[cheering]
[crowd] Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy!
[reporter] A statue of Lemmy Kilmister
was unveiled last night at The Rainbow Bar & Grill.
The Los Angeles bar's outdoor patio has now been dubbed "Lemmy's Lounge".
[Todd] I just want to welcome everybody here.
[Todd] This is truly an event from the fans.
[Todd] Want to thank Mikeal, the Maglieris here for putting this on, and honoring Lemmy.
[woman] Yeah.
We're here for a very special night,
we're showing tribute to one of our dear friends.
[Mike] Let's open up this statue.
[cheering]
[crowd] Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy!
Lemmy is always here, and now Lemmy is permanently here, not going anywhere.
He's at home here, and they've enshrined it.
[Todd] And this to me is going to be, basically, rock n' roll mecca.
Everybody from rock n' roll's gotta come here one time in their life and pay homage.
[crowd] Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy!
Alright, we are Motörhead. And we are going to kick your ass.
[rock song]
[Steve] It was like a party every night. It was crazy.
It was absolutely insane, I've never seen anything like that.
[Slash] If you were cool, you could get away with anything.
I used to get away with murder in there.
[Mario]I'd see musicians getting head under the table and shit like that.
I said do what the fuck you want, I don't care.
It was bacchanalia.
It was exactly how you'd picture it, times ten.
It was the place to be.
It was the rock n' roll café.
I was here every single night hanging out. All of us were.
You'd see everybody here.
[Mikeal] Slash, Ozzy, Lemmy.
- [Matt] John Bonham. - [Slash] Motley Crue.
- [Ozzy] Keith Moon. - [Steve] Van Halen.
- [Matt] Jimmy Page. - [Mike] Janis Joplin.
- [Mikeal] Jimi Hendrix. - The list goes on and on and on.
Mikeal] It was different then.
[Gene] There was a culture, a glamorous culture,
the likes of which will not happen again.
[Gene]And the watering hole of all of it...
[Matt] The one great hub...
[Mike] The only rock mecca...
[Gene] The church of rock n' roll... The Rainbow.
[Gene] The Rainbow somehow was sort of when the planets line up.
A special place at a special time.
It didn't happen in the Valley, it didn't happen on Ventura Boulevard,
it didn't happen in Iowa or Wyoming.
It happened in Los Angeles. Perfect weather.
And up the hills, everybody lived there.
They all came from all over the world.
And at night they would all come down and celebrate life.
Anything was possible.
My name is Mario Maglieri Sr.,
and I've been here 42 years.
I've fed more musicians you can shake a stick at.
[Mike]My grandpa had a restaurant back in Chicago.
[Mario] Know what, I had rock n' roll in my bar in Chicago
before you ever heard of rock n' roll.
Lots of people have been critical of rock n' roll for a long time,
but if I may say so,
I think for the wrong reason, because they thought it was bad music.
Well, actually, it is worse than that.
As here used it is a cynical, commercial exploitation of the emotions of children.
Rock n' roll music in the United States is dying.
[Mike] One of his partners from the restaurant, Elmer,
was gonna open a business out here.
[Mario]Elmer Valentine, he saw the Whisky in France,
and he brought it to America.
[Mikeal]He went to Europe, and in France saw a club called Whisky A Go Go,
that had these girls standing behind the bar on the ledge dancing.
That's where he came up with the concept of the Go-Go girls.
[Mikeal] So he opened the club January 16, 1964.
When I went there about less than 2 months after it opened,
the guy couldn't run it. They were robbing him blind.
[Mikeal]Elmer had called my Dad and said "Come in and straighten this out."
Yeah, I'll come down there. $200 a week, a lot of money.
My Father came in, to like, reorganize the business and run the business.
I fired everyone in the place,
got all new help, and uh, I straightened it out,
and it became successful the way it is.
[Mario] We had I think three cages of girls dancing on the stage.
And we had more movie stars in there than you could actually count.
Packed house every night. Was like a hang out.
Here he is with a song called 'Going to a Go Go',
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
[girls cheering]
[upbeat music]
We were the first club to integrate that we brought black acts in.
[Mario] Los Angeles, they didn't want blacks in the street,
so I fucked 'em all, I brought 'em all for the whole year.
[Mikeal] Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves, The Temptations, The Tops.
[Mario] You name 'em, I had 'em.
[Mario] He's color, a human being, you know, God put us all here for a reason.
I don't care what color you are.
I don't give a shit.
[announcer]And the visitor to Hollywood soon discovers
that this small town has a wealth of entertainment, but much more.
My Grandpa moved out to be a manager at first,
and you know, eventually over time started buying into the business.
His whole family at that point moved out here.
Everyone, you know, was living in LA.
I was 16 years old when I started at the Whisky A Go Go.
He was a busboy, God, in the 60's at the Whisky.
[Mikeal]I was a kid, he did not want me there,
and I insisted that he bring me in there, that I wanted to come in and work there.
I would come in and work, maybe five, six nights a week,
and I was still going to High School, then College.
But on my nights off I wasn't allowed to go in there.
He did not want me in that environment.
[Mikeal] It was an era of peace and love and free drugs,
and he just didn't want me to become a part of all that.
He thought I'd fall prey, so to speak, of what was going on around me.
I personally had a ball.
[Mikeal]My Father ran the business as far as the nightclub end of it.
The booking was done by Elmer.
[Mario] Johnny Rivers was there for a year.
And then after rock n' roll started in, then we started with rock n' roll.
[Mikeal] The Doors started as the house band.
We're paying them about 50 bucks a week,
a case of beer a night, whatever, just to keep 'em entertained.
[Mikeal] How The Doors got booked in the Whisky to begin with
was Chris Gowdy, who worked in our office as a bookkeeper,
and Charlotte, who's a ticket taker at the front door,
went to a club called The London Fog,
they saw Jim, and they wanted to screw Jim.
