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Bill Graham (promoter)
Encyclopedia
Bill Graham was an American impresario
and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death.
prior to the rise of Nazism
. Graham's father died two days after his son's birth. Graham's mother placed her son and his younger sister in an orphanage in Berlin due to the increasing peril to Jews in Germany
. The orphanage sent them to France in a pre–Holocaust exchange of Jewish children for Christian orphans. Graham's older sisters stayed behind with his mother. After the fall of France, Graham was among a group of Jewish orphans spirited out of France. A majority of the children—including Graham's older sister Tolla—did not survive the journey. Graham's mother was killed in Auschwitz. Graham had five sisters, Rita, Evelyn, Sonja, Ester and Tolla (Tanya). His sister Ester survived Auschwitz. She later moved to the United States and was very close to Graham in his later life. His sister Rita escaped, first to Shanghai and then (after the war) to the United States.
Once in the United States, Graham stayed in a foster home in The Bronx in New York City. After being taunted as an immigrant and being called a Nazi because of his German accented English, Graham first worked on his accent, eventually being able to speak in a perfect New York accent, and changed his name ("Graham" was found in the phonebook, it was closest to his real surname "Grajonca." According to Graham, both "Bill" and "Graham" were meaningless to him). Graham graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School
and then obtained a business degree from City College
. He was later quoted as describing his training as that of an "efficiency expert
".
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' in Catskill Mountain
resorts in upstate New York during their heyday. He was later quoted as saying 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 once saying that Graham was avid to learn Spanish from him, but only cared about the curse words
. It was during the 1950s that Graham became a champion mambo dancer in the mambo clubs of New York City.
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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
, where he made contact with the San Francisco Mime Troupe
, a radical theater group. He gave up a promising business career to manage the troupe in 1965. After Mime Troupe leader Ronny Davis was arrested on obscenity charges during an outdoor performance, Graham organized a benefit concert to cover the troupe's legal fees. The concert was a success, and Graham saw a business opportunity.
Graham began promoting more concerts to raise funds for the Mime Troupe and eventually left the troupe to promote concerts full time. Charles Sullivan was a mid-20th century black entrepreneur and businessman in San Francisco who owned the master lease on the Fillmore Auditorium
. Bill approached Charles to put on the Second Mime Troupe appeals concert at the Fillmore Auditorium on December 10, 1965 using Sullivan's dance hall permit for the show. Graham later secured a contract from Sullivan for the open dates at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1966. Graham credits Sullivan with giving him his break in the music promotion business. Charles Sullivan was found murdered on August 2, 1966, south of Market Street in San Francisco. To this day the murder remains unsolved.
One of the first concerts Graham promoted was in partnership with Chet Helms
of the Family Dog organization and featured the Paul Butterfield Blues Band
. The concert was an overwhelming success and Graham saw an opportunity with the band. Early the next morning, Graham 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 and advised him to "get up early" in the future.
A charismatic but often difficult personality, Graham produced shows attracting elements of America's now legendary counterculture
of the time such as Jefferson Airplane
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
, Country Joe and The Fish
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
, The Committee
, The Fugs
, Allen Ginsberg
, and, a particular favorite of Graham's, The Grateful Dead. He was the manager
of Jefferson Airplane during 1967 and 1968. His successes and popularity allowed him to become the top concert promoter in rock music. He operated the famous venues the Fillmore West
and Winterland (both in San Francisco) and the Fillmore East
(in New York City), where the best up-and-coming acts would come to play. Graham also owned a record label, Fillmore Records, which was in operation from 1969 to circa 1976. Some of the artists who signed with Graham were Rod Stewart
, Elvin Bishop
and Cold Blood.
In New York City, he formed a booking agency called The Millard Agency which organized the booking of bands into various venues across the US. Because his music venue was the Fillmore, it seemed obvious to call the booking agency Millard. (Millard Fillmore
was the thirteenth president of the United States.) In his music venues, he also opened certain weekday nights for unknown bands, like Santana
, to get exposure. Graham promoted the West-Coast leg of the legendary The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972
, also known as S.T.P. Tour (for Stones Touring Party), as well as parts of the Rolling Stones 1975 and 1978 tours. He would then promote the entire Rolling Stones American Tour 1981
and Rolling Stones European Tour 1982
. When the Stones returned to touring in 1989 with the Steel Wheels
tour, Mick Jagger
accepted the offer of Michael Cohl
's The BCL Group (Ballard Cohl Labatt). to buy the concert, sponsorship, merchandising, radio, television, and film rights. Steel Wheels became the most financially successful in history. Graham later discovered that Cohl had offered only slightly more money. Graham took Jagger's repudiation as a personal defeat, writing "Losing the Stones was like watching my favorite lover become a whore."
