Amalie R. Rothschild: Rock and Roll and More

Jewhoo’s editor recently had the pleasure of interviewing Amalie R. Rothschild. Ms. Rothschild is a prize-winning photographer and filmmaker. Her new book is entitled “Live At the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir”. Ms. Rothschild's new book has garnered excellent reviews in major newspapers and magazines. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the book and the photographs brought back many memories of the performers who appeared at Bill Graham’s famous rock palace. This is a beautiful “coffee table” type book, filled with photos, many of which are in better than  psychedelic color. Most of the photos are of performers who appeared at the Fillmore East. But there are “bonus” pictures of other concerts Ms. Rothschild covered, including pictures of Bob Dylan at the Isle of Wight, Jimi Hendrix at the Café Au Go Go, and quite a number of photos from the (original) Woodstock rock festival. There is even a chart of every performer who played the Fillmore East. Therefore, if you are a dinosaur, you can check and see if you really saw “so and so” at the Fillmore, or you just got some of that bad brown acid that was going around.

The Fillmore East was, of course, Bill Graham’s flagship rock palace on the East Coast. It opened in 1968 and closed in 1971. Bill Graham was a German Jewish refugee who barely escaped to China and then immigrated to America. His sister died during this arduous journey. His parents died in the concentration camps. Bill settled in San Francisco and in the mid-60’s became a rock promoter. He took over the old Fillmore Auditorium and then the Carousel Ballroom (re-named the Fillmore West) and made them the premier showcase of the psychedelic San Francisco Sound. The Grateful Dead and The Jefferson Airplane were the most famous of the many acts who were featured at the San Francisco-based Fillmore.

Graham, as the book states, was a success because he was both a good businessman and someone who really cared about his audience and the performers. He wanted a rock show to be treated with the respect of an opera. He lent the auditoriums for benefit concerts for many worthy causes. Graham, like any businessman, had to turn a profit to stay in business. But unlike so many of his ‘60’s peers, he managed to do the seemingly impossible: he gave his audiences great shows, respected and paid his performers, made a profit, and gave something back to the world.

Ms. Rothschild told me that she did not know Mr. Graham well. However, he gave a young Jewish woman from Baltimore a unique privilege--for three years she was given unrestricted access to Fillmore East performers and every area of the theater. The quality of the photos of in this book reflects that access and Ms. Rothschild’s talent. 

Talent runs in Ms. Rothschild’s family. Her mother is Amalie (no “r”) Rothschild, a talented painter and sculptor who resides in Baltimore. (Unfortunately, an on-line exhibition of the senior Ms. Rothschild’s work has recently disappeared from the web. Her biography is online, and she and her daughter are represented by the Gomez Gallery in Baltimore.)

Amalie R. Rothschild’s father, Randolph, is an attorney. He is also a jazz pianist and is associated with Chamber Music Society of Baltimore, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Baltimore Symphony. Ms. Rothschild tells me that she is not one of the famous Rothschilds. However, her father’s family came from America (about 100 years ago) from the same German city (Frankfurt Am Main) which “the Rothschilds” sprang from. Her mother’s family also traces their roots back to Germany.

Ms. Rothschild and I had a lively discussion about her hometown. Baltimore is fairly hip today, but that was not true in the early ‘60’s when Amalie was growing up. I asked her if the many Barry Levinson films set in Baltimore during the early ‘60’s were accurate. She said they were--- and she added that if men’s lives were constrained, as depicted in these films, women’s lives were even more confined. We agreed that talented young woman might well strike out for New York as soon as she could. Ms. Rothschild went to NYU film school, and it was from NYU that she was recruited for the staff of the new Fillmore East. In addition to taking photographs, Ms. Rothschild joined the staff of the famous Joshua Light Show (Joshua White, Amalie tells me, was Jewish). The Joshua Light show was the house light show at the Fillmore. If you want to know how those groovy effects were created in the pre-computer age, you need to pick up the book.

Bill Graham closed the Fillmores in 1971. Rock festivals and such had driven up the price of rock performers so high that the economics of a small auditoriums did not make sense any more. (“The sacred store closed” and the “music died” to quote “American Pie”). Graham remained a top rock impresario, using other venues, until his accidental death in 1991.

After the Fillmore closed, Ms. Rothschild got a graduate degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and turned more of her attention to film. In 1974, Ms. Rothschild made a biographical family film, “Nana, Mom, and Me”. It depicts the relationship, sometimes difficult, between three generations of women. This genre is familiar today, but Ms. Rothschild’s film was one of the first and remains among the best of its type. “Nana, Mom, and Me” and Ms. Rothschild’s other films are available online through New Day Films. The web site also gives a detailed description of her other films and is well worth a look.

Ms. Rothschild currently divides her professional work between film and still photographs. Her work has been featured in the Village Voice, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She divides her time between Rome and New York and we had a lively discussion about the astonishing level of achievement of the relatively small Italian Jewish community (she taught me that correct pronunciation of “Primo Levi”). 

Amalie R. Rothschild’s Fillmore photographs and more are currently on exhibit at the Soho Triad Fine Arts, (April 7-May 21, 2000) at 107 Grand Street in Manhattan, btw. Mercer and Broadway. Tel (212) 965-9500