Marc Estrin
SHADES OF THE COMIC PAST
February 19, 2006
As the future looms, here with its websites and podcasts, and out there in the hallways of fascism, the past occasionally arises, and often with a comic mask.
Jeez, I once had 500 of these things in the back of my car. That’s a million and a half bucks worth. I couldn’t have sold an equal volume of drugs for that much — and those were the high old days. It just goes to show, though what it goes to show is beyond me.
Today a friend sent a link to wolfgangsvault.com, which offers for sale “vintage t-shirts, rock posters...” etc. I was not the target of this message, simply a member of his “send interesting things” list. But I thought I’d look up a poster for a show I directed at the Fillmore Auditorium back in the sixties.
I found it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a small handbill for that event was selling for $2,928. To avoid excess, I’ll spare you the purple ink version, which is going for $3,028.
Well, should we speak of wagging the dog, here’s one thing it goes to show:
in the early sixties, Bill Graham was working as the publicity guy for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and was not getting on well with Ronnie Davis, its director. I was at the time directing at the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop, doing experimental plays at the tiny Encore theater, while John Hancock, the artistic director did the mainstage productions. Bill wanted me to leave the Actor’s Workshop, and start a new theater with him. With a new baby girl, I wasn’t very interested in seeking iffy new work, and giving up my excellent position. But Bill was an interesting character, and I thought I’d at least go for a ride with him one afternoon to see an empty building he had found.
The building was the Fillmore Auditorium, locked and shuttered. Bill let us in with a key he‘d borrowed from the realtor, and we walked through the building, illuminating our way with matches. (Bill, as I recall, was a chain smoker.) The place was haunted by ancient elegance, and as spookily cobwebbed as Miss Havisham’s wedding hall. I don’t know how long it had been abandoned. We stood in the middle of the great central room, and Bill outlined to me his plan:
We would build a theater here, The American Theater, and would finance the whole operation by staging rock concerts — a new phenomenon at the time. Bill would be the impresario to engage the bands and advertise them, and I would direct the shows. Then we could afford to do new American plays no one else would do, and advance the cause of American theater.
I think The Beard was the only play ever headlined — perhaps ever performed — at the Fillmore. I had directed the show to some acclaim at the Encore, it had moved from there to be busted by the vice squad at The Committee, a North Beach theater venue, and by that time was pretty well known in town. So it was a good bet. But it’s an intimate show in all ways, and going from a 200 seat theater to a 2,000 seat one was an intriguing challenge.
The rest is history — not of me and the Beard, but of Bill and the Fillmore. The theater plans were left behind, and the tail not only wagged the dog, but became the dog in toto — and a whole crucial chapter of American history and culture was born.
The ironic part is that having been present at the creation, I had almost nothing to do with what ensued. I never went to an event at the Fillmore other than my own — too loud! All the rock music of the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties passed me by. I spent my music time playing Beethoven quartets and orchestral works right through the Vietnam war and beyond. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Elvis. The only group I might be able to recognize is the Beatles. When I wrote a Greatful Dead chapter for SKULK, I had to ask a friend make a tape for me of songs he thought might be relevant.
Pathetic, huh? But you can’t do everything, and I do know a helluva lot of early, baroque, classical, romantic and modern music. I just don’t know any of the bands that played at the Fillmore.