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- [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 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 to the good old Grateful Dead Cast. This episode continues to shine our spotlight on the music of American Beauty. Illuminating one of the most beloved tracks on the record Broke down palace, we'll hear about what makes it special not only in its composition, but also what makes it special in the hearts of fans. Make sure to Visit us@dead.net deadcast where you'll find the 10 episodes from last season which contain episodes about the 8 songs on Working Man's Dead plus 2 bonus episodes loaded with music and insight. You can catch up or revisit with the American Beauty episodes that have already been released, which now also include two special bonus episodes of their own. Looking for a little bit more? After you finish an episode, we post companion materials for each of these at our website dead.netdeadcast and you can link from there to any and all of the podcasting platforms available. Please help this podcast by subscribing hitting that like button and please leave us a review. Thank you very much. It is the 50th anniversary of American Beauty and the Grateful Dead have prepared a 3 CD set reissue of this classic album. It includes a pristine remastering of the album's 10 tracks that you really need to hear to believe, as well as an unreleased live show from February 18, 1971 at the Capitol Theater. It was mixed from the original 16 track reel to reel multitracks at Bob Weir's Tri Studios features the first time ever for five tracks from the Grateful Dead and was Mickey's last show before his three and a half year hiatus. Along with this impeccably remastered three disc set, we also have a new batch of Angel Share Audio out now not only the full band acoustic demos for American Beauty but also the rest of the studio outtakes from the American Beauty recording sessions. Be sure to check out the Angel Share American Beauty audio at your favorite streaming service or Download provider and put yourself inside Wally Heiders in 1970 as the Grateful Dead create this truly timeless classic album on American Beauty. Broke down palace comes hot on the heels of Ripple, so much so you may wonder if it was intentionally written and recorded that way, or was it just one of those mystical collisions that seem to occur so frequently in the world of the Grateful Dead. There's a lot to unpack in this episode, so let's get Jesse Jarno on the mic.
- [03:17]
Jesse Jarno
One of my favorite moments on American Beauty is in a song, or even part of a song, but the transition between the end of Ripple and to the beginning of Broke down palace. If you were a Deadhead keeping track of a set list, and you might be, you might write that down as Ripple into Broke down palace. With a segue arrow in between. It feels like a little magic trick moving from the pure light of Ripple into something more mournful, even biblical. And those harmonies, Tales from the Golden Road co host Gary Lambert. Ripple and Broke Down. You know, they are such a beautiful opening to that side of the album, and I like the fact that they really paired them, that there's really no separation between them. You know, they fit together in such a beautiful way. Broke down, of course, has come to have some of the most profound emotional impact. You know, it often came at an emotionally appropriate moment for me in my life, you know, when we were saying fare thee well to someone we loved or whatever. And it's got that feeling of a hymn, which is, you know, the sacred and profane in Grateful Dead music. You know, there's a college course for you right there. You know, we have songs about the devil, and then we have this thing that's like something like out of a revival meeting or something like that. It's one of those beautifully contradictory and yet harmonious things in the music.
- [05:08]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
Going to leave this Broke Down palace on my hand Hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll make myself a bed by the wall this side.
- [05:32]
Jesse Jarno
In my time, Broke down palace is a song of reckoning and redemption sung by an old soul. Here's Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir.
- [05:41]
Howard Wales
I could almost hear Conway Twitty doing that one.
- [05:45]
Jesse Jarno
A real soulful country singer, George Jones.
- [05:48]
Howard Wales
Would have been able to pull that one off.
- [05:52]
Jesse Jarno
I've been going to Nashville a fair bit, working there, and I may try.
- [05:57]
Alan Trist
To record a version of that tune.
- [05:59]
Jesse Jarno
In Nashville just to showcase that aspect of its DNA. Jerry had, you know, he had country.
- [06:06]
Howard Wales
On his mind when he wrote that one.
- [06:08]
Jesse Jarno
In our last episode about Ripple, we heard about what Robert Hunter described as a peak experience he had in London in May of 1970. This is how he described it to Andy Geffen on WBRU In Providence in 1979 I wrote three songs that day.
- [06:23]
Alan Trist
I wrote them in London.
- [06:24]
Jesse Jarno
It's my first trip over and I sat down with a bottle of Retsina.
- [06:28]
Howard Wales
I think it was.
- [06:29]
Jesse Jarno
Or maybe it was two or three. No, I had a case of Retsina.
- [06:33]
Mike Hammond
And I wrote Broke Down Palace, Ripple.
- [06:36]
Howard Wales
And To Lay Me down all at one sitting.
- [06:39]
Jesse Jarno
Robert Hunter was a month short of his 29th birthday and it was a little less than a year after the massive LSD overdose that left him psychically scarred in June of 1969, which you can hear about in our Black Peter and Easy Wind episodes in Hunter's introduction to David Dodd's Annotated Lyrics collection. He wrote about the I wrote reams of bad songs bitching about everything under the sun, which I kept to myself. Cast not thy swines before pearls and once in a while something would sort of pop out of nowhere. The sunny London afternoon I wrote Broke down palace to Lay Me down and Ripple All Keepers was in no way typical, but it remains in my mind as the personal quintessence of the union between writer and muse, a promising past and bright future prospect melding into one great glowing apoctastasis in South Kensington. Writing words that seemed to flow like molten gold onto parchment paper in Apoctostasis, as I've just learned, is a restoration of one's original soul, fairly well expressed in brokedown palace. Andrew McGann recently wrote a powerful essay about the song titled the Grateful the Spirit of Broke Down Palace Lives on, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast Andrew observes that Hunter's classical reference to restored paradise to the promise we were on a road home infuses both Broke down palace and Ripple with hope in the midst of death.
- [08:04]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
Years ago. Mama, Mama Many worlds I've come since I first left home Going home, going home by the waterside I will rest my bones Listen to the river Sing sweet songs to rock my soul.
