Bill Graham escaped Nazi Germany alone on a train at age 10, and the experience of surviving the Holocaust drove him to create something monumental with his life. Born Wulf Wolodia Grajonca on January 8, 1931, in Berlin, he was one of 64 Jewish children evacuated from Germany to France in 1939 through a Red Cross program. His mother and sister were killed in the Holocaust. He spent years in French orphanages and foster homes before emigrating to New York in 1941, where he was adopted by a family in the Bronx and given the name Bill Graham. He served in the Korean War, earned a Bronze Star, and drifted through various jobs before moving to San Francisco in the early 1960s, where the counterculture was coalescing. Graham started producing concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1965 and immediately demonstrated a genius for combining artistic vision with ruthless business discipline. He transformed music venues from simple performance spaces into theatrical experiences, pioneering light shows, quality sound systems, and the idea that a concert should be an event, not just a gig. The Fillmore West in San Francisco and the Fillmore East in New York became temples of rock music. The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and virtually every major rock act of the 1960s and 1970s played his venues. He produced landmark concerts including the Last Waltz and the Human Rights Now! tour. He was feared and respected in equal measure, known for screaming matches with musicians and an intensity that reflected his survival instincts. He died in a helicopter crash on October 25, 1991, returning from a Huey Lewis and the News concert near Vallejo, California. He was 60.