Back in the heyday of '70s rock gods, through the decades of hair bands and glam metal, the stories of debauchery along Los Angeles' Sunset Strip became not only legendary, but almost a rite of passage for bands striving for that upper echelon of fame.
L.A.'s Hyatt on Sunset hotel (now Andaz West Hollywood) became known as the "Riot House" for good reason -- Led Zeppelin, who often rented as many as six floors while in town, threw massive parties and trashed rooms. Keith Richards dropped a TV out of room 1015; Keith Moon reportedly did the same. John Bonham (or perhaps Zep's tour manager) reportedly drove a motorcycle down through the hallways. Jim Morrison was evicted after hanging out a tenth floor window by his fingertips. It was from a balcony of this hotel that Robert Plant made his famous "I am a golden god!" declaration.
Also along the Strip, bands like Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, Poison, and Metallica made their name playing gigs and doing drugs. "The Sunset Strip was a cesspool of depravity," Crüe frontman Vince Neil wrote in the band's autobiography The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band.
Those days in L.A. are long over though, and the Sunset Strip is now sanitized and tourist friendly. Its name, however, is still synonymous within music lore as a haven for bad behavior. Now, the strip of bars seemingly on its way to getting that level of attention is Nashville's Lower Broadway.
Country music singer Morgan Wallen's arrest this weekend following the Country Music Awards is just the latest in a long rap sheet building along the Honky-Tonk Highway. According to the Metro Nashville Police Department, Wallen was arrested and charged with three felony accounts of reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct after he allegedly threw a chair off of the sixth story rooftop of Chief's Bar.
Chief's Bar is a brand-new venture, owned by country singer Eric Church and just opened on April 5, two days before Wallen's arrest. Like many bars in Nashville (and along the Sunset Strip), live music is a huge component of the business. Emerging singer-songwriters busk along the popular roadway and compete for stage time in the bars. The area is both touristy and townie, depending on what's going on in Music City.
Chief's is just the most recent celebrity-owned bar to pop up along Lower Broadway. It's on the same block as Kid Rock's Honky Tonk, which has seen its own fair share of arrests since it opened in 2018. The next block down has Jason Aldean's eponymous bar, Luke Bryan's Luke's 32 Bridge bar, Blake Shelton's Ole Red restaurant and bar, and Miranda Lambert's Casa Rosa cantina. Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row is just one more block down, along with Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places and Alan Jackson's AJ's Good Time Bar. Florida-Georgia Line's FGL House is down a side street.
Last summer, The Tennessean reported that locals were concerned that Lower Broadway was on the verge of becoming a liability. At the time, some 230,000 visitors were hitting the downtown hotspots each weekend night and year-end visitor projections were expected to hit 15 million. Nashville's airport saw some 21.9 million passengers, up 9.5% from 2022. The Tennessean called Lower Broadway's transformation over the course of 30 years turning "a dilapidated downtown thoroughfare [into] an adult theme park," which is why it's become such a popular place for bachelor and bachelorette parties, fraternity and sorority trips, and other weekend getaways.
The generally rowdy atmosphere and huge growth in the area brings with it an increased concern about safety. The MNPD statistics for 2023 show a city-wide decrease in violent crime, and thus far in 2024 in the Central District, which includes Lower Broadway, larceny is by far the most reported offense.
A local, frequently updated site called broadwaycrime.com, which begins its drunk and disorderly arrest tallies in July 2021, posts the many mugshots and reasons for arrests happening along the Broadway strip. They range from the humorous ("[Name Redacted] kicked out of Kid Rock's Bar after vomiting") to concerning ("Name Redacted] grabs a man's buttocks without consent") to serious ("Name Redacted] caught with 'switch' on his handgun").
Overconsumption of alcohol is prevalent, as it is in any party district, and a reported rise in date rape drugs only adds to the concern about frequenting the area. According to The Tennessean, nearly 25% of all victims who received sexual assault exams in 2023 believed they were drugged at the downtown bars.
Wallen's felony arrest (which was included on BroadwayCrime) was high-profile, but last month a man was arrested for a Valentine's Day stabbing at the Lucky Bastard Saloon on Broadway. Also in March, a University of Missouri senior who was in town for a fraternity formal and had been bar-hopping with friends that night went missing after being removed from Luke's 32 Bridge. His body was found in the Cumberland River two weeks later; no foul play is suspected.
Nashville has long been the heart and home of country music, and for a genre (and lifestyle) that is often known for its rowdy ways and rebellious spirit, a bit of good-natured troublemaking is expected. But the Sunset Strip stopped being fun for musicians and fans once the frequent brawls and deaths became too much for the newly incorporated city of West Hollywood, and its citizens demanded better. John Belushi may have died at the long-famous Chauteau Marmont on the Strip, but River Phoenix overdosed at the then-brand new Viper Room, which happened to be an exceedingly popular celebrity-owned hotspot. The human toll became too much, and the Strip declined soon after.
Lower Broadway has not reached that rock bottom yet, and hopefully that reckoning never comes. The stages in its bars and clubs foster the talent that the rest of the country will one day know, and these newer locations with big-name backing add credibility to the artists who manage to grace their stages.
But Nashville's music scene is too important to become a casualty of growth and popularity and reckless behavior, and those who own, operate, and frequent Lower Broadway -- locals or not -- have to help it avoid that fate.
