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

As a reference tool, music buffs and casual fans alike will find this volume indispensable. Glatt has spent the better part of 20 years assembling a truly staggering amount of information on a period of music that is often oversimplified as a haze of drugs and sex. Influential though those elements may have been, Glatt focuses instead on a triumphantly thorough chronicle of the business decisions and industry trends that affected the music of a generation, like Janis Joplin's decision to split with Big Brother and the Holding Company. * Publishers Weekly * You had to be there, and . . . Glatt finds people who were behind the scenes, from secretaries and stage hands. * New York Post * Live at the Fillmore East & West is an entertaining overview of the rock scene in the late '60s and early '70s. . .The most fascinating part of Live is the detailed explanation of how the Fillmore East came to be born. * San Francisco Book Review * "Glatt weaves the tales of legendary music impresario Bill Graham, one of the most bombastic and combative figures in the history of the music business... It is those outsized, over the top personalities, that Glatt captures so well the propels the entertaining tale. While Graham is either beloved or outright hated, Glatt captures the promoters enterprising genius, and willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed. Along the way it amounted to stellar successes, world famous tantrums, and rock bottom lows. " - My Big Honkin Blog

In 1968, rock promoter Bill Graham launched the Fillmore East in New York City and the Fillmore West in San Francisco, changing music forever. For three years, every major rock band played the Fillmores, performing legendary shows: Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, Cream, the Allman Brothers, and many more. Author John Glatt tells the story of the Fillmores through the lives of Bill Graham, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Carlos Santana, and an all-star supporting cast. Joplin opened the Fillmore East and delivered some of her greatest performances there and at its San Francisco twin. Carlos Santana grew up as a performer at the Fillmore West after being discovered by Graham on audition night. Always unpredicatable, Grace Slick's electrifying Jefferson Airplane was the de facto resident band at both Fillmores. Chronicling the East and West Coast cultures of the late '60s and early '70s-New York City with its speed, heroin, and the Velvet Underground versus San Francisco with the LSD-drenched Summer of Love-Glatt reveals how Graham the made it all possible . . . that is, until August 1969 when Woodstock changed everything and musicians suddenly realized their power. But why did Bill Graham shutter both Fillmores within weeks of each other in 1971, during the height of their popularity? Live at the Fillmore East and West reveals how Graham's claim that "The flowers wilted and the scene changed," was not quite the whole story.