Wolfgang’s Vault is sort of his legacy company. The story is that the heirs, cousins I believe, fought over the estate for years, the main asset was a building in downtown San Francisco. They finally settled in maybe 2005? Anyway none of them ever went inside and they sold it to condo developers for $5 million. The buyers went inside and found he saved posters and tickets and handbills (the tickets and handbills are small replicas of the posters) from every show and realized they had something worth hundreds of millions so they opened up a website and starting selling the posters and tickets. He commissioned the art from the most famous and prolific counterculture artists! When the buyers went into the basement they found a locked bank vault, inside were films and recordings of every show! Which once the get all the rights resolved, and they will, is probably worth a billion or so…
possibly because our natural tendency is to dismiss them and assume that if they can't find their asses with two hands, they're just as incompetent at everything else?
I signed up for your substack, that was a really special one about Charlie. We're on our fourth dog, the previous three all made it to 15. We just got our first cat in 40 years to keep her company.
George Harrison, in (Beatles Anthology) spoke of how he wanted to go to San Francisco and groove with a new civilization in the making. It wasn't pretty. Thousands of stoned kids crapping in the alleys and thousands more sleeping where ever and hundreds facing disaster when local hospitals shut their doors to the crazy's and the damaged. In New York City the Fillmore was a magnet and it attracted a lot of damaged kids. It is unfair to blame Bill Graham for the worst of it. He inspired a generation of musicians and boys who grew up to be producers and promoters. No one really understood the magnitude of the Hippie Era until it was over.
Lucian Have you any idea the value of your writings, especially from the 1970's? Your stories are authentic history and they affect even the hardcore cynics. Thank you sir.
have you ever considered putting the best ones together for a nice, fat anthology? forgive me if you've already done so and I just didn't get the memo. but if you didn't, you sure as shit SHOULD.
I lived around the corner from the Village Theater/ Fillmore East- worked for a few days painting floors when it was transitioning. My first Date with a 16 year old college freshman was Cream’s debut (we’re still together- thanks Bill). Saw the whole panoply of great acts, too numerous to mention- everybody I wanted to see. And the tix were, of I’m remembering correctly less than $5!
I once paid $2.75 for a balcony seat. Saw Three Dog Night, Sha na na, and some group called the Faces with a singer nobody ever heard of called Rod Stewart. It was his first appearance in the U.S. and he had such stage fright, he sang the first two songs from behind a curtain at the side of the stage. Then Graham came out of his office, saw what was going on, and pushed him onstage. It was eerie hearing that marvelous voice and not being able to see who was singing.
I think there was a kind of cosmic confluence of music in the sixties that could let bands that good/great, competent and dedicated musicians, end on one bill, and this was happening all over the place as they toured.
But once certain kinds of drugs/substance abuse got going, along with corporate capitalism encroaching, it couldn't last.
Remember the Anderson, across Second Avenue from the Fillmore East before Graham opened it? I saw the Grateful Dead there, at Howie Solomon's Cafe au GoGo, the Central Park concert Lucian mentions, and the Stonybrook gym several times before Deadheads even had a name.
you sure did...you were a much more active concertgoer than I ever was. or than we ever were, since, as you recall, the Brooklyn duo weren't especially regular concertgoers. but then again, WE lived in Brooklyn while you were, literally, around the corner.
of course, all of this changed with Apartment X...
I hope Lucian gets a zillion subscribers, but be careful what you wish for, Roland. What makes this forum distinctive is the variety and high level of commentary. I look in on another Substack newsletter that receives hundreds of comments daily. So many are just junk opinion that using the forum is a chore, where Lucian's is always informative or fun or both and that hasn't changed with growing readership. I'd hate to see quantity drive out quality here too.
Yes, difny, agree completely. I’m no longer on Heather Cox Richardson for that reason (& others). Notice my encouragement was for TC. In Lucian’s case, I was just commenting, not hoping for more. 😉
Who? If "he" means Lucian, Lucian is Lucian, whatever his circumstances. What concerns me is the nature of the forum, which is necessarily a function of growth. The present size seems optimum. At some point, the more the muddier, but that just may be the price of success. Tough luck. I can't bring back Zito's Bakery or the Lion's Head, or the tree outside my window that a neighbor murdered either. (0r the old piers 25 and 26 or Emilio's.)
