The curving colossus pulsates with neon stripes, rising up the body of the building to its crown – where six laser-beam “strings” shoot light 20,000 feet into the sky, creating a phantom guitar neck that dissolves into the clouds. As classic 80s rock ballads boom out over the vast 13-acre, palm-fringed swimming pool, crowds of gamblers stumble from the casino to gawp up at the glitzy sight. “It was certainly built to be noticed from afar,” says Gary Bitner, spokesman for Hard Rock International, as we stand beneath the twinkling cliff face of LED lights that transforms the building into a dazzling son-et-lumière spectacle every evening, an eruption that is visible on the horizon for miles around. Near Fort Lauderdale, and wedged between the busy highways of Florida’s Turnpike and Route 441, the $1.5bn complex takes the roadside architecture of the Las Vegas strip to the ultimate extreme, bringing a dose of razzmatazz to the southern swamps. With its own rooftop swimming pool and butler service, the Beyoncé Suite (as it’s now known following the singer’s stay here) is one of the more surreal features of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel – a building that, more than any other, embodies the end-of-the-world hedonism of the new roaring 20s. I t doesn’t get much more rock’n’roll than standing stark naked at the top of a 450ft tall mirrored-glass guitar, taking an al fresco shower on the balcony of your penthouse overlooking the sun-soaked plains of Florida, as millions of dollars are gambled beneath you.
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