Ignored             Obscured              Restored

For half a century, California has existed in pop music less as a state than as a state of mind.  Its beaches and boulevards, its sunsets and smog, have been filtered through songs that promise escape, reinvention, and occasionally disappointment.  Three of the most evocative entries in this canon — Joni Mitchell’s California (1971), Led Zeppelin’s Going to California (1971), and the Mamas & the Papas’ California Dreamin’ (1965) — illustrate just how elastic that golden state could be in the musical imagination.

Each song is rooted in longing, but the kind of longing changes with the artist.  For John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, California was a sun-drenched fantasy when they were shivering in New York.  For Led Zeppelin, it was a mystical quest across the Atlantic, a countercultural Eden that shimmered from afar.  For Joni Mitchell, it was something more personal — a home she missed while wandering Europe.  Together, these three songs sketch a shifting map of California in the late ’60s and early ’70s, tracing the arc from communal dream to personal refuge.

Released in 1965, “California Dreamin’” was born of cold Manhattan sidewalks. John Phillips, trudging through winter with Michelle, imagined the Pacific coast as the antidote to frozen streets and urban gloom.  The song’s yearning is immediate: “

All the leaves are brown,

and the sky is grey  

Within seconds, we’re transported into a daydream of warmth and liberation.

Musically, it carried the polish of LA’s burgeoning folk-pop scene, thanks in no small part to producer Lou Adler and the Wrecking Crew session musicians.  The flute solo — played by Bud Shank, a jazz man drafted into the pop world — adds a wistful, almost cinematic shimmer.  And those harmonies!  The Mamas and the Papas were never tighter than on this record, with Denny Doherty’s tenor cutting through and Cass Elliot’s warmth anchoring the sound.

But listen closely and you hear something bittersweet.  For all its imagery of sun and freedom, “California Dreamin’” isn’t sung from the beaches — it’s sung from exile. It’s about being somewhere you don’t want to be, imagining California as salvation.  That tension — between the dull grind of reality and the bright fantasy of escape — gave the song its enduring pull.

By 1971, the dream had become myth.  Led Zeppelin, already kings of electric thunder, downshifted into fragile acoustic textures for “Going to California,” a highlight of Led Zeppelin IV.  With mandolin and acoustic guitar intertwining, the band spun a ballad of longing that felt out of step with their swaggering reputation.

Here, California is imagined as a mystical sanctuary, where “a woman out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair” waits.  It’s no coincidence that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page wrote the song under the influence of Laurel Canyon’s folk goddess — Joni Mitchell herself.  Plant would later admit that Mitchell was the inspiration, and the song can be heard as both pilgrimage and love letter.

The perspective is masculine, even quest-like: a British troubadour voyaging west in search of peace, romance, maybe even salvation.  Plant’s vocal is fragile; a sense of wonder not found in Zeppelin’s heavier catalog.  In this acoustic hush, California becomes mythic—less a place on the map than an imagined Shangri-La.

Joni Mitchell’s own “California”, also from 1971, provides the counterpoint.  Written while she was abroad in Europe – “sitting in a park in Paris, France” — the song is a letter home, playful and intimate.  Where Zeppelin dream of California as a destination, Mitchell sings of it as an anchor, a place she belongs.

The genius of Blue lies in its confessional immediacy, and “California” is no exception.  Mitchell catalogues her travels — Spain, France, Greece — then punctuates them with a refrain of yearning:

Oh, it gets so lonely

When you’re walking

And the streets are full of strangers

The melody skips and dances, propelled by James Taylor’s guitar and Mitchell’s unmistakable phrasing.

California here isn’t fantasy or myth; it’s home.  Not just the physical place, but the psychic ground zero of Mitchell’s creative self.  While Zeppelin were mythologizing her from afar, Mitchell was reminding us that California could be just as flawed and human as the people who called it home.

Taken together, these three songs chart California’s evolution in the popular imagination.  The Mamas & the Papas gave us the dream, all soft-focus harmonies and wide-eyed yearning.  Zeppelin gave us the myth, a British fantasia of flower children and sunlit freedom.  Mitchell grounded it in reality — a homecoming sung with both longing and clear-eyed intimacy.

What they share is the recognition that California was more than geography.  It was promise, myth, and muse.  For some, it was an escape; for others, a dream; for Mitchell, a home to miss.

In the end, these songs don’t describe the same California at all.  They describe three different versions of it, refracted through different eyes at different cultural moments.  But that’s the point: California has always been less about where you are than about what you long for.

Enjoy… until next week.