Kind of makes me ache for those days. There was an immediacy, and honesty about things then that aren't any more. Maybe it is corruption as you hinted. It can't be all about the bejamins and the art at the same time. One has to be first, and today it is the benjamins.
i love all these stories of those times and places. i always feel sorry for myself of having missed seeing or experiencing the emergent scene of hippies and the music of those times.
i was upcountry backwoods in the far pacific northwest working for the railways and mixing with trainmen, truckers, loggers, and farmers. a lot of dirt and grease stained jeans and heavy caulked boots, and nary a sight of long hair or bellbottoms.
oh, and the music from jukeboxes or local radio was all twang and nasal and old time rock n roll.
so i really truly love hearing about all that i missed of the world that flourished outside those woods.
this was the anthropocene era BC (before celfones) as well as the time B.I. ( before internet). nobody owned a TV, only because there was no signal reception even from the single station down the river valley, around the bend, the other side of the mountains.
upcountry pacific northwest was a different civilization, removed and remote from the hustle and busyness of "outdownthere" where few caulkbooted adventurers ventured. they didn't think their best gototown jeans were good enough to go that far downtown.
but they were a hardy and hearty bunch, full of tales of backwood, backwater and backroad living. and drink beer? draft beer that kept on coming. when "last call" sounded, the room was full of upstretched fingers. tables which were covered in red terrycloth were covered upon with toppedfull glasses.
but they accepted me, a cokebottlebottom-glassed university kid with barely fuzzed chin because i spoke edoocated yet had the nature of one brought up amongst fisherfolk, wharfworkers, and boatbuilders. all who wore heavy rubber caulked boots.
i spent two and a half years with the railway, taking a couple of years out from studies because 15 years sitting in a schooldesk was browning me out. my grades were telling me that.
when i emerged from the backwoods with a fresh crosscountry rail ticket in hand earned as a bonus for two years employment, my eyes were stabbed by the flash of the neon lights (cred S&G). and the longhaired people! even guys!
i made the trip across the wide country, dipped my toes in the atlantic [ cold!], visited aunt and uncle on the shores of lake ontario, bought a $200 breadvan a company was closing out, let my hair grow long and headed back to finish off my schooling.
That's a helluva resonant story, Ln Em. Thanks for writing and posting it. It deserves to be spread beyond the confines of a Substack forum when most readers have moved on.
I wonder how many people outside the Northwest have any idea life like that exists?/existed? in our time. The only window we have is electoral results, with no idea what the life is like that produced them. Idahokat too posted some stuff here that was really illuminating about the Northwest. The rest of us need to be informed.
As I started reading, my mind jumped to Jack Nicholson climbing up into that truck at the end of "Five Easy Pieces," headed farther north, but probably for someplace like that valley. Your telling is cinematic. Have you revisited the valley? When you got back to school at the end of your trip east, some jaws must have dropped.
PS.: After growing up on the Pacific, you thought the *Atlantic* Ocean was cold?!
people up there were pretty self-sufficient. almost everyone hunted or knew someone who did and all kept their freezers full. lakes were cold and clear and were full of fish.
and people didn't go far afield. i met a man who had a nice new pickup and camper. i asked him if he had visited some of the campgrounds i knew from the ocean beaches to the rockies. he said, "uh, i only have been around this valley"
!!
but these days the valley has grown and even has a heli-skiing resort. the wild and noisy trucker and logger hangout is now a chain hotel. satellite dishes and cable tv bring in the outside world.
as to being back in classes, my former peers had gone on and graduated, so i was a newcomer to a slightly younger crowd. but my shaggy looks let me blend in.
I was there many late shows, some until dawn. I always appreciated everything Bill Graham did to make everything about the experience great. The biggest downside for a Fillmore East regular was that no rock music venue, or show/tour ever matched the presentation al the FE. I have a dozen FE stories; from first row (AA102) for the late show, Band of Gypsys, 12/31/69, the last concert of the sixties, The Who, many times, Neil Young, Miles Davis & the Steve Miller Band on the same bill, Grateful Dead midnight to 6am, my final FE show, Traffic in Nov. 1970. Some people and places exceed their legends, the Bill Graham's Fillmore East was more than words can describe.
of course he was, but (unlike many other bands on many other occasions), he was gracious enough to come out and SAY it. but Mayall was very consciously engaged in turning his audiences on to the stuff that inspired HIM.
