Hot Hollywood clubs face new pressures

‘Rich, powerful, sexy’ works better than a fake I.D.
Masada and others, including Nic Adler, owner of the venerable music venue the Roxy, with its famous upstairs celebrity club On the Rox, said owners have a responsibility to see their patrons don’t drink to excess or that minors aren’t served.

“We’ve all been battling underage ever since the beginning of clubs,” said Adler, whose father, fabled music mogul Lou Adler, opened the Roxy in 1973. “These young girls dress up and you don’t know what age they are.”

At the same time, clubs feel the pressure to cater to celebrities who will drop hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine if they can sit at a special table and drink it with friends, as well as the hordes of other people they will bring out who hope to get past the velvet ropes and spend a few hours rubbing shoulders with them.

“Rich, powerful, sexy” are what’s needed to get in the club of the moment if you aren’t famous, said veteran Hollywood publicist Michael Levine. Either that, he said, or be an extremely attractive woman.

“Hot women do not have to pay attention to the normal traffic lights of life in nightclubs,” he said with a laugh.

Neither do celebrities.

“I can tell you that we handle celebrities different,” former House of Blues manager Arich Berghammer testified recently at the murder trial of Phil Spector. He had been asked if the music producer or other famous people received special treatment at the club’s Foundation Room, including allowing them to drink to excess or drink after hours.

Spector had left the Foundation Room with hostess Lana Clarkson hours before Clarkson was found shot to death in his home.

Asked what impact it would have on the club if drunken celebrities were consistently refused service, Berghammer replied, “It would be devastating.”

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