THE SUNSET MARQUIS HOTEL IS SORT OF MY HAVEN, MY SPIRITUAL home in a way. It’s my favorite hotel in the world. It doesn’t really look like a hotel. It’s nestled there in West Hollywood, kind of out of the way of everything.
I started staying there in the nineties. The place had all these great Jim Marshall photographs up everywhere; Jim Marshall was a rock-and-roll photographer who took all these famous, iconic pictures of people like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Janis Joplin, the Stones, and just about everybody else. He’s the one who took that amazing black-and-white picture of Johnny Cash shooting the finger.
The bar at the Sunset Marquis was called the Whiskey Bar, which we used to close down on a regular basis. The guy who ran the bar, Wendell (he’s since passed away), was a great dude. It was like hanging out at your own house, in your own living room. Everybody came there. The place is a little more tame these days because I think everything is in some ways. The eighties and nineties and into the early 2000s when I stayed there, it was pretty wide-open.
The waitresses at the Whiskey Bar all wore these catsuits, and on a scale of one to ten, they were all ten-plus. Sometimes at the end of the night Wendell would just close the bar and lock the door and I’d sit there talking to him for hours. Maybe a couple of the waitresses would stick around while they were cleaning up. We just had an amazing time.
Dwight wanted to make a video and write a song about the Sunset Marquis. The video would start with this limousine pulling up, and then you’d see these boots getting out of the limousine. The camera would stay on the boots, and in the frame you would see a bag swinging along. The camera would follow the boots as they walked into a hallway, across a marble floor, and up to a desk, where they would stop. Then you’d hear a woman say, “Welcome back, Mr. Thornton.” The camera would pan up, and you’d see the bag in my hand and me standing there checking into the Sunset Marquis again.
The standard joke is that every time I would get a divorce I would stay at the Sunset Marquis (that is to say, pretty often). In the beginning, I used to go there just to hang out with people, so a lot of my friends from my years in L.A. have been guys I’ve met over at the old Whiskey Bar.
I actually lived at the Marquis for a total of about six years. The first time I lived there for a period of two and a half years in Villa 4 North. During another stretch I lived there for a year and a half in 2 South. Later on I lived there for two more years. This was in the nineties, part of 2000, and a little bit in 2001. When Angie and I first got married, we didn’t have any place to live, so we lived there. After we bought our first house, the one I’m still in now, we stayed at the Marquis while we got the house redone.
The thing about the Marquis is that it’s mainly the music hotel. There were some actors who stayed there—quite a few British actors, actually—actors who I go way back with, such as John Hurt, who’s in the movie I just did, Jayne Mansfield’s Car, and Gabriel Byrne. Richard Harris lived below me for a while. I had some great times with those guys. But at any given time it looked just like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame over there.
When I lived in Villa 4 North, Keith Richards was right below me. Chris Robinson lived in my building when Kate Hudson first started seeing him. There was Deana Carter, the guys from Metallica, the guys from Aerosmith, guys from U2, Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons with, like, eleven different colors of hair and cooler than shit. There were all kinds of music people staying there.
After I split up with their mom, I saw my sons Willie and Harry on the weekends, Friday through Sunday. They were three and four years old, and they would come stay with me at the Marquis. I remember times that my kids were swimming in the pool with other kids whose dads were in Metallica and other bands. I remember one time in particular sitting out there watching my kids swimming while Kirk, Lars, and James Hetfield from Metallica were all sitting around the pool doing the same thing. Willie used to get throwaway cameras and chase Lars around the back lawn all the time and say, “I’m going to get a picture of your butt, Lars!” Lars used to wear these silk shorts all the time, and Willie would chase Lars around trying to take pictures of his ass. I still have some snapshots of just Lars’s ass and these silk shorts, most of them without his face in them so I can’t really use them against him. Those were some good times when I had my sons there.
One time Jimmy Page, who was staying at the Sunset Marquis, sent me a card that said something like, “I really dig your movies, I’m a big fan.” I was like, “Wow! Fucking Jimmy Page!” He’s a legendary guy to me. So I sent him something, I think it was a bottle of champagne. Later on I was doing sit-ups on the floor of this little gym they had in the same building as my villa when all of a sudden I’m looking up some cat’s big khaki shorts and there’s this little boy standing next to him holding his hand. It’s Jimmy Page. He’s like, “Hey, mate, thanks for the champagne,” and I just kind of froze. There I was, lying on the floor, talking to Jimmy Page. We had about a ten-minute conversation, and I never got off my back. I just lay there on the floor of the gym talking to Jimmy Page. After he left, I was like, Did I just lie on my back in the fucking gym here and have a conversation with Jimmy Page? That was astounding.
During the time I lived there, I had been nominated for quite a few awards. I would go to the awards ceremonies, and then, win or lose, I’d be right back at the Marquis, where they would sometimes have after-parties. These days I’m so agoraphobic that I’m really hesitant to get out of the house, but back in those days I didn’t have to get outside the house. The parties just came there. It was a busy, amazing place.
I became, like, the mayor of the Sunset Marquis, and to this day it’s the only place I can go in public where I feel protected. I get the same feeling there that I had at my grandmother’s house back in Arkansas. They make everybody that stays there feel like it’s their own home. They don’t let the paparazzi hang around on the street out front, and they don’t ever let people inside who are going to be harassing you. I got to know the people who work there, the housekeepers, the security guys. It’s like a family. They’re very protective.
Today when you walk into the lobby, there’s a huge picture of me on one side and a huge picture of Slash on the other side. They’ve changed the pictures out. It used to be Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, the Allman Brothers, the Doors, Janis Joplin. Now it’s given way to the next guard at that hotel: me, Slash, other cats like that.
I still run in to people there every now and then, good friends like Jed Leiber, a great songwriter/musician whose dad was from Leiber and Stoller, the famous songwriting duo; and Jeff Barry, a great songwriter. I run into those kinds of people there, and it’s as close as it gets, for me, to being part of something like the Rat Pack or whatever, because that’s kind of what we were. I made a lot of great friends at the Sunset Marquis. It was just its own world over there. I wish there were more places like it.