Fact #95984

The Troubadour Story - by Johnny Black

WHEN THE SUN goes down over Santa Monica Boulevard, there's really only ever been one place to be and that's inside Doug Weston's legendary Troubadour Club.

The Troubadour, of course, wasn't always legendary. Hell, it wasn't even always on Santa Monica. When Weston opened it as an unassuming Los Angeles coffee house in 1957, the building stood on La Cienega. When there was music, it tended to be jazz. On a good night you might hear Horace Silver coaxing 'Senor Blues' out of the ivories for the assembled beatniks. It was 1961 before Weston moved The Troubadour to 9081 Santa Monica Boulevard, where audiences could soar up to 300 people.

Today, strolling in off the boulevard through The Troubadour's double doors, the little joint's history smacks you right in the kisser as you scan those rows of pictures on the wall of the bar, proudly displaying many of the internationally renowned artists whose careers started right here, often playing for free. There's The Byrds, of course, and isn't that Elton John? Aren't those The Eagles? Look, up there, Linda Ronstadt? Phew! Damned if that lot doesn't look like Guns'n'Roses, but now we're getting way ahead of ourselves. Cue the tinkling harp, cue the long slow dissolve...

As the 60s was kicking in, the place was always jammed on Monday nights. That was the night of the weekly Hootenanny session, where a parade of future folk stars like Judy Collins or Phil Ochs would perform a couple songs each free of charge simply to get a foot on the ladder. As rock photographer Henry Diltz recalls, "You'd see ten to fifteen acts on Monday nights. The place would be packed with agents, managers and record company people."

By the mid-60's though, the folk scene was undergoing a radical change. Diltz still vividly remembers, "Jim McGuinn showing up at the Troub one night and singing Beatles songs all by himself." Up to that point, McGuinn had been, like all the Troub regulars, a traditionalist folkie. His decision to play Beatles songs – electric music – in that hallowed location was viewed by some as tantamount to treason.

Not too long after, McGuinn returned to the Troubadour with another singer, Gene Clark. The pair were looking to form a band but needed a third harmony voice. David Crosby was on stage and, within minutes, Clark turned to McGuinn and said "That's the other voice." McGuinn was reluctant, knowing Crosby from Greenwich Village, but a little later that night in the stairwell beneath Weston's office, the trio harmonised together for the first time. "That sound rang clear," he says, "and we were off and runnin'."

The trio went on to become the core of The Byrds and, from their blend of jangling guitars, Dylan tunes and close harmonies, the blueprint for folk-rock was created. Intriguingly, Weston himself at first resisted the new wave, expressing dismay when The Modern Folk Quartet showed up one night toting amplifiers. He was soon converted though, and could be heard regaling one and all with the details of how he had invented the term folk-rock.

By 1966, The Troubadour's reputation for staging the best music in town had made it an essential watering hole for visiting celebrities like the painter David Hockney and the writer Christopher Isherwood. These were the nights of Buffalo Springfield, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Stone Poneys. The Poneys were fronted by a young girl from Tucson, Linda Ronstadt, and it was in the wake of their two-week 1965 residency at The Troub that they secured a deal from Capitol Records A&R man Nik Venet.

Ronstadt's memories of the club all seem to be good ones. "The Troubadour was like a café society. Everyone was in transition. No one was getting married, no one was having families, no one was having a particular connection ... so our connection was the Troubadour. It was where everyone met, where everyone got to hear everyone else's act. It was where I made all my musical contacts, and found people who were sympathetic to the musical styles I wanted to explore. We used to sit in a corner of The Troubadour and dream."

According to Jackson Browne, however, "I don;t think there was ever a songwriter's scene around The Troubadour. It was like Bob Dylan said, 'You probably call it folk music, but it's not.' It wasn't folk music at The Troubadour and nobody thought of it as folk. People came in with a full band. They'd come and they'd get record deals and they'd go. A lot of them were real corny, and flashy too. If you hung out there long enough, you could almost chart someone's progress. You'd see them one day by themselves, and the next day with two or three people they'd be forming a band. Like J.D. souther and Glenn Frey began playing there as a duo, and eventually you'd hear J.D. go up there by himself. And then a couple of weeks later Glenn would be in rehearsal with these other guys and they'd become The Eagles."

