Hotel June Malibu has been the site of some important cultural moments. Bob Dylan wrote one of his best albums here. But its greatest accomplishment might be what hasn’t happened.
By Mark Fedeli
Marketing and Editorial Director, Tablet Hotels
Book Hotel June Malibu on Tablet Hotels.
There’s a little hotel in Malibu that’s been through a lot. Just off the PCH, cascading gently down toward the sea, is a set of 13 connected bungalows that have survived multiple wildfires, multiple transfers of ownership, multiple name changes, and multiple celebrity escapades. There’s one celebrity story that stands above the rest, though. Not because of its salaciousness, but because of its prodigiousness.
The Malibu Riviera was opened in 1949 by Wayne and Helen Wilcox in a quiet area known as Point Dume. The Wilcoxes were a fun-loving, artistic couple, and they fostered an environment of creativity and easy-going hospitality that attracted writers and musicians to their motel. It’s even been said that superstars like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe occasionally hid out there.
In the seventies, the Wilcoxes’ son Gary worked on the property at Bob Dylan’s house, also in Point Dume. When Dylan’s then-wife Sara kicked him out in 1974 after one too many mistresses, he decided to hole up at Gary’s family’s motel. It was during this period, in bungalow 13, the furthest from the highway and most private, that Dylan started writing what’s largely considered his best album, Blood on the Tracks.
Despite being labeled his “breakup album,” Dylan has always insisted that Blood on the Tracks is not about the situation that sent him to live at the Malibu Riviera. Interviewed in the mid-1980s by a young Cameron Crowe, he said, “I read that this was supposed to be about my wife. I wish somebody would ask me first before they go ahead and print stuff like that. I mean, it couldn’t be about anybody else but my wife, right? Stupid and misleading jerks these interpreters sometimes are… I don’t write confessional songs.” Rarely do artists get to define how the audiences perceive their art. While the album might not be as personal as it’s been assumed, songs like “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Idiot Wind,” and “Shelter From the Storm” detail the complications that swirl around our adult relationships.
Fifty years later, you can stay in bungalow 13 and write your own masterpiece. Today the motel is known as the Hotel June Malibu and it’s been completely renovated. There’s a heated pool and light bites in the lobby. And the rooms have been reimagined just enough, with comfortable beds, a tasteful mix of high-design furniture and eccentric vintage pieces, and works by local artists. If boho-modernism is a thing, this is what it looks like.
What’s most important is what the Hotel June hasn’t done: jack up the pretentiousness and jack up the prices — something that wouldn’t have been out of character in this neck of the woods. The original motel was rustic and unassuming, a place for artists, both successful and otherwise. The Hotel June is surely a more polished production, but without turning its back on the atmosphere Wayne and Helen Wilcox set out to create, or the spirit that inspired one of rock and roll’s legendary records.
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Mark Fedeli is the hotel marketing and editorial director for Tablet and Michelin Guide. He’s been with Tablet since 2006, and he thinks you should subscribe to our newsletter.