Bill Graham Presents

by Anthony Medici in Honoring Lives

Took a bit of a detour from my jazz reading to dip into “Bill Graham Presents,” a memoir in interview form by Graham and Robert Greenfield, who conducted interviews of Graham and the many individuals whose paths he crossed.  I never met Graham, but, as owner and producer of the Fillmore East,  he played a vital role in my life at one time, as he did for others as well.  As the promoter of the original Fillmore Auditorium and Winterland in San Francisco, follwed by the Fillmore West, also in San Francisco, then the Fillmore East, in the East Village of New York City, Graham was a major force on the rock scene of the 1960s.   As a dazed and confused 15 and 16 year old,  I made regular pilgrimages to the Fillmore East, no small task at that time, given the very raw nature of the neighborhood and its denizens.  There, I saw many of the great acts of rock’s classic era, often before the “broke” big on the scene.

The list still amazes me:  Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company; The Who (pre- and post- Tommy); Hendrix (with the original Experience with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, a fantastic group); The Doors; Clapton with Derek and the Dominos; Country Joe and the Fish (doing the Fish Cheer– “And it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, what are we fighting for, I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam…); Jethro Tull;  Joe Cocker, Chick Berry, Albert King, and others.  I regret not seeing the Jefferson Airplane, an inexplicable omission.  I consider them one fo the 5 greatest rock & roll bands. 

I think the tickets were about $2.00.  Unlike today’s concerts with astronomical ticket prices (if the ticket scalpers haven’t already grabbed them all up and jacked the prices even higher), one could afford to go to shows regularly, and that’s what me and my friend, and many other kids did.   It was the height of the 60’s, the height of the new rock music, the height of psychedlia, and it was fantastic and scary and strange.  I knew as soon as I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show that I needed to be as much a part of it as I could.  I never made it to San Francisco, but I did make it to the East Village as much as I could.  The music was not something just on its own, but truly a part of the scene, part of the culture, in a way that is now hard to explain or understand.  The war on one side, and the counter-culture on the other produced an era as intense and creative and temporary as Elizabethan England.   

Graham, by all accounts, was a pretty raw and intense fellow, a 1940s or ’50s guy who made it big in the 60s.  He was among us but not of us.  As a fugitive from the Holocaust, who came to this country orphaned and alone, he shows many of the deep emotions and conflicts of others directly affected by the Holocaust.  He reminds me of Jerzy Kozinski and Roman Polanski,  who both shared a similar background.  They were racked by demons, but they somehow made a life in the arts, Kozinski in literature, Polanski in film, and Graham in music; their personal lives, however, were far from transcendental.    It’s a fascinating read.

BTW, the photo inside the duofold LP of Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys record, recorded live at Fillmore East, shows my favorite spot to sit at the Filmore East:  the front of the balcony.  If you look close, you might even see a scraggly 16 year old cheering.