The Carnegie Hall of Classic Rock

The Fillmore East and Legendary Promoter Bill Graham

By Roger Paradiso

I recently walked in the East Village to 105 Second Avenue where the former Fillmore East is now a bank. It wasn’t a bank that killed the beast it was greed and power or something like that.

The Fillmore East was everybody’s favorite gig to play. It was the Carnegie Hall of rock ‘n’ roll. Bill Graham made a very great presentation of rock ‘n’ roll, with the light shows and the curtains and the presentation of the bands and the set changes. —Dickey Betts, Allman Brothers, in Rolling Stone

The Allman Brothers played the Fillmore East many times along with all the best bands of that era. My favorite shows were: Moody Blues 1970, Zappa with Flo and Eddie 1971, The Who 1969, Jefferson Airplane 1968 and Jimi Hendrix 1970. Out of the 40 concerts he saw at the Fillmore, Arthur Schwartz, a founder of the Village View, said his favorites were Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and the Chambers Brothers. He also said, “Bill Graham opened the Fillmore in 1968. Back then, there were three groups per show. Tickets were $3. Once I saw Chicago, the Dead and Janis Joplin in the same night.”

Then it all came crashing down. After three plus years of glory came one night of infamy when the Fillmore closed on June 27, 1971. I was 20 years old and too young to understand the politics of rock ‘n’ roll let alone Manhattan real estate.

Before it was the Fillmore, the venue was a movie and vaudeville theater called the Loews Commodore Theater. It was built in 1927. Movies were silent. Any narration was read by the audience on black cards with the dialogue typed on them. There was always a piano or organ to provide live sound which drew the crowds in until the talkies came by way of Hollywood. Sound changed the movies and if video killed the radio star who killed the Carnegie Hall of classic rock?

Dear Friends:
Ever since the creation of the Fillmores, it was my sole intention to do nothing more, or less, than present the finest contemporary artists in this country, on the best stages and in the most pleasant halls.
The scene has changed…All that I know is that what exists now is not what we started with, and what I see around me now does not seem to be a logical, creative extension of that beginning. – Bill Graham, May 6, 1971, The Village Voice

There was some speculation that Graham became upset about other festivals.

“It wasn’t lack of revenue that closed the Fillmore East, but Graham’s dislike of larger concert venues like Arena Rock and festivals like Woodstock which he felt were taking rock and roll down a road he didn’t wanted to travel.” – Untapped New York

Graham was also exhausted from running the smaller rock venues he had in New York and San Francisco. He was tired of being a promoter in the new day of packaging concerts and the agents controlling what the promoter used to do—which was to book the acts. Agent packaging has also wounded the independent film world. It seems like an obligatory scene of evolution that the bigger always beats the smaller and sometimes better.

Graham took a small break and then ironically got back into the music business and stadium shows and reopened the Fillmore West and Winterland Ballroom theaters in San Francisco.

After three years, the Fillmore East closed on June 1971 and was gone forever. The New Fillmore East opened and closed in 1975. In 1980 after lying dormant for several years, it became The Saint, a poplar gay disco which closed in 1988. The original auditorium was demolished in 1996. Later that decade it turned into condos and an Apple Bank. The only memory of the great days of the Fillmore is a lamppost on Second Avenue. It reads “Bill Grahan Way” in mosaic tile done by East Village artist and Vietnam vet Jim Powers. Most people pass by without knowing who it is meant to honor.

Graham died in a helicopter crash  on October 25, 1991 while returning home from a Huey Lewis and the News concert. He was elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.