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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 back to the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. This week we have a delightful detour planned for you, a bonus episode that is not only timely and seasonal, but but full of great stories revolving around the making of one of our favorite Grateful Dead albums, Reckoning. If this is your first time joining us, we invite you to also check out the 10 episodes from our first season, which dove headfirst into the eight songs on Working Man's Dead and also served up two fun bonus episodes as side dishes. Both Working Man's Dead and American Beauty are celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year and we are happy to celebrate with all of you. You can always get the latest episodes and link to your favorite 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 fully dive into in the podcast. Get you some hey, please help this podcast by subscribing hitting that like button and if you dug it, leave us a review. Thank you very, 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, 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@disney dead.net have you checked out the new batch of Angel Share audio yet? Out now are the full band demos for American Beauty, and you can hear early live in the studio acoustic versions of the American Beauty songs recorded just before the band went into Wally Hiders in San Francisco to lay them down for real. Be sure to check out the American Beauty Angel Share audio at your favorite streaming service or download provider. Well, back in 1980, the dead were celebrating their 15th anniversary, and to celebrate, the boys played runs of shows in both San Francisco at the Warfield and in New York City at Radio City Music Hall. In this bonus episode, we celebrate the now 40th anniversary of that 15th anniversary, the recordings of those runs yielding not one, but two killer live albums, the acoustic Reckoning and the wonderfully electric Dead set. And dig this, we've got your All Hallows Eve plans sussed out for you. Join David Lemieux and Gary Lambert on Friday, October 30th at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific for what is sure to be a very funny shakedown stream pre show with longtime Deadhead and comedian Al Franken. The main feature will be Dead Ahead, recorded at Radio City Music hall in New York City on October 30th and 31st, 1980, which was hosted by Al Franken himself, along with his comedy partner Tom Davis, on the evening of the 31st. Here to let us in on all the backstory is your friend and mine, Jesse Jarno.
- [04:12]
Narrator / Host
At least at my current space time coordinates and perhaps yours. It's autumn, and when it's autumn, that means it's time for acoustic Dead.
- [04:27]
Jesse Jarno
In the timbers of Mario, the wolves are running red. The winner was so hot and cold.
- [04:37]
Richard Loren
Froze 10ft beneath the ground. Don't Marry Me.
- [04:48]
Narrator / Host
This month marks the 40th anniversary of reckoning and dead set. The Grateful Dead's live acoustic and electric double LP is recorded at San Francisco's Warfield Theater and New York's Radio City Music hall in the fall of 1980. And this Halloween also marks the 40th anniversary of dead Ahead, the simulcast from Radio City with comedians Al Franken and Tom Davis coming soon to a shakedown stream near you. Released on VHS and LaserDisc in 1981, it became a perennial on PBS pledge drives and a staple in dorm rooms everywhere. The four discs of Reckoning and Dead Set became arguably the Dead's first major live release since Europe 72. This is the story of how the Grateful Dead's 15th anniversary shows became a landmark in the band's history. Here's former senator Al Franken. He'll be back later.
- [05:35]
Jesse Jarno
I put together a Spotify list I don't know, a few weeks ago, both for Deadheads and people who hadn't really hadn't heard the Dead. And so I opened with Dark Hollow from Reckoning. I wanted to do that because, you know, sometimes people who don't know the Dead at all, they don't know who they are, and they think, oh, they're heavy metal or something. I don't know what they are. And the musicianship is so evident there from the acoustic set. So I started with that. So I wanted to suck those people.
- [06:07]
Al Franken
In and say, these guys are great musicians.
- [06:11]
Jesse Jarno
I'd rather be in some dark high.
- [06:16]
Richard Loren
Where the sun don't ever shine Good.
- [06:22]
Rich Mahan
To see when another man's dark and.
- [06:27]
Richard Loren
To know you won't Never been mine.
- [06:32]
Narrator / Host
New Yorker staff writer Nick Palmgarden.
- [06:34]
Jesse Jarno
A big album for us actually was Reckoning. It was acoustic Grateful Dead.
- [06:38]
Richard Loren
And it was.
- [06:38]
Jesse Jarno
That was another entry point where it was like. It was clean. You could hear what they were doing. You could hear the song Craft. It wasn't too boomy. You'd hear the lyrics. And it introduced my whole gang to a whole bunch of songs that may not have been the rotation on a lot of other stuff. And really, I mean, it was basically them reprising the thing that they had done 10 years earlier in the Working Mans and American Beauty stage when they rediscovered their roots and were playing acoustic sets and playing traditional American music more on the nose than they had before. And it kind of creates that bridge for you as someone trying to understand where this band's coming from, what they've been doing. You know, they're playing, you know, old Appalachian ballads and folk English songs mixed in with, you know, with blues songs and then their own compositions like Birdsong or whatever. They're, you know, kind of more experimental, I guess you'd call it. You know, Reckoning is still like a foundational dead text for me.
- [07:37]
Richard Loren
Yeah.
