“Livin’ in L.A. is so much-a … fffuuuun!” screeched Taime Downe, an outsider teen from Seattle who’d journeyed to Hollywood, remade himself as the platinum-maned, leather-and-lace-wrapped gypsy-god leader of Faster Pussycat, and summarily guzzled down all the women and booze the Sunset Strip could throw at him. It’s a tale as old as time immemorial—or at least the 1960s, when the Whisky opened its doors, followed by the Roxy, Gazzarri’s, the Rainbow, and the Starwood. By the mid ’80s, all these clubs, along with the storied Troubadour, once a folkie hangout where James Taylor and Joni Mitchell rubbed shoulders, were catering to the throngs of hard rock fans and aspiring musicians who could not resist the gravitational pull of the Sunset Strip.
If life in Hollywood was frequently depicted as one big party (if it’s Tuesday night in L.A., we suggest heading south on La Cienega to Taime and Riki Rachtman’s “world-famous” Cathouse), that’s because, for a lot of bands, it was. “It’s a time that’ll never happen again, in the history of music. It was just unadulterated fun. X-rated Disneyland, you know?” recalls Warrant’s Joey Allen.
Nowhere was this more evident than in Penelope Spheeris’ 1988 documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, which captured the scene’s winners and losers—and, in some cases, winners that sure looked a lot like losers—in stark reality. “It was kind of exaggerated and put a big exclamation point on some of the debauchery of the time,” says Janet Gardner, whose all-female outfit, Vixen, were one of the up-and-coming acts presented alongside more established artists like Kiss, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and Poison, who were still buzzing from the massive success of their debut album. “There were some people looking like buffoons, but it did capture some rock ’n’ roll attitude, for sure.”
If partying came with the territory, most bands, regardless of their locale, were just as gung-ho when it came to the cutthroat business of booking the best gigs, securing the most fans, and grabbing the attention of the record labels who could make their rock dreams come true. “It was dog-eat-dog,” says Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan.
The primary form of hand-to-hand combat in L.A. involved posting and passing out flyers for your gig. Bands would print up hundreds, thousands, and sometimes even tens of thousands of flyers for a single show and carpet-bomb Sunset Boulevard with them, often ripping down and papering over one another’s handiwork. By sunrise on a Saturday or Sunday morning, the sidewalks and streets of the Strip could resemble a paper-strewn, postapocalyptic war zone. “It was before the internet so that’s how you did it,” says Jetboy’s Mickey Finn. “You went out there, you plastered.”