Location | 2000 Post Street at Steiner Street, San Francisco, California |
---|---|
Coordinates | 37°47′06″N122°26′06″W / 37.785036111111°N 122.43488888889°W |
Owner | Bill Graham (1971–1978) |
Capacity | 5,400 (1971–1978) |
Construction | |
Opened | June 29th, 1928 |
Renovated | 1971 (Converted exclusively to music venue) |
Closed | December 31st, 1978 |
Demolished | late 1985 [1] |
Winterland Ballroom (more commonly known as Winterland Arena or simply Winterland) was an ice skating rink and music venue in San Francisco, California, United States. The arena was located at the corner of Post Street and Steiner Street. It was converted for exclusive use as a music venue in 1971 by concert promoter Bill Graham and became a popular performance location for many rock acts. Graham later formed a merchandising company called Winterland Productions, which sold concert shirts, memorabilia, and official sports team merchandise.
The venue was opened on June 29, 1928, as the New Dreamland Auditorium. [2] It served as an ice skating rink that could be converted into a seated entertainment venue. Sometime in the late 1930s the building's name was changed to Winterland, and it successfully operated through the Great Depression. It was built in 1928 for $1 million (equivalent to $17.7 million in 2023). [3] The New Dreamland was built on the site of the Dreamland Rink (midway on the west side of Steiner between Post and Sutter) and Sid Grauman's National Theatre (on the corner of Post and Steiner). [4]
In 1936, Winterland began hosting the Shipstads and Johnson Ice Follies. [5] Impresario Clifford C. Fischer staged an authorized production of the Folies Bergère, the Folies Bergère of 1944, at the Winterland Ballroom in November 1944. [6] The Ballroom hosted opera, boxing and tennis matches. [7]
Starting on September 23, 1966, with a double bill of Jefferson Airplane and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Bill Graham began to occasionally rent the venue, which had an audience capacity of 5,400, for larger concerts that his nearby Fillmore Auditorium could not properly accommodate. After closing the Fillmore West in 1971, he began to hold regular weekend shows at Winterland.
Various popular rock acts played there, including such bands and musicians as Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, the J. Geils Band, the Who, Black Sabbath, James Gang, Kansas, Mahogany Rush, Quicksilver Messenger Service, UFO, REO Speedwagon, Queen, Slade, Boston, Cream, Yes, Fleetwood Mac, Kiss, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Styx, Van Morrison, the Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead, the Band, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Neil Young, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Ten Years After, Wishbone Ash, Rush, Electric Light Orchestra, David Bowie, Genesis, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Sons of Champlin, Sex Pistols, Traffic, Golden Earring, Grand Funk Railroad, Humble Pie, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Robin Trower, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Sha Na Na, Loggins and Messina, Lee Michaels, Heart, Journey, Deep Purple, J.J. Cale, Spirit, the Chambers Brothers, Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Foghat, Mountain, B.B. King, Montrose, George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers and Elvis Costello. Led Zeppelin first performed their song "Whole Lotta Love" there.
The Tubes headlined New Year's Eve 1975 with Flo and Eddie.
Many of the best-known rock acts from the 1960s and 1970s played at Winterland or played two blocks away across Geary Boulevard at the original Fillmore Auditorium. Peter Frampton recorded parts of the fourth-best-selling live album ever, Frampton Comes Alive! , at Winterland. The Grateful Dead made Winterland their home base, and The Band played their last show there on Thanksgiving Day 1976. That concert, featuring numerous guest performers including Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and many others, was filmed by Martin Scorsese and released in theaters and as a soundtrack under the name The Last Waltz . Winterland also hosted the Sex Pistols' final show, on January 14, 1978. [8]
During Winterland's final month of existence, shows were booked nearly every night. Acts included the Sex Pistols, The Tubes, [9] Ramones,Smokey Robinson, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and on December 15–16, 1978, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. Springsteen's December 15 show was broadcast on local radio station KSAN-FM.
Winterland closed on New Year's Eve 1978 / New Year's Day 1979 with a concert by the Grateful Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and The Blues Brothers. The show lasted for over eight hours, with the Grateful Dead's performance—documented on DVD and CD as The Closing of Winterland —lasting nearly six hours, beginning at midnight with Bill Graham's favorite Dead tune, Sugar Magnolia. After the show, the crowd was treated to a hot, buffet-style champagne breakfast. The final show was simulcast live on radio station KSAN-FM and the local PBS TV station KQED. [10]
Winterland was eventually razed in 1985 and replaced by apartments. [11]
A number of films and recordings were made in whole or in part at the Winterland Arena. [12]
The Fillmore is a historic music venue in San Francisco, California.
The Folies Bergère is a cabaret music hall in Paris, France. Located at 32 Rue Richer in the 9th Arrondissement, the Folies Bergère was built as an opera house by the architect Plumeret. It opened on 2 May 1869 as the Folies Trévise, with light entertainment including operettas, comic opera, popular songs, and gymnastics. It became the Folies Bergère on 13 September 1872, named after nearby Rue Bergère. The house was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890s' Belle Époque through the 1920s.
