HARD ROCK ERA ENDS: MY MEMORIES
All Photos Wikimedia Commons
Whatever “it” is, the Hard Rock Hotel had it when the doors opened 25 years ago on March 9, 1995.
It had the hottest buzz, hippest restaurants, most beautiful cocktail servers (the Santa Claus outfits were epic) and the edgiest billboards.
It oozed attitude.
An era ends Monday after a nostalgia-soaked weekend of parties, with the Hard Rock giving way to the renovation for Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
The Hard Rock was my first stop when I arrived in Las Vegas from Denver on Sept. 11, 1999 to write a gossip column for the Review-Journal. Five days later, on my first night on the town, I scored my biggest Las Vegas jackpot. It was pure dumb luck. I wasn’t paying attention. Someone was telling me about the recent sighting of Leonardo Di Caprio playing at the next table. Instead of my usual $10 chip play on zero, I didn’t realize I had bet two $100 chips, one on a zero (35-1) and the other “split” a zero (17-1). Next thing I knew I had a mound of chips worth $5,200 in front of me.
My next “score” at the Hard Rock got me evicted.
Acting on a hot tip in August 2000, I drove over to the Hard Rock to see if I could confirm the rumor that actor Ben Affleck had won $660,0000.
I immediately ran into a local PR guy who had no connection with the Hard Rock. To my amazement, he said, “Are you looking for Ben Affleck?” The publicist had heard the story of Affleck’s blackjack coup.
A few minutes later, I heard someone hail me from a gaming table. He had gaming connections that I won’t reveal and damned if he wasn’t aware of the details of Affleck’s big win. He was playing three hands for $20,000 each, the source said, and handed out $150,000 in tips to dealers and cocktail servers.
A day or so after the article appeared in my column, USA Today quoted an Affleck rep who refuted the story, saying it was a fabrication. Then came a telephone call from the Hard Rock’s executive office. The chief of security informed me I was banned for what turned out to be a year. Later, I was told by a Hard Rock exec that the decision to ban me was a way of sending a signal to Affleck and other celebrities that the hotel was taking a hardline against reporters who blabbed.
After a top-level management change, I was informed I was allowed to return as long as I didn’t speak to any employees. I declined the offer, saying it would have cost employees their jobs if they recognized me and innocently started a conversation.
Two years later, the death of The Who’s bass guitarist John Entwistle brought another monster tip after he had died in a Hard Rock suite. The shocker came one day before the Hall of Fame band’s scheduled first show of a U.S. tour at Caesars Palace.
I confirmed that Entwistle was with a stripper the night he died. Almost overnight, a small army of British reporters arrived and began offering big money to anyone who knew the stripper or her whereabouts.
When they couldn’t find her, the Fleet Street gossip hounds focused their frustration on me. One very nasty newspaper exec called me from London and accused me of making up the story. He said I had cost his company a ton of money over a bogus story.
I knew otherwise. My source had been with Entwistle and his friend before they went to the suite. A few months later, the newspaper boss must have had a very bad day when a rival paper ran an interview with the stripper. Entwistle had died of a cocaine-induced heart attack, the Las Vegas coroner’s office ruled.
One of the wildest Las Vegas stories to fall into my lap took place over New Year’s weekend 2006 at the Hard Rock.
As I was finishing my column about 6 p.m., a reliable source called me with details that sounded too good to be true.
He said Kid Rock’s feud with Tommy Lee of Motley Crue had reached a boiling point. Kid Rock was letting it be known he planned to kick Lee’s butt that night at the Hard Rock. Kid Rock’s marriage to Pamela Anderson in July 2006 fell apart quickly and she filed for divorce in November. Kid Rock blamed Lee, Anderson’s ex.
Armed with that delicious bit of inside information, I rewrote the lead of my column, saying “the potential for celebrity drama rarely has been higher” with Kid Rock, Lee and Anderson in town at the same time and “look for sparks to fly.”
Sure enough, Kid Rock and a couple of his bodyguards showed up at the Hard Rock at dawn and tried kicking down the door to Lee’s suite.
But Kid had some bad intel. He got the wrong room and the pissed-off high roller he woke up called security.
And to top it off, the high roller saw my phone number in the column that day and called me with more details.
The postscript to that story was just as jawdropping.
Nine months later, Kid Rock was still seething when he attended the MTV Video Music Awards at the Palms. During the live telecast, he walked up to Lee’s table and slapped him. Jamie Foxx, who was hosting the show, delivered an unscripted line for the ages, when he said, “We’ve got to stop this white-on-white violence.”
Those are the big ones that went viral.
There are sad memories. I can’t think of the Hard Rock without mourning the loss of the rock-n-roll chef Kerry Simon and Pink Taco founder Harry Morton, scion of Hard Rock co-founder Peter Morton. A-list stars flocked to Nobu restaurant. New restaurants meant celebrity interviews with the likes of Robert De Niro, an investor. Paris Hilton was a regular at Jeff Beacher’s Madhouse. One of her boyfriends du jour, Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos III, embarrassed his family by trashing a Hard Rock suite.
One of the biggest crowds to gather outside the Hard Rock was over Super Bowl weekend 2001 when Howard Stern interviewed a star-studded group of entertainers and local media.
I was having lunch with old Vegas comedy legend Steve Rossi, waiting for my turn with Stern, when a beautiful young blonde came up to our table at Mr. Lucky’s.
She asked if we could take a photo together. This was a Vegas first. While her friend snapped the photo, Rossi teased me about “having a fan club.”
Two weeks later, I received an eight-by-10 envelope in the mail. It was a photo of me with the woman who requested the photo.
It was signed, “Jenna Jameson,” arguably the world’s most famous porn star.
I’ll miss the Hard Rock. Never a dull moment.
(I’ll be joining Fox Sports Radio’s JT the Brick from 1-3 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 31, at LVSportsNetwork, 98.9 FM and 1340 AM to reminisce about the Hard Rock’s 25 years.)