- [07:38]
Jesse Jarno
Even thinking about it right now, you know, I just, like, get chills just thinking about listening to it. You can hear that they are much better musicians in 1980 than they were in 1970. They're more sophisticated musicians by far. Obviously, the instruments and the micing of the instruments is better, but in terms of, you know, like, the things that Weir can do on an acoustic guitar, the dynamics, you know, Garcia's acoustic guitar playing is frustrating sometimes. He's a. You know, he has that plonk thing that he does, you know, technically imperfect. It's part of the charm. But, you know, I think he's doing things that are more interesting on guitar in some ways than the presentation in 70 was more, like, straightforward. Like, we're playing these songs now. You know, I'm thinking of, like. Like a Wake Up Little Susie from, You know, it's. It's like we're doing it. We're like two guys doing It. Whereas you think of like the, you know, the Birdsong Outro jam on Reckoning. I mean, that's like rich ensemble acoustic, experimental music.
- [09:06]
Narrator / Host
The Grateful Dead's 15th anniversary shows became a milestone for the band, creating music that became part of their official canon. And a whole bushel of new firsts along the way. Before the eight shows at Radio City, Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia gave a short press conference.
- [09:20]
Richard Loren
Guess it's you and me, bub Bob.
- [09:23]
Narrator / Host
The shows were being advertised as 15th anniversary retrospectives. That's like pure fiction pop culture. That's another thing we're not doing on purpose. The truth of the matter is that.
- [09:35]
Jesse Jarno
As long as we play, we've always.
- [09:36]
Narrator / Host
Played some amount of everything we've ever played.
- [09:38]
Richard Loren
You know, we're just playing as many of our old songs as we can remember. Yeah, we always do.
- [09:42]
Al Franken
Yeah, right.
- [09:43]
Narrator / Host
We have a huge number of songs.
- [09:45]
Jesse Jarno
And we remember lots of them.
- [09:46]
Richard Loren
Sometimes 15 year retrospective business was somebody else's.
- [09:51]
Narrator / Host
Then why the acoustic performances, guys?
- [09:53]
Richard Loren
It's a difficult thing to do with my conventional microphones and stuff.
- [09:56]
Narrator / Host
We found these snazzy new guitars that they make now that are acoustic, electrical.
- [10:01]
Richard Loren
Dig this.
- [10:02]
Narrator / Host
There's another reason we're playing in theaters, you know, these are theaters. Like normally we play arenas in these colossal, gigantic places where if you had an acoustic, even an electric acoustic guitar, it would feed back horrendously.
- [10:13]
Richard Loren
Let's let him fix the PA for a minute. Hey, it won't do anything if you don't mess around with.
- [10:21]
Jesse Jarno
Was okay until you started messing with it.
- [10:23]
Al Franken
Yeah, you idiot.
- [10:25]
Richard Loren
The technical problems involved in it are just.
- [10:27]
Jesse Jarno
They're hopeless in a really big place.
- [10:29]
Narrator / Host
I mean, at least they're hopeless for us. Somebody else might be able to.
- [10:31]
Richard Loren
I think we could do it. I think we could do.
- [10:33]
Narrator / Host
They wouldn't. But for 25 nights in the fall of 1980, in smaller venues, the Dead themselves would rarely or never play again. It was glorious. Also, never trust a prankster. For a slightly more straightforward account of what happened, let's start with Richard Loren. After working with Olden in the Way and other Garcia side trips, Richard started managing the Grateful Dead in the late 70s. You can read a full account of his time with the Dead, the Jefferson Airplane and others, and in his fantastic memoir, High Notes, which you can order.
- [11:04]
Richard Loren
Via highnotes.org Around June of 1980, we booked a show in Boulder with a promoter named Barry Fay, and he. We did two nights there in order to bolster ticket sales. He announced it as the 15th anniversary of the founding of the Grateful Dead. Wow. You know. Oh, really? No kidding? He said, yes. He says, you know, Phil joined the band and the Warlocks at the time, and that was the date of the 65. And that's when the band formed. Okay, great.
- [11:35]
Narrator / Host
Grateful dead biographer Dennis McNally, nobody bothered.
- [11:38]
Richard Loren
To tell the band that the audience was expecting something special for the 15th anniversary. Band didn't know it was the 15th anniversary. So at the end of the first.
- [11:46]
Narrator / Host
Night, there was two nights at Folsom Field.
- [11:48]
Richard Loren
And at the end of the first night, basically they sort of the man.
- [11:52]
Jesse Jarno
Going, boy, the audience was really off today. Rock Scully says, well, yeah, that's because.
- [11:59]
Richard Loren
You know, it was the 15th anniversary.
- [12:01]
Jesse Jarno
And you didn't do anything. And they went. It was. So the next day they, you know.
- [12:06]
Richard Loren
Put together a special opener that was.
- [12:09]
Jesse Jarno
Like a little better.
- [12:10]
Richard Loren
But then in the Grateful Dead way, they said, all right, well, if we're going to have an anniversary, let's work it up more seriously. And the end result was the series of shows, 13 at the Warfield, two in New Orleans and then a week.
- [12:27]
Jesse Jarno
Or so in New York, ending on Halloween, which was simulcast, I guess you'd.
- [12:32]
Richard Loren
Call it simulcast, to theaters on the East Coast.
