Live at the Fillmore East and West: Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock's Greatest Legends

This Book is absolutely entretainment, stories of the principal groups from San Francisco intermingle to create the narrative along the history of the Fillmore's. here I learned the different locations of the auditóriums, the shape of the Fillmore West as a dance hall and the difference with the Fillmore East having seats, the light shows and the people who created and operated them.The book gave me the insight of how the music business changed after the Woodstock Festival and how the bands, managers, etc wanted more money and began playing bigger venues leaving the Fillmore's out of business.Here You read how focefully Bill Graham began to present shows at other venues in order to change with the times and survive in the music business.As an example of things that I learned in the book is that i thought the Beatles were the first group to play in a rooftop or were their's idea and I found out that the Jefferson Airplane played in a roof before them.

A good read with lots of detail. However, there are errors that should have been easy to avoid. The city of Mountain View is not in Marin County. The Airplane song on Crown of Creation about turning 30 is Lather, not Lava. Stuff like that. But overall, detailed and worth reading.

This was a great read, actually got through it very quickly, This will be on my reread list for sure

When the Fillmores were at their height, I lived in Dallas. Unfortunately, we actually got little information concerning the music scenes on the coasts. What we did get came from the publicists of the record companies. Thus, we'd only hear of the Fillmores when an album came out, or from reading cryptic notes in our local underground newspaper, Notes From The Underground. By the early 70's, I subscribed to Rolling Stone and did learn a lot about the music scene. Of course, I have read many biographies of the stars of the era. This book is one of the best that I have ever read of both the music and the entire scene. Honestly, it explained (to me) why the concerts that I was able to see of The Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin did not live up to my expectations, due to their drug and alcohol use. Not all of the artists' concerts failed to be amazing in that era. I will never forget Sly & The Family Stone absolutely astounding us at The Texas Pop Festival, or The Who's amazing concerts. This book is great. I loved it, both for the highs, and the sad lows.

It tells the story not only of a fascinating period in rock 'n roll, the flower power period and the oftentimes bad effects of the huge successes of both the bands and the concert business. The book shows Bill Graham a monster in some ways but a business genius in other ways. But that in itself tells the story of those time and of the music business in general. I've also done a few thousand low key gigs. From an audience's point of view, "Great show. Great music". From the performer's point of view, it ranges from complete mayhem, a lot of NOT performing between gigs, and the glamor and glitter is not usually very good for the soul. The music itself is great. Making it happen...maybe not so great! Anyway, I liked learning about a lot of stuff I'd never heard about before.

ONE OF THE BEST ROCK BOOKS I'VE EVER READ......AND I'VE READ THEM ALL!!!! Even if you've read Bill Grahams biography, or Janis Joplins, or Jefferson Airplanes, The Doors or The Grateful Dead, or Hendrix or Santana or a host of everyone who ever walked through those DOORS....he leaves NO STONE unturned...this book is absolutely FANTASTIC.....Should be required reading for every musician! So if your interested in that SCENE that started the origins of rock music..this is a great trip and a great story as well....Extremely thorough and very well written.....I really could not put it down....Know this.....I never write reviews...but this one I just had to tell......No I'm not related to the author and gain NOTHING from this......Its really just that good....I wish rock music books were his first love..instead of true crime...yuk!

I was at the Fillmore East quite a lot during its hayday, and saw many of the bands at other venues as well, mostly in NY. I was lucky enough to be at some of the specific shows Glatt talked about in a way that brought me back...to those moments of music history. Glatt certainly captures the vibe, and the stories about Grace, Jerry, Phil, Jorma, Jack, Jai Johnny, Butch, Gregg, Duane, Janis and Carlos, even Jimi - you know all the last names if you're interested in real rock and roll and psychedelic music and an era - were insightful and ring pretty true, though are so good you wonder if he's making some of it up. And it isn't just about the front-men and women, but about all the musicians, Bill Graham, money, and culture, sprinkled with various substances good, bad and otherworldly. I hope all the stories and quotes ARE true because it is a fascinating look at both Bill Graham, the times and all the protagonists. If you're a fan of the Airplane, the Dead, Jimi, the Allaman Brothers, Janis, Big Brother & the Holding Co and Santana, you'll find this a page turner.

Well documented, well written, telling it like it was. Morals? Not many! All the inside dirt on the rock stars who were regulars at Fillmore East and West in a time when sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll jumped from the local party venues to these rock palaces. All of this skillfully woven through the life's of some of the best known musicians of the time who played to the orchestration of perhaps the greatest rock promoter of all time.If you were there or just intrigued by the history, you are in for a good read.

Well written account of the sixties music scene in New York and the West Coast. All the big names are here and there is a lot of detail. Not quite as good as My Life Inside Rock and Out by Bill Graham in my opinion, but less biased. A lot of the classic Fillmore concerts mentioned in this book can be found in part and in some cases in full on Utube so you can judge for yourself how good they were. In my opinion they range from Superb, (The Allman Brothers) to clear cases of style over content ( the over rated screeching of Janis Joplin) Then you have the Grateful Dead, No book about this era in American music would be complete without them. Love them or hate them they were a major influence on the West Coast at this time and this is well documented in this book. All in all a good read.

awesome

Good document of a great venue.

This book is a very useful addition to the growing number of books covering the sixties San Francisco scene. My main purpose in buying it was to have a history of the Fillmore in one volume and from that perspective I am not disappointed. It contains a lot of information about Bill Graham warts and all! It is also very useful as regards the histories of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Santana. Although I didn't find any new information in the book it was a fascinating read and great to have so much information about the various bands in one volume.I spotted a couple of minor errors. Santana's second album is shown as "Abraxus" and should be "Abraxas". "Lather" from Crown of Creation is called "Lava". The author also says that the Grateful Dead was formed by Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzmann. I stand to be corrected but I thought that Garcia, Pigpen and Weir were already jamming at Dana Morgan's music store in Palo Alto before Kreutzmann was invited to join them. None of the errors in the book are, however, significant and do not detract from what is a comprehensive book.I can recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in the legendary Fillmore venues.

Dad loved his present