Name: Bill Graham on Letterman, August 25, 1982
Uploaded: 2016-06-05T21:05:23.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Graham on Letterman, August 25, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-05. Transcript available. Sorry about the video quality.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Graham on Letterman, August 25, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-05. Transcript available. Sorry about the video quality.

Hi, hi and hello, welcome, welcome back to the show, and we've just covered the
topic of bat jobs and other nasty extermination, and now we're ready to move on.
In the world of rock music, my next guest is a legend. He is not a musician, he's
not a writer, he has often been called a rock impresario, however, and he was
the man behind the Fillmore West and the Fillmore East and Winterland.
He introduced the music of such groups as the Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Janis
Joplin, and Van Morrison to all of America. Please welcome Mr. Bill Graham.
How are you? Did you ever have any difficulty with a bat job at any of the Fillmore
Auditoriums?
No.
That's good. Rock impresario, what exactly, what does that mean?
The only impresario I ever met was a man named Saul Hurok. I mean, you looked
at him, he was an impresario.
We're in the world of music and entertainment. Impresario is just something I
don't relate to the word.
What exactly do you do, though? I mean, in the days of the Fillmore, tell us
about that. How did the Fillmore Auditorium begin?
I was with a theater group in San Francisco, and we had trouble raising money
for the work that we were doing, and got to know a lot of the musicians in the
town.
And 65, 66 was the beginning in San Francisco, and everywhere else in the
Alternative Society, and Grateful Dead started in that time for Jefferson Airplane
and Big Brother with Janis.
And I got to know some of those people, and some of the cinematographers, and
some of the poets in the Bay Area, so we used our loft for a fundraiser, and
thousands of people showed up in this small loft and raised a few thousand
dollars.
And the public just wanted another one, and another one, and another one, and I
found an old skating rink called the Fillmore, and did two or three more
benefits.
How big a house was it? How many folks?
2,800.
Tiny, by today's comparison.
Yeah.
By comparison.
Now, during all of this, in the material I've read on you, people said that you
were really good at spotting talent, but you were also regarded as, some people
called you money-hungry, a capitalist pig, and so on and so forth.
We're only two.
What is your reaction to that criticism at the time?
To this day, it's something that you can't really take if you respect yourself,
and you feel that you're a decent person, and you do your work to the best of
your ability.
It was the era to call the cop a pig, and to call someone who was in the music
business some names that you don't like to be called.
It was distasteful then, and it's distasteful now.
You just don't hear as much of it now as you did then.
Yeah.
But you were actually, if it weren't for you, well, I'm sure somebody else
would have gotten into it, but you were doing everybody a real favor, weren't
you?
Well, in the right place at the right time is one thing, but also, if it wasn't
for the groups of that era, the Jimi Hendrixes, the Jim Morrison, the Byrds,
and so many groups, I don't know how many of us would be in this business.
I'd be pushing a tray somewhere in the Catskills, I think.
We're going to talk some more with Mr. Graham about some of those folks that he
mentioned, and we've got all kinds of other things to do here tonight.
We'll be right back after you take a look at this.
Larry Bud Melman, president of the Melman Bus Lounge, with another of my five
reasons to ride Melman buses.
Reason number two, newspapers and magazines.
We not only allow you, but encourage you to bring your favorite news magazines
and gazettes on board our daytime buses.
There's plenty of natural light, except for when we hit a bump.
You'll feel like you're sitting in your living room, which is what traveling is
all about.
Not just a good ride, a good read.
Thank you very much.
Welcome back to the show.
Bill Graham is here.
Also, if you're thinking about going to bed, forget it, because later in the
show, the first installment of Dave's sitcom sampler.
Now, you mentioned some of the people that you worked with.
I want to talk about those in a second, but why did you end up closing the
clubs?
The film was?
Yeah.
3,000 miles apart, and the business got, after the Woodstock gig in 69, I think
Business America got to realize how big Rock and Roll really was.
And accountants and tax people and advisors got into the business and making
every negotiation difficult to the point it was difficult to run two establishments
3,000 miles apart and going back and forth.
I wasn't getting out of it personally, what it used to be.
It was just too difficult to negotiate on a week-to-week basis, 52 weeks a year.
Did you get the feeling that the groups involved were greedy or others were
greedy or that there was, in fact, greed going on here?
It wasn't so much greed. It got to the point where the agent or the manager for
the headliner said, well, if you want our group to appear on the show, we want
this other group that we handle to be on the show.
And in the early days, the real joy was that you would find a group that you
liked that wasn't necessarily rock and roll, that was a gospel group or a folk
group or a comedian that you also want to put on.