In 1971, he closed the Fillmore
s on both coasts, citing a need to "find [himself]". The movie Fillmore: The Last Days documents the closing of the Fillmore West. Graham retreated to a Greek
island, but found the quietude disconcerting and later admitted being disappointed that no one there knew of him. He returned to promoting, first organizing concerts at smaller venues, like the Berkeley Community Theatre
on the campus of Berkeley High School. He then leased out the Winterland Arena in San Francisco and promoted shows at the Cow Palace
Auditorium in Daly City. His first large-scale outdoor arena concert was a benefit for the San Francisco after-school programs, called the SNACK
concert and starred Bob Dylan
, with Neil Young
,various members of the Grateful Dead
and members of The Band
.
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 the Silicon Valley
. Throughout his career, Graham promoted benefit concerts.
He would go on to set the standard for well-produced large-scale rock concert
s, such as the American portion of Live Aid
in JFK Stadium, Philadelphia on July 13, 1985, as well as the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope
and 1988 Human Rights Now!
tours for Amnesty International
. In addition, he presented regular bay area outdoor concerts at the Oakland Coliseum, referred to as "Days on the Green
," and was known to aggressively challenge potential competition.
Graham's monopoly business practices went as far as strong-arm contracts with the University of California Regents to control on-campus entertainment venues, thus preventing ASUC and other student organizations from promoting their own rock concerts in the 1980s. In the 1980s, he teamed up with BASS Tickets to drive small ticket-distribution companies out of business in the Bay Area, creating a de facto monopoly. After the smaller operations failed, the remaining one, Ticketmaster (formerly BASS), raised prices to unprecedented levels. Its only opposition came from a few bands, notably Pearl Jam
, who protested that the company's high ticketing fees were unfair to music fans. Such practices were targeted by the California Senate in S.B. 815.
Graham was recognized as an expert promoter who genuinely cared about both the artists and the attendees at his concerts. He was the first to ensure that medical personnel were on site for large shows and was both a contributor and supporter of the St. Mark's Free Clinic in New York and the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic
, which he often used as medical support at events. He enjoyed putting together groups onstage from different ethnic backgrounds—many of whom were ignored by other promoters—and he had an eye for pleasing his audience, while making an effort to educate them in styles of music they would otherwise not have been exposed to. Graham was credited with assisting the early careers of artists like Santana
, Eddie Money
and Paul Collins' Beat
.
Graham's status as a Holocaust survivor came into play in the mid-1980s, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan
. When Graham learned that Reagan intended to lay a wreath at the Bitburg
Cemetery in Germany, where SS Officers were buried, he organized protests against the act. During the same month that Reagan visited the cemetery, Graham's office was firebombed by Neo-Nazis. Graham, in France at the time, meeting with Bob Geldof
to organize the first Live Aid
concert, was informed of the fire via telephone. He responded as follows: "Was anybody hurt?" It was only after he was told that everyone was okay, he asked, "Is anything left?"
Graham had a lifelong dream to become a character actor
, professing a great admiration for Edward G. Robinson
. He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola
's Apocalypse Now
, as a promoter. In 1990, director Barry Levinson
and actor Warren Beatty
provided an opportunity for Graham to take a more substantive role by casting him as Charles "Lucky" Luciano
in the film Bugsy
. During one scene, Graham is shown in a Latin dance number, a style of dancing Graham had embraced as a teenager in New York. He also appears as a promoter in the 1991 Oliver Stone
film, The Doors
. He also had a small part in Coppola's 1987 Gardens of Stone
playing the part of Don Brubaker as a hippie war protester at a garden party during the Vietnam War who gets into an argument with James Caan's character and is beaten up.