- [12:36]
Narrator / Host
A decade and a half into the Dead's career, the 15th anniversary shows would become a peak of their own. Whether the band acknowledged the anniversary or not, the shows marked the end of some storylines and the beginning of others, along with the band's usual bundle of firsts. After finishing their summer tour in Maine the weekend after Labor Day, they reconvene at their Front street space in San Rafael for a few days of short acoustic rehearsals. Besides a one off 1978 benefit billed as Bob Weir and Friends, these would be their first acoustic set since late 1970. Here's a little bit of the band practicing to Lay me down at front street on September 14, 1980, released on the expanded version of Reckoning, debuted during the band's 1970 acoustic sets. They hadn't performed To Lay Me down live since 1974, one of the many songs they would revive. And they had a whole new sound with Brett Midland on acoustic piano. Stay tuned to the good old Grateful Dead cast for a lot more about this song.
- [13:42]
Richard Loren
To lay me down to lay me down.
- [13:58]
Narrator / Host
One last time in San Francisco, the band called in promoter Bill Graham, their longtime collaborator. Here's Dead manager Richard Loren.
- [14:09]
Richard Loren
He took out a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, you know, plastered with his famous quote, they're not the best at what they do. They're the only ones that do what they do. So this quote, of course, enigmatic, became familiar with Deadheads for forever, right? And they recognized it. And the ad made no mention of the Grateful Dead that were going to perform at the Warfield Theater because we'd made an arrangement. He said, okay, I want to do a show. I said, well, let's do the Warfield Theater. So we set, you know, a week of dates, the end of September into October to do some shows there. When the dates were set at the Warfield, I immediately called John Shear. Now, John Shear was a pilot as tour director for us. I was manager at the time and I'd been an agent before that when I was employed as their manager, you know, we turned over all the booking activities to John and he took care of all that for us. So I called John, I said, John, I said, you know, I said, you know, Bill's going to do this 15th anniversary show here, coming up with something equally impressive, spectacle in New York. He says, we might be able to get into Radio City Music. What? Radio City Musical. The most conservative place you could ever imagine you could ever play, especially for a rock band like the Grateful Dead. You know, do G rated films and Rockettes and, you know, the manager never allowed much of freaks like us in here, you know, this is really weird, you know, I said, well, maybe. He said, I think they might, you know, he thought, he said. Because he said, and I learned that they were trying to. The management and the owners of the Race Musical were trying to hang on to the place because it was bankrupt and they need, and they needed the money to keep it up, you know, John Bellucci, old friends of the Dead from the day, sort of Saturday Night Live delivered a commentary on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Edition or Weekend Update, whatever it's called. And it was a public outcry. People took it over and the place was preserved as a New York City landmark.
- [16:04]
Narrator / Host
Thank you, John, argued Belushi, if they need more office space, why don't they tear down Roseland or CBGB's? They're fire traps. Anyway, it's from the April 8, 1978 episode. And he makes a great case.
- [16:15]
Richard Loren
It was unthinkable, but it basically happened. And we booked eight concerts over 10 days, ending on Halloween night. And as grateful that famous for their many firsts, this was the first performance by a rock band in Radio City's musical history.
- [16:32]
Narrator / Host
Before the shows even happened, the Radio City gigs would produce another first for the Dead. Tickets went on sale at the venue box office and Ticketron outlets on the morning of Monday, September 22, when New York media arrived at their midtown offices, they couldn't help but notice the Dead freaks that had been camping on the sidewalk outside the box office for upwards of three days. It became a news sensation, perhaps the first nationwide coverage of the Deadhead phenomenon. An Associated Press story ran coast to coast. The Hare Krishnas arrived and passed out. Halva and plum juice. ABC sent a news team.
- [17:07]
Jesse Jarno
Alright, my name is UJ Pastrana and I'm waiting here for Grateful Dead.
- [17:11]
Narrator / Host
I've been here.
- [17:12]
Jesse Jarno
I waited online for three days for these tickets.
- [17:15]
Narrator / Host
Tonight is my 75th concert.
- [17:17]
Richard Loren
The Dead care about their fans and they play music so that their fans lives. They make everybody feel good.
- [17:23]
Jesse Jarno
I try to. They go to every concert they perform.
- [17:25]
Richard Loren
Because they're the best at what they do.
- [17:27]
Jesse Jarno
The Dead are just beautiful. They make beautiful music.
- [17:30]
Richard Loren
They offer something that nobody else offers.
- [17:32]
Jesse Jarno
And there's a family, a big family, the Dead.
- [17:36]
Rich Mahan
You know, that's where most of my money goes.
- [17:38]
Richard Loren
2,000 fans waited. They camped out for three days on the sidewalk just to snag the 50,000 tickets for the shows. Cab drivers were screaming at them. And it was like. Because it was insane. It was insane. They didn't create any problems. They never did create problems, you know.
- [17:54]
Narrator / Host
From 1980 on, Deadheads were often just as much a part of the story as the Dead themselves. And in the late 80s, after Richard Loren's departure, the crowds did get to be a problem. But not in 1980. The shows at the Warfield opened a few days later in San Francisco on September 25th. Here's Bay Area Dead freak Erik Nelson.
- [18:13]
Rich Mahan
When the news dropped that the Grateful.
- [18:15]
Richard Loren
Dead were going to be playing the.
