The Mobster Of Music Ends Up As “Toast On A Tower”
He and his mistress were electrocuted and welded to a power tower when his chopper exploded as it rammed into the utility structure.
Graham ruled the concert music scene as a monopolistic oligarch who would sabotage the insurance policies, contracts and staffing of anybody who dared to compete with him. His ‘strongman’: Nick, would tell competing promoters that he could have ‘their legs broken’ if they did not cancel their shows.
He would order musicians to never work with competing promoters and use his monopoly of live concerts to totally control the industry in California. He could get Mayor Willie Brown to cut off others.
Graham was a brash, self-centered, arrogant, entrepreneur who made himself indispensable to spreading San Francisco’s emerging hippie culture. The actor Peter Coyote famously described Graham as “a cross between Mother Teresa and Al Capone,” though most news articles tell little of the Al Capone side. Graham had his staff, especially Zhon Artman, threaten reporters and pay to have negative articles about him deleted. The musicians that he did concerts with promote him as a “genius”. His competitors say he was a ‘scumbag’.
Graham’s partner was Chet Helms until, at the San Francisco Longshoreman’s hall, Graham stole all of the cashbox money.
