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Archive for the 'Riot House Redux' Category
More Riot House Memories
Saturday, August 18th, 2007
Tiger Michiels—a member of the family dynasty that’s run the Sunset Strip’s esteemed Almor Wine and Spirits for three generations—writes:
Your Requiem for the Riot House sent me off into my archives to retrieve a few memories in the gray matter and actual memorabilia.
In 1973, when leaving the Hyatt one morning I picked up [a] broken Moet et Chandon, Cuvee Dom Perignon Champagne bottle, Vintage 1961 [pictured, above]. Could Led Zeppelin have thrown this one over the balcony? Or was it one of the Beatles? Maybe I did it! Sorry, I can’t remember.
The top was broken off but the bottom survived the fall. I used a glass cutter to clean up the jagged edges and voila, one expensive flower pot.
Over two decades I attended many [Riot House] parties. Prior to midnight, we would make deliveries to keep the party going. After midnight I would get invited to hang around—after all, I had the keys to a liquor store, on the Sunset Strip!
Got your own Riot House stories? Yes, you do, and it’s time to share them. Email me (click the CONTACT button at right) and include photos, incriminating or otherwise.
You Can Check Out Any Time You Like…
Monday, August 6th, 2007
My item on the Riot House got a big response, with links from WorldHum and LAObserved. Got a Riot House story you want to share with the world? Email me at michael@laurelcanyonthebook.com and I’ll post.
For further edification…
The DVD of “Almost Famous” offers what is probably the most authentic representation of the hotel during its days of infamy; director Cameron Crowe had the film’s set dressers painstakingly remake the lobby to match the hotel’s ‘72-vintage decor (above) and digitally “rebuilt” the porte-cochere for a gorgeous nighttime establishing shot.
Also the dismal end-of-tour party in “This is Spinal Tap” was shot on location at the hotel’s rooftop pool.
Among the hotel’s many idiosyncrasies was the long-term residency of Little Richard.
As WorldHum’s Jim Benning recalled…
I once met Little Richard at the Riot House while doing a story about the sculpting of him for the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park. It was the mid-’90s, when he lived there. They took measurements. Little Richard, it turns out, has a very large cranium!
The Riot House staff were nothing if not unflappable. As Neal Doughty, pianist in REO Speedwagon—perhaps the ultimate American road band of the 1970s—recalled in LAUREL CANYON:
The Hyatt House was one of those places that had a rather tolerant attitude towards groups like us. One night we got crazy and threw a chair out the window. Ten seconds later we got a call from the desk. All they said was, ‘Did you at least look first’?
Finally, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of Kiss, under pressure from Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart to “write an anthem” for the band, composed the group’s signature “Rock and Roll All Nite” at the Riot House.
Top that for a recommendation, Zagat Guide.
Requiem for the Riot House
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
Alas, the last bastions of incivility are disappearing from of one of traveling rock and roll’s mightiest icons—the Hyatt West Hollywood, nee Riot House.
The textured concrete balconies (above) from which Led Zeppelin and entourage hurled bottles of Dom Perignon, Zeppelin drummer John Bonham teetered and singer Robert Plant brayed “I’m a golden god!” (immortalized in Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’) are being ripped out like so many meth-rotted teeth as part of a $24 million renovation of the property, opened in 1958 as the Gene Autry Hotel and the first high-rise on the Sunset Strip.
According to the chain’s official flackage, the “Hyatt’s notorious balconies will be removed and replaced by a stunning translucent glass finish.” Once enclosed the balconies will become an “urban sanctuary” with “spectacular floor-to-ceiling view[s] of the Los Angeles Basin” separated by a “luxurious blackout curtain.”
It’s something when the Hyatt mothership feels compelled to acknowledge that one of its prime properties is possessed of a less than exemplary past, but the Riot House’s scuzzy pedigree is by now so well traveled that there’s no point in denying it even at the corporate level.
When the chain last upgraded the hotel it took the heartening step of designating the Zeppelin-defiled 11th floor as a sort of rock and roll shrine, outfitting the rooms with custom decor and stereos and even promoting it with a bizarre press event.
Now, it seems Hyatt is finally hoovering the last metaphorical flakes of coke from the hotel’s image. From the flackage:
The designer, Hal Goldstein of architectural firm Janson Goldstein, is bringing his modernist approach to [the] Hyatt and will set a new standard for West Hollywood hotels. Past clients include Salvatore Ferragamo, Burberry, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and Coty…
Back in the day, when the Dom bottles and occasional color TV rained from the Riot House’s balconies and exploded on Sunset, the clientele didn’t need a “luxurious blackout curtain” to achieve oblivion nor did they ever doubt they had arrived at an “urban sanctuary”—the ‘ludes and groupies saw to that.
And while the hotel’s new transluscent glass finish—already the defining aestheic of the former Playboy tower and other facelifted Sunset Strip landmarks—will no doubt look “stunning,” it’s always mournful when another little piece of L.A.’s anarchic rock and roll heart is taken away.