The Byrds / Linda Ronstadt

The Story

A stone house in Topanga Canyon, in the hills above Malibu, appears on two pioneering albums from the late 1960s. The cover of The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968) by The Byrds, and the back cover of Hand Sown... Home Grown (1969) by Linda Ronstadt. Photographer Guy Webster said he found the old abandoned stable with four empty windows and decided to place a band member in each of them. However, The Byrds had just expelled David Crosby, so instead of forcing an obvious absence, Webster filled the last window with a horse that was around. Not as a provocation, but according to him, to balance the composition. Decades later, researchers confirmed it was this house by comparing stone by stone of the facade with current photos of the property. Today, it has been renovated.

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