Hidden hoard of live rock to be released
John Harlow, Los Angeles
THE world’s largest independent rock and pop music archive, featuring stars from Jimi Hendrix to Elvis Costello and from Janis Joplin to Madonna, is to be opened for the first time.
Up to 100,000 songs recorded and filmed between 1966 and 1991 by Bill Graham, the American concert promoter, languished in an underground basement in San Francisco for more than 10 years after his death.
Then it was bought by Bill Sagan, a health company executive turned rock entrepreneur, who has now launched negotiations aimed at securing the stars’ permission to release their music. This weekend he was flying to London for talks with lawyers representing British rockers such as Led Zeppelin and the Who.
The archive contains unseen footage of a legendary performance by the Who in 1973, when drummer Keith Moon collapsed and a student was picked from the audience to finish the show, and the final concert in 1978 by the Sex Pistols.
There are unknown performances by Led Zeppelin such as a version of Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor, which they later rewrote as the Lemon Song, and a tousle-headed Elton John singing his 1970 ballad Your Song.
There are also moments luminaries may prefer to forget, such as Joe Cocker vomiting on stage and Madonna hitting herself in the face with her chunky necklaces. All were pitilessly captured by Graham’s photographers or, in later years, four cameramen.
Graham, born Wolfgang Grajonca in Nazi Berlin, was described by Joplin as the first concert promoter to respect the artists and give them what they wanted, both on and off stage.
As a result, normally wary performers such as Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan signed contracts that allowed him to record their concerts at venues he managed in New York and California.
Graham hoarded everything, from ticket stubs and backstage passes to psychedelic Jefferson Airplane posters and surplus Duran Duran T-shirts.
When Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991, he had packed an air-conditioned cellar with 30m artefacts. Three years ago his corporate heirs sold it for £2.9m to Sagan, a Led Zeppelin fan from Minnesota, who joked that he had only snapped it up for the garish Zeppelin tour ties. He beat Paul Allen, the Microsoft billionaire, to the deal.
Now, having spent months going through enough boxes to fill 25 40ft-long lorries when he moved the archive to a more secure warehouse, Sagan estimates his trove could be worth more than £50m.
Sagan, 56, has already started recouping his investment by selling off posters and tickets through an internet site called Wolfgang’s Vault. But he believes the 7,000-plus concerts captured on audio tape and film are his prize asset.
In February Sagan started gauging rock fans’ reactions by broadcasting live recordings by Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen and Chuck Berry over his internet radio station. He was inundated with e-mails asking for more.
Some of the shows, such as Aretha Franklin at the Fillmore West in 1971, have been officially released, albeit in truncated form, and others are to be found on bootlegs. But most of the music has been heard only by those who were lucky enough to be there at the time.
Jimmy Page, of Led Zeppelin, who spent years begging for scraps from bootleggers so that he could compile a history of the band in 2003, is keen to dive into the archive.
“Bill recorded a San Francisco show that Jimmy remembers as momentous: which Zep fan would not want to hear that?” said an Atlantic Records source last week.
Source:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2089-2271915%2C00.htmlWow. Just...wow.
