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Jimmy Page, left, and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, circa 1975. The band partied hard at Swingos -- like so many that stayed and raged at the legendary downtown Cleveland hotel.
(New York Times)
Note: This story first appeared in The Plain Dealer on Oct. 15, 2000. Jim Swingos, who passed away on Sunday, was 73. He played an important part in Cleveland's rock history, running the legendary Swingos hotel on Euclid Avenue and East 18th Street.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Dave Sunde was just another teenager looking for a late-night party. As he walked down Euclid Ave. in the boarded-up, broken-down ghost town that was Cleveland in 1976, he went through a door and found it.
Members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were hanging from a chandelier. People were ordering bottles, not shots, of whiskey. The bar was a train-station of stars, partyers and groupies all mingling. It was loud.
"For a green, 19-year-old kid from Bedford, it opened up a whole new world," Sunde said.
That world may seem like a scene out of "Almost Famous," Cameron Crowe's movie about a 15-year-old who accompanies a band and its groupies on tour during rock's heady heyday. But it wasn't.
It was Swingos in the '70s.
From 1971 to 1982, the Euclid Ave. and E. 18th St. hotel, which makes a cameo appearance in Crowe's film, hosted one of the longest-running parties in rock 'n' roll, bringing together entertainers and fans, the famous and the almost famous. Elvis made it his home away from home. Led Zeppelin members turned it into their own private Sodom and Gomorrah. Cher and Kiss' Gene Simmons made it a secret rendezvous for an affair. Fans flocked to catch a glimpse, share a drink, sometimes drugs, and maybe even have sex with their idols.
And it all happened in the middle of nowhere.
"In the '70s, downtown was dead. The Warehouse District and Playhouse Square weren't happening yet. There was no reason to come," said John Gorman, disc jockey and program director at radio station WMMS. "That is, until Jim Swingos gave them the reason: rock 'n' roll."
Oasis in the desert
When Swingos took over the restaurant at the Downtowner hotel in 1967, he was anything but a rock magnate. The restaurateur's only ambition was to serve great, garlic-drenched food for the 150-room hotel's businessman clientele. In 1971, however, Swingos bought the hotel and found himself confronted with a bitter reality.
"Cleveland's hotel business was dead, and I was trying to support a hotel with a restaurant," said Swingos. "It was dying."
Then, "I got a call from a promoter wanting to make a booking for Elvis," Swingos said.
Long live the King.
Elvis wasn't looking for a room. He wanted to use the hotel as his base of operations during a Midwest tour. Ka-ching! One-hundred rooms, three floors and enough room service to keep the chefs working overtime - and Elvis had run up a $20,000 bill.
Swingos had discovered his oasis in the desert. Though the city was in decline, its rock 'n' roll scene was raging.
"Cleveland was a national breakout town with worldwide impact," said Steve Popovich, who worked at the time as an executive at Columbia Records. "You had a radio station like WMMS, clubs like the Agora and a lot of great fans. It all came together at Swingos, the real rock 'n' roll hall of fame."
According to Don George, who worked as a representative for Kiss' label, Casablanca Records, Swingos did what few hotels at the time were willing to do: It appealed to long-haired musicians looking for some flash.
"It offered outrageous-looking rooms, reasonable rates and a very tolerant attitude - everything any musician would want," George said. "It was a great place to stay or just throw a party."
Turning a businessman's hotel into Action Central wasn't a simple task, however. Swingos ditched the bland decor for glitzy rooms with wild themes, from a safari room to a Bogie-themed "Casablanca" suite. He expanded the food and booze menus - anything to cater to the stars. No request was rejected - even the most bizarre.
"Elvis ordered a Boston strip steak and a chopped steak, a simple order," Swingos said. "Then I took it up to the room and he says OK, now cut it up into little pieces.' I did. Then he looks at 'em and says, Now, put 'em back together.'"
For Frank Sinatra, Swingos went out of his way to please.
"I got ahold of all these maitre d's at Sinatra's favorite restaurants to find out what he liked to eat. This one tells me hot peppers - so I got the hottest peppers I could find. They were literally steaming," he said.
The peppers even made Swingos break out into a sweat.
"He stuck his fork into one and my whole life flashed before me: What if the maitre d' had lied to me?" Swingos said. "Then he put it into his mouth, slammed down his fork and screamed 'Goddamn! ... those are the best peppers I ever had!'"
Decade of decadence
Food may have been the fastest way into many an entertainer's heart, but it was excess that made Swingos one of the country's most notorious rock hotels.
According to Ian Hunter, leader of the British group Mott the Hoople, Swingos was "a place you remember checking in and out of, but you can't remember anything in between. It was wild: a great place where you could be relaxed partying and taking in the chaos without having to worry about getting hassled for it."
Kid Leo, former disc jockey and music director at WMMS, remembers very well what it was like to party one night with rock's most conspicuous Who-ligan, drummer Keith Moon.
"The Who had a party there when Moon shows up dressed in a cop uniform. He's babbling something incoherent when all of a sudden he handcuffs me to this blonde," Leo said. "I didn't know her and she didn't know me. And Moon just walked away. She freaked."
Though Swingos remained tolerant of the commotion - the main reason for the hotel's popularity - he admits that one time even he freaked.
"I got a call at my house at 4 a.m. It was Yul Brynner complaining: This Deep Purple band is driving me crazy making noise," Swingos said. "So I showed up and saw Brynner going at it with (Deep Purple guitarist) Ritchie Blackmore."
Swingos stepped in to restore order: "I told that (expletive) Blackmore Can't you have some respect for Mr. Brynner?'"
But when the masters of mayhem, Led Zeppelin, descended on the hotel in '75 and '77, he just stepped aside and let the place get trashed.
"Whenever they came, we knew we'd get to remodel the place after they left,"Swingos said. "They were the only band who had an accountant on tour with them to tally up the damages. They smashed light fixtures, walls, windows, mirrors - everything. Their stay would end up costing $13,000 just for damages."
'Almost' reality?
Swingos believes that Led Zeppelin's rampages through the hotel not only took excess to a new level, but also inspired "Almost Famous."
"Everything is just like Swingos," he said. "Crowe was here when Led Zeppelin came to town and he saw it all: the chaos, the music, even (the film's queen groupie) Penny Lane."
Enter Christine Boris. The Clevelander, whom the character Penny resembles, was a fixture at the hotel during most of its heyday. She partied with dozens of bands and accompanied Led Zeppelin on two national tours. Everyone who was there still remembers her turning heads, strutting through Swingos with her long, blond hair swaying.
"She was Cleveland's Chamber of Commerce," Gorman said.
"She was the queen of the scene," Sunde said.
"She knew everyone," Leo said.
"But I wasn't a groupie," Boris said during a recent reunion with Swingos and Popovich at the Lakewood restaurant Swingos currently owns and operates, Swingos on the Lake.
"My job was to accompany (Zeppelin guitarist) Jimmy Page on tour to protect him from himself. We all partied together, but I still had my own room. They didn't want just a groupie."
"Yeah, just like Penny Lane - she called herself a Band-Aid," Swingos said. "She even fell in love with a rock star just like you did - remember Robert Plant?"
"It was at Swingos that I saw him in the full nude," Boris said. "He was an amazing specimen!"
"You should really see the movie - Penny Lane is you," Swingos said.
"You should talk to a lawyer, too, for taking your story," Popovich said.
"I don't want to see it," Boris said. "Even at the time, I was too busy partying to even take photos. No movie can replicate that 24-hour party."