On This Day in Art Rock History

The Beard

Sundays at the Fillmore Auditorium usually meant music. On July 24, 1966, it meant a play — and, as it turned out, a play the San Francisco police did not intend to let happen twice. The event was a single performance of "The Beard," Michael McClure's two-character piece that puts Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid in a blue-lit eternity and lets them circle, taunt, and finally consume each other. Bill Graham presented…