Bill Graham (promoter)

Bill Graham (born Wulf Wolodia Grajonca; January 8, 1931 – October 25, 1991) was a German-born American impresario and rock concert promoter.

In the early 1960s, Graham moved to San Francisco, and in 1965, began to manage the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He had teamed up with local Haight Ashbury promoter Chet Helms to organize a benefit concert, then promoted several free concerts. This eventually turned into a profitable full-time career and he assembled a talented staff. Graham had a profound influence around the world, sponsoring the musical renaissance of the 1960s from its epicenter in San Francisco. Chet Helms and then Graham made famous the Fillmore and Winterland Ballroom; these turned out to be a proving grounds for rock bands and acts of the San Francisco Bay area including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, who were first managed, and in some cases developed, by Helms.

Early life

Graham was born on January 8, 1931, in Berlin, Germany. He was the youngest child and only son of lower middle-class Jewish parents, Frieda (née Sass) and Jacob "Yankel" Grajonca, who had emigrated from Russia before the rise of Nazism. There were six children in the Grajonca family. His father died in an accident two days after Graham was born. Graham was one of the One Thousand Children (OTC), mainly Jewish children who managed to flee Nazi Germany and Europe and come directly to North America, but whose parents were forced to stay behind. Graham's mother died on the way to Auschwitz concentration camp.

Graham was drafted into the United States Army in 1951, and served in the Korean War, where he was awarded both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Upon his return to the States he worked as a waiter/maître d' at resorts in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York during their heyday. He was quoted saying that his experience as a maître d' and with the poker games he hosted behind the scenes was good training for his eventual career as a promoter. Tito Puente, who played some of these resorts, went on record saying that Graham was avid to learn Spanish from him, but only cared about the curse words. Graham also mentions in his bio-pic Last Days At The Fillmore once working for 3M.

Career

thumb|right|Graham in 1974

Fillmore Auditorium (December 10, 1965 – July 4, 1968)

Graham moved from New York to San Francisco in the early 1960s to be closer to his sister Rita. He was invited to attend a free concert in Golden Gate Park, produced by Chet Helms and the Diggers, where he made contact with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical theater group. After Mime Troupe leader R. G. Davis was arrested on obscenity charges during an outdoor performance, Graham organized a benefit concert to cover the troupe's legal fees.

Graham was denied by the Board of Permit Appeals who refused to overrule the first denial. Graham then stated, "Then on April 21, 1966, a Thursday, the Chronicle ran an editorial, 'The Fillmore Auditorium Case' ... [I]t was a big turning point for me. In more ways than one"; he secured his permit.

Sullivan was laid to rest on August 8, 1966, according to the Sun Reporter, which reported that "Last respects were paid Charles Sullivan Monday, Aug. 8, when hundreds crowded into Jones Memorial Methodist Church, 1975 Post St. from 11:30 a.m. to view Sullivan for the last time. An enormous crowd had gathered by 1 p.m. to hear the eulogy for a friend." The funeral announcement is accompanied by photographs of the actual funeral covering two pages in which police are stopping traffic to assist the motorcade to the cemetery in Colma.

Graham's struggle to get his dance hall permit in 1966 was described in an article in Billboard Magazine, July 11, 1966. San Francisco music critic Ralph Gleason, in defense of Graham's Fillmore Auditorium scene, wrote that Graham got a three-year lease for the Fillmore Auditorium from Charles Sullivan and was still struggling to procure his dance hall permit, a fact never publicly revealed by Graham. Charles Sullivan's last show at the Fillmore Auditorium came a week before his death, on July 26, 1966, The Temptations Dance and Show. Graham must have got his permit in mid-July 1966, confirming his possession of the Fillmore brand.

It was unknown how Graham had taken over the Fillmore lease until the 2004 publication of Hendrik Hertzberg's Politics Observations & Arguments (1966-2004). It contains an article, "The San Francisco Sound, New music, new subculture", at the end of which it stated, "Unpublished file for Newsweek, October 28, 1966". This article contains the only published account of how Graham acquired the Fillmore. In the beginning, Hertzberg recounts familiar territory with the Mime Troupe, reducing the Fillmore Auditorium to a run-down ballroom in "SF's biggest negro ghetto." After the success of the Fillmore Auditorium Mime Troupe shows, Graham parts ways with the Troupe: "He went back to the Fillmore and found that eleven other promoters had already put in bids for it. Graham got 41 prominent citizens to write letters to the auditorium's owner, a haberdasher named Harry Shifs, and Shifs gave him a three-year lease at five hundred dollars a month.... [T]he hippie community ... has turned out to be something the man from Montgomery Street can point to with pride, in a left-handed way, and say 'these are our boys'", stated Jerry Garcia. Early the next morning, Graham's secretary called the band's manager, Albert Grossman, and obtained exclusive rights to promote them. Shortly thereafter, Chet Helms arrived at Graham's office, asking how Graham could have cut him out of the deal. Graham pointed out that Helms would not have known about it unless he had tried to do the same thing to Graham. He advised Helms to "get up early" in the future. Graham produced shows attracting elements of America's now-legendary 1960s counterculture such as the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the Committee (improv_group), The Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, and a particular favorite of Graham's, the Grateful Dead. although of these it seems only Bishop actually issued albums on the Fillmore label. Tower of Power was signed to Bill Graham's San Francisco Records and their first album, East Bay Grease, was recorded in 1970.

