Interesting tidbit about the origin of the Hard Rock Cafe

I always thought I remembered seeing a skid row bar called The Hard Rock Cafe when I was a little kid in downtown L.A. but I never thought about it again until now. Here's a little story about it.
Henry Diltz was a photographer that was photographing the Doors for the upcoming album 'Morrison Hotel'.Though the shoot produced what would become a memorable album cover, the events that followed proved even more fateful.

"Jim said, 'Let's go get a drink,'" recalled Diltz.

The group drove to Skid Row, where they spotted a place called the Hard Rock Cafe. "It was a little wino bar on the corner," said Diltz.

Diltz said the band spent an hour drinking inside, while he took photos. A shot of the exterior of the bar, with a sign bearing its name, ended up on the back of the album cover. After the record was released, Diltz says the Doors got a call from a man in London who wanted to use the Hard Rock Cafe name for a restaurant he was opening. The business grew into the now famous international chain of music-themed restaurants. A Hard Rock Cafe spokesperson said Diltz's account is the most common explanation for the origin of the restaurant's name, though he added that other stories are floating around.

The Hard Rock Cafe on Skid Row is long gone.The Hard Rock Café had been there since the ‘30s, so it didn’t have anything to do with hard rock music. Hard rock mining probably, or “a rock and a hard place.”

Read the story here.
Original location of the bar here.