When I was head of the press office at the NYSE, Lee Ehrenreich was the chief speechwriter. He had been adopted by the same family in the Bronx that adopted Graham, and they grew up as brothers. Lee was a great character. Despite his senior position working with the CEO, he had very long hair that he wore in a ponytail with his gray Wall St. suit, and also despite being a somewhat out-of-shape smoker, went trekking in Nepal every year.
Thanks for running this again. I never went to either Fillmore, but when I was a college student we had the Boston Tea Party, Psychedelic Supermarket, Unicorn Coffeehouse, Catacombs, a lot of small venues where it was all about the music. Within a few years that would all disappear It's hard to convey the spirit of those times, but you do so wonderfully in this piece.
Somewhere between 1969 and 1971 I tagged along with my sister and a few friends to a psychedelic music show in Boston or Cambridge. All I really remember is how awestruck I was. Wonder if it was one of the venues you mention.
Among other facts-he was one of " One Thousand," those mainly Jewish children who managed to flee Hitler and Europe, and come directly to North America, but whose parents were forced to stay behind. Graham's mother was murdered at Auschwitz.
Growing up in Berkeley in the 60's and 70's, going to the Fillmore West was a huge part of my teen-hood and through college at UCB. So many friends worked for Bill Graham, so I often cwould hang backstage at Days on the Green, etc. But the concert I remember the most at the Fillmore: Miles Davis and Aretha Franklin. Just imagine. Thrilling.
I stopped going east half because of the crowd you describe, half because the magic in general was dissipating. After too many nights and musicians to count spent there, the closing was barely a blip for me, but I well remember my first sight of Bill Graham, when San Francisco music was classical, folk, jazz, and Tony Bennett. The town's culture was notable then for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, for innovative and civically-involved theater. NYC's Sullivan Street Playhouse, where "The Fantasticks" reigned for decades, hosted benefits on dark nights. When the Mime Troupe's turn came, Bill Graham was a central figure. His presence onstage and making his pitch from the floor were so compelling they're burned into memory. So long ago, but that guy had tons of charisma he was already putting to good use. He had minor roles in "Bugsy" and some other movies post-Fillmore.
Wow Lucian, that opened a flood of memories. I too have fond memories of Bill Graham, more than once he handed me a free ticket to one of the shows at The Fillmore in SF. I remember doing light shows with Head Lights at The Avalon Ballroom and The Fillmore, those 2 venues have sort of merged in my consciousness, I went to so many shows at both of them between ‘65 and ‘67. I have worked in show business my whole life, starting with Head Lights and promoting The Grateful Dead in Portland Oregon at a Shriners temple. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Owsley, Mountain Girl, and the Dead, they were all friends during that era. One of the lessons I learned early on was how much work was required to put on a show, Bill Graham will always have a high place in my estimation because of his work ethic. I saw him in later years during the Stones tours that I worked on as a stage rigger. The Fillmore was a special place where magical things happened, I remember Owsley walking around with a basket of butterflies, like a collector would have, each of which had a tab of acid taped to the bottom, passing them out to anyone that wanted one. You could sail on that music and in truth I still do this day. I’m vibrating like a tuning fork from the flood of memories that your essay unleashed, thank you and all of the commenters for that. 🙏
An NYC blog, Bedford & Bowery, did a fascinating Fillmore East 50th anniversary Q&A a couple of years ago with house manager Jerry Pompili, John Morris and Kip Cohen, managing directors, and Josh White of the Joshua Light Show (paraphrasing the house's unison chant every time he played the clip, "'Twas not the planes that killed the beast, it was beauty"). Jerry describes the night the Fillmore East didn't burn down. I usually sat in the light booth, that night had an orchestra seat. The smell of smoke kept getting stronger as the Who played on. I don't remember anyone else stirring, but I finally calmly walked out (the staff did the right thing, as Jerry explains). After I simply described my experience in a Voice column, not criticizing, Bill challenged me to a debate. I probably did what I usually did in such situations, told him to go fuck himself. It was all forgotten as fast as it happened. https://bedfordandbowery.com/2018/03/the-fillmore-east-recalled-by-those-who-helped-open-it-50-years-ago/
Even up here, in Maine did I hear about the Fillmore and Bill Graham, courtesy of Rolling Stone when is was a real paper (thick and folded). I read about the legends and the music, wishing I could have been there-at the young age of 14 or so..and you know the parents won't let you hitch hike anywhere they don't know about, so I passed my adolescence dreaming of watching Janis and the others, reading about awesome concerts, never having been near anything like that before I was 18 and it was all over.
