grove."
  It was no coincidence, perhaps, that record companies in New York were waking up to what snobs called the "Left Coast." Paul Rothchild, a hip Artists and Repertoire (A&R) man with Jac Holzman's classy and eclectic Elektra label, flew out to L.A. to scout the 1964 Folk Festival at UCLA. Smitten with what he found, Rothchild began to commute regularly between the East and West coasts. "L.A. was less the promised land than the untilled field," says Holzman, himself entranced by Southern California. "We'd picked over the East Coast pretty well."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Carole King's move from New York to California simultaneously saw her move from a writer-for-hire to a singer-songwriter mentality. "Her brain changed as much as her hairstyle did," says Peter Asher. "And I think James had quite a bit to do with that. To go from 'The Loco-Motion' to 'You've Got a Friend'... I mean, we'd always treasured Carole's demos of those famous 1960s songs, because you realized how special she was in her own right."
  If he had little affinity with the CSNY-Joni-Jackson canyon-cowboy community, Newman benefited greatly from the new wave of interest in artists who did it all themselves. "Dylan and others like him made it all right for your voice not to be bel canto," he reflects. "Maybe [there] was some kind of interest in the creator like there was at the end of the eighteenth century, where people were interested in Beethoven anyway."
  Legend has it that when the Laurel Canyon rock community got the news about the butchering at Terry Melcher's house on Cielo Drive, Stephen Stills ran around shrieking, "They're killing everybody with estates!"
  Estates were a concept that Stills, Crosby, and Nash were now all too familiar with, given that their debut album was selling so well. But there also was the small problem of how CSN were going to translate their layered studio sound to the stage. Uneasy as the prospect made him, Stills was giving serious thought to Ahmet Ertegun's suggestion that his old sparring partner Neil Young be bolted onto the trio to augment their live power.
  Elliot Roberts for one was surprised that Stills had even considered it: "It still always shocks me that it was Stephen's call to invite Neil back into the fold when he knew he wouldn't be able to intimidate him." For his part Graham Nash felt threatened by the idea of Young joining the group. He'd found the perfect harmony trio and now suddenly Stephen's old Springfield buddy was entering the picture. "With CSNY it was like the Yankees adding another starter," says Ben Fong-Torres. "Whereas most teams are content to have a couple of guys who can throw the ball, this group had four."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Page 159 top: Courtesy of Billy James; pages 159 bottom, 162 bottom right, 163, 164 top, 165, 166, 168, 169 bottom, 172 top, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179 top, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186: © Henry Diltz; pages 160 top, 161, 162 bottom left, 164 bottom: ©Nurit Wilde; page 160 bottom: Courtesy of Chris Darrow; pages 162 top, 171 top: photograph by Barney Hoskyns; page 167: Courtesy of Mo Ostin Archive; page 169 top: © Jim McCrary; pages 170, 174, 179 bottom, 182: © Michael Ochs Archives; page 171 bottom: © Joel Bernstein; page 172 bottom: Courtesy of Stan Cornyn.
  Over the years there has been much hazy dispute about the exact location of this impromptu gathering on the night of July 3, 1968. Stills thought it took place at Cass Elliott's house, Nash wasn't sure, and both Crosby and Roberts insist it was chez Joni.
  One of Manson's songs, "Cease to Exist," was adapted by the Beach Boys for their 1969 track "Never Learn Not to Love." Another, reflecting the typical Topanga attitude toward Greater Los Angeles, was titled "Sick City."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ".
  Over the years there has been much hazy dispute about the exact location of this impromptu gathering on the night of July 3, 1968. Stills thought it took place at Cass Elliott's house, Nash wasn't sure, and both Crosby and Roberts insist it was chez Joni.
  One of Manson's songs, "Cease to Exist," was adapted by the Beach Boys for their 1969 track "Never Learn Not to Love." Another, reflecting the typical Topanga attitude toward Greater Los Angeles, was titled "Sick City.Page 159 top: Courtesy of Billy James; pages 159 bottom, 162 bottom right, 163, 164 top, 165, 166, 168, 169 bottom, 172 top, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179 top, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186: © Henry Diltz; pages 160 top, 161, 162 bottom left, 164 bottom: ©Nurit Wilde; page 160 bottom: Courtesy of Chris Darrow; pages 162 top, 171 top: photograph by Barney Hoskyns; page 167: Courtesy of Mo Ostin Archive; page 169 top: © Jim McCrary; pages 170, 174, 179 bottom, 182: © Michael Ochs Archives; page 171 bottom: © Joel Bernstein; page 172 bottom: Courtesy of Stan Cornyn.