Loading summary
Transcript82 lines
- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly.
- [00:30]
Ira Kaplan
Foreign.
- [00:35]
Rich Mahan
The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Welcome back to the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. Ladies and gents, in this episode we are back on track with our track by track exploration of American Beauty as we dive into track three on side one. Sugar Magnolia. That's a lot of tracks. Our special guest for this episode is none other than the man himself, Mr. Bob Weir. If this is your first time joining us, welcome. We invite you to check out the 10 episodes from our first season which explore the eight songs on Working Man's Dead and there's two bonus episodes that we know you're going to love. Also, both Working Man's Dead and American Beauty are celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year and we're happy you're here for the party. You can always get the latest episodes and link to your favorite podcast listening platforms@dead.net deadcast our website also has bonus materials for each episode, including links to full audio clips or videos we weren't able to dive fully into in the podcast. Please help us by subscribing hitting that like button and if you dug it, leave us a review. It helps more than you can imagine. Thank you very, very much. Well, it is the 50th anniversary of American Beauty and the Grateful Dead have prepared a 3 CD set reissue of this classic album, which includes a pristine remastering of the album's 10 tracks, as well as an unreleased live show from February 18, 1971 at the Capitol Theater. If you liked the 50th anniversary set we released for Working Man's Dead, you'll be sure to love the American Beauty version as well, so check it out@dead.net Also, here's something new that's really cool. Have you checked out the new batch of Angel Share American Beauty audio yet? So not only are the full band demos for American Beauty out, which came out a couple of weeks ago, but all the studio outtakes are out now from the American Beauty sessions. Listen to your favorite songs from this album as they came into focus during the 1970s sessions at Wally Hyder Recording. Very cool Fly on the Wall action right there. We've got a big episode for you today, folks. Sugar Magnolia is Bob Weir's debut as a songwriting force in the Grateful Dead. Many great Weir helmed compositions followed Sugar Mag, but there's no arguing that this one is one of the band's most beloved songs and is well known by a wide variety of music fans. Plenty of surprises for you in this episode, so let's just dive in with our friend Jesse Giorno.
- [03:29]
Narrator / Host
For the third song on American Beauty, the Grateful Dead unveiled more surprises. It was a new direction for the Dead, recalled lyricist Robert Hunter. Sugar Magnolia, Sunshine, Daydream reaffirmed the important business of just getting stupid and being in love. It also introduced the world to a new songwriter.
- [03:46]
Bob Weir
Sweet Blossom Come on under the willow we can have high time if you look back we can discover the wonders of nature Growing in the rushes down by the riverside she's got everything we like for she's got everything I need Takes the wheel when I'm seeing double Plays my ticket when I speak that's.
- [04:16]
Narrator / Host
Bob Weir, of course. Sugar Magnolia would become perhaps his signature song. Sounding a good bit different to most Deadheads as the years went on, it's possible that Sugar Magnolia has had the longest year in, year out journey of any song on American Beauty, or maybe even the Dead's whole songbook of originals. It's ongoing. Here it is, nearly 50 years after its debut, recorded March 6, 2020 in Knoxville with the Wolf Brothers. One perhaps surprising fan of the song is Stephen Malkmus of Pavement, whose new solo album, Traditional Techniques, is pretty head friendly. He'll be back on the Dead cast soon.
- [05:04]
Jesse Jarno
I love Sugar Magnolia for primarily just to sing Sugar Magnolia, like when it comes is like one of these moments for me as a songwriter where I'm just like, it brings me joy, you know, just go, Sugar Magnolia. Sugar Magnolia is basically 1984 Charlottesville. Like that's pretty much it, you know, like that encapsulates that era of Grateful Dead fans for me. Sort of, you know, it's like everybody's welcome. It's good times. Similar to like she Got Bells on a Vanderbins on the shoes, like that sort of style of the band, which is like joyous and 60ish hippie ish.
- [05:48]
Narrator / Host
By 1970, Bob Weir's voice was familiar to Dead fans. He sang a Pair of songs in their 1967 debut, including Beat It on down the line on 1968's Anthem of the Sun. He had a pair of writing credits. He sang the middle section of that's it for the other one, which would become another signature, not to put too fine a point on it, that was more like a groove with a turnaround in words rather than a piece of honed songcraft. He was also the sole author of Bourne Cross Eyed. It's as psychedelic as anything the Dead or anybody kinda ever did. Almost what record collectors now call sunshine pop. Seriously underrated, pretty fun. Probably wouldn't fly at an open mic night, though. So in 1970, when Weir arrived as a songwriter with Sugar Magnolia, it still felt like there was little precedent. So where did it come from? To answer that question, we are absolutely thrilled to welcome to the Dead cast on rhythm guitar and vocals, Mr. Bob Weir.
