Celebrating Bill Graham’s legacy on death’s anniversary

Rock promoter Bill Graham’s influence reaches far beyond the Bay Area music scene. He forever changed how fans and musicians come together and how concerts are organized.

Oct. 25 marks 25 years since his death in a helicopter crash west of Vallejo while flying from a Huey Lewis concert at the Concord Pavilion to his home in Marin County.

Below is a classic story about Graham written in November 1985 by longtime Chronicle music critic Joel Selvin.

Headline: Bill Graham Recalls Two Decades of Rock

Bill Graham rubbed his eyes and choked back tears. He had flown halfway around the world and driven straight to the charred hulk of his South of Market office to view the carnage first-hand. Emerging from walking through the ashes and rubble that had been his office, he looked beaten, shaken and lost.

He had been in Europe last May when he checked with his answering service and got the news that a firebomb had gutted his headquarters and destroyed a great deal of his lifetime collection of personal memorabilia. But how could a few old letters and photos have such a devastating impact on such a strong personality?

“I don’t write” said Graham. “I don’t paint. I don’t sing. I don’t perform. I finally thought one day about why I felt so angry. That was our gallery. That was our statement. That was our company’s work, our art.”

For the past two decades, Graham has ruled the rock concert world from his San Francisco headquarters, beginning with a benefit for the San Francisco Mime Troupe 20 years ago this week. He built the Fillmore Auditorium into the premiere showplace of rock’s history, presenting the best bands of the 1960s.

In those early days, Graham liked to book jazz, soul and blues greats alongside the rock groups and some of those double-billings were once-in-a-lifetime pairings; Lenny Bruce and the Mothers of Invention, the Who and Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd, the Byrds and B.B. King.

He moved operations to the Fillmore West at the corner of Market and Van Ness and opened a New York branch, the Fillmore East. But Graham closed Fillmore East in June 1971 and Fillmore West less than a month later to concentrate on throwing shows on a less regular basis in the Bay Area only.

But wherever there has been a challenge, he has picked up the gauntlet. He led nationwide tours by former Beatle George Harrison, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones. He produced the giant SNACK benefit to raise money for S.F. school athletic programs, featuring Dylan and Marlon Brando among others. He produced the first US Festival, last year’s ARMS tour and last summer, trekked across Europe with Dylan and Santana.

In addition to presenting concerts, Graham has maintained a long and successful management relationship with Santana. His firm also handles Eddie Money and other more recently signed acts such as the Neville Brothers and a new band from Sacramento, Bourgeois Tagg. The firm he founded to sell rock ’n’ roll T-shirts, Winterland Productions, turned into one of his biggest money-makers and he sold half-interest in the company last year to CBS Inc.

But, despite a career none can match in the rock field, Graham said he looks at life differently these days, chiefly because of the blaze that swept his office.

Two months after the fire, Graham presided over the daylong Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, certainly the crowning achievement of his career. But it was not the old Bill Graham, tense and imperial. Instead, he was practically euphoric, his moods ranging from good to better. No temper tantrums. No yelling matches. Bill Graham, 54, celebrates 20 years in show business this week. In his mid-30s, after a meandering professional course, he held a comfortable job as an office manager. At that point, he made an uncertain, risky career gamble, and it paid off handsomely. He is rich and famous. But these days Graham is more concerned with his struggle for happiness.

The impresario lives on the top of a mountain above Mill Valley on an estate built by the late flamboyant attorney Jake Ehrlich. Graham calls it Masada. At night, the road beyond the electronic wrought-iron gates passes a giant floodlit skull and giant globe, both props from old New Year's Eve shows by the Grateful Dead, Graham’s favorite band. The handsome hilltop bachelor mansion with its marble floors and beamed ceilings has been transformed into a museum, even more than his old office: Janis Joplin’s tambourine on one wall, Keith Richards’ boots in the crowded trophy case, the wreaths Graham has worn each year portraying Father Time at New Year’s Eve shows, the barrel he used to hand out free apples from at the old Fillmore Auditorium. Huge scrapbooks sit piled up on his dining room table, saved from the fire because they were stored elsewhere.

The house does not have the stray, offhand lived-in touches found in most people’s homes. Two unattended fires sputter out in different rooms. Somebody else apparently set them since Graham never so much as stirs the ashes. A note on his spotless kitchen counter from his major domo, gone home for the night, tells Graham his supper is in the oven. He seems like a weary prince alone in his castle.

Tonight Graham is in a reflective mood. Something is gnawing at him and the occasion of an interview, looking back at his 20-year career, becomes an opportunity to delve delicately into wounds just beginning to heal. Tonight he will not engage in his typical charming, nostalgic banter, so informed by his colorful character and jocular skills as a raconteur. Tonight Graham is serious, searching and sober.

He leaned back into a sofa and considered the significance of his 20th anniversary in rock, starting a slow, rambling dialogue.

“The meaning has been affected,” he began, “by this year, which has been the hardest year, by far. I think I feel different because I'm not more than a year older than last year, but I’m much older in having experienced the fire. The fire had an awesome effect on me in that, for months afterwards, it was hard for me to explain. I couldn't find the words to express what the loss meant to me.

“We put so much value in our society on material things. I do, too. Nice car. Nice home. They were things I had saved over the years, letters and photos.

“I always felt like I did the reverse. Most of the things that were particularly meaningful to me, I didn't keep in a vault. It was there for you to see. The fact that someone just hit it like a gnat . . .” He shook his head, his voice trailed off. “What is it to that person?