That's why they got hired.
[Micky] The Doors opening for Johnny Rivers
and getting booed off on the stage.
♪ Try now we can only lose ♪
♪ And our love become A funeral pyre ♪
♪ Come on baby Light my fire ♪
[Mikeal] They learned their trade. They came and rehearsed all day.
That 'Light My Fire' song that became 12 and a half minutes,
I heard that for two and a half hours at a time.
By the time it came out on the radio and became famous,
I was like, "Oh my God, do I have to hear this again?"
Mother.
♪ I want to fuck you All night, baby ♪
♪ Come on, baby ♪
Turn it off! Turn these fucking--!
Actually when I met Oliver Stone,
this was years later, after he did the movie 'The Doors",
I had to correct him.
Hey, come on, man!
[yelling]
Here's your act right there.
[Mikeal]My Father did not throw Jim out.
Jim had a habit of like kinda dropping his pants.
Now I know today, they wear their pants below their ass,
in those days you didn't do that.
The girls would go crazy in the audience.
And one night in particular,
and this is where the movie got it misinterpreted,
is he decided to do a frontal nudity,
and kind of showed his works onstage.
My Father got so ticked off that he pulled the plug.
Jim jumped off the stage onto the dance floor,
went down the steps of the dance floor, went up on the second landing,
and peed over the balcony.
Literally like, to say screw you back to my Dad for unplugging him.
Went up in the dressing room and hid,
and at two in the morning he came down and apologized to my Dad
and they were back onstage the next night.
[Mario] Jim Morrison used too many drugs.
He was not a bad kid, he was a good kid.
Like I'd tell him "Hey," you know I called 'em names,
"You get out on that stage at 9 o'clock,
not 5, not 5 after, you're not I'll beat the shit outta ya."
The Whisky was the place where the happening acts were happening.
[Steve]If you come out to LA as a band,
you really want that on your resume,
that you've played at the Whisky A Go Go, I mean, it's a big thing.
[Mike] My Dad was 17, 18 years old working in these clubs,
and it's mind-blowing the people he had to have come across.
At the time you're not aware of what's going on around you,
you know, I'm hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee from Love.
[Mike]I mean, just to be sitting at the Whisky
and have someone from The Beatles or have Andy Warhol sitting in there,
I mean that's just, it's unbelievable.
[Mikeal]And I was the busboy for probably six, eight months
and then I was the manager when my Dad wanted to take a night off.
I worked into bartending. I learned the business from the ground up.
Out of College, Law School, everything else I did,
the best education I had was right here on the Sunset Strip.
[Mikeal] Janis Joplin came in, and her name's Pearl by the way,
Janis was her stage name.
And she sat down in the middle booth of the Whisky,
she had like four glasses of Southern Comfort on the rocks,
and on or about her fourth one,
my Dad said put a case of Southern Comfort into Pearls trunk.
She leaves with her manager,
the next morning on the news they said that Janis Joplin had died of alcohol poisoning.
I thought, well, the booze I gave her, I must've killed her.
She had all those drinks, and I mean, I was a kid.
So for like three days, I thought I killed her
until the coroner's report came out and found out she actually OD-ed,
and no, I did not kill Janis Joplin.
[announcer]And here's the world famous Whisky A Go Go on the Strip,
a favorite dancing spot for both the mods and movie stars who want to get it on.
Let's drop in and see what's happening tonight.
[Slash] The Whisky was pretty essential,
it was one of the first great rock n' roll clubs.
[Steve]It's the Old Marquis in London, it's the CBGB of the West Coast,
it's the place that you know everybody's gone through.
You thought it was this big, massive concert hall,
you can't fit more than 200 people inside.
It was just a regular bar with people, and yet anybody who's anybody played there.
[Slash] A lot of great artists over the years, Led Zeppelin.
[Mike] Buffalo Springfield is another big band,
Fleetwood Mac is another big band,
Alice Cooper, you know, all these bands when they were nothing.
When you first start out, and before you figure out your game,
The Whisky's the place to do it.
I cannot tell you how many thousands of people got started on this street.
[Steve]Everybody, they've all done their first tour through the States in clubs,
so they ended up at the Whisky in LA.
The first time we ever played in Los Angeles was at the Whisky,
and there was like a line around the block twice.
[Mikeal] We had opening nights probably two to three times a week with major groups,
and then you always had the house band, Chicago, CTA at that time.
They were, like, I think seven guys
living in a one bedroom apartment on the Hollywood Boulevard.
We didn't have much of anything. I mean we're just trying to survive.
We all lived together in a little house on Holly Drive under the 101
and, you know, coming to the Whiskey to work
was a chance to make some dough to feed ourselves
and to possibly get, you know,
a connection to something even better.
[Robert] We were opening for Velvet Underground,
they were promoting their very famous first album
with the Andy Warhol banana on the cover.
And not only did we, sort of, become the house band,
that would be on the off nights, not the nights when--
- Like the big names. - The big names would come through.
But we did get access to the club during the daytime.
We were in here rehearsing that was to become Chicago Transit Authority,
the first album.
[Lee] This was a sounding ground,
and a place for us to really write and arrange the music
that put us on the map.
♪ As I was walking Down the street one day ♪
Next thing you know, we had record company executives in here
and bidding wars were starting.
And so we wound up acing a deal with Columbia Records,
which started here.
[Slash] West Hollywood's a popular part of LA,
you know obviously you had Tower Records there,
you had a lot of nightclubs around there,
and it just had cemented itself
even before the Whisky as being sort of the entertainment strip.
You know, this is the Whisky on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood.
Palm trees, suntan chicks, and it was just, it was cool.
Sunset Blvd was packed with people strolling,
you know, it was like a party on the sidewalk.
Going to a concert was an event, it was the gathering of the tribes,
and the streets were just filled with really interesting,
attractive, glamorous people.
