How the Fillmore became ground zero for rock ‘n’ roll

When it came time for the Who to stage the rock opera "Tommy," it had to be a Fillmore.

Live at the Fillmore East and West:
Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock's Greatest Legends
by John Glatt (Lyons Press)

The Fillmore East was where John Lennon and Yoko Ono could be convinced to join Frank Zappa onstage. The Fillmore West was where Jefferson Airplane added Grace Slick to their lineup, where Janis Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company and where Carlos Santana went from being a fan to being a legend.

But Fillmore East was also where a smartly dressed 21-year-old man inhaled freon gas, fatally freezing his lungs. Fillmore West was where singer Joplin arrived stoned on crystal meth to a B.B.
King show and was denied entrance by promoter Bill Graham, who hurled her down a flight of stairs and screamed that she was "no good."

Those infamous days were the reason the two music venues fell to earth, their veritable houses of Americana presently occupied by a bank in the East Village and a car dealership in San Francisco. But while the two legendary stages were in operation, from 1968-71, rock music hit a crescendo, author John Glatt argues in "Live at the Fillmore East and West."

The history of the venues is intertwined with the man Bill Graham, rock's biggest single promoter, an inimitable figure tempered by the horror of Nazi Germany he experienced as a child. As a Berlin-born Jewish child, Graham — born Wolodia Grajonca — witnessed Kristallnacht and, in a chance turn of history, was an exchange student visiting Paris when Nazi Germany closed its borders to Jews, separating him from his family.

Bill GrahamPhoto: AP

Graham escaped to America and landed a job as head of business affairs for the San Francisco Mime Troupe. His sense of showmanship was apparent. He convinced the members to put on a display provocative enough to get them arrested — then put on a benefit concert to raise funds for their defense.

The first benefit concert was such a success, Graham did another. Soon he was staging regular shows at the old Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, benefitting from the rise of Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and other acts during 1967's Summer of Love.

Janis Joplin performs in 1968.Photo: Getty Images

To dance inside the ballroom at San Francisco's Fillmore West, attendees coughed up $3, $4 or $5 ($20-$34 in today's money) for seats to take in Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Cream, Miles Davis, Santana, Frank Zappa and Elton John, all at or near the primes of their careers.

Jimi Hendrix performs in 1968.Photo: Getty Images

New York City was an obvious next stop. After negotiations to strike a partnership with the owner of the Anderson Theater fell through, Graham arranged $400,000 in financing to purchase the Village Theater, a 1925 Yiddish vaudeville theater on Second Avenue and Sixth Street.

You had to be there, and in many cases author Glatt finds people who were behind the scenes, from secretaries and stage hands.

Jimi Hendrix, exhorted by Graham to try harder in his second set for New Year's Eve 1970 at Fillmore East, responded with the performance, recorded and later featured on "Band of Gypsys," that would prove the doomed guitarist's capstone. At another memorable show, Hendrix was called out for an encore. As Jimi played through "Wild Thing," he staggered to his knees in his trademark move, when stagehand John Morris heard the noise of Hendrix's blue velvet pants ripping at the back seams, "And he wasn't wearing underwear. The look on Jimi's face — I mean he literally turned pink. And I thought, 'Oh, s—." Morris grabbed a towel and waved it at the guitar god, beckoning him to the side of the stage where Morris could tie a towel around his derriere.

Jim Morrison of The Doors performs in 1967.Photo: Getty Images

Bill Graham was chummy with the acts he promoted, but distant. After Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground mocked Fillmore West's minimal setup, Graham snarls at the band, just as they were to take the stage, "You motherf—ers! I hope you bomb," remembers Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison. That led Lou Reed to smash the house drum kit on stage, cutting himself with a cymbal in the process. When an enraged Graham stormed to Reed's dressing room for a dress down, he saw the bleeding man and relented — though only for insurance purposes, the Velvets claim.

Miles Davis, incensed at Graham for positioning him as an opening act for white groups like the Steve Miller Band, and for paying him less than other artists, would show up late to concerts as a protest. Even so the trumpeter managed to make dramatic entrances, such as the evening in the summer of 1970 when Davis leapt from a Maserati convertible, trumpet in hand, strode onto a summer stage in the Berkshires and hit his first note.

Graham onstage in 1970.Photo: Getty Images

Sadly there is a funereal aspect over the book not only for the deaths of Hendrix, Joplin and Jim Morrison, but the coincident shutdown of Fillmore East and Fillmore West in the summer of 1971.

As rock gravitated to arenas and helped usher in the closure of both venues, Bill Graham loudly complained that the changing climate of the music business made it impossible for him to operate. Ironically, his company, Bill Graham Presents, was absorbed by Clear Channel Communications and later spun off as Live Nation.

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