Fact #74677
When:
Short story:
Jefferson Airplane, The Fugs, The John Handy Quintet, Mystery Trend and Sandy Bull provide live music at the San Francisco Mime Troupe Appeal party at Bill Graham's Calliope Ballroom, 924 Howard Street, San Francisco, California, USA. Other performers include the beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The event raises $4,800.Full article:
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : I left my job as an office manager for Alice Chalmers Manufacturing on Market Street to work for the Mime Troupe. I did their books, ran the office, set up lights, loaded trucks. I was their only full-time employee, at $125 a month. When they got busted, I suggested, 'Let's get some money together through a benefit.' I used their connections to round up the talent. We announced the benefit and let the city know we intended to fight this obscenity charge stuff.
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : We built a stage at the near end of the loft so we could play into the room. We put up some lights that we owned. (Source : Bill Graham Presents, by Bill Graham And Robert Greenfield, Delta books, 1992)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : I got a call from someone in The Family Dog, asking if he could help in any way. It was Chet Helms. I told him to show up. He was very nice. On the poster, I had listed The Family Dog as one of the performing acts. When they came in I asked them where the dogs were. That's how little I knew. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : I used pieces of sheetrock to write the admission prices on - if you had a full-time job and earned $100,000 a year, admission was $48. If you had a part-time job and made less than $20 a week, come on in. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Robert Scheer (founder of Ramparts magazine) : The night of the first benefit, Bill and I went for a chopped liver sandwich at David's. I remember talking at dinner because we were worried that no-one would show up. That was the main thing. We had absolutely no idea whether this thing would work and it was considered a very wild idea to have groups play in order to try and get a big crowd. (Source : Bill Graham Presents, by Bill Graham And Robert Greenfield, Delta books, 1992)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : It was the first time I saw the undercurrents of San Francisco – long hair, short hair, pants, no pants, signs, tattoos, light shows, film. You turned over all the rocks, took all the worms and put them in one place. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Ron Nagle (Mystery Trend) : It was held in this industrial loft, the Calliope warehouse on Howard Street, behind the Chronicle building. We pulled up in our '51 Chevy sedan delivery truck and saw people lined up for two blocks. You couldn't get in. I don't know how they all found out, whether it was word of mouth or what.
We were stoked that there were all these people willing to pay to see us and two or three other bands nobody'd ever heard of. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Ronny Davis (founder, San Francisco Mime Troupe) : I saw Bill collecting money at the door. He had a green sack under his arm and he was collecting one-dollar bills and he was stuffing them in that sack. Climbing over people, sort of in a little bit of a hysterical state. Slightly hysterical about collecting this money, because there were so many coming. (Source : Bill Graham Presents, by Bill Graham And Robert Greenfield, Delta books, 1992)
Paul Kantner (guitarist/vocalist, Jefferson Airplane) : When I first met Bill, he was busy, simultaneously taking tickets, checking refreshments, mopping the floor and dealing with the SFPD, who had come to complain about the spillover of people from the loft. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Bill Graham : We expected a few hundred people and thousands showed up. There were people with huge hats and loud colours and baggy pants and costume jewellery and army coats. A sea of visual expression. Cinema people put up bedsheets and projected their 8mm films on the walls. We had these big barrels filled with vodka andGrapefruit juice. People were dancing around the loft in groups of five and ten.
And the response we got : 'My eyes were opened. There's a new world and a new society and a new spirit'.
