So you want to know the history of the Cathouse do you.? Part 1 - 1986 will be on this website on Wednesday. In the mean time……. What you are about to read is a watered down, vanilla, safe version of what the CATHOUSE really was. It is also all I can remember today...
It was 1986, 4 years before I hosted Headbangers Ball on MTV or began to work on the radio. With no money I persuaded a bar to l
et me turn it into a dance club that would only play rock n roll. I wanted a place my friends could hang out at and hey if my roomate Taime and I could meet a few new girls that would be ok. Yeah lame but Im honest. The club said yes and the Cathouse was born. The Cathouse was opened in 1986 in Hollywood I threw some vintage burlesque videos on the wall and asked Taime Downe (from Faster Pussycat) if he could help get the word out. I found Joseph Brooks of Vinyl Fe**sh fame and he became the DJ with his blend of 80's rock 70's glam and punk a mood was set. The club at that time was held at an old Disco on La Cienega. The club was a wreck. It was a risk just walking up the stairs but once up the stairs you found yourself in a Shangra la's of Decadence. The original idea was to just have a DJ. The GRAND OPENING........sucked. However Lita Ford puked in the bathroom! I kept it going to crowds of about 70-80. Every Tuesday night the crowds got a little bigger. Among that small crowd was Guns n Roses, Aerosmith, Motley Crue, Ted Nugent and more. So a bunch of girls heard that the bands were hanging out at the Cathouse so the woman began to show up actually outnumbering men. When that got around more bands started showing up....then some friends asked if they could play at the club for their EP record release party... I said yes. That band was called Guns n Roses. Then Taimes band Faster Pussycat wanted to play that night and so did LA GUNS and Jetboy! My first live performance at the Cathouse and those 4 bands played. Taime started focusing on his band and all I had was the Cathouse. With its reputation more and more bands wanted to play this so called rock dance. It was getting out of hand. The Cathouse became the cool place to go. Axl would mention the club in interviews. Faster Pussycat recorded a song called Cathouse. Then media picked up on our little club LA TIMES did a cover story called GUNS N ROSES and the CATHOUSE SCENE , Would you believe even NEWSWEEK wrote about the club. Many of the local bands were now selling millions of records but kept on playing at the Cathouse. Soon other bands asked to play here. Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Motorhead, Megadeth, Alice Cooper, Danzig, Pearl Jam, Black Crowes, Junkyard, Primus, LA Guns, White Zombie, ICE T, Suicidal Tendencies, Pantera the list goes on and on. For some reason we always had more women than men at the club. Believe it or not fashion magazines saw the women in their decadent attire and thought we were starting a worldwide trend. The Cathouse was featured in Women's Wear Daily and California Apparel News. When the movie the "Decline of Western Civilization 2 - the Metal Years" wanted to capture the rock scene they did a whole segment on the Cathouse. More media attention. We also had a rule of not letting anyone take pictures in the club. That way everyone could feel at ease and not worry about it in the paper the next day. Does anyone remember the night Axl chased David Bowie down the street? How about Malcolm Forbes showing up on a Harley or Christina Applegate working coatcheck or Slash falling down the stairs taking a fake tree with him while he was wearing a Cathouse security shirt or how about Depeche Mode going to the Cathouse when the instore they had planned turned into a riot. They knew nobody would bug them at the Cathouse. Needless to say the CATHOUSE truly became a part of rock history. The funny thing is the bands that played at the Cathouse are only a small part of what made Riki Rachtman's World Famous Cathouse...World Famous