How very true. With Linda Ronstadt in her corner, watching and learning from the mistakes of country rock trailblazers like The Burritos and the Nitty Grittys were the members of that future megastar band that did not yet exist – The Eagles. One of them, Glenn Frey, harboured a more jaundiced view of the club than most. "The Troubadour, man, was and always will be full of tragic fucking characters. Has-beens and hopefuls. Sure, it's brought a lot of music to people but it's also infested with spiritual parasites who will rob you of your precious artistic energy. I was always worried about going down there, because I thought people would think I had nothing better to do. Which was true."

But, as another Eagle, Don Henley, recalls, "The Troubadour was the first place I went when I got to LA. The first night I walked in, I saw Graham Nash and Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt was standing there in a little Daisy Mae kind of dress. She was barefooted and scratching her ass. I thought 'I've made it. I'm here. I'm in heaven'."

Ronstadt confirms Henley's recollection. "The Troubadour was where I'd met Bernie Leadon and where I met Glenn Frey, who was in a group called Longbranch Pennywhistle with my boyfriend at that time, John David Souther. Don Henley came to town with a band from Texas called Shiloh and, one night, I was walking through the performing part of the club on my way to the bathroom when I heard Shiloh playing 'Silver Threads And Golden Needles', and using the exact guitar break off my album, Hand Sown. Right after that, we needed a band, so I hired Don and Glenn."

A slot supporting Ronstadt at The Troub, was the first big break for another unknown young hopeful trying to break through in the late 60s – Jackson Browne. "The Troub was the only place you could go and showcase for record companies," he remembers. "You went there on Mondays just to try and get a job. You signed onto this list at 4pm and, if you were lucky, you might get to sing three or four songs that night. Monday was also industry night at the bar, so you had a lot of actors, agents, record executives and beautiful women around. It was a teeming scene, and people like (David) Crosby were always flying in and out with girls."

Indeed they were. In the words of Susan Smith, a waitress at the time, "You had to wear a diaphragm just to walk through. The semen potential in the bar was so intense it was enough to get you pregnant just standing there." Or, as self-confessed groupie Eve Babitz neatly encapsulated it, you could "smell the sex" even from outside those double doors.

Jackson Browne eventually moved right into the club, sleeping in the kitchen. As Babitz tells it, Browne would stroll nonchalantly out of the kitchen, get himself a beer and stroll back in again, nodding to regulars like Jim Morrison, actor Harry Dean Stanton or comedian Steve Martin as if he owned the place. Arlo Guthrie seemed to lust endlessly after the waitresses, reckoned to be easily the hottest serving wenches in Los Angeles, but the merest flutter of Jackson's long eyelashes above those high cheekbones left Woody's boy in the dust. Janis Joplin could be spied, drinking alone, clad in nightdress and feather boa. Van Morrison glowered from the darkest corners.

There was one fondly-remembered night when Doug Dillard, unaccompanied, sang the opening line of 'Amazing Grace'. Seconds later, he was joined from across the bar by a perfect top harmony from Ronstadt. By the time their entwined voices had hit the second verse, David Crosby, Gene Clark and Jackson Browne were chiming in too – perfect five part close harmony a cappella.

As folk singer Jim Croce recalled, by this time, "The Troubadour was one of the most unique and respected places to play. There would be Cadillacs and Porsches parked outside, and inside it was one big, wild party. People would be doing drugs and trying to get picked up, while young talent was being revealed on its stage. There was no club that was more influential during the 60s and 70s for promoting new talent than The Troubadour. If you were lucky enough to get a gig there, then you had a shot at getting discovered and getting signed to a recording contract."

In the summer of 1968, young Canadian songstress Joni Mitchell blew into Los Angeles, taking the town by storm with an astonishing four-night sell-out at The Troub as her first gig in the city. Loudon Wainwright III, starting out on his career, remembers those days. "It was full of songwriters and musicians. You could see Phil Ochs there. Roger Miller used to hang out there. Roger McGuinn would come in and out. Bobby Neuwirth, The Band, who were all living out in Malibu then..."