- [18:16]
Rich Mahan
Warfield, that was a huge deal. Dylan had come in, was coming in too. There was a lot happening at the Warfield. That was Bill Graham's brand new venue and stomping ground. So tickets vanished very quickly, and I'm one of the ones who bought them. But I'll never forget opening night, going into that wonderful, wonderful space for the first time, taking my seat. And what was instantly different was there was a curtain dropped. So there was. You couldn't. The curtain was down and right there. That's not a usual Grateful Dead environment. So finally the house lights come down. You hear this backstage, you know, moving things around and creaking. And then all of a sudden the curtain rises and it's the boys sitting acoustic with that great lineup, and they launch into Birdsong. And it was just this. Everyone was like. It had been 10 years, really, since a proper Grateful Dead acoustic set. So it was this mass exhalation and inhalation of oh, my God. And then they went off. And the first night is very credible performance. They had it down, I seem to think. I saw nine of the shows, and I know I saw seven of the Dylan shows in that period, and I saw four Springsteen shows, all in a five week period in October. So I was a zombie by the end of that month. It was a great month in San Francisco, to say the least.
- [19:40]
Narrator / Host
Here's Steve silverman, who caught 10 of the knights.
- [19:42]
Richard Loren
Rumors had been circulating since a show in Alaska that there was going to be an extended run at the War Field, although it ended up being even more shows than were initially announced that would include acoustic sets. So it was not a complete shock when we walked in and saw stools on the stage and a harpsichord. And not only were the acoustic sets amazing, they weren't just like revamped, you know, folk sets from Mother McCree's or whatever. You know, it sounded like they had had the experience of being that tight electric band all through the 70s. The acoustic sets were not just like, oh, they're doing, you know, nostalgia for the old pokey days. Like, it was actually really hot and really tight in a way that was not just, you know, looking back to the hoot Nanny days or something. If you read the contemporaneous press accounts, they say, like, tickets were very hard to get. But if you were kind of a longtime Bay Area Deadhead, which very much still felt like a relatively small family at that point, you could not only get tickets, but you could get tickets pretty much on the day. So I do remember saying to my friends, like, oh, you want to go down and see the Dead tonight? It was like going to Fisherman's Wharf. Like, it was something that was always there, you know, and not only that, but because Bill Graham had put so much memorabilia in the hallways in the auditorium, and there were even on the inside of the marquee as you left. I believe it said, one man gathers while another man spills. So the whole thing was like a temple of Deadhead dumb. And so you were rewarded by going to these shows with a feeling of continuity, that you were a part of this deep history that had been going at that point by, I guess, 15 years that, you know, all this stuff had built up that you were a part of, and you could see it on the walls. And, you know, I would say at that point, it's almost hard to remember, but almost everybody felt like they. They knew, you know, probably Half the audience, like, you would recognize your friends who were at all the Bay Area shows, like the Kaiser, you know, and kind of those smaller venues. You'd see the same people, you know, year after year. I mean, eventually we all saw each other grow up, get gray hair, have kids, you know, get married. So you felt like you were part of this story that the band was a part of because of this collection of memorabilia decorating the hallways. And, you know, Market street is not. It's not lovely, you know, it's kind of a windblown wasteland of wasteoids. So once you were in, it felt very warm and cozy, just like the Grateful Dead.
- [22:40]
Narrator / Host
Promoter Bill Graham was celebrating 15 years in the business, and he was still going full steam ahead. Graham's attention to detail was legendary, and nowhere was that more obvious than at the 15th anniversary shows at the Warfield. Dead. Manager Richard Lorenzo, he took, you know.
- [22:56]
Richard Loren
Great pains to put together something really special. He installed things like speakers in the lobby so the bands could dance. You know, something that's, you know, old hat now, but, you know, in those days, you didn't have speakers in the lobby, you know, but he collected, you know, a lot of memorabilia and he filled the wall space and he. He enlisted the services of the assistant manager kind of person, Peter Barsati and his partner, Dennis Larkin, they designed this. This uncle. This Uncle Sam skeleton with Uncle Sam hats, skeletons, you know, a poster. He had, you know, balloons everywhere. There was. The place smelled with marijuana. He was very, very loose, you know, even back then.
- [23:37]
Jesse Jarno
It's nice the way Bill Graham has it set up. Yeah, everyone appreciates it for sure.
- [23:43]
Rich Mahan
The lobby's all decked out and it's all.
- [23:47]
Jesse Jarno
Yeah, just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. All the flowers and the films.
- [23:57]
Narrator / Host
Recently, Graham's production notes for several of the Warfield shows surfaced online. You can find the link@dead.net deadcast and they're absolutely extraordinary. If you've never heard Bill Graham's speaking voice before, though, we need to rectify that before I read a few segments. This is from a 1977 interview.
- [24:15]
Richard Loren
I have the privilege of renting for.
- [24:18]
Jesse Jarno
A day this facility. I have decided to take these artists.
- [24:21]
Richard Loren
Put them on that stage, and through advertising and publicity or desire, on the.
- [24:25]
Jesse Jarno
Parts of other humans, I will have these people come to the same meeting place. And at a given time, these people will affect these people, and these people will affect these people.
- [24:34]
Richard Loren
Hopefully, they will have had a good time. They will have had a good time. I will have had a good time. They spent some money.
