Who was Bill Graham?
"One of the most important concert promoters of all time"
As an adult, I hate the feeling of running into a topic or a name I “should know” but just never learned. This feeling (almost a caught with your pants down kind of feeling) was probably my main inspiration for starting this whole series. It is fun to know the basics (plus random niche stories) about our city’s history, landmarks, and its most notable names.
For me, Bill Graham has always been one of those names. I’ve attended many concerts at the San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and I’ve walked past the bright mural painted in Graham’s honor at the corner of Fillmore and Post plenty of times.
So who was he?
The headline is that Bill Graham is considered one of the most important concert promoters of all time. He ushered in a new era of entertainment and rock music in the prime of San Francisco’s counterculture movement in the ’60s, and then went on to revolutionize the live music business, on a global scale, with the Bay Area as his main stage.
If you’re interested in more photos of Graham, check out this Getty Images page. There are tons of amazing shots. (Getting the rights to pictures of him for this story was harder than you’d think!)
Born to Russian Jewish immigrants in 1931, his birth name was actually Wolfgang Grajonca. As Hitler gained power and Germany became progressively more dangerous for Jews, Grajonca’s mother sent him and one of his five sisters to a children’s home in France, hoping that they would be safer there.
Eventually when France fell to the Nazis, Grajonca and the other children were led by Red Cross workers through Spain and then to Portugal. Along the way, Grajonca’s sister got sick and they were separated.
At just 10 years old, Grajonca was put on a ship bound for America. It was a brutal multiple-week-long journey spent dodging German boats and surviving on almost no food. Of the 60 children who had fled France together months earlier, he was one of only 11 who actually made it to New York.
In New York, Grajonca was put in a foster program for refugee children and was adopted by a family from the Bronx. He learned English and adapted to life in America as a scrappy New Yorker. He eventually attended Brooklyn College, and recalled dancing many nights away at a Manhattan nightclub called The Palladium.
At 18, he was drafted into the Korean War. Around this time, he also officially changed his name. Bill Graham was much easier for Americans to read, write, and pronounce.
He was discharged from the war when his foster mom passed away, and basically started his adult life without a real sense of what to do with himself. He was a waiter and a cab driver in New York, and even tried a brief acting stint, before making his way to San Francisco in the early ’60s.
Once in San Francisco, he came into contact with the San Francisco Mime Troupe by chance, a radical theater group (which still exists today) that performed political satire in San Francisco’s public parks. Graham became their business manager.
The troupe started to face real legal trouble after the SF Rec and Parks commission revoked their performance permit, calling them “obscene” and “indecent.” When they decided to perform at Lafayette Park anyway, the group’s founder, R.G. Davis, was arrested.
To cover legal fees, Graham decided to organize a benefit concert. He hired a newly-formed local band called Jefferson Airplane to perform. The fundraiser was a huge success, raising about $4,000 for the cause. But more importantly, in this process, Graham had found something he was really good at.
Soon, he would host another fundraiser for the troupe, but this time he approached Charles Sullivan who owned the master lease on The Fillmore Auditorium.
Sullivan, who had taken over the dance hall in 1954, had become one of the most successful Black businessmen in the city. He had opened The Fillmore’s doors to Black people and he regularly booked the biggest names in Black music like James Brown, Louis Armstrong, Ike & Tina Turner, and many more.
Sullivan allowed Graham to host the Mime Troupe’s second benefit concert at The Fillmore in 1965. And after the troupe’s show, Graham and Sullivan struck up a contract that allowed Graham to continue booking shows there on the dates that Sullivan was not using the space.
Their relationship came at the right time for Sullivan, who was dealing with a downturn caused by redevelopment and “urban renewal” putting a strain on the Black community and the jazz scene in the Western Addition.
Sadly, the next year in 1966, Sullivan was shot and killed in the early morning hours on the streets south of Market. The details surrounding his death remain a mystery to this day.
At that point, The Fillmore’s lease was turned over to Graham.
