Jimi, Janis, Jerry - Is The Fillmore Next? Landmark New York Rock Concert Hall Being Torn Down

Bob Herman wants to rock the Fillmore. Alan Bell wants to wreck it. And only one of these children of the ‘60s will get his way.

The Fillmore East, rock impresario Bill Graham’s legendary concert hall in the East Village where such acts as The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead played, now sits in disrepair on Second Avenue.

Property owner Bell, 43, envisions the long-empty space as an apartment house. Herman, 39, prefers something of a flashback: the Fillmore as a music and video production studio.

“I consider it the Holy Grail of contemporary music,” said Herman, a one-man band who won’t let the Fillmore die quietly. “We saved the Apollo. We saved Carnegie Hall. These are treasures. We don’t have many left.”

The Fillmore acquired its aura between 1968 and 1971, when its stage lured the best artists of a generation.

Classic live albums were recorded there by the Allman Brothers, Derek and the Dominos, Jimi Hendrix and Humble Pie, all done before a demanding Fillmore audience that paid $5.50 for the best of its 2,600 seats.

Unless Herman can do something amazing very soon, the Fillmore will go the way of Mott the Hoople and Vanilla Fudge - just two of the now-defunct bands that headlined there. Interior demolition began Tuesday; the whole building should be down by Sept. 1, Bell said.

“Bob’s chances are really slim now,” Bell said Thursday, one day after the passing of another rock icon, the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. “At some point, we can’t afford to stop. There’s too much money at stake.”

Herman chased potential Fillmore benefactors for the last 2-1/2 years. The South Orange, N.J., resident, who quit his video industry job last year to go full-time on the Fillmore, asked such figures as David Geffen and Martin Scorsese about investing $12 million to $15 million.

None opened their wallets, said the denim-clad Herman, a master of musical minutiae who can recite old Fillmore bills from memory. (Bell remembers seeing Janis Joplin and John Mayall at the venue.)

Danny Fields, a New York music scene veteran who now works for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said he tried to match Herman and the Fillmore with a deep-pocketed savior.

“It came down to money,” Fields said. “Everyone was distressed, and said it was a wonderful cause, but nobody wanted to write a check.”

Should Herman’s quixotic quest fail, the hall’s legacy will be a simple curbside sign reading, “Fillmore East, 105 Second Avenue.”

“It looks like a ‘No Parking’ sign,” grumbled Herman, whose efforts are not entirely altruistic. He’d like a spot as director of operations if the Fillmore reopens as a production facility for music, video and film companies.

The Fillmore has seen better days (and nights). While its West Coast sister stage reopened last year, the Fillmore East site has been empty since 1987. Its last tenant was a gay dance club, The Saint.

Long gone is the marquee that announced unprecedented triple bills (Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Steve Miller Blues Band and the Miles Davis Quintet played on March 6, 1970).

The front doors are pasted over with posters for concerts elsewhere by a generation of post-Fillmore musicians: Terence Trent D’Arby, the Robert Cray Band. The marble front holds some illegible graffiti and a soot-covered light fixture.

A hand-scrawled farewell was taped to the front door: “Fillmore East to be demolished tomorrow morning. Rest in pieces.” “Goodbye, old friend,” read another message, written on a business card.

On Tuesday, a well-dressed man hopped out of a cab and inquired about getting a souvenir Fillmore brick. Herman informed the man that his visit was premature.