- [24:40]
Al Franken
They also made Some money.
- [24:41]
Richard Loren
I made some money.
- [24:42]
Narrator / Host
Nobody loses every night. Graham filed a few pages of notes with the staff with a deeply incredible eye for detail. We need a mirror ball with a speed control device, he noted one night. A few nights later, Graham had a revelation. He wrote to his staff, I'm finally beginning to realize that these shows in actuality comprise the most important piece of work this company has ever done. I can't speak for the rest of you, but I know that's what it is to me. After 15 years, we finally have some knowledge as to how best to deal with our fellow man. These shows are giving us the opportunity to handle a situation and give us a 2nd, 3rd, and 15th chance to improve on the painting. Even though Dylan played 14 nights here, due to the fact that the only thing that was happening was happening on the stage, the rest of the building was unalive. The Grateful Dead and their audience allow us to be involved in this piece of theater and we have the opportunity to play director of the non musical choreography with 15 shots to make it better and better. When you realize how much better the third evening was than the premiere night, you get the picture. We're used to trying to hit a home run on one swing and that's it. This is not the case here. To me, this is a joyous piece of theater. The boundaries are much more far reaching than I ever dreamed. And still a few nights after that, Bill Graham decided he wanted to document the occasion. We've all put too much love, labor and creativity into this project, and I need to insist that we have it on record, he said. Graham's calls found their way to Video West, a pioneering music television outfit with shows on local Bay Area television. And at Video West. Those calls found their way to a staff member who'd already been to multiple shows of the Warfield Run, Eric Nelson.
- [26:17]
Rich Mahan
I was the in house Deadhead at Video west, and I jumped at the chance and all the instruction I got was just cover what's interesting, just go and, you know, we're proud of what we're doing, show it off to people. So I think for over a couple of nights, but it might only have been one night. We went and filmed everything and focused on the, quote, odian details, if you will, of what went into a concert. At that time. It was just me, a cameraman and a sound guy. I won't say state of the art equipment. If you look closely, the microphone is duct taped with foam insulation duct taped around it. Hardly a super pro outfit, but we all looked like Deadheads. I was the only actual Deadhead among the crew of three.
- [27:00]
Narrator / Host
You can see the resulting half hour documentary on the Creative Differences Channel and Vimeo. Search for Dead at Warfield the Dead Plane Acoustic.
- [27:08]
Rich Mahan
First time in 10 years. I've been 10 out of the 13.
- [27:12]
Richard Loren
And I'm staying for the last two. I didn't get in one night and I had to go home for two. But if I'd be here for everyone, I could kid.
- [27:31]
Rich Mahan
Bill had decided to do something very special, not unlike what he did for the Last Waltz four years earlier. So he was very proud. He turned the Warfield into a Grateful Dead museum. There were photo frame photographs everywhere, a lot of a memorabilia. It was very much the Bill Graham shrine to the Grateful Dead. He loved, loved the Grateful Dead and he felt that every venue he presided over was his living room and it was his house. So he was very proud of what he was doing. And he was just as proud of his sister who was running the snack bar and making fresh bagels for everybody, which, you know, Bill Graham tested the bagels out. Nothing was going to go out over that counter without being checked. And there's a great scene where Bill was playing camera shy because Bill Graham, but his sister grabs him and drags him into the shot and then he does that really sweet moment and it's time you remember. This is the guy who walked out of as his family was being exterminated in the Holocaust.
- [28:33]
Jesse Jarno
This is the guy who walks out.
- [28:35]
Rich Mahan
Of Europe and obviously I didn't know that his sister walked out with him.
- [28:39]
Narrator / Host
I can't say enough nice things about Eric's documentary. After working with Bill Graham as an in house videographer for several years, Eric would go on to a long and still continuing career as a documentarian, exploring a wide range of historical topics and working with Werner Herzog, Gore Vidal and many others. Along with his Warfield documentary, his hour long production about The New Year's 1980-1981 shows is also on Vimeo. He also hosts an All Dead radio show every Monday from 1 to 3pm on K Squid 90.7 FM in Santa Cruz. One place that Eric and his crew went was the basement of the Warfield where one could find the familiar faces of the Dead's engineering crew setting up their latest unfamiliar pieces of audio equipment. A new way to create live sonic imaging pioneered by Dan Healy and recorded by Betty Cantor Jackson, Bob Matthews and others. Here's the familiar voice of Bob Matthews who spoke to us extensively about making Working Man's Dead during the first season of the Dead Cast.
- [29:35]
Richard Loren
In the past, our live albums, we've always had to take tunes from different evenings, different locations. But the desire of this project was to be able to work in one.
- [29:45]
Rich Mahan
Or two locations for a good period of time. To be able to get settled into.
- [29:48]
Richard Loren
The groove and be able to sit back and just play night after night after night and be able to come up with something really a good five star performance evening. To be able to put that out totally rather than picking.
- [30:02]
Narrator / Host
It would turn out to be the last project with the Dead for both Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor Jackson, but it would be a fantastic one. With the expanded sound team led by Dan Healy, the tapes rolled away in the Warfield's basement.