I'm glad you wrote about it, if just to touch the memories again, however mythical and famous.
In 1967, the scene in San Francisco was fresh and new, and exciting; by '68, it was losing its way. In 1969, when I moved to the Haight Ashbury to prepare for the Bar Examination, the Haight was a dangerous, drug-addled shithole. Sic transit gloria. I heard nothing good about Graham's New York operation; and by then, I was on to better things in life.
Wolfgang’s Vault is sort of his legacy company. The story is that the heirs, cousins I believe, fought over the estate for years, the main asset was a building in downtown San Francisco. They finally settled in maybe 2005? Anyway none of them ever went inside and they sold it to condo developers for $5 million. The buyers went inside and found he saved posters and tickets and handbills (the tickets and handbills are small replicas of the posters) from every show and realized they had something worth hundreds of millions so they opened up a website and starting selling the posters and tickets. He commissioned the art from the most famous and prolific counterculture artists! When the buyers went into the basement they found a locked bank vault, inside were films and recordings of every show! Which once the get all the rights resolved, and they will, is probably worth a billion or so…
Apparently Wolfgang's Vault left not only the relatives behind. At the time, musicians had big complaints: 'Wolfgang's Vault site opens a Pandora's box of copyright issues over rockperformances' https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/They-re-not-in-concert-Wolfgang-s-Vault-site-2481793.php
I guess it's been resolved, all the music is now available.
Thanks—hope the musicians are getting a bundle.
I wouldn't necessarily count on it. since Spotify et all became a thing, I'm lucky if my ASCAP royalties exceed a hundred bucks a year.
Why do weasels always win?
possibly because our natural tendency is to dismiss them and assume that if they can't find their asses with two hands, they're just as incompetent at everything else?
Serves the philistine heirs right!
I signed up for your substack, that was a really special one about Charlie. We're on our fourth dog, the previous three all made it to 15. We just got our first cat in 40 years to keep her company.
George Harrison, in (Beatles Anthology) spoke of how he wanted to go to San Francisco and groove with a new civilization in the making. It wasn't pretty. Thousands of stoned kids crapping in the alleys and thousands more sleeping where ever and hundreds facing disaster when local hospitals shut their doors to the crazy's and the damaged. In New York City the Fillmore was a magnet and it attracted a lot of damaged kids. It is unfair to blame Bill Graham for the worst of it. He inspired a generation of musicians and boys who grew up to be producers and promoters. No one really understood the magnitude of the Hippie Era until it was over.
Lucian Have you any idea the value of your writings, especially from the 1970's? Your stories are authentic history and they affect even the hardcore cynics. Thank you sir.
I was there. I covered it, and I had a slightly different take on things than your average lefty writer.
have you ever considered putting the best ones together for a nice, fat anthology? forgive me if you've already done so and I just didn't get the memo. but if you didn't, you sure as shit SHOULD.
Used to love hash in the late 60’s early 70’s.
I lived around the corner from the Village Theater/ Fillmore East- worked for a few days painting floors when it was transitioning. My first Date with a 16 year old college freshman was Cream’s debut (we’re still together- thanks Bill). Saw the whole panoply of great acts, too numerous to mention- everybody I wanted to see. And the tix were, of I’m remembering correctly less than $5!
I once paid $2.75 for a balcony seat. Saw Three Dog Night, Sha na na, and some group called the Faces with a singer nobody ever heard of called Rod Stewart. It was his first appearance in the U.S. and he had such stage fright, he sang the first two songs from behind a curtain at the side of the stage. Then Graham came out of his office, saw what was going on, and pushed him onstage. It was eerie hearing that marvelous voice and not being able to see who was singing.
I think there was a kind of cosmic confluence of music in the sixties that could let bands that good/great, competent and dedicated musicians, end on one bill, and this was happening all over the place as they toured.
But once certain kinds of drugs/substance abuse got going, along with corporate capitalism encroaching, it couldn't last.
I was at that one too!