- [08:30]
Jesse Jarno
A quarter century later, in 1996, a 20something reader of Robert Hunter's online journal wrote that what always strikes me is that you write from the perspective of someone on his way out. Not in the morbid sense, but in a way that only someone of your age and experience could possibly write. End quote. Hunter responded, in a way, I guess I've always done that. I mean, Broke down palace was on American Beauty, wasn't it? And I was only around your age then. Don't know where I got the long view from, but suspected it had something to do with traumatic family breakup, Troubles at age 9 and subsequent boarding homes I was placed in over the next couple of years. Made a melancholy lad of me. Two and a half months after Hunter wrote the lyrics, Broke down palace appears on a recording for the first Time it's possible that the Grateful Dead debuted the song during one of their shows at the Lion's Share in late July, not surviving on tape. But it's also possible that what we're about to hear is the first time the Dead played the song outside of their rehearsal hall. This is from the new edition of the Angels Share American Beauty, a demo recording probably made at Pacific High in San Francisco on August 6, 1970. Well, that's just the way it is.
- [09:49]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
Where my honey, there you are My only true one all the birds that were singing are gone except you alone Gonna leave this boat down palace on my hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll, roll A feeling by the forehead of sand in my time in my time I will roll, roll, roll In a bed, in a bed by the waterside I will lay my head Listen to the river Sing sweet songs to rock my soul.
- [11:13]
Jesse Jarno
The groove is still a little choppy and the harmonies are a little rough, but it's Broke down palace exactly as we know and love it. They knew what they were going for. There's another element of the song that's almost finished on the demo as well, though it's not quite obvious just by listening. Robert Hunter wrote Ripple, Broke down palace and To Lay Me down on a single Day on the tape box for the American Beauty demo, track six and seven, back to back are the song labeled Hand Me down, soon to become Ripple, followed by Broke down Palace. On August 18th and 19th at the Fillmore west, they played the two songs in that order, as they would a month later at the Fillmore East. And of course, it's how the two songs appear together on American Beauty. Several musicologists have suggested to us that it's possible that the two songs were written to be played together like a suite, and that the beginning of Broke down palace may have been composed explicitly as a musical bridge between the two. It's time for some music theory. Mike Hammond is a politics reporter at the Hartford Quran. He's also a musicologist.
- [12:50]
Mike Hammond
It's very unusual for a song to begin in one key, and then really the bulk of the song is in another key. That's always kind of what strikes Me, when I listen to Broke down palace, you know, that's unusual. That's not to say that it's not unheard of. I'm sure there are folk songs, maybe even some songs that Hunter and Garcia listened to where that was the case, you know, And I think that's also part of the musical theater tradition where you start in one key and there's maybe a little bit of dialogue or some narrative action, and then you're into the real key of the song later on as it pertains to Broketown Palace. Broketown palace not only starts in G, it starts with this weird sort of three measure vamp in G, this odd number of measures coming out of Ripple, which the whole song is in the key of G major. The singer on his own sings, you know, fare you well, my honey. And then all of a sudden, three chords kind of come out of nowhere. B flat, F and C. And so you're quickly taken into another realm that's far away from G major. By the time you get to that C, you really don't know where you are. You know, you went from G, now you're sort of in C. When the singer comes back and sings all the birds that were singing, you get another G chord. But now you don't know if it's the G that's the dominant of the C major that you just heard. You know, that sort of relationship is flipped somewhat. The rest of that phrase have flown, except you alone brings you to the dominant of F major, which is really the key of the bulk of Broke Down Palace. Everything that comes after that is pretty firmly in F major, unambiguously so it's that first. It's these first four lines that begin in G, take you through C and end up in F major that are really unusual not only for a Grateful Dead song, but for any song. And what's kind of cool about that is if you think of the circle of fifths, if you can picture this circle with C major right at the top, you know, C has no sharps or flats in the key signature. One sharp to the right of that is G. That's the key of Ripple in the beginning of Broke Down Palace. And one flat to the left of C is F major, which is the key of Broke Down Palace. So this sort of tension, this G major sharp side surface tension of Ripple, you know, ripple in still water, surface tension gets sort of broken by flattening out through C and through F major, which is. Which is really kind of a nice feeling. Because Broke down palace is another Song that's about water and it's about rolling down a river. And so I like to always think about that when I listen to these two songs. The sort of the breaking of the surface tension between G major and F major moving towards the flat side. It works for me. If you're sort of sensitive to these tonal areas, it's a nice kind of a thing that works with these two songs. I want to say that it'd be easy for him to just change a couple chords at the beginning of that section from F to G, the way that it is now in the final version, and it would all kind of just flow out of Ripple, but not exactly. I mean, there's so much that's different about those first four lines harmonically than the rest of the song that it really would make sense that it was kind of written to bridge Ripple and Broke Down Palace.
- [16:13]
Jesse Jarno
The result is the haunting introduction to Broke Down Palace. Ripple into Broke down palace might not pop out as one of the Dead's infamous song suites like that's it for the Other One or China Cat, Sunflower into I Know you, Rider or Help on the Way, Slipknot Franklin's Tower, but maybe it should. Thanks, Mike, for laying it out. In addition to being a politics reporter and musicologist, Mike is also a visual artist and makes gorgeous representations of Grateful Dead and Fish improvisations. You can check out his work@setlessschematics.com there's one more piece of evidence to consider. Along with a typed manuscript of Ripple that we discussed in the last episode, historian Nicholas Merriweather found a nearly identical typed manuscript for Broke down palace when he was going through the papers related to Ice 9, the Grateful Dead's In House publishing company.
- [17:00]
Nicholas Merriweather
They were unusual in that those were mixed in with a bunch of papers that essentially had to do with Heist 9. The Ice 9 papers that were part of what the band gave as part of their archive are different from the Ice 9 papers that Robert Hunter maintained control of and that are still, as I understand it, in his family's possession. These tended to be things like photocopies, lots of copyright registration, in fact, principally copyright registration notices. But scattered in and amongst those were just random bits of archival joy. And these two pieces were very much, you know, oh, my God moments for me when I. When I came across them.
