The Rainbow Bar and Grill

The Rainbow Bar and Grill opened in 1972 at 9015 Sunset Boulevard, next door to the Roxy Theatre, and within a few years had become the single most mythologised address on the Sunset Strip — the after-show gathering point for every major rock and metal act that played Los Angeles from the 1970s through the 1990s. The list of regulars reads like a complete census of hard rock: Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and virtually every band that called the Strip home at some point during those decades.

Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead occupied the same barstool at the Rainbow for decades — a seat near the bar's video poker machine that became so associated with him that the club preserved it as a memorial after his death in December 2015. John Lennon had his last public outing at the Rainbow before flying back to New York in 1980; he was there with May Pang on the night of October 9, which was his fortieth birthday, weeks before he was shot. Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, and Keith Moon were regulars during the 1970s. The club's booths, its jukebox, and the photographs covering every inch of its walls absorbed thirty years of rock mythology in layers that have not been disturbed.

The Rainbow is still open and still operating on the same block, its exterior largely unchanged, its interior still covered in photographs and memorabilia. Lemmy's stool remains at the bar with a small dedication. It is one of the few Sunset Strip institutions that survived the changes of the 1990s and 2000s with its identity intact.