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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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