Graham was instrumental in commissioning and marketing psychedelic
concert posters by designers including Stanley Mouse
, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson
, Victor Moscoso
, and Rick Griffin
. Bill Sagan (Former CEO of EBP) of Minnetonka, Minnesota
bought the Bill Graham Presents archives and has organized hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of merchandise and video/audio recordings of concerts collected by Graham. Sagan is now selling some of the collection at Wolfgang's Vault
referring to Graham's childhood nickname.
crash near Vallejo, California
on October 25, 1991, while returning home from a Huey Lewis and the News
concert at the Concord Pavilion. Graham had attended the event to discuss promoting a benefit concert
for the victims of the 1991 Oakland firestorm, after a large portion of the Oakland
/Berkeley Hills
area burned. Once he had obtained the commitment from the News to perform, he returned to his helicopter, which crashed shortly after take-off, just 20 miles from the concert site.
Flying in weather reported as low overcast, rain and gusty winds, the aircraft flew directly into a 223-foot high-voltage tower along Hwy 37
, which runs between Vallejo
and Marin County
. Also killed in the crash was pilot Steve Kahn and Graham's girlfriend, Melissa Gold, ex-wife of author Herbert Gold
, and mother of independent filmmaker Ari Gold
, who won an Academy Award for the deeply personal short film, Helicopter he produced about the devastating incident.
Graham was married at one time to San Francisco artist Bonnie Lipshitz MacLean who is the mother of his son David. Bonnie was the first bookkeeper at the Fillmore and designed some of the posters for concerts Bill promoted. He would occasionally introduce Bonnie from the stage as "the world's greatest broad". He also had several long-term relationships. He was survived by his sisters and two sons, David Graham and Alex Graham, as well as his stepson, Thomas Sult.
Following his death, his company, Bill Graham Presents, 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, including former President/CEO Gregg Perloff and former Senior Vice President Sherry Wasserman, who started their own company, Another Planet Entertainment. Eventually Clear Channel separated itself from concert promotion and formed Live Nation
, which is managed by many former Clear Channel executives. Live Nation
is now the world's largest concert production/promotion company and is no longer legally affiliated in any way with Clear Channel.
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 honour Graham, Gold and Kahn. An estimated 300,000 people attended to view many of the entertainment acts Graham had supported including Santana
, Grateful Dead
, John Fogerty
, Robin Williams
, Journey
(reunited), and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (reunited). The video for the song "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.
– April 1971
Impresario
An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business...
and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death.
Early life
Graham was born Wolodia Grajonca in Berlin, the son of Frieda (Sass) and Yankel Grajonca, an engineer. He was given the nickname Wolfgang by his family early in his life. Graham was the youngest son of a lower-middle-class Jewish family that had emigrated from RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
prior to the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. Graham's father died two days after his son's birth. Graham's mother placed her son and his younger sister in an orphanage in Berlin due to the increasing peril to Jews in Germany
History of the Jews in Germany
The presence of Jews in Germany has been established since the early 4th century. The community prospered under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades...
. The orphanage sent them to France in a pre–Holocaust exchange of Jewish children for Christian orphans. Graham's older sisters stayed behind with his mother. After the fall of France, Graham was among a group of Jewish orphans spirited out of France. A majority of the children—including Graham's older sister Tolla—did not survive the journey. Graham's mother was killed in Auschwitz. Graham had five sisters, Rita, Evelyn, Sonja, Ester and Tolla (Tanya). His sister Ester survived Auschwitz. She later moved to the United States and was very close to Graham in his later life. His sister Rita escaped, first to Shanghai and then (after the war) to the United States.
Once in the United States, Graham stayed in a foster home in The Bronx in New York City. After being taunted as an immigrant and being called a Nazi because of his German accented English, Graham first worked on his accent, eventually being able to speak in a perfect New York accent, and changed his name ("Graham" was found in the phonebook, it was closest to his real surname "Grajonca." According to Graham, both "Bill" and "Graham" were meaningless to him). Graham graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School
DeWitt Clinton High School
DeWitt Clinton High School is an American high school located in the Bronx, New York City, New York.-History:Clinton opened in 1897 at 60 West 13th Street at the northern end of Greenwich Village under the name of Boys High School, although this Boys High School was not related to the one in Brooklyn...
and then obtained a business degree from City College
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
. He was later quoted as describing his training as that of an "efficiency expert
Efficiency expert
Efficiency expert may refer to:*Ergonomics expert*Business efficiency expert; see also, Layoffs*The Efficiency Expert, a 1921 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs-See also:...
".
