Live at the Fillmore East and West

by John Glatt

  The week of the opening, Graham presented a run of Cream shows at Winterland and the Fillmore Auditorium, many of which he attended. The eight West Coast shows grossed $107,000 ($720,000).

  While in New York, Graham either micromanaged the preparations for the Fillmore East opening or schmoozed the key East Coast music business power brokers, such as Albert Grossman, Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, and agent Frank Barsalona.

  “Bill used to hang,” said Lee Blumer, whom Graham had hired as his personal assistant. “When Bill would come to town that’s where he would go to sit at the feet of the masters and absorb as fast as he could.”31

  After Albert Grossman’s February 19 press party, Janis Joplin and Big Brother left for a short East Coast tour prior to the Fillmore East opening. They played Boston, Providence, and the Grande Ballroom in Detroit on March 1, where they began recording a live album with Columbia Records producer John Simon. It was a disaster. Big Brother, who was always very loose onstage, were intimidated by all the recording equipment and played badly. Always the perfectionist, Janis railed at them.

  “That Detroit concert sounded really awful,” said Sam Andrew. “The band almost broke up right there.”

  After the show the band commiserated in a diner, where one of them accidentally dropped a packet of heroin, which was duly reported to Albert Grossman.

  Several days later, Janis and Big Brother listened to a tape of the abysmal Detroit show in their manager’s New York Office. Grossman then announced he would hire a session drummer and bassist to go into the studio and record the album.

  “I [told him] that’s just the way we are onstage,” said Peter Albin. “We’re really a live act and it’s difficult to record us.”32

  After they refused to bring in any new musicians, Grossman agreed that they would go into Columbia’s Black Rock studios with producer John Simon at the helm.

  “And it was a serious moment,” said Sam Andrew. “So we say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have to make it in the studio.’ And even that was really hard.”33

  On Friday afternoon, March 8, a nervous Bill Graham and his team were still frantically putting the final touches to the Fillmore East. His newly recruited team of ushers had just arrived for a final briefing, and they were given their green-and-gold football uniforms—replicating Graham’s old neighborhood gang—the Pirates. One of them was a young photographer named Robert Mapplethorpe, who would go home the next morning and tell his girlfriend, Patti Smith, that Janis Joplin was going to be a big star. 34

  “Guys were still painting gold leaf in the lobby,” recalled John Morris. “Still testing the sound system and Bill Hanley was onstage with a solder gun in his hand hooking the sound up. We weren’t ready.”35

  When Big Brother and the Holding Company arrived for the afternoon soundcheck, they were livid upon seeing the marquee sign, which read “Big Brother/Janis.”

  “And I had to take it down,” said Joshua White, “because Big Brother and Janis wanted to be considered ‘Big Brother,’ and she was the vocalist. But all of us knew it wouldn’t be long before she was back on her own.”36

  Inside, while they were rehearsing, Graham noticed that a spotlight on the bridge, forty feet above the stage, was out of focus. He went berserk.

  “Janis is rehearsing for opening night,” recalled Chip Monck, “and Bill is literally pounding on the [ladder] to get the fuck up there and focus it or he’d do it.” 37

  Monck duly climbed up the ladder and fixed the light.

  A few hours later, a smartly dressed Bill Graham arrived to find John Morris and Chip Monck in his office having their hair cut by a hairdresser friend from Vidal Sassoon.

  “I thought Graham was going to have a fit,” said Morris, “because it was happening in the office. The two of us were totally filthy from head to toe, but they were nice haircuts.”38

  Bill Graham had invited the cream of the New York music industry to his opening, planning a show that would triumphantly announce his Big Apple return. But just hours before the opening, he discovered that eight hundred counterfeit tickets had been printed by a competitor bent on sabotage.

  “Some spiteful bastard wanted to screw up the first show,” said Kip Cohen. “It made some people uncomfortable.” 39

  Graham then stationed himself at the entrance, personally inspecting everyone’s ticket, looking for forgeries.