- [30:14]
Richard Loren
One of the most striking things about those shows that was kind of surprising was that it sounded much more intimate. Like it sounded like they were using a sound system that was specifically intended for that room. And that had a couple of interesting effects. The acoustic set sounded great. The electric sets, and I'm not dissing them because I love them and it was one of the high points of my life. But the electric set sounded a little bit miniaturized, you know, like it didn't have that huge, you know, kind of what would later become an arena filling sound. It sounded very kind of precise and crisp and Jewel like. And so, you know, things like acoustic guitar strings or particularly Brent's Fender Rhodes. I'm not sure if it's an actual Fender Rhodes or a synth emulation, but. Oh, Dino Rose. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But you know that I think it really, the sound of those shows really put that Brent sound in the foreground. And it was. It was just lovely. And what's interesting is that Phil's base, which, you know, it sounds clear on the files on Archive, but what you don't get is that it was very punchy acoustically in the room. So you felt like the Dead had kind of, you know, put their ship in a bottle a bit and made it a kind of smaller sound for a smaller, more intimate setting. But that was kind of nice, you know. But then you didn't get like the big, you know, playing jams like at Winterland, you know, in 74 or whatever. It sounded smaller, but in a kind of a nice way, if that makes any sense. One of the tracks from 1014 80, which was, I believe, the climactic night of the war film Run, ended up on the box set so Many Roads, which I co produced with Blair Jackson and David Gans. And there's a very specific reason why that track ended up on the box set. Besides the fact that it's one of the two best versions of the songs that I can remember, it's just so tight. It's like whipping when they, when they transition into the, into the kind of waltz time section, like it just does not get tighter than that. And the reason why that's on the box set is that we knew, everybody in the hall knew that they were recording an album. We didn't know it was going to be two different vinyl sets, Dead Set and Reckoning, separating the electric and acoustic music. I think we thought it was going to be a just a, you know, maybe a 4 CD, you know, set or something. But when they played the Let It Grow wheel, music Never Stopped to, I believe, close the first electric set, maybe on 1014, 80, I was absolutely certain that that jamming sequence was going to be on the album. There was no question, in part because it was a fantastic live version of the Wheel, Let It Grow with Sublime. And then Music Never Stopped was, as I say, of the two best ones I ever heard. And so when that jam was over, I said to myself, well, okay, at least we know what one side of the record is going to be, you know, and then, and then it wasn't. And it was massively frustrating. I mean, I listened to those records, they're good, their performances were well chosen, but it feels chopped up, you know, it doesn't have the flow of actual sets. So I put that music Never Stop because I thought it was sort of a, a karmic error that I wanted to try to fix. And I still love it. I just listened to it 10 minutes ago and it sounds as good as it ever did.
- [34:32]
Narrator / Host
Bill Graham made it special, right up to the point when it was time for the music to finally stop. After 15 shows, Richard Loren, when the.
- [34:39]
Richard Loren
Band finally returned to the stage for the final encore, he did his big thing. He filled, you know, he put a champagne bottle on a table and glasses and turn the lights up on the spotlight on the audience and everybody was drinking champagne. But last night at 10, 1480, Bill Graham had, you know, champagne distributed to the audience. I forget if it was for the 15th anniversary or somebody's birthday or something, but, you know, so we all like gave them, gave the band a toast with champagne. It was incredibly bonding and community building experience for Bay Area Deadheads.
- [35:14]
Narrator / Host
At the same New York press conference where Garcia and weir denied their 15th anniversary shows, for 15th anniversary shows, they also announced something else new. The final night at Radio City. Halloween would be simulcast to 20 movie theaters. East of the Mississippi. We've actually been toying with the idea for a while. Somebody's actually done it before. The who have done it before.
- [35:34]
Al Franken
We've done it before with regular TV at home.
- [35:36]
Richard Loren
We've done it with the local educational. Ha ha.
- [35:39]
Al Franken
Educational channel.
- [35:41]
Narrator / Host
The Dead had begun looking for ways to stream their live shows before there was even a ground floor to get on at. They virtually built the foundation, beginning with a KMPX FM broadcast from the Carousel Ballroom in 1968. In 1970, as they were making American Beauty, the Dead participated in a quadraphonic KQED live television and radio simulcast from Winterland. Soon after, their managers began seriously pitching commercial and public television stations alike on doing Dead events to little avail, at least until the later 70s. On New Year's 1978 into 79, an all night show from Winterlands closing went out on local television. But they never beamed themselves into movie theaters. Manager Richard Loren.
- [36:24]
Richard Loren
We knew it was going to sell out for sure and it did, you know, 6,000 people a night for eight nights. There was a complete sellout. So again, first time in the history that a rock band simulcast their shows. So we simulcast the performance to 20 theaters with full concert sound from Chicago to as far south as Florida. You know, this way, you know, Deadheads throughout the United States, at least on the eastern part, eastern coast, were able to enjoy, had a little Halloween treatment.
- [36:58]
Narrator / Host
East coast promoter John Scher came up with a plan.
- [37:01]
Richard Loren
John thought he could get the people that, you know that did the fights, the heavyweight championship fights, Muhammad Ali and them, you know, it would be filmed or shot at the site and then it would be shown all over the United States and the world on screen. Don't dare show up at any of the theaters where the video simulcast is going to be happening unless you really expect to be scared to death because it's going to be very scary. Right on. So I mean, I mean if you have the guts to come to the video simulcast, come on to the simulcast. But I really don't think you can do it.
