Cafes’ Curator Basks in His Rockin’ Role : John Rosenfield will speak Wednesday in Laguna about a dream job--collecting music memorabilia for the mega-popular restaurants.

Some kids kept their noses in their textbooks, diligently applied themselves to their studies and were rewarded with professions or positions in hi-tech industries. Then they lost those jobs in our rocky economy and possibly found themselves among the 3,000 applicants seeking food service jobs at the Newport Beach Hard Rock Cafe when it opened in October, 1992. John Rosenfield, meanwhile, had spent his formative years crowding the walls of his room with rock ‘n’ roll posters, drawing Rat Fink cartoons on his friends’ T-shirts with a Magic Marker, and pondering the big questions of life, like, “I wonder where Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock Strat is now?”

Unlike his hapless contemporaries, Rosenfield has a swell job, one that allows him to jet around the world, hobnob with the rock elite and stick rock ‘n’ roll posters on expensively wood-paneled walls, and it pays him to wonder about the whereabouts of the now-legendary guitars of Hendrix and other stars.

As curator for Hard Rock America, which owns half of the world’s growing supply of Hard Rock Cafes, it is Rosenfield’s job to find and acquire rock-related rarities--from Buddy Holly’s thick-framed glasses to Kurt Cobain’s guitar--for display in the mega-popular restaurants. It’s a job he will be speaking about Wednesday night at the Laguna Art Museum, as part of its “The Art of Money” lecture series.

It isn’t simply serendipity that landed Rosenfield, 38, his position. Between times spent staring longingly at the guitars on Eric Clapton album covers, he’s also studied art and design, dealt in antiques, and done time in management, helming some of Ralph Lauren’s shops. That experience all comes in handy, but one suspects he’s where he is--working in blue jeans, driving a ’56 ragtop T-Bird, and inhabiting an office so cool that you hear John Lee Hooker music when he puts your call on hold--because he clearly has followed Big Joe Campbell’s famed maxim and followed his bliss.

“I love rock ‘n’ roll music. It’s my life,” Rosenfield said. “When I was a kid, I always went overboard with posters on the wall and everything. I had collected lots of signed photos and had a huge record collection, thousands of records, which I lost this year in the fire in Malibu.

“And vintage guitars are a real passion for me. Like vintage cars, there’s an authenticity to them that’s so real . I could have a guitar, like a 1954 Les Paul, and never touch it, just look at it and go, ‘God, what a piece of art.’ ”

*

We spoke in the Beverly Center Hard Rock Cafe, the one that’s set apart from its upscale neighbors by the be-finned Cadillac jutting out of its roof. The interior is scarcely any less flashy, with such prizes as a 1958 Harley Elektra Glide once owned by Elvis Presley, a gaudy gold metal-flake guitar of Chris Isaak’s, the accessory-loaded moped from the Who’s “Quadrophenia,” and a bass dismembered by the same band.

Rosenfield got his start with the Hard Rock managing this location when it opened in 1982. Previously, while managing the Beverly Hills Ralph Lauren store he had met and become friends with Hard Rock founder and owner Peter Morton. Visiting Morton once in the late ‘70s at the original 1971-opened London Hard Rock, Rosenfield suggested to him that he should build a L.A. location and that he would like to work for him if he did.

So Morton did, and Rosenfield did, though he soon found that being a restaurant manager didn’t provide much creative satisfaction once the place was set up and running.

“I liked working for Peter, but I didn’t like the job that much. What I really wanted to do was collect the stuff full time. But back then this was the only Hard Rock (in the United States) and no one knew how it was going to take off.”

Rosenfield wound up going back to work for Lauren until six years ago, when the Hard Rocks had become such an expanding proposition that they needed a full-time curator. With him making the acquisitions, the chain now has the world’s largest collection of rock items, leading People magazine to refer to it as “the Smithsonian of rock ‘n’ roll.”

*

In the Newport Hard Rock you’ll see Prince’s “Purple Rain” outfit and guitars that were formerly the possessions of stars ranging from the Cure to local surf guitar legend Dick Dale. There’s more local color in displays of the skate and surf boards of local celebs, and even the motorcycle gas tank from fashion kingpin Mossimo Giannulli.

At the entrance there’s a Beatles display that includes one of Paul McCartney’s violin-shaped Hofner basses, and that isn’t just any Coke sign hanging there, but the one that once adorned the Beatles’ first haunt, Liverpool’s Casbah Club. Rosenfield works closely on such displays with Hard Rock creative director Warwick Stone, who is the fellow responsible for the Cadillac woody that hovers over the Newport location’s bar.

It’s not easy finding such treasures--Rosenfield routinely works 10-hour days--and his success at it just makes the job harder. In amassing its trove, Rosenfield maintains that the Hard Rock Cafe practically created the present market for rock memorabilia and certainly upped the ante for rare items.

When the London Hard Rock opened, rockers had been glad to donate their relics to hang on the walls. Now, the value of their castoffs is so great that those in possession of them understandably want heaps of money.

