Poster Room
The Poster Room at the Fillmore San Francisco has a long and rich history. Student Riley Evans talks with Amie Bailey Knobler, the general manager at the Fillmore to find out more.
Created as part of the Audio Production class at USF.
Transcript
The first time I went to the Fillmore, I went to see King Krule. On the outside, the building looked like any ordinary music venue: tan bricks, wrought iron gate. But when we entered, we walked up these red carpet stairs and in front of us was a huge bucket of apples. A few twists and turns in the hallway, and we were in The Poster Room. Lining the 20-foot walls of
this huge room were thousands of concert posters. I didn't even know where to start; at first glance I saw tons of names I knew: Willie Nelson, David Byrne, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, The Cure, Patti Smith, and literally hundreds of others. At the top of all of them a
uniform phrase: "Bill Graham presents in San Francisco." And it turned out later in the night, we too were given posters for our event, reminding us always of the King Krule concert we saw in this historic place.
"When we look at the calendar about a month out and decide what shows are gonna get a poster..." that's Amy Bailey. She's the general manager of the Fillmore "A lot of times it's sold out shows but not always. Sometimes there's a great exciting local band that's almost sold out. We have an art director, Arlene Owseichik, and then she works so a lot of different artists. We try to keep new artists in the mix all the time."
There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of posters lining the interior walls of this building. They start in the main poster room in the upper left-hand corner of the wall above the door and continue in chronological order on every wall in that room, in the hallway outside, and in the room across the hall. It's quite honestly a little bit
overwhelming. "They ran out of room in 2006 so and we did scoot everything once
and we added a whole other row in that room. It's been such a long-standing tradition here, that to a lot of bands it's a really big deal to get a Fillmore poster."
She's right; Fillmore posters have a pretty sizable reputation. Bands today still ask for their posters to be styled like old posters from the 60s.
"Some of these here on this first wall really famous and worth a lot of money. The Rick Griffin flying eyeball at the end the red and blue with Jimi Hendrix..." The poster she's referring to is probably the most famous poster to come out of the Fillmore. This image has been used on t-shirts and book covers and tattoos for decades since the original poster was given out at the Fillmore in 1969.
"The other thing is the themes keep repeating, so there's a huge list of things that bands can't put on posters." This is true. Here are some things that they won't allow on posters anymore: typewriters, deer, bird cages, coffee cups, record players, hot rods... the list is
surprisingly extensive. "As we get farther and farther away from people understanding where things came from, so many bands are producing their own Fillmore-style poster now to sell at merchandising not realizing the history of it. Sometimes they do they don't
realize the origin of it and what an honor it is to have one."
The Fillmore is a staple of San Francisco's culture and history. Although it has been the home to hundreds of different types of music since its founding in 1912, it gained a significant reputation while in the possession of one man in particular. Bill Graham came in here in the mid-sixties to do a benefit for the San Francisco
mime troupe. After purchasing the venue, Bill Graham hosted his first live concert
with a performance by Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix. As a gift, Bill Graham presented the bands with a poster designed specifically for that show and gave copies of the poster to
the fans for free the ceremony became a tradition at the Fillmore, one that has
been going on for decades since then. There have been 1574 posters handed out
at the Fillmore.
"People literally walk in and tell the greeter 'it's so good to be
home.' There is something tangibly different about the Fillmore, something
about the energy makes you feel like you walked into someone's church. A musician
the other day told me, 'it's like your favorite acoustic guitar like you can't
replicate that feeling or sound anywhere else.'"
This was no accident. Bill Graham was a successful entrepreneur, but he wasn't just interested in money. He believed in giving people a unique experience separate from just the music, and one that made people feel like they were at home. One example of this that's
still around today is the bucket of apples that sits at the top of the stairs. "In the mid sixties it was a big deal to feed people. The shows went all night a lot of time so meals were very cheap or free. And it wasn't just apples; in the beginning it was all different
kinds of food, but the apples kind of stuck as the symbol of that. But the apple also is a symbol close to Bill graham because in his early youth, he was a survivor of the Holocaust and then came to this country as part of an orphanage program. After the Holocaust when he was in an orphanage, it was adjacent to an apple field and the kids weren't fed very much and so they would hop over the fence and eat apples. It's kind of the history is kind
of a combination of those two things. So the apple just kind of stayed as our symbol."
Bill Graham once said "I was always looking for ways to make the place more Haimish." Haimish is a Yiddish word meaning friendly or homey in a foreign place, like a hotel room that you feel at ease in. This was Bill Graham's legacy which he was unfortunately not
able to see through to the fullest extent. "Over there where you see the
construction one, that's a horizontal; that's when we reopened after the
earthquake." The Loma Prieta earthquake that struck San Francisco in 1989 devastated the Fillmore and as a result, the venue had to close for five years while they were going through
renovations.
"During that period that the venue was closed, Bill Graham died in a helicopter crash. And so in honor of him, his staff got together and reopened the building."
This poster still hangs on the wall, as a tribute to Bill Graham's legacy being carried on forever.