- [37:34]
Narrator / Host
Yeah, here's how Jerry described it to an interviewer the next year in St. Paul.
- [37:38]
Richard Loren
It was really an experimental idea, top to bottom. We did it, you know, mostly as a gesture to our audience to see if it wasn't some.
- [37:49]
Jesse Jarno
Something we could do apart from living on the road, you know what I mean? Something that would maybe allow us to be a little bit more selective and.
- [37:57]
Richard Loren
Also to see whether there was something.
- [37:59]
Jesse Jarno
Whether the experience would be, would have.
- [38:02]
Richard Loren
Any value to the concert goer to.
- [38:05]
Narrator / Host
Direct John Scher suggested Len Delamico, the 29 year old videographer who had led the closed circuit cruise at Cher's shows on the east coast for the past few years. It would begin a decade and a half partnership between Delameco and the dead. Becoming their in house video director, he was dispatched to San Francisco and made his way to the backstage door at the Warfield.
- [38:27]
Jesse Jarno
The word went out, when this guy shows up, you take, take charge of him and take care of him. So I was some boom, boom, boom. And there was some weird guy in shades backstage. Who are you? What do you want? I think of the wizard of Oz when they knock on the door and it opens, you know, wait here.
- [38:43]
Richard Loren
Boom.
- [38:44]
Jesse Jarno
Oh God. Parrish appears. Who I didn't know, and I didn't know what that meant, but means quite a lot. But he's a little forbidding and you know, when I became his friend and now that I can look back, I mean, he's a great actor. The crew was projecting a certain thing which is, you can't get by us, you have to kill us to get by us. And they protected the band. You know, Parrish is this wonderful lovable guy, but he had this image of being fearsome. Follow me. So I follow him through this labyrinth. The stuff that's going by me is like, is that. What did I just see? Was it two foot barn? What was that? Little kids and stuff. Boom, boom, door. And the door opens and smoke comes out and Steve steps in. It's a tiny little room. And I look and there's Garcia sitting right there smiling with a big fat doobie. The first thing that happens is, hey, I'm Jerry and I'm Len. And he's hands me this doobie. I've never seen anything that big. And I'm like, okay, if I don't suck on this, I'm probably out. I take this huge hit and 20, 30 seconds later, I'm just completely fucked up. I look around, there's nobody I recognize. All the seats are taken. On a. A road case sits this giant hulking Hell's angel, looking mean, you know, I'm like, okay. But they're all smoking and stuff. Jerry's working the room, he's come on and sit down. And Parrish says to the biker, joe, get up, give this guy your seat. And I'm like, no, no, no, don't do that.
- [40:26]
Richard Loren
It's okay.
- [40:28]
Jesse Jarno
But the guy got up and decided to sit down. But before they left, the ha was encouraged to give his message to Jerry. And so he Got very serious. He said, I bring a message from Sonny Barger, who I guess was imprisoned in Oakland. And Jerry's like, oh, it's like that scene in the Godfather where the guy is rehearsing what he's going to say. Sonny wishes you very well in this new run. This was the first day of the first show of that run. They had never done this before and all this other stuff. And Jerry's like, that's very sweet. Tell Sonny, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, what the fuck am.
- [41:06]
Richard Loren
I in the middle of?
- [41:07]
Jesse Jarno
But eventually, Steve clears the room. Cause we're getting to showtime. Parrish clears the room. And I get up and Jerry says, you stay. I'm like, okay, what's up with that? I don't know. We're not talking. He's got the big Martin and he's going through his warm up for an acoustic set, as any musician would do. Runs beautiful. This beautiful sound of this beautiful instrument. And I'm like, well, you know, shouldn't. Don't you want to be alone? And I. And he said, no, this is fine. And so I just started to relax. And then he played. I guess he was improvising beautiful, lyrical music. And it was smitten. Many years later, I realized that I was being methodically seduced. There was another director hovering around, but he didn't last the day. He probably turned down the joint. But, you know. And this went on for many minutes. 10 minutes or something. I'm just sitting there by myself. I'm the only person hearing this. And I'm an archivist. I'm like, I don't have a recorder. I won't even remember this. And then the door bursts open and Steve's like, we're on, we're on, we're on. And he jumps up with the guitar and leaves, and the door shuts. And I'm sitting there by myself. Eventually, somebody saved me and brought me to the front row of the Warfield balcony, right next to Healy and Brightman. Best seat in the house to watch the first show. And it was mayhem and it was fantastic. I mean, these guys are great musicians, you know, they're just the harmony, you know. Brent had been with them now for a year or more, and they had the sound and it was just fantastic. Then there were two more sets, you know, in the coming days. I was put up very nicely, you know, limos and everything. And, you know, meeting with Garcia was put in charge of this project by the band. So he was in charge of me. And so we would Meet. What are we going to do? You know, and we need hosts, we need help. We're not TV people. We need somebody to do.
- [43:04]
Richard Loren
Okay.
