Far Out 40: Songs from The Chelsea Hotel
The Chelsea Hotel is a fascinating hub of history. As if an asteroid of creativity and intrigue hit New York and landed as a 12-story resting place on 222 West 23rd Street, there must be something mythical there, something otherworldly. From its opening in the late 1880s, the establishment seemed to be home to strange goings-on and odd characters. But as the decades ticked on and the place stood style, its looming facade drew in lost souls and artists like a beacon, with its clientele offering off art as a thank you.
That part isn’t even a metaphor. Chelsea became such a thriving and influential creative hub in the 1960s, especially because art could be traded for board. The manager, Stanley Bard, was a good Samaritan type who wanted to help down-and-out creatives. So, for a while, rent could be paid late or not paid at all as long as Bard could keep hold of a portfolio or a painting or two in lieu of the money.
It then became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As artists moved in, the cheap rent allowed them to dedicate themselves to creating more. More art was then made about the place, and then more artists came along to see what the fuss was about. The 1950s brought the poets as Dylan Thomas moved in and drank himself to death there. Then came the musicians. By the mid-1960s, Chelsea was busy with some of the best minds of the generation, following in the footsteps and walking the halls ways of those that came before.
The fascination with the Chelsea Hotel is as much held up by those who lived there as it is by music history fans. The residents couldn’t seem to stop the setting from entering their work. Andy Warhol traced through the rooms in ‘Chelsea Girls’, with Nico providing the soundtrack. Leonard Cohen captured a moment of kismet in the elevator as he penned ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ about a night spent with Janis Joplin. Bob Dylan remembered “staying up for days at the Chelsea Hotel” writing songs for his wife, Sara.
Even if they never penned a word about the place, the hotel is in their history. The Grateful Dead played a show on the roof, stopping and refusing to continue when Warhol walked in. Madonna shot the scandalous pictures for her Erotica photobook in room 822. The Sex Pistols story came to a grizzly end as Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungeon, in room 100. Pink Floyd, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, Chet Baker and many more all found their way there.
The obsession with these people and these stories is so high that the hotel has had to regularly switch up the room numbers to throw people off their tracks. Room 100 especially had to go, as hordes of dark tourists would come looking for the murder site. Nowadays, the hotel has reopened as a plush and luxurious space. It’s a far cry from the semi-squaller the residents used to live in, but the ghosts are surely still haunting it.
The place still finds its way into modern music, too. Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, Jesse Jo Stark, and others have all continued the legacy of the hotel’s inclusion in music, holding it up as sacred ground that artists still worship.
Whether mentioned in song, or whether the song itself was made there, there is plenty of music echoing the hallways. From artists across all genres and spanning a lengthy timeline, dive into the sounds of the Chelsea Hotel.
40 songs about or written at the Chelsea Hotel:
- Leonard Cohen – ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’
- Joni Mitchell – ‘Chelsea Morning’
- Nico – ‘Chelsea Girls’
- Jefferson Airplane – ‘Third Week In The Chelsea’
- Bob Dylan – ‘Sara’
- Joey Ramone – ‘Like A Drug I Never Did Before’
- Patti Smith – ‘Land: Horses / Land Of A Thousand Dances / La Mer(de)
- Lou Reed – ‘Vicious’
- Bob Dylan – ‘Sad Eyed-Lady Of The Lowlands’
- Leonard Cohen – ‘Take This Longing’
- Grateful Dead – ‘Friend Of The Devil’
- Madonna – ‘Erotica’
- The Doors – ‘The End’
- Tom Waits – ‘Martha’
- John Cale – ‘Barracude’
- Janis Joplin – ‘Cry Baby’
- Canned Heat – ‘Let’s Work Together’
- Allen Ginsberg – ‘America’
- Pink Floyd – ‘Wish You Were Here’
- Jimi Hendrix – ‘Hey Joe’
- Sid Vicious – ‘My Way’
- Marianne Faithfull – ‘As Tears Go By’
- Iggy Pop – ‘Lust For Life’
- Bob Marley – ‘Could You Be Loved’
- Jeff Beck – ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’
- Chet Baker – ‘My Funny Valentine’
- Dee Dee Ramone – ‘Jump In The Fire’
- Alice Cooper – ‘Caught In A Dream’
- Dylan Thomas – ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Night’
- William S. Burroughs + Kurt Cobain – ‘The “Priest” They Called Him’
- Kris Kristofferson – ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’
- Mink DeVille – ‘Spanish Stroll’
- Johnny Thunders – ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Round A Memory’
- Edith Piaf – ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’
- The Velvet Underground + Nico – ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’
- Phoebe Bridgers – ‘Chelsea’
- Taylor Swift – ‘The Tortured Poets Department’
- Better Oblivion Community Centre – ‘Dylan Thomas’
- Jesse Jo Stark – ‘Chelsea Hotel
- Jeffrey Lewis – ‘The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song’