Rosenfield wouldn’t disclose the budget he has to work with, saying only, “It’s big .” But it evidently has limits. When the Fullerton-made Stratocaster guitar played by Hendrix at Woodstock (the same instrument Rosenfield mused about as was a kid, original list price $330) came up for auction a while back, he had to pass on it, as an Italian collector had made a record-breaking bid of $325,000 for the guitar.

He did turn up Hendrix-played Flying V and acoustic guitars, though, as well as one of his fringed buckskin jackets. The L.A. Hard Rock also host’s Elvis’ most photographed guitar, a black Gibson adorned with a karate sticker that Elvis used through his Vegas years. Rosenfield bought it at a Sotheby’s auction for $25,000 and says it has quadrupled in value during the last four years.

*

There are some rock icons that have eluded him so far. He’d love to acquire the prime guitars of Duane Allman and Eddie Cochran, as well as the psychedelic-painted Gibson SG that Clapton played in his Cream days. (Cream drummer Ginger Baker’s personalized bass drum heads already reside in the Las Vegas Hard Rock.)

Rosenfield has his own favorites of the things he’s turned up. A big Roxy Music fan, he spent some time tracking down the leopard jacket Bryan Ferry wore on an early album cover.

“And I was really knocked out to get Buddy Holly’s custom cowboy boots that he handmade himself. Leather tooling was his side interest. They have his initials on the outside, and on the inside are his girlfriend of the time’s initials--her name was Echo McGuire. They are amazingly beautiful, the most beautiful cowboy boots I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He says he never feels torn between keeping such things for himself or turning them over to the Hard Rock.

“There are a lot of things I would have liked for myself, but this is my job. I focus on doing it for the Hard Rock. I don’t really collect rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia for myself now because I do it for a living,” he said.

*

His work day usually starts around 8:30 a.m. “It’s mostly faxing and phone calls, studying auction catalogues, coming up with ideas for framing and concepts for different displays we’re going to do,” he said.

Due to the Hard Rock’s reputation, he often is the first person approached with a rare item, so he has to know his stuff. About half his callers are established dealers he’s dealt with and trusts; others are unknown quantities. During a follow-up phone call for this interview, he kept excusing himself to deal with a party on another line claiming to have one of Elvis’ 1950s microphones.

“He has photos of Elvis using it up close, so it might be a good piece,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard to authenticate things like that. If some guy says, ‘Bob Dylan threw this shirt off the stage in 1966,’ how can we prove that? I usually only buy things if there’s full documentation on it, or if I know the person or if there’s photographs of the person wearing the particular item. There is some fake memorabilia out there, but I know it petty well.”

He often works into the night, hanging out backstage at concerts to talk to acts about donating items for exhibit (Often, in return, the Hard Rock will make donations to the acts’ favored charities).

His job has grown more complicated in the last couple of years, having to determine not only what’s rare, but what might someday be rare.

“We’re trying to stay cutting-edge. These kids come in, and a lot of them don’t know who Jerry Lee Lewis is. They want to see Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana. So that’s where my head is now. I don’t want this to be a mausoleum,” he said.

*

The Universal City Hard Rock Cafe, due to open in a year, will be “very ‘90s, real thrash, grunge, skating, Generation X, Pearl Jam, Gin Blossoms, Primal Scream style stuff, as new as you can get.”

He tries to stay on top of trends, to determine which artists are going to last for a while. “A lot of bands who want to give us stuff are just one-hit wonders. I already have storerooms full of stuff.”

In addition to stocking the 13 Hard Rock America-owned cafes--which are as far-flung as Australia and Israel--Rosenfield has been working overtime on the Hard Rock hotel and casino due to open in Vegas in December. There even the rooms, such as a proposed Elvis suite, will sport memorabilia.

“The hotel is going to be full-on the most amazing collection of rock and roll ever assembled,” he claims. “It’s not going to be lots of little things. We don’t want to repeat ourselves, and we already have the Hard Rock Cafe there now.

“In order not to repeat ourselves, we’re going to have only major pieces. Each guitar there--like a Springsteen Telecaster or the guitar Bill Haley used to record ‘Rock Around the Clock’--will have enough substance to stand on its own. There are going to be a lot of surprises, a lot of really interesting things.”

As much as he enjoys the hunt and hustle of finding rock rarities, his real satisfaction comes after they’re in place.

“Whenever I’m in a city with a Hard Rock, I go in and watch people’s reactions to things. Most people really are into it. They walk around and really study the stuff, get excited when they see certain pieces. Then there are others who will walk right by a really amazing piece and not even look at it. I wonder about people like that, but that’s OK too.

“To me, doing this is like making a movie, from the ground up. You go to a place and there’s nothing there. And you have to come up with ideas for it and put it together, and the excitement builds, and when it finally opens, it’s like going to your movie’s premiere. That’s very fulfilling.”