Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast
Two baby boomers, Bill Price and Jumpin' John McDermott, bringing you podcasts highlighting the early history & evolution of Rock & Roll.
Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast
Bill Graham
Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback! I'm your host, Jumpin' John, and in this episode I will review the career of the German-born American impresario and rock concert promoter, Bill Graham!
All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott. The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John, and the basic track was recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004.
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Until next time...
Rock On!
Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback! I'm your host, Jumpin' John, and in this episode I will review the career of the German-born American impresario and rock concert promoter, Bill Graham!
Bill Graham was born on January 8th, 1931, in Berlin, Germany. His birth name was Wulf Wolodia Grajonca, and he was nicknamed "Wolfgang." He was the youngest child and only son of Russian Jewish parents, and his father died in an accident two days after Graham was born. Due to the increasing peril to Jews in Germany, Graham's mother placed her son in a Berlin orphanage. From there he was sent first to France and, after the fall of France, he was sent to the United States in 1941. At age 10, he settled into a foster home in the Bronx, New York. He changed his name to sound more American, choosing "Graham" from a phone book, as it seemed to be the closest he could find to his birth surname, "Grajonca".
After obtaining a business degree from the City College of New York, Graham was drafted into the US Army in 1951, where he served in the Korean War and was awarded both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Upon his return to the States he worked as a waiter and maître d' in Catskill Mountain resorts in upstate New York. He was quoted saying that his experience as a maître d' and with the poker games he hosted behind the scenes was good training for his eventual career as a promoter.
Graham moved from New York to San Francisco in the early 1960's. He attended a free concert in Golden Gate Park and met the producer, Chet Helms. Helms was an important music promoter, producer, organizer, and major counterculture figure in San Francisco. At that concert Graham also made contact with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical theater group. After Mime Troupe leader R. G. Davis was arrested on obscenity charges, Graham organized a benefit concert to cover the Troupe's legal fees, and he approached Charles Sullivan. Sullivan owned the master lease on the Fillmore Auditorium, and he gave Graham permission to put on the Second Mime Troupe appeals concert at the Fillmore Auditorium on December 10th, 1965. Then, in February 1966, Chet Helms formally founded Family Dog Productions to begin promoting concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium, alternating weekends with Bill Graham. As Graham began promoting more concerts with Helms and Family Dog projects, inevitable conflicts arose between the two promoters. Helms' style was more laid back and Graham's more driven. Graham also saw the need to promote shows from more permanent locations of his own, rather than at rented venues.
Graham later secured a contract from Sullivan for the remaining open dates at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1966, and he credited Sullivan with giving him his break in the music concert hall business. Graham said [and I quote] "If Mr. Sullivan, Charles, hadn't stood by me and allowed me to use his permit I wouldn't be sitting here" [end quote]. Over the next two years Bill Graham produced shows attracting elements of America's now-legendary 1960's counterculture. Among the performers that he featured were the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the Committee Improv Group, The Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, and the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said this about Bill Graham [and I quote] “I was in an altered state one night and looked down to discover that the bridge of my guitar had collapsed. That’s when I saw this high-energy guy in a neat cardigan sweater, carrying a clipboard and trying to organize this completely unorganizable situation. He asked me what was wrong and then, not knowing a thing about guitars, he tried frantically to fix it. He didn’t, but I fell in love with him and I’ve loved him ever since” [end quote].