Graham was drafted
Conscription in the United States
Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
into the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
in 1951, and served in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, where he was awarded both the Bronze Star
Bronze Star Medal
The Bronze Star Medal is a United States Armed Forces individual military decoration that may be awarded for bravery, acts of merit, or meritorious service. As a medal it is awarded for merit, and with the "V" for valor device it is awarded for heroism. It is the fourth-highest combat award of the...
and Purple Heart
Purple Heart
The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those who have been wounded or killed while serving on or after April 5, 1917 with the U.S. military. The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is located in New Windsor, New York...
. Upon his return to the States he worked as a waiter/maître d' in Catskill Mountain
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...
resorts in upstate New York during their heyday. He was later quoted as saying his experience as a maître d' and with the poker
Poker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
games he hosted behind the scenes was good training for his eventual career as a promoter. Tito Puente
Tito Puente
Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...
, who played some of these resorts, went on record once saying that Graham was avid to learn Spanish from him, but only cared about the curse words
Profanity
Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...
. It was during the 1950s that Graham became a champion mambo dancer in the mambo clubs of New York City.
Career
Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and about half a...
, where he made contact with the San Francisco Mime Troupe
San Francisco Mime Troupe
The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a theatre of political satire which performs free shows in various parks in the San Francisco Bay Area and around California. The Troupe does not, however, perform silent mime, but each year creates an original musical comedy that combines aspects of Commedia...
, a radical theater group. He gave up a promising business career to manage the troupe in 1965. After Mime Troupe leader Ronny Davis was arrested on obscenity charges during an outdoor performance, Graham organized a benefit concert to cover the troupe's legal fees. The concert was a success, and Graham saw a business opportunity.
Graham began promoting more concerts to raise funds for the Mime Troupe and eventually left the troupe to promote concerts full time. Charles Sullivan was a mid-20th century black entrepreneur and businessman in San Francisco who owned the master lease on the Fillmore Auditorium
The Fillmore
The Fillmore Auditorium is a historic music venue in San Francisco, California, made famous by Bill Graham. Named for its original location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it lies on the boundary of the Western Addition and the Pacific Heights neighborhoods.In 1968,...
. Bill approached Charles to put on the Second Mime Troupe appeals concert at the Fillmore Auditorium on December 10, 1965 using Sullivan's dance hall permit for the show. Graham later secured a contract from Sullivan for the open dates at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1966. Graham credits Sullivan with giving him his break in the music promotion business. Charles Sullivan was found murdered on August 2, 1966, south of Market Street in San Francisco. To this day the murder remains unsolved.
One of the first concerts Graham promoted was in partnership with Chet Helms
Chet Helms
Chester Leo "Chet" Helms , often called the father of San Francisco's "1967 Summer of Love," was a music promoter and a cultural figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the late Sixties....
of the Family Dog organization and featured the Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Paul Butterfield
Paul Butterfield was an American blues vocalist and harmonica player, who founded the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s and performed at the original Woodstock Festival...
. The concert was an overwhelming success and Graham saw an opportunity with the band. Early the next morning, Graham called the band's manager, Albert Grossman
Albert Grossman
Albert Bernard Grossman was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music scene and rock and roll. He was most famous as the manager of Bob Dylan between 1962 and 1970.-Biography:...
, and obtained exclusive rights to promote them. Shortly thereafter, Chet Helms
Chet Helms
Chester Leo "Chet" Helms , often called the father of San Francisco's "1967 Summer of Love," was a music promoter and a cultural figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the late Sixties....
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 and advised him to "get up early" in the future.
A charismatic but often difficult personality, Graham produced shows attracting elements of America's now legendary counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
of the time such as Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
, Country Joe and The Fish
Country Joe and the Fish
Country Joe and the Fish was a rock band most widely known for musical protests against the Vietnam War, from 1966 to 1971, and also regarded as a seminal influence to psychedelic rock.-History:...
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, The Committee
The Committee (improv group)
The Committee is a San Francisco based improvisational comedy group founded by Alan Myerson and Jessica Myerson . The Myersons were both alums of The Second City in Chicago. The Committee opened April 10, 1963 at 622 Broadway in a 300 seat Cabaret theater that used to be an indoor bocce ball court...
, The Fugs
The Fugs
The Fugs are a band formed in New York in late 1964 by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, and, a particular favorite of Graham's, The Grateful Dead. He was the manager
Talent manager
A talent manager, also known as an artist manager or band manager, is an individual or company who guides the professional career of artists in the entertainment industry...
of Jefferson Airplane during 1967 and 1968. His successes and popularity allowed him to become the top concert promoter in rock music. He operated the famous venues the Fillmore West
Fillmore West
The Fillmore West was an historic music venue in San Francisco, California made famous by concert promoter Bill Graham. Named after Graham's original "Fillmore" location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it stood at Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue and was formerly...
and Winterland (both in San Francisco) and the Fillmore East
Fillmore East
The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in the East Village neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City. It was open from 1968 to 1971, and featured some of the biggest acts in rock music at the time...
