The Riot House: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Most Infamous Hotel I The Hyatt Continental in the 70s

Описание: Hello dolls, 🌼
and welcome to: The Riot House: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Most Infamous Hotel I The Hyatt Continental in the 70s!

High above Sunset Boulevard stood a concrete tower that became rock ’n’ roll’s most infamous crash pad. The Continental Hyatt House - soon rechristened the "Riot House" - was never just a hotel. It was a circus in the sky, a stage for excess, and a sanctuary for the biggest names in music during the 1960s and 70s.

This is the story of the Riot House.

Opened in 1963 as Gene Autry’s Hotel Continental, the building began as a polished stopover for Hollywood travelers. But when Hyatt took over in 1966, the timing was perfect. The Sunset Strip was exploding with youth culture, the Whisky a Go Go and the Roxy were buzzing, and touring bands needed a place to land. They found it here. Soon, the hotel became a magnet for legends - The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin - and its nickname was born from the chaos they left behind.

The Riot House lived up to its name. Televisions sailed from balconies and shattered on the Strip below. Keith Richards hurled one from Room 1015 and laughed as it exploded. John Bonham roared a Harley-Davidson down the 11th-floor hallway in the middle of the night. Jim Morrison dangled from a balcony by his fingertips, swaying above Sunset traffic. Groupies loitered in the lobby, hoping to follow their idols upstairs, while DJs like Rodney Bingenheimer held court over morning coffee. At its height, the Hyatt was equal parts hotel, carnival, and battlefield of desire.

No band embodied it more than Led Zeppelin. They often rented out entire floors, filling them with music, mayhem, and endless pranks. Wheelchair races tore down the hallways, stereos blasted at 3 a.m., and an infamous "Coke Lady" ensured no one ever ran out of energy. One night in Room 905, Robert Plant stepped onto his balcony, lifted his arms to the sky, and shouted into the Los Angeles night: “I am a golden god.” It was a moment that became legend, immortalized decades later in Almost Famous.

But the Riot House wasn’t only chaos. Elton John checked in before his Troubadour debut in 1970, a nervous young artist on the brink of stardom. Lemmy Kilmister scribbled the song "Motörhead" on a balcony here in 1974. Little Richard moved in long-term during the 1980s, preferring gospel and peanut-butter sandwiches to wild parties. And in later years, new generations of rockers - Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses - carried the torch. (Axl Rose even tried to barbecue steaks on his balcony, sending charred meat raining down on West Hollywood firefighters.)

Through it all, the Hyatt’s staff looked on with a mix of disbelief and pragmatism. By the mid-70s, management demanded $50,000 deposits from touring bands, knowing full well the TVs wouldn’t survive. Complaining guests were relocated; rock stars were never told to quiet down. The Riot House operated by its own rules - for golden gods, anything was allowed.

By the 1990s, the chaos had slowed. The balconies were enclosed in 2008, the TVs bolted down, and the hotel reopened as the Andaz West Hollywood. Today, it honors its past with vintage photos, suites named for Jim Morrison and Robert Plant, and even a Riot House Bar. The building is quieter now, but if you stand on Sunset at night and look up, you can still feel it - the hum of an untamed era, the laughter, the roar of a motorcycle echoing down the hallway.

The Riot House was never just a hotel. It was a crucible of chaos and creation, a place where rock stars lived like myths, and where legends were made floor by floor.

This is the story of rock ’n’ roll’s most infamous hotel: Welcome to the Riot House!

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xx Emma 💌

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