Fillmore East: 15 Great Shows
Few venues in rock history can match the hallowed legacy of the Fillmore East. The ornate theater located on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in New York City only operated for three years, but in that time, it hosted some of the greatest legends the music industry has ever known, including Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers Band, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, and Sly and the Family Stone to name just a few. But it wasn’t just the names emblazoned on the marquee that made the Fillmore East a special place to catch a show; it was the man who ran it.
Bill Graham, a German transplant born Wulf Wolodia Grajonca, opened the venue on March 8th, 1968, to stand as an East Coast outpost for his burgeoning live-concert empire. Graham operated a tight ship, demanding nothing less than excellence from his staff and the artists who inhabited his stage. To him, everything was about the fan experience, and he went out of his way to provide the best kind of atmosphere to take in a live performance, from the ornate, hand-rendered posters he printed up to announce the gigs; the lavish psychedelic visuals he commissioned the Joshua Light Show to provide behind the stage; the 35,000-watt, 26-speaker sound system custom designed by Bill Hanley; and even the barrel of free apples he left out for people departing at the end of the night. No detail was too small for Graham’s notice.
As a result, the bands and artists who played the Fillmore East, as well as its San Francisco counterpart, typically went the extra mile. For just $3, $4 or $5, you, as a ticketholder, were granted a pass to be taken to someplace truly magical. Today, the building operates as a wing of the Emigrant Savings bank, but in its late Sixties, early Seventies heyday, the Fillmore East was a place where you knew going in that you were going to witness something extraordinary. Here, on the 45th anniversary of the venue’s 1971 closing, we look back at 15 of the greatest shows that went down there.
Big Brother and the Holding Company – March 8th, 1968
For the very first performance at the Fillmore East, Graham decided to bring a little bit of the sound of San Francisco out to the East Coast and tapped Big Brother and The Holding Company for the honor with Freddie King placed in the opening slot. The New York cultural cognoscenti descended on the venue that evening to see for themselves Graham’s operation at work, and to check out the buzzy blues-rock band fronted by a singer from Texas named Janis Joplin. Even though tensions in the group were at an all-time high because of Joplin’s burgeoning star status, Big Brother managed to set their differences aside that night and deliver a tremendous performance, especially in the second set, which kicked off at nearly two in the morning and garnered a rapturous standing ovation. In the course of just one night, the entire city was put on notice: The Fillmore East was the new place to be.
The Doors – March 23rd, 1968
In the late 1960s, the Doors, and particularly their frontman Jim Morrison, were one of the most unpredictable live acts on the planet. You simply didn’t know what they were going to do or how long they were going to do it for. Just two weeks after the Fillmore East opened, Graham booked the Southern California psych rockers to play four sets of music spread across two nights. The final set on the second evening was the one to catch. That night, the Doors played their regular collection of material but apparently enjoyed themselves so much that they came back after most of the crowd had thinned out and played again for nearly an hour. It was an incredible showing, and left a tremendous impression on one audience member in particular: future punk poetess Patti Smith. Her boyfriend, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, was working as an usher at the venue and managed to get her a free pass to the show. It was a galvanizing experience, as she explained in her autobiography Just Kids. “I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that,” Smith wrote.
Sly and the Family Stone – Oct 5th, 1968
The Fillmore East was widely regarded as a palace of blues and rock, but every once in a while the place could get downright funky, like when Sly and the Family Stone rolled through in October 1968. The band had yet to really break through in the way they would following their turn at Woodstock the following year, and the release of their platinum-selling greatest-hits collection in 1971. Nevertheless, when their time came, they played that like they were already the biggest stars in the world. The energy throughout all four shows is incredibly intense, reaching a near-boiling point during the final performance. Opening with “M’Lady,” Sly and his group of musicians treated the crowd to a full-on soul explosion that never let up from start to finish. The highlight comes smack dab in the middle of the set with an ecstatic rendition of their single “Dance to the Music” featuring a hurricane of guitar solos amid a series of seismic horn blasts. At the center of it all of course is Sly, who keeps the energy high and the groove moving. While many iconic musicians would take over the Fillmore East stage in the years to come, you’d be hard pressed to pick out a better showman than Sly Stone.
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