When Miles Davis opened for Neil Young
The way Bill Graham ran the Fillmore East was unique in the late 1960s rock scene. With a dedicated in-house lighting team and some of the most important connections in music, Graham was able to bend the trends of the psychedelic rock scene to his will. That meant that he was able to pair up some of the most diverse artists of the day, creating eclectic lineups that were mini-festivals unto themselves. That’s how Miles Davis wound up opening for Neil Young.
On March 6th and 7th, 1970, Graham unleashed one of the most unique bills in the history of music. Headlining would be Neil Young, the erstwhile former Buffalo Springfield member who was about to become a global megastar when Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s Déjà Vu would be released less than a week after his appearance at the Fillmore East. Joining Young was the first lineup of his longtime backing group Crazy Horse, featuring the rhythm section of Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina, plus guitarist/singer Danny Whitten.
Also on the bill for those shows was the Steve Miller Band. A full decade before they would become pop-rock giants, the Steve Miller Band were a psychedelic blues outfit whose jamming style matched the sounds of the day. But Graham decided that the lineup wasn’t complete, so he pulled off a bizarre turn – inviting jazz great Miles Davis and his Quintet to open the shows.
Graham’s procedure for shows was unique in that all acts played twice in one night – one as an early show and one as a late show. Davis was going to be the warm-up act for both early and late shows, but the trumpeter was none too pleased with having to open for younger, less experienced rock musicians.
“Steve Miller didn’t have his shit going for him,” Davis recalled in his autobiography. “So I’m pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out. So I would come late, and he would have to go on first, and then when we got there, we smoked the motherfucking place, and everybody dug it.”
Indeed, Davis did manage to finagle getting to play in between Miller and Young. Graham loved the mix between jazz and rock so much that he pulled off a similar stunt at his San Francisco home base, the Fillmore West, a month later. Across a few days in April of 1970, you could have seen Davis play on the same stage as the Grateful Dead, whose audience was probably more sympathetic to the far-out zones that Davis reached in his own music.
Check out the audio from Miles Davis’ performance at the Fillmore East in 1970 down below.
