The Viper Room

Viper Room

8852 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, California 90069
www.viperroom.com

The Viper Room is a nightclub located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. It was opened in 1993 and was partly owned by actor Johnny Depp until 2004. The club is well known for having been the site where actor River Phoenix died of a drug overdose on Halloween morning in 1993.

Even following Phoenix’s death, the club remained a hang-out for Hollywood’s hottest young actors. Regulars included Jennifer Aniston and Sean Penn. Adding to that group, Adam Duritz, the lead singer of Counting Crows, hid out as a Viper Room bartender in late 1994 - early 1995 to escape his newfound fame.

Johnny Depp had asked Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to play the club's opening night. They gladly obliged.

In Oliver Stone’s film, The Doors (1991), the Viper Room was used as a filming location for scenes depicting the London Fog, also of West Hollywood. London Fog was a lesser-known nightclub next to the Whisky a Go Go where The Doors had their first regular gig for four months in early 1966.

As part of the settlement of a lawsuit involving the disappearance of co-owner Anthony Fox in 2001, Depp relinquished his ownership of the Viper Room in 2004.  Until early 2008, the club was owned by Darin Feinstein, Bevan Cooney, and Blackhawk Capital Partners, Inc. The club is currently owned by Harry Morton, President and CEO of Pink Taco, and the son of Hard Rock Cafe co-founder Peter Morton. Morton plans to turn the gritty Sunset Strip club into a global franchise by opening several live music venues throughout the world, all of which will bear the name "The Viper Room."