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.