(Source : interview in Rolling Stone – 23 August 1990)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : Here were these film-makers who met these poets for the first time, and jazz musicians and rock'n'roll musicians. People were dancing with people they'd never met before. Men and women and kids were just dancing. And all of a suddent it was six o'clock in the morning – it started getting light – and Allen Ginsberg was doing his mantra chants. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : We raised $4,800 and everyone was there for the right reasons. People brought fruit, banana stalks and pate. We had steel drums full of vodka and apple juice. I'd never seen anything like it. It was the greatest show of my life. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Paul Kantner (guitar/vocals, Jefferson Airplane) : No-one could have predicted the impact of Bill Graham's Mime Troupe Benefit on both his own future and, indeed, the future of rock'n'roll in San Francisco. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Bill Graham : What I saw was an adventure. It was as if life filled out the form of how I could express myself. I didn't want to be an office manager and sit behind a desk. I couldn't take regimentation. I had trouble in the army, and wanted to be independent. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
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Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : We built a stage at the near end of the loft so we could play into the room. We put up some lights that we owned. (Source : Bill Graham Presents, by Bill Graham And Robert Greenfield, Delta books, 1992)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : I got a call from someone in The Family Dog, asking if he could help in any way. It was Chet Helms. I told him to show up. He was very nice. On the poster, I had listed The Family Dog as one of the performing acts. When they came in I asked them where the dogs were. That's how little I knew. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : I used pieces of sheetrock to write the admission prices on - if you had a full-time job and earned $100,000 a year, admission was $48. If you had a part-time job and made less than $20 a week, come on in. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Robert Scheer (founder of Ramparts magazine) : The night of the first benefit, Bill and I went for a chopped liver sandwich at David's. I remember talking at dinner because we were worried that no-one would show up. That was the main thing. We had absolutely no idea whether this thing would work and it was considered a very wild idea to have groups play in order to try and get a big crowd. (Source : Bill Graham Presents, by Bill Graham And Robert Greenfield, Delta books, 1992)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : It was the first time I saw the undercurrents of San Francisco – long hair, short hair, pants, no pants, signs, tattoos, light shows, film. You turned over all the rocks, took all the worms and put them in one place. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Ron Nagle (Mystery Trend) : It was held in this industrial loft, the Calliope warehouse on Howard Street, behind the Chronicle building. We pulled up in our '51 Chevy sedan delivery truck and saw people lined up for two blocks. You couldn't get in. I don't know how they all found out, whether it was word of mouth or what.
We were stoked that there were all these people willing to pay to see us and two or three other bands nobody'd ever heard of. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Ronny Davis (founder, San Francisco Mime Troupe) : I saw Bill collecting money at the door. He had a green sack under his arm and he was collecting one-dollar bills and he was stuffing them in that sack. Climbing over people, sort of in a little bit of a hysterical state. Slightly hysterical about collecting this money, because there were so many coming. (Source : Bill Graham Presents, by Bill Graham And Robert Greenfield, Delta books, 1992)
Paul Kantner (guitarist/vocalist, Jefferson Airplane) : When I first met Bill, he was busy, simultaneously taking tickets, checking refreshments, mopping the floor and dealing with the SFPD, who had come to complain about the spillover of people from the loft. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Bill Graham : We expected a few hundred people and thousands showed up. There were people with huge hats and loud colours and baggy pants and costume jewellery and army coats. A sea of visual expression. Cinema people put up bedsheets and projected their 8mm films on the walls. We had these big barrels filled with vodka andGrapefruit juice. People were dancing around the loft in groups of five and ten.
And the response we got : 'My eyes were opened. There's a new world and a new society and a new spirit'.
(Source : interview in Rolling Stone – 23 August 1990)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : Here were these film-makers who met these poets for the first time, and jazz musicians and rock'n'roll musicians. People were dancing with people they'd never met before. Men and women and kids were just dancing. And all of a suddent it was six o'clock in the morning – it started getting light – and Allen Ginsberg was doing his mantra chants. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Bill Graham (rock entrepreneur) : We raised $4,800 and everyone was there for the right reasons. People brought fruit, banana stalks and pate. We had steel drums full of vodka and apple juice. I'd never seen anything like it. It was the greatest show of my life. (Source : interview in San Francisco Nights by Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay, Sidgwick And Jackson, 1985)
Paul Kantner (guitar/vocals, Jefferson Airplane) : No-one could have predicted the impact of Bill Graham's Mime Troupe Benefit on both his own future and, indeed, the future of rock'n'roll in San Francisco. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)
Bill Graham : What I saw was an adventure. It was as if life filled out the form of how I could express myself. I didn't want to be an office manager and sit behind a desk. I couldn't take regimentation. I had trouble in the army, and wanted to be independent. (Source : Rage And Roll by John Glatt, Birch Lane Press, 1993)