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There's
good news for rock historians on the Sunset Strip these days: The Whisky
a Go-Go, the most celebrated L.A. Strip nightclub, is back in business
after being closed for two years.
At the moment. it's only open three nights a week, as a dance disco,
but old timers might remember that the Whisky was also a dance club
for a spell in the early '70s before Johnny Rivers moved in and kicked
off a star-studded two decades of live music.
And the Whisky's management already has found itself unable to break
at least some tradition. "We wanted to change the name to W.A.G.G.,"
says Joe Larson, who deejays the Friday and Saturday dance nights with
partner John Dunn. "But nobody bought it. They still called it
the Whisky a Go-Go, so that's what it is."
While the club has a new, mostly high-tech interior, its walls are covered
with huge blowups of pages from old calendars listing all the bands
that have played the club: Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin,
Cream and hundreds of others. "For now, we're strictly a dance
club," says Larson, who once performed at the Whisky as singer
for the Grass Roots. "But, eventually, we hope to get back to presenting
and breaking some live bands."
That will please people like Saul Davis, who manages Whisky veterans,
the Textones, Phil Seymour and Go-Go Kathy Valentine. "It's great
that the club is back in business because it's a good place to hear
music and because, historically, it's important," Davis says. "But
if it's just reopening so that people can dance to Culture Club and
Wham records, then it's totally useless. I'm glad it's open, but I'll
be happier if it starts presenting live acts again."
According to Larson, heavy metal bands are the only local outfits that
are currently profitable in rooms the size of the Whisky or Roxy. "If
that changes, we'll certainly be interested in booking live performances,"
he says. Band manager Davis contends that the club could be profitable
now: "It's a matter of good management and an aggressive booking
policy. But most people I know feel that it'll happen."
The Whisky closed its doors in September, 1982. At the time, owners
Lou Adler and Elmer Valentine had no definite plans for the building
at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and San Vicente Boulevard. It wasn't
until recently, says Larson, that the decision came to reopen the building.
"When the Randy Newman Show "Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong"
started playing the Roxy, they realized the Whisky was just sitting
empty down the street," he says. "John and I had been presenting
dance night at the Roxy in the summer, so we just moved on over."
The club reopened a month ago with little advertising, drawing on the
clientele Larson and Dunn already had. Since then, Larson says, they've
been attracting a different kind of customer. "Lots of people come
by and poke their head in the door just to see the place again,"
he says. "They'll look around and say, 'The deejay booth used to
be there, the ramp was over there, and in that corner were the cages
for the Go-Go dancers'.........."
"Larson says that soon they'll begin operating six nights a week
for dancing. They've already expanded from two to three nights with
the addition of ex-Fake Club deejay Paul Fortune in Thursdays. At the
moment, the reopened Whisky must tread gingerly until it learns more
about the politics of the newly-formed City of West Hollywood. "We
have to be careful not to annoy our neighbors right now," says
Larson. "But a lot of what we do depends on the West Hollywood
charter. It's possible that we'll be able to stay open until 6 am, which
I'd love to do."
"We don't have any definite plans........but we'll be able to do
lots of things. The room is the same -- only the wallpaper has changed."
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