- [17:55]
Jesse Jarno
Like Ripple, both sets of lyrics were typed on lined paper with Jerry Garcia's handwritten chord changes next to the verses. The similarities end there, though. The lyrics were written on the same day in London, the typed versions are on different kinds of paper. One in blue ink, one in black. The Ripple lyric sheet has an extra verse. On the Broke down palace lyric sheet, the start of the song is at the very bottom. Maybe it was how Hunter originally ended the words, which would make sense. Fare you well, fare you well sounds like the beginning of the last verse of a song. And like a classic magazine editor, Garcia turned the ending into the lead. Or maybe Hunter wrote it to order after they'd finished the rest. It's impossible to say conclusively.
- [18:38]
Nicholas Merriweather
It's hard to speculate. I mean, it's one of those things where I think a historian would say that just because it seems ineluctable in retrospect doesn't mean it necessarily would have to unfold that way.
- [18:49]
Jesse Jarno
But it's also fun.
- [18:51]
Mike Hammond
Are these Jerry's chord indications? That's fascinating. Yeah. Oh my God. That's it.
- [18:57]
Jesse Jarno
To me, we can't really say for sure, though we did ask someone who might know, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir.
- [19:03]
Howard Wales
I don't remember.
- [19:04]
Alan Trist
It just probably just felt right. The guys you'd have to ask that.
- [19:08]
Jesse Jarno
Question to are no longer abiding in this world, so I can't answer that one for you. But there might be an answer, something to ponder for sure, and who knows why. But there are also a few live versions of Broke down palace in later years, where Garcia started the song in the wrong key, perhaps thrown by his own harmonic cleverness. Thank you, Mike Hamed. Thank you, Nicholas Merriweather. Nicholas is one of the organizers behind the Grateful Dead Studies Association. You can find more information about upcoming conferences and read back issues of the scholarly journal dead studies@deadstudies.org but on American Beauty, the transition from Ripple into Broke down palace brought the album to a deep and beautiful place. In the song's very first seconds, we hear a full palette of instruments all floating around. The unusual opening, strumming guitar, pedal steel stabs, dancing bass, simple percussion and busy piano, plus a layer of vocal harmonies. Let's listen to the beginning of the song and hear how gorgeously it all fits together.
- [20:14]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
There you will the honey Fare you well, my only true one.
- [20:32]
Jesse Jarno
Besides the demo version on Angel Share, there are no alternate takes of Broke Down Palace. Apparently the Dead came prepared. Here's our friend, archival engineer Brian Kehu, to go through the multi track tapes and give us the Broke down breakdown.
- [20:45]
Brian Kehu
Let'S listen through to the tracks of Broke Down Palace. On their own, they're not that exceptional. The playing is fairly straightforward from everyone involved, but all together Combined with the vocals, it makes an incredible record. As we have before, let's start with Bill's drums. I'm just going to play with a combined drum track similar to before. We have some very simple microphone techniques. Kick drum, overhead mics, and a snare drum mic.
- [21:14]
Howard Wales
Sam.
- [21:42]
Brian Kehu
And we have Phil's bass, recorded as before on two tracks. The first track is a warm, mellow sound. And the other track is a brighter, more articulate sound. And as they like to do, they'd combine both together for a full sound. With the articulate, stringy sound on top. And next we have guitars. The first track is a very basic rhythm guitar played on acoustic. I don't recall it being labeled, but it seems very similar to the straightforward strumming that Jerry does during live versions of the song. And next is an electric guitar track cut at the same time. Playing a little bit higher on the neck. And a little bit more articulate part. So I believe this is Bobby on this one. And here are both parts playing together. It's good arranging to have simple parts like this, but played slightly differently. Different parts of the guitar neck, different voicings of the chord. And that's good arranging. So they can stack and layer together without being in each other's way. And next we have piano played by Howard Wales, who was the guest musician on several songs from this album. The piano part is a little bit busier than those simple guitar parts. There's room for him to be a little bit more interesting. And it adds a lot to the song.
- [24:23]
Howard Wales
Sam.
- [24:57]
Brian Kehu
And that adds some of the gospel flavor that is kind of the root of this song underneath it all. Next we have the beautiful steel guitar part displayed by Jerry Garcia as an overdub. He had added several great parts to their records already. And this is one of the strong ones.
- [25:14]
Howard Wales
Sam.
- [25:40]
Brian Kehu
Any musician that's ever tried to play the steel guitar, the pedal steel, as some people call it, know that it's a beautiful, incredible sound. But it's incredibly difficult to play well. And in such a short time, Jerry had developed a real affinity for it. Playing both in tune and being able to work the transposition levers and sliding the slide up and down the neck to create this kind of three level chessboard of notes that change. It's very complicated, but beautiful to hear when it's done. Right now we're going to move into the vocals, which is really the hallmark of this song. The vocals start, of course, with Jerry's main lead vocal here.
- [26:14]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
Fare you well, my honey Fare you well, my only true one all the birds that were singing are flown except you.
- [26:50]
Brian Kehu
It'S beautiful to hear him sing by himself on this one. And that would have been enough for most records. But one of the hallmarks of this song is particularly those harmony vocals. You could hear in the background. As Jerry sang that the other singers were going in the background singing harmonies at the same time as he was recording. Let's cut to Phil's microphone, and we can hear what it sounded like as Phil was doing his vocals with Jerry leaking through the background.
- [27:14]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
There you will My only true one all the birds that were singing are.
- [27:31]
Alan Trist
Flep.
- [27:39]
Brian Kehu
Then we can hear Bobby's vocal cut at the same time, alternating from low to high parts around the other's harmonies.
- [27:45]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
On my hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll make myself a.