- [07:31]
Bob Weir
I was listening to a bunch of Doug Kershaw at the time. Cajun fiddle music, that kind of thing. Oh, you know, I always listen to a bunch of George Jones for that matter. I don't know that either of those elements is readily apparent in what came out. And also I was listening to a bunch of Delaney and Bonnie. I think it was sort of a mix of all those things and just a little love song to a girlfriend of mine.
- [07:58]
Narrator / Host
I can totally hear the Cajun part. Listen to this fiddle break from Rusty and Doug Kershaw's Louisiana man from 1960. And now listen again to the way Weir phrases his guitar part in Sugar Magnolia.
- [08:34]
Bob Weir
Sliding into the cord and all that kind of stuff.
- [08:37]
Narrator / Host
Another starting point was Robert Hunter as the band's in house lyricist and Jerry Garcia's housemaid in Larkspur. Robert Hunter had provided all the lyrics for Working Man's Dead and Oxumaxoa and all the original songs included on Live Dead. Often when he wrote words, he wrote his own music too. Here's what Sugar Magnolia sounded like in its earliest draft. This is Robert Hunter playing it how he remembered it in 1978 on Long Island's Wlir.
- [09:18]
Bob Weir
Magnolia. You can't better beware.
- [09:21]
Robert Hunter
You can't go casting notions with a hook in the air.
- [09:25]
Narrator / Host
That's what Sugar Magnolia sounded like when Robert Hunter passed it along to Bob Weir along with a bundle of lyrics for what would become their first collaboration. If you point yourself over to the Sugar Magnolia page on alexallens whitegum.com, you can read these and some of the other early verses for Sugar Magnolia, all of which would be pretty far from the final version, sung on American Beauty and in concert ever after, they give the song a very different bent than what it would become. Here's one of those. Sugar Magnolia Recall what I said. You can't indulge your notion if you ain't got no bread. There are a bunch of other verses like that, all pretty far from the innocent song of love that it became, besides the indelible title phrase. So how did it become, you know, Sugar Magnolia?
- [10:09]
Robert Hunter
He just worked to death on it. And Weir's a hard taskmaster. He wants everything to be just the way he wants it. So we went around and around and around about it. Then he'd go off and work on it some more, and then he'd bring it back and demand more lyrics or better lyrics.
- [10:23]
Bob Weir
He wasn't good with me changing stuff that he wrote, and I was real picky. You know, somebody said something better than I could say it then, or, you know, what seemed to me better than I could say it then. I was good with it, but if I had what I felt like was a better way of saying something, then I would say it. And Hunter wasn't good with that. And so we, you know, we were sort of at loggerheads there a little bit. I enjoyed working with him. He was brilliant guy, but, you know, I have my notions about how things roll off the tongue, you know, when I was a kid, I spent my summer in bunk houses with old cowpokes who were storytellers. They'd grown up before the era of radio, and so their notion of how to spend an evening was storytelling. I wasn't carrying that around like it was a big deal or anything like that, but I have a feeling that that was really influencing how I like for things to, like I say, roll off the tongue. And so if Hunter didn't provide something that was altogether spectacular, wonderful for me, then I'd go ahead and hammer away at it myself. The drift of the song. The overall drift of the song, we more or less pretty much clued together.
- [11:46]
Narrator / Host
The song first appears on Dead tapes in early June 1970, the same month that Working Man's Dead made it into stores. These embryonic versions of Sugar Magnolia bear only a passing resemblance to even the one that made it onto the album. Shakedown Stream and Tales from the Golden Road. Co host Gary Lambert, who saw an early Sugar Magnolia at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester.
