a group of rivers that eventually join together as one

Rivers had been there a few months when another club owner, Elmer Valentine, said he was opening a new place on the Strip named after the Paris hot spot called Le Whisky a Go Go, where people danced to records. The little club became so cool, Gazzarri had to hire a man for the door. A couple of nights later, actress Natalie Wood came in with friends and they started dancing. Rivers had only expected to play three or four nights, but by the second evening, crowds were dancing. Rivers then called Eddie Rubin, a jazz drummer he knew, and the duo played the rock, blues and R&B that the guitarist had been weaned on growing up in Louisiana. Gazzarri told him he didn’t care what he played, as long as it wasn’t too loud. When the owner, Bill Gazzarri, asked him to fill in while his house band was on the road, “I told him ‘I don’t think I play the kind of music you want hear,’ ” says Rivers, who is performing a concert with his friend songwriter Jimmy Webb on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of that first night at the Whisky. In 1963, Rivers, a young songwriter and studio musician, was in Gazzarri’s - not the night spot that would later appear on the Strip, but a small jazz club on La Cienega Boulevard.

By the time the Whisky opened, the Strip was ripe for change. The area had once been a favorite of the Rat Pack crowd, but by the late 1950s, Las Vegas had become the place to go and most of the clubs were losing business. Though it also became known for its high-class restaurants and hotels, over the years, the Strip has been home to gangsters, strippers and some rather nasty behavior. Once a Native Indian trail, the area was built up in the Prohibition Era with casinos and night clubs, where the anti-liquor law wasn’t as strictly enforced as other places.

That there was a crackdown was somewhat ironic, considering that the Sunset Strip always seemed to have a dual personality.

The melee, which included actor/protesters Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, inspired the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth,” written by Stephen Stills. Due to a curfew imposed by local businesses to suppress the “hippies,” the Sunset Strip riots erupted on Nov. Within a couple of years, the 1.7-mile, then-unincorporated area that connects Hollywood and Beverly Hills had become a mecca for the 1960s counterculture. Even the Grateful Dead moved from the Bay Area for a while to play the Strip in order to secure a record label. Little more than a year later, The Byrds had already taken flight, and it wasn’t long before such seminal rock groups as The Doors, The Mothers of Invention, Love, the Seeds, Buffalo Springfield and The Mamas and the Papas became part of the crazy scene. As it turned out, though, the performer found himself at the forefront of a new era on the Sunset Strip. Rivers’ route to the Whisky was an unexpected one, with some strange twists, including his refusal to play on the night of President John F. 15, A month later, as the Fab Four made their big splash in America on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the singer-songwriter-guitarist released his debut album, “Johnny Rivers at the Whisky à Go Go” produced by Lou Adler. Johnny Rivers opened the famed nightspot the Whisky a Go Go 50 years ago on Jan. charts with “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” bringing along with them the British invasion, a musical revolution of its own began on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Just three days before The Beatles hit the U.S.

A group of rivers that eventually join together as one