- [27:57]
Brian Kehu
Bear and the real magic comes when we combine those three parts together, sung as they were in the room at the same time. Great performances and an even more amazing vocal arrangement.
- [28:09]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
In my time in my time I will roll, roll, roll In a bed, in a bed by the waterside I will lay my head Listen to the river Sing sweet songs to rock my.
- [28:32]
Brian Kehu
Soul and then we found a nice surprise on the tape. After doing those harmony vocals, they went back and set up again to add some more layers to the very end of the song. So here we're going to hear a new vocal from Jerry, then one from Phil, then one from Bobby. And together, those three new vocals sound like this do. And that is a great sound. But they intended to layer this on top of the original vocal tracks. And then you really get the big choir sound that they intended for the end of the record as we hear it here.
- [29:45]
Howard Wales
Right. I bet we could do it better, though.
- [29:48]
Brian Kehu
And there was no need to improve upon that one. They kept it. That becomes the record, the classic Broke Down Palace.
- [29:54]
Jesse Jarno
If Broke down palace is understated and somber, there's one part of the song that's not understated at all. The piano played by Howard Wales. Like Howard himself, it bounces wonderfully and conversationally.
- [30:13]
Howard Wales
I met Jerry at the Avalon Ballroom. I remember that we end up there on Fillmore Street. I was the person that ran the jam on Mondays.
- [30:24]
Jesse Jarno
The place at 3138 Fillmore was the Matrix. Jerry Garcia was quite familiar. He'd played there multiple times with the Dead in 66, the Jamming Side Project, Mickey and the Heartbeats in 68, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage in 69. The common theme is that when the Dead weren't playing, Jerry Garcia often wanted to continue doing so.
- [30:44]
Howard Wales
Jerry and I, we met, and it was really great. It was working with somebody, you know, that wasn't afraid to go to other different genres and things, you know. And Jerry was that kind of guy because he wanted to learn. He was a singer and a guitar player. But what he made possible for his voice, he basically put the guitar flavor, the things that he played, you know. And he would match that into his actual vocals. He meshed it together, you know what I mean? He had a really. Look, Jerry never conceived himself. He didn't have much of an ego at all. Jerry wasn't like that. Jerry was such a wonderful friend and such a really good person. We had a lot of things to talk about all the time. Both in our nature of our growing up and family and things like that. We had a lot of. We had some of the greatest conversations, I think, that I ever talked to anybody. We weren't friends, you know, going out to eat dinners all the time and stuff like that. I was busy, he was busy, you know. But anytime that we were together, which was enough times, you know, a lot of it was music, okay? And the rest of it was just talking about everything and everything and getting loaded. Funny guy, funny. We used to laugh and he'd look at me and used to call me the Kaiser. That's what they called me, the Kaiser at the time. He said, kaiser, what are you doing? I said, Jerry would always come up with these dry jokes, man. What Jerry was funny in is if somebody else said something that seemed silly to him. He kind of had this funny, kind of sly thing on his mind. When Jerry did that, man, he meant that he didn't really care what that guy said. It didn't really mean anything to him. Now he's mellow as a cello man.
- [32:37]
Jesse Jarno
From April through September 1970, whenever the dead weren't working elsewhere, Garcia would head to the Matrix every week to join Wales and what Garcia called the Monday Night Band. Drummer Bill Vitt and bassist John Kahn for hours and hours of improvisation. There's only one circulating recording of the group jamming at the Matrix, released in 1998 as Side Trips, Volume 1. Seemingly recorded on Monday, May 18, 1970, coincidentally just days before the Dead's trip to London, where Robert Hunter would write the words to Broke down palace and other songs. Here you can hear Garcia and Wales equally conversational playing.
- [33:42]
Howard Wales
That band. It was just when Jerry and I, it was basically acid jazz.
- [33:47]
Jesse Jarno
If you like pure improvisation and haven't checked out Side Trips, Volume one, we definitely recommend that you do so the period in which Jerry Garcia played regularly with Howard Wales at the matrix, April through September 1970, also exactly coincides with the writing and recording of American Beauty. They might seem like different types of music, but they were part of an enormous and still emerging continuum. The next year, Garcia told Charles Reich and Jan, the records are not total indicators. They're just products out of the enormous amount of output that we create in the course of a year. They're that little piece that goes out to where everybody can get it. For Jerry Garcia over the course of 1970, that output not only included Working Man's Dead and American Beauty, but being a full time pedal steel player for the New Riders of the Purple Sage and playing for six months with Howard Wales and friends, it was really cool.
- [34:36]
Howard Wales
Six months of some really great, you know, Harvey Mandel, all kinds of people, Alvin, Bishop, Grabinitis, you name them, they were there for six months and Jerry was there. In fact, I had. It was everybody that everybody was around at the time. You know, lots of great players and see, that's what the days were, man, when it was really a scene. It was a scene because people wanted to see nice stuff, you know, I mean, they really liked the very original and he, you know, and things like that. People just went all over town to see everything. It was really never happened again. It was such a really, you know, one of those places that packed small places, you know, people coming from all over town. And then of course, when everybody found out about this jam session, you know, that meant that anybody to everybody or whatever just came down and it became a really not a good thing. It was. Well, I didn't like it, neither did anybody else, because people were jumping up on the stage, not even talking, you know what I'm saying? It was just so bizarre, man. It was like just, oh, well, we'll just play. Who the hell cares? After about six months, six months of it. And then I didn't like it and Jerry didn't like it too. The people that we knew, okay, they felt really good about the fact when they showed up and we knew where that was all at. But then, you know, but the overflow of people that can't play anyway, you know, and they're just hopping up on stage, it just got completely insane. So I walked and I can't remember who took care of it after that. I didn't want any part of it anymore.
