A Sonic Tour of the Most Musical Street in Los Angeles

Artist Ed Ruscha began his pioneering project Every Building on the Sunset Strip in 1965, mounting a modified, automated 35mm Nikon camera on a tripod in the bed of his pickup truck and driving up and down a mile and a half of the famous Los Angeles street to capture both a north and south view, stitching together the resulting images into a continuous strip and publishing them as an accordion book.

“I looked at Sunset Boulevard like a 22-mile-long canvas with an evolving history,” Ruscha said. “It had fluid motion, fluid stories, one long horizontal ribbon, and I always thought about it. It just asked to be documented.”

The living canvas of Sunset Boulevard may be forever embedded in the visual history of Los Angeles, but it plays an equally essential part in its sonic history.

"Of all the musical streets in Los Angeles—and there are many—Sunset Boulevard is perhaps the most musical of all. No other street has so consistently shaped the city's sonic identities on so many different levels, across so many different decades,” says cultural historian Josh Kun, who has previously worked with Getty on the series 10 Songs for 12 Sunsets, which is presented alongside 12 Sunsets, a project that allows users to virtually drive down Sunset Boulevard with photographs by Ruscha from 1965–2007.

“From nightclubs, record labels, and recording studios to music instrument shops and record stores. And no other street has inspired so many songs about itself, whether Donna Summer's Sunset People, Wes Montgomery’s Bumpin’ on Sunset, or Steely Dan using a song to give driving directions.” (That would be Drive West on Sunset to the Sea, as sung in Babylon Sisters.)

Kun recently led a special tour from atop a double-decker bus for a program presented by LACMA and the Getty Research Institute alongside the exhibition ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, exploring the relationship between the boulevard's architecture and its rich history of live music with a specially crafted playlist that runs the gamut from funk to Chicano rock to ska.

For those who missed it, we now present not only the musical playlist but a modified audio version of the tour. These spots lie on just a short stretch of the boulevard, running from Alta Vista Boulevard to El Centro Avenue, making it easy to navigate the path on foot, by car, or by bus. Though the original tour ran down the boulevard from west to east, which is reflected in the audio tour and map below, we’ve also provided the time stamp of each site so you can choose your own adventure. So whether you’re a lover of urban history, architecture, or music—or ideally all three—make your way to Sunset, find the map and the link to the tour below, and explore the past and present of each site. (Please note that content on the playlist and audio tour may not be suitable for all ages.)

Time stamps:

1. Intro 0:00
2. Seventh Veil 6:18
3. Original Sound 11:00
4. Citadel d'Haiti 15:48
5. Sunset Sound 20:12
6. Club Lingerie 23:15
7. Wallich’s 27:28
8. Hollywood Palladium 31:02