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Well it’s 1 2 3 4
take the elevator
at the Hotel Yorba
I’ll be glad to see you later
all they got inside is vacancy…
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Until 2001, the Hotel Yorba was just a very stately flophouse near the Canadian border. But the White Stripes’ first big single made it a landmark — a rock ‘n roll hotel on the edge of America.
Jack White — a master of rock intrigue — heard all sorts of legends about the building as a kid, including rumors that the Beatles had camped out at the Yorba during their glory days. So it’s only fitting that the building would feature in the breakout single from the White Blood Cells album.
The single version of the track was actually recorded in room 206 of the hotel. But when the band returned to shoot the music video, they were refused entry. According to Jack White, the duo is “sort of banned for life” from the establishment, which has since been turned into low-income housing.
No matter how much they might have upset the management, the White Stipes made the hotel a legend. And the Hotel Yorba design owes its inspiration to all of the musical mystique — real and imagined — that swirls around Motor City.