- [12:06]
Gary Lambert
I heard what turned out to be, if all was documented correctly, the second live Sugar Magnolia. The first one had been at Fillmore west in early June of 70. The second was folded into the middle of a dark star that also contained the then very new addicts of my life. And Sugar Magnolia was super embryonic at that point. They only had the first chorus and the She's Got Everything Delightful bridge. And none of the verses like Sweet Blossom, Come on under the Willow or any of those. No modulation to Be and the Sunshine Daydream coda or anything like that. Just the very beginnings of the song form. And they sang it through twice. The first verse repeated and then the bridge, and then it meandered back into Darkstar, and it still sort of caught my ear. I said, well, that's an intriguing little thing. It was rhythmically very different from the way it turned out. It sort of hopped more than loped. I thought, well, that could go someplace that needs some work.
- [13:13]
Narrator / Host
You can track down those early versions on dead tapes from June 7 and June 24, 1970, at the Fillmore west and the Capitol Theater, respectively. It's only barely a song at that point. In Robert Hunter's lyric collection A Box of Rain, he makes clear that the final lyrics were a collaboration, even going so far as to delineate who wrote which parts.
- [13:35]
Bob Weir
I haven't seen that particular book, but I'm not entirely sure that they made his stuff either. My verses. But nonetheless, you know, that's how it.
- [13:44]
Narrator / Host
Goes in the song. As Gary Lambert first heard it at the Capitol, the first verse about sugar magnolia blossoms bloomin heads all empty and I don't care is Hunter's. But she's got everything delightful. That's weird. In early August 1970, the band recorded the session of demos now released on streaming services as the Angels Share American Beauty. Sugar Magnolia was the second song they recorded that day at Pacific High. They have more of the words now.
- [14:34]
Bob Weir
Sugar magnolia blossoms bloomin it's all empty and I don't care so might leave it down by the river Knew she had to come up soon Forever.
- [14:49]
Narrator / Host
Sweet.
- [14:50]
Bob Weir
Blossom Come on under the willow we can have high times if you'll abide we can mascara the wonders of nature Rollin in the rushes down by the riverside she's got everything delightful she's got everything I need Takes the wheel when I'm seeing double Pay my ticket when I sleep.
- [15:21]
Narrator / Host
That new second verse about Sweet blossom Come on under the Willow is by Weir. This next verse is by Hunter.
- [15:28]
Bob Weir
She comes streaming through rays of violet she can wait in a drop or two she don't come, I don't follow Waits backstage while I sing to you.
- [15:42]
Narrator / Host
And this one's by Weir.
- [15:43]
Bob Weir
She can dance a Cajun rhythm Jump like a will Drive she's my summer love in the spring fall dinner she can make happen Yin and man alive.
- [15:57]
Narrator / Host
We already heard about the Cajun rhythm. But what, you may ask, is a Willis?
- [16:01]
Bob Weir
Yes, here comes the parade of Willis Jeeps and utility vehicles. What's the next new job they can do? The next new job for? Four wheel drive north, south, east and west, in cities, in industries and on farms. Wherever there's work to be done and the will to do it, you'll find new uses and new markets for the world's most useful vehicles. Remember, there's a Jeep for your job.
- [16:29]
Narrator / Host
At least in some tellings of the incident, notably Phil Lesh's memoir, Searching for the Sound. This lyric didn't sit well with Hunter. Shall I compare thee to a World War II era jeep? If you're Bob Weir, sure, you can file Sugar Magnolia in the classic Californian tradition of car songs. During the final recording of the song a few weeks later, Hunter tried to veto the Willis verse, and Weir had to politely ask Hunter to excuse himself from the studio. This part is Hunter, but then there's this part.
- [17:26]
Bob Weir
Sam, shall we?
- [17:56]
Narrator / Host
Sure, why not?
- [18:00]
Bob Weir
Which one will that be?
- [18:02]
Narrator / Host
Let's see. Yeah. During the August demo session, that section was blank, and it would stay that way when they played the Fillmore west in the middle of the month. But when they recorded the song at Wally Heiders, that end section grew and became known as Sunshine Daydream. And it was by Jerry Garcia. The music part anyway. I contributed the N riff to that, he said in 1988. That's my contribution to the song. The Sunshine Daydream part, the chord changes at the end. Hunter was back in the studio when they needed him.
- [18:31]
Robert Hunter
When it was all done, he wanted some extravaganza to cap it all off. So I wrote that Sunshine Daydream thing for, like, right in the studio. I just went out in the other and up and down, handed it to him and said, that's just fine, and just then tacked it on.
