How Bill Graham and Winterland Productions Created the Bedrock of the Band T-Shirt Market

There’s few articles of clothing in the world as ubiquitous or symbolic as the band t-shirt. In Cesar Padilla’s book Ripped: t-shirts from the underground, iconic no wave artist Lydia Lunch says of band shirts, “Whether you bought one out of camaraderie, were given one after making out with the lead singer, or went home jacked up by the energy of the gig to make your own tatty design, you were expressing support for fellow members of a loose-knit community of wandering gypsy minstrels, who, like you, valued the music over its sale potential…”. Lunch here gets to the core of what wearing a band t-shirt has meant to many for decades now, beyond being simply a commercial collectible. Instead, it's an opportunity to cherish a memory, express your own taste and passion for an artist, and potentially connect more with the music and the community that surrounds it.

Even today, as omnipresent and commodified as band t-shirts, both new and old, have become, for those who still reach in their closet to pull out the memories of sweating in a mosh pit or hearing your favorite song live, band t-shirts represent much more than an aesthetic or a price tag, but a history of love. But where did this history begin? How did the band t-shirt become such a storied, replicated, and revered garment in the history of fashion? Various acts like Elvis, The Beatles, and The Monkees all tried their hand at t-shirts for their fans to some degree, but the story of the band t-shirt as we know it today begins with the hard-fought tale of Bill Graham. Born Wulf Grajonca to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1931, his mother was forced to send Wulf and his younger sister, Tolla, to France to be taken to the United States. Young Wulf would again be forced to part with Tolla before the journey overseas, as she came down with pneumonia. He would never see either again, with his mother dying on the way to Auschwitz concentration camp.

Even when landing in New York, life for Wulf was still extremely difficult. Immediately slotted into the foster system, Wulf faced abuse from his peers and fellow foster kids, being called a Nazi for his German-accented English and his Jewish name. This had a profound impact on an adolescent Wulf, and he worked hard to rid his voice of its Deutsch overtones, which corresponded with a name change to “Bill Graham”. After a decorated military stint in the 1950s and a failed attempt at an acting career, Graham hitched it out west to San Francisco to be closer to his sister Rita, and after attending a free concert, took up managing the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Using the building permit of businessman Charles Sullivan, Graham would hold a benefit for the Troupe in The Fillmore Auditorium that also featured at-the-time unknown musical acts Jefferson Airplane and The Fugs, which ended up being a massive success.

This success encouraged Graham to open Bill Graham Presents, his promotion company that ran itself out of The Fillmore after Graham acquired it following the murder of Sullivan. The Fillmore quickly became a bastion for alternative and experimental rock music, featuring legendary acts like The Grateful Dead, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Santana, and it quickly became the home for fans of countercultural music from all genres. This popularity pushed Graham to open the Winterland Ballroom for larger shows that The Fillmore couldn’t accommodate, with the Ballroom becoming an iconic venue in its own right. But it was here where the seed that would grow the business of band t-shirts would officially be planted.

After a Grateful Dead show at the Ballroom in 1974, the wife of drummer Bill Kreutzmann suggested to the manager of the Ballroom, Dell Furano, that the Winterland set up a t-shirt stand for fans after the concert. Furano brought the idea to Graham, and together, the two founded Winterland Productions, the world’s first business specifically geared towards creating concert t-shirts, all for the artists that helped make the Winterland such a mainstay in subcultural music. The business was a smash hit, and Winterland immediately created an accessible and tangible way fans could connect with the artists they love. These t-shirts even became a part of the very culture of these concerts, such as for the aforementioned Grateful Dead and their legions of Deadheads, who’ve made following the band and collecting the shirts a veritable cottage industry for the group.  Many of these Winterland designs have also become extremely coveted for fans across music, with the graphics constantly being replicated on shirts across modern retail outlets, and original Winterland t-shirts still going for hundreds to even thousands of dollars.

Winterland Productions would continue its dominance of the licensed graphic t-shirt industry well into the 90’s, having expanded into the retail market in the 80’s with their sublabel “Rock Express”, which sold T-shirts as well as a plethora of other licensed memorabilia. When the New York Times did a story on them in 1992, they reported Winterland was posting around $200 million dollars in revenue annually. However, the dominance would eventually come to an end by the turn of the millennium, with Winterland officially declaring bankruptcy in 2002, and after being bought out by Signatures Network and eventually being sold again to Live Nation, the label was officially retired in 2011. But Winterland’s legacy lives on stronger than ever nowadays on the likes of Grailed, eBay, and other secondhand vintage markets across the world, where shirts they made in the 20th century routinely fetch eye-popping triple and quadruple figure price tags, with their bold and nostalgia-infused graphics continue to captivate the child in every person’s mind, young and old, continuing to make them an irresistible draw to this day.

However, the legacy of Winterland Productions that was set forth by Graham and Furano with the concert t-shirt, that which has expanded well beyond Winterland into the music industry as a whole and continues to be one of the most accessible ways for fans to make a memory tangible when they go see their favorite artist perform. And even after the echoes of the last encore have long since left your ears, you’ll still have your t-shirt to take you back to those sweet sounds once more.

-Ryan Lynch