(in New York City), where the best up-and-coming acts would come to play. Graham also owned a record label, Fillmore Records, which was in operation from 1969 to circa 1976. Some of the artists who signed with Graham were Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
, Elvin Bishop
Elvin Bishop
Elvin Bishop is an American blues and rock and roll musician and guitarist.-Career:Bishop was born in Glendale, California, and grew up on a farm near Elliott, Iowa. His family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was ten years old...
and Cold Blood.
In New York City, he formed a booking agency called The Millard Agency which organized the booking of bands into various venues across the US. Because his music venue was the Fillmore, it seemed obvious to call the booking agency Millard. (Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States and the last member of the Whig Party to hold the office of president...
was the thirteenth president of the United States.) In his music venues, he also opened certain weekday nights for unknown bands, like Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
, to get exposure. Graham promoted the West-Coast leg of the legendary The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972
The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972
The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972, often referred to as the S.T.P. Tour , was a much-publicized and much-written-about concert tour of The United States and Canada in June and July 1972 by The Rolling Stones...
, also known as S.T.P. Tour (for Stones Touring Party), as well as parts of the Rolling Stones 1975 and 1978 tours. He would then promote the entire Rolling Stones American Tour 1981
Rolling Stones American Tour 1981
The Rolling Stones' American Tour 1981 was a concert tour of stadiums and arenas in the United States to promote the album Tattoo You. It was the largest grossing tour of 1981 with $50 million in ticket sales...
and Rolling Stones European Tour 1982
Rolling Stones European Tour 1982
The Rolling Stones' European Tour 1982 was a concert tour of Europe to promote the album Tattoo You. It was in effect the European continuation of their long and successful 1981 US tour, and promoted by Bill Graham...
. When the Stones returned to touring in 1989 with the Steel Wheels
Steel Wheels
Steel Wheels is the 19th British and 21st American studio album by The Rolling Stones and was released in 1989. Heralded as a major comeback upon its release, the project is notable for the patching up of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' relationship, a reversion to a more classic style of music and...
tour, Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
accepted the offer of Michael Cohl
Michael Cohl
Michael Cohl is a Canadian concert promoter, theatrical producer and touring impresario. He is the former Chairman of Live Nation, the largest live entertainment company in the world. Cohl now runs S2BN Entertainment, with offices in Miami and Toronto...
's The BCL Group (Ballard Cohl Labatt). to buy the concert, sponsorship, merchandising, radio, television, and film rights. Steel Wheels became the most financially successful in history. Graham later discovered that Cohl had offered only slightly more money. Graham took Jagger's repudiation as a personal defeat, writing "Losing the Stones was like watching my favorite lover become a whore."
In 1971, he closed the Fillmore
Fillmore
-People:*Millard Fillmore , thirteenth President of the United States**Abigail Fillmore , first wife of Millard Fillmore**Caroline Fillmore , second wife of Millard Fillmore...
s on both coasts, citing a need to "find [himself]". The movie Fillmore: The Last Days documents the closing of the Fillmore West. Graham retreated to a Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
island, but found the quietude disconcerting and later admitted being disappointed that no one there knew of him. He returned to promoting, first organizing concerts at smaller venues, like the Berkeley Community Theatre
Berkeley Community Theatre
The Berkeley Community Theatre is a theatre, located in Berkeley, California on the campus of Berkeley High School. The Art Deco-style theater has 3,491 seats, including a balcony section...
on the campus of Berkeley High School. He then leased out the Winterland Arena in San Francisco and promoted shows at the Cow Palace
Cow Palace
Cow Palace is an indoor arena, in Daly City, California, situated on the city's border with neighboring San Francisco, notable as a sporting arena.-History:...
Auditorium in Daly City. His first large-scale outdoor arena concert was a benefit for the San Francisco after-school programs, called the SNACK
Snack
A snack is a small portion of food eaten between meals. The food might be snack food—items like potato chips or baby carrots—but could also simply be a smaller amount of any food item.-Snacks and health:...
concert and starred Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, with Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
,various members of the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
and members of The Band
The Band
The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...
.