Bill Graham hired a staff that became known for their resourcefulness and personal contacts with artists and fans alike. Right from the start, Bill saw the rock concert as theater and provided his musicians with the best sound and lights available. It was Graham who steadily introduced more complex production into performances, and who encouraged intricate artwork for show posters. His attention to detail was unparalleled as he continued to work on bigger events throughout his career. A perfectionist who was completely hands-on, no task was too menial for Bill Graham. He did everything from booking the shows to taking tickets at the front door to cleaning the bathrooms between sets. With his wife Bonnie, who did some of the earliest show posters, Bill made the Fillmore a place where kids could experience the music they loved without getting busted. Bill treated concert goers like honored guests, and he treated his musicians like artists. He quickly became the top rock concert promoter in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bill Graham provided a platform for many bands to reach an audience and achieve notoriety. Alongside The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Butterfield Blues Band, and The Jefferson Airplane headlining, Bill brought great black artists like Freddie King, Albert King, B.B. King, Junior Wells, Lightning Hopkins, The Staple Singers, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters to a brand new audience. Bill brought The Doors and Jimi Hendrix to San Francisco for the first time. He also began booking English bands who had never before performed on the West Coast. After The Who played for the first time in San Francisco for two nights at the Fillmore, they did their groundbreaking set at the Monterey Pop Festival. When Bill put on Cream for a six night gig, the group was forced to begin extending their songs because they did not have enough material to fill two sets and their extraordinary performances broke the band in America. In 1966 Graham discovered the talent of a young guitarist named Carlos Santana. Bill would engineer Carlos' meteoric rise to success by insisting the Santana Blues Band perform at 1969's Woodstock Festival.
On March 8th, 1968 Graham expanded his operation by opening The Fillmore East on Second Avenue near East 6th Street on the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City. The venue provided Graham with an East Coast counterpart to his existing Fillmore in San Francisco, California. Opening on March 8th, 1968, the Fillmore East quickly became known as "The Church of Rock and Roll," with two-show, triple-bill concerts several nights a week. Graham would regularly alternate acts between the East and West Coast venues. Until early 1971, bands were booked to play two shows per night, at 8 pm and 11 pm, on both Friday and Saturday nights.
Then four months later, in July 1968, Graham moved his prime San Francisco concert location to a larger venue, one and a half miles away from the original Fillmore. He called this venue the Fillmore West. Originally the El Patio Ballroom and later the Carousel Ballroom, it was a swing-era dance palace, located in San Francisco's Civic Center District. The Grateful Dead were among the regulars at the Fillmore West, playing 64 concerts (including 18 under the name of the Carousel Ballroom) from 1968 to 1971.
Meanwhile, the Fillmore East quickly was becoming an important venue on the rock music circuit in the late 1960's. Because of its excellent acoustics, the enthusiastic audiences, and Graham's innovative way of handling the concert environment, the hall became a favorite spot for the recording of many phenomenal, live albums. Here are just a few of the artists who released an album that contained songs recorded at Fillmore East:
•The Allman Brothers Band, who released 4 albums
•Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
•Miles Davis, who released 3 albums
•Grateful Dead,who released 6 albums
•Jimi Hendrix, who released 2 albums
•Jefferson Airplane, who released 3 albums
•King Crimson, who released 2 albums
•Love
•John Lennon and Yoko Ono
•Quicksilver Messenger Service
•Johnny Winter, who released 2 albums
•Frank Zappa, who released 2 albums
In 1967 and early 1968 Bill Graham briefly managed the Jefferson Airplane. In 1969, with producer David Rubinson, Bill created two record labels, Fillmore Records and Wolfgang Records. In addition to his other operations Graham also purchased three San Francisco institutions: The Punch Line comedy club, The Old Waldorf nightclub, and Wolfgang's
nightclub. He also founded FM Productions, which soon became the leading technical tour support company in rock.
Now a media celebrity, Bill commuted between New York and San Francisco on a weekly basis. By 1971, the pressures of running multiple venues on opposite ends of the country was getting to Graham. He was starting to burn out from the stress of his never ending work schedule and the increasingly outrageous demands of superstar acts. The music industry was undergoing major changes, with large growth in the concert industry, and in particular with the increased prevalence of arena and stadium bookings. Graham decided to close both Fillmores. The final concert at Fillmore East took place on June 27th, 1971, with three billed acts, The Allman Brothers Band, The J. Geils Band, Albert King, and special surprise guests Edgar Winter's White Trash, Mountain, The Beach Boys, Country Joe McDonald in an invitation-only performance. The concert was simulcast live by New York City radio stations WPLJ and WNEW-FM. A week later, on July 4th, 1971, Graham closed the Fillmore West. The final five nights of shows featured such San Francisco bands as Santana, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, plus a poetry reading from Allen Ginsberg.
