2021.08.31 - The First 50 Gigs - Episode 2: Welcome to the Jungle (Part 1) Ft. Laurie Jacobson

“Do you know where you are? You’re in the Jungle baby!” In Episode 2 of the First 50 Gigs, we’re taking you back…all the way back to the origin of the Sunset Strip and answer Axl’s eternal question with Hollywood historian Laurie Jacobson, author of Dishing Hollywood: The Real Scope on Tinseltown’s Most Notorious Scandals

In this episode you’ll:

• Relive the scandalous history that gave rise to the Sunset Strip and how it became a throughway for Hollywood elite to commute from Beverly Hills to Hollywood.

• See the rise of legendary nightclubs on the Strip that showcased the biggest stars of the 20s, 30s, 40’s and 50’s.

• Witness the eventual decline of the Sunset Strip when a new “strip” took its place, Las Vegas, and learn how a new generation of clubs rose from the ashes of Hollywood to birth a new movement in music with the electrification of rock n’ roll.

Subscribe to our Patreon Site to see the video version of this episode and access the deep archive of historical photographs we used to illustrate this story: https://www.patreon.com/first50gigs_gnr



Transcript:

00:01
Give us the origin of the Sunset Strip. It's a street like no other. The ghosts of the past are in every corner. They were walking in the footsteps of history.

00:19
Welcome back to the first 50 gigs, Guns N' Roses, and the making of Appetite for Destruction. Before we take you forward from 1983, we need to take you back, all the way back to the jungle, baby, before it was a jungle, and answer Axel's eternal question, do you know where you are? So for GNR fans, we thought it was important to provide a history of this legendary strip of nightclubs, where GNR played their first 50 gigs, dominated the scene, got discovered,

00:49
and made history. And we're going to do that in two parts. Laurie Jacobson is here today to take us from 1900 to 1960s, when the strip was a showcase for Hollywood stars and starlets. And in part two, Dominic Priori, author of Riot on the Sunset Strip, will take us from 1965 to 1985, when the strip was all about rock.

01:13
Laurie, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for being here. My extreme pleasure. You know, a lot of people have an association of the Sunset Strip as strip joints and drug dens and alleys with homeless, that there's this kind of seedy underbelly. And on top of that underbelly was this renaissance of rock and roll music. And people who know Guns N' Roses videos, they have an idea of how the Sunset Strip is.

01:42
was back then and how they depicted it, but it wasn't always like that. So we'd like you to give us some background. Give us the origin of the Sunset Strip. Absolutely. Well, I had this wonderful uncle, my Uncle Harry, who moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles in 1915. And he said, driving down the strip in the late teens.

02:12
with the overwhelming aroma of orange blossoms was just like nothing else. And of course, as we know, years later, the smell became quite different on the strip. But in the earliest days, it was really farmland. What happened to change that were three Hollywood scandals.

02:40
in the very early 20s. The death of Wallace Reed, who lived on the Sunset Strip, the fatty Arbuckle rape scandal, which never happened, and the murder of a very prominent director named William Desmond Taylor. At that time, the celebrities lived in close to downtown LA, West Adams and that whole area, and they were invaded.

03:08
by the police, by the press. The police wanted the next big one and their privacy went out the window. Mary Pickford and Doug Fairbanks lived in this area far across town. They lived in an old hunting lodge that they were fixing up and the area was called Beverly Hills and it was really not highly populated.

03:35
nor was it more beautiful than any other area. The difference was that it didn't belong to the city of Los Angeles. They had their own mayor, they had their own chamber of commerce of which Doug Fairbanks was the head, and they had their own police force, which for a ticket to your next film or a few bucks,

04:06
Your DUI went unnoticed and you got escorted quietly home. Celebrities began to move in droves to Beverly Hills. For that reason, it was a private enclave and they were protected there. But they still had to go to work in Hollywood. And the only way to get there was across the strip. Now this was another.

04:33
unincorporated area not attached to the city of Los Angeles and it was called the Township of Sherman. Once Beverly Hills took off as a celebrity neighborhood, people became aware that now celebrities and directors and producers and anyone associated really with Hollywood were driving the strip every day. The Sunset Strip became the

05:02
singular route for celebrities to commute to the studios in Hollywood. Therefore, businesses that wanted to attract the attention of these celebrities began springing up on the strip. Certainly eateries were the first to join there, but then hey, there was the ride home after a long day at work and so entertainment.