In the mid-1980s, in conjunction with the city of Mountain View, California
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, and Apple Inc. cofounder Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne...
, he masterminded the creation of the Shoreline Amphitheatre
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Shoreline Amphitheatre is an outdoor amphitheater, in Mountain View, California, USA, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Inside the venue it has a capacity of 22,500, with 6,500 reserved seats and 16,000 general admission on the lawn...
, which became the premier venue for outdoor concerts in the Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
. Throughout his career, Graham promoted benefit concerts.
He would go on to set the standard for well-produced large-scale rock concert
Rock concert
The term rock concert refers to a musical performance in the style of any one of many genres inspired by "rock and roll" music. While a variety of vocal and instrumental styles can constitute a rock concert, this phenomenon is typically characterized by bands playing at least one electric guitar,...
s, such as the American portion of Live Aid
Live Aid
Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom ...
in JFK Stadium, Philadelphia on July 13, 1985, as well as the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope
A Conspiracy of Hope Tour
A Conspiracy of Hope was a short tour of six benefit concerts on behalf of Amnesty International that took place in the United States during June 1986. The purpose of the tour was not to raise funds but rather to increase awareness of human rights and of Amnesty's work on its 25th anniversary, and...
and 1988 Human Rights Now!
Human Rights Now! Tour
Human Rights Now! was a worldwide tour of twenty benefit concerts on behalf of Amnesty International that took place over six weeks in 1988. Held not to raise funds but to increase awareness of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on its 40th anniversary and the work of Amnesty...
tours for Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
. In addition, he presented regular bay area outdoor concerts at the Oakland Coliseum, referred to as "Days on the Green
Days on the Green
Day On The Green was the name of a concert series in Oakland, California, presented by promoter Bill Graham and his company Bill Graham Presents. Held at the Oakland Coliseum Stadium, these events began in 1973 and continued into the early 1990s. The last Day On The Green overseen by Graham took...
," and was known to aggressively challenge potential competition.
Graham's monopoly business practices went as far as strong-arm contracts with the University of California Regents to control on-campus entertainment venues, thus preventing ASUC and other student organizations from promoting their own rock concerts in the 1980s. In the 1980s, he teamed up with BASS Tickets to drive small ticket-distribution companies out of business in the Bay Area, creating a de facto monopoly. After the smaller operations failed, the remaining one, Ticketmaster (formerly BASS), raised prices to unprecedented levels. Its only opposition came from a few bands, notably Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder , Jeff Ament , Stone Gossard , and Mike McCready...
, who protested that the company's high ticketing fees were unfair to music fans. Such practices were targeted by the California Senate in S.B. 815.
Graham was recognized as an expert promoter who genuinely cared about both the artists and the attendees at his concerts. He was the first to ensure that medical personnel were on site for large shows and was both a contributor and supporter of the St. Mark's Free Clinic in New York and the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic
Haight Ashbury Free Clinics
The Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, Inc. is a free health care service provider serving more than 34,000 people in Northern California. The organization was founded by Dr. David E Smith in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California on June 7, 1967 during the counterculture of the 1960s...
, which he often used as medical support at events. He enjoyed putting together groups onstage from different ethnic backgrounds—many of whom were ignored by other promoters—and he had an eye for pleasing his audience, while making an effort to educate them in styles of music they would otherwise not have been exposed to. Graham was credited with assisting the early careers of artists like Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
, Eddie Money
Eddie Money
Eddie Money is an American rock guitarist, saxophonist and singer-songwriter who found success in the 1970s and 1980s with a string of Top 40 hits and platinum albums...
and Paul Collins' Beat
The Beat (US)
The Beat , were an American rock and power pop group from Los Angeles, California that formed in the late 1970s. The Beat resurfaced in the 1990s and continues to tour and record new material as Paul Collins' Beat...
.
Graham's status as a Holocaust survivor came into play in the mid-1980s, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
. When Graham learned that Reagan intended to lay a wreath at the Bitburg
Bitburg
Bitburg It is situated approx. 25 km north-west of Trier, and 50 km north-east of Luxembourg . One American airbase, Spangdahlem Air Base, is located nearby.-History:...
Cemetery in Germany, where SS Officers were buried, he organized protests against the act. During the same month that Reagan visited the cemetery, Graham's office was firebombed by Neo-Nazis. Graham, in France at the time, meeting with Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof
Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...
to organize the first Live Aid
Live Aid
Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom ...
concert, was informed of the fire via telephone. He responded as follows: "Was anybody hurt?" It was only after he was told that everyone was okay, he asked, "Is anything left?"