However, Graham's retirement did not last long. Doing more shows than ever before at a variety of venues, Bill put on multiple concerts ranging from a popular series of one-day outdoor festivals to landmark arena rock tours by major artists. In 1971 he reopened the Winterland Arena, a five thousand seat ice skating arena in San Francisco, and he also put on shows at the Cow Palace Arena in Daly City. In 1973 he did the staging for the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen rock festival at Watkins Glen, New York with The Band, the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers Band. Over 600,000 paying ticket-holders were in attendance at Watkins Glen. He continued promoting stadium-sized concerts at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco with Led Zeppelin in 1973 and 1977, and from 1973 to 1992 he promoted a series of outdoor stadium concerts at the Oakland Coliseum, each billed as "Day on the Green." These concerts featured acts such as the Grateful Dead and The Who on October 9, 1976, and the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan in 1987. Graham also helped create the incredibly lucrative rock merchandising industry by funding Winterland Productions, the first purveyor of t-shirts for which musicians received royalties.
Throughout his career, Bill Graham promoted multiple benefit festivals and concerts to raise monies for needy worthwhile causes. When Bill learned a budget cut was about to put an end to all extracurricular activities in San Francisco public schools, he persuaded the city to let him put on a March 23rd, 1975 benefit he called SNACK – an acronym for “San Francisco Needs Athletics, Culture, and Kicks.” Fifty thousand people filled Kezar Stadium to watch The Grateful Dead, Graham Central Station, Bob Dylan and the Band, Jefferson Starship, Tower of Power, the Doobie Brothers, Santana, Mimi Farina, and Neil Young perform. The concert raised enough money to fund after-school programs in San Francisco schools for another year. Although Bill had been doing benefits ever since he had first opened the Fillmore, SNACK was the first big rock benefit concert in history. By using the drawing power of artists who were willing to contribute their services free for a worthy cause, Bill had discovered a way to use rock to try to solve a social problem. His willingness to invest his time and energy in projects from which neither he nor his company earned any money would in time make him the go-to guy in rock for anyone with a worthy cause. From that point on, his organization of multiple charity concerts and festivals is legendary and unmatched by any other promoter. He went on to set the standard for well-produced large-scale rock concerts, such as the U.S. portion of 1985's Live Aid at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope and 1988 Human Rights Now! tours for Amnesty International.
On Friday, October 25th, 1991, Bill was flying home from a Huey Lewis and the News show in the East Bay when the helicopter stuck a power line and exploded, tragically killing all those on board. Almost half a million people would fill the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park on November 3rd, 1991 at a free concert in Bill’s memory entitled “Laughter, Love, and Music.” Three months later in 1992 Bill Graham was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the "Non-Performer" category. Graham would also be inducted into the Rock Radio Hall of Fame in the "Without Whom" category in 2014.
While Bill Graham was certainly in the music promotion business to make money, he also truly enjoyed the music and enjoyed making people happy. He tried to create that synergy where the performer and the crowd came together and the music became a vehicle that took everyone to a higher plane. For more than a quarter of a century, Bill Graham was the heart and soul of rock. His influence on the evolution of rock and roll was profound. There has never been any non-musician more significant to the San Francisco music scene and, in many ways, the live music industry as a whole, than Bill Graham. The city of San Francisco would end up dedicating the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in his honor. To the very end of his life, he continued to identify himself with and try to help those who had no real power in the world. Since his death the Bill Graham Memorial Foundation continues to do good works in his name.
Thank you for traveling back through time with me in another episode of the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts. In this episode I reviewed the career of the great impresario and rock concert promoter, Bill Graham! I'm Jumpin' John McDermott, and until next time - ROCK ON!