So if they wanted to see the headliner, you would bring on something that they'd
never heard.
What about some of the things that contract writers that you read about or hear
about that certain groups have?
They request things backstage and so forth.
Did you run into that?
You ran into it then and you run into it now.
Anything unusual come to mind, like ponies or...
They're always that way.
I think a good example is some years ago, a major, what you call a superstar,
had a paragraph in their writer which stated,
a tour advance man will discuss with local promoter food and beverages for the
artist entourage.
said food and beverages at the total discretion of the artist and at the total
expense.
Who was the artist? Can you tell us?
I'd rather...
At the total expense of the artist.
Is it somebody still working today?
Very much so, yeah.
Male or female?
Male.
Male.
Male.
Lots of males.
A group.
Group.
I get a line, you get a line.
And eventually, it got to a point where I said, it would be nice if you would
allow me to just put the spread up.
Well, we're going to tell you what we want.
The end of the story was, I called the lead person in this group, who was
overseas at the time, and I said,
what you're saying is if you were a pheasant on the glass for your 120 people
in the entourage, it would be at my expense.
I said, yes.
The end result was they arrived in San Francisco to play at this large arena,
and they came backstage, and we had these wonderful tables set up with table
cloths and silverware and candelabras, and we put it all out.
And we had all the food covered, and when they opened it up, they were just
cheeseburgers with Coca-Cola.
But you're not going to tell us who this was?
Come on.
We still have to work for a living.
All right, let's talk about other people we mentioned.
You mentioned Jimi Hendrix.
What was your relationship with him like?
Probably the greatest all-around, no disrespect to Eric Clapton, or Santana,
probably the greatest virtuoso of rock and roll guitar players for his era.
Recorded one of his live albums at the Fillmore in New York City.
He came there for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day for four shows, two shows a
night some years ago.
And the first show that he did, it was very unusual for him to come into the
office in between shows as they were turning the house around.
And he very solemnly, he was a very quiet person, very reserved, and said, what
do you think of the show?
And usually if an artist asks, and I don't have good things to say, I'll just,
hmm, try to not answer them.
And then the last three or four times, I asked the other people in the office
to leave.
And I tried to explain to him, because it was serious for me to tell him what I
had to say.
I said, because of who you are, you have a different responsibility.
You're considered this demagogue.
What you wear and what you say and what you do is very important to your
followers and to people who buy your records and watch you.
And in the first show, you played the guitar with your teeth.
You stuck it behind your back.
You put it behind your legs, you rolled it around, you put it on a fly, you
broke it, and you did everything else to play.
You forgot to play.
And he looked at me like I was crazy.
But he also knew I was right.
But because he was Jimmy Hendrix, he could do that, and they would take it.
And he got very angry with himself.
And he asked if I was going to stay for the second show that night.
And I said, yeah, he said, do me a favor, just watch the second show.
The second show that night was probably the greatest individual sustained
performance I've ever seen by a guitar player,
which became the record, the Band of Gypsies record.
He came off stage after 75 minutes of just uninterrupted get-down playing and
singing,
just a powerful performer.
Came into the wing, and I was in the wing of the stage area,
and he was soaking wet, said, all right, huh?
All right with you now?
You want to let me go now, huh?
Jimmy, you were great.
All right, is that good enough for you?
Are you satisfied?
Yes.
He goes out for the encore and does 15 minutes of all the schtick that he could
ever.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Just got it out of the system.
Did you yell at people in the Fillmore, customers and music acts?
On occasion, yeah.
Yeah.
Is there something you can quickly tell us about Janice Joplin,
your relationship with her?
It's hard to do that without getting personal,
and I can't really do that except to say it was tragic that she left,
as early as she did, and she was the first female rock and roll superstar of
that era that I knew.
And I think the thing she said one time set the tone for a lot of the problems
that came after for many other people in rock and roll,
but you're a guy on the show business.
You're a guy on the road in show business.
You go down to the bar and you can have a good time.
What does a woman do on the road?
And that's the never-ending problem with show business.
But the impression of her now is that she did all right as far as having a good
time is concerned.
Yeah.
What are we doing here?
We're going to go away.
Mr. Bill Graham, ladies.
Oh, we've got to mention you have a concert out west, the U.S. festival.
Yeah, I flew out here to hopefully be able to mention that.
There was an attempt to put on a large three-day event in Southern California.
September 3rd, 4th of September.
Labor Day weekend, yeah.
A three-day camping event with a lot of the major groups.
Terrific. Bill Graham, ladies and gentlemen.
Now we're going to go to life.
We'll be right back for the premiere of Dave's sitcom sembler.