Tying in nicely with the release of her debut LP on Reprise Records, Mitchell opened at The Troubadour on June 4, 1968, and played every night up to the 16th, causing an immediate sensation. "David (David Crosby) set it up so that when the album finally came out, everyone in LA was aware of Joni Mitchell," recalled her manager Elliot Roberts. "The first club date we played, at The Troubadour, was standing room only for four nights, two shows a night."

Success at The Troubadour was, for Mitchell as for many others, the start of success everywhere.

As the sixties stumbled towards the seventies, country-rock began to usurp folk-rock, but The Troubadour remained at the heart of this new music. By the time Poco made their debut at Troubadour in November 1968, Doug Weston had become a very shrewd operator indeed. Rather than simply pay a talented young performer for a gig, he instituted a system whereby he would give them a break by showcasing them at the club but, in return, they were committed to play for him in later years if and when they became famous. As a result, he could always present top names in the club despite its tiny audience.

Don McLean, of 'American Pie' fame, was one of many snared by Weston's technique. "My contract with The Troubadour was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Weston would sign you for five years and pay the same amount for every performance – $1000. Sure, in 1970 this was good money but, when I became No1 all over the world, I still had to play his goddamned lousy club because he had me under contract."

Fairport Convention, when they played a week-long residency in September 1970, were paid $500 but, because they were also given unlimited access to the bar, discovered at the end of the week that they owed Weston $1,500. Nevertheless, their axe maestro Richard Thompson remembers it fondly. "The LA Troubadour was fun. Everyone who played there had to sign to do three or four engagements ...and of course you wanted to play there the first time, but a lot of people got famous in the meantime and had to go back to the Troubadour to fulfil this terrible obligation. But it was quite a place, it was great hang-out for folkies."

Watching the Fairports from out front was confirmed regular Loudon Wainwright III. "The first time I laid eyes on Richard was at the Troubadour. I remember him drunk, with his head down on the table at he bar at the Troubadour, the only time in my life I've ever seen him drunk."

Legend holds that it was in The Troubadour that Thompson was asked by The Eagles if he'd consider joining them, a move which could have radically re-shaped rock history. "Don Henley says that I was asked to join, but I don't remember being asked," says Thompson, adding that, "I'd have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans."

It was also during that 1970 stint, on 4 September, that some of bassist Dave Pegg's chums, who just happened to be in LA, popped in. "Zeppelin came down," remembers Fairport singer Simon Nicol, "and it was all Peggy and Bonzo, Old Firm Night. Neither Mattacks nor I spent much time on stage once they got down, we were supernumeraries. I remember Mattacks' silver sparkle Gretsch bass drum jumping forward three or four inches on Bonzo's first strike."

Inevitably, something of a guitar duel developed between Jimmy Page and Richard Thompson, with Thompson evidently claiming the honours and, after a lengthy jam, both bands headed for the bar again. "Peggy was involved in some serious drinking contest with Bonham and Janis Joplin," remembers Thompson. "It ended when they found Bonham two days later stark naked by a swimming pool and the rest of the band had gone to Hawaii."

Eve Babitz, who reckons to have spent virtually every night of the five years between 1968 and 1972 in the Troub bar, once characterised owner Doug Weston as "a snaggletoothed, greedy son of a bitch who didn't understand artists", adding that he "rarely came downstairs into the bar because, people said, he was upstairs cackling over his good fortune."

Nevertheless, even a partial listing of the significant rock moments that occurred in his club would take many pages and one of them involves Don McLean. During one of his reluctant stints at the club in 1972, he was seen by a young folksinger, Lori Lieberman, who found herself mesmerised by his rendition of 'American Pie'. "I thought he was just incredible," she says. " He was singing songs that I felt pertained to my life at the time. I went home and wrote a poem and showed it to these two men I was working with at the time – Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox."

The trio transformed the poem into 'Killing Me Softly With His Song', which provided an international number one smash for Roberta Flack the following year.

It is also said, for example, that Gram Parsons' song 'Juanita' was inspired by a girl he met at The Troubadour. West Coast music mogul David Geffen is reputed to have struck his deals with Joni Mitchell, The Eagles and Jackson Browne in the bar here. It was in the Troubadour too that The Eagles allegedly attempted to woo Richard Thompson away from Fairport Convention to join their fledgling band. This was where, in July 1969, James Taylor made his live solo debut, and on 25 August 1970, Elton John played his first US gig at The Troubadour.

