Bill Graham Presents In San Francisco - Fillmore: The Last Days

We Say...

Review by Lenny Kaye

Few musical venues embodied and transformed their era like the Fillmore auditorium at the intersection of Fillmore and Geary Streets in San Francisco, later moving to South Van Ness and Market. Though the original location still functions as the city's premier venue (and a great place to play), the Fillmore as a concept did have a late '60s/early '70s heyday in which head honcho Bill Graham and the venue's ballroom stage provided a new sensibility of how rock and roll was meant to be presented and promoted. Along with its crosstown rival, the Avalon, the Fillmore was the epicenter of San Francisco's musical Summer o' Love, and the scene it helped foster — embodied on my teen-o bedroom wall by a poster celebrating New Year's Eve of 1966 as it became '67 (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service!) — did much to mind-expanse the possibilities of music and its artistic reach, along with a cast of characters truly kaleidoscopic in their flowering.

The groups and artists gathered here were celebrating six years of the Fillmore as the ol' joint closed in the summer of 1971, a roll-call that encompasses most of those who earned their stripes on its hallowed proscenium. Along with the expected names (the Dead's version of "Casey Jones" is particularly loping thanks to the close miking of Phil Lesh's armadillo bass, and Quicksilver's "Mojo" shows how da blues underlay much of these spiraling improvisations, a hallmark of the Golden Gate sound) — many of San Francisco's second tier are showcased: The Sons of Champlin, Elvin Bishop Group, Stoneground, Tower of Power, Malo, It's A Beautiful Day — all of whom have musical resumes worth seeking out, with a diversity that highlights the many styles that went into the era's sense of grab-bag. No better example of this is Santana, who literally got their start under Graham's watchful eye, and are in romping form here with "Incident At Nashabur" and a beautiful version of Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way."

The jams are loose and lusty, and though there is a sense of finale as Graham bids his Fillmore adieu, with him thinking that he's really going to retire, the knowledge that both he and the ballroom would rise from its own ashes-to-ashes to provide a staging for many new generations of bands makes this less bittersweet than a homage to the venue's golden era. The interview with Graham is very illuminating about how the business changed along with the promoter's role, and perhaps why the Fillmore is now regarded as more of a brand and less a cosmic joining of time and space.