A long tracking shot follows concert promoter Bill Graham as he walks past a long line of fans, strung around the block several times like chains of love beads, waiting for the final weekend of the Fillmore West. More than a venue for live music, the venerable theater, featuring eclectic shows booked by Graham, came to symbolize the freewheeling cultural scene of San Francisco in the late 60s. The 1972 documentary Fillmore:The Last Days is out now on DVD.
Graham is remembered as the sharp edge of the first generation of professional rock promoters, but the backstage and interview segments measure the man more fully. A wandering Jew, Graham had escaped Nazi Europe in childhood, and before settling down in San Francisco, had dreamed of becoming a Hollywood character actor. He would have made a good movie gangster. Instead, he fell in with a San Francisco mime troop, whose outdoor performances brought him into the citys artistic and musical subcultures.
Graham was neither as starry-eyed as the hippies who flocked to his early shows nor the sort of cold blooded MBA running (ruining?) the music industry nowadays. He seems to have loved the joy, creativity and sense of community he found in the Bay area. It was a fantasy, but it was nice, he says, already looking back on the 60s from the perspective of 1971. It was, he adds, the Utopia that never was.
By the end, it was already turning into a nastier business. Graham was sick of preening rock stars and their egos. He throws one leather-jacketed jag-off out of his officeand chases him down the stairsfor being impolite. He was a streetwise diplomat, wheeling, dealing and unafraid to pound his fist on the table to make his point.
Director Richard T. Hefron did excellent work incorporating the backstage with the concert stage. The actual musical footage, however, is sometimes marred by bad acid special effects, including candy-colored lighting and double-vision images of the performers. Some of the featured bands have been entirely forgotten. Others are worth a new listen. Hot Tuna would be considered a good Americana act in the 00s, and Quicksilver Messenger Service could play the pants off most contemporary jam bands. The films headlining acts, the Grateful Dead and Santana, give some indication of the breadth of the San Francisco scene.
