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Home , 77 Sunset Strip, Edd Byrnes, Roger Smith (actor), Sunset Strip, Trocadero (Los Angeles), Whisky a Go Go

robert landau Excerpt: Live on the

The street that made music history

Robert Landau’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip was published in

October 2012 by Angel City Press. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

The Sunset Strip is that 1.7-mile stretch of that is now part of the city of West , connecting Hollywood on the east (where funky Laurel Canyon descends to Sunset and meets Crescent Heights) with Beverly Hills to the west (where Doheny Road climbs to the posh mansions of 90210-land). There are actually many Sunset Strips—versions that live in real time and space, and versions that live in our collective fantasy. The actual landscape of the Strip is typical of , featuring buildings of every imaginable architectural style, a look captured perfectly by artist Ed Ruscha in his 1966 book Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Outdoor advertising permeates the vista, ready to capture the attention of the steady stream of eyeballs that comes with continuously heavy traffic. Billboards of varying sizes are sandwiched between and above colorful hotels, restaurants, offices, gas stations, sleazy strip malls, and trendy retail shops. Now, thanks to digital technology, billboards engulf entire buildings and cover whole city buses, adding even more visual congestion to an already over- saturated urban scene. By day, the Sunset Strip was where the business of the music industry was conducted in the Sixties and Seventies. Both high-rise luxury offices and older, cottage-style buildings have long housed record companies, producers, talent scouts, business managers, personal managers, public relations executives, advertising agencies, design firms, and even a few film, photo, and recording studios. Deals have been struck and contracts inked at any number of casual or swank restaurants, or inside the lobbies and suites of elegant old hotels. Songs first performed at Sunset Strip clubs could have been discovered, recorded, packaged, promoted, and sold all on the same street, all in a relatively short period of time. By night, the Strip was, and still is, Hollywood’s playground, where the entertainment industry came to party and see or be seen at , rock clubs,

Boom: A Journal of , Vol. 2, Number 4, pps 79–86. ISSN 2153-8018, electronic ISSN 2153-764X. © 2013 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/boom.2012.2.4.79.

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Billboards on Sunset Strip 1950 at Kings Road.

bars, lounges, comedy clubs, and restaurants. Grizzled larger-than-life celebrities riding in stretch limousines, veterans of the film world mingled with newcomers trying surrounded by their private and public entourages, ever to catch a break. More people could usually be seen walking ready for their big close-up, with paparazzi fighting for the the street at night than in the daytime, since traffic would shot. Being discovered is always just as close as the next slow to a crawl after work, and parking was scarce, making club and the next flirtation. it a hell of a lot easier to get around on foot. Not much has The myth evolved honestly, honed over time. The changed. After the sun goes down in L.A., that hallowed first studios sprouted on Sunset Boulevard as early as pavement has, over the years, been navigated by stars, 1911, and the clubs and restaurants quickly followed. In starlets, gangsters, crooners, hipsters, winos, beatniks, the 1920s, the Russian Eagle drew the likes of , teeny boppers, hustlers, rock stars, groupies, Rudolf Valentino. When it burned in 1930, La Bohème junkies, yuppies, punks, Gen-Xers, rappers, and anyone replaced it, then evolved into the Cafe by 1934. else looking for a place to convene with a like spirit. Owned by Billy Wilkerson, the publisher of the Hollywood The mythic Sunset Strip, the Strip of our dreams, lives on in our fantasies, fueled by fan magazines, pulp novels, The myth evolved movies, stage productions, blogs, and, of course, television. In this, its most iconic incarnation, the Strip pulses with honestly, honed over time.

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Boom0204_09.indd 80 12/24/12 4:30 PM In 1953, the Hotel Sahara in literally created a splash on the Sunset Strip when its Foster and Kleiser billboard included an actual swimming pool, filled with water and stocked with in-the-flesh bathing beauties. Intrigued passers-by stopped their cars to gawk and take photos. The local press played up the story, especially when comedic actor Red Skelton, who was scheduled to appear at the Hotel Sahara, showed up at the site and jumped into the pool fully clothed. The clever publicity stunt not only caught the eye of the public and the press, but also of other Hollywood publicity hounds. The Strip was fast becoming

the place to promote Vegas acts and other entertainment- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 related projects in Los Angeles. Ladies of Sahara Las Vegas Hotel, 1953.