Big Brother and the Holding Company are an American rock band that was formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After some initial personnel changes, the band became well known with the lineup of vocalist Janis Joplin, guitarists Sam Andrew and James Gurley, bassist Peter Albin, and drummer Dave Getz. Their second album Cheap Thrills, released in 1968, is considered one of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco; it reached number one on the Billboard charts, and was ranked number 338 in Rolling Stone's the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album is also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Bill Graham was a German-born American impresario and rock concert promoter.
The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street on the Lower East Side section of Manhattan, now called the East Village, in New York City. The venue was open from March 8, 1968, to June 27, 1971, and featured some of the biggest acts in rock music of that time. The Fillmore East was a companion to Graham's Fillmore Auditorium, and its successor, the Fillmore West, in San Francisco.
The Fillmore West was a historic rock and roll music venue in San Francisco, California, US which became famous under the direction of concert promoter Bill Graham from 1968 to 1971. Named after The Fillmore at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it stood at the southwest corner of Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue in the Civic Center district. In June 2018, the top two floors of the building reopened as SVN West, a new concert and corporate event venue.
"Dark Star" is a song released as a single by the Grateful Dead on Warner Bros. Records in 1968. It was written by lyricist Robert Hunter and composed by lead guitarist Jerry Garcia; however, compositional credit is sometimes extended to include Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Bob Weir. "Dark Star" was an early Grateful Dead classic, which the group often used as a vehicle for extended jam sessions during live performances. One such performance, lasting 23 minutes, was included on the Dead's breakthrough 1969 album Live/Dead and is the best-known version of the song. "Dark Star" is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list and was ranked at number 57 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.
The Roseland Ballroom was a multipurpose hall, in a converted ice skating rink, with a colorful ballroom dancing pedigree, in New York City's theater district, on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.
So Many Roads (1965–1995) is a five-disc box set by the Grateful Dead. Primarily consisting of concert recordings from different periods of the band's history, it also contains several songs recorded in the studio. All but one of the forty-two tracks were previously unreleased. The album was released on November 7, 1999. It was certified a gold record by the RIAA on April 12, 2000.
The Golden Road (1965–1973) is a twelve-CD box set of the Grateful Dead's studio and live albums released during their time with Warner Bros. Records, from 1965 to 1973. After 1973, the band went on to create its own label, Grateful Dead Records. Also included in the box set is a two-disc bonus album, Birth of the Dead, containing very early recordings of the band.
The Avalon Ballroom was a music venue in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco, California, at 1244 Sutter Street. The space is known as the location of many concerts of the counterculture movement, from around 1966 to 1969. It also had a reopening 34 years later, from 2003 to 2005.
The Closing of Winterland is a four-CD live album by the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert performed on December 31, 1978. The concert was also released as a two-disc DVD. The title derives from the fact that it was the last concert in San Francisco's Winterland Arena, which was shut down shortly thereafter. The Dead celebrated the closing as an approximately five-hour-long party and invited some guests including guitarist John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service and Ken Kesey as well as actor Dan Aykroyd who provided the midnight countdown. It was certified Double Platinum by the RIAA on December 15, 2003 under the category of longform video, selling 200,000 units. The New Riders of the Purple Sage and Blues Brothers opened the show.
Liquid light shows are a form of light art that surfaced in the early 1960s as accompaniment to electronic music and avant-garde theatre performances. They were later adapted for performances of rock or psychedelic music.
Road Trips Volume 2 Number 2 is a two-CD live album by the American rock band the Grateful Dead. The sixth in their "Road Trips" series of albums, it was the first to contain a complete concert—the February 14, 1968, show at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco, California. Bonus material on Disc 1, as well as the bonus disc offered to early purchasers, comes from the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service "Tour of the Great Pacific Northwest", immediately preceding the Carousel Ballroom show. The album was released on March 21, 2009.
Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 12/31/77 is an album by the country rock band the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It was recorded live on December 31, 1977, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, California. It was released on April 16, 2009. It was the sixth complete New Riders concert that was recorded in the 1970s and released in the 2000s as an album on the Kufala Recordings label.
Winterland is a posthumous live box set by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released on September 13, 2011, by Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings, the four-disc collection documents the band's six performances at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, California between October 10 and 12, 1968. A single disc "highlights" edition was released the same day.
All the Years Combine: The DVD Collection is a box set of videos by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains 14 DVDs, comprising 12 previously released titles plus bonus material. It also includes a 40-page booklet of liner notes, essays, and photos. It was released by Shout! Factory on April 17, 2012.
Winterland: May 30th 1971 is an album by the rock group the Grateful Dead. As the name suggests, it was recorded live at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, California on May 30, 1971. The album includes most of the second set from that concert, as well as the encore. It was produced only as a two-disc vinyl LP, in a limited edition of 7,500 copies, and was released on November 23, 2012, in conjunction with Record Store Day.
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Compilation of Published Sources