05:31
became popular and drinks. By the mid-20s, real estate development began in the Sunset Plaza area and up above. So now people are moving to just above the strip. The crowds that it attracts are a more liberal crowd. Certainly the celebrities were more freewheeling than your normal mom and pop.

06:02
and some of them were gay. And so gay clubs sprung up, or places where the gay community could go and not be bothered. And the more money these places began to make, the more the underworld began to be interested in them. There was illegal gambling.

06:31
And with the underworld, you know, they loved being elbow to elbow with the celebrities. And the celebrities were quite fascinated with Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen, who came a little later, and Johnny Rosselli. It was a really interesting time. If you were in New York at this time and you were frequenting the kind of places that you're talking about,

06:58
You would get to know who the family mobs were that were kind of running things in those neighborhoods. So just like New York, was there ethnic mobs, the Italian mobs, the Jewish mobs that also kind of ran that underworld? Mobsters that I'm thinking of were mostly Jewish. Mickey Cohn, of course, and Bugsy Siegel left the Jewish mafia in New York and came out to L.A.

07:31
As we move into the 30s and maybe into the 40s, I would imagine that some of the venues became a showcase where people could be seen by all of these important Hollywood producers and stars that are commuting from Beverly Hills. Studios would send their up and coming starlets with, you know, a studio date on their arm and they would be photographed going into Ciro's.

08:00
in the evening and they would walk through the club, walk right out the back door, get into the studio limo and go home so that they could get up at four o'clock in the morning and go to work the next day. But it was, you know, it was a major place to be seen. Now, if it wasn't happening there, that the night you were there, you could walk down the street to the Macombo.

08:30
or the Trocadero, which were almost right next door to one another and see what was going on there. They all had a different theme. The Trocadero had a French theme. The Macombo was wild with a live aviary in the center. Not only were celebrities going to all of these places, but since they were walking, all the tourists.

08:59
wanted to walk down the street and see Judy Garland, Hal Jolson, Sinatra, whoever might be walking to the next club. So it was a really, really exciting 1.7 miles. That's a whole length of the Sunset Strip. So it was really very easy to spot a celebrity while you're simply out for a stroll.

09:25
And I would say that tradition continued into the mid-80s. A lot of the people that we've interviewed for this project talk about, okay, they were 16, 17, maybe they were 20. And the idea was to get into the bars and to be a part of the scene. But they also described this vibrant scene outside of the clubs. And that was really the place to be, was the scene outside of the clubs. The tradition that you're describing carried forward. Yes, yes.

09:54
Absolutely. Now so people are coming to the strip, they're drinking, maybe they don't want to drive home. So hotels start springing up. Certainly brothels started springing up. That was another thing, stumble out of.

10:14
Searows and you could go right next door, you know, to a favorite hangout of, say, Errol Flynn's or Barrymore's. Barrymore lived, had a small house for a while across the street from Searows, which later became a restaurant that used his name, which later became the House of Blues. That's the other thing. Everything on the Strip was something.

10:43
A lot of people think, oh, a brand new club with a brand new name. It was a club before that, and it was a club before that. So what were the big clubs at that time? You mentioned Ciro's, which what were the other ones? Well, the three biggies were Ciro's, the Macombo and the Trocadero. Gosh, you could stop in there after hours and Judy Garland would be.

11:08
just singing her lungs out, because those people were in the audience and they had a couple drinks and, you know, hey, there were no cell phones, there were no cameras, there was no paparazzi, you know. I mean, it's true. What went on in these places after hours was a great show as well.

11:33
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11:48
You mentioned there were some brothels that cropped up and there was, you know, things could have easily gotten out of hand with all the drinking. And there was probably some some lawlessness. And you talked about this kind of mob underground. So how did the township of Sherman deal with lawlessness at that time? I think they probably made a lot of money under the table. You know, once again, it was a sheriff's office.

