Barney's Beanery, the legendary funky eating attraction that has served food and drink to stars and wannabes since hulking Victrolas were the cutting edge music technology, turns 90 this month.  Cheap eats and beverages made the Santa Monica Boulevard location a Mecca for yet to be discovered Rock stars, and many continued as regulars even after making it big.  The Doors offices, a recording studio they used and a motel and apartment Jim Morrison lived were all just a short walk from the Beanery.  Morrison relieved himself on the top of the Baenery bar during a night of prolific drinking, an occasion the owner commemorated with a plaque.  Barney's is also where Janis Joplin is said to have eaten shortly before suffering the overdose that killed her at the nearby Landmark Hotel in October of 1970.  Jeff Jampol, who manages the estates of both Joplin and Morrison, said that Barney's and the Troubador were the two places in the area that had comparable 'cultural weight'.  Peter Rowan mentions both in Lonesome LA Cowboy, a song the New Riders Of The Purple Sage included on the 1973 album The Adventures of Panama Red,  calling Barney's a place musicians could meet girls and '...smoke our hopes, try to make it one more night'.
LATimes.com

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