My husband and I used to go to the Fillmore just to watch Graham in action. He was Everywhere: pounding nails into the stage, cajoling musicians, breaking up incipient fights, and verbally vanquishing anyone who tried to stop him from practicing his craft. He was almost an archetypal figure, the rugged-individualist self-made millionaire who started out as a penniless immigrant and created magic through his intelligence, courage and integrity. We wrote a letter of support to Rolling Stone at a time when he was being maligned by just about everyone, and got a very nice thank-you note from him, with a vague invitation to meet him, but we were too chicken to take him up on it, regretfully. I'm very sorry he died, but can't complain about the way he died: dramatically, with probably no more than a split second of suffering, while engaged in the work he loved. Though I didn't realize it until hearing the news the next day, I (and thousands of others) felt the exact moment of his death, because when his copter hit the tower, the lights in our house briefly dimmed - somehow a fitting goodbye.
--- Joan May
5/23/95
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