Bill Graham

Bill Graham was an American concert promoter. Born to a Jewish family in Berlin, he escaped Nazi persecution as a child and reached the United States as one of the One Thousand Children; his mother died on the way to Auschwitz concentration camp. After moving to San Francisco in the early 1960s, Graham became involved with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and organized a benefit concert after its leader was arrested. He subsequently promoted rock concerts at venues including the Fillmore, Fillmore West, Fillmore East, and Winterland, presenting performers, including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company. He later promoted stadium concerts and large-scale benefit events, including the 1975 SNACK concert, the U.S. portion of Live Aid in 1985, and the A Conspiracy of Hope and Human Rights Now! tours for Amnesty International. Graham died in a helicopter crash west of Vallejo, California, while returning from a concert at which he had been arranging a benefit for victims of the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gr...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)