The Alta Cienega Motel helped shape Doors history, but today it sits abandoned. Why hasn’t Los Angeles embraced its rock and roll heritage?
This past week I drove by the Alta Cienega Motel on La Cienega, famously known for being the place where Jim Morrison lived on and off from 1968 to 1970 during the band’s recording of their final album L.A. Woman. It is said that Jim wrote some of the most classic Doors songs in this room, entertained willing rock groupies, and crashed after long nights when Love Street in Laurel Canyon was just too far of a walk home. The surrounding area of West Hollywood was Jim’s sacred triangle. The Doors Workshop studio, with its converted bathroom/vocal booth, was where Jim sang his final notes. The Alta Cienega was 500 feet across the street. Barney’s Beanery, now an influencer paradise, was his proper neighborhood watering hole around the corner.
Credit: Chris Gialanella
At the Alta Cienega, Room 32 was known as the “Morrison Room.” In the years following his death in 1971, it had been transformed into a shrine to the Lizard King, with fans clamoring to rent it for the night only to decorate the walls with poetry, quotes and tributes to the fallen rock God. It was L.A.’s version of Jim’s Pere Lachaise headstone in Paris that is famously decorated by thousands of Doors fans traveling to France every year.
Credit: Chris Gialanella
Looking up the Alta Cienega this past week, I was shocked to realize it has actually been closed for five years, marking yet another fallen and forgotten Los Angeles landmark that is not getting a celebratory send-off.
Credit: Chris Gialanella
But why does Los Angeles continue to do this? In Joshua Tree at the Joshua Tree Inn, where L.A. country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons met his early demise, Room 8 is a fan destination visited by Parsons fans every year. The city plays annual tribute shows to Parsons, and Room 8 is the hardest room to book. In Tucson, Arizona, the Congress Hotel celebrates “Dillinger Days” – a two-day spectacle honoring the arrest of John Dillinger, Public Enemy Number One, back at the hotel back in 1934.
In 2018, Jim’s old house and street in Laurel Canyon were made into a historic landmark called “Love Street.“ It was the first cultural marker that L.A ever recognized for any band. Sure, there are plaques at Jim’s last apartment and at the Doors studio (now a Tiki bar above Tail of the Pup where you can see the bathroom where Jim recorded his vocals)… But why does the Alta Cienega remain so ignored? Apparently, Jim and Mick Jagger gathered here before the 1968 Doors Hollywood Bowl show back when rooms were $8.00 a night. So why shouldn’t Los Angeles celebrate one of its favorite sons’ creative motel rooms? Build a shrine, make it a museum. Charge admission. If you build it they come.
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Look at the current state of the Sunset Strip. The legendary street has a storied history, from the 1960s to the mid-2000s, but it has since become a home for condos and shuttered restaurants and bars. (Dublin’s anyone?) Imagine if L.A. had turned it into a pedestrian rock history walk honoring all the larger-than-life stars who once called it home?
Credit: Chris Gialanella
Down South in Nashville, they have it figured out. Broadway Boulevard’s honky-tonk history – where Willie Nelson and nearly every country singer ever once stumbled around – has become a living museum. The old bars and live music scenes draw millions of country music fans every year. Why hasn’t L.A. done the same for rock and roll? Between the Byrds, the Doors, Laurel Canyon, Guns N Roses, and Rage Against the Machine, we could turn this city into a rock shrine. Instead, people go to Cleveland (?) for the Rock’n ‘Roll Hall of Fame.
LA should preserve the Alta Cienega Motel and celebrate Jim Morrison’s legacy. If not, it will fade away into rock folklore like so many lost bars and buildings before it. But for now, it’s still standing, and the chain link fence surrounding it won’t let any Doors disciples inside to hear the cars hiss by the window…
A song undoubtedly written in Room 32…