L.A. Odester Is Singing a Different Tune

Hugh Stone III of Granada Hills sings:

Welcome to the city of make believe,

Open arms are waiting for you,

Once you come to L.A., you’ll never leave,

There’s no limit to what you can do.

Roll over, Frank Zappa. Tell Jim Morrison the news.

Hugh Stone’s tune is called “L.A.’s the Place!” and it was one of two original songs sent to me by readers in response to a recent critique of the latest wrinkle in L.A.’s official marketing campaign. I suggested that the gee-whiz slogan “It’s amazing what grows in Los Angeles” failed to measure up to the defiantly upbeat spirit that made Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” the city’s unofficial anthem. This observation inspired Stone’s lyrical response.

“Back in the good old days,” Stone explained by e-mail, “when some of the powers that be were looking for a theme song for L.A. (before Mr. N sucked the wind out of their sails), I penned a little ditty that I thought then (and I think now) captures the flavor of why people come here, stay here, or come back here if they should leave here.

“Having done all three myself, I felt qualified to write it.”

The lyrics and melody are, as Stone put it, “relentlessly upbeat.” No irony here. Consider the chorus.

L.A.’s the place!

The City of Angels is calling.

L.A.’s the place!

The land of the open door.

L.A.’s the place!

It’s here for you, come get it.

L.A.’s the place!

What are you waiting for?

These, Stone said, are the absolutely heartfelt sentiments of a native of St. Louis who studied journalism in New York but came to L.A. with a guitar and a sense of adventure.

People come to L.A. from everywhere,

They find milk and honey abound,

Mountains, ocean, weather that’s always fair,

Paradise is finally found.

“I was just crazy about the place,” he said. “I didn’t have a car and I’d hitchhike all over town.”

Dreamers thumbing out here to make it in show biz,

And some of us do,

People from the East Coast all love New York,

They usually wake up in a year or two.

“I was five years too late,” he said, laughing. His songwriting style, he explained, was “somewhere between Cat Stevens and the Beatles.” But he hit Hollywood in the age of punk.

He figured out that he didn’t want to be a reporter, so he went back to Missouri for law school. Then one day a professor said, look around you, these are the people you’ll spend your life with. He looked around and realized he didn’t want anything to do with these people. So he quit law school and came back to the city he loved best.

He met an L.A. woman. For a full two years, they kept telling each other: “This is happening too fast.” Now they’ve been married 18 years and have a 16-year-old son.

After I reached Stone by phone, I was surprised by how easily he laughed. His e-mail had been so serious and thought-provoking.

“One of the things that makes getting through each day so difficult for so many of us,” he wrote, “is the post-Watergate penchant of viewing the world with such cynicism that people who have ideals are derided as Pollyanna-ish, and any attempt to encourage or uplift others is immediately suspect. There has always been a place in America for the suspicious, cynical outsider; indeed careers have been built on this. But the jaundiced eye is now mainstream, and no longer outside at all.

“You touched on Randy Newman’s ‘I Love L.A.’ It’s not that people don’t get his affectionate derision; it’s that that’s what they feel they should feel (and many do feel) themselves.”

Next he described how the “I Love New York” slogan both inspired ridicule from outsiders and rallied “many a gruff NuYawker” to come to the city’s defense.

“Los Angeleans, on the other hand, lose a simply superb slogan, ‘L.A.’s the Place!’ ” Stone continued, “and offers an anemic ‘Together, we’re the best.’ . . . In the wake of the riots, they doubt the truth of what they’re saying about the city. They don’t believe L.A.’s the place anymore, and it shows in their advertising, it shows in their ennui.

“But where it really shows is the way we took to Randy Newman’s song. We were too dumb to be insulted. In the name of truth, we refuse to avert our eyes from what is wrong until we can’t see what’s RIGHT with us. So we miss THAT truth as well. . . . We need uplift! And we are finding, to our dismay, that we have been down so long that we don’t know when it bites us in the rear.”

And when we talked, he seemed so happy-go-lucky!

Stone certainly makes some interesting points. I can understand why a frustrated L.A. anthem writer might feel as though Randy Newman left teeth marks in our backside. But as a native son of the Southland (and one who wonders when Angelenos became “Los Angeleans”), I must say the view that “we were too dumb to be insulted” is downright insulting.

Stone himself provides all the reasons we took to “I Love L.A.” The derision is affectionate, not malicious. A line like “Look at that bum over there, man, he’s down on his knees” isn’t an insult. It’s just a dose of candor; welcome to the city of reality. “I Love L.A.” happened to be the right song in the right place at the right time. In the post-Watergate era, candor can be uplifting, especially when delivered with a catchy, hard-driving beat.

None of which is to suggest that I don’t appreciate Stone’s song or his sentiments. I do.

I also appreciate the original lyrics sent to me by Toni Duncan of Hidden Hills, though I’m certain San Franciscans won’t. This is how her Spanish-tinged “Ole L.A. Ole” begins:

Ole L.A. ole,

The envy of the City by the Bay,

Living here is, like, living the free way,

Where everyone relaxes to the max,

And communication is by phone or fax.

I like the way “like” is dropped in there. Very Val-ish.

But I feel obligated to report that Duncan didn’t fax, phone or e-mail me her song. Somebody from the post office delivered it.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at [email protected] Please include a phone number.