Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And Out

Front Cover
Hachette Books, May 5, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 568 pages
Gritty, moving, funny, and always fascinating, Bill Graham Presents is the inside story of the explosive and unforgettable man who created the business of rock.

As a child, Bill Graham fled Europe to escape Hitler's armies. He grew up on the streets of New York and in the dining rooms of the hotels in the Catskills. After failing as an actor, he headed for San Francisco right before the Summer of Love where he founded the Fillmore and launched the rock icons of a generation--Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, the Grateful Dead, and more. He was a complex, caring, compassionate whirlwind of energy who rock stars either loved or hated.

In his own voice and those of the people who knew him--Jerry Garcia, Keith Richards, Grace Slick, Ken Kesey, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Carlos Santana--we hear Bill's story as well as the scoop on the major events in rock for more than three decades, ending with his tragic death in a 1991 helicopter crash.
 

Contents

1 From War to War
3
2 Mountain Rat
65
3 My Life in the Theater
105
The Sacred Store
133
4 The First Days
135
5 Doing Shows
172
6 Summer of Love
198
7 Bringing It All Back Home
226
15 Led Zeppelin
399
16 Closing Winterland
417
17 Stones
425
18 A Personal Plea
451
19 Going Global
466
20 A Conspiracy of Hope
478
21 Rocking Behind the Curtain
491
22 Around the World for Amnesty
506

8 Street Life
253
9 1969
262
10 The White Mans Apollo
301
11 Closing the Sacred Store
329
12 Touring
345
13 The Last Waltz
379
14 Stranded in the Jungle
395
23 Breakdown
519
24 Last Word
535
Afterword by David Graham
547
Speakers
549
Index
556
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