Bill Graham (born Wulf Wolodia Grajonca; January 8, 1931 – October 25, 1991) was a German-born American impresario and rock concert promoter.

Chet Helms and then Graham made famous the Fillmore and Winterland Ballroom; these turned out to be a proving grounds for rock bands and acts of the San Francisco Bay area including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin,[3] who were first managed, and in some cases developed, by Helms.

[4] He was the youngest child and only son of lower middle-class Jewish parents, Frieda (née Sass) and Jacob "Yankel" Grajonca,[5][6] who had emigrated from Russia before the rise of Nazism.

[10] Due to the increasing Nazi persecution of Jews and the death of Jacob, Graham's mother placed her son and her youngest daughter, Tanya "Tolla", in a Berlin orphanage,[6] which sent them to France in a pre-Holocaust exchange of Jewish children for Christian orphans.

Graham graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and then obtained a business degree from the City College of New York.

[citation needed] Graham was drafted into the United States Army in 1951, and served in the Korean War, where he was awarded both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

He was quoted saying that his experience as a maître d' and with the poker games he hosted behind the scenes was good training for his eventual career as a promoter.

Tito Puente, who played some of these resorts, went on record saying that Graham was avid to learn Spanish from him, but only cared about the curse words.

He was invited to attend a free concert in Golden Gate Park, produced by Chet Helms and the Diggers, where he made contact with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical theater group.

From 2003 to 2013 auxiliary writers of the times surrounding the 1960s, and Graham family lawsuits,[15] tell the narrative of the Fillmore phenomena and how the Black community there was disenfranchised.

Graham then stated, "Then on April 21, 1966, a Thursday, the Chronicle ran an editorial, 'The Fillmore Auditorium Case' ... [I]t was a big turning point for me.

[10] Charles Sullivan was found shot dead at 1:45 am on August 2, 1966, at 5th and Bluxome Streets, San Francisco (South of Market industrial area near the train station).

Some of the greatest names in the entertainment world, like Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Ray Charles and numerous others, have been presented all up and down the Pacific Coast by Sullivan.

It contains an article, "The San Francisco Sound, New music, new subculture", at the end of which it stated, "Unpublished file for Newsweek, October 28, 1966".

[23] In the beginning, Hertzberg recounts familiar territory with the Mime Troupe, reducing the Fillmore Auditorium to a run-down ballroom in "SF's biggest negro ghetto."

Graham got forty-one prominent citizens to write letters to the auditorium's owner, a haberdasher named Harry Shifs, and Shifs gave him a three-year lease at five hundred dollars a month.... [T]he hippie community ... has turned out to be something the man from Montgomery Street can point to with pride, in a left-handed way, and say 'these are our boys'", stated Jerry Garcia.

[23]: 8–9 One of the early concerts Graham sponsored, with Chet Helms hired to promote it, featured the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

[24] Early the next morning, Graham's secretary called the band's manager, Albert Grossman, and obtained exclusive rights to promote them.

His staff's amount of resourcefulness, success, popularity, and personal contacts with artists and fans alike was one reason Graham became the top rock concert promoter in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[26] By 1971, Graham citing financial reasons and changes he saw as unwelcome in the music industry,[27] closed the Fillmore East and West, claiming a need to "find [himself]".

His first large-scale outdoor benefit concert, at Kezar Stadium, on Sunday, March 23, 1975, "SF SNACK",[28] was organized to replace funds[29] for after-school programs canceled by the San Francisco Unified School District,[30] with performances by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, members of The Band and Grateful Dead,[31] Jefferson Starship, Mimi Fariña, Joan Baez, Santana, Tower of Power, Jerry Garcia & Friends, The Doobie Brothers, Eddie Palmieri & His Orchestra, The Miracles, Graham Central Station, and appearing : Marlon Brando, Francis Ford Coppola, Frankie Albert, John Brodie, Rosie Casals, Werner Erhard, Cedric Hardman, Willie Mays, Jesse Owens, Gene Washington, Cecil Williams[32] Graham as Bill Graham Presents booked the 1982 US Festival, funded by Steve Wozniak as Unuson.

[33][34] In the mid-1980s, in conjunction with the city of Mountain View, California, and Apple Inc. cofounder Steve Wozniak, he masterminded the creation of the Shoreline Amphitheatre, which became the premier venue for outdoor concerts in Silicon Valley, complementing his booking of the East Bay Concord Pavilion.

He went on to set the standard for well-produced large-scale rock concerts, such as the U.S. portion of Live Aid at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 13, 1985, as well as the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope and 1988 Human Rights Now!

[9][46][47] The residence Jake Ehrlich designed with a sliding glass roof at the top of Camino Alto Road in Marin County, in Northern California, was later owned by Graham.

[11] When Graham learned that Reagan intended to lay a wreath at Bitburg's World War II cemetery where SS soldiers were also buried, he took out a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle in protest.

Graham eventually led an effort to build a large menorah which is lit during every Hanukkah in downtown San Francisco.

[56] Graham died in a helicopter crash[57] west of Vallejo, California, on October 25, 1991, while returning home from a Huey Lewis and the News concert at the Concord Pavilion.

[59] Once he had obtained a commitment from Huey Lewis to perform, he departed by helicopter, which collided with a high-voltage tower in Marin County, California.

Former BGP President/CEO Gregg Perloff and former Senior Vice President Sherry Wasserman left and started their own company, Another Planet Entertainment.

On November 3, 1991, a free concert called "Laughter, Love and Music" was held at Golden Gate Park to honor Graham, Gold and Kahn.