On New Year's Eve 1978, the Grateful Dead took the stage at midnight and did not stop playing until dawn. When they finally finished -- nearly six hours later -- the crowd was served champagne and a hot buffet breakfast. The show was broadcast simultaneously on KSAN-FM and KQED television. Then Winterland closed forever. The building at Post and Steiner Streets, which had opened as New Dreamland Auditorium on June 29, 1928, had been a skating rink, a boxing venue, an opera house, and the home of the Ice Follies before Bill Graham turned it into the most important large rock venue in San Francisco. Today the site is an apartment building. But the recordings made within those walls -- Frampton Comes Alive, The Last Waltz, Live at Winterland -- remain some of the most celebrated live albums ever produced.
New Dreamland Auditorium cost $1 million to build in 1928 and opened as a skating rink that could convert into a 5,400-seat entertainment venue. The name changed to Winterland in the late 1930s. The building survived the Great Depression by hosting everything from the Shipstads and Johnson Ice Follies (starting in 1936) to opera, boxing, and tennis. In 1944, impresario Clifford C. Fischer staged a production of the Folies Bergere. The venue had been built on the site of Sid Grauman's National Theatre and the original Dreamland Rink, making the corner of Post and Steiner one of San Francisco's oldest continuously used entertainment locations. But the transformation that mattered most began on September 23, 1966, when Bill Graham booked a double bill of Jefferson Airplane and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The Fillmore Auditorium, two blocks away, held fewer people. Winterland had room.
The list of artists who performed at Winterland reads like the table of contents of a rock history textbook. The Grateful Dead made it their home base. Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin (who debuted "Whole Lotta Love" there), Cream, the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, David Bowie, Santana, and dozens more all played the room. Peter Frampton recorded portions of Frampton Comes Alive -- the fourth-best-selling live album of all time -- at Winterland. B.B. King and Albert King brought blues authenticity to audiences hungry for the real roots of the music they loved. Albert King's 1968 shows produced Live Wire/Blues Power and two additional albums released decades later. After Graham closed the Fillmore West in 1971, Winterland became his primary venue, hosting regular weekend shows throughout the 1970s.
On Thanksgiving Day 1976, The Band played their farewell concert at Winterland. Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and others joined them onstage. Martin Scorsese filmed it. The resulting documentary, The Last Waltz, became one of the most celebrated concert films ever made. Two years later, on January 14, 1978, the Sex Pistols played their final concert at Winterland -- Johnny Rotten closing with his famous question: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" The punk revolution and the classic rock era ended in the same room, 23 months apart. During Winterland's final month, shows ran nearly every night: the Ramones, Smokey Robinson, Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen all played before the Grateful Dead closed the venue on New Year's Eve.
Winterland was razed in 1985. Apartments now stand where Led Zeppelin premiered songs and the Grateful Dead played until sunrise. The building is gone, but its acoustic legacy is permanent and remarkably well-documented. Dozens of live albums and concert films were recorded there: Cream's Wheels of Fire (erroneously credited to the Fillmore on the original LP), Jefferson Airplane's Thirty Seconds Over Winterland, the Allman Brothers' Wipe the Windows, Jimi Hendrix's four-disc Winterland box set, and the Grateful Dead's seemingly endless catalog of Winterland recordings. The Closing of Winterland, the documentary of that final New Year's Eve show, preserves the moment when the last great rock venue of the 1960s generation went dark -- not with a whimper, but with six hours of Jerry Garcia and a champagne breakfast at dawn.
The Winterland site was at 37.79N, -122.43W, at the corner of Post and Steiner Streets in San Francisco's Western Addition. The venue was demolished in 1985 and replaced by apartments. The Fillmore Auditorium, still operating, is two blocks south on Geary Boulevard. Nearest airports: KSFO 11nm south, KOAK 9nm east.