Remembering Producer and Impresario Bill Graham
The Rock Music Pioneer Died 32 Years Ago
Bill Graham, founder of the rock palaces Fillmore East and West among many accomplishments, died Oct. 25, 1991 in a helicopter crash. Here is an excerpt on Graham from the book New York Groove: An Inside Look at the Stars, Shows, and Songs That Make NYC Rock.
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Born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin in 1931, Bill Graham escaped pre-Holocaust Germany as part of an orphan exchange program that brought Jewish children to France. When Paris fell to the Nazis in 1941, Graham survived an arduous journey to America, where a foster family from the Bronx took him in. Graham was 10 years old.
Graham graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and at 18 was drafted to fight in the Korean War. On his return to New York, Graham worked as a waiter at Catskill Mountain resorts upstate. In the early 1960s, Graham moved to San Francisco, where he found success organizing benefit concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium. Graham realized he could make a living promoting shows with San Francisco bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Moby Grape, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
As bands suggested musicians they’d like to see perform, Graham booked Black artists, many of whom rarely played for White audiences. R&B, blues, and gospel greats like the Staple Singers, Otis Redding, B.B. King, Albert King, Lightning Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters shared bills with rock and jazz musicians. In 1968 Graham shifted operations to Fillmore West. That year he also opened Fillmore East in the former Loews Commodore, and later Village Theater, at 105 Second Avenue in the East Village.
Graham brought the greatest rock musicians of the era to Fillmore East: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Roger Daltrey, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Jim Morrison, and Elton John all appeared with the biggest names in Latin, jazz, blues, R&B, folk, big band, and Eastern music.
Joshua White, who pioneered psychedelic visual accompaniment of musicians, founded the Joshua Light Show. White and his team of lighting innovators created visual fireworks behind Fillmore East’s performers, who embraced the hall’s acoustics and knowledgeable fans.
By 1971 Graham found it harder to book headliners in Fillmore East, which sat 2,600 people. Bands found that it was more lucrative to play shows at arenas and stadiums that had begun to stage rock concerts. Graham, burned out by weekly travel between coasts, closed both halls and relocated to the Bay Area. But he was not idle long. Graham promoted huge events that included the 1985 American Live Aid concert, the 1986 Conspiracy of Hope tour, and the 1988 Human Rights Now! tour. In 2020, the New York Times called Graham “America’s best-known rock promoter from the 1960s to the 1990s.”
Graham was flying home from a Huey Lewis & the News show with companion Melissa Gold on October 25, 1991, when their helicopter was caught in a sudden storm. The helicopter flew into a power line and exploded, killing Graham, Gold, and pilot Steve Kahn. Graham was 60 years old.
Frank Mastropolo is the author of Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever.
