Bill Graham

Induction Year: 1992

Induction Category: Non-Performer

"Concert promoter and artist manager Bill Graham forever changed the way rock and roll is presented. He provided the business and organizational acumen that allowed the anarchic San Francisco scene of the mid-to-late Sixties to flower in venues such as the Fillmore, a dilapidated auditorium that Graham transformed into a tightly run concert hall beginning in late 1966. There, Graham booked such mainstays of the psychedelic era as , , Big Brother & the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service. In 1968, Graham moved the Fillmore into another old dance hall (the Carousel Ballroom, rechristened Fillmore West) and opened Fillmore East in New York. Subsequently, he took over Winterland, another San Francisco concert venue, and branched into band management and tour promotion. A high percentage of the most significant pop-music events of the last thirty years have been produced under the banner “Bill Graham Presents.” Among other things, Graham brought a new standard of professionalism to the business.

Graham was born Wolfgang Grajonca on January 8, 1931, in Berlin and literally walked across Europe to escape the Nazis. He was raised in New York by foster parents and moved to San Francisco in the mid-Fifties to pursue an acting career. Instead, events conspired to thrust him into his calling as a concert impresario and business manager. Several fundraisers for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a political comedy group he managed, were wildly successful due in large part to the . Graham grasped the potential: something electrifying was beginning to happen in San Francisco, and the scene lacked only a focused, business-oriented mind to harness its power.

A tireless worker known for his gruff exterior and unsullied idealism, Graham challenged the rock audience by booking bills that mingled jazz, blues and folk artists in with all of the psychedelic rock bands of the day. One might walk into the Fillmore and find sharing a bill with or opening for Steppenwolf. His broad, generous view of music and the public’s ability to appreciate it stands in marked contrast to the narrowcasting that would subdivide the rock and roll audience, to its lasting detriment, in the Eighties and beyond. After closing the Fillmores in 1971, Graham continued to run Winterland (site of ’s farewell concert, “The Last Waltz,” in 1978), while managing acts like and the Neville Brothers, promoting national tours for , and others, and helping to organize the Live Aid benefit concert of 1985.

Graham died in October, 1991, when a helicopter in which he was a passenger crashed into an electrical tower as he was leaving a concert.”

TIMELINE

January 8, 1931: Bill Graham was born in Berlin, Germany.

November 1, 1965: Bill Graham presents his first show, a benefit for the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

1966: Ken Kesey plans, and Bill Graham supervises, the Trips Festival: three days of concerts, films, readings and lights.

May 17, 1968: Having worked their way up from the street, the Blues Band performs at San Francisco’s storied Avalon Ballroom. They soon become regulars at the Fillmore West, and Bill Graham himself manages the band.

July 1, 1968: Bill Graham takes over the Carousel — a music hall owned by the and Grateful Dead — and re-christens it Fillmore West.

December 31, 1969 - January 1, 1970: Band of Gypsys – a trio with Hendrix, Cox and drummer Buddy Miles – plays Bill Graham’s Fillmore East in New York. Graham calls the shows “the most brilliant, emotional display of virtuosic electric guitar playing I have ever heard.”

October 25, 1991: Bill Graham was killed in a helicopter accident.