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Ronnie Haran’s Wild Rock n’ Roll Ride

Behind every great band, there’s usually some suit in an office taking credit for “discovering” them. But in the case of The Doors and Love – two bands that defined the sonic earthquake of 1960s Los Angeles – that person was a 5-foot-nothing firecracker named Ronnie Haran who couldn’t type, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and just happened to carry a camera everywhere she went. Her teenage years were spent frequenting famed New York jazz clubs like Birdland and Jimmy Ryan’s, where she met and photographed luminaries like Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Dave Brubeck—later on, she pointed her lens at Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Frank Zappa, to name a few.

In 1965, while most women in the music industry were being asked to fetch coffee, Haran transformed the Whisky a Go Go from a struggling disco into rock’s holy ground. The Whisky might have become just another failed venture on the Sunset Strip if not for a fortuitous meeting between two regulars at PJ’s nightclub in Hollywood. Haran, already a fixture in the local scene thanks to her magnetic personality and ever-present camera, had been spending her evenings there among a rotating cast of celebrity friends when she struck up a friendship with Elmer Valentine, a club owner with big dreams and an empty venue.

When Haran mentioned she was looking for work, Valentine offered her a position that seemed modest on paper: assistant publicist at his newest venture, the Whisky, for the princely sum of $50 a week. What Valentine couldn’t have known was that he’d just hired a hurricane in heels. Within three weeks, Haran had so thoroughly outshone her supervisor that Valentine did what any smart businessman would do – he fired the publicist, gave Haran a whopping $25 raise, and handed her the reins.

The Whisky’s early days were less than promising, but Haran had a knack for seeing possibilities where others saw problems. When she discovered that adding a kitchen would allow them to lower the admission age from 21 to 18, she didn’t just suggest the change – she practically demanded it. But it was her next move that would transform the club from a struggling dance spot into ground zero for rock’s revolution. Haran convinced Valentine that the future wasn’t in spinning records but in live music, starting with acts like The Young Rascals, who were already setting the New York scene ablaze.

Before long, Haran had graduated from publicist to the Whisky’s house booker, wielding her influence like a divining rod for talent. Under her guidance, the former disco became a temple of rock and roll, its stage graced by a parade of soon-to-be legends: The Byrds soaring through their folk-rock harmonies, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention bending reality with their experimental sounds, Buffalo Springfield making the ground shake, and The Turtles riding their first waves of success.

The transformation was so complete that decades later, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would make the Whisky its first-ever inducted venue – though few knew the story of the young woman who’d orchestrated its metamorphosis. Her golden touch extended beyond booking, as she began managing two of L.A.’s most promising bands, Love and The Doors, with nothing but handshake deals and iron-clad determination.

In the corporate world of contracts and lawyers, Haran operated on something far more powerful: pure instinct. While she was revolutionizing the music industry, Haran was also snapping photos of everyone. Not your standard “peace sign at the party” shots, but intimate portraits of giants: Bowie, Warhol, Hitchcock.

Despite her iconic shots plastering the bedroom walls of teenagers everywhere, Haran never considered herself a professional photographer. She was just some kid from Brooklyn whose dad had given her a camera at age five, and she never stopped clicking. According to her, many of these photos have never seen the light of day; nearly half a million shots are sitting in boxes, waiting to be discovered like buried treasure. We’re talking about the kind of archive that makes music historians weep into their archived copies of Crawdaddy magazine.

Today, at 83, Haran’s one of the last standing witnesses to an era when rock and roll was still dangerous, when the Sunset Strip was an electric circus, and when a woman could revolutionize the music industry armed with nothing but moxie and a camera. While she’s living quietly in Montecito with her three dogs, surrounded by her museum-worthy collection of everything from California pottery to Hawaiian shirts, teams of archivists are finally digging through her photographic treasure trove. In a world where everyone with an iPhone thinks they’re Annie Leibovitz, Haran’s images are the real deal – snapshots of lightning in a bottle, taken by someone who helped create the storm.

-Staci Layne Wilson

Photo: Ronnie Haran with actor Clint Walker, 1962 (public domain)

4 comments on “Ronnie Haran’s Wild Rock n’ Roll Ride

  1. Great article. (Nice pic. Of her with Clint Walker – Cheyenne from my childhood.)

  2. Mike Gaglio

    Cool!

  3. The writing is as compelling as the subject! ❤️

  4. I love her for Love, one of my fave bands. A minor actress before the Whiskey, I was gobsmacked when I recently saw her appear in an episode of The Munsters!

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