12:17
It wasn't the LAPD. They were easily bought, I'm sure. They only really had to put their foot down when there was like the occasional shootout. Yeah, so it sounds like even though the township of Sherman where the Sunset Strip was located, even though it was in Los Angeles, it was really still like a Wild West outpost. There was a very famous shootout.

12:45
at Crescent Heights and Sunset. They were aiming for Mickey Cone, but they missed him. I think they winged a bodyguard and they shot some poor woman in the ass, a reporter. So some great stories. That's crazy. You were saying that it kind of started to come to an end when World War II arrived. You know, these clubs opened their doors to any guy in uniform.

13:14
You know, there were tons of sailors and many of them got blazing drunk, couldn't hold their liquor, couldn't believe who they were seeing. Many guys got discovered that way too. Agents, like a good looking guy in uniform and how'd you like to be in the movies. The Hollywood Canteen, which was a club for servicemen run by celebrities where you could go and dance with.

13:45
Zsa Zsa or Ava or Marlena, they worked there. The bartenders were, you know, Danny K and Sinatra and Dino and you know, if you were sending these guys off to war and you knew that some of them weren't gonna come back, the celebrities were extremely generous with their time and sometimes with more than their time. But it did change the scene.

14:14
And then something happened after the war that changed the scene further. And that was the advent of television.

14:26
In Hollywood, it was a big deal. Hey, you can see Frank Sinatra on TV now. You didn't have to go to Ciro's and pay their high cover and their two drink minimum. So these clubs languished and eventually closed. It sounds like the center of entertainment shifted to the living room. And while convenience was gained.

14:56
We lost something very precious. The clubs had another challenge as well, Las Vegas. These smaller clubs could not begin to compete with the big salaries that these huge casinos were paying their entertainment. Sinatra didn't go to the strip anymore.

15:19
You know, he was playing the Sands, making money hand over fist. These little clubs could not compete with that either. So between TV and Las Vegas, it was really the death knell for the most glamorous age that Hollywood has ever known. Now these clubs were empty and club owners had to come up with something to fill them.

15:48
and what was happening in the early 50s, folk music.

15:57
So Searows is empty. It becomes this place called, of all things, the living room. And you could go there and hear folk singers. The Ashgrove opened on Melrose, where the improv is today. The Beat Generation was what was happening in the 50s. You know, you've got the Beatniks coming to the living room. They don't have money. They want poetry.

16:29
So it was a much quieter scene. Out of folk music in the 50s, you know, there's so many groups in the 60s that were considered rock and roll, but really came out of folk. The birds, I think is one. The mamas and papas, art galleries opened, coffee houses were big.

16:55
Celebrities had always lived in Laurel Canyon, but now it started to take on a real music vibe where you could wander down to the strip and go to a coffee house and hear somebody sing. So slowly that scene turned into rock and roll.

17:28
So it's interesting because the strip lost Hollywood celebrities and their Bacchanalian lifestyle to Vegas. But the arts remained and this shift into the 1950s and into the 1960s, music started to replace the old Hollywood acts and became somewhat of a coffee culture.

17:58
and somewhat of a counterculture. So when the people who hung out on the strip began to change, and they were more, you know, tattered and torn, then it was so completely different from what had been there a generation earlier, that the people who performed on the strip...

18:23
in the 40s and 50s were now driving the strip in the 60s to see all these weird people hanging out on the strip. People in togas, you had Hare Krishnas in long trails of people banging drums, and you had kids starting to run away to the strip. They heard about living the life.

18:52
For a while, it was a beautiful scene. They looked weird, but they took care of each other. But as more and more kids came to the strip, it became seedy. Couches that were in the lobbies of hotels were being stolen. And when there are homeless kids, there are people that come to prey upon them.

19:21
And so there were pimps and drug dealers. After a year or so became a pretty ugly mess.

19:33
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19:52
You know, you touch on something that's very interesting because if you flash forward in time 25 years and you have members of Guns N' Roses, Axel and Izzy came from Indiana to the Sunset Strip and Saul Hudson, who became Slash, ran around unsupervised and kind of just left his home and Stephen left his home. And so that idea of going to the strip

20:21
as a young person to make it in the arts in some way, that wasn't just some random place and time when the musicians who became Guns N' Roses actually did that. This is rooted in tradition that goes back to the 60s. I had never seen so many people on the street in my life. Just hundreds and hundreds of kids.