- [36:45]
Jesse Jarno
That was Huxley's Howl from a self released Howard Whale single from the mid-70s, recently reissued by Ubiquity Records. You can hear that along with Rendezvous with the sun and the rest of Howard Wales solo discography@howardwales.bandcamp.com We've also posted links on the page for Today's deadcast@dead.net the person who took care of the Monday Night Matrix jams after that was a different organist, Merle Saunders, who became Garcia's collaborator for the next half decade. Bassist John Kahn and drummer Bill Vette continued to hold down the rhythm section for the next 25 years, from the spring of 1970 through Garcia's passing in 1995, Kahn would be virtually Garcia's only regular bassist outside the Grateful Dead. And it could be said that what Garcia first called the Monday Night Band represented the earliest kernel of what would later be known as the Jerry Garcia Band. It's hard to know why and when things unfolded as they did, but Howard Whale seemingly walked away from the Matrix jam sometime in September 1970, at virtually exactly the same moment that he would have recorded parts for American Beauty.
- [37:49]
Howard Wales
I think I'm a pretty good piano player. I don't really get an often chance to do it unless I do what I'm doing now. It's just a one man band. Just love playing piano. But once you get hooked with people, man, and you have that thing about the B3 and the organ and you're not going to do anything else other than that, forget about it. I did a lot of sessions back in years, you know, a lot of sessions. And every time I asked, can I play piano? No. Can I play piano? No. Well, why? Because. Want you to play our organ. It just. I didn't understand it, you know what I mean? It's really. I mean, because I really can play good piano. I play anything with black and white keys. I don't care. I can make the worst thing sound bad and still sound good. A lot of people like Brook Dawn Palace.
- [38:34]
Jesse Jarno
Later that fall, the original Monday Night Band, including Wales, Garcia, Vit and Khan, would record their single studio album, Hooteroll. There would be a short tour in 1972. But in some ways, the American Beauty sessions were the beginning of the goodbye between Garcia and Wales.
- [38:50]
Howard Wales
Jerry wanted me to play on it. They paid me a lot of money.
- [38:54]
Jesse Jarno
One aspect of the Grateful Dead's world, as they prepared to put out American Beauty, is that they now were receiving real amounts of money for their work. In his online journal many years later, Robert Hunter wrote that after Working man is Dead came out, he'd received a $75,000 advanced. I thought I was set for life. He Wrote, bought a new Saab for 2,500 cash. The next day, somebody put an egg in the gas tank at a huge party up at Mickey's ranch. I like to believe one of the kids did it because it was new, not because of who it belonged to. On American Beauty, the Grateful Dead actively involved their musical friends in the album sessions, which also resulted in their musical friends getting paid. The new riders of the Purple Sage. David Grisman, Ned Lagin, Howard Wales.
- [39:37]
Howard Wales
Let me tell you something, my friend. Here's the bottom line with Jerry. Jerry really had a lot of love in him and he had a lot of availability. He wanted to always help people. It didn't matter, man. He, the world. He tried to go with the world, you know, couldn't really help everybody, but he did help people, and he's just a great soul. SAM.
- [40:36]
Jesse Jarno
The Dead's world was beginning to organize itself in new ways. In the 60s, they'd grown from an underground art scene. Now, as the Dead turned into a real business in the 1970s, they tried to institutionalize those countercultural ideals into their own practices. As historian Nicholas Meriwether has long argued.
- [40:53]
Nicholas Merriweather
It'S not just generosity. When Garcia talks about hip economics in the Garcia Reich and Winter book, that's exactly an expression of what they're thinking about, which is you want to have this internal, self contained community that has a few earnways, a few pipelines from the outside world into your community, and then you circulate that money within the community very quickly.
- [41:20]
Jesse Jarno
In the spring of 1970, after Lenny Hart's abrupt departure, they'd replaced him with a system of checks and balances. A group of different managers, Sam Cutler handled the band's road business. Dave and Bonnie Parker handled the band's money, and John McIntyre handled the home front.
- [41:36]
Nicholas Merriweather
The dad had picked up McIntyre when he was working at the carousel. McIntyre had this very explicit idea that you're going to form community and MacIntyre's vision. When he hires Alan Trist, he says, we need you because you're going to add this element that we need to how we're functioning. And part of Alan's contribution is to help them think about what their project and organization is in the terms that he had learned from his father while working at the Tavistock Institute, which is how do we actually come up with a healthy, functioning organization that values the contribution of all these different people and really fits, makes sense, is harmonious. It's one of the big things that Alan does.
- [42:28]
Jesse Jarno
Alan Trist was an old and close friend of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. The three had met in early 1961, in the early days of the Palo Alto folk scene. He'd been a passenger in the fateful car accident that sent Garcia down his artistic path, which we discussed in our American Folkie episode last season. A heady thinker and roving mind to match Garcia and Hunter, Alan Trist became an official employee of the grateful dead in November 1970, the month American Beauty hit stores, as the head of Ice 9, the band's new in house song publishing company.
- [42:59]
Alan Trist
I do remember the income from Working Man's Dead was extraordinary for all of them, you know, and I remember Hunter beaming with, now we can really get going with our songwriting, you know, and Einstein could become a real entity. The name itself was chosen while they were a partnership. Back when the partnership was set up in, I don't know, 67 or 8. It ran as a partnership for some years before Ice 9 incorporated.
- [43:27]
Jesse Jarno
The name Ice 9 came from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, a fictional super catalyst that transforms all it touches.
- [43:34]
Alan Trist
There were several readers, but Hunter was the one who put all his thought into what Ice 9 should mean, what it should be named. And, you know, he was given control of Ice 9. Originally it was really Garcia and Hunter because the Weir Barlow songs didn't really come until later, you know, when Ice 9 was set up as a corporation. Jerry really said, bob, this is your bailiwick, you know, and it always remains. So he chose the name, you know, and also the hexagram, which is the logo, the I Ching hexagram, you know, gathering together, changing to holding together, which is a natural way that people thought. Back in the 60s, Alembic was the.