And you'd just hop from one club to the next, you know,
passing joints and just, "Hey brother, what's happening?"
You'd walk up the street and people would hand you a hit of acid.
[Mario] Every night there was people on the street,
the street was full of young people.
[Mikeal] Just strolling up and down the street you would meet movie stars,
rock stars, everyone.
A wandering band of members of a so-called religious cult with a leader they call Jesus
has had three of its followers arrested
in the investigation of the murder of Sharon Tate and six others.
[Mario] Charles Manson.
The girl called me at home and said there's a guy downstairs,
we're closed, he won't get up.
So I'll be right down there, so I drove down all the way to the Whisky,
and I go downstairs and said "What are you doing here?"
He said "You know who I am?"
I stopped him, "I don't give a fuck who you are, okay?"
"Now you gotta leave or you don't, I'm gonna kick your ass."
He says "I'm Jesus."
I tell him "I'm God, motherfucker, now get up from that chair."
He got up, or I'd of had to beat the shit out of him. Either one.
The Whisky was a club where groups came to see other groups play.
That was a change in time,
and if you give credit to an individual, it'd be my Dad.
He literally came out and stood at the front door of The Rainbow,
so the groups started coming in here to hang out.
The Rainbow was originally the Villa Nova,
which was a famous restaurant in itself.
[Micky]I was here with my parents when it was Villa Nova in the 50's.
[Mikeal]It was loaded with movie stars.
Marilyn Monroe dated Joe Dimaggio in that booth right behind us.
[Ron] I was friends with Tony Curtis.
I believe it was around the time that they were making 'Some Like It Hot',
that Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis would meet here at The Rainbow,
then called the Villa Nova, and have their little liaisons,
and then went out to the bungalows up by the ocean.
She was cheating on Arthur Miller, her playwright husband.
Arthur Miller found out, and wanted to fight with him.
And then it was either the director of 'Some Like It Hot'
broke it up, or Arthur Miller decided it wasn't worth fighting with him.
Tony promised to stop the relationship with Marilyn Monroe,
and they all agreed and shook hands, and that was the end of that.
[Mikeal] The Whisky was a place where groups came to see other groups.
Now the groups were coming up to The Rainbow to hang out, to hang with one another.
[Mikeal] We had a private club upstairs called The Vampires Lair.
The Hollywood Vampires, it was a club of people that just all hung together.
It was Micky Dolenz, and Alice Cooper.
[Mikeal] You had Ringo, John Lennon, these people hung in here all the time.
The Hollywood Vampires were me,
Alice, Harry, Keith, and John, that was kind of the core.
So they were hanging out up there, and then... Oh, I can't look.
Shortly after it opened, we were kind of a drinking men's club,
like you would have in England, you know, call it the Priars or something.
I think maybe it might have had something to do with the fact
that this had such a cool, like private, private, private--
you know, it was tough enough to get downstairs,
you know, and then to get up here, over The Rainbow was like another level,
and then to get up here was basically impossible
unless you were one of those guys.
Every kind of act you could imagine,
every kind of drug you could imagine, probably went through there,
I'm not going to point fingers at anyone.
We were just smoking and drinking and laughing and puking.
There probably wasn't a whole lot of people that even wanted to go up there.
It's like all those weirdoes.
Contrary to a little bit of urban myth,
Alice and I, we were into sports, Harry was a basketball player.
And Alice's idea was to start a softball team
called the Hollywood Vampires.
He got t-shirts made and we would play these charity games,
and we'd go out and raise money and stuff, then we'd come here and get hammered.
[Micky] But The Rainbow is just a great restaurant,
and it got to the point where it was probably
one of the premiere rock places along the Sunset Strip.
[Mikeal] The Rainbow became the home of the moving stars,
where rock stars and musicians and the movie stars came to see one another.
Literally to be seen or to see who's here.
It was more than instantaneous, it was kind of unbelievable.
Gene]Anybody who was in town, whether they were recording or playing a show
would come here.
[James] This was the hub. Main acts would come to LA,
they'd come here on a night off to see what was going on.
Bands who were actually the innovators of all, of all music.
James] The Who, or The Stones.
Well, I met 'em all. I talked to them.
Give 'em booze, whatever they want.
Was it James Brown wouldn't go in any other restroom but here?
[James] You'd never know who you were gonna see.
[Wendy]Zeppelin would come in all the time,
they'd put the big round table in the middle, all of Zeppelin were there.
Deep Purple would come in, The Who, and it was packed,
it was absolutely packed, and it was really a fun different era.
[Mikeal]And it's really a restaurant in a club.
I have a lot of memories of that kitchen.
So busy, all the time.
Always having something to eat, even if you had no money, I mean he would--
Mario was always,
"Eh, pay me later, you know, whatever, I didn't hear anything."
It's not just the location of it, because it's right in the middle of everything,
but the food's really good.
[Ron] They have the best damn soups, the pizzas are notorious,
I always tell my friends you get a Spago steak at a Rainbow price.
[Mario] The steak, you gotta pay 60, 70 dollars for a steak,
I've got the best steak in this city right here.
[Lita] You feel sick, you gotta eat some Rainbow chicken soup.
It's the only way to cure your throat.
My name is Miguel Murillo, and I'm the chef at The Rainbow.
Miguel is a mainstay, without a doubt, he makes sure this place runs right.
[Miguel]I started working here April 1972,
started as a busboy, I'd never cooked before.
He used to clean toilets, now he's the chef.
[Mikeal] Miguel did the movie Up In Smoke, Cheech and Chong used to hang in here.
In fact, Cheech married one of our waitresses.
[man in movie] We smoked this whole lid, man, and I haven't even had a buzz yet.
[Mikeal] We had a French chef that we first opened The Rainbow with
and Miguel watched him prepare the food,
and then with my mother's recipes he incorporated into it
and developed the menu we have.