Remember the Anderson, across Second Avenue from the Fillmore East before Graham opened it? I saw the Grateful Dead there, at Howie Solomon's Cafe au GoGo, the Central Park concert Lucian mentions, and the Stonybrook gym several times before Deadheads even had a name.
Gee, for some reason I have a rather special memory of that Dead concert...
Uh, yeah. ;) Me too. Some memories are forever.
They were $3 at the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore west in the mid-late 60’s 😎
you sure did...you were a much more active concertgoer than I ever was. or than we ever were, since, as you recall, the Brooklyn duo weren't especially regular concertgoers. but then again, WE lived in Brooklyn while you were, literally, around the corner.
of course, all of this changed with Apartment X...
It seems like only a short while ago, was it Spring 2019 (or 2018?), when Comments were a ghost town. We’d only see maybe 7 or 8 Comments a day later.
Look at yesterday’s piece about Trump’s snowballing troubles: 108 Comments.
Your wishes appear to have come true, Lucian.
That column brought a lot of people joy. A lot of joy.
It sure did!
Sub stacks are the future for sure.
And I just $igned up,too
I knew you'd turn up here one way or another, Tone. and if I'm not mistaken, you were at that concert...
Yes. And thanks for turning me onto TC in LA
and thanks for listening to me!
You’ll be at 1000 before you know it
Excellent‼️🎉
(reply to TC having 250 paid subscribers)
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😎
you know I have a blog but I don't think I could ever write half as well (or as often) as all of you. You've earned the readership.
I couldn’t write as often as Lucian or TC, but don’t sell yourself short, Mary. I’ve seen you post some hellaciously good material. Five star stuff.
Oh, now you've made me blush for the wonderful compliment. Thank you.
I hope Lucian gets a zillion subscribers, but be careful what you wish for, Roland. What makes this forum distinctive is the variety and high level of commentary. I look in on another Substack newsletter that receives hundreds of comments daily. So many are just junk opinion that using the forum is a chore, where Lucian's is always informative or fun or both and that hasn't changed with growing readership. I'd hate to see quantity drive out quality here too.
Yes, difny, agree completely. I’m no longer on Heather Cox Richardson for that reason (& others). Notice my encouragement was for TC. In Lucian’s case, I was just commenting, not hoping for more. 😉
I suspected that was true of HCR's forum. She has many readers in common with the writer whose huge forum I had in mind. Yes—TC is a treasure!
Hopefully he won't change.
Who? If "he" means Lucian, Lucian is Lucian, whatever his circumstances. What concerns me is the nature of the forum, which is necessarily a function of growth. The present size seems optimum. At some point, the more the muddier, but that just may be the price of success. Tough luck. I can't bring back Zito's Bakery or the Lion's Head, or the tree outside my window that a neighbor murdered either. (0r the old piers 25 and 26 or Emilio's.)
Grow or die right? It’s the way of the world…
Kind of makes me ache for those days. There was an immediacy, and honesty about things then that aren't any more. Maybe it is corruption as you hinted. It can't be all about the bejamins and the art at the same time. One has to be first, and today it is the benjamins.
Yes although there are always some musicians and artists who "keep it real."
i love all these stories of those times and places. i always feel sorry for myself of having missed seeing or experiencing the emergent scene of hippies and the music of those times.
i was upcountry backwoods in the far pacific northwest working for the railways and mixing with trainmen, truckers, loggers, and farmers. a lot of dirt and grease stained jeans and heavy caulked boots, and nary a sight of long hair or bellbottoms.
oh, and the music from jukeboxes or local radio was all twang and nasal and old time rock n roll.
so i really truly love hearing about all that i missed of the world that flourished outside those woods.
please keep them coming.