- [44:24]
Jesse Jarno
Mystically named offshoot that provided the Dead's equipment. Named by Owsley Stanley for the alchemical vehicle of transformation, ICE 9 was Robert Hunter's own mystically named vehicle. You can see the ICE9 hexagram logo@dead.net deadcast.
- [44:39]
Alan Trist
Straight economics is the first reason that the Dead formed Ice nine. Since they had their own administrative office publishing their own music saved anything from 15 to 30% payable to an external music publisher. The writers won secondly, control of licensing. We were able to take a personal approach to licensing, whether to record companies, lyric quotation in books, or song used by other artists. This built up cool relationships over the long run. In house, was close at hand and trustworthy. In addition to the increased prominence of the Dead's original songwriting, they first began touring nationally. And all this increased activity put pressure on the fifth and Lincoln office for more personnel. John McIntyre was the manager then and Dave and Bonnie Parker, Annette Flowers and Eileen Law looked after the office administration. And I joined that crew in the November 1970. This came about because as I said about the Hollywood Festival in May, the band went home but Hunter and manager John McIntyre stayed behind in my flat. And that was when I was invited to come to California and look after i9 the backstory of that you probably know is that I had known Jerry and Hunter and Phil and Bobby Peterson back in 1960 in Palo Alto as to why they asked me to manage an in house publishing company. This goes to the GD's philosophy of management. The music industry was famously shady in those days and the band did not want to trust their activities of business to outside agencies and music companies. So they very early on decided to do it themselves with their friends and companions from around the Hate and from before in Palo Alto, all the people in the office in San Rafael and also Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin a year or so earlier in 710. They were all friends, old and new. I was a very old friend from 1961 in Palo Alto where I spent a lot of time with Garcia and Hunter when we were teenagers looking for a way into adulthood. Such roots build trust. And since Garcia and Hunter were the instigators of Ice 9 as the chief songwriters, I suppose I was a natural choice to look after the in house songwriting company.
- [47:34]
Jesse Jarno
And of course American Beauty triggered the first major original songs from Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Pigpen as well.
- [47:40]
Alan Trist
The idea of writing songs in the style of Working Man's Dead that took off with the band, you know, oh, I'm gonna have a go at that too, you know. Everyone wanted to be a songwriter. When I first started working at 5th and Lincoln in November 1970, there was a rite of initiation. Or rather I just smoked pot most of the time along with everyone else. I was familiar with London spliffs, tobacco and hashish joints, but California and cannabis sativa buzz were another story and it took me a few weeks to adjust to that. This was fun and it maintained the high note of managing a band to the necessary same level of consciousness that they had themselves. So there was a seamless continuity of energy between the band and the crew and the office, which was always very important. You know, we were always attuned to the band's energy and not wanting to do things or write things in that would bring it down naturally enough in the 60s part was part of that.
- [48:56]
Jesse Jarno
One of Alan's first Jobs was sorting out all the songwriting they'd done up until that point.
- [49:01]
Alan Trist
The early albums in the 60s were registered with a copyright under the fictional joint songwriting name of McGannahan Skagellifetti by the legendary San Francisco lawyer Brian Rohan, who copyrighted songs in the 60s for several for purposes of basic protection. With Working Man's Dead and American Beauty and the Grateful Dead's reputation growing, it was time to get serious about the publishing. The GD's long term lawyer Hal Cant set up ICE9 as a private corporation owned by the band and Hunter. In 1970 Ice 9 Inc. Was inaugurated, so to speak, with the songs on American Beauty and I Remember I also deposited new copyright certificates for the copyright office, which had the actual writers of each song rather than McGannahan's Kigelifeti, and this was important to ensure the fair and correct distribution of publishing royalties to the writers. You could imagine it was an interesting job going around all the band members and asking them which part of McGannahan's Kagele Fedi do you think you should be credited for? That process took me weeks because they were scratching their head and not wanting to diss their partners.
- [50:31]
Jesse Jarno
As we were in the last stages of putting together this episode, we received a rather unusual query. Did Pigpen once also own a cat named McGanahan's Cajelli Fedi? Good question. And so we now veer briefly from this Dead cast to bring you a segment about a missing pet. Maybe as Alan Trist just explained, the Dead used the name McGanahan Skagelli Feddy for songwriting purposes, to register group compositions and arrangements of traditional tunes. The name itself was a reference to a character in a novel by the proto beat writer Kenneth Patchen called the Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer. There was an attorney there by the name of Skagelli Feddy McGranahan, and the name's reversal was apparently some wordplay on the part of Pigpen that led to the band's songwriting pseudonym. Alright, good enough. But the Wikipedia page for the band's first album also claims that Pigpen once had a cat by this name, with a footnote citing Steve Silberman and David Schenck's absolutely essential book Skeleton A Dictionary for Deadheads. But this reference isn't anywhere in any edition of the book. We asked Sully, the friend of Pigpen's family we interviewed on our Operator episode. He says the only McKernan family pet was a dog named Kilo. I also emailed Alan Trist, who adds Sounds likely. I even have a tickle in my mind that I heard this once. Might even have met said cat at pig's house. Okay, the oldest reference we can dig up, thanks to our friend Light into Ashes, is a usenet post from 1993 that may or may not be pure Internet goofiness. In short, what we have on our hands is a missing cat from 50 years ago that may or may not have ever existed. And though we're not authorized to offer a reward for any information leading to the existence or non existence of this cat, we'd certainly love to know more. Let us know if you know anything. Anyway, back to Alan Trist.