“Whatever their reason was — not to accuse — but it’s hard to believe that one day after Bitburg would be the one day some rock 'n' roller decided to get even.”

President Reagan’s visit to the Nazi cemetery in West Germany had particular meaning for Graham. Born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin on Jan. 8, 1931, Graham came to the United States as a refugee orphan at the age of 10, he and his family victims of the Third Reich. His mother and a sister died in concentration camps. “My childhood didn't happen,” he said crisply. As a private in the U.S. Army, he fought in Korea, winning a Bronze Star for bravery and a Purple Heart for wounds. Nobody ever said Graham backed down from a fight, and it was in character for him to lead a public denunciation of Reagan’s visit to the Nazi cemetery. The day after Reagan laid wreaths on the graves of former enemies, someone threw a firebomb through Graham’s office window in the dark of the morning hours.

Now the old warrior seemed tired of doing battle. “Over the years, it’s gotten to the point where, if I expect more from others, they expect more from me,” he said. “I don’t know if it's come from work or age, but it has to do with wanting to be a gladiator less. I don't think the word is wisdom. It comes somewhere between wisdom and aging. What I do know is as time goes by, you control your emotions better, then common sense will emerge victorious.”

The two-decade mark also brings mortality to his mind. “Twenty years is also a sign of time,” he said. “It’s a large chunk of time and part of prime-life time, is it not? These are the productive years of a person's life, between 20 and 60. That doesn't mean you can't be productive after, but that's half of those 40 years.

“Twenty years also marks the reality of being a duelist every day,” he continued, “being a gladiator of sorts out in the arena every day. There are fair players, and there are people . . . that are truly morally intolerable.

“But the price is high because we're in a high-roller business. Being in that arena has had its great, truly amazing moments. I've had the opportunity to bask in the glory and then turn around and see the X-ray up close.” It has not always been a pretty picture. When Graham began throwing concerts 20 years ago, rock was still in infancy. He single-handedly proscribed the dictums of modern-day rock concerts, blazing trails where none existed. “That first six, seven years,” he said, “I was Sabu, jungle warrior, strange territory, in quicksand half the time.”

But, 20 years later, Graham frequently finds himself in a business he helped create, but can no longer completely approve. The X-rays of Live Aid, for instance, apparently didn't look too good to Graham. “I would never talk about Live Aid in detail, even when I get to heaven,” he said, "because nobody would believe me.”

Since the fire more than five months ago, Graham said he occasionally takes a weekday off. He said he envied the man who drives a bus for a living. “I want to do some of the things he does on the weekends,” Graham said. His employees call their outfit the Graham Family, a term not without irony. Graham said his devotion to business in the early days of the Fillmore cost him his wife and family. “It did become my mistress for many years. Thank God the relationship today with my children is wonderful. It’s good. But the price of making that the organization the family was one that was paid,” he said.

“I’m not married to the business anymore,” he added, “but we’re still lovers.”

Over the past several years, Graham has come to trust the judgment of his hired hands to a greater degree. He pictures his role as head of the family more like a football coach than a godfather.

“At midfield, you can call the plays,” he said. “But sometimes, at second and goal with a few seconds left, you want to come to the bench. I’ll give you the play. I'll even come in and play it with you. But I depend so much on the players. I’m not removed from it, although I’d be lying to you if I didn't admit in the past five, six years, I’ve relied a great deal on other people in the company on the musical end, the acquisition of talent. I rely on their ears to sift through and let me know about the better stuff.

“In the early days, the creative ideas of the company started out as 100 percent my ideas,” he said, “the posters, the light shows, whatever it might be. Now, maybe 20 percent of the creative ideas are mine. I just approve 100 percent.

“The way I feel had something to do with the loss of the gallery,” he said. "Something died or somebody took something away. Even though it's hard not to, I don’t want to guess and I’m not trying to find out why. I haven’t gone to a doctor to find out why. But there are devastating changes in the way I think about things and those have all taken place this year.”

He kept returning to a conflict between his desire to live life the way he wants and the demands of being the top rock promoter. “I'm far, far from being at peace with life because the industry I'm in will not allow it,” he said. “But in other ways, I’ve been able to get closer to a realistic relationship with more people as time goes by.

“I’ve always felt I had to joust too much out in the field. If I didn’t, I think there could have been many things I could have contributed to society.

“The most awesome change I always see in life is what happens to you when you make it, who you become. The greatest challenge to a character is what happens to you, how do you treat someone who takes orders from you after you've been taking orders. What happens to you as a person. A black person in a white neighborhood, a white person in a black neighborhood, a Jew in a gentile neighborhood . . . what happened to you?

“Who did you become when you got to where you wanted to get? When you became that, did you remain in touch with your society? As time goes by, I have great affection for those who stayed in touch.

“I’ve never left,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s not a compliment. I don’t live any differently. That’s the amazing part. I wish I had it in me to take off two weeks and go sailing or go mountain climbing. I don’t mean loaf.

“I don’t live any differently today. I still go to work every day. I sometimes wish I could acquire the taste for, maybe, fine clothes. The only good thing about that is I don't hassle about the price. Nothing’s changed. It changed early on when I was able to eat anywhere.

“I have had the same two cars since 1969. I live here because somebody suggested it was a deal. But as far as my lifestyle, my workstyle, who my friends are, how I relate to my family, in some ways, I wish it were different.

“But in the way I'm pleased, I don't think I’m any different,” he said. “Do you want something from me? Do you really need it? Are you a trustworthy human being? Here’s my arm.”