It was a typical crisis for the opening of any club and of course Elmer had already had his share of challenges, but he was a deeply practical man. When he realized that his already cramped dance floor could not accommodate room for a DJ stand, he had one suspended in a cage above the floor; problem solved. The sobbing teenager on the other end of the phone was just another problem to be solved. He turned to his young cigarette girl to get him through this opening night bind.

This is not what Patty Brockhurst had in mind when she signed up for the cigarette girl job, but it was serendipitous to say the least.  You see, she was supposed to get up in that cage in spin records in between the sets of the live band so that the crowd could keep dancing. That was her job. But as Elmer reminisced in a vanity fair interview shortly before his death in 2008, “all of the sudden she starts dancing to em!  It was a dream!”  The audience loved it and assumed that it was part of the act. His house band at the time did not like it, calling it a “sideshow” that distracted from their performance. It didn’t matter though, because the moment little miss Brockhurst shook her thang in that cage suspended above the dance floor, the sixties cage girl was born and there was no turning back.

People came from everywhere to see those cage girls at the Whisky A Go Go in L.A., as Elmer and his crew  made the Whisky a fertile breeding ground for many of Rock n Roll’s biggest legends, most of whom owe their success to the networking they did at this complex of clubs on Hollywood Blvd. of which The Whisky was at the center.

A Sampling of Whisky Billings Over the Years                                                                            


Valentine stumbled upon the original Whisky in Paris in 1963. It was the first time he had seen young people dancing together, he quickly recognized this as an opportunity and bought space in the old Bank of America building at 8901 Sunset Blvd. He was going to bring the “discothèque” concept to America.  The Whisky’s first live band was Johnny Rivers, a progressive band that was taking Memphis country style blues and melding it with the nascent blues rock in much the same way that Syd Nathan’s King Records was doing in Ohio.  But as the sixties wore on, the sunset strip was flooded with beatniks, than hippies, who congregated at clubs on the strip. Soon the Whisky billed acts like The Rascals, The Turtles, Buffalo Springfield, and The Four Tops. And of course, its most famous house band; The Doors.

As hinted by the literal translation of its French name, which means “ Whiskey in abundance” The Whisky forever stands on the strip as an icon to the steamy cauldron of excess, vanity, and creativity that together formed the most influential and uniquely American music genre; Rock and Roll.  

In November 2006, The Whisky became the first landmark designated by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame outside of its home state of Ohio.  The setting for many of Rock history’s little accidents(the cage girl) and big reveals (Jim Morrison’s famous Oedipus version of “The End,” the Whisky is truly the house that Rock built; and perhaps somewhere there is a woman in her mid 60’s whose tears have dried by now, but oh they could have soaked all of Sunset Blvd.

Tidbits of History At The Whisky

 .........................................................................................................................................................................................