Were you aware all of that was going on elsewhere? Emerging into the world must have been a shock. Have you written about it?
hahaha
aware?
this was the anthropocene era BC (before celfones) as well as the time B.I. ( before internet). nobody owned a TV, only because there was no signal reception even from the single station down the river valley, around the bend, the other side of the mountains.
upcountry pacific northwest was a different civilization, removed and remote from the hustle and busyness of "outdownthere" where few caulkbooted adventurers ventured. they didn't think their best gototown jeans were good enough to go that far downtown.
but they were a hardy and hearty bunch, full of tales of backwood, backwater and backroad living. and drink beer? draft beer that kept on coming. when "last call" sounded, the room was full of upstretched fingers. tables which were covered in red terrycloth were covered upon with toppedfull glasses.
but they accepted me, a cokebottlebottom-glassed university kid with barely fuzzed chin because i spoke edoocated yet had the nature of one brought up amongst fisherfolk, wharfworkers, and boatbuilders. all who wore heavy rubber caulked boots.
i spent two and a half years with the railway, taking a couple of years out from studies because 15 years sitting in a schooldesk was browning me out. my grades were telling me that.
when i emerged from the backwoods with a fresh crosscountry rail ticket in hand earned as a bonus for two years employment, my eyes were stabbed by the flash of the neon lights (cred S&G). and the longhaired people! even guys!
i made the trip across the wide country, dipped my toes in the atlantic [ cold!], visited aunt and uncle on the shores of lake ontario, bought a $200 breadvan a company was closing out, let my hair grow long and headed back to finish off my schooling.
Well, you get out the way you can, and you seem to have done so with aplomb!
well, thank you
but i still feel better with trees around me rather than tall buildings.
and i'm more at ease around men with permanent greaseblack in their knuckle creases than men with manicured fingers.
That's a helluva resonant story, Ln Em. Thanks for writing and posting it. It deserves to be spread beyond the confines of a Substack forum when most readers have moved on.
I wonder how many people outside the Northwest have any idea life like that exists?/existed? in our time. The only window we have is electoral results, with no idea what the life is like that produced them. Idahokat too posted some stuff here that was really illuminating about the Northwest. The rest of us need to be informed.
As I started reading, my mind jumped to Jack Nicholson climbing up into that truck at the end of "Five Easy Pieces," headed farther north, but probably for someplace like that valley. Your telling is cinematic. Have you revisited the valley? When you got back to school at the end of your trip east, some jaws must have dropped.
PS.: After growing up on the Pacific, you thought the *Atlantic* Ocean was cold?!
people up there were pretty self-sufficient. almost everyone hunted or knew someone who did and all kept their freezers full. lakes were cold and clear and were full of fish.
and people didn't go far afield. i met a man who had a nice new pickup and camper. i asked him if he had visited some of the campgrounds i knew from the ocean beaches to the rockies. he said, "uh, i only have been around this valley"
!!
but these days the valley has grown and even has a heli-skiing resort. the wild and noisy trucker and logger hangout is now a chain hotel. satellite dishes and cable tv bring in the outside world.
as to being back in classes, my former peers had gone on and graduated, so i was a newcomer to a slightly younger crowd. but my shaggy looks let me blend in.
I was there many late shows, some until dawn. I always appreciated everything Bill Graham did to make everything about the experience great. The biggest downside for a Fillmore East regular was that no rock music venue, or show/tour ever matched the presentation al the FE. I have a dozen FE stories; from first row (AA102) for the late show, Band of Gypsys, 12/31/69, the last concert of the sixties, The Who, many times, Neil Young, Miles Davis & the Steve Miller Band on the same bill, Grateful Dead midnight to 6am, my final FE show, Traffic in Nov. 1970. Some people and places exceed their legends, the Bill Graham's Fillmore East was more than words can describe.
of course he was, but (unlike many other bands on many other occasions), he was gracious enough to come out and SAY it. but Mayall was very consciously engaged in turning his audiences on to the stuff that inspired HIM.
When I was head of the press office at the NYSE, Lee Ehrenreich was the chief speechwriter. He had been adopted by the same family in the Bronx that adopted Graham, and they grew up as brothers. Lee was a great character. Despite his senior position working with the CEO, he had very long hair that he wore in a ponytail with his gray Wall St. suit, and also despite being a somewhat out-of-shape smoker, went trekking in Nepal every year.
Thanks for running this again. I never went to either Fillmore, but when I was a college student we had the Boston Tea Party, Psychedelic Supermarket, Unicorn Coffeehouse, Catacombs, a lot of small venues where it was all about the music. Within a few years that would all disappear It's hard to convey the spirit of those times, but you do so wonderfully in this piece.
Somewhere between 1969 and 1971 I tagged along with my sister and a few friends to a psychedelic music show in Boston or Cambridge. All I really remember is how awestruck I was. Wonder if it was one of the venues you mention.
As side note to this, I did look up Bill Graham's page in Wikipedia.
