Jimi Hendrix jammed with the in-house bands. Janis Joplin downed
her last bottle of Southern Comfort there before she died.
It’s where The Doors had their monumental beginning.
When the Whisky a Go-Go opened its doors in 1964, it had the
trappings of a Parisian discotheque, complete with female DJs
spinning in cages suspended above the stage. The concept of go-go
dancing was founded when a female DJ wearing a short skirt started
dancing during Johnny Rivers’ set, the first live act
showcased at the Whisky.
The club served as the headlining venue for arguably the most
influential acts of the 1960s, adding to the neon energy on the
Sunset Strip. Going to the Whisky meant experiencing the social
decadence of the time. Playing at the Whisky meant making it big,
becoming part of a musical tradition of revolutionary change that
was associated with the era.
This tradition continued through to the following decades,
though not as forcefully, when the club highlighted the punk
movement by featuring bands such as X and The Ramones. Metal
entered the Sunset Strip in the ’80s with Guns N’ Roses
and Metallica, and even grunge trickled in with Soundgarden in the
early ’90s.
While the Whisky has escalated itself to the status of an
official landmark of the city of West Hollywood, things have
changed, and drastically so.
The venue that The Doors once performed at now offers Wild
Child, a Doors tribute band, and much of the current wave of new
music has relocated further east to Silverlake clubs such as the
Echo and Spaceland. The Sunset Strip appears to be losing its
luster.
“It’s still a melting pot for all the diversity of
music,” said Gena Penney, the Whisky’s booking agent.
“It’s a staple in the name of music, and it always has
been. But we don’t let just anybody play anymore because they
have to have a draw, and they actually have to sound halfway
decent. If the band does not have a draw, the Whisky does not have
a place for you.”
After encountering problems with the fallout from the first wave
of punk in the late ’70s and almost being burned down to the
ground, the Whisky imposed different policies upon its reopening in
1982. Along with the rest of the Sunset Strip, it has imposed a
strict pay-to-play policy, which draws mostly hardcore and metal
bands to the venue.
“The Whisky is a pre-sell club, and it’s not a bad
thing,” said Tisa Mylar, the general manager of the Whisky,
whose family founded and owns the venue. “It’s been
labeled badly, but a lot of the bands that come here get such a
great deal, and they can charge their friends more for the tickets
they have to sell. They can make money on it, so it’s a way
that a band can get paid if they do it the right way.”
Some up-and-coming bands don’t agree, however. The Grizzly
Peak, a five-piece UCLA-based band with roots in college funk and
reggae rock, got its start playing shows on campus and recently
started gigging in the greater Los Angeles area. They currently
have a Friday-night residency at the Westwood Brewing Company.
“We haven’t bothered to play at the Strip,”
said Will Hauser, the group’s guitar player and a fourth-year
psychology student. “We try to stay away from those
pay-to-play-type venues. It’s a lot of work for us and
it’s a big hassle. It’s something that bands that have
a little bit more distribution or (are) a little bit more
well-known can get away with, but it’s hard when you’re
a full-time student. We don’t have the time and the effort to
go out and hustle people we don’t know about coming to our
show.”
The Big Pianist and The G Strings … and Ben is another band
that formed at UCLA and is trying to find gigs on the Strip. They
have a show scheduled at the Viper Room on Dec. 6.
“We’re really going to try to promote outside of our
group of friends for this Viper Room show,” said Ryan Groves,
lead singer, pianist and guitarist of the band. “People tend
to know the Viper Room and want to go there regardless. Having a
promoter really facilitates the process. Otherwise we’d have
to go to clubs and promote ourselves, and we don’t even have
a demo, which most venues on Sunset require.”
In fact, it’s not just college-based bands that have a
difficult time in the area. Since the Whisky’s roots include
punk and grunge, it is a logical extension for the club to be a
showcase for the present-day genres heavily influenced by those
styles ““ metal, nu metal, and hardcore.
The disparity between these limited musical categories and the
burgeoning independent music scene leads directly to many
up-and-coming bands resorting to smaller venues in the areas where
their styles of music are more popular.
“Of course, the alternative Los Feliz scene doesn’t
come out to Hollywood much,” Penney said. “They have
their own venues, anyway. They think they’re rock stars of
their own little areas. So why ““ if you can sell out a small
club like Spaceland ““ why would you want to go to a big club
when you’re going to feel like a little fish in a big
pond?”
Silverlake and Echo Park, areas inhabited by a collective of
artists and musicians who have flocked there because of cheap
living and smaller venues such as Spaceland, the Echo and the
Silverlake Lounge, have become supportive hosts to the Los Angeles
music scene.
“We don’t do anything like the Roxy and the Whisky
and the Viper Room,” said Liz Garo, booking agent for the
Echo. “They’re all in Hollywood; we’re on the
East Side. We’re worlds apart. Geographically, the way we do
shows, the way we book bands ““ we’re very
artist-friendly. We don’t do bands that have to do
pay-to-play. When you have bands pay to play, you’re getting
a different caliber of a band. The goal is that we produce shows
with talent that we think is credible and creative and is worth
seeing and paying attention to.”
Talents featured at these venues have ranged from successful
touring acts to local groups. Over the last decade, bands
performing at Spaceland alone have included Beck, The Arcade Fire,
and Elliott Smith, a former Silverlake resident.
The Echo has seen everything from the prog-influenced Appleseed
Cast to electronic acts such as Caribou and the hip-hop
instrumentalist Daedalus.
The Silverlake clubs also offer residencies to bands that
typically run for four Monday nights in a row. Lion Fever, who
opened for The Kills on tour, has a January residency at the Echo
next year.
Silverlake, along with its venues, is beginning to exemplify an
eclectic mesh of fresh new independent acts that could very well be
representative of this decade.
“Do I think we’re the new Whisky?” Garo said.
“No, we just happen to be on Sunset Boulevard and we’re
in Echo Park. Do the Echo and Spaceland book young, smart, talented
bands? We do. If that turns into a scene, that’s great. If
some of those bands want to become huge, that’s great
too.”
The begging question seems to be what will happen to the
longer-standing Sunset Strip landmark of the Los Angeles music
scene.
“The Whisky has been here 41 years,” Mylar said.
“I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere
fast.”
While the Whisky may still be standing, its fancy cages have
dropped, and there are no more go-go dancers. Unless hardcore and
nu metal make their long-standing mark, the Whisky and other Sunset
Strip venues may have to find a new scene to introduce to music
fans.
But regardless of whether the independent music scene central to
Silverlake will outlast the Whisky, the black doors of the former
psychedelic shrine will be hard to miss on the way down Sunset,
retaining the shadows of musical change it has hosted for over four
decades.