AN APPRECIATION : Bill Graham: The Activist Promoter

More than the death of anyone in rock ‘n’ roll since John Lennon in 1980, the loss of Bill Graham on Friday night in a helicopter crash near Vallejo represents the end of another era.

In the narrowest of terms, Graham was the nation’s most celebrated rock promoter--a man who staged concerts or entire tours over the past 2 1/2 decades for such major attractions as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and U2.

In the widest sense, however, Graham was also a conscience and activist in rock--a man whose name was linked not only to most of the music’s great names, but also to its grandest causes, from the landmark Live Aid benefit concerts in 1985 to the worldwide Amnesty International tour of 1988.

He was a colorful, outspoken, gregarious, but also deeply serious man who was frequently disillusioned by what he saw as greed on the part of agents and artists in rock. He always seemed to be talking about retiring or, at least, scaling back his massive concert, merchandising and management organization to devote more time to his personal life. Yet he loved the “sizzle”--as he put it--too much to ever follow through.

Graham, who retained a street-wise New York accent even though he lived most of his professional life in San Francisco, sometimes spoke of his role as that of a chef--someone who tried to mix ingredients to shape the perfect meal. He delighted in surprising and enlightening rock crowds by adding a tasty appetizer or an exotic main dish to the evening’s basic rock fare: a jazz hero such as Miles Davis or a soul favorite such as Otis Redding or a Latin headliner such as Tito Puente.

In the end, no one in rock worked harder--and no one got more joy from the music. Graham made each show an event. He would pamper the artists--turning formerly drab backstage areas into warm, personalized settings--in hopes of coaxing them into their best performances.

At the same time, Graham would confront artists where necessary.

“How dare you keep the fans waiting!” he screamed at a superstar performer in the early ‘70s, when many rock acts thought it was cool to be late to the show.

Another time, he pulled a famous rocker from a waiting van backstage after a show, demanding to know why he wasn’t doing an encore. When the performer muttered that he was too tired, Graham countered with, “Well, there are 15,000 fans who are still cheering for you. You’re out-voted. Get the hell back out there!”

It was this side of Graham that made him controversial for years.

“One of the problems is that when I have something on my mind, I will say it,” he said in the ‘70s. “I will not try to win you over by saying the things you want to hear. I want to be judged by what I’ve done. I hope that I am liked, but it is more important to me that I’m respected. You don’t buy respect; you have to earn it.”

In the end, Graham not only earned respect for himself, but he also taught an industry--from rock performers to businessmen--to have respect for its audience.

For years, he wore a watch with two timepieces in the face, the kind that enables you to tell the time in two different zones--perhaps a throwback from the days he spent so much time traveling between New York and San Francisco. But the watch also seemed symbolic of a man who was so busy every day that it seemed there was no way he could cram all his activities into a single 24 hours.

Part of that drive may have grown out of his tragic background. Born in Berlin in 1931 as Wolfgang Grajonca, Graham, a Jew, was raised in an orphanage after his father died. In 1941, Graham and some other orphans were stranded during a trip to Paris when German troops invaded. He and the other children were taken by Red Cross officials to the United States. His mother died in a concentration camp.

Graham, who was awarded a Bronze Star during the Korean War, was managing a mime troupe in San Francisco in 1964 when he got involved with rock. Staging a concert to raise money for the troupe, he became fascinated with the city’s emerging psychedelic music scene.

One of the things that made him such an astute observer was that he knew it was as important at rock concerts to notice what was going on in the audience as it was what was happening on stage.

Despite the trials of his own childhood, he found ways as an adult to believe in the goodness of man and in the soul-stirring celebration of art. Like so many of his generation, he lamented the loss in recent years of the sociological connection that existed between performers and fans in the ‘60s--the shared sense of optimism and social values. He thought that rock had become too much “entertainment” and too little “inspiration.” Unlike many of his peers, however, he didn’t lose hope of regaining that connection.

He was typically optimistic two weekends ago at a Metallica concert he staged at the Oakland Coliseum. He saw something, he said, in the intensity of the audience that came to see the hard-rock band--an intensity that once more encouraged him.

Graham stood backstage, looking at the young faces in the crowd--15, 16, 17. “There’s something going on out there and I’m not sure I understand it--a certain anger . . . a real anger. I look at them and wonder if they have a right to be so angry at such a young age.

“But the youth may know something about life that we didn’t know at that age. . . . Maybe they’ve got toughness that we didn’t have. . . . Wouldn’t it be something if we see some of the changes in the ‘90s (socially and politically) that we just dreamed about in the ‘60s?”