The consistency is unbelievable,
since I was a kid it tastes exactly the same.
[Mikeal] Miguel's been here 43 years,
we have not one or two, but many long, long time employees.
It's not unusual for someone to be here 25, 30 years.
[Ron] The same chef and the same owner
have been around for about 30, at least 30 some odd years.
It was like, you know, go in the kitchen. It was like your house.
[Mike]I remember being there as a little kid running around,
my whole childhood my Grandfather would work late nights
until three in the morning every night, my Dad same thing.
As kids we didn't go to bed until two, three in the morning,
because it was just what our family was used to.
I made it a family, I want my family. What else you got in life? Nothing.
I took care of my people that came in,
"Hello, how are ya, how's your kids, how's your wife?"
[Ron]It's like that TV show Cheers,
people like to go where everybody knows your name.
[Mikeal]And to this day, we are now 43 years later,
and they are still coming here on a regular basis.
You can come on a Monday or Tuesday, which you wouldn't even expect it,
and you may have five or ten rock stars.
Ozzy's here about three, four times a week.
Lemmy from Motörhead bought a place right down the street so he would be near The Rainbow.
He makes no bones about it, he has to be by The Rainbow.
Lemmy is a God. Lemmy is awesome, he's always been a part of this club,
he loves hanging out at The Rainbow. He's always at The Rainbow.
He's like furniture there, he's always there.
[Mike]People call and they think he owns the place,
you know, I get all these calls, what does Lemmy have to do with The Rainbow,
it's like he just hangs out there.
Lemmy, he still comes here.
Plays the machine on the bar, that's all he does.
But he minds his own business, such a nice guy.
[Steve]He's in front of the machine all the time, drinking his jack and cokes,
and uh, you don't bug him.
[Mike] One of the coolest things about The Rainbow
is celebrities like to hang out there cause they don't get messed with.
People who are famous can hang there and kind of sit in a corner
and keep to themselves, and not get fucked with by every person that walks by.
That guy helped me out in Vegas one time with another joint we had there,
and Lemmy's a good man.
[Mike]He's an amazing guy, he's a great person, and we all adore him.
[Ron]It was the kind of crowd that I liked.
I wasn't really crazy about like the Sky Bar, or the W.
These places struck me as a bit pretentious,
you know, leisure suit attitude, you know sports jackets, it's just, I don't know.
This is rock n' roll. This is as rock n' roll as it gets.
[Gene]A rock star is a peculiar thing,
it's come to mean you're extraordinary.
You can be Bill Clinton, you're a rock star,
or Obama, or whoever it is you think is cool.
You can't say, "See that guy over there, he's a hip-hop star,"
it fucking means nothing.
"That guy over there, he's a country star."
Take your pick, "That guy's a heavy metal star," it means fuck all.
There is only rock, because as much as we love Sinatra, and the Rat Pack,
it's not this thing.
Mom and Dad and outside culture didn't effect it,
so peoples hair grew longer, they wore more flamboyant clothes.
Straight guys like Robert Plant were wearing chick clothing,
and the sort of ambiguous nature of guys moving like girls, and stuff.
It was not judgment, in fact, I don't remember the word gay being uttered.
You just did whatever you wanted to do.
When people say tell us a story, it doesn't have to be sexual,
if it's rock n' roll, it's always about sexual.
If it's country music it's about your beer and your truck or your hog or whatever.
That's why we picked up guitars in the first place.
What do you think, we have some great secret to impart to the world?
I don't look like Bob Dylan, nobody pretends to be that.
We just wanted to get laid.
[Slash] The Rainbow was really a place where rock n' roll musicians
could go and hang out, and just be themselves,
and be able to you know, have a good time.
The kind of good time that a musician wants to have.
You know, the reputation was rock n' roll-- sex, drugs and rock n' roll.
People want to live a kind of a rock n' roll gypsy lifestyle
where you don't have to apologize.
There was even a magazine called Star,
and on the cover of every issue of star were groupies
who would tell their stories of bedding down Robert Plant,
or the Aerosmith guys, or whoever. They were celebrated.
We get to fuck the prettiest boys, you get to smoke the best dope.
You get to meet all the most far out people. It's magic.
You just had to be cool about it. That was the sort of fine line.
[Matt] Once I finally got out of high school in 1978
my first thing to do was to pack up the car and come to Hollywood.
[Steve]It was in the heart of the disco era,
rock was a secondary thing.
The very first night I came out in '77 I came to The Rainbow,
and then I came every night after that for years.
There were all these guys waiting for a chance, going through different bands.
I'm talking about me and Nikki Sixx, Blackie Lawless
and we were all hanging here wondering what was going to happen to us.
[Slash]I was an aspiring rock n' roll musician
and hanging out at all the various clubs in LA,
you know, sort of doing that thing that you do which is going to check out bands,
going to sort of network so to speak.
[Slash]I mean all kinds of interesting stories
about things that have developed at The Rainbow,
from record deals to songs, to bands, members of bands meeting,
I mean all kinds of, you name it, it's happened there.
Rock music in the 80's all came out of The Rainbow and The Whisky.
I was a stalwart at The Rainbow. I have a long history with Mikeal and Mario.
I first met them unbeknownst to them
probably when I was like 15.
I used to make fake IDs and we'd go in there on the weekends.
Mikeal was always hanging around the door.
He finally busted me with my fake ID
and I'd gone down there with Steven
and he was using the fake ID I made for him.
He walked right in, and I got held up.
I was drunk too, and I was pissed, so I went back to my pad,
and I went into my Mom's clothes,
cause it was Tuesday, it was ladies night.
So I went through a bunch of her shit
and I put together this makeshift female sort of get up,
and some make-up and that, and I padded my chest up
and did the whole nine and went back up there and got in.
