» Hardcore for Hard Rock: Every location is a destination for superfans

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LONDON — Beneath the gift shop of the original Hard Rock Cafe, staff members lead daily tours of the Vault, a space the size of a walk-in closet that guards some of the chain’s most vaunted treasures.

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Inside, there’s the harpsichord played by the Beatles, Bo Diddley’s cigar box guitar, a bustier from Madonna’s era of traffic cone tops. At the restaurant across the street, diners eat cheeseburgers alongside Jimi Hendrix’s maracas, Keith Richards’s pink Fender Stratocaster, and a pair of glittery sunglasses immortalized on the cover of Elton John’s chart-topping album “Caribou.”

Over at Table 61, where Princess Diana once dined with her young princes, a small plaque honours a duo with no musical gifts to speak of.

“To Dave & Val, legends among our patrons!” the sign reads. “This booth is dedicated to your enduring friendship.”

Dave and Val Harvey, a married couple from Middlesex, England, have been Hard Rock regulars since the mid-1980s. First once a month, then every Saturday, now every other weekend. They always sit at the four-top table sandwiched between Roger Daltrey’s “Tommy” outfit and Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’s kit. Dave, who has eaten thousands of meals here, has a standing order: Cheeseburger, fries and vanilla ice cream.

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The “Hard Rock Harveys,” who held their wedding reception at the now-closed Hard Rock Cafe Maui, are members of an extraordinary fan club whose travel and dining plans revolve around the temple to music deities and nacho plates. With more than 150 cafes in over 70 countries, devotees of the brand can turn their hobby into a lifelong pursuit. Last year, for Dave’s 70th birthday, the London staff presented the Harveys with the engraved plate.

“When we walked through the door of the London cafe for the first time, I said, ‘Yeah, this is for me,’” said Dave, a retired bus mechanic who sports a Hard Rock Cafe tattoo on his arm. “It’s the whole thing: The music, the food, the people, the memorabilia.”

More than a half-century since its debut, the rockin’ burger joint stands as a testament to the enduring powers of rock idolatry, American roadside diners and logo tees. Name a cultural capital or tourist haven — Osaka, Budapest, New Delhi, Lisbon, Bali, Cape Town, La Paz — and you’ll find people happily chewing on burgers and mooning over used instruments and worn costumes, seemingly in defiance of the local cuisines, museums and archeological sites.

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Other theme establishments have fumbled or failed. Fashion Cafe completely shut down; the celebrity-backed Planet Hollywood downsized to only four restaurant locations, including the recently reopened Times Square site. Meanwhile, Hard Rock International has experienced its own ebbs and flows, changing ownership four times, most recently to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, in 2007.

Yet the iconic brand, recognizable by a logo with a retro font transposed on a yellow disk that evokes an abstract cheeseburger, is everywhere. New restaurants, hotels, casinos, souvenir shops and live-music venues are coursing through the pipeline, including cafes in Madrid and Itapema, Brazil, and on Tejon reservation land in California. Every day around the world, tourists pour out of the cafes and retail stores, brandishing the logo with sports team pride.

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The appetite for Hard Rock Cafe, apparently, is insatiable.

The opening act

The first Hard Rock was established in 1971 by a couple of U.S. expats, Peter Morton, whose father co-founded the Morton’s the Steakhouse chain, and Isaac Tigrett, who would go on to marry Ringo Starr’s ex-wife.

The pair of young entrepreneurs shared a mutual hankering for ground beef patties and rock music. After importing the classic American-style diner, they waited for the British invasion to arrive. It did.

“These two guys open a restaurant introducing the American hamburger to London, which then was still new,” said Ken Kerrigan, a New York University instructor who specializes in corporate branding. “They had this novelty, but they also tapped into the ethos of rock-and-roll.”

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Rebellion, freedom, iconoclasm – with a side of fries.

Like the music in its name, Hard Rock built mass appeal. According to James Russell-Jones, the general manager in London who started his career with the company as a busboy, quality hamburgers were unusual on that side of the Atlantic. Hard Rock Cafe, he said, helped upend England’s conservative cuisine and culture. The unpretentious food and communal spirit of rock music brought a wider group of diners to the table. Its motto — “Love All, Serve All” — summed up its egalitarian philosophy.

