Graham, Bill (1931–1993)

German-born US rock music promoter and manager. A successful theatre owner and concert promoter in the 1960s, he combined a hard-driven entrepreneurialism with counter-culture idealism. In 1971 he closed his theatres and shifted to managing various groups and stars and promoting large arena concerts and tours, many of them featuring the biggest names in popular music including the Band and the Rolling Stones. Throughout the 1980s he continued to produce various concerts including a big 4th of July 1987 rock concert in Moscow, Russia.

Graham was born in Berlin, Germany. He fled the Nazis with his Russian-Jewish parents and arrived in the USA in 1941, becoming a citizen in 1953. He served with the US Army in Korea, then drove a taxi to pay for his business studies. Based in California, in 1965 he became the manager of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and moved on to present rock bands in concerts in his own venues. The first of these was a San Francisco club hall, which he named the Fillmore. This was followed by the Carousel Ballroom, also in San Francisco, and renamed the Fillmore West in 1967. In 1968 he opened the Fillmore East in a former movie house in New York City.