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Boom: A Journal of California, 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.

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

October 2012 by Angel City Press.

The Sunset Strip is that 1.7-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard that is now part of the

city of West Hollywood, 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 Los Angeles, 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 nightclubs, rock clubs,

robert landau

Excerpt: Live on the Sunset Strip

The street that made music history

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bars, lounges, comedy clubs, and restaurants. Grizzled

veterans of the film world mingled with newcomers trying

to catch a break. More people could usually be seen walking

the street at night than in the daytime, since traffic would

slow to a crawl after work, and parking was scarce, making

it a hell of a lot easier to get around on foot. Not much has

changed. After the sun goes down in L.A., that hallowed

pavement has, over the years, been navigated by stars,

starlets, gangsters, crooners, hipsters, winos, beatniks,

hippies, teeny boppers, hustlers, rock stars, groupies,

junkies, yuppies, punks, Gen-Xers, rappers, and anyone

else looking for a place to convene with a like spirit.

The mythic Sunset Strip, the Strip of our dreams, lives

on in our fantasies, fueled by fan magazines, pulp novels,

movies, stage productions, blogs, and, of course, television.

In this, its most iconic incarnation, the Strip pulses with

larger-than-life celebrities riding in stretch limousines,

surrounded by their private and public entourages, ever

ready for their big close-up, with paparazzi fighting for the

shot. Being discovered is always just as close as the next

club and the next flirtation.

The myth evolved honestly, honed over time. The

first studios sprouted on Sunset Boulevard as early as

1911, and the clubs and restaurants quickly followed. In

the 1920s, the Russian Eagle nightclub drew the likes of

Rudolf Valentino. When it burned in 1930, La Bohème

replaced it, then evolved into the Cafe Trocadero by 1934.

Owned by Billy Wilkerson, the publisher of the Hollywood

The myth evolved honestly, honed over time.

Billboards on Sunset Strip 1950 at Kings Road.

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Reporter, Trocadero drew an opening night crowd that

included Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Jean Harlow, William

Powell, and other big stars of the day. Through the years,

Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, and others serenaded

patrons, while studio moguls and mobsters engaged in

high-stakes poker games in the backrooms. The Strip’s

status as unincorporated territory between the cities of

Los Angeles and Beverly Hills helped foster an anything-

goes atmosphere, its few cops ready to be bought off, and

laws only there to be broken.

Billboard for Sahara Las Vegas Hotel.

In 1953, the Hotel Sahara in Las Vegas 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-

related projects in Los Angeles. Ladies of Sahara Las Vegas Hotel, 1953.

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Wayne Newton at the Hollywood Bowl 1967 billboard.

Love billboard.

In 1940, Ciro’s was the place to be seen, where clients

such as Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and

Katharine Hepburn dutifully posed for photos that ran in

newspapers and fan magazines the world over. Just down

the street, director Preston Sturges opened the Players

Club and welcomed regulars Greta Garbo, Marlene

Dietrich, and Hedy Lamarr.

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.

By the mid-Fifties, the Strip had lost some of its

luster and drawing power, in large part due to two new

popular phenomena: television and Las Vegas. Television

kept people away from movie theaters and nightclubs

as they increasingly spent nights at home, glued to

their sets. Las Vegas, just a few hours’ drive (and an

even shorter plane flight) from L.A., offered the kind of

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uninhibited adult entertainment that the Sunset Strip

only suggested. Ironically, the Strip’s many billboards

featured airline travel to and from Las Vegas, as well as

its headlining acts such as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis,

Jr., and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Adding further

insult to injury was the popularity of a 1958–1964 TV-

detective series titled 77 Sunset Strip, filmed at the site of

Dean Martin’s real-life nightclub, Dino’s, which glorified

the now-fading boulevard. It became a household word

for faraway television viewers who dreamed of coming to

Hollywood. Ironically, it also kept the locals at home, out

of the restaurants and clubs on the Strip, seated on their

sofas watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and

Edd Byrnes (who inspired—and sang—the Warner Bros.

Records hit single, “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb”)

solve mysteries on the once-glamorous boulevard.

In the Sixties, a youthful and reinvigorated music

scene began to fill the vacuum left on the Strip, adding its

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 Whisky a Go Go opened its doors

at the corner of Sunset and Clark Avenue. Headliner Johnny

Rivers was accompanied by the novelty of mini-skirted go-

go dancers boogalooing overhead in suspended cages. Soon

the new generation of emerging Hollywood stars, including

Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Elizabeth Taylor, Steve

McQueen, and even a few of the Beatles, made headlines

just by showing up to watch and listen. By 1966, the Doors

had become the Whisky’s house band, and Ciro’s reopened

down the street with the Byrds as the main attraction.

Connected by the music that was resounding on the

Strip, young people swarmed the boulevard by night. New

clubs and coffeehouses sprang up to meet the growing

demand. The Sea Witch, the Trip, the London Fog, the

Galaxy, Gazzarri’s, and a bit later on, the Roxy and the

Rainbow Room were alive with kids and music. Pandora’s

Box was among the most notorious. Situated at the east end

of the Strip, the club’s threatened closing in November of

1966, coupled with new curfew rules imposed on the Strip,

triggered the protest and riot that inspired Stephen Stills

of Buffalo Springfield (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-

altering drugs like marijuana and psychedelic substances

The Liberace Show ‘70 billboard.

Paul McCartney billboard above Whiskey a Go-Go, 1970.

Pandora’s Box was among the most notorious.

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such as peyote and LSD increased the schism between the

Establishment and the counterculture in search of alternate

lifestyles and alternate realities. The sexual revolution

of the Sixties also led the youth of the Seventies to seek

an even freer, less-repressed expression of their sexuality.

These factors shaped a new attitude that was expressed in

many ways, but especially in its music, the album covers

and de rigueur billboard designs.

The graphic sensibility associated with the Sixties had

actually taken hold well ahead of eclectic album covers

and splashy Sunset Strip billboards. It began with concert

posters, handbills, and counterculture comic art mostly

emanating from San Francisco, and, to a lesser extent, New

York. Concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and Bill Graham’s

Fillmore West and Fillmore East, and publications such

as Zap Comix, provided platforms for artists including

R. Crumb, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, and the team of

Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly. The style was a psychedelic

blend of dreamlike visions and Art Nouveau-inspired

lettering that created a visual counterpart to the sounds and

moods of popular music. The work of these artists found its

way onto album covers and billboards, but the true legacy

of these artists lies in the overall style they created. Their

style symbolized an era, and still resonates with both an

aging generation of Baby Boomers and with the younger

generations fascinated by the remarkable Sixties. That

style became the basis for the rock ’n’ roll billboards of the

Sunset Strip. b

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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

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 the Rolling

Stones’ 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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