But then suddenly I realized the grim reality
is that I'm dressed as a girl in The Rainbow. It did work though. I got in.
[Matt] Well, I would probably be breaking the law by saying
the first time I was let in here.
As a musician you could live on a bowl of chicken soup and a loaf of bread
because they always gave you a loaf of bread,
which was like the thing you fill up on
but then you get a little bit of nourishment with it.
It was a big bowl too.
There's so many that literally give credit to my Dad
because yeah, he supported them while they were coming up.
And he always took them under his wing.
If someone came in and it looked like they were down and out on their luck,
or trying to get started, my Dad was always like, here, gotta feed you.
Have a bowl of soup.
[Lita] I met Mario in The Runaways days,
we had an apartment around the corner up here on Clarke street.
And we would come to The Rainbow every night
and Mario would take care of us every night 'cause we didn't have any money.
[Matt] You know, in those days I might have had enough for a beer.
Mario was always very, very cool about it.
He'd hook me up with the next, maybe, even a refill.
You know, I don't know why he was so sweet to me but he was.
And to this day I always thank him for it.
[Lita] Mario really gave us a place to put a roof over our heads.
We were trying to be rock stars, learning,
and reaching out for different people to help us, and Mario was there.
The Runaways had the largest attendance record
in the history of the Whisky a Go Go
that wrapped around The Rainbow four nights in a row.
♪ Can't stay at home Can't stay at school ♪
♪ Old folks say 'You poor little fool' ♪
♪ Down the streets I'm the girl next door ♪
♪ I'm the fox You've been waiting for ♪
♪ Hello, daddy Hello, mom ♪
♪ I'm your C-ch-ch-cherry bomb! ♪
[Mike] Your Grandpa let me in there, he'd buy me a meal, I didn't have any money.
I've seriously heard that story from a thousand different people.
It's me, it's my nature.
I feel sorry for the guy down there,
not the guy up, but the guy down here.
You gotta treat everybody well,
no matter who they are, it don't matter.
Except Manson, he's nuts that guy.
[Matt]Around that period that I came up to Hollywood, you know,
that was the era of Van Halen.
You know, Van Halen got signed out of the Whiskey in the late 70s.
I got to see them do their first album at The Whisky,
and it was insane, I'd never heard of them.
Me and my friends were all into Van Halen
and they were playing, they were doing some release party.
So I come down, I was a little kid,
and there's just thousands of people in the street.
I mean you've never seen so many people in your life
and they're all in front of the Whisky trying to get into the Whisky
to see Van Halen.
And someone announces that the tickets are on sale
at Tower Records down the street,
so everyone runs from The Whisky over to Tower Records
trying to get their tickets, and then some fuck up happened over there,
the tickets end up being sold here.
Sold the 500 tickets in about four seconds, and it was just mayhem.
I mean, the SWAT team, you know,
the whole nine yards was out here protecting the Sunset Blvd from this,
like, potential riot from this Van Halen crowd.
I went up to The Rainbow just to, you know, say hi to my Grandpa and stuff,
and he made me walk Weird Al Yankovich into the show.
So I got to go see Van Halen with Weird Al.
And it was the coolest night ever.
[Steve] When we saw Van Halen take off and it was a local band,
and everybody was aware of who they were, and how good they were.
We knew a door had flung open on that.
I've seen a lot of bands at the Whisky.
But one of the important gigs for as far as The Whisky,
and LA and all that was I saw Motley Crue there.
[reporter]Motley Crue, this leather and chain clad band
pushed their way through the LA club circuit just two years ago.
Now with the release of their second album Shout At The Devil,
Motley Crue has them waiting around the block for hours in the cold and rain.
Motley Crue!
[Steve]A lot of us got record deals.
Quiet Riot, Motley, W.A.S.P., Ratt, Dokken,
that's when we really took over the strip.
It was just crazy here.
From right here at The Rainbow down to the edge of The Whisky corner,
it was just packed.
Get set for three hours of the loudest, rudest,
crudest, heaviest, meanest, music around.
It's time for the Headbangers ball.
It was just total domination on TV, radio, concerts,
everything was dominated from the bands that came from this strip right here.
I think Poison are fucking great!
And there were so many signed bands living here and all friends,
so it was a real, real community and a really cool scene.
I was signed with W.A.S.P. for four years, all the way up to about '87.
We were all touring so much,
we weren't even aware that there was a second wave of metal coming out of LA.
How the fuck are you doing?
Is it fucking hot in this fucking place?
[crowd cheering]
Been a long time.
[screaming unintelligibly]
[reporter] Approximately one year ago,
an LA club band hoping to gain recognition
released their first album Appetite for Destruction.
[music host] They say the stones to the 60's were the kings of their genre.
They say Aerosmith in the 70's was the same thing,
they say in the late 80' going into the 90's it is Guns N' Roses.
[Steve]It was just Guns N' Roses, LA Guns,
Faster Pussycat thing happening and the whole city was buzzing,
and I was fortunate, I got right out of WASP and right into LA Guns.
I just watched that whole thing, that whole second wave take over too,
especially GNR, how big they got.
Axl Rose, he came on stage and he started talking,
he said we played this town in Florida,
and the Mayor said we'll never play there again.
Well he can suck my dick, he grabbed his privates.
[Mike] One of my biggest shows as a kid
was Guns N' Roses and Metallica at the Rose Bowl,
and I run into my Grandpa at like 12 years old,
and he's like, what the fuck are you doing here?
Like the last person you'd think you're run into
at a venue that holds a hundred thousand people is your grandfather.
But that happened.
He's hanging out.
They invited him down, he was there, you know, he had his laminate on,
you know, he was going backstage.
I was trying to go to the bathroom and I ran right into him.
Guns N' Roses was a good show, good group, I like them.
I still like 'em.
[Slash]In the early days of Guns N' Roses,
we used to hang out at The Rainbow all the time.