Graham had split from the Mime Troupe soon after the second benefit concert, in pursuit of a newly envisioned career built around bringing people and music together in the form of epic concerts. He was building this career during a historic time in San Francisco, when social and artistic counterculture movements created the perfect setting to push boundaries when it came to music and entertainment. Graham was able to offer something fresh and exciting to the energized youth.
In his early days, he partnered with an already established rock promoter in the city, Chet Helms, who ran a collective called “The Family Dog” and hosted concerts at the Longshoreman’s Hall on North Point Street. Helms had early relationships with San Francisco rock bands and he gets some credit for showing Graham, the new guy on the block, the ropes. They hosted concerts together at the Fillmore for a short period, before their relationship dissolved.
At the Fillmore, Graham embodied a true businessman, and he was determined to put on shows to remember. He ran around the venue cleaning bathrooms, collecting tickets, adjusting lights, and noticing every inconsistency. He organized unique shows where comedians or poets would open the night for a Jefferson Airplane or The Mothers of Invention rock show.
He also brought Black music to a white rock audience. Artists like Otis Redding, B.B. King, and Chuck Berry opened for headlining psychedelic rock acts like The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Moby Grape.
During these years, Graham brought Jimi Hendrix and The Who to San Francisco for the first time and put on a unique six-night run of Cream.
He promoted his shows with bright, eye-catching, iconic psychedelic posters that he often hung around San Francisco overnight, by riding the streets on his scooter.
By 1968, his success had grown so large that he opened the Fillmore East on Second Avenue in New York and began commuting weekly between coasts. He also expanded to larger venues like the Winterland Ballroom (on the corner of Post and Steiner) in San Francisco, which could seat five thousand, and was one of the larger rock venues available to artists at the time.
It wasn’t long before he entered the world of management, helping shape the careers of Jefferson Airplane and Carlos Santana. In 1969, he famously insisted that a little-known Santana Blues Band get a spot performing at Woodstock, where Santana would go on to gain national recognition.
Exhausted, Graham eventually closed both Fillmores in 1971.
But this was just a pivot.
Through the 1970s and ’80s, Graham would take on even bigger projects and go on to reshape the live music experience itself.
He worked on getting rock bands to even bigger stages, and he managed national arena tours for legends like The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and George Harrison.
When bands toured in the ’60s, they would often show up to a venue and be at the mercy of whatever sound system (or loud speaker) a venue had to offer. Graham believed that the sound and production at a rock show should be bigger, grander, and louder than anything else that had taken place in these venues before. So, he went on to launch FM Productions, which pioneered professional sound, lighting, staging, and production.
He also launched Winterland Productions—one of the leading merchandise and licensing companies. At one point just an afterthought, “merch” quickly turned into a major revenue stream, thanks to Graham. Winterland Productions produced merch for artists like The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, and Madonna.
Graham made large contributions to the way we think about concert security, health, and safety. He understood the risks of overdoses at a rock show, and so he went to great lengths to partner with clinics and ensure that treatment was on site.
By the ’80s, Graham had created all of this and so much more under Bill Graham Enterprises. His businesses oversaw nearly every part of the live music business. “Bill Graham Presents” was dedicated to booking shows, there was an arm for artist management and development, catering, and internal marketing. In 1985, determined to have his own Bay Area venue, Graham worked with the city of Mountain View to design and build Shoreline Amphitheater.
What I take away from learning about Bill Graham was that he was a one-of-a-kind, brilliant, no-nonsense (hard ass) businessman.
However, more than that, it is impossible to miss how much he cared. He cared about the music, the audience, the artists, and especially about the experiences he was curating. Evidenced by his early support of the Mime Troupe, Graham had an innate concern for the world around him.
Regardless of his wild success, the most impressive thing about Graham was that he built a true legacy through the community events and benefit concerts he put on.
In 1973, he started the “Day on the Green” festival at the Oakland Coliseum, which was a large outdoor all-day rock concert that ran each year through the early 90s. Headliners over the years included The Beach Boys, The Grateful Dead, Dolly Parton, The Eagles, The Doobie Brothers, Led Zeppelin, and many more.
