Ry Cooder: Rock'n'Roll Outlaw

TO MOST VISITORS and residents, Santa Monica is Los Angeles-on-sea, a breezy, oceanside reprieve from the bad air, nose-to-tail buildings and car-choked "boulevards" that sprawl 30 miles inland as far as the Mojave desert. With its bland seafront of modern condominiums and chain hotels, curiously set off by an old-fashioned pier with a funfair, Santa Monica is cool only in the climatic sense, and it doesn't house many of LA's star entertainers. They prefer to hang with its beachy neighbours, scruffy boho Venice to the south and swanky Malibu up the Pacific Coast Highway to the north.