“We opened the first classless restaurant. It didn’t matter who you were. You came in through the same door,” said Rita Gilligan, 84, one of the cafe’s first hires, who retired only a couple of years ago. “The billionaire, the bellman, the baker, the banker: They all sat together.”

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Five decades later, step inside the Las Vegas location and not a whole lot has changed. The third-largest cafe (after Orlando and New York City) commands a prime location on the Strip, its three storeys overlooking the street carnival below. Inside, LL Cool J raps; outside, an Elvis impersonator croons.

In every Hard Rock location, whether you are dining in Orlando, Suriname or Kathmandu, the menu is consistent. In addition to the burgers, the nachos, baby back ribs and milkshakes are menu stalwarts.

Before he worked for the company, Hard Rock International chairman Jim Allen visited a cafe in South Africa during his honeymoon with his first wife, satisfying the couple’s craving for “good old-fashioned American food and a cold Budweiser beer.” Allen said the chain offers more than familiarity, however.

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“We’re not McDonald’s,” he said. “We’re an experience.”

Branding and marketing experts agree that the Hard Rock Cafe can’t exist on food alone. Kerrigan, the instructor who is also a lead singer in a hard rock cover band, cites online reviews that rank it slightly better than Applebee’s. He pegs its longevity and popularity to what he calls “eatertainment.”

“Hard Rock latched their brand onto what it means to rock,” Kerrigan said. “You’re great, and you’re rebellious, and you’re different, and you’re changing things.”

Founders Morton and Tigrett, who embodied the rocker look with flowing locks, didn’t set out to collect costumes and instruments. It was serendipity.

Eric Clapton, a former regular of the London cafe, donated a red Fender guitar that, once installed, would act as a “reserved” sign for his favourite bar stool. Shortly after, Pete Townshend sent the restaurant one of his guitars with a note that read, “Mine’s as good as his! Love, Pete.” Both still hang over the bar.

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The duelling guitars spawned the world’s largest private collection of music memorabilia. The more than 88,000 items span decades of music history and represent genres including heavy metal, pop, grunge, rap, R&B, blues, country and Milli Vanilli.

Collecting cafes, T-shirts and 10,000 pins

Some travellers “collect” Hard Rock Cafes as they would countries, U.S. states or national parks. Andreas Buergelt, a bank adviser from Germany, is one of the most accomplished.

In 2016, he embarked on a jaunt that would rival Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour: 25 Hard Rocks in nine Asian countries over 16 days. In November, he clinched his 400th cafe, at the grand opening of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Bristol, Virginia. In January, during a spin through Latin America, he increased his tally by 16. In September, he will add China and Mongolia to his life list.

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“There are Starbucks collectors, but it’s not the same,” said Buergelt, 50, who was serenaded by a Madrid Hard Rock hotel manager and feted on his latest birthday by cafe employees at Changi Airport in Singapore.

Buergelt, like many other pilgrims, doesn’t just accrue visits. He has been amassing keepsakes, such as uniforms, logos, carpets and two decades’ worth of managers’ signatures, since he bought his first T-shirt at the Berlin cafe in 1993. In his home, he displays the relics in what he calls the “Hard Rock Way – Vault.”

“One room is not enough,” he said of an exhibit space that encompasses an entryway, staircase, bathroom, mail room and laundry room.

Similar to music fans, cafe enthusiasts want to own a piece of their idols. The Rock Shop, which can be attached to the cafe or stand alone, feeds the fervour with T-shirts, key chains, magnets and pins, shiny objects that have produced a community as serious about collecting as numismatists.

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The original pin was a gift from Tigrett to Gilligan, whose likeness has appeared on subsequent pieces. Today, servers wear lanyards laden with pins, which they often swap with customers and employees from other locations.

In London, the Harveys also have thousands of pins, in addition to scores of Hard Rock Cafe artifacts displayed in their home, like a private museum. They have been slowly giving away items, but, Dave lamented, “the trouble is we have so much stuff.”

To ensure a good home for the remainder of their collection postmortem, they included instructions in their will. The mementos, including the table plaque, will go to the London cafe and be distributed among the staff.

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