- [52:18]
Alan Trist
The Office. It was a bubble on the music business and always remained so, despite the fact that more professionalism crept in later. In the late 80s, you know, middle 80s. And in those early days, there was a constant traffic in and out of the office. The crew, the band, engineers from Front street, artists from Mouse Studios, old friends from the counterculture in the city, returning vagabonds from abroad, any number of associates with ideas and projects. It was never a dull moment. And in fact, 5th and Lincoln was something of an ideas factory. It was like a hub for innovation and ideas. It was a great place, place to work. You know, Stanley or Mouse would bring in the artwork for the covers, you know, be lying around on the table for a couple of days. People come in and out, make comments. I would go into the city after the artwork had been lying around on the table at 5th and Lincoln with Kelly. You know, we go down to the printers. And that was fascinating, you know, to see the whole process of the artwork being realized, you know, through the printing process. I got involved with all that kind of stuff too. And that was very helpful for later publishing work that I did.
- [53:38]
Jesse Jarno
And there remained a heady undercurrent to.
- [53:40]
Alan Trist
All the endeavors, particularly in the 70s. That was the time, you know, when various philosophical discussions were going on in our scene about independence from the record business, control of touring and concert presentation and so forth. You know, 70 to 74 till the hiatus, this was big discussions going on. So there were many, or shall I say not discussions, but arguments with Bill Graham about the concerts and with Warner Brothers about the recording and release of albums. McIntyre and I would be down in LA or in San Francisco all the time talking about these issues.
- [54:24]
Jesse Jarno
Bob Dylan heads will be familiar with the stories of the many songs that Dylan copyrighted through his publisher in the 60s and 70s that nobody has ever heard. Ice9 did no such thing. In fact, Robert Hunter seemed surprisingly mellow about it all.
- [54:37]
Alan Trist
When an album came out, I'd have a physical copy and I'd give it to my lead sheet maker and he'd listen to it and write down the music and the words. I got nothing from Hunter or the musicians. Well, I would sometimes get Hunter's words. That's true. Then the question of what was the Leachy maker hearing and was that different from what Hunter had written down? And as we know, that discussion amongst what the Deadheads heard and what the band intended has always been fungible. Shall we say the song is out there in the cosmos. I mean, Hunter's attitude was the song wasn't really finished until all of that process of who was hearing what went down. He wasn't that strict about what the word should be. You know, there was no copywriting in advance there, you know, which caused a little bit of problem when Box of Rain, Hunter's collection of lyrics came out, which was his own compilation, because there were a number of songs in there that were not on the album. He actually put a little notice in the preface to the book saying, you know, that people could use these songs. And over the years, they've been picked up by other artists, you know, but then other artists had already put music to it, and then somebody wanted to put new music to it, which is not really kosher, you know. So there were a lot of issues that came up through that process over the years.
- [56:11]
Jesse Jarno
Alan Crist had to address a number of Grateful Dead specific publishing issues. For example, there was the issue of the jams the Dead played that earned the official title Space. Space, Space Space Space, Space, Space, Space.
- [56:23]
Howard Wales
Space, Space, Space, Space, Space, Space, Space, Space.
- [56:30]
Alan Trist
Space is an interesting story, actually, because it goes to the whole question of improv. At some point, when the legacy releases started coming out after Jerry died, you know, it became an issue. Space was copyrighted, for sure, both as a title and as a demonstrable piece. I forget quite which piece was used to do that technically with a copyright office. But before that happened, there had to be a distinction made between what was improvisation attached to a particular song, either embedded in it or tailing off from it, and what was improvisation that happened between songs, for instance, and was not necessarily connected with a song. And Space was classically that. It was something that happened between songs, you know, flowed out of the last song of the first set or whatever it. Some of them began to have their own names, like Spanish Jam, Mind Out Of Body Jam. There was half a dozen of them, right? And I remember copywriting those because they had that specificity musically that allowed that to happen. But then there were all kinds of other stuff, what other people in the music business called are the Dead and Noodling. Right, or whatever, that didn't have quite that specificity. We wouldn't look at it that way.
- [57:57]
Jesse Jarno
Along with Robert Hunter, Alan was naturally friends with his other major client, Bob Weir's lyrical collaborator, John Perry Barlow. It was through Barlow that Alan made an indirect contribution to Grateful Dead songwriting.
- [58:09]
Alan Trist
He'd say, well, Weir and I are the B team. Garcia and Hunter are the A team. You know, which was very humble of him, you know, put it in that context. So he followed the general setup of ICE 9 without any question. You know, in later years, I had lots of conversations with Barlow. In fact, I went to his ranch at the time of Ace, when that was coming out, and spent a couple of weeks in a winter in Wyoming. He was working on those songs. I remember Cassidy. We talked about that a lot. He was in the middle of Cassidy, and I remember I pointed out to him, well, you know, you're talking about Eileen Law, but there's another Cassidy, Neil, you know, he said, yeah, I know, you know. And then he said, okay, I'll weave it in there. And so hence that line about something about a Cadillac lost now on the.
- [59:06]
Howard Wales
Country miles in his Cadillac I can.
- [59:12]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
Tell by the way his smile is rolling back Come wash the nighttime green Come grow the scorched brown green.
- [59:30]
Howard Wales
Blow.
- [59:30]
Jesse Jarno
The horn Tap the tambourine Alan Trist was part of the Dead's secret fabric for their entire career. Even as the Dead moved between Warner Bros. Their own independent labels, then United Artists, arista and beyond, Ice9 remained the truly independent, hip economic valve that operated in parallel to the band's touring operation. From his post at 5th and Lincoln, Alan Trist not only watched the music flow by, but tended to it as the songs generated new versions of themselves. The music on American Beauty remained hits within the Grateful Dead's own repertoire. A decade after Alan Trist went to work for the Dead, the band recorded the twin double LPs reckoning and dead Set, which we heard about at length during our episode called Dead Behind, Dead Ahead. Stretched across these four discs were new versions of half of American beauty, including all three songs Robert Hunter wrote in Alan Trist's apartment in May 1970. Ripple to lay Me down and Broke Down Palace. That was Broke down palace from dead set. Recorded October 3, 1980, at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. The 1980 dead sounded a good deal different from the 1970 dead. For starters, there's no guitar solo at all on the original American Beauty recording. And, of course, that guitar solo would sound different in 1990 than 1980, as the band kept changing around the song that was the Dead in Hartford, March 19, 1990, on the Spring 1990 box set. But as tours and live tapes came and went and new fans discovered the Dead, American Beauty remained constant. New Yorker staff writer Nick Palmgarden in.
