Last Call At The Viper Room: The Secret History Of America's Most Notorious — And Cursed — Rock Dive
Nov. 23 2021, Published 7:12 p.m. ET
Every cultural movement has a North Star. A nightspot with such gravitational it sucks in the defining art crowd of the time. The seventies disco crowd had NYC’s Studio 54, the eighties new Romantic pioneers had London’s Blitz. In the nineties, when grunge rose as an antidote to the preening, big hair and spandex heavy metal scene, one nightspot became a refuge for Gen X superstars disaffected with the unwanted trappings of their own fame.
Situated on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, the Viper Room was both a cultural Mecca and an escape room for the hottest stars of the era. Behind the nondescript front doors, musicians, movie stars, and models partied, gambled, took drugs, and indulged in debauchery. The venue provided a protective cocoon where A-listers could let their hair down in privacy. It attracted stars such as Drew Barrymore, Uma Thurman, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jennifer Aniston and the defining musicians of the age, such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Guns N' Roses.
The Viper Room opened in 1993 as a live music venue and had owner Johnny Depp to thank for its stellar clientele. At the time, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor and his girlfriend, supermodel Kate Moss, were the golden couple of the heroin chic clique, and the club became a venue where young actors, seduced by the stripped back anti-establishment rawness of grunge, could indulge in the scene and party in private.
Writer and performer, Pleasant Gehman, was a regular.
“It was the only game in town for young Hollywood,” she told a Vice documentary. “They were hanging out there trying to elude fame. Johnny Depp was making a valiant attempt to protect the young and famous up-and-coming arty a-listers. He wanted to create a haven for them.”
Many actors at the time had their own offshoot musical projects including Keanu Reeves, Juliette Lewis, Depp, and River Phoenix, whose name became synonymous with the Viper Room for all the wrong reasons.
Just months after it first opened, on Halloween night 1993, Phoenix, then 23, died on the sidewalk outside the club while his sister, Rain, sat on his chest trying to stop his convulsions and his brother, Joaquin, made a desperate 911 call for help.
The young movie idol had overdosed on cocaine and heroin.
Like Kurt Cobain’s death a year later, the tragic event was a defining moment in the grunge era. But while the eulogies flowed, little was done to investigate the circumstances of his death. As far as officials were concerned, it was an open and shut case. Less than two weeks after the tragedy, Los Angeles County coroner’s office ruled the death was accidental and caused by 'acute multiple drug intoxication' involving lethal levels of cocaine and morphine. At the same time, the office of the county sheriff announced that its investigation had found 'no evidence of foul play.'