However, the famous hotel built in 1927 and located off the Sunset strip, has been the scene of so many musical antics, it is now part of the Rock and Roll legend.
The picture on the cover of Gram Parsons’ solo album ‘GP’ was taken in the hotel, where he lived for a time in the early 1970s.
Led Zeppelin rockers rode their motorbikes in the lobby in front of a cheering crowd during one of their stay, causing only little damages.
Jim Morrison almost died in the hotel when falling from a drainpipe as he was trying to enter his room through the window, after having ingested a mixture of Jack Daniels and LSD.
But Blues brothers John Belushi did die at this same place, from a heroin and cocaine (speedball) overdose in 1982 at the young age of 33. It was ruled as an accident but two months later Cathy Smith, a band member, admitted to having injected him with the deadly dose!
‘Hotel California’ by The Eagles is supposedly based on the famous landmark, although nobody seems to be sure of that, but the hotel is referenced in ‘West LA Fadeway’, a song by the Grateful Dead. Also British Lily Allen wrote the song ‘Batman, Guess Who?‘, for her second album, in the hotel.
John Frusciante lived in the hotel in 1996 while he was seriously addicted to heroin and cocaine, and described as ‘a skeleton covered in thin skin’. He was kicked out of the hotel shortly after an interview.
Britney Spears is apparently on the black list of the hotel after having covered her face with her meal in 2007,… such a bizarre story!
The Chateau was built as a tribute to a French Chateau (the Chateau d’Amboise), and it is a place which has the reputation to make you disappear right in the middle of Hollywood