Graham had a lifelong dream to become a character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...
, professing a great admiration for Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
. He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
's Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
, as a promoter. In 1990, director Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His films include Good Morning, Vietnam, Sleepers and Rain Man.-Early life:...
and actor Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
provided an opportunity for Graham to take a more substantive role by casting him as Charles "Lucky" Luciano
Lucky Luciano
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian mobster born in Sicily. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first commission...
in the film Bugsy
Bugsy
Bugsy is a 1991 American crime-drama film which tells the story of mobster Bugsy Siegel. It stars Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould, Joe Mantegna, Bebe Neuwirth, and Bill Graham....
. During one scene, Graham is shown in a Latin dance number, a style of dancing Graham had embraced as a teenager in New York. He also appears as a promoter in the 1991 Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
film, The Doors
The Doors (film)
The Doors is a 1991 biopic about the 1960s-1970s rock band of the same name which emphasizes the life of its lead singer, Jim Morrison. It was directed by Oliver Stone, and stars Val Kilmer as Morrison, Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson , Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger,...
. He also had a small part in Coppola's 1987 Gardens of Stone
Gardens of Stone
Gardens of Stone is a 1987 film by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novel of the same title by Nicholas Proffitt.A drama, it stars James Caan, Anjelica Huston, James Earl Jones and D. B. Sweeney.-Plot:...
playing the part of Don Brubaker as a hippie war protester at a garden party during the Vietnam War who gets into an argument with James Caan's character and is beaten up.
Graham was instrumental in commissioning and marketing psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
concert posters by designers including Stanley Mouse
Stanley Mouse
Stanley George Miller , better known as Mouse and Stanley Mouse, is an American artist, notable for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs and Grateful Dead album cover art.-Early life:...
, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson
Wes Wilson
Wes Wilson is an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters. Most well known for designing posters for Bill Graham of the The Fillmore in San Francisco, he invented a style that is now synonymous with the peace movement, psychedelic era and the 1960s...
, Victor Moscoso
Victor Moscoso
Victor Moscoso is an artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters/advertisements and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and '70s....
, and Rick Griffin
Rick Griffin
Richard Alden Griffin was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. As a contributor to the underground comix movement, his work appeared regularly in Zap Comix. Griffin was closely identified with the Grateful Dead, designing some of their best known...
. Bill Sagan (Former CEO of EBP) of Minnetonka, Minnesota
Minnetonka, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 51,301 people, 21,393 households, and 14,097 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,893.0 persons per square mile . There were 22,228 housing units at an average density of 818.9 per square mile...
bought the Bill Graham Presents archives and has organized hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of merchandise and video/audio recordings of concerts collected by Graham. Sagan is now selling some of the collection at Wolfgang's Vault
Wolfgang's Vault
Wolfgang's Vault is a private music-focused company established in 2003 dedicated to the restoration and archiving of live concert recordings in audio and video format and the sale of music memorabilia. It began with the collection of the late promoter Bill Graham, and added multiple other music...
referring to Graham's childhood nickname.
Death
Graham was killed in a helicopterHelicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
crash near Vallejo, California
Vallejo, California
Vallejo is the largest city in Solano County, California, United States. The population was 115,942 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area on the northeastern shore of San Pablo Bay...
on October 25, 1991, while returning home from a Huey Lewis and the News
Huey Lewis and the News
Huey Lewis and the News is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California. They had a run of hit singles during the 1980s and early 1990s, eventually scoring a total of 19 top-ten singles across the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary and Mainstream Rock charts...
concert at the Concord Pavilion. Graham had attended the event to discuss promoting a benefit concert
Benefit concert
A benefit concert or charity concert is a concert, show or gala featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Such events raise both funds and public awareness to address the cause at...
for the victims of the 1991 Oakland firestorm, after a large portion of the Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
/Berkeley Hills
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
area burned. Once he had obtained the commitment from the News to perform, he returned to his helicopter, which crashed shortly after take-off, just 20 miles from the concert site.
Flying in weather reported as low overcast, rain and gusty winds, the aircraft flew directly into a 223-foot high-voltage tower along Hwy 37
California State Route 37
State Route 37 is a state highway in the northern part of the U.S. state of California that runs 21 miles along the northern shore of San Pablo Bay. It is built from U.S. Route 101 in Novato and runs through the southern tips of Sonoma and Napa Counties to Interstate 80 in Vallejo...