[Matt] When I joined Guns N' Roses, we always came back here.
You know, we had our booth, which is the corner booth.
Slash's name is on that booth.
We all sat there, but he claimed it.
[Slash] You know the booth thing is just something that materialized,
I don't know if it was intentional.
They just put this one picture of me in the back booth,
and that sort of just turned into, like, Slash's booth somehow.
They probably thought maybe, you know, with all those pizza's and stuff,
maybe it's time to give him some sort of a booth, you know.
[Matt] We always felt protected in our booth
and people didn't really bother us because this was our place.
And Mario, the guys and Mikeal would say, "Hey, this is your home.
You could do whatever you want here.
You want to film a video, do it."
there was no contracts or asking for money, or any of that bullshit.
[Matt] The first video that I performed in with Guns N' Roses
was shot right here at the Roxy with Arnold.
We all sat in here waiting for our scenes to come up
because as you know, filming stuff, you gotta set cameras or lights.
Arnold had a trailer that was parked in the parking lot, we'd all go over there.
I remember we went in there and he's smoking cigars and drinking Goldschlager.
And we all did shots with him.
So by the time we shot the last scene where Arnold comes out of the Roxy
and we're all standing in a line
where it's Slash, me, Duff, Dizzy and Axl,
we'd been in here for about four hours drinking heavily.
So, by the time we got to the film set, if you watch,
we're very wobbly on that last scene, specially Slash.
You know, we shot many videos here.
[Slash] When we shot part of a video called Estranged,
which is one of a three part epic video series
that Guns N' Roses did.
[Mike]I remember going to that,
and that was just amazing to see a video being filmed at our club.
[Slash] And then I gave them a guitar that I threw off a cliff
for the "Don't Cry" video.
That was a good Les Paul too, it went neck first off this cliff,
and it came back in three pieces, and we sort of tied it back together.
[Mikeal] We don't buy any of this memorabilia or the guitars and things,
they're given to us regularly.
Phil Campbell from Motörhead gave me the one that's over my head somewhere here.
That's like a $5000 guitar, but he wanted it to be in The Rainbow.
We got Eddie Van Halen's guitar up there, we've got tons of drum heads.
I mean all sorts of cool memorabilia.
[Ron]And all the pictures on the walls
of all the famous rock stars that have been here or--
I've given them their gold albums.
[Mike]It's a little bit of a museum,
it's like we're the real Hard Rock Café, you know.
[Micky] The story I heard is that the guys who started Hard Rock,
got the idea from The Rainbow.
I would not be surprised.
So Mario, you know, I brought him one of my Guns N' Roses snare drums,
which was like a signature series drum that they made for me,
it says "To Mario and The Rainbow, Matt Sorum, Guns N' fucking Roses".
And Mario says, "Matt, what's with the language?
You know I don't like it when you cuss."
You know, I'm like, "Mario, I mean, we're in The Rainbow, I mean, really?"
He takes a piece of tape and covers up the "fuckin'."
He thought I should be respectful of what's on the wall,
and not everybody wants to see the word "fuckin'," okay?
So, still up there and it still got that old piece of tape
from over twenty years ago.
Are you still doing rock n' roll?
A few heavy metal comedians around.
Yeah, I had a lot of fun with it.
[Ron]I was good friends with Sam Kinison, who came to The Rainbow all the time.
We used to come here, and the funny thing is that Sam would often drink,
and yet we would be called upon to help walk some of the rock stars out the door.
Like Ozzy Osbourne, he'd get a little tipsy.
And then me and Sam Kinison would walk them out to the car.
And it was an honor, here I am with a legend like this,
and I'm helping him walk to his car. Hooking up under his arm.
[doing a raspy voice] "Oh thank you Ron, appreciate it.
Thank you very much, thank you Sam."
And then of course, me and Bill used to help Sam Kinison get to his car.
He had this great car, it was a corvette, it said EX REV,
'cause Sam was a Pentecostal minister in a former life.
Nobody ever helped me out the door and I'm kind of jealous.
- What was Ozzy like? - Oh Ozzy's great, so funny, so mellow,
you know I was expecting, "Ah, you got any bats on you?
Rawr! Can I get some raw meat, you know?"
And he's not like that at all, he's so kind.
You know, he's so British, "Hello, how are you? I've always been afraid to meet you."
That's what he told me.
"I'm afraid to meet you because I heard you were too wild for me to hang out with."
Oh yeah, yeah, great, Ozzy Osbourne's afraid to meet me?
[Mikeal]I can't tell you how many people that my father has lectured on their drug issues.
Of using drugs.
He will turn to customers here that are regular drinkers
still to this day and say "You drink too much."
We sell drinks for a living, okay, he will sit down and tell them "You drink too much."
[Micky] There's a few characters like that in town
who cared about the people that frequented their establishments.
That wasn't uncommon, it is now.
Mario's an exception.
That's why I didn't care so much when my daughter Amy would come around.
Because I knew that there was this
protective almost family thing.
Matt] When I got some success,
I remember my drinking getting a little out of control.
'Cause now I had money to buy beers,
and buy beers for my friends, you know, and do some shots too.
And I remember Mario pulling me aside one night
and he literally gave me that fatherly talk,
because my Dad wasn't around up here in Hollywood.
I was a kid running around on my own, you know.
And he said "Matt, I don't like how you're acting kid,
you're drinking too much."
I was like "Aww, come on, Mario."
"No! Listen to me. I'm telling you you drink too much, simmer down."
And, you know, that really stuck with me, you know, because he--
he was like a father figure to a lot of us who had come to Hollywood,
you know, looking for the dream
and we were away from family and any sort of grounding, you know.
[Slash] Over the years, you know, I had different issues,
and Mario had taken care of me a few times.
He definitely saw where I was at,
and he did give me sort of a speech as to, you know, what the fuck am I doing,
why would I, blah blah blah...