- [18:44]
Narrator / Host
When Weir sang the lyrics on the album, he was reading them off a piece of paper for virtually the first time. Here it is on the sparkly new American Beauty 50th anniversary remaster with the delightful petal steel part by Garcia.
- [19:06]
Bob Weir
Going where the wind goes Blooming like a red rose Even more freely Light I sing when I walk here in the morning Sunshine.
- [19:23]
Narrator / Host
Downbeat critic Alan Heidman would wonder, is the Duke Du Duke group singing under the solo vocal at the end? A parody of the Crosby, Stills, Sacco and Vanzetti style. Sounds like probably closer to a tribute. The two bands had the same engineer and he would receive a co production credit on American Beauty. Stephen Barnard.
- [19:42]
Bob Weir
It basically shows how good singers they were. And Phil, who knew, you know, I mean, he had total confidence. He hit those notes. It was not a lot of angst. It was like everybody standing, waiting, watching it. It was performance time. Everybody was just performing. It wasn't like, can we do that again? It wasn't like that. It was amazing. Steve was more involved than I think a lot of people would think. You know, he's just a recording engineer. But first off, he was getting great sounds. He was good at getting sounds. He knew the right microphone to use for this or that. You know, he broke out, you know, a little Sony microphone for my vocal on Sugar Magnolia and stuff like that. And he was right every time. And he also got the vocal sounding right in your headphones, which makes it a lot easier to sing. But more than that, I could see pretty much if what I was doing was lighting him up or not. And he'd made a bunch of records, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. And, you know, we were sort of. We were novices at this.
- [20:50]
Narrator / Host
Not that a song like Sugar Magnolia needs to be about someone in particular, but. Well, as Stephen Barnard remembers, Frankie, Sugar Magnolia. Frankie was Frankie Weir. Here's her buddy, Ronie Stanley. You can read a lot more about Roni's adventures with Frankie in Roni's great book, Owsley and Me, My LSD Family.
- [21:10]
Roni Stanley
I never met anybody like her. Frankie was one of the smartest women I have ever met and I'm educated. The thing about the scene at that time is that people did not get formal education, but that did not mean that they weren't smart. And she was a prime example of that. She was so talented in so many ways and sophisticated. When she met the Grateful Dead, she'd already been a dancer, a shindig dancer on Hullabaloo. And when I was writing about her, I went and did a little research and I was looking at the Hullabaloo and the shindig photos and I saw her right in the middle. I couldn't believe it.
- [22:00]
Narrator / Host
Originally from the East Coast, Frankie Weir had been part of the Dead circle for a few years already. Roni knew both halves of the new couple.
- [22:07]
Roni Stanley
At that time he was staying at Alembic. He didn't really have a place to live and often sleeping at Bear's house in Piedmont. And she Decided she was going to be with him. And he did. Look at how he changed after that. It's just amazing change in Weir, when Frankie became his partner.
- [22:32]
Narrator / Host
Some of the lyrics in Sugar Magnolia can be heard as sexist. Maybe a typical song by a typical rock star with its lyrics like waits backstage, will I sing to you? But Roni says that was simply an accurate depiction.
- [22:43]
Roni Stanley
Yeah, that was really what was happening. Or on stage. A lot of times the family was in the early days used to be on stage. And definitely she waits backstage while I sing to you. You know, stuff like that makes women feel connected. And there was a strong community of women. The women in the Grateful Dead scene were really connected, even though there were lots of pettiness and jealousies. But we did. We can share the women, you know, it was also, we can share the men.
- [23:19]
Narrator / Host
Some have called into question the line, head's all empty and I don't care for being misogynistic. Robert Hunter addressed this lyric on his website in 1996, saying it was the narrator's viewpoint of himself, not of his lady friend. Of course, Hunter would also be the first to acknowledge that however a listener heard it was also perfectly valid. Though they would never marry, Frankie took the last name Weir and was one of several important women in the Deads community in the early 70s. She would found the band's in house travel agency, Fly By Night Travel, that.
- [23:50]
Roni Stanley
While she was in the scene, she started that travel agency, Fly By Night. And that's another thing that I think that we want to give credit to the women for. For being entrepreneurial and starting all these adjunct businesses that could help the Grateful Dead band in their needs. For example, Fly By Night Travel, for example, the Deadheads, for example, Grateful Dead to ticket sales. So all these little businesses that were supportive of the Grateful Dead were started by women.
