Andaz West Hollywood — The Riot House

The hotel at 8401 Sunset Boulevard — now the Andaz West Hollywood, formerly the Continental Hyatt House — acquired the nickname 'The Riot House' largely through the exploits of Led Zeppelin during their American tours of the early 1970s. The band and their entourage effectively took over the upper floors of the hotel on multiple visits, with incidents that became the stuff of rock legend: motorcycles ridden through corridors, televisions thrown from balconies into the pool below, and the full apparatus of excess that defined the peak of the classic rock era. Keith Moon of The Who was similarly notorious at the property. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham occupied a series of interconnected suites and treated the hotel as a private playground during their LA residencies.

The Continental Hyatt House was the rock and roll hotel of the Sunset Strip in the 1970s — the place where touring acts stayed, where music industry figures gathered, and where the boundary between performance and real life dissolved into a continuous party. Its location on the Sunset Strip, near the Whisky a Go Go, the Roxy, and the other clubs that defined the LA rock scene, made it the natural base of operations for any major act. Cameron Crowe was reportedly staying at the hotel when researching what became the film Almost Famous, and used it as inspiration. The hotel's heyday corresponded almost exactly with the peak years of the classic rock era.

The property is now the Andaz West Hollywood, a Hyatt boutique brand, and continues to operate as a hotel. It has leaned into its rock history and the rooftop bar offers views of the Strip. The televisions-from-the-balcony story — said to involve Led Zeppelin, though details vary in the retelling — is among the most enduring anecdotes in rock mythology. The Whisky a Go Go is a ten-minute walk west along Sunset Boulevard.