When considering the influence a geographic place has on popular culture, it would be undeniable that Sunset Boulevard was inextricably connected to Rock & Roll. It started slowly, trailing behind New York, Memphis, and Detroit, but when it arrived, Sunset was the place to be for rock music, and several circumstances can be attributed to its arrival. As well-known entertainers like Bobby Darin, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. were lured to Las Vegas with big money and exclusive contracts, the clubs they left behind were searching for inexpensive acts to fill the empty stages. Concurrently, the Beatles’ influence on American teenagers inspired hundreds of newly formed groups that composed their own material and played their own instruments, not necessitating a backing band. Additionally, clubs could get permits to operate without serving liquor, so teenagers as young as fifteen could buy a soda and dance all night to records spun by disc jockeys and see their favorite rock groups perform live, now the main attraction to the area.
However, by the end of the ’60s, most of the dance clubs were gone, a casualty of the battle between the teenagers and the police over an enforced curfew. The Sunset Strip of the ’70s attracted an older, wilder crowd with a taste for flamboyance and indulgence that lasted until the end of the 1980s.
The thirty years referenced in The Sounds of Sunset witnessed a wide range of musical styles, and just as many legends, rumors, highs and lows. Styles and trends come and go, but during this time, no other street has been as connected to music, in all its variety, over so many years, as Sunset Boulevard.