By 1971, Graham citing financial reasons and changes he saw as unwelcome in the music industry, closed the Fillmore East and West, claiming a need to "find [himself]". was organized to replace funds for after-school programs canceled by the San Francisco Unified School District, with performances by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, members of The Band and Grateful Dead, Jefferson Starship, Mimi Fariña, Joan Baez, Santana, Tower of Power, Jerry Garcia & Friends, The Doobie Brothers, Eddie Palmieri & His Orchestra, The Miracles, Graham Central Station, and appearing : Marlon Brando, Francis Ford Coppola, Frankie Albert, John Brodie, Rosie Casals, Werner Erhard, Cedric Hardman, Willie Mays, Jesse Owens, Gene Washington, Cecil Williams

Graham as Bill Graham Presents booked the 1982 US Festival, funded by Steve Wozniak as Unuson. In the mid-1980s, in conjunction with the city of Mountain View, California, and Apple Inc. cofounder Steve Wozniak, he masterminded the creation of the Shoreline Amphitheatre, which became the premier venue for outdoor concerts in Silicon Valley, complementing his booking of the East Bay Concord Pavilion. Throughout his career, Graham promoted benefit concerts. He went on to set the standard for well-produced large-scale rock concerts, such as the U.S. portion of Live Aid at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 13, 1985, then Wolfgang's, also a Jeffrey Pollack venue, on Columbus Ave in San Francisco.

Personal life

Family

Bill Graham had five sisters, Rita Rose; Evelyn (or "Echa") Udray; Sonja (or "Sonia") Szobel; Ester Chichinsky; and Tanya (or "Tolla") Grajonca. His youngest sister Tolla died of pneumonia while fleeing the Holocaust. Rita and Ester moved to the United States and were close to Graham in his later life. Evelyn and Sonja escaped the Holocaust, first to Shanghai, and later, after the war, to Europe. Graham's nephew and Sonia Szobel's son is musician Hermann Szobel.

Graham married Bonnie MacLean on June 11, 1967, and they had one child, David (born 1968); after many years of not living together the couple divorced in 1975. With Marcia Sult Godinez, Graham had another son; Alex Graham-Sult and a stepson, Thomas Sult.

Home estate

The residence Jake Ehrlich designed with a sliding glass roof at the top of Camino Alto Road in Marin County, in Northern California, was later owned by Graham.

For many years Graham lived in Corte Madera, California, on an 11-acre estate with a ranch-style house he named "Masada" after the ancient mountain fort in Israel with the same name, Masada. The house was replaced in the early 2000s, and later occupied by WeWork CEO, Adam Neumann.

Bitburg controversy

Graham's status as a Holocaust survivor came into play in 1985, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. During the same month that Reagan visited the cemetery, Graham's San Francisco office was firebombed by Neo-Nazis. west of Vallejo, California, on October 25, 1991, while returning home from a Huey Lewis and the News concert at the Concord Pavilion. He had attended the event to discuss promoting a benefit concert for the victims of the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. Once he had obtained a commitment from Huey Lewis to perform, he departed by helicopter, which collided with a high-voltage tower in Marin County, California. Fatalities included Graham, pilot and advance man Steve "Killer" Kahn, and Graham's girlfriend, Melissa Gold (née Dilworth), ex-wife of author Herbert Gold.

Aftermath and tributes

Following his death, his company, Bill Graham Presents (BGP), was taken over by a group of employees. Graham's sons remained a core part of the new management team. The new owners sold the company to SFX Promotions, which in turn sold the company to Clear Channel Entertainment. The BGP staff did not embrace the Clear Channel name, and several members of the Graham staff eventually left the company. Former BGP President/CEO Gregg Perloff and former Senior Vice President Sherry Wasserman left and started their own company, Another Planet Entertainment.

In tribute, the San Francisco Civic Auditorium was renamed the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. On November 3, 1991, a free concert called "Laughter, Love and Music" was held at Golden Gate Park to honor Graham, Gold and Kahn. An estimated 300,000 people attended to view many of the entertainment acts Graham had supported including Santana, the Grateful Dead, John Fogerty, Robin Williams, Journey (reunited), and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (reunited). The video for "I'll Get By" from Eddie Money's album Right Here was dedicated to Graham. Graham's images and poster artwork still adorn the office walls at Live Nation's new San Francisco office. With the band Hardline, Neal Schon of Journey composed a piece entitled "31–91" in 1992 in Graham's honor.

Bill Graham was inducted into the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" in 1992 in the "Non-Performer" category. Graham was inducted into the Rock Radio Hall of Fame in the "Without Whom" category in 2014.

References

External links

Bill Graham Foundation
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
Bill Graham interview with Robert Greenfield, famousinterview.ca/interviews/bill_graham.htm; accessed May 7, 2014.
"Concert Archive Draws Digital Suit", December 2006 MP3 Newswire article about the fight over "Wolfgang's Vault" and the digital rights to the Bill Graham concert legacy
Bill Graham's Stairway to Heaven..., check-six.com; accessed May 7, 2014.
The Houston Freeburg Collection website ; accessed May 7, 2014.
Wolfgang's Vault—contains live music audio/video
Kenny Wardell of 106 KMEL Interviews Bill Graham, kmelforever.com; accessed May 7, 2014.
A Video of 106 KMEL Broadcasting Live from Bill Graham's House, kmelforever.com; accessed May 7, 2014