In 1975, when Graham learned that budget cuts within the San Francisco Unified School District were threatening after school programs, he put together the largest rock benefit concert that had been seen by the world at the time at Kezar Stadium. It was called SNACK (aka “San Francisco Needs Athletics, Culture, and Kicks”). There were speakers like Joan Baez and Willie Mays, and performances by The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Santana, Jefferson Starship, and more. 50,000 people attended and they raised enough money to fund extracurriculars at San Francisco schools for another year.
Graham’s efforts were eventually felt on an international scale in 1985, when he helped produce the American Live Aid concert at the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Pennsylvania. Live Aid was a two-venue benefit concert that raised more than $45 million for famine relief in Africa, between the U.S. and U.K.
He was also a vocal member of the Jewish community. He financed San Francisco’s public menorah in Union Square and sponsored a large San Francisco protest when President Reagan visited a cemetery in Germany where Nazi soldiers were buried. After his vocal presence at the protest, the Bill Graham Presents offices were firebombed and burned to the ground. Graham tragically lost many of his prized possessions and memorabilia from over the years in the fire.
Never deterred though, in 1986 Graham produced Amnesty International’s “Conspiracy of Hope” tour, bringing together U2, The Police, Peter Gabriel, and others to raise $2.5 million.”
In 1987, he hosted a groundbreaking U.S.-Soviet concert in Moscow with American artists like Santana, James Taylor, and the Doobie Brothers. This was to celebrate the end of an American-Soviet peace walk, which were large-scale campaigns conducted by civilians to promote peace and arms control.
In 1988, he produced Amnesty International’s “Human Rights Now!” tour, bringing rock music to countries including India, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and Costa Rica in hopes of spreading a global message of togetherness and love.
After the Bay Area’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Graham organized a twelve-hour rock telethon with KQED to raise money for recovery.
In 1990, Graham hosted a large-scale event at the Oakland Coliseum, where 60,000 people gathered to welcome Nelson Mandela after his release from prison. Graham had even corresponded with Mandela during his imprisonment about their shared passion for ending apartheid in South Africa.
And this is just a flavor! I have to wrap it up or we will be here all day.
Graham strongly believed in music’s ability to speak a universal language and bring people together. He built a reputation around pulling these incredible events off, attracting the best talent and the biggest crowds.
Sadly, his life was cut short in a helicopter crash on October 25, 1991. 60-year-old Graham was leaving a Huey Lewis and the News concert at the Concord Pavilion when his helicopter got caught in a storm, struck a power line, and exploded, killing everyone on board.
Weeks later, on November 3, 1991, more than 300,000 people gathered in Golden Gate Park for a free memorial concert, “Laughter, Love, and Music,” in honor of Graham. Performers included The Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, Journey, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Graham was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. That same year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to rename our Civic Auditorium in his honor.
Bill Graham’s legacy is forever woven into the Bay Area music scene, but it also lives on in every packed arena today. He showed artists and audiences that music connects us all and can drive real cultural change.
P.S. If you look closely at The Fillmore’s sign you will see an apple at the bottom. You also can find apples as a main theme in the Bill Graham mural on Post St. That is because Graham famously always handed out free apples at his Fillmore shows. It was a unique symbol of his famous hospitality and a staple to The Fillmore experience. To this day, management at The Fillmore have chosen to continue the tradition.
Sources:
https://www.thecjm.org/exhibitions/6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fillmore
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/san-francisco-fillmore-auditorium-history-17830364.php
https://www.foundsf.org/Fillmore_Bill:_Bill_Graham%E2%80%99s_Legacy
https://www.outsidelands.org/podcast/WNP467_The_Family_Dog
Wow - that was an incredible amount of data and information on a man who I knew was interesting but did not understand the sheer force he was in music and community. Hannah you did it again - shared a large amount of content in an amazingly clear and concise writing style. So interesting from the story to the message to the way it was written. Great job and please keep going on this historic journey!
Happy 69th Birthday Kerry Lee.... My Favorite Subject.. BGP Presents ⭐💜✅🎶
Terrific Article About The Professional Music Scene.... City By The Bay. Sucker Free Cuidad 📜🖋️💙🎶🧨💥