East Village, Manhattan St. Marks Place. On June 27, 1967, the Electric Circus opened in the same space with a benefit for the Children's Recreation Foundation whose chairman was Bobby Kennedy. The Grateful Dead, The Chambers Brothers, Sly and the Family Stone, and the Allman Brothers Band were among the many rock bands that performed there before it closed in 1971. On March 8, 1968, Bill Graham opened the Fillmore East in what had been a Yiddish Theatre on Second Avenue at East 6th Street in the Yiddish Theater District. The venue quickly became known as "The Church of Rock and Roll", with
At Fillmore East doing the [studio] records, and I think, consequently, our next album will be ... a live recording, to get some of that natural fire on it." "We were not intentionally trying to buck the system, but keeping each song down to 3:14 just didn't work for us," remembered Gregg Allman. "And we realized that the audience was a big part of what we did, which couldn't be duplicated in a studio. A lightbulb finally went off; we needed to make a live album." "At Fillmore East" was recorded over two nights — March 12 and 13, 1971 — for which