Mayor of Sunset Strip, The
Mon 9 July 2007 10.30pm
Through the glitter and the grunge, from The Monkees to Coldplay, Rodney Bingenheimer has reigned over the Los Angeles music scene for over two decades.
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Rodney Bingenheimer, aka Rodney on the ROQ, is the prince of pop, the king of Los Angeles radio who was the first to play records by Blondie, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and Nirvana. For 30 years he has championed the cutting edge.
But he drives an ancient car, lives alone in a cramped house stuffed full of dusty Hollywood memorabilia, and these days his only slot on Radio KROQ is on Sunday from midnight to 3am. What went wrong?
Featuring interviews with David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Cher, Brooke Shields, Brian Wilson, Debbie Harry, Gwen Stefani, Courtney Love, Nancy Sinatra, Coldplay's Chris Martin, and many others, Mayor of the Sunset Strip is a unique look at a life defined by a fascination with, and a Zelig-like knack for getting close to, the biggest celebrities in music, movies, television, and beyond.
Like Kim Fowley, the original 'Mayor of the Sunset Strip', also interviewed in this film, Rodney's parents divorced when he was young. He grew up with only movie magazines for company and his mother abandoned him when he was 17. So in 1965 the gnome-like Rodney headed for LA's Sunset Strip, where he found hundreds of teenage girls who wanted to mother him, feed him and give him somewhere to live.