Reporter, Trocadero drew an opening night crowd that high-stakes poker games in the backrooms. The Strip’s included , , , William status as unincorporated territory between the cities of Powell, and other big stars of the day. Through the years, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills helped foster an anything- Nat King Cole, , and others serenaded goes atmosphere, its few cops ready to be bought off, and patrons, while studio moguls and mobsters engaged in laws only there to be broken.

Billboard for Sahara Las Vegas Hotel.

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Love billboard.

In 1940, Ciro’s was the place to be seen, where clients By the mid-Fifties, the Strip had lost some of its such as , Jimmy Stewart, , and luster and drawing power, in large part due to two new Katharine Hepburn dutifully posed for photos that ran in popular phenomena: television and Las Vegas. Television newspapers and fan magazines the world over. Just down kept people away from movie theaters and nightclubs the street, director Preston Sturges opened the Players as they increasingly spent nights at home, glued to Club and welcomed regulars Greta Garbo, Marlene their sets. Las Vegas, just a few hours’ drive (and an Dietrich, and Hedy Lamarr. even shorter plane flight) from L.A., offered the kind of The Garden of Allah apartments at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights housed writers including Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, all drawn to Hollywood to make big money as scriptwriters. Schwab’s Pharmacy was just a short walk away, and was known as a popular hangout where hopeful young actors and actresses could rub shoulders with the really big stars while waiting to be discovered. As reels of American films traveled to movie houses around the world, an ever-growing global press focused its attention on the doings of celebrities, making the Sunset Strip an international symbol of the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood nightlife. Wayne Newton at the 1967 billboard.

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energy through the onslaught of rock ’n’ roll. A few weeks before the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, the iconic opened its doors The Liberace Show ‘70 billboard. at the corner of Sunset and Clark Avenue. Headliner was accompanied by the novelty of mini-skirted go- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 uninhibited adult entertainment that the Sunset Strip go dancers boogalooing overhead in suspended cages. Soon only suggested. Ironically, the Strip’s many billboards the new generation of emerging Hollywood stars, including featured airline travel to and from Las Vegas, as well as Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Elizabeth Taylor, Steve its headlining acts such as , Sammy Davis, McQueen, and even a few of the Beatles, made headlines Jr., and and Jerry Lewis. Adding further just by showing up to watch and listen. By 1966, insult to injury was the popularity of a 1958–1964 TV- had become the Whisky’s house band, and Ciro’s reopened detective series titled , filmed at the site of down the street with as the main attraction. Dean Martin’s real-life nightclub, Dino’s, which glorified Connected by the music that was resounding on the the now-fading boulevard. It became a household word Strip, young people swarmed the boulevard by night. New for faraway television viewers who dreamed of coming to clubs and coffeehouses sprang up to meet the growing Hollywood. Ironically, it also kept the locals at home, out demand. The Sea Witch, the Trip, the , the of the restaurants and clubs on the Strip, seated on their Galaxy, Gazzarri’s, and a bit later on, the Roxy and the sofas watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., , and Rainbow Room were alive with kids and music. Pandora’s (who inspired—and sang—the Warner Bros. Box was among the most notorious. Situated at the east end Records hit single, “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb”) of the Strip, the club’s threatened closing in November of solve mysteries on the once-glamorous boulevard. 1966, coupled with new curfew rules imposed on the Strip, In the Sixties, a youthful and reinvigorated music triggered the protest and riot that inspired Stephen Stills scene began to fill the vacuum left on the Strip, adding its of (and later Crosby, Stills & Nash) to write the popular song “For What It’s Worth.” That song became a major radio hit and something of an anthem for young people all over the country who felt alienated by the restrictions of existing societal norms and the ever-widening gap between their parents’ generation and their own. By the early Seventies, the gap between the generations had hardened into an “us versus them” mentality, and Free Speech Movement-activist Jack Weinberg’s 1964 slogan “don’t trust anyone over thirty” became a mantra. Unsolved political assassinations, unresolved racial and social injustices, and the lingering Vietnam War were major divisive issues. Access to and widespread use of mind- Paul McCartney billboard above Whiskey a Go-Go, 1970. altering drugs like marijuana and psychedelic substances