And, you know, and I listened to him within reason.
You know, I took it to heart.
[Mike] The grunge era came in the 90's,
it cut down everybody on the streets,
you know, it wasn't craziness out on the streets in the 90's.
[bearded musician]Because it is more overcast here,
we don't spend 300 days a year playing volleyball like they do down in California.
You tend to spend more time indoors. Whether reading a book, or seeing films.
Or practicing music in your garage.
[Gene] Musical tastes changed,
the glamorous part of the scene came and went.
Once the guys started cutting their hair
and looked like, let me see, are you a Domino's pizza delivery boy?
Do you work for the sanitation department?
Or are you in a band? You're done.
[Mikeal]As far as the flow when it comes to The Rainbow, it kept a consistent thing.
The Rainbow was still kind of catering to the 80's people.
You know, The Rainbow kind of kept that rock n' roll,
that old, you know, 80's rock feel alive.
[Mikeal] But, as far as The Whisky, it definitely affected the business.
The economy changed, and when the economy changed, the industry changed.
You had the record companies that backed every group.
When we threw a party at the Whisky, you had Capitol, you had Atlantic.
You had all these major companies that literally came behind the groups
and backed them up.
The record companies, they weren't throwing out
several thousand dollars a night to promote a new group that was coming out.
[Mike]And back in the late 90's when the record sales started to drop
and music became free,
the bands stopped making money, so the bands stopped touring.
That's when it got bad, and that was my generation.
Money got tight. There were times that it was strained.
[Mike] My grandpa got real sick.
He had cancer, and they had to take him for chemotherapy.
[Mikeal] He had a very rare type of cancer that was in his face.
They actually had to remove his nose at one point.
He had a 10 percent survival rate, well he beat that, he was tough.
[Mike]And my Dad was by his side,
so it was basically my Dad and my Grandpa,
for a long time, were just non-existent.
[Mikeal] When it comes to my son,
at first it was like, you have to cover the business,
you know, you run the weekends and answer the phone.
And I'm actually quite amazed that he picked everything up just like that.
Within two years all of a sudden he's booking groups.
[Mike]I've been around it my whole life, so it was just natural,
I just took over and started doing everything.
No matter what was going on in our personal life,
no matter what was going on at home,
it was like, I couldn't let that effect business.
Like the business needs to go on, this is what we live off of,
the show must go on, literally.
[Mike]I started off, I did all System of a Down's first shows here,
all Hoobastank's first shows,
I was booking Hoobastank for 10 years before they got a record deal.
Linkin Park, I booked those guys for years,
we did Eminem's first LA show.
You know, we heard about this white rapper Eminem,
and it was all the big rage. You know, he wanted fifteen hundred bucks,
we were like, wow that's a lot, but we'll give it a shot.
That show is the first show that Dr. Dre saw him,
and that's when he got signed, right after that show.
Anything out of that late 90's early 2000's generation we helped out,
and we booked all their shows and started them from the ground up.
[Mario]My grandson, thank God he came along,
you know if it weren't for him forget about it, it wouldn't happen.
I'm very proud, proud of the fact that my son was able to take over,
and this kid was born with a silver spoon, or gold spoon in his mouth,
doesn't have to work, didn't have to do anything
and he gets out and works as hard if not harder than I worked.
Day and night.
And that brought a joy to my father, that was his pride, was his grandson.
[Mario]He keeps that place open seven days a week,
when we used to open maybe three, four days a week.
And he knows the music better than my son, probably better than me.
He's a booker, that's what he does.
To me it was never about the partying or about the fun.
Like I'm just a music freak, I love music, I love concerts.
[Mikeal]And now he runs the whole show over there. He runs it all for us.
I don't really have an actual position at either place, I'm just the boss.
I rarely will walk into the Whisky,
and to be quite honest with you I'm at an age where I can't stand the noise.
[Mike]I've had some pretty crazy shows.
I've had some shows where they get pretty violent.
It just depends on the crowd.
I had a friend over at Taang! Records,
he was like, "Oh let's put these British bands,
you know like really just like Oi! type punk rock bands,"
and I mean, this place just broke out into a riot.
There was like skinheads, and the non-skinheads,
they're fighting, I mean you had every type of bad person in the punk rock scene
all at one place at one time, literally just fighting.
Somehow a gunshot went off, the place was berserk,
SWAT team, the barricades, the whole nine yards, I mean it was insane.
Another one, it was like a hardcore show, pretty rough crowd.
These thugs came in and started a big fight.
There's trash cans getting thrown,
people getting the shit kicked out of them.
We had it to the point where all the security guards were inside the club,
and the maniacs were outside.
My sister's husband was just hired as a security guard here.
He doesn't really know how to deal with these situations.
He goes outside, the second he walks out there he gets clipped in the jaw.
And I mean, there's just blood gushing everywhere,
so we go out to help him, he goes around the side trying to help somebody else,
and gets hit again.
Fully destroyed his jaw,
like broken every little piece of his jaw.
And then that was his last day of security.
Um, he sells real estate.
You know. It's a lot calmer of a job.
[Matt] This is tradition at its core, you know.
And thank God, because I'd hate it to fall into somebody else's hands.
[reporter] Sunset Strip as we know it is being stripped away a little bit.
[reporter] You can find construction going up everywhere on the strip.
Developers buying old buildings to replace them with luxury hotels.
[Slash] The Rainbow hasn't changed at all.
[Lita] I came back to Los Angeles,
and I remember walking into The Rainbow after not seeing it for 15 years
and going "It hasn't fucking changed."
[Slash] They've always seemed to keep the integrity of the club intact.
It's so real.
And it has been-- I don't know how they do it.
[Mikeal]It goes back to the atmosphere, you keep that comfortable atmosphere.
This is still the base décor that you see around here from the old Villa Nova.