  Vincent Fusco, who worked for Albert Grossman, and his pregnant wife arrived early, with backstage passes. They were surprised to see the box office was still being painted and the new marquee sign was being set up.40

  When the Fillmore East doors opened for the first time, everybody surged in like a tidal wave. No one had thought about crowd control, and celebrities, including Judy Collins and Elektra Records president Jac Holzman, were crushed on the way to their VIP seats.

  “It was absolute pandemonium,” remembered Kip Cohen. “I remember seeing some very highly placed people literally being crushed into the lobby walls, trying to get in. It all worked out but it was a little tense for a while.”41

  Backstage, Janis Joplin was nervous as she sat drinking Southern Comfort from the two cases Albert Grossman had sent over earlier.

  “Janis was terrified,” said John Morris. “This was New York and this was the big time.”42

  At one point blues legend Albert King, who was opening for Big Brother with Tim Buckley, came into the dressing room to chat.

  “He was getting really chummy with Janis and asking her questions,” said Peter Albin. “I said, ‘Are you related to B.B. King?’ He said, ‘All us Kings are brothers.’ ”

  After the first show, a young teenager named Nils Lofgren, who would later play guitar with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, came into the dressing room and asked if he could play a tune.

  “Nils came to see us at that show and he was just a kid,” recalled Sam Andrew. “Just the way he was playing and the questions he asked, I thought, ‘This guy’s going to be incredible.’ And we got to know him backstage at the Fillmore East that night.”

  Upstairs in his office, Bill Graham entertained a succession of top music industry executives.

  “It was all business,” said Chip Monck, “and he changed colors like a chameleon . . . ingratiating every agent and band manager that could possibly be found. He wasn’t a great actor but he sure knew his business.”

  It was around two in the morning as Janis Joplin and Big Brother took the stage for the second show. They did not disappoint.

  “When I saw her live at that Fillmore opening I was blown away. I mean blown away,” said Village Voice columnist Howard Smith. “It was one of the most riveting performances.”43

  But although Janis received several standing ovations, she came offstage uncertain about her performance. Sam Andrew reassured her that everything had gone well.

  “Janis was so extremely insecure,” he said. “She was going, ‘How was I? Did I sing well? It wasn’t too bad, was it? Did I look okay?’ One question after another for half an hour. I said, ‘It was great. Now let’s talk about something else, Janis.’ ”44

  The Fillmore East opening was a sensation, enthusiastically acclaimed by the New York music establishment and the press.

  “It’s making waves ten foot high,” one music industry “A”-lister told Rolling Stone. “Looks like an enormous money-maker,” said another.

  Bill Graham had returned to New York, and neither he nor the city would ever be the same.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Up and Running

  April to June, 1968

  The spring of 1968, Bill Graham bounced between New York and San Francisco several times a week, relishing his new bicoastal operation. He even had a double-faced watch custom made so that he always knew the time at both his Fillmores. It would become his personal trademark.

  He delighted in flying first class to N
ew York on a red-eye and then putting in a full day’s work. He functioned on pure adrenaline, often working twenty-hour days.

  “Bill invented the shuttle and he loved every minute of it,” said his Fillmore East manager, John Morris. “Whoosh. . . . I’ll be here one minute and there the next. The man’s energy was phenomenal in good ways and bad.”1

  On Friday, March 22, The Doors headlined the first weekend of sold-out shows at the Fillmore East. At the Friday early show, Jim Morrison introduced a new song called “Unknown Soldier” before seguing into an extended “Celebration of the Lizard.”

  The late show began with the band onstage but no sign of Morrison. Then, as keyboardist Ray Manzarek played the haunting first notes of “When the Music’s Over,” the leather-clad singer appeared, launching himself over the drum kit and grabbing the microphone just in time to scream the opening line.