Very impressive stuff, because he came by his kindness naturally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Graham_(promoter)
Among other facts-he was one of " One Thousand," those mainly Jewish children who managed to flee Hitler and Europe, and come directly to North America, but whose parents were forced to stay behind. Graham's mother was murdered at Auschwitz.
Growing up in Berkeley in the 60's and 70's, going to the Fillmore West was a huge part of my teen-hood and through college at UCB. So many friends worked for Bill Graham, so I often cwould hang backstage at Days on the Green, etc. But the concert I remember the most at the Fillmore: Miles Davis and Aretha Franklin. Just imagine. Thrilling.
I stopped going east half because of the crowd you describe, half because the magic in general was dissipating. After too many nights and musicians to count spent there, the closing was barely a blip for me, but I well remember my first sight of Bill Graham, when San Francisco music was classical, folk, jazz, and Tony Bennett. The town's culture was notable then for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, for innovative and civically-involved theater. NYC's Sullivan Street Playhouse, where "The Fantasticks" reigned for decades, hosted benefits on dark nights. When the Mime Troupe's turn came, Bill Graham was a central figure. His presence onstage and making his pitch from the floor were so compelling they're burned into memory. So long ago, but that guy had tons of charisma he was already putting to good use. He had minor roles in "Bugsy" and some other movies post-Fillmore.
Wow Lucian, that opened a flood of memories. I too have fond memories of Bill Graham, more than once he handed me a free ticket to one of the shows at The Fillmore in SF. I remember doing light shows with Head Lights at The Avalon Ballroom and The Fillmore, those 2 venues have sort of merged in my consciousness, I went to so many shows at both of them between ‘65 and ‘67. I have worked in show business my whole life, starting with Head Lights and promoting The Grateful Dead in Portland Oregon at a Shriners temple. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Owsley, Mountain Girl, and the Dead, they were all friends during that era. One of the lessons I learned early on was how much work was required to put on a show, Bill Graham will always have a high place in my estimation because of his work ethic. I saw him in later years during the Stones tours that I worked on as a stage rigger. The Fillmore was a special place where magical things happened, I remember Owsley walking around with a basket of butterflies, like a collector would have, each of which had a tab of acid taped to the bottom, passing them out to anyone that wanted one. You could sail on that music and in truth I still do this day. I’m vibrating like a tuning fork from the flood of memories that your essay unleashed, thank you and all of the commenters for that. 🙏
An NYC blog, Bedford & Bowery, did a fascinating Fillmore East 50th anniversary Q&A a couple of years ago with house manager Jerry Pompili, John Morris and Kip Cohen, managing directors, and Josh White of the Joshua Light Show (paraphrasing the house's unison chant every time he played the clip, "'Twas not the planes that killed the beast, it was beauty"). Jerry describes the night the Fillmore East didn't burn down. I usually sat in the light booth, that night had an orchestra seat. The smell of smoke kept getting stronger as the Who played on. I don't remember anyone else stirring, but I finally calmly walked out (the staff did the right thing, as Jerry explains). After I simply described my experience in a Voice column, not criticizing, Bill challenged me to a debate. I probably did what I usually did in such situations, told him to go fuck himself. It was all forgotten as fast as it happened. https://bedfordandbowery.com/2018/03/the-fillmore-east-recalled-by-those-who-helped-open-it-50-years-ago/
Even up here, in Maine did I hear about the Fillmore and Bill Graham, courtesy of Rolling Stone when is was a real paper (thick and folded). I read about the legends and the music, wishing I could have been there-at the young age of 14 or so..and you know the parents won't let you hitch hike anywhere they don't know about, so I passed my adolescence dreaming of watching Janis and the others, reading about awesome concerts, never having been near anything like that before I was 18 and it was all over.
I'm glad you wrote about it, if just to touch the memories again, however mythical and famous.
In 1967, the scene in San Francisco was fresh and new, and exciting; by '68, it was losing its way. In 1969, when I moved to the Haight Ashbury to prepare for the Bar Examination, the Haight was a dangerous, drug-addled shithole. Sic transit gloria. I heard nothing good about Graham's New York operation; and by then, I was on to better things in life.
Great piece, thank you. I just re-heard his introduction of The Allman Brothers on the night that the Fillmore East closed and it gave me goosebumps.