Toasting 25 Years at the WHISKY
L.A. Times - March 13,1989

OWNERS RECALL GLORY DAYS OF FAMOUS CLUB

Before there was a rock 'n' roll heaven, the Whisky-A-Go-Go had a hell of a band. There were times during the psychedelic '60s on Sunset Boulevard when Whisky owners Elmer Valentine and Mario Maglieri had Jim Morrison and the Doors as a house band and headliners like Janis Joplin; and Jimi Hendrix was just a nice quiet guy who dropped by to jam.

Inspired by discotheques he had seen in Paris, that featured go-go girls dancing in cages, Valentine opened the Whisky in the winter of 1964 in an old three-story bank at 8901 Sunset at the corner of Clark Street.

The young Southern rocker Johnny Rivers was the opening act and recorded the historic album "Johnny Rivers Live at the Whisky-A-Go-Go" a record whose enthusiastic audience of 150 or so Whisky patrons had to troop dutifully over to a recording studio two weeks later to redub and enhance their own "live" crowd sounds.

Today, 25 years later, unknown groups such as Funhouse, Black Cherry, Rock Dolls and Skin Tight Skin are paying promoters to get them on-stage at the Whisky on its "No Bozo Monday" showcase evenings and other nights of the week in the hope that they'll become the next Van Halen or Guns N' Roses or X or Ratt, who were all launched in recent years by the club.

Meanwhile, Mario Maglieri, a tough ex-Chicago cop with a soft heart for hard rockers, is observing the Whisky's 25th anniversary year by recuperating from his second coronary.

"It's the pressure from the kids," Maglieri chuckles gruffly about his recent heart attack. "But me retire? Are you serious? I love doing what I'm doing. I love the kids. I love all the young people. I talk to them everyday. They hug you like they really mean it. They're just good kids."

Maglieri and Valentine - together with record producer Lou Adler, who produced the Rivers album and who joined them as a partner in the mid-'70s - own the Whisky, along with the Roxy and the Rainbow rock clubs. But Maglieri is still fond of the Whisky.

He remembers Janis Joplin as a "raunchy broad. But she was a good kid. She meant well. Three days before she died, we sat in a booth and she asked for a Southern Comfort. She had this raspy voice and she was stoned and drunk. The girl brought over a glass of Southern Comfort and Janis said, "I wanted a (expletive deleted) bottle of Southern Comfort."

"She was a broad that broad, but she was a great girl. I loved her." Maglieri says, laughing.

Jim Morrison , the boozing Byronic lyrisist and leather Lizard King leader of the Doors, was "just a mixed-up kid, but a good kid. I kicked his ass off-stage (when) he screwed around. He would never show up on time. But he was a good kid. He meant well. I tried to straighten him out. I saved his ass so many times."

Guitarist Jimi Henrix never played the Whisky as an act, Maglieri said, but he would show up unexpectedly to jam with performers such as Paul Butterfield. Maglieri's head still rings with the music of Buffalo Springfield, Humble Pie, Three Dog Night, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Beach Boys and Chicago, which also put in a long stint as a Whisky house band.

Rock 'n' roll will never die, but by 1971, Jim and Janis and Jimi had succumbed to drugs and drink before they were 30, and the Whisky had closed down for a few months following a $100,000 fire caused, Maglieri says, by a careless smoker.

In the '70s and '80s the Whisky opened and closed a couple of times, first as a records-only disco, then again as a club for live bands. Now, instead of paying for big acts, the Whisky leases to rock promoters who charge new bands for the chance to play and gain exposure, a practice Maglieri dislikes but sees as necessary.

Occasionally a big name such as Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones will hold a private party at the Whisky to inaugurate a new album, but most of the Whisky's glory days, for the time being at least, are behind it.

Still, Valentine, Maglieri and the old Whisky-A-Go-Go remain legendary among L.A. musicians. Len Fagan, entertainment director for the rival Coconut Teaszer club and a longtime L.A. drummer, will never forget his first night at the Whisky during its early French disco-nouveau days when the Doors were still playing a cubbyhole next door called Sneaky Pete's. Fagan, then 17 and making $10 a night at a small club down the block, was standing outside the Whisky one rainy, cold night, straining to hear Moby Grape or Janis or somebody perforning inside. Suddenly, 20 feet away, he heard Maglieri's voice bellow, "Hey, you! What's the matter? Ain't you got any money? "No." Fagan answered, scared to death. "Then get inside." Maglieri ordered.

"It was just a beautiful thing" recalls Fagan, who eventually drummed for a Whisky house band. "Mario did all the announcing himself. He'd introduce you with, 'And now, ladies and gentlemen, four bums you've been waiting for.' But the beautiful thing was that he did it lovingly, and the next time on stage he'd say, 'Give an especially nice welcome to four great guys who have got a great future in front of them.' He was just a wonderful man."

The avuncular Maglieri counseled Whisky musicians on marriage or drug abuse, and sat them down for a proper meal when they dragged in after days on the road.

Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Traffic, Arthur Lee and Love, the Young Rascals \ and other major bands got a boost from the Whisky, Fagan says, while celebrities like Steve McQueen would dance the night away. "Anybody who got a shot at being the house band there was instantly put in the limelight back then. The Whisky was the must-stay place."

The Whisky, Ciro's (now the Comedy Store) and the Trip (now the Playboy Building) - and maybe Bill Gazzari's - were the big showcases in those fabulously freaky days of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitability and the Velvet Underground, when Elvis the King himself would drive up and down the Strip tossing out $100 bills and Frank Zappa's groupie GTO's - Girls Together Outrageously - were making the club scene.

"I learned such a lot from Mario and Elmer," says Fagan, "not only how to treat artists, but how to run a club."

The Whisky today is managed by Mario Maglieri's second cousin Louie "the Lip" Maglieri. There is a big portrait of Jim Morrison behind the bar. Enshrined up on the third floor is an old off-its-hinges bathroom door that the Whisky's light man, a 30 year old guy named Relaxin' Jackson, swears on a stack of Holy Bibles is the bathroom door from the Door's old recording studio.

"Jim Morrison took a shower behind that door," Relaxin' Jackson swears solemnly.

The waitresses dress in early Madonna Tough Pop-art black toreador pants and zippered decolletage. The main room is basic black, as are most of the clothes and leather jackets on the kids who pour into the Whisky to hear groups such as Lickety Split, Screamin' Mimi, Faith No More, Breakfast w/Amy and God Sent Humans.

And if a group called Toad and the Wet Sprockets - four young rockers dressed in plaid shirts like Larry, Darryl and Darryl of the "Newhart" TV show - have to apologize that they don't know the middle part of their encore number - hey, it's okay. Like Mario says, they're good kids. They mean well.