It’s something of a shame that Billy Preston never starred in a western. As a child, the Fifth Beatle had a brief role in the 1958 film St. Louis Blues, but otherwise never applied his infectious on-stage charisma to the screen. The recently restored documentary, In Hollywood’s Backyard: Topanga in the 1970s, features a fair amount of footage of Preston in a cowboy suit riding a horse through the verdant, sun-drenched canyon where he lived. In a staged sequence of the otherwise interview-heavy film, Preston trots through a mountain path and looks up, smiling, as he sees different members of what he calls his “lovely community” singing from the hilltops, offering their musical gifts to the sky.
Preston was one of a number of musicians who called the neighborhood home in the 1970s. The 50-minute documentary was directed by residents Alexander and Anne Christine Von Wetter as a special for German television, but the master and 16mm negative was sadly lost in a fire. A VHS copy survived and has been recently restored by Planet Group Entertainment.
The Von Wetters feature a sampling of their talented neighbors: We see Preston rehearsing in his home, talking from his car about the area’s special vibes. (He chalks it up to its historical place as an “Indian holy site” when the Tongva tribe still inhabited the area). Canned Heat singer Bob “The Bear” Hite speaks from his kitchen while making tacos with his daughter. Session musician Fred Tackett jams at home with his impressively talented eleven-year-old son. The performances in the film largely take place either at a benefit for regional flood victims or the Topanga Corral, a local venue that has since burned down but once hosted shows by Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Captain Beefheart. While most of the artists interviewed are best known outside of Topanga, in the film they seem inextricable from it.
Some of their reasons for living there are unsurprising, even mundane — the proximity to professional work in Los Angeles; the comfort of living with others, to use the era’s parlance, “freaks.” As Hite says, “If you lived in Woodland Hills, people stared at you all the time.” A number of interviewees refer to the sense of community they feel, how when a flood or a fire strikes everyone gets together to raise money, rebuild houses, do what they can to help. These are great reasons to live there but don't quite explain what, if anything, made the area special.
The film doesn’t put Topanga and its eclectic scene in a broader context or explain why its history has gone under the radar compared to its sister neighborhood, Laurel Canyon. Will Greer, the blacklisted actor and labor activist who collaborated with Woody Guthrie and started Topanga’s Theatricum Botanicum, is only mentioned in passing. The film rather gives a brief snapshot of the community at a particular moment in time. A filmmaker in the future might take the opportunity to use this footage to give a more complete version of Topanga’s story. Until then, the sight of Billy Preston clad in a cowboy hat, joyfully singing in the hills, is more than enough reason to watch
Would highly recommend this documentary to anyone studying 1970s counterculture and the music scene in Los Angeles/California in particular. It would benefit library collections in the region and the music documentary section of any library given the rare, previously unavailable footage it offers.