Hard Rock Cafe

History

The cafe was reportedly named after side one of The Doors' 1970 album, Morrison Hotel, which was in turn named after a now closed bar in down town Los Angeles depicted on the back cover of Morrison Hotel. The Hard Rock Cafe's motto Love All, Serve All was adopted from Tigrett's guru Sathya Sai Baba.

Expansion around the world

A second location, originally developed by an unaffiliated group and later purchased by Hard Rock International, opened in downtown Toronto in 1978.[1] (Toronto is now home to 2 cafes).

The chain began global expansion in 1982 when the two agreed to develop their own cafes across the world. Morton (Hard Rock America) opened Hard Rocks in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston while Tigrett (Hard Rock International) did so in New York City, Dallas, and Paris, France.

Eventually Tigrett sold his interest to Robert Earl and Mecca Leisure, but Morton opened several more units including Las Vegas, Nevada; San Diego, La Jolla, and Newport Beach, California; Sydney and Melbourne, Australia; Honolulu and Maui, Hawaii; and Israel (later closed) among many others.

In 1990, The Rank Organisation (now The Rank Group) acquired Mecca Leisure and continued expanding the cafes, acquiring the cafes owned by Morton in 1995 at the same time as purchasing the Canadian units that were developed by an unaffiliated company.

There are more than 143 Hard Rock Cafes in over 36 countries at current date, with several more in the works. Hard Rock was most popular in the 1980s when it was a common hobby to visit as many locations as possible and collect a Hard Rock t-shirt bearing their logo and the location name. Now pin collecting is the current rage.

Music memorabilia

Hard Rock is better known for its atmosphere than its food. The cafes not only solicit donations of music memorabilia, but also purchase a number of items at auctions around the world. Hard Rock has the world's largest collection of such items. Memorabilia like autographed guitars, outfits from world tours and rare photographs are oft to be found mounted on cafe walls.

The collection began in 1979 with the gift of a un-signed guitar (a Red Fender Lead II) from Eric Clapton, who was a regular at the first restaurant in London. Pete Townshend of The Who got wind of this and sent in one of his guitars, also un-signed. Attached was a note: "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete." Hard Rock has so much material in their archive that they opened a Hard Rock museum named "The Vault" in Orlando, Florida. It closed in 2005.

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