Lowell George — Little Feat and the Tropicana Motel, LA

The Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood was the unofficial headquarters of the LA rock underground in the 1970s — a cheap, pool-equipped motor lodge where Tom Waits lived for years, where the New York Dolls crashed, and where Little Feat and their leader Lowell George were frequent occupants when in town. George was one of the most gifted musicians of the 1970s — a slide guitarist of extraordinary subtlety, a songwriter of real originality (Willin,' Truck Stop Girl, Dixie Chicken), and a singer whose laid-back authority made everything sound effortless.

Little Feat formed in Los Angeles in 1969 after George was dismissed from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, reportedly for writing songs about drugs. Their albums from Sailin' Shoes (1972) through Feats Don't Fail Me (1974) and The Last Record Album (1975) were critically celebrated and commercially modest — a situation that frustrated George. He died of a heart attack on June 29, 1979, in Arlington, Virginia, the morning after a solo show, at the age of 34. His weight and drug use were contributing factors. The Feats reunion that followed his death produced Waiting for Columbus, widely considered one of the finest live albums in rock.

The Tropicana Motel was demolished in 1988 and replaced by a hotel complex. Its address at 8585 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood is now occupied by a Ramada Inn. The myth of the Tropicana — preserved in countless rock memoirs and Jim Morrison photographs — looms larger than any surviving physical trace.