20:51
walking the street, you know, the fashions, the styles, barefoot, beaded, bra-less, looking like Jesus. It was a carnival, okay? It was an absolute carnival. And people running up to your car and banging on the windows. And I was scared. I was fascinated. It was a world unto itself. And I could not wait to move.

21:20
to Los Angeles and be part of that. That was amazing to me. It took you an hour now to drive that 1.7 miles from Crescent Heights to Doheny. And so the businesses began to complain. People can't come to my restaurant because they can't get down the damn street. You know, and there's nowhere to park and they're afraid of all these kids on the street.

21:49
So they called on the township of Sherman, you gotta do something about this. So they find this old curfew law that says everybody under 18 must be in by 10 p.m. And they were gonna clear the streets that way. Good luck with that. Yeah, yeah, that was not popular and it led to what we call the riots on the Sunset Strip.

22:16
which originated in front of Pandora's Box. And one of the things I love about the riots was that they happened over two weekends. You know, it wasn't something that broke out and lasted for days on end. You know, it was the weekend when most of these kids weren't in school and could come down and protest this curfew law. It was an amazing scene.

22:46
The kids win, but the scene quieted down somewhat after that.

22:56
So it sounds like the riots on Sunset Strip was this defining moment that really launched a new era on the Strip as it relates to rock and roll. Would you characterize the riots on the Sunset Strip as a turning point or not? 1966 and the riots were absolutely a turning point. I mean, the following year you have the Summer of Love. So there was no stopping rock and roll. So, Lori.

23:25
There's also this other element I don't think we touched on. In addition to this kind of counterculture movement that was happening on the strip, there was also the electrification of music that drove people maybe out of the Laurel Canyon type of scenes and back into the clubs. Yes, the birds going electric was a famous moment. And did this give rise to new clubs? Everything on the strip.

23:55
was something before. So when you say, did new clubs open? Yes, but they had been clubs before that. As you move more into the 80s, and you had Johnny Depp's Viper Room, in the 70s when I moved to LA, that was a place called Filthy McNasty's. The strip was populated with some

24:23
wonderful characters that can never, never be repeated. And prior to Filthy owning that club, it was a sort of like a barbershop quartet type of music place. So that's one of the things that I love about the strip because the ghosts of the past are in every corner of every club.

24:53
I was a cocktail waitress at the Comedy Store, which was Ciro's, and then the living room, and then Kaleidoscope, and later the Comedy Store in the 70s. And literally that place was haunted from the basement to the attic. We saw ghosts there all the time, and weird shit happened there all the time.

25:20
And I feel that about so many other places on the strip. You know, when Axel's singing his heart out at the whiskey, you know, the ghost of Jim Morrison is watching from the balcony. And that's what made the groups want to play those places. The doors were the house band at the whiskey. That alone makes you wanna say, I played the whiskey too. I played the troubadour too.

25:50
I played Ghazaris, I played London Fog, I went on stage at the Comedy Store, where Richard Pryor and Robin Williams, and prior to that, where Sammy Davis performed. That's the allure, I think, of playing these clubs that have been made famous by the prior generations. And the story continues, and that's what I love about the strip, the story.

26:19
continues and it slides into despair and it rises again like a phoenix. It's a street like no other. I dare you to come up with another street with this kind of history.

26:40
So when Guns N' Roses are making their way up the Sunset Strip food chain at the time that they were rising and creating a following, they were literally writing the spirit of those who came before them. Absolutely. They were walking in the footsteps of history. Lori, this has been an amazing look back at the history of the Sunset Strip. We really, really...

27:09
appreciate your knowledge and your experience and just the colorful characters and places that you've introduced us to today. And we're going to pick up your story in around 1965, probably just when the riots break out. And we're going to learn from Dominic how rock and roll took a place on this trip and defined it for the next 20 to 25 years. Wow, great. Can't wait to hear Dominic.

27:43
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the first 50 gigs, Guns N' Roses, and the making of Appetite for Destruction. To watch the video podcast, access bonus episodes and galleries, and buy show merchandise, join our growing community on Patreon, and subscribe.

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