Doug Weston, owner of Los Angeles legendary Troubadour club on Santa Monica Boulevard, paid Elton John's trio a meagre $500 for a week of gigs. "We'd flown to Los Angeles," explained Elton later, "thirteen hours over the pole in this jumbo jet, and we arrived to find this bloody great bus ... 'Elton John has arrived!' and all that sort of thing ... and it took another two hours to get to the hotel. Once we'd booked in, we were hustled out again and off to the Troubadour where The Dillards were appearing ... they were incredible, just knocked me out completely."

Then, the night before the first show, Elton's manager Ray Williams found him "sulking – and petrified." Convinced that he was too inexperienced to play for a sophisticated LA crowd, Elton was in a state of panic. "He said he wasn't going to play The Troubadour date," remembers Williams, "and was getting on the first plane home. I basically had to fight with him."

Luckily, Williams prevailed but Elton's anxiety wasn't reduced when he arrived at The Troubadour to find that "It was packed to the brim with people from the record industry, who expected me to come on with this 15-piece orchestra and reproduce the sound of the album, which had recently been released there." So, when a still-terrified Elton finally hit the little stage (introduced by Neil Diamond) that Tuesday night, he was seen by Beach Boy Mike Love, Bread leader David Gates and singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, not to mention such luminaries as Quincy Jones, Elmer Bernstein and Henry Mancini.

Robert Hillburn of the L.A. Times remembers Elton's shaky opening. "He started going through his songs in a somewhat distant, businesslike manner. He looked scared, keeping his eyes on the piano." The ultra-cool Troubadour crowd virtually ignored the unknown Brit until, four numbers into the set, Elton snapped. Composer Don Black, also in the house that night, recalls that "He stood up, kicked away his piano stool and shouted 'Right! If you won't listen, perhaps you'll bloody well listen to this!' Then he started pounding the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis." By the end of the set, America was Elton's for the taking.

Rolling Stone magazine rated that night as one of the all-time greatest rock performances and, the following morning Elton received a telegram from Bill Graham, the country's most important promoter, offering him $5,000 to play at the Fillmore East in New York – the largest sum ever offered to a first time act.

In retrospect, Elton has said, "I think the start of all the success was the Troubadour thing. It was just amazing. It's an incredibly funky little place, the best club of its kind anywhere, and all it is is some wooden tables and chairs and good acoustics."

Another performer who stepped, petrified, onto the stage of The Troubadour was Carole King, when she debuted her album Tapestry here on 18 May 1971. "Back then," explains her producer Lou Adler, "performing was a real chore for Carole – she just didn't like it." She was also understandably nervous about stepping back into the limelight so soon after her previous album, Writer, had sold a miserable 6,000 copies. "Carole was squeezing my hand so hard," says Adler, "I knew she was churning on her way up to the stage." It was a different story, however, when she came off, and Tapestry went on to become the most successful rock album ever.

26 Feb 73 : Springsteen's first Troubadour appearance was a six song set at a Hoot night, of which the L.A. Free Press said "It was Bruce Springsteen who made the crowd collision, the stepped on toes, the smoke-pained eyeballs, the walk away from the TV set all worthwhile ... never have I been more impressed with a debuting singer than I was with Bruce Springsteen on Monday night."

The next few years at the Troub seem more memorable for superstar escapades than for music. By far the most celebrated incident took place on 12 March 1974. Separated from Yoko Ono, John Lennon was working in LA with Harry Nilsson on the album Pussycats. As Nilsson recalled it, "We'd stopped by Tower Records and bought a copy of my favourite song at the time, 'I Can't Stand The Rain' by Ann Peebles." Moving on to The Troubadour, the pair glugged down numerous Brandy Alexanders, whereupon, "We ended up singing 'I Can't Stand The Rain' at our table, and we got the whole place rocking. There was nobody performing. But some guy, I think it was Jack Haley Jr, kept going 'Shhhh!' And Peter Lawford was getting uptight. Finally, the act was about to begin, with The Smothers Brothers and we were going 'Shhh!' to them.'

According to another source, Nilsson then began priming Lennon with lewd comments he might direct at the hapless comics. "During our first set, I heard someone yelling something about pigs," remembers Tommy Smothers. "It was fairly disgusting.... The heckling got so bad that our show was going downhill rapidly."

