The way it came down
This time, there would be no press conference with thrusting bouquets of microphones … no formal, printed advance statements for the media ... no theatrics on the Dick Cavett Show, lashing the ungrateful miscreants of rock.
The dying sun of a dying day shone through the blinds at Fillmore West, through the golden hair of a beautiful young girl, but it did not shine on the haggard face of Bill Graham. He was perched on a chairback, too high. Maybe the sun got his feet. That would have been poetically just.
Graham had called his staff together to announce the abrupt closing of Fillmore West, a week from Sunday, on June 27. A couple of those present knew what was coming but most didn’t. Sure, they knew Fillmore West was dundee but it would be in the fall at the earliest, maybe December 31, maybe even March 17, 1972. They thought they were meeting about the Fourth of July bash Graham was throwing for them, a weekend out-of-town, all expenses paid. They finally got to it, but no one was much in the mood by that time. The discussion was postponed.
Nobody loves good theater more than Bill Graham, especially when the spotlight rests on him. He wanted to be an actor. He still gets in his licks. But not Thursday night. He was tired; tired of all the “closings” (as we all are), tired of losing the initiative, tired of not being able to hold down five full-time jobs simultaneously, tired of the hassles, tired of his own paranoia, tired of telling people they no longer had a job. Most of all, maybe, he was tired of fighting.
“The Sol Hurok of Rock” was his common sobriquet, but “Battle Bill” would have been more appropriate. And more appreciated, perhaps, for earlier this year he had discovered — to his own satisfaction, at least — that Sol Hurok, the man, was all kinds of unprintable things, most of them preceded by “Slimy.”
Graham has been fighting a long time. You do not become the best and biggest producer of rock music in the whole world through indolence. Nor, long ago, a successful caterer of sandwiches and soft drinks to floating crap games on the streets of New York. An instinct for the jugular is not merely helpful in business, sometimes it is requisite for survival.
The last fight would have been with the police department of San Francisco. Following the Winterland-LSD incident of two weeks ago, Chief Nelder said Graham’s Winterland permit should be revoked. Since that time, eyewitnesses report police harassment unprecedented in the more than five years — more than a thousand concerts — more than three million people history of “Bill Graham Presents in San Francisco …”
Stories of unwarranted roustings, illegal searches and up-against-the-wall picturetaking by both uniformed and plain-clothes officers were related to his somber staff. He spoke slowly and with long, uncharacteristic pauses, running first one hand, then the other over this face as he searched for words and balanced between exploding with anger and yielding to tears.
“None of us were guilty,” he said quietly, “but we were convicted without trial. Then came the backlash, and I would have to ask where we are and what year this is ... I don’t know.” He spoke of other things. “I’m also aware of what these years of voluntary slavery have done to me. They have cost me a lot of personal happiness. I started to become robot-ized, I tried to do too much and failed.
“I could fight … I always did. I can’t put my finger on it, but I can’t do it anymore. That the Chief of Police of a major American city would do this is beyond my wildest dreams. I am so terribly sad about this community; not that it hasn’t stood up for me … I can do that myself … but that it hasn’t stood up for itself. If quitting is a sign of weakness or cowardice, so be it.
“I never really wanted it to end this way …”
On the brighter side, I finally saw Woody Allen’s new comedy, “Bananas,” at the Bridge and it is hysterical — the funniest film since “Take the Money and Run,” which was the funniest film since “A Shot in the Dark.” I’ll spare you a recitation of the gags — critics love to recite gags, because it shows how clever and observant they are — but don’t miss it.
The last fight would have been with the police department of San Francisco. Following the Winterland-LSD incident of two weeks ago, Chief Nelder said Graham’s Winterland permit should be revoked.