![]() |
Bill |
Jim Morrison looked out over a changing Hollywood and wrote "L.A. Woman;" a song about change and loss. The billboards along Sunset today are primarily for Calvin Klein or BMW; a statement itself in how the Strip has evolved. There has always been speculation who the L.A. Woman might be, with Pamela Courson the obvious choice; in reality the L.A. Woman was Los Angeles: "Never saw a woman so alone..."
Jac Holzman of Elektra Records was the first to venture into this advertising medium. For $1,200 a month, he reserved a sign near the
Chateau Marmont hotel , and inaugurated it with the Doors, who were the "house band" at the Whisky A-Go-Go just down the street. Holzman reasoned that L.A.
disc jockeys would see the sign on their way to work, saying the billboard was
"a calling card for the artist, but it was a very large calling
card."
Below is a collection of Sunset
Billboards, some from Robert Landau's fabulous coffee table book, Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset
Strip (available through Amazon). I do not own the rights to
these photos, only the rights to my father. And, of course, you can read so much more in Jay and the Americans. Click on the links in the sidebar, please!

"That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life," Springsteen said when he saw the billboard for Darkness on the Edge of Town (not my father's - wrong company). The Boss proceeded to "enhance" it with graffiti. Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, bassist Garry Tallent, and some crew members arrived late at night with twenty cans of black spray paint. Springsteen wrote "E Street" himself while standing on Clemons' shoulders. "I wanted to get to my face, and paint on a mustache," he said. "But it was just too damn high.