Beverley Hills

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Hotel California / Beverley Hills Hotel (9641 Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills)
Elizabeth Taylor used to live at this old hotel, built in 1912, but it is best known as The Eagles’ Hotel California. The hotel appears on the front cover of the album (the photograph on the inside cover was actually taken in the lobby of the Lido Apartments, 6500 Yucca). In the early 70s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed in the hotel's bungalows. A night at the Hotel California will cost somewhere between $295 and $3350.

Phil Spector’s House (1200 La Collina Drive)
Spector built this house in the mid 60s at the height of his success.

Brian Wilson’s House (10452 Bellagio Drive, Bel Air)
The house has been described as “a sprawling low slung California mansion like a small ocean liner. The state of the art recording studio was at one end of the house and, like a sort of engine room cum bridge, it seemed to pull the rest of the house along in its wake ... the year before (in 1966) in a moment of inspiration, Brian had the outside of the house painted bright purple to match his vibrational pitch at the time. His neighbours were horrified. Claiming it would adversely affect property values, they made him repaint it (pale yellow). Inside, shag carpeting, colour TV with the sound off, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles spinning on the turntable. There was the white grand piano, but the legendary sandbox in which Brian wiggled his toes while he composed, was gone - apparently the cats had misunderstood its purpose.” (David Dalton, Mojo June 98)

The house once belonged to Edgar Rice Burroughs

Roman Polanski’s House (10050 Cielo Drive, Benedict Canyon)
Trent Reznor recorded the album Downward Spiral at this location in 1994, but the house is best known for the Charles Manson inspired murders of Sharon Tate and her friends in 1969.

While Tate’s partner, Roman Polanski was away filming Day of the Dolphin, Manson ordered some of his “Family” to drive to the house and kill the occupants.

The killings - which happened a week before the Woodstock Festival on the East Coast - came to symbolise the end of the hippie dream in America. The house has since been demolished.

Westwood Memorial Park (1218 Glendon Avenue)
Frank Zappa (in an unmarked grave, near a large tree, close to the marker for Charles Bassler and Lew Ayres) and Roy Orbison (in an unmarked grave, near the marker for Frank Wright Tuttle) are buried here. Other graves in the cemetry belong to Truman Capote, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe (Hugh Hefner has bought the plot of land next door to Marilyn for a reported $85,000), Buddy Rich, Minnie Ripperton, Playboy pinup Dorothy Stratten and Natalie Wood. Also Eve Arden, Burt Lancaster (near the Sanctuary of Love), Carl Wilson, Sebastian Cabot, and John Cassavantes.

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