TIME MACHINE
JANUARY 1964 …the Whisky A Go Go opens in LA!
Ready, steady, go-go!: (clockwise from above) Johnny Rivers rocks the house, 1964; a promo poster; the venue’s raised glass booth and DJ box; Rivers’ debut LP.
Getty (6), Alamy (3)
JANUARY 16 “It was just so popular, right from the very first night… it was easy,” said Whisky A Go Go club proprietor Elmer Valentine to Vanity Fair’s David Kamp in 2000. “How the fuck could anyone miss? Being on Sunset Boulevard in the ’60s! I’m not being humble. Fuckin’ idiots that I had for competition!”
Valentine booked Bronx-born, Louisianaraised rocker Johnny Rivers to play the Los Angeles club’s opening show. As legend tells, a small slice of Swinging ’60s history also germinated that night: the disc jockey – recruited at the last minute when the original choice’s mother wouldn’t let her take up her new job – was cigarette vendor Patty Brockhurst. She danced as she played dance hits in the Whisky’s elevated DJ box, and an idea was born. Soon after, the club installed raised glass booths where young female dancers frugged with abandon in a uniform of fringed-skirt and go-go boots. Some say the free-styling presentation dubbed ‘go-go’ originated at the Peppermint Lounge in New York, but it was at the Whisky that the phenomenon found its home.