, which runs between Vallejo
Vallejo, California
Vallejo is the largest city in Solano County, California, United States. The population was 115,942 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area on the northeastern shore of San Pablo Bay...
and Marin County
Marin County, California
Marin County is a county located in the North San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. As of 2010, the population was 252,409. The county seat is San Rafael and the largest employer is the county government. Marin County is well...
. Also killed in the crash was pilot Steve Kahn and Graham's girlfriend, Melissa Gold, ex-wife of author Herbert Gold
Herbert Gold
-Early life:Gold was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Lakewood, a community he was later to memorialize in his first book, Birth of a Hero, published in 1951 by Viking Press. He moved to New York City at age 17 after several of his poems had been accepted by New York literary magazines...
, and mother of independent filmmaker Ari Gold
Ari Gold (filmmaker)
Ari Gold is an American filmmaker, actor and musician. His short film Helicopter, about the aftermath of his mother's death, won him a Student Oscar. His feature debut Adventures of Power premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and made its European debut at the 2008 Karlovy Vary International...
, who won an Academy Award for the deeply personal short film, Helicopter he produced about the devastating incident.
Graham was married at one time to San Francisco artist Bonnie Lipshitz MacLean who is the mother of his son David. Bonnie was the first bookkeeper at the Fillmore and designed some of the posters for concerts Bill promoted. He would occasionally introduce Bonnie from the stage as "the world's greatest broad". He also had several long-term relationships. He was survived by his sisters and two sons, David Graham and Alex Graham, as well as his stepson, Thomas Sult.
Following his death, his company, Bill Graham Presents, 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, including former President/CEO Gregg Perloff and former Senior Vice President Sherry Wasserman, who started their own company, Another Planet Entertainment. Eventually Clear Channel separated itself from concert promotion and formed Live Nation
Live Nation
Live Nation is a live-events company based in Beverly Hills, California, focused on concert promotions. Live Nation formed in 2005 as a spin-off from Clear Channel Communications, which then merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 to become Live Nation Entertainment....
, which is managed by many former Clear Channel executives. Live Nation
Live Nation
Live Nation is a live-events company based in Beverly Hills, California, focused on concert promotions. Live Nation formed in 2005 as a spin-off from Clear Channel Communications, which then merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 to become Live Nation Entertainment....
is now the world's largest concert production/promotion company and is no longer legally affiliated in any way with Clear Channel.
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
Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and about half a...
to honour Graham, Gold and Kahn. An estimated 300,000 people attended to view many of the entertainment acts Graham had supported including Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
, Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
, John Fogerty
John Fogerty
John Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest...
, Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...
, Journey
Journey (band)
Journey is an American rock band formed in 1973 in San Francisco by former members of Santana. The band has gone through several phases; its strongest commercial success occurred between the 1978 and 1987, after which it temporarily disbanded...
(reunited), and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (reunited). The video for the song "I'll Get By" from Eddie Money
Eddie Money
Eddie Money is an American rock guitarist, saxophonist and singer-songwriter who found success in the 1970s and 1980s with a string of Top 40 hits and platinum albums...
'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.
Quotation
NMENME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
– April 1971
See also
- List of Korean War veterans who are recipients of the Bronze Star
Further reading
- Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And Out, re-published 2004. (By Robert GreenfieldRobert Greenfield-Career:Greenfield began his career as a sports writer. He has published book reviews in New West magazine and The New York Times Book Review.From 1970 to 1972 Greenfield was employed as an associate editor with Rolling Stone magazine's London bureau...
and Bill Graham) ISBN 0-306-81349-1 - Rage & Roll: Bill Graham and the Selling of Rock, 1993. (By John Glatt) ISBN 1-55972-205-3
External links
- Bill Graham Foundation
- Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
- Interview with Robert Greenfield
- Concert Archive Draws Digital Suit – December 2006 MP3 NewswireMP3 NewswireFounded in 1998, the same year as MP3.com, MP3 Newswire is the oldest active news site devoted to digital media technology. Notable for its series of essays that chronicled the rise of digital music and the Internet’s acrimonious relationship with the record industry, MP3 Newswire initially was...
article about the fight over Wolfgang's Vault and the digital rights to the Bill Graham concert legacy. - Crash Photo
- http://www.houstonfreeburgcollection.com/BG0_to_BG289.php