- [24:28]
Narrator / Host
Sugar Magnolia is a song that Bob Weir sang many, many nights starting in the summer of 1970. A song that meant many things to many people. The band had never played Sugar Magnolia live in its completed form before they recorded American Beauty. And when they did, it was already different.
- [24:44]
Bob Weir
You know, you play a song a few dozen times, especially if you're committed to the notion of making sure that you never play it the same way twice. Things are gonna change about it. That's all there is to it. And then also when you're playing it and you're playing it to a live audience and you get the reaction from people as you're delivering the lines, both instrumentally and vocally, as you feel and you can really palpably feel the audience light up at certain things that's gonna lead you in certain directions.
- [25:19]
Narrator / Host
In a 1978 interview, Robert Hunter remembered the night Sugar Magnolia really clicked.
- [25:24]
Robert Hunter
The first time that song ever came off in concert was in Chicago. They had been playing it a lot, but the audience had only reacted very mildly to it. So Bob Matthews was at the soundboard at that time, and he went off into the audience or backstage or something like that, and there was nobody there at the sound booth. So I zipped in there and Weir started singing it and I just cranked.
- [25:48]
Narrator / Host
His vocal up, which is like.
- [25:50]
Robert Hunter
Because there was a kind of a thing where everything should be at the same level, including the voices, which tended to get lost. I just cranked it up and the audience just sat up to the thing and then they had the reaction to it at the end that they've had ever since.
- [26:03]
Bob Weir
Well, I'm glad he did, because I'm not sure I remember that particular night. But I do know that if I could, if my voice gets big as God, I'm gonna work it a little bit.
- [26:16]
Narrator / Host
The November 27, 1970 show at the Syndrome in Chicago doesn't survive as a recording. Sadly. Hunter could also maybe mean August 23, 1971, at the auditorium Theater. You can find that from your local tape trader. Here's what the song sounded like live on February 18, 1971 at the Capitol Theater in Portchester. Released in a pristine 16 track mix on the new 50th anniversary edition of American Beauty, the song's feel has evolved a good deal from the studio sessions and sounds more like how the band would keep playing it into the 80s and 90s. Though some of the verse vocals are still sung as a group by Weir, Garcia and Lesh on these early versions, Jerry Garcia's Wawa takes over the vibe control from the pedal steel.
- [27:10]
Bob Weir
Forever.
- [27:27]
Narrator / Host
It was at these Capitol theater shows in February 1971 as well that the Bob Weir Robert Hunter songwriting partnership dissolved. They'd written a few songs in the interim, including Greatest Story Ever Told, but the Sugar Magnolia lyrics were apparently still a source of contention. Their fight over them at the Capitol landed Weir with a different songwriting partner he'd work with for the next 20 years, one who happened to be standing next to Weir and Hunter when the Argument. John Perry Barlow.
- [27:55]
Bob Weir
Barlow and I were schoolmates a long time ago. We went to a boarding school in Colorado, and when I met him, he was the water boy on the football team, and I was on the football team, and we sort of hit it off. Ended up being roommates for a while and all that kind of stuff, and got into a lot of trouble at the end of that year. They sat us down together and said, listen, one of you guys could come back, but not both you guys figure it out. And I was the one who didn't come back. He went on and had an illustrious career there at Fountain Valley School for.
- [28:30]
Narrator / Host
Aardvarks, but they stayed in touch.
- [28:32]
Bob Weir
He showed up at our gig at the Cafe A Go Go, I think it was, in New York, our first gig in New York, and we rekindled our friendship. And a year or so later, he came out to visit me in California. And he brought with him a bunch of his poetry. And I was reading through his poetry, and in college back then, if you want to make big points with the girls, he wrote poetry. And so he was doing well enough with that. But I noticed at the end of all his poems, he had a sort of a Sunday punch line, and I liked that. And not everything rhymed like, you know, in perfect meter, like a song is supposed to do. I figured he would be good to write with. And I was still writing with Hunter at the time, but that didn't mean that I couldn't write with other folks.
- [29:25]
Narrator / Host
In fact, when the Sugar Magnolia argument erupted between Weir and Hunter at the Capitol, Weir and Barlow were already on their way to their first collaboration. This time it wasn't Cajun music that inspired Weir, but something from a little further south.
