Mikael Maglieri

About a year after my family had moved out of Chicago, my father got a call one day from Elmer Valentine, the guy who started the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. Elmer knew my dad from our Chicago days when my dad owned several restaurants and bars there. Elmer said to my dad, “They’re robbing me blind, come help me out.” That was around 1965, and after that call, my dad became the manager of the Whisky. In 1972, my dad became a co-owner of the Rainbow Bar & Grill down the street with Elmer, Lou Adler, and some others in the music industry. At one point, my dad was a co-owner of the Roxy Theatre too. Slowly but surely, my family became the sole owners of the Whisky and the Rainbow. 
       I have fifty-three years of history on the Sunset Strip. At about sixteen years old, I started busing tables five nights a week at the Whisky. It was the hippie era of peace, love, and drugs. My job included delivering food and whatever the groups wanted, either backstage or wherever they were. I’ll never forget the night in 1970 when my dad told me to take a case of Southern Comfort from our inventory and put it into the trunk of Janis Joplin’s car. The next day, I heard on the news that Janis died the night before of alcohol poisoning. For three or four days I thought I killed her—until it came out that she actually ODed [overdosed] from drugs. 
        By the time I was seventeen, I was already manager of the Whisky. That was kind of funny because my older brother worked at the Whisky and I was his boss. I had finished high school early, went to law school, and became a stockbroker. For a while, I left the Whisky and ended up owning my own real estate company, which is how my family acquired the Whisky and the Rainbow. My dad used to literally take people that hung out at the Whisky and bring them over to the Rainbow to eat. A lot of people came to the Rainbow because they knew they wouldn’t be disturbed: Barbra Streisand, Elvis, Madonna. You name it. It has become home to a lot of people—some even come for lunch every day. During the Jewish holidays, people buy buckets of the Rainbow’s chicken soup and then go home and act like they made it themselves. The soup is actually my mother Scarlett’s recipe.
        So many people came through the Whisky who were just starting out their musical careers. My family helped make many of them successful and we enjoyed their success at the same time. We were the first club in town to bring in Black acts—we supported Motown, Smokey [Robinson], the Temptations, the Four Tops—all these people. I’m still friends with Smokey to this day. Who else started here? Led Zeppelin, the Kinks. Van Halen, the Doors, and Chicago. The Doors became our house band for six months. Even though they weren’t that good, our ticket taker and office girl fell in love with Jim Morrison at the London Fog, a club nearby. When they came back to the Whisky, they made us book the Doors—and that kicked off their career. The group Chicago also became our house band, and that led to their first record deal after one customer who heard them at the Whisky invited them to play at a bar mitzvah party. They met the head of a record label at the party, and after that, their career took off.
        I remember in the years before Cityhood, I was standing in front of the Whisky and looking up and down the street and saw strip clubs everywhere. There was Big Al’s, the Classic Cat, and of course, the Body Shop. Filthy McNasty’s was a few doors up from the Whisky. It wasn’t a strip club, but they put dancing girls up on the stage, which was the same idea. McNasty’s became the Viper Room. In those years, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was under the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor’s jurisdiction, and they never busted people who brought drugs into the clubs. Things were willy-nilly then. Little by little, the Sunset Strip changed when West Hollywood incorporated.
        During the Cityhood campaign, I didn’t pick a side. It didn’t matter to me if we were part of Los Angeles County or the City of West Hollywood. I knew things would have been easier for my businesses if West Hollywood had stayed unincorporated because I wouldn’t have had any rules or regulations to follow. Now, there are things that I appreciate about West Hollywood becoming its own city. For example, the City made a concentrated effort to keep the streets cleaner than the county did—and the streets became cleaner. City inspectors actually started checking to make sure that things were up to code. When City code enforcement came by and told me I couldn’t put 40-foot statues out on the street, I was actually glad they did. I can only imagine what would have happened if one of them had fallen over because of a big wind.
       All this hasn’t helped me to make changes to the Whisky and Rainbow—like putting in an outdoor bar—because the City is oddly shaped—like a handgun—and part of my business is in West Hollywood, and the back of the Whisky and my office at the Rainbow are actually in the City of Los Angeles. It’s hard to follow the municipal codes that are different in each city. And since Cityhood, the Sheriff’s Department has paid attention because the West Hollywood City Council controls its budget. Just the other day, the Los Angeles County Fire Department [whose budget is also controlled by the City Council] was here and told me my emergency lights were out upstairs. If they hadn’t done the inspection, I wouldn’t have known. I mean, how can you fault somebody for telling you to fix something that would protect the public?
        In the first few years after Cityhood, the City Council realized that the Sunset Strip was their entertainment mecca, and it helped promote the industry. I started going to different City meetings to show support. I went to speak about the original Sunset Specific Plan in the late 1980s, early ’90s, and saw the strip clubs start disappearing and more places for entertainment opening. When residents complained about the music clubs being noisy, I informed the City Council that the problem isn’t inside the clubs; it’s the people who can’t get into the clubs that are throwing beer bongs in the neighborhoods, urinating on people’s lawns, and littering. 
        I think the City is monumental. It has been able to survive all these years and go through many changes—kind of the same way the Whisky has. In the 1960s and into the 1970s, people would sit down and watch the show at the Whisky. Then we had the disco era with Donna Summer and the Whisky became famous for the disco ball in the middle of the room. Today, I think the Whisky has become the third most photographed corner in Southern California.
        The Sunset Strip itself has gone through lots of changes too—from a hippie-dippy hangout to a bunch of rock and roll clubs and restaurants, to now becoming hotel row. I think building more hotels on the Strip is going to benefit me—business brings business. My dad taught me that one. He really helped shape the Sunset Strip. And my father, my son, and I had a great impact, a positive impact, on the entertainment and the music industry. One of my daughters works at the box office of the Whisky and the other helps with bookkeeping. I’m sixty-eight now, so my son has taken over running the business where I left off, just like I took over where my father left off. It is the natural progression of things.