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Boom0204_09.indd 83 12/24/12 4:30 PM such as peyote and LSD increased the schism between the and Fillmore East, and publications such Establishment and the counterculture in search of alternate as Zap Comix, provided platforms for artists including lifestyles and alternate realities. The sexual revolution R. Crumb, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, and the team of of the Sixties also led the youth of the Seventies to seek Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly. The style was a psychedelic an even freer, less-repressed expression of their sexuality. blend of dreamlike visions and Art Nouveau-inspired These factors shaped a new attitude that was expressed in lettering that created a visual counterpart to the sounds and many ways, but especially in its music, the album covers moods of popular music. The work of these artists found its and de rigueur billboard designs. way onto album covers and billboards, but the true legacy The graphic sensibility associated with the Sixties had of these artists lies in the overall style they created. Their actually taken hold well ahead of eclectic album covers style symbolized an era, and still resonates with both an and splashy Sunset Strip billboards. It began with concert aging generation of Baby Boomers and with the younger posters, handbills, and counterculture comic art mostly generations fascinated by the remarkable Sixties. That Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 emanating from San Francisco, and, to a lesser extent, New style became the basis for the rock ’n’ roll billboards of the York. Concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and Bill Graham’s Sunset Strip. b

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Boom0204_09.indd 84 12/24/12 4:30 PM TOWER RECORDS

THE HEART OF THE STRIP

Tower Records didn’t require its employees to maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary music, but many of the salespeople who worked there in the Seventies did. It was probably osmosis at work. Located at Horn Avenue, directly at the geographic and spiritual heart of the Strip, Tower Records was much more than a record store. It was a destination in and of itself where customers—fans, musicians, songwriters, record executives, locals, rock stars and wannabee stars—could easily wile away hours, surrounded by the sounds they loved. Midway between the Continental Hyatt House (known as Riot House by the renegade bands who made it their L.A. home) and most of the key Strip nightclubs, Tower Records was the place to buy music. The large, open-space interior of the building felt like a library dedicated to music. But, instead of quiet, the latest newly released records blared over the customers who filled the aisles, searching for albums from the overstuffed racks. Sections of Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 the store were dedicated to different genres of music as well as hard-to-find, imported products by obscure foreign groups. A separate section was dedicated to audio cassettes, a mid-Sixties music format whose popularity soared with the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1979. Tower became such a rockers’ scene that at one point the owner was forced to open a second location across the street just to sell classical music to a more genteel set of consumers. At rock central, near the front entrance and checkout counter, stood low tables with large piles of the newest and most popular albums. Smaller piles of giveaway promo posters and alternative press publications like the L.A. Free Press stood nearby, with freestanding racks containing music publications like Rolling Stone, Creem, and Crawdaddy for sale. Three- dimensional in-store displays for hot new rock albums competed for space where buyers queued to pay. The new albums, those being played on FM radio stations, were mounted and displayed on the back wall, facing out so the album’s front was clearly visible. The end result was a world of album covers, posters, and displays—a mass of rock ’n’ roll art. But at least there was a method to it, and a semblance of order. The exterior of the store was a whole other matter. Since other popular buildings in L.A. were great examples of programmatic architecture (consider the Tail o’ the Pup hotdog stand in the shape of a giant frankfurter in a bun or the Capitol Records tower that references a stack of records with a needle ready to play them), it would follow that Tower Records should have had an imaginative building too. Instead, it was a boring, low-slung horizontal building that could be easily overlooked. No matter—Tower was never overlooked. Below the huge red-on-yellow sign that ran the length of the store, the structure came to life, plastered with signage, with so many posters that the record store itself resembled a giant music billboard gone amok. Every available inch of the exterior was covered with promotional signage for the music sold within. Rows of crudely painted signs—basically, enlarged square reproductions of the latest albums—lined the outside of the store’s windows nearly preventing daylight from entering the store. Unlike the larger, more professional billboards installed on the boulevard by major advertising companies, these mini-boards felt as though they were knocked out as quickly and cheaply as possible, but were nonetheless effective. And huge posters were affixed to the back of another building behind the store. More signs were hung on the walls of the parking lot, light poles, and anywhere else they might fit. When an act’s budget allowed for extra expenditure, the crowds came to view the extravaganza, like when ’ Steel Wheels album made its debut at Tower with four large inflatable figures on the scene. Tower Records on the Sunset Strip was a spinoff of a record store started in 1960 in Sacramento by Russell Solomon, who named it for the nearby Tower Bridge. Solomon opened Tower stores in San Francisco and New York, as well as major cities around the world, but the fame of the Sunset Strip store, opened in 1971, was unparalleled. The store on the Strip closed in 2006 when Tower, like so many independent music stores, went bankrupt. But its legendary status as the sanctuary of rock ’n’ roll lives on.

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Love Storm billboard.

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