  That night Jim Morrison pulled out all the stops. During an extended version of “Light My Fire,” he swung the microphone over the heads of the audience lariat-style, letting it out a little more with each circle. A worried Bill Graham then tore straight into the audience at the front of the stage, frantically waving at Morrison.

  “I could see that sooner or later he was going to lose it,” Graham recalled in 1985, “and I didn’t want it to hit anybody. I was standing maybe ten people back, waving my arms trying to catch his attention, and then he loses it. And out of two thousand people in the hall, it hits me right in the head.”2

  Back in the dressing room after the show, Graham nursed his injured head and joked about it. The next time The Doors played for Graham, the singer brought him a pith helmet for protection.

  On Saturday night, The Doors had such a good time playing that they didn’t want to leave the stage after the second performance.

  “Bill Graham has been putting on some beautiful, well-run concerts at his Fillmore East,” wrote Howard Smith in his Village Voice column, “but even he couldn’t have planned what happened Saturday night at The Doors’ last show. After one encore, wise in the ways of rock, part of the audience left, but to those who cheered on, Graham announced that The Doors had themselves requested to keep playing if the audience wanted it. They did and The Doors played for another full hour.”3

  In the audience that night was a twenty-two-year-old bookstore assistant named Patti Smith, who was given a free pass by her usher boyfriend, Robert Mapplethorpe. That night at the Fillmore East, she was inspired to become a rock star.

  “I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that,” she later wrote in her autobiography, Just Kids. “I can’t say why I thought this. I had nothing in my experience to make me think that would ever be possible.”4

  As Big Brother and the Holding Company began recording their new album in New York, Peggy Caserta flew in and moved into Sam Andrew’s room at the Chelsea Hotel. Caserta, who had a steady girlfriend back in San Francisco, had a crush on the guitarist, which wasn’t reciprocated. After a night of passionless sex, Andrew was taking a shower when Janis Joplin knocked on the door, surprised to see the beautiful owner of the San Francisco boutique where she bought her clothes.

  As Sam Andrew came out of the shower, Janis invited Caserta to move into her room. Caserta declined.

  If things were awkward at the Chelsea, the Columbia recording sessions were not going well, either. Producer John Simon, who had worked with Simon and Garfunkel and The Band, had little rapport with Big Brother. He would later describe the sessions as “mind-blowing brutal,” complaining that Big Brother was incapable of playing a complete tune together in the same tempo.5

  “It wasn’t working well,” recalled Sam Andrew. “There was tension. We were playing very badly and Janis always knew her stuff. She could do it in one take.”6

  Janis became more and more frustrated in the studio while watching her band going through countless false starts and takes without nailing it down.

  “She came to me about wanting to leave [the band],” said Andrew. “I talked her out of it.”7

  One night, looking for diversions, Janis invited Peggy Caserta to the studio and proceeded to get drunk on Southern Comfort. She became so drunk that Albert Grossman asked Caserta to take Janis back to the Chelsea. With the help of a member of staff, Caserta managed to get Janis outside, where they hailed a cab.

  After throwing up in the back seat, Janis demanded to be taken to a bar. Caserta talked her out of it and they went back to her room at the Chelsea.

  “I pulled off her dress and panties,” Caserta wrote in her book Going Down with Janis. “When she was completely naked she began groping at me, but she was so drunk . . . she kept missing my face.” 8

  The next night they did get it together, and Caserta moved into Janis’s room for the rest of her stay in New York.

  “We were young and wild and interested in each other,” said Caserta in 2000. “We had a lot of fun. We made a lot of love.”9

  On Thursday, April 4, Village Voice music critic Richard Goldstein officially welcomed Bill Graham to New York, saluting his “hip professionalism” and wishing him every success.

  “Bill Graham is in town,” wrote Goldstein, “and the manifestation of his arrival—the Fillmore East—may yet transform this city into the only place on the East Coast with a genuine San Francisco–style live rock scene.”

  Goldstein applauded Graham for the Fillmore East’s “superb acoustical system,” making it “one of the best sound-boxes in the city.”