- [61:57]
Nick Palmgarden
The summer of 84, you know, as newly minted head of 15, I listened to that cassette, a cassette of American Beauty, like, a thousand times over. Just, you know, I had that and the big Chill soundtrack on a boombox for a month. It was just one of those places where there was no radio. I didn't have my tapes. I didn't have my records. I just had these two things. So. And, you know, so it was like Motown, American Beauty for a month. I had seen two live shows, two dead shows in June that summer. That was Merryweather626, 627 84. And those shows, they were kind of overwhelming and mysterious. You know, I'm talking about the music. You know, the scene was the scene, but the music. I listened to tapes, but there was just so much going on. You know, I was still finding my way into understanding what was going on and who was playing what. You know, the Dead's music of that era, like, 1984 was really dense. There's a lot of information in it. Busy. I think that's one of the reasons why people don't like it as much. You know, Brent's all over the place. Phil's not laying down, like, an obvious line. It's all over the place. Garcia is just, like, nodded over, just, like, throwing thousands of notes. So, yeah, like, I'd had that experience of seeing them live for the first time, not knowing all the music, not knowing all the songs, just being sort of overwhelmed by it. And then two weeks later, I'm in a place where all I have is this Motown greatest hits tape and American Beauty. And I listen to American Beauty several times a day, over and over and over again. So here was this other thing, like, this tape of beautiful, clean recordings of songs that were like hymns, just perfect. There was beautiful singing. There was this sort of sense of majesty and loss, you know, ravages of time. It sort of made sense in the context of what the band had become. What I'd just seen in 1984, it was like I'd seen these guys who looked like hell playing on stage, just, like, really busy, crazy Music and this really busy, crazy scene. And here was this clean thing made in 1970 and yet really seemed to be about what they were to become in 1984. You know, it was like a time machine, you know, so you listen to these songs like Broke down palace or addicts in 1984, and they had this power. They were describing something that was going to happen to this band, like the sort of sense of loss. You know, there's this meaning and pathos in these songs from 1970 that reflected on what was going on in 1984. It was like a hymnal or something.
- [64:39]
Jesse Jarno
And while the American Beauty version of Broke down palace became canonical for generations of new fans, discovering or rediscovering the album On Sea, the song itself roamed the cosmos. It wasn't a song that jammed. That wasn't its function. Almost exclusively. Broke down palace was played in the show's encore slot. In the specific conditions of the Dead's concert repertoire, it took on its own meaning. Here's Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
- [65:06]
David Lemieux
It's a song that, you know, having. And I'm certainly not alone with this. Most of my Deadhead friends, and I remember when we had John Mayer on the shakedown stream, he said the exact same thing. But I left home to follow the dead at 16, and I saw them, I don't know, maybe a dozen times at 16. And by 17, I was seeing them 20 times a year, 25, 30. And before you knew it, my entire life revolved around seeing the Grateful Dead and making Dead tapes and talking about the Dead. And it was an obsession, but it's pleasing. And I certainly wasn't alone. My parents were very supportive of it, too, whether it was letting me knock off a school for two weeks at 17 years old, or even loaning me money because mail order. And I didn't get a paycheck for two weeks, and I needed $200 right now so I could order the tours worth of tickets. They would loan that money sometimes. They were very supportive of it. And every time I saw Broke down palace, which was often enough, you know, it was a once every six shows encore. And you could see at the end of a run of shows, and every single time, Mama, Mama, Many worlds. I've come since I first left home. That was my life in a nutshell. I'd be at the show and they'd be encoreing with it, and I would sing that song to myself. It was my way of saying, thanks, mom and dad, and letting them know from 1,000 or 3,000 miles away that everything's going to be okay. You know, I'm growing, I'm here, I'm safe, this is my community and I'm growing many worlds I've come and that song Goosebumps talking about it. And I saw some really good ones too and very meaningful. And it was a song that similar if you saw the Dead on a Sunday night, there was a very high likelihood you were going to see Samson and Delilah. High likelihood you were going to see one more Saturday night on a Saturday. Likewise at the end of a three night run if they hadn't played it at the previous run, let's say there's a very good chance you're going to see Broke down palace on the final night. Sometimes they play it on the first night and you'd be like just confused when you have that level of anticipation, which didn't happen very often with the Grateful Dead. Now if you saw like six shows in a row and they hadn't played China Rider yet, there's a very good chance that second set's going to open with China writers. So when it did, you weren't overly surprised and you were relieved and you were happy. Broke down was the same thing when if they hadn't encored with it for a while and it was the final night of a run and they go into it somewhat expected, as unexpected and unpredictable as Dead Set lists where Broke down was a song that you could sort of predict it was only an encore when I was seeing the Dead and when they did play it, I loved was my way of silently telepathically telling my parents that I'm growing here and I'm doing well and I'm getting a heck of an education, don't worry about me, I'll be fine. And they knew that. That was the other part. They were very supportive of it. They knew my dad had friends. They knew every time I came back from Dead tour I was a very good version of myself.
- [68:11]
Jerry Garcia (singing)
Mama, Mama, Many worlds I've come since I first met Home going home, going home by the waterside I will rest my bones Listen to the river Sing sweet songs to rock my soul.
- [68:35]
Rich Mahan
I completely relate to what David Lemieux was saying at the end of this episode. I recall frequent three show run Sunday closers of Broke down palace. An apropos soft landing after a weekend of hard charging that left you floating your way out of the parking lot. Thanks very much for tuning in. Visit us over@dead.net deadcast spread the love and light Share this podcast with your neighbor. See you next episode. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Richard Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.