Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Hal Rothman on how Las Vegas has remained one step ahead of the competition in the entertainment game

Bill Murray used to get a lot of laughs out of his caricature of the Las Vegas lounge singer, the smarmy crooner without even a droplet of sincerity in his soul. Like much about the image of our city, this hackneyed characterization has not stood the test of time. A bona fide lounge lizard himself, Murray has seen the changes firsthand. Las Vegas is home to the hippest club scene in the nation.

Las Vegas has been hip before. A moment of illusory sophistication accompanied the city's modern birth. Las Vegas entertainment began as center stage, with Jimmy Durante opening the Flamingo in 1946, Frank Sinatra's arrival at the Sands in 1952, and the interracial Moulin Rouge's brief moment at the pinnacle of afterhours cool in 1955. It peaked in the early 1960s with the Rat Pack and Louis Prima.

Then Las Vegas stumbled; instead of cutting-edge it became middlebrow before the concept really existed. Las Vegas became Wayne Newton's town, where entertainment placated and did not challenge, a place so unhip that it was bound to become a caricature of whatever it intended. This was the era of Sonny and Cher, the town that originated the lounge singer, an icon that Murray parodied beyond cliche. After they got booted from television, Tony Orlando and Dawn headlined 1970s Las Vegas in their slide toward oblivion.

Even the opening of the Mirage and the inauguration of the Mirage Phase did not change entertainment at the club level. Focused on the big productions, Siegfried & Roy, Cirque de Soleil and others, entertainment in Las Vegas moved toward the wide center of a growing market. Smaller hip venues did not fly.

The rebirth came out of nowhere. By 1995 a few small clubs began to alter the existing ethos, sneaking in under the radar of the enormous new hotels. The Metz Club, The Beach and Drink and Eat Too attempted to draw a crowd of young conventioneers and tourists as well as locals.

The opening of the Hard Rock Hotel in March 1995 signaled a new Las Vegas, aimed at the young. A shrine for the rock 'n' roll generation, the Hard Rock began attempts to reach hip Baby Boomers. With its Stevie Ray Vaughn guitars and Sheryl Crow clothing on display, the Hard Rock opened the way to a different audience.

The smaller clubs had the market to themselves for a brief moment. Then the big hotels got wise to the fact that their patrons were escaping to other places because the entertainment on the premises was not quite to their liking. This was the age of "Swingers" and "Go," movies that featured young rapscallions painting their dreams on the canvas of the new Las Vegas. The die was cast.

It happened quickly. In 1995 Club Rio atop the Rio opened the first hip nightclub inside a hotel. Other hotels looked at the niche and realized they had missed a significant opportunity. Not only could such clubs be lucrative, but they also promised cachet, a sense of hipness that would extend beyond the club to the rest of the property.

The year 1997 was the turning point. Two of the largest properties figured out an answer to the question of the 21-34 demographic. Upscale nightclubs Ra at the Luxor and Studio 54 at the MGM Grand were announced. Ra opened on New Year's Eve 1997. The two clubs showed that the model could work inside a hotel.

The MGM Grand and Luxor were not without precedent when they chose to create nightclubs. They did what corporate managers do best. They expropriated the ideas of smaller entrepreneurs and used their resources to create a better imitation of the original. They succeeded so completely that they changed the market.

From there, it was off to the races. Every major hotel soon had a hip nightclub and each was full of gyrating patrons. With the opening of the Palms, the city had a property devoted to the chic, where celebrities were visual currency. The ante went up and more clubs opened. No self-respecting Strip hotel would be caught dead without one. Once again, Las Vegas had done what the city does best: It anticipates desire where competitors only reflect it.

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