Rock promoter Bill Graham turned the concert hall, the Fillmore, into a legendary site for San Francisco, CA rock and one of the key meeting places for the counterculture that proliferated in the late 1960s in the Bay area. Graham started out as manager for the avant-gardist San Francisco Mime Troupe; when the troupe got into legal trouble for performing its risqué art publicly he organized a fundraiser at the Fillmore with the Jefferson Airplane and The Fugs. Graham took over the hall and became renowned for promoting eclectic combinations of artists in a night’s bill and introducing audiences to performers outside the mainstream. Graham died in a helicopter accident in 1991; the Fillmore continues today under separate management.