There are roads you drive down. Then there’s Sunset Boulevard, where you’re just as likely to pass a rock ’n’ roll landmark, a rooftop party and somewhere your parents probably behaved badly in the ’80s (if you happened to grow up in good old ‘Merica).
On 14 November, West Hollywood is shutting down a stretch of its most famous strip and turning it into one very large, very free outdoor gig.
LIVE ON SUNSET will be headlined by nine-time GRAMMY winner Sheryl Crow, returning to the same stretch of Sunset Boulevard where she played some of her earliest shows. Joining her are Local Natives, Empress Of, Grace Bowers, Doug Locke and Mia Moretti, with the whole thing unfolding beneath the billboards and neon of the Sunset Strip.
It’s the headline act in a month-long celebration of West Hollywood’s music history, which has quite a back catalogue.
Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy and the Troubadour have spent decades hosting everyone from scrappy newcomers to artists who’d later require stadium-sized dressing rooms. These days, the music spills well beyond the old guard. Hotel Ziggy’s Backbeat and The Peppermint Club regularly hand the mic to emerging acts, while rooftops, hotel bars and clubs keep things going long after the amps have been unplugged.
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Even checking in comes with musical baggage. Sunset Marquis has its own recording studio and a new documentary, If These Walls Could Rock, digging into decades of rock-star guests. Andaz West Hollywood still wears its infamous “Riot House” past proudly, while The Sun Rose has recently hosted Stevie Wonder, Chappell Roan, Beck, John Legend and Dave Grohl.
The best bit? West Hollywood is less than two square miles. Catch a gig, wander to dinner, stumble into a comedy set, find a rooftop DJ and end up in a bar with several decades’ worth of stories in its walls.
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