Tag Archives: motley crue

Sun Sets on Tower Video

Tower Video - 2012

SUNSET STRIP LANDMARK & EARLY GN’R HAUNT BECOMES RUBBLE

Axl Rose - SlashIconic Sunset Strip landmark Tower Video, the timeless neon-lit hub of hipster activity that was the main spot to head to for concert tickets and music videos, has become a pile of rocks. Earlier this month crews began to deconstruct the famous spot that once employed a pre-rock star Axl Rose as its night manager and Guns N’ Roses bandmate Slash as a counter clerk.

In the fall of 2006, as Internet music piracy and iTunes began to claim their stake on the Net, Towers’ chain of music and video stores filed for bankruptcy after 46 years as the go-to place for discovering exciting new bands and picking up tickets to L.A.’s hottest shows.

Tower Sunset Video Parking LotTower Video was located at 8844 Sunset at Larrabee, across the street from the defunct Tower Records. The split-level video store also served as a concert ticket venue, classical music annex and sold rock novelties. The store’s small back parking lot, where the photo on the left, of Tower Video rubble, was snapped, is the infamous location where Rose once challenged Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil to a fight over some trash talk. The incident sparked the singers’ well-publicized, longstanding feud.

R.I.P. Tower Video.

Check out what remains of the landmark location as it becomes rock and roll rubble.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Classic Metal

L.A.’S ROCKIN’ LANDMARKS: TROPICANA

Bulldozers have been coming uncomfortably close to the huge white skeletal remains of the historic Hollywood rock club Tropicana in the past few weeks. The defunct legendary ’80s club infamously hosted female mud wrestling, championed the local metal scene before the Rolling Stone cover stories and is justifiably immortalized in Motley Crue‘s classic track “Girls, Girls, Girls.” The Tropicana is where Vince Neil said he “lost my heart” The band even posed at the club with some of the wrestlers for the 1987 album’s inside sleeve (below).

Fortunately, the current crop of bulldozers rumbling next to the club’s former location on Western near Fountain are flattening the adjacent empty lot. The old Tropicana haunt looks safe for now, but there’s no word on what’s in store for the future of the empty former heavy metal hot spot.

Slash Shreds On Sunset

Slash

Hometown Heavy Metal Heroes Make a Pitch for the L.A. Dodgers

The L.A. Dodgers tapped a couple of local rock n’ roll heroes to hype the hometown team in the summer of 2010 as part of the baseball club’s “This Is My Town” campaign, which coincided with the launch of the third annual Sunset Strip Music Festival in August. The promotion included billboards scattered throughout the city, including a notable presence on Sunset, and featured the likes of Hollywood bad boys Mötley Crüe, longtime Beverly Hills residents Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and for some unusual reason, Canadian cheeseballs Nickelback.

Guitar hero Slash, a faithful Dodgers fan who rocked the national anthem at a 2009 Dodgers vs Cardinals home game, donned Dodger Blue (a denim shirt, which is close enough) for a billboard near Sunset and La Cienega in West Hollywood.

Crüe bassist-songwriter Nikki Sixx and Poison frontman Bret Michaels were featured in the campaign last year.