- [29:39]
Bob Weir
I took my first vacation. We'd been at it for about five years, and Barlow and I and our manager at the time, John McIntyre, went down to Mexico and drove all the way to the southern tip of Oaxaca on the Pacific Ocean, a place called Puerto Escondido, and had a great little vacation there. When we got back, having listened to the radio for all the way up and down Mexico and listened to a bunch of Mexican radio, we sort of got Mexican popular music in our bones. The stuff that you hear on the radio down there in those days and still do here in Mexico. We decided, okay, let's write a song. Listen and write a song together. And we did. It was sort of patterned after one of the old Marty Robbins gunfighter ballads. It was Mexicali Blues. And I played it for Jerry and, you know, he seemed mightily impressed. I had no way of nothing to judge it by, no frame of reference. So I didn't know if this was good or bad or anything like that, but it seemed to please Jerry, so we started playing it. You know, people seemed to enjoy it and we were off to the races.
- [31:09]
Laid back in an old saloon with a watching flies and children on the street and I catch a glimpse of black eyed girls who giggle when I smile.
- [31:22]
Narrator / Host
We'll have a lot more from our conversation with Bob in episodes to come. Within a year of American Beauty's release, Weir truly began to emerge as a songwriter and singer as his new songs became a part of the Dead's expanding book on American Beauty. Sugar Magnolia wasn't quite a deep cut, nothing like what it would become live. It became a staple, a classic Grateful Dead song. It wasn't a hit, but it also was the big rave up at the end of many amazing sets. It had to go through some evolutions first. Phil Lesh disappeared from the vocal mix in the fall of 1971. A year later, when the band put out the triple LP Europe 72, sugar magnolia was the single with a big flaring Garcia solo and false ending before the Sunshine Daydream coda with sweet vocals by Donna Jean Godshow.
- [32:33]
Bob Weir
Sunshine Daydream.
- [32:39]
Narrator / Host
Magnolia wasn't done going through its changes. By the spring of 1974, Sunshine Daydream had split off even further, with the pause getting longer and the intro turning into its own distinctive thump. It happened gradually, mostly in 73, but by summer 74 it was ready for.
- [32:55]
Gary Lambert
New duty at Boston Garden. In 74 there was the first time they came up with the device of opening a set with Sugar Magnolia and closing it with Sunshine Daydream. At the time it was just like the greatest prank played on the audience because you know, Sugar Magnolia would end on that big unresolved chord. Then they'd go into something else and they then played this long, meandering, exploratory set and then suddenly at the end they slam into Bam. Sunshine Daydream. And you could hear the sound in Boston Garden of 15,000 palms smiting 15,000 foreheads, you know, because it was. It became a commonplace thing. But it was so great to hear that for the first time and to have been taken down that rabbit hole and then plunked down in the middle of Sunshine Daydream. So I was really happy to experience that one.
- [34:04]
Bob Weir
Sunshine Daydream Walk you in the tall trees Going where the wind goes Blooming like a red rose.
- [34:17]
Narrator / Host
That's From Dick's Picks 12, recorded June 28, 1974 at the Boston Garden. The next time they tried it was slightly later in the summer where one of the pranked was teenager Ira Kaplan. Ira would go on to co found Yola Tango One of my all time favorite bands, whose own commitment to constantly surprising live performances is appealingly deadlike. Ira caught a few dead shows in the early 70s, but they had an impact.
- [34:42]
Ira Kaplan
I saw them at Nassau Coliseum and Roosevelt Stadium and somewhere in Hartford. I think that might be the only three times I thought there was a fourth, but I can't come up with it. The Roosevelt Stadium show in particular I really loved and I sorry to say I can't do it anymore without looking it up, but there was a long truckin. He's gone. The other one was it the other one. And as I said I would have to look it up now. And going down the road feeling bad that I used to just kind of sing to myself walking from my house that to town, which was like an hour long walk, just kind of retracing my memory of the structure of that, that was a really eye opening experience. I do remember seeing them do Sugar Magnolia where they did the song and then except for Sunshine Daydream, then an hour later did Sunshine Daydream and just feeling a part of my brain explode. And you know that that definitely has been referenced within our lineup at times.
