Hanging Out With Rock Stars at The Rainbow Bar & Grill

Dear Rainbow Bar & Grill

 

by Karen Yampolsky

Dear The Rainbow Bar & Grill,

You were my favorite bar in the world.

Before cell phones, before social media, before VIP packages, before every celebrity encounter became something people filmed instead of experienced, there was you.

If you loved rock music and found yourself in Los Angeles in the late 1980s or early 1990s, eventually somebody would tell you to go to the Rainbow. Not because your food was exceptional, though the pizza was perfectly respectable. Not because you were glamorous. You weren’t. You were dark, loud, crowded, and a little sticky from decades of spilled beer.

You went because anything could happen.

The Rainbow still sits in the middle of the Sunset Strip, but back then it was THE clubhouse for rock and roll. Famous musicians, aspiring musicians, roadies, record executives, tourists, groupies, and people who simply wanted a good story all ended up under your roof.

Lemmy practically lived there. Guns N’ Roses wandered through. Members of Poison, Skid Row, Alice in Chains, and a hundred other bands stopped by between shows, recording sessions, and on random nights when there was nothing better to do.

You were a reliably fun option for all of us.

I was working first for Charles Koppelman at SBK/EMI and later for Jane Pratt at Sassy, which meant I somehow kept finding myself in Los Angeles on work trips that felt more like adventures than work. Record-label meetings. Magazine business. Interviews. Concerts. The reasons changed. The destination rarely did. Every trip seemed to include at least one night at the Rainbow.

I will never forget the first time I walked through your doors. My friend Randi insisted. We were in Los Angeles after all, and we loved music. I think we had just spent the afternoon hanging out in the studio with Slaughter thanks to Toby from Alive Enterprises. We wanted the full Sunset Strip experience.

You did not disappoint.

The place was packed. Standing room only.

Axl FUCKING Rose was there.

That was enough for me.

We spent the evening squeezed into narrow aisles with our drinks, soaking up the atmosphere and pretending we belonged there. I would later discover an important Rainbow survival skill: if you wanted a booth, you needed to arrive early and order dinner.

I pretty much wore the same outfit every time I visited. Boots. Ripped jeans. A white lycra tank top with no bra. A silver heart hanging from a black cord around my neck. I was going for sexy but not too sexy, if you get my drift.

Walking through your doors always felt like stepping into possibility. The walls were covered in rock history. The booths were filled with musicians, some famous and some trying very hard to become famous. There were West Coast groupies whose confidence I deeply admired. Every table seemed to contain a story.

And oh, the people we met there, Dalita. Randi. Mindy. Me.

Lemmy was usually there. Over by the arcade game. One night he appeared to spend several minutes very seriously explaining to us that he had “trod on an orange.” To this day, Dalita and I have no idea whether he actually said that or how it related to whatever conversation we were having. He was kind of hard to understand, he always sounded like he had a mouth full of marbles.

Another evening found us unexpectedly sharing the legendary corner booth with Bret Michaels.

We had been sitting at our own booth waiting for pizza when Dalita suddenly announced that someone famous had just walked in.

“I think it’s Bret Michaels.”

I looked toward the door.

Bandana. Check.

Entourage. Check.

Yep. Bret Michaels.

I had met Bret months earlier after a Z100 show at The Palladium in New York. We had gone to dinner with a group afterward and, at the end of the night, I found myself outside the restaurant kissing him while he leaned against his limousine. When he invited me back to his hotel, I said no. I promise this becomes relevant in approximately thirty seconds.

Dalita insisted I go say hello.

I refused.

“He won’t remember me.”

“GO.”

Classic Dalita.

So I went.

Not only did he remember me, but when I explained I had a friend and a pizza waiting at another table, he invited both of us into the corner booth. “Bring your pizza,” he said.

We spent the evening drinking and laughing while discussing a Skid Row concert I had attended the night before. Bret wanted to know what I thought of the show.

I told him it was fine but, considering the entire set only lasted ninety minutes, the twenty-minute guitar solo seemed excessive.

Bret howled.

Then he shouted across the table:

“That’s it, C.C.! No more guitar solos!”

The entire booth dissolved into laughter.

At some point Bret got up to use the restroom. The moment he disappeared, one of his friends informed us that perhaps it was time for us to leave. So we did.

When Bret spotted us heading for the door, he stopped us and asked where we were going. I explained. He rolled his eyes. Then he marched us right back to the table.

Dalita later informed me the friend in question was Richie Kotzen. I am still not entirely sure who the fuck Richie Kotzen is.

I saw Mike Starr there too one quiet early evening.

He remembered me from the Pirate Radio baseball game, where we had escaped the photographers and Hawaiian Tropic models in favor of a parking lot and a joint. He told me he was in town recording. We stood talking beside his booth for a while. Before I left, he scribbled his phone number on one of your matchbooks and told me to call before I headed back to New York.

I left a message but he never called me back.

I wish I had kept that matchbook.

Not because I think it would be worth anything. I’d just like to hold it again.

The last time I visited, hair bands were falling out of fashion and grunge had already won. You were strangely empty.

People I knew had stopped considering you cool but I still loved you.

That night Derek Sherinian informed Dalita and me that the Rainbow had become “a place for muppetry” and was completely killing our vibe. So we pretended to leave.

Then, once we were sure he was gone, we came right back. Your manager rewarded our loyalty by giving us the corner booth.

Dalita and I still laugh about that. To this day, we wonder whether he thought we were important because we always seemed to be running into famous people.

Spoiler alert: We weren’t. But the nights we spent there absolutely were.

Thirty-plus years later, I remember very few specific conversations. I remember almost none of the drinks. I barely remember what songs were playing. What I remember is possibility.

I remember walking through your doors convinced that something interesting was about to happen.

Maybe I’d end up talking to a rock star, maybe a roadie, maybe just eating pizza with Dalita.

It didn’t really matter. The magic was believing that any of those outcomes were possible.

For a few years, you felt like the center of the universe.

And you kind of were.

Rock on,

Karen