POP MUSIC : Grim View of City Through Rock’s Eyes

Garden of Eden. Web of corruption. Gritty, garish streets. Golden sunsets. Promised land. City of cruel disillusionment.

That’s the way Los Angeles looks through the eyes of Los Angeles’ bands, and over the years the emphasis has always been on the meaner side.

In the beginning, though, it was good vibrations, as the Beach Boys defined a Chamber-of-Commerce ideal of Southern California as a charmed land full of fun, fun, fun--starting in the early ‘60s with the surf and hot rod songs and culminating in the aching plea:

I wish they all could be California girls.

Things changed quickly.

In 1971’s “L. A. Woman,” the Doors set the tone for many a portrait of the city as a dark but alluring place--and as a femme fatale.

I see your hair is burnin’, hills are filled with fire

If they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar

Drivin’ down your freeway, midnight alleys roam

Cops in cars, the topless bars

Never saw a woman so alone, so alone, so alone, so alone.

If Jim Morrison and company gave the impression that this seamy side was kind of fun, others--mostly emigres from more innocent lands--were taking a moralistic, cautionary approach to L.A.’s flash and falseness.

In 1977’s “Hotel California,” the Eagles, offered the apotheosis of the L.A.-as-seductress metaphor.

There she stood in the doorway

I heard the mission bell

And I was thinkin’ to myself

This could be heaven and this could be hell

Welcome to the Hotel California. ...

Any time of year

You can find it here

Last thing I remember

I was driving for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

Relax, said the night man

We are programmed to see

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave.

That notion of being somehow trapped in the Basin found exquisite expression in Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters,” where the Beach Boys’ Malibu playground is now the end of the line, and the physical culture they celebrated has become a decadent hedonism that will soon destroy the helpless protagonist. “Here come those Santa Ana winds again,” warns the languorous female chorus. Meantime:

Drive west on Sunset

To the sea. ...

We’ll jog with show folk

On the sand

Drink kirschwasser from a shell. ...

The kid will live and learn

As he watches his bridges burn

From the point of no return

In the ‘80s, some of L.A.’s younger bands took a more hard-bitten but less judgmental approach to life in L.A. The Go-Go’s pretty much summed it up in “This Town”: It’s not pretty, but it’s what we picked:

Make up that face

Jump in the race

Life’s a kick in this town

We’re all dreamers--we’re all whores

Discarded stars

Like worn out cars

Litter the streets of this town .