History

The room began as a swing-era dance palace — later the Carousel Ballroom — occupying the upstairs floor of a corner building at Market Street and South Van Ness (entrance 10 South Van Ness; street-level address 1545 Market). In early 1968 it had a brief, idealistic second life: a collective formed by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother and the Holding Company leased and ran it as a musician-controlled hall. The venture struggled financially and folded within months. Bill Graham — contending with the small capacity of the original Fillmore Auditorium — took the lease over and reopened the room on July 5, 1968, renaming it Fillmore West to mirror his recently opened Fillmore East in New York. It ran almost exactly three years, closing July 4, 1971, with a now-legendary final week commemorated in the 1972 documentary film Fillmore and the three-LP album Fillmore: The Last Days.

Its Place in the Scene

Fillmore West mattered as the bigger, more durable successor to Graham's original Fillmore Auditorium — a roughly 3,000-capacity room that became the flagship West Coast counterpart to Fillmore East and a fixture of the San Francisco scene from 1968 to 1971. It anchored the most-collected era of the numbered Bill Graham poster series, especially the work of David Singer. Its July 4, 1971 closing — capped by Santana, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Tower of Power — is widely read as a symbolic end of the San Francisco ballroom era.

The Facts

Shows at this Venue