Finish the booths, or redo the tops of the tables,
but you have to keep it looking the same.
If you change it-- my father taught me that.
If you change it, you'll change the face of the business.
And so people today are still comfortable being here.
[Mike] We want people to feel like they're in rock n' roll.
Now we have a whole revitalization of the 80's rock movement,
and I love the fact that you can go to The Rainbow,
feel the rock vibe, come to the Whisky and see Dokken,
or see Warrant still in this day.
That's what we're going for,
I'm not really a fan of music of today, and where music's going.
♪ I don't care About my make up ♪
Technology is the new crack of music.
It's too easy to press a button and sound better than you normally do.
So almost everybody that gets up on stage,
I'm talking about big bands, are not playing live.
It really isn't this thing of wanting to learn how to play a guitar.
Wanting to master drums, wanting to play bass or sing.
[Slash] It's part and parcel of the digital age
and also the way the record companies
have decided the direction that they've gone.
But I think that the magic that you hear on a record
comes from people really interacting in the same room.
It's not something that you can do from different people's living rooms from a distance.
Having outlets, you know, venues for young bands
to get together and do their thing is essential.
Especially if we're discovering music,
I mean that's an art that is close to dead.
[Micky] I think it's a shame,
it makes it really difficult for new young acts and artists
to get a foot in the door.
[Slash] The music business itself is not catering to rock n' roll at all.
[Micky] I miss those times.
[Slash] You know, as far as rock is concerned, it's not viable to make music.
Here, I'll play a game with you and see if you can answer this question.
From 1958 until 1988
name 100 classic, iconic bands that will stand the test of time.
Let me see, I've got Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones,
Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, in pop and R&B and stuff
you've got The Jackson Five, Michael Jackson, Madonna,
even disco, Donna Summers on that level.
Motown, The Supremes, it all happened at the same time. Okay.
From 1988 until today,
give me 5 bands that will stand the test of time.
It's not on that level.
Good evening, thanks very much for joining us,
the breaking news tonight is sad.
A founding member of one of the most popular music acts of all time has died.
Just 67 years old, and he was quite simply, a rock star.
[reporter] The rock legend David Bowie has died,
he was 69 years of age.
[reporter] Tributes from around the world this morning for Tom Petty,
who died overnight at the age of 66. The legendary rocker--
[reporter]Musician Prince has died at his home in Minneapolis,
he was 57, and had been--
[reporter]Paul Katner, a giant of the 60's music scene has died. He was 74--
[reporter] Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister,
the front man for the heavy metal band Motörhead
has died at the age of 70.
[reporter] Sunset Strip rock club owner Mario Maglieri has died at the age of 93.
[Mikeal] That day I was in such a state of shock, there was--
I mean, just people on top of people,
and literally in a state of shock.
[Wendy]He was the godfather, he was the icon.
And nobody could ever take his place.
He was my hero, my hero.
[Lita] He gave us this block of rock n' roll.
I don't know where we would be without it.
[Wendy] An era is gone.
But Mikeal will carry on and become an icon too I think.
And Mikey, the grandson, he's just amazing.
[Mikeal]I think my son is the future of the club,
and he's done a tremendous job of carrying on that generational thing.
[Mikeal]My two daughters, they keep it strong, keep it alive,
we're a very close knit family.
- She lives across the hall. - She works down at the Whisky.
- She works at the Whisky. - I do.
I worked here for many years. Now I'm raising those cuties.
[Mikeal] Now I have a grandson,
I have another generation that will come into it.
And hopefully he'll be the next one to come through.
I've got a daughter, we're good.
[Matt] The premise of rock n' roll
and the understanding of what the word really means.
Icon, which yeah, eventually will we lose those icons,
are they making any new ones?
And I think that's what Mikeal Jr has holding in his hands.
What kind of entertainment is he gonna bring to Sunset Boulevard
that's gonna say that's the next big thing?
Where's the next Guns N' Roses?
Cause when you look at Guns N' Roses,
it wasn't just a band, it was a cultural shift
of music, fashion, style,
as sense of being of who you were as an individual.
Like The Doors, like Van Halen.
Like any other band that came out of the Sunset Strip.
The one great thing that I learned through rock n' roll
is that something big will happen,
where everyone all of a sudden,
you stop in your tracks and go "Holy shit. Something is exploding."
So if you're a rock n' roll musician, you know the history of rock n' roll,
you know that rock n' roll will never die.
[Ron] The Rainbow is a right of passage for the world of rock n' roll.
This is the strip. This is the home of rock n' roll.
[Slash]I'd hate for that place to go,
it'd just sort of kill what's left
of a really iconic chapter in music history.
[Gene] This thing, this small little place,
just serves burgers and beer and booze and stuff,
but both Whisky and The Rainbow
mean bucketsful for the culture.
[Mikeal] This place still breaks records.
People from all over the world come here just to see it.
Major, major artists, major, major movie stars
still come through here on a regular basis.
[Mike]I don't think rock will ever die,
I don't think the music will ever die so,
The Rainbow and this strip will be here forever as far as I'm concerned.
[Steve] It's not the biggest place, but it's the place.
[Matt]For me it was the greatest time of my life.
Rock n' roll is about celebrating life.
[Mike]I want that feeling to continue on.
I want them all to feel like they can always come back.
This is their home.
It's gonna stay, and it is the history of the Sunset Strip.
[Gene] This classical period, where possibly the best records of all time were made.
[Matt] Being in the atmosphere of Hollywood and creativity of that era.
It was just the coolest feeling and vibe that I ever experienced.
The idea of pursuing your dreams, and that energy.
And I really believe that The Rainbow is the vortex for that energy.
[Gene] This is the history, these are your roots.
The next kid can come in here,
and some old guy like me can sit him down and say
"Listen kid, once upon a time, there was a special place, it was called The Rainbow."
♪♪