Rock & Roll Books

Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out

Da Capo Press, 568 pp., $18.95 (paper)

If Bill Graham hadn't actually existed, Hollywood would've had to invent him. The man most responsible for turning concert promotion into a multimillion-dollar industry, he towered over his profession – which he stumbled into by accident after staging a benefit for a friend who got arrested – like the Marvel Comics character Galactus. A concentration camp survivor before he was out of short pants, Graham was brash, outspoken, and focused like a hawk on the bottom line. "Which was a cross he had to bear for many years," says late Merry Pranksters founder Ken Kesey, referring to Graham's insistence on no comps at the Pranksters' early Acid Tests. "Until finally he crawled up on it and decided to rule from there." Originally published in 1992 after Graham's October 1991 death in a helicopter crash, Bill Graham Presents is a fascinating, if sometimes daunting, oral history. Graham's frank, often indignant voice dominates the narrative, as a chorus of friends, relatives, associates, employees, and superstars like Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, and Carlos Santana lend their impressions. No detail – his trips to New York's Palladium as a college student, where he acquired his lifelong love of Latin music; mediating between the Police and U2 over who would headline 1986's Conspiracy of Hope tour – is too minute for Graham to include. Gather enough of them (545 pages, to be exact), and you've got his epic life. He wasn't just an observer at the milestones of rock history – Monterey Pop, Altamont, the Last Waltz, the Stones' 1981 tour – or even just the guy who signed the checks. He was the major reason they happened at all. Bill Graham Presents would indeed make a great movie, but it would need a director with as much chutzpah, ego, and sheer balls as Graham himself. Maybe Oliver Stone is available.