Hard Rock Cafe Shoots Straight for the Hip : La Jolla Is Next

When the Hard Rock Cafe chain opens its 11th night club in La Jolla on Dec. 11, its impact on the local nightlife scene may be comparable to that of the first manned moon shot on thS. space program.

Or maybe the similarity will just be in the amount of noise they generate.

In any event, if the success of the other 10 Hard Rock Cafes is repeated, Hard Rock Cafe-La Jolla will almost certainly become the hot spot for two-legged wildlife in San Diego.

The Hard Rocks, launched in London in 1971, combine inexpensive roadside diner food, Richter-scale-rattling rock ‘n’ roll music and eye-boggling amounts of rock memorabilia. It’s a formula that has made the Hard Rock the toast of the hip in London, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Chicago, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco and Honolulu.

“I went (to the L.A. Hard Rock) last Saturday night for a radio station Halloween party, and it was just wild and crazy,” said Lisa Protter, director of creative services with MEGA, a rock ‘n’ roll sponsorship company. “It definitely is a hot spot, and what’s even hotter than the spot is the merchandising: Everywhere you go, you see people wearing Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts and sweat shirts.”

So, get ready for the Hard Rock Cafe-La Jolla T-shirt blitz. The local cafe may be the hippest of them all.

The $2-million, two-story restaurant, at 909 Prospect Ave., will occupy 6,000 square feet and feature a bar modeled after Pete Townshend’s custom Les Paul guitar, right down to its sunburst finish. On the menu will be hearty American food from the Happy Days era: hamburgers and french fries, mashed potatoes and gravy, milkshakes and cherry Cokes. On the sound system will be a steady stream of rock ‘n’ roll hits from the 1950s through the ‘80s.

On the walls will be an assortment of rock ‘n’ roll flotsam and jetsam, including Jimi Hendrix’s beaded, fringe-leather shirt, handwritten lyrics by Bruce Springsteen, Elton John’s Tutti Frutti suit and guitars from Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Billy Idol and Steve Winwood.

“We probably have the largest private collection of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia in the world,” chain founder Peter Morton said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “We have a full-time curator, and the stuff that isn’t on display is stored in our Los Angeles warehouse. A lot of what we get is donated. Just last week, George Michael gave us one of his guitars after we set up a miniature Hard Rock Cafe at a fund-raiser he was putting on.

“We also buy from private dealers, and at auctions,” he added.

Morton, a 41-year-old native of Chicago,said the Hard Rock Cafe concept was born of hunger. After earning his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Denver in 1969, he took off on a post-graduate vacation to Europe and found homesickness gnawing at his stomach.

“On the way home, I was in London, and I realized, ‘Damn, there’s no place where you can get a real American hamburger or milkshake,’ ” Morton said. “One thing led to another, and I ended up putting down $5,000 of my own money, getting a bank loan, and building a restaurant that was very reminiscent of a 1950s-style American diner, juxtaposed with my love for rock ‘n’ roll.”

The London Hard Rock Cafe, which opened June 14, 1971, was an instant success--and an instant moneymaker, Morton said. Yet it wasn’t until 1982 that he opened a second Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles, with backing of film director Steven Spielberg and country-western singer Willie Nelson.

“I was just having a good time, experiencing the culture of Europe, of England,” Morton said. “But eventually, I felt it was time to do something more positive; I decided I wanted to build the Hard Rock Cafe into a big company.”

Today, the Hard Rock Cafe is not only a “big company,” but a very hip company. Last year, the chain grossed more than $75 million. A third of that came from merchandising: sales of T-shirts, sweat shirts, jackets and baseball caps bearing the Hard Rock Cafe logo and location.

On Dec. 10, the night before the Hard Rock-La Jolla’s public opening, a $100-a-ticket benefit for the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation will be held.

Any doubts about the Hard Rock Cafe’s hipness can be resolved by driving south across the border to Tijuana and taking a stroll along Avenida Revolucion, the Mexican city’s main tourist drag.

In virtually every storefront is a rack of T-shirts and sweat shirts geared toward fad-conscious American consumers. Emblazoned on the front: Corona Beer, Spuds MacKenzie and the Hard Rock Cafe-Tijuana.

Many of these shirts are probably bootlegs. After all, there is no Hard Rock Cafe in Tijuana. Not yet.