When the now drunken and abusive Lennon, with a tampon taped to his forehead, posed the question "Do you know who I am?", to a sassy Troub waitress, she knew the answer. "Yeah, you're an asshole," she replied, "with a Kotex on his head." Before long, fists were flying.

"My wife ended up with Lennon's glasses because of the punches that were thrown," says Smothers.

"All of a sudden," said Nilsson, "a bunch of bodyguards came over and pounced on us."

The fun wasn't over yet, though, because according to Tommy Smother, Lennon then "went outside and kicked the car parker." Despite his superstar status, Lennon was overpowered by the bouncers and unceremoniously dumped onto the sidewalk. The Smothers Brothers, appropriately, had the last laugh.

Equally embarrassing, but in a different way, was the scene that erupted in March 1975 when Rod Stewart's long-standing English girlfriend Dee Harrington turned up unexpectedly at the club to find Rod drooling over blonde starlet Britt Ekland. When a somewhat nonplussed Ekland discreetly retreated to a distant table, Harrington presented Rod with an ultimatum – her or me. Rod chose her, and one of the great superstar romances of the seventies was officially on.

By the mid-seventies, The Troubadour was exerting such a stranglehold on LA's laid-back scene that Whiskey A Go Go owner Elmer Valentine formed a partnership with producer Lou Adler and manager Elliott Roberts to start a new club, The Roxy on Sunset Strip, whose clear objective was to break the Weston monopoly.

The ploy worked. The Troubadour faltered, stumbled and nearly fell. Hoping to find a new identity, the club flirted disastrously with punk. After fans of The Bags rampaged through the venue overturning tables, a petition got up by those funky waitresses resulted in Weston turning the tables on the punks and banning their music. When Weston convinced Jackson Browne to play a benefit for the ailing club in 1977.

Even though it looked as if the end was nigh, The Troubadour remained influential. Shortly after Tom Petty got his first taste of skinny-tie power poppers The Knack at The Troub in 1978, the band was signed by an A&R man who had also spotted them in the club.

Come the summer of 1979, Weston took a gamble and started booking heavy metal acts. By that autumn, the venue was rising again as a hard rock showcase.

Weston immediately endeared himself to his new musical partners by deciding that he had the right to tape and sell their Troubadour performances without their permission. On 8 November 1979, three bands (The Sweethearts, Snapp and Blow-up) scheduled to play refused to take the stage. Sterling Haug of The Sweethearts explained, "He hadn't told us he was planning to tape us and every time we asked what he was going to do with the tapes we got a different answer."

Tactful as ever, Weston retorted that, "When an individual with as much perception as myself decides to honour those pipsqueaks by recording them instead of pissing on them, the first thing they should do is kneel and kiss my ass. If they're good enough, I record them without charging them anything, just as a gift to them. Some renege at the last minute, after I've gone to all the trouble of hiring a truck and getting the sixteen-track recorder down to the club. If there is no deal on paper, then it must be fair, because we will negotiate later, when I can decide what is equitable."

In 1985, Guns'n'Roses landed their first residency at the Troub. In the audience was Geffen Records A&R man Tom Zutaut, and he vividly remembers the show. "Axl Rose was the most charismatic, electrifying performer I'd ever seen. The musicians were amazing. Everything about the band was right." Slyly feigning indifference to flummox other A&R touts, Zutaut left after a few songs but rang the band early the next day to offer the contract which made them world superstars.

These days, with a more eclectic booking policy than ever, you're just as likely to see tomorrow's stars in The Troubadour as you ever were. Metal, indie and acoustic all represented and booker Lance Hubp says "From a business perspective we'll book anything that makes sense and, from a musical perspective, anything that I believe in."

So next time you're standing out there on Santa Monica Boulevard watching that red ball of fire sink slowly in the west, you know where to go. Just check first that you don't have a tampon taped to your head.

Thanks : Barney Hoskyns, Art Fein, Patrick Humphries, Tim Perry, Ed Glinert, Dave Walker, A.M.Nolan, Joe Smith, Mary Ellen Moore, Connie Berman, Bob Shannon, John Javna, Danny Somach.

© Johnny Black, 1997