Last Rites

By J.C.

FILLMORE

Directed by RICHARD T. HEFFRON

Since Woodstock, a frenzied, adoring documentary seems to have been made about every tour and concert in contemporary rock 'n' roll. For last year's Great Medicine Ball Caravan, a movie studio even subsidized a festival in order to film it. Not to be out done, Fillmore treats the closing performances at the Fillmore West as if they were the last rites in the Roman Colosseum before the barbarians came to town.

The Fillmore theaters in New York and San Francisco were rallying points all right, but still something less than the monuments of rock culture that they are portrayed as here. The man who ran them both, Bill Graham, was the counterculture's own Jekyll-and-Hyde, a tough former street kid who snarled at unruly flower children and treated rock musicians -- well, some rock musicians -- like royalty.

Graham is in fine form all through Fillmore, yelling into the telephone over matters of scheduling, billing and finance, and talking to the camera about his early life and ambitions. "I wanted to become a good character actor," he says, and Fillmore makes him more than that. Graham gets the chance to be a star, and he gives quite a performance, by turns nasty, cajoling and funny.

Graham is a lot more interesting than the musical talent on display, which is mostly mediocre. The Grate ful Dead and the New Riders of the Pur ple Sage, virtually interchangeable parts of the same group, dispense a couple of good tunes, but Santana and Boz Scaggs are disappointing compared with some of their recent recordings. As for the Elvin Bishop Group and Quicksilver Messenger Service, they sound like washouts from Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts.

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