- [43:04]
Jesse Jarno
Franken and Davis, Saturday Night Live stars. Really? Okay, what kind of budget do we have for this? You know, I don't know. It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. That was another phrase you don't often hear, don't worry about the budget.
- [43:19]
Narrator / Host
At their press conference in New York, they also announced their co hosts, Franken and Davis. Franken and Davis. Our old pals Franken and Davis, former.
- [43:26]
Richard Loren
Deadheads, former Saturday Night Live fugitives, now hopeless, not bums out on the street, just like the rest of us are going to be involved in the simulcast where this. They'll be doing the blow by blow.
- [43:42]
Narrator / Host
As it were, through the magic of archival audio. But really, thanks to the incredible work and generosity of our friend David Ganz, here's the late Tom Davis. I very aggressively recommend Tom's incredible memoir, 39 years of short Term Memory Loss. And if you'd like to hear David's entire conversation with Tom Davis, we've posted a link@dead.net deadcast long before I met.
- [44:04]
Al Franken
The Grateful Dead, I was a Deadhead. And I do remember being very high at Winterland once and talking, I thought it was to God, I'm not sure. But I said, if there's any way I can work with these guys, I want to do it. And it's the most important thing to me. One or two other things. But that came true in 1980 because it started with a phone call from Jerry, which Jerry didn't call very often. Would you guys like to host us on a closed circuit broadcast on Halloween from Radio City? Let me think about that, Jerry, I'll get back to you. No, I just. Yes. Yeah, we'll do it.
- [44:44]
Narrator / Host
And please welcome to the Dead cast.
- [44:46]
Jesse Jarno
Al Franken, My partner, Tom Davis. We were a comedy team, Franken and Davis, and he was a Deadhead before me. I graduated college and we went out to LA together. And it was 1973, and he started playing the Dead for me. We drove out and I went, wow. And then we went to a concert in Santa Barbara and then we just kept going to concerts. We would go up and do, you know, in the 70s, 74, 75, go up to Winterland and go up to San Francisco and do all four nights, right? Yeah. And, you know, it's transcendent, the connection you feel with the people that are there. You feel connected to these people, certainly, but also kind of, you just Go, oh, I wish humanity could be like this. And then I would do a lot of thinking during it. A lot of dancing, did a lot of thinking at these things. I used to do a lot of writing actually, for snl when I was at the concert, I was very free associative. They were actually productive for me, the music just made me. Sometimes there was a drug involved too.
- [46:02]
Narrator / Host
At Saturday Night Live, Starting with its 1975 debut, Franken and Davis were paid one combined salary and became the show's in house Deadheads. That didn't mean they just took acid and cranked out comedy. But that did happen once.
- [46:15]
Al Franken
There was only one time when we took acid on Tuesday to write a sketch. Only one time during a show week. Tuesday was the big night and we couldn't think of anything. And at midnight I said, al, we gotta do something. I took the big half. Five hours later we had written the Final Days sketch, the Nixon Final Days. That was the LSD sketch. How about that?
- [46:40]
Narrator / Host
The Final Days would be one of Saturday Night Live's most legendary sketches, capturing the surreal end of a doomed presidency, with Dan Aykroyd's Richard Nixon going full paranoid, conversing with the paintings on the Oval Office walls. Naturally, Franken and Davis pressured their boss to get their favorite band to play on Saturday Night Live.
- [46:58]
Al Franken
Lauren was standing next to G.E. smith, and they're both my good friends. This is 1978 in the spring, and 1978 was a great year for me. Probably the peak of my career, really, or certainly my influence at Saturday Night Live. I just thought it was the right time to pop the question. Hey, Lorne, can we book the Grateful Dead? I think they should be on the show. Lauren goes, hmm, weren't they big in the 60s? And then he turns to ge ge do you think we should book the Grateful Dead? And GE Goes, they're not happening. I said, lorne, they sell more tickets than anyone else. And Tom, this is television. No one knows who they are. So that week I wrote a sketch with Gilda and Lorraine giving testimonials in some commercial parody that we were doing live. Gilda was Candace Brightman and Lorraine was Donna Garcho, because I always use real names. So the following it got on the air, and the following Monday, I get summoned to the boss's office. And Davis, did you use real Grateful Dead names in that thing you wrote? I went, yeah, I always use real names. Well, don't do that again, because I got all these phone calls. I said, lauren, you told me nobody knows who they Are. This is television. He goes, all right, I'll book them, but I'll book them in the fall. And true to his word, he booked them in the fall. That's how they got on, thanks to me.
- [48:23]
Narrator / Host
The episode in question was probably May 11, 1978, with host Richard Dreyfuss. Lorraine Newman appears as UCLA doctor Candace Brightman, the name of the Dead's longtime lighting designer, in a sketch called Sex Test. It's edgy. Thanks a bunch to my friend Tom for helping to figure it out. Gilda Radner doesn't actually appear as Donna God show, but earlier that spring, on March 11, opposite host Art Garfunkel, John Belushi played a KISS roadie named Steve Parrish. The Dead appeared in the fall.
- [48:54]
Al Franken
The music is blocked at, like, 11 in the morning. And our director, Davey Wilson, was an old school director, and he likes to know where you're going to be at, what part of the song and stuff. So he was in the control room and they were doing the rehearsing. And of course, Jerry was doing it