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IN BUSINESS UNTOLD STORY HARD ROCK CURATOR’S HAND ON THE PULSE OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL By Amanda Finnegan staff writer In a studio squeezed between hotel rooms on the second floor of the Hard Rock Hotel, rock and roll memorabilia curator Warwick Stone is nipping and tucking at a dress on a silver mannequin, preparing it to go on display. It’s hardly a dress, actually. The British flag fashioned into an article of clothing looks more like a shirt for a child than a dress for former Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell. The singer wore the dress more than 15 years ago, but it is still one of the most photographed and recognizable pieces in the Hard Rock’s memorabilia collection, Stone says. Not Jimi Hendrix’s guitars or Elvis’ loaded gun or Elton John’s sequined Dodgers uniform, but a dress from a former Spice Girl. “I know I paid way too much for it,” Stone says of the dress. “I just felt at the time that we had to have it. People remember it and the British come and ask for it. We tried at the time to buy every piece of Spice Girl memorabilia because it was a study in merchandising.” He’s helped to curate nearly 2,000 one-of-a-kind pieces of rock-themed memorabilia at the resort, where he now works exclusively, and thousands more for Hard Rock International. But surprisingly, rock and roll hasn’t always been of the theme of Hard Rock brand. When Hard Rock founders Peter Morton and Issac Tigrett began to expand its London-based café in the 1980s, the restaurant originally had an Americana theme—gas pumps, Cadillacs and moose heads adorning the walls, Stone said. The style made sense since Morton and Tigrett named their restaurant “Hard Rock Café” after the first side of The Doors’ “Morrison Hotel” album. It was a bar on 5th Street in Los Angeles frequented by miners and blue-collar workers, as Stone tells the story. “In the 1970s and 1980s, it was a really prevalent restaurant style to do these restaurants full of junk,” Stone said. “I walked into a TGI Fridays and saw a canoe hanging from the ceiling and I thought, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ We were sort of just one of these places.” So he went to his first Sotheby’s auction in 1986 and came back with a 1975 Gibson Les Paul guitar owned by Pete Townsend, the legendary guitarist for The Who, for $1,100. Now worth close to $40,000, it has become an icon as the signage for Las Vegas’ two Hard Rock Cafés. The original, still one of Stone’s favorites, is at the Hard Rock Hotel. Like any good curator, Stone knows all the stories, rumors and scratches behind nearly all of Hard Rock’s major pieces. Inside a jacket given to the hotel by Slash, Stone knows there are two lighters, $7 in change and a receipt for the jacket from Leathers and Treasures in Los Angeles, across the street from Need Some Advice? Ask an Expert. Taking business to a new level with innovative advertising and marketing solutions. AMANDA BYRNS Account Executive 702.990.2543 amanda.byrns@vegasinc.com Ask me how your company can gain a competitive edge. Commercial and Residential Let KO set-up your POS, CCTV, or VoIP network. KO’s team is comprised of IT professionals with years of experience. We also provide customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. www.VEGASinc.com | 4 JULY 2011 | 702.291.1015 or 1.800.590.0416 www.KoNevada.com 17 where the rocker went to school. He knows Jimi Hendrix’s handwriting apart from the woman who wrote their numbers in his black book. Among the contacts are telephone numbers for legends Sammy Davis Jr., Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. He also knows that Prince wears a boys size 10 and that almost all ’70s rockers wore size 28 pants. “What do you expect? They were surviving on amphetamines back then,” Stone says, holding out the waist of a pair of red bejeweled pants owned by the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. What he’s not sure of is the pair of women’s underwear that sits on the floor in the Steven Tyler exhibit of costumes worn during a Madison Square Garden show. Tyler requested that they be put in the exhibit and Stone abided. The curator rotates the exhibits based on their popularity and relevance, like the Tyler exhibit when he signed with “American Idol.” He’s in the process of installing bar codes in the exhibits for guests to scan with their smartphones ROCK’S STONE: Warwick Stone, leſt, is curator and creative consultant for Hard Rock Hotel. Among the items he’s responsible for is an original Elvis jumpsuit. for more info and for Stone to track what’s popular. He also bases the exhibits on public perceptions of the musicians. Before Michael Jackson died in 2009, the hotel had only one piece from him in storage—a “Bad” era leather suit—which Stone quickly put on display hours after his death. People thought only of his legal troubles and sexual abuse allegations prior to his death, he said. “Of course when someone dies, that all goes away,” he said. Everything was hot after Jackson’s death. Stone remembers bidding on a suit worn by Jackson’s chimpanzee at an auction but dropped out at $10,000. “I thought ‘What the (expletive) am I doing?’ What then? Am I going to have to buy a stuffed monkey to put this thing on?” Stone said. But some pieces are timeless, like the Elvis jumpsuit from his fabled Las Vegas days. Stone purchased it at an auction in London in 1986 for £25,000, or $40,000. It’s now one of the priciest pieces of rock memorabilia in the hotel, valued somewhere around $300,000. “Elvis has been working for me for the last 25 years,” Stone said. “He’s more than paid off the £25,000.” Data | Voice | Audio | Visual | Security PHOTOS BY JUSTIN M. BOWEN