  “Outside the new Fillmore,” he wrote, “someone has scrawled, ‘Bill Graham is our businessman.’ To which I say, ‘Amen.’ ”

  That night Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, sparking riots all across America. There were real fears of violence in the East Village, and Bill Graham, who was in San Francisco, told John Morris that he would have to decide whether to go ahead with a scheduled weekend of The Who shows.

  Morris then met with Pete Townshend and The Who’s manager at the Fillmore East.

  “Pete was talking about violence and the stupidity of it,” said Morris, “and how he was not going to smash amps or anything anymore.”

  It was decided the shows would proceed as planned. The Who’s first set on Friday night began on a restrained note, reflecting all the tension after the assassination.

  “Pete was just about halfway through the set and he just lost it,” said Morris. “And he turned around and attacked these amps.”10

  Morris stood behind the amps, which were dangerously close to the $6,500 Joshua Light Show screen, to keep them from being damaged.

  “And my hands were up there,” said Morris, “so I was moving them to keep from getting smashed fingers. And he looked over the top and went, ‘Oh, sorry Guv.’ And then poked the speaker and smashed it.”11

  At the end of the show, a dazed-looking Townshend threw his white Stratocaster to a kid in the front row and walked off the stage.

  On Friday, May 3, Jefferson Airplane debuted at the Fillmore East. It was their first show for Bill Graham since his firing, and they were wary. There was also the fact that they were now competing with him in San Francisco with their own Carousel Ballroom.

  “He was just another promoter to us,” said Airplane road manager Bill Laudner. “As long as he was forthcoming with his part of the show requirements, then we got on fine.”12

  Since their divorce, Jefferson Airplane had hardly slowed down. Their new manager, Bill Thompson, had ambitious plans. But the band members were breaking into different factions that would ultimately tear them apart.

  Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden now kept their own company, with their drunken behavior becoming more and more outrageous. With Bill Graham gone, there was no one to rein them in.

  “They were always on alcohol tears,” said Thompson. “But what can you do with Grace? I mean there was nobody who could replace her. She’s too good. Too great.”


  At one outdoor concert, Grace ripped off her blouse when it started raining and performed the rest of the show topless, to the audience’s delight.

  “She couldn’t stay away from the booze,” said Thompson. “And when she’d get drunk she couldn’t stop drinking. It cost us a lot of money.” 13

  At another show, Grace and Dryden got into a drunken argument backstage that turned violent.

  “Spencer got a knife out and put it by Grace’s throat,” recalled Thompson. “And our road manager Bill Laudner said in a very stern voice, ‘Now Spencer, I don’t want to hurt you. Put that knife down!’ Everything ended peacefully.”

  In Fort Wayne, Indiana, Grace’s behavior put the band’s future in real jeopardy.

  “Grace was drunk onstage,” said Thompson, “and she says to the audience, ‘Which one of you guys has the biggest cock?’ ”

  The Bible Belt promoter was so disgusted with Grace’s “foulmouthed behavior,” that he wrote to his colleagues all over the country calling for a concert ban on Jefferson Airplane. But as the band was such a huge draw, nobody paid much attention.

  Grace was on her best behavior though when Senator Robert Kennedy flew Jefferson Airplane to Washington, DC, in a government Lear jet for a fund-raising telethon.

  “His kids really liked Jefferson Airplane,” said Thompson, “so we were the only band invited.”

  It was at the height of the Vietnam War, and Grace insisted they perform her antiwar song “Rejoyce,” to make a strong political statement.

  Before they went on, Bill Thompson asked Pierre Salinger, who had been John F. Kennedy’s press secretary, to sit in with the band on piano, knowing he was an accomplished pianist.

  “He didn’t know the song was ‘Rejoyce,’ ” said Thompson, “which had a line, ‘War’s good business so give your son, but I’d rather have my country die for me.’ ”14

  Although some at the telethon were “outraged,” Salinger took it in his stride.