If you enter the address 2401 Laurel Canyon Blvd. into Google Maps, you’re shown a boarded-up vacant wooded property, with hints of ruins. There’s nothing to suggest the colourful Hollywood and rock ’n’ roll history that took place here.
This is the heart of the Hollywood Hills, overlooking Los Angeles, at the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue. Across the street is what’s referred to as “the Houdini estate” — basically a lush wedding venue, on the site of an imposing, castle-like mansion that burned down in 1959. Famous illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini is said to have rented the guest cottage on the property when he moved from New York City in 1919. The main house, with its gothic towers and parapets, secret passageways, hidden rooms and tunnels, was referred to by reporters at the time of the fire as having been Houdini’s. This led to tales of it being haunted, of course.
But the property at 2401 has an equally rich history.
The two-plus-acre property hasn’t always been mostly vacant. In the early 1900s, the area was used as an irrigation source until real estate investor and engineer Charles Spencer Mann started the development. As early as 1910, Mann built a 16-passenger electric “trackless trolley” system to take people in and out of the canyon, using two converted Oldsmobile buses. Three years later, he built the Laurel Tavern on the property as a place for the people to grab a drink, smoke and have some lunch. The building was immense, with a huge dining room and a regulation one-lane bowling alley in the basement.
Early Hollywood western star Tom Mix bought the building in the late ’20s, renovated and renamed it The Log Cabin, and moved his family there for a few years. As the story goes, Mix had his horse Tony buried under the basement floor. But I don’t buy this, as Tony The Wonder Horse outlived Mix, dying in 1942 — two years after Mix died in a car crash in Arizona.
In the 1960s, architect Robert Byrd had a cottage built behind the main building. The property was sold to actress Bessie Love, who lived in the cottage, now referred to as the Upper Tree House. This is the only remaining structure following a 1981 fire which razed the main house. Fania Mae “Fannie” Jones Pearson bought the property and the Houdini estate in the 1950s, initially to build a girls’ school. She rented out the cabin — first to artist Vito Paulekas in 1967, and then more famously, to Frank Zappa from May to September 1968.
The cabin is where Vito assembled a troupe of freak-scene dancers led by Carl Franzoni — aka Captain Fuck — who were tied to The Byrds, Love and Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention. The dancers became an attraction unto themselves, being essentially made up of the women who would become The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), and the psychedelic band Fraternity Of Man. They lived and rehearsed at the cabin, and split the rent with staff from The Oracle alternative newspaper, which put together its final issue (No. 12) in February ’68. During this time, dozens of people were either living or staying there. Franzoni and The Oracle moved out and Zappa moved in.
GTOs founding member Miss Pamela (Miller) first visited the home after being invited to a party by Franzoni. She ended up spending a great deal of time there after becoming a protégé of Zappa. In the cabin one night, Zappa suggested that Pamela and her friends — Mercy Fontenot, Christine Frka, Cynthia Wells, Sandra Rowe and Linda Parker — turn their freaky collective into a band. He eventually produced their one and only album, Permanent Damage (1969). Pamela enjoyed the structure and comfort provided by his wife Gail. Pamela, arguably the most famous rock ’n’ roll groupie of all time, would later serve as a babysitter and nanny to the Zappa children. Frka also worked as a babysitter and secretary for Zappa and the family. She also appeared on the cover of his 1970 album Hot Rats.
During their time renting the cabin, the Zappa family consisted of Frank, Gail, and their eight-month-old daughter Moon Unit. Dweezil was born a year after the family left. This was a productive time for Zappa, who — in addition to his own music — was launching his own Straight and Bizarre Records labels, signing groups like The GTOs and Alice Cooper. Cooper’s audition happened at the cabin — though the band mistakenly arrived at 7 a.m. rather than 7 p.m. as Zappa intended. He still signed them.
In addition to being a huge building with a 2,000 square-foot living room and that basement bowling alley, the cabin also had a massive floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, and two trees growing out of the living room into the yard. The surrounding hillside property had trails and faux caves made of stucco, which were strung with lights and featured a spiral staircase. There were duck ponds and little waterfalls.
Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick, who visited the place several times, called it “exactly like a troll’s kingdom… Fuzzy-haired women lounged in long antique dresses, and naked children ran to and fro while Frank sat behind piles of electronic equipment discussing his latest ideas for orchestrating satirical hippie rock music. Never a druggie, Frank openly made fun of the very counter-culture he was helping to sustain,” Slick wrote in her memoir, Somebody to Love.
Zappa had just released We’re Only In It For The Money (March 1968) when he took up residence at the cabin. The album skewers right-wing politics and the hippie subculture equally. It especially targets the artwork of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with a parody of that LP’s famous cast-of-characters collage cover art. In addition to members of The Mothers Of Invention, the other live humans on the cover are Jimi Hendrix, Gail Zappa (pregnant with Moon Unit), album producer Tom Wilson and art director Cal Schenkel. Zappa had yet to move into the cabin when the photo was shot in June 1967, so you won’t find Mix pictured. He is, however, found on the cover of Sgt. Pepper — in the big cowboy hat, right behind the wax figure of Paul McCartney. So too, are Stan Laurel (Laurel Canyon, get it?), and actor Tony Curtis, who once portrayed Houdini. That’s a stretch, I know.
The whole Laurel Canyon area became a mecca among musicians during this time. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Carole King, Eric Burdon, The Mamas & The Papas, The Monkees, Dusty Springfield and Brian Wilson all called it home. Zappa played host to pretty much all of them at one time or another. Other notable party guests included Alice Cooper (Vince Furnier), Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet), Mick Jagger, Andy Summers (then of The Animals), Mark Lindsay (Paul Revere & The Raiders), Art Tripp, members of The Who, Marianne Faithfull, John Sebastian & The Lovin’ Spoonful, Janis Joplin and Sam Andrew of Big Brother & The Holding Company, Mike Clarke and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, Arthur Lee and Brian McLain from Love, Sky Saxon and members of The Seeds, and Bluesbreakers John Mayall and Mick Taylor.
The Zappas soon grew tired of being the centre of this scene, and bailed after only six months. With the straight-edged Frank no longer controlling things, the parties continued, but became drug-fuelled and dark, eventually ending with a mysterious fire that destroyed everything except the upper tree house. Producer Bob Crosby rented the property in 1984, and says he found drumsticks in the old stone fireplace chimney, and a surviving wall in the bowling alley, adorned with the signatures of the cabin’s many famous guests. There are also remnants of a “Zappawood” rock garden. The manager of Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward bought the property in 1999, and it sold again in April 2021 for a paltry $828,000. It would be a heck of a place for a museum — the Mann-Mix-Mothers Laurel Canyon Hall of Flame.
Here’s a playlist of songs recorded (mostly) in the area by (mostly) locally based artists, during the time when the Zappa family lived at The Log Cabin:
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