- [35:53]
Narrator / Host
If you listen to an audience tape of the Dead at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City on August 6, 1974, possibly you can hear the moment when the Dead detonated part of Ira's brain with the wall of sound splitting up. Sugar Magnolia and Sunshined Adrian became a favorite trick. It happened especially during New Year's sets with Sugar Magnolia often deployed as the band's midnight song because it was the favorite of promoter Bill Graham. Imagine for a moment that it's the last moment of 1978. Dan Aykroyd is leading the New Year's countdown. Through the haze you see Bill Graham riding towards the stage on a giant burning joint.
- [36:30]
Bob Weir
Five, four, three, two, two and a half, two minus one, quarter one. Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen. Happy New Year.
- [37:08]
Narrator / Host
You can imagine where it goes from here. Or if you want, you can listen to the four hours of music from the closing of Winterland CDs. Though Sugar Magnolia was recorded in 1970, it was hardly fixed in that year for either the band or Deadheads like Stephen Malkmas. For Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux, Sugar Magnolia was just as much a soundtrack to the 80s.
- [37:29]
David Lemieux
It's the perfect summer song. And when my friends and I ate 14 and 15, I remember the summer of 85, I was 14 and my friends and I all we did the entire summer, we worked our lame jobs, whatever they were. I Did a few different things, but we would always spend our afternoons and evenings in this field near our houses. We had this field. We'd bring this little boombox, a JVC boombox. And I remember that it was this long, skinny thing that you could pop out the cassette player part, and it was a Walkman, and you could pop it back in, and it was a little boombox. And we'd go to this park and we'd play Frisbee. That's all we did. We'd play Frisbee and listen to the dead. Sugar Mag was the song that every time it came on, or sometimes we'd specifically put it on, it gave us this incredible summer feeling, like, this is us. We're living this song right now in our cutoff jeans, our long hair, you know, doing what Deadheads do in a field, playing Frisbee all summer. And, you know, we worked hard and for what was minimum wages at like $4.50, and we made enough money to go to McDonald's or Wendy's every couple of days and whatever. We didn't. We didn't really. The biggest care in the world was, is it sunny today? Are we gonna be able to play Frisbee? And that song still to this day, embodies that. That kind of carefree feeling. Then I started exploring the live versions of it and realized what an incredible showstopper it was. And I remember I was in law class, grade 12 law class, and I had long enough hair that I could keep earbuds in in class, and my teacher couldn't see. Mrs. Kostash, if you're listening, Mrs. Kostash. I remember specifically hearing 71384 at the Greek. The Scarlet Touch Fire, the Dark Star.
- [39:15]
Rich Mahan
Encore.
- [39:16]
David Lemieux
Terrific first set. And I remember hearing that Sugar Mag, and it's ripping and rolling, and it's a great version to end the second set. And then when Weir sings before Sunshine Daydream take me out and I wander around. Brent does this thing on the keyboards. He does this. He plays this thing on the keyboards. This. This kind of runs his hand along them. And it just knocked me out. And I. By that point, I'd heard some pretty bad versions from 1970 of Sugar Mag. And I heard some great versions. This was one that just knocked me out. And I remember seeing the dead three years later in Deer Creek. 7, 15, 89. And they ended the show with Sugar Mag, and Brent did that again. And since then, I've heard many, many Sugar Mags, and I've heard it a few times, but the two that have always stood out were those two.
- [40:01]
Narrator / Host
And of course, the dad never stopped playing it, closing out their very last set with it in July 1995, and Weir has continued to play it since.
- [40:09]
Bob Weir
Sunshine daydream Walk you in the tall trees Going where the wind goes. We're filming like a red buzz now Come on over sweetly while I wait and I catch you in the morning.
- [40:31]
Narrator / Host
Sun Come on over here. That was The Wolf Brothers, March 6, 2020, in Knoxville. I'm sure there'll be another one soon. We'll throw it back now to the capitol theater on February 18, 1971, from the beautiful new 3 CD expanded edition of American Beauty. Hopefully we now have closed out all the sugar magnolias we've started.
- [41:22]
Rich Mahan
Sugar Magnolia is a song that appeals to people of all ages, across generations. One day while grilling up some carne asada on my parents back patio with a buddy of mine, we were grooving to American Beauty on vinyl. Sugar Magnolia finished, we comment on what a great song it is. And all of a sudden the song starts playing again. We're like, what's going on? I go inside the house to investigate. There's my mom dancing at the kitchen sink, singing along. She turns to me and says, I hope you don't mind. I just love this song. Thanks very much for tuning in folks. Visit us over@dead.net deadcast be well and we'll see you next episode. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.