The Rainbow (2019) - Documentary

⁣The Hollywood Vampires take their name from an all-star social club that drank itself to oblivion during the mid 1970s at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on The Sunset Strip. The 2019 documentary The Rainbow chronicles the restaurant’s place in the Los Angeles music scene and is an engaging profile of the family that’s run it for three generations (that is, when it’s not indulging in lazy nostalgia). Directed by Zak Knutson, it is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Since opening in 1972, the Rainbow has offered food and drinks to successive generations of rockers. Located in West Hollywood, betwixt a cluster of music venues, it was popular with bands visiting Los Angeles as well as those living and trying to make it in the City of Angels. Besides the Hollywood Vampires – which included Alice Cooper, a couple Beatles and riotous Who drummer Keith Moon, Led Zeppelin picked up groupies there, The Runaways ate there and a teenage Slash snuck in dressed as a woman. Motörhead’s Lemmy loved the place so much he bought an apartment within walking distance and was often found drinking Jack Daniel’s and playing video poker at the bar for hours on end.
Behind it all was the Maglieri family, led by tough talking patriarch Mario, who came to Los Angeles from Chicago in the early 1960s to help run another storied local institution, the Whisky A Go Go. Mario is hard not to like, dropping one-liners like “I had rock n’ roll in my bar in Chicago before you ever heard of rock n’ roll,” calling Jim Morrison “a good kid,” and telling stories about throwing Charles Manson out on his ass, like a real life Cliff Booth. “He says, ‘I’m Jesus.’ I tell him, ‘I’m God motherfucker. Now get up from that chair.’ He got up or I’d have had to beat the shit out of him. Either one.”
Though its capacity was in the hundreds, the Whisky became one of the most important L.A. music clubs of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The Doors and Chicago were the house bands at various times, Van Halen used it to built their audience and scores of trailblazing acts made their area on its stage. As Kiss’ Gene Simmons says, “When you first start out and before you figure out your game, the Whisky’s the place to do it.” In fact, the Maglieri have an interest in both the Whisky and the Rainbow, and the film is as much about the venue as the bar up the street.
As the ’70s turned to the ’80s, hard rock turned to metal, from glam to thrash, and again found a home on the Sunset Strip. W.A.S.P. and L.A. Guns drummer Steve Riley says he went to the Rainbow the first night he moved to L.A. and it became a great place to meet other hungry young rock musicians looking to form bands. Thought it all, Mario Maglieri was there to comp musicians a bowl of soup or offer fatherly advice, telling young rock stars when they were drinking too much or doing too many drugs.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://decider.com/2020/02/24..../the-rainbow-documen