Fleeing Nazi Germany as a child and crossing Europe on foot, Bill Graham arrived at Ellis Island at the age of ten and grew up a foster child playing in the streets of the Bronx.

After earning a Bronze Star in the Korean War, he spent his summers working and hustling the grand Catskills resorts of the 1950s and his winters criss-crossing the United States and Europe. In 1965, Graham landed in San Francisco.

Through his long standing interest in theater, Graham was introduced to and became manager of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, an avant-garde performance group. Members of the group were arrested for an outdoor production deemed “too risque” by the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Commission.

Graham staged a benefit for the group’s legal defense fund with a line-up that included Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jefferson Airplane, the Fugs, and John Handy on November 6, 1965. Bill later said, “I didn’t know that night was the beginning of anything, but I knew it was the most exciting experience of my life”. The Mime Troupe benefit featured rock, jazz, poetry… and the standing room only crowd started dancing. Graham had hit upon an eclectic mix and not only was it popular, it made money. The people who came took their rock music in a casual atmosphere made spectacular through an LSD filter; the psychedelic 60’s had arrived.

The Sacred Store: The Early Fillmores

After producing a second benefit for the Mime Troupe, Graham decided to concentrate his efforts on the concert scene. By March 1966, Graham had secured a three-year lease on the Fillmore Auditorium in the Western Addition district of San Francisco. He also began to manage Jefferson Airplane, the Fillmore house band. Graham realized he “had a knack for carrying out the details of public assemblage. Working the room, hiring the right people to do the security … trying to get closer and closer to the way something should be.”

At the Fillmore, and later the Fillmore West, Graham introduced audiences to Otis Redding, The Butterfield Blues Band, the Grateful Dead, Carlos Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin. He gave local artists free reign to design eye-popping posters and kept ticket prices low. Graham expanded his productions to New York City in 1968, and for three years the Fillmore East was the East Coast music Mecca for the tune in, drop out generation. Concerts included light shows and were a laboratory for technical and musical innovation.

Between 1966 and the closing of the Fillmores in 1971, Graham staged thousands of shows. He found talent and mixed new names and familiar groups in the lineup. He met with the musicians, assembled a workforce that functioned as a family, and kept a close eye on the bottom line. His greatest talents were his keen business sense and his ability to organize events charged with creative energy but presented in a comfortable, safe environment…

Changing How Rock Evolved

It could be said that Bill Graham was responsible for a phenomenon that included new art, new bands, and a new way of thinking. As the Hippie movement faded from the peace and love-fest to a rabble of misfits and hard drugs, Graham changed directions, too. An admitted aficionado of Latin music, Graham nevertheless appreciated the artists he featured and continued to manage and assemble talent all over the world. His ability to talk his way past band managers and convince artists to play his venues was legendary.

A shrewd, manic man with a brusque manner, Graham was described by Mime Troup member Peter Coyote as “a cross between Mother Teresa and Al Capone,” but he was well respected for his talent and his support of artists and musicians. Of Graham, Grace Slick said, “He was one of us and one of them.” Peter Gabriel described Bill as “a big steam engine. All fired up, he could carry the world behind him, but you didn’t want to get in his way.”

On October 25, 1991, a helicopter returning Bill Graham to Novato from a concert in Concord, California lost control in rough weather and crashed into an electric tower. All three occupants were killed on impact. At his memorial concert the following Sunday, an estimated half a million people crowded the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park to pay him tribute. “…At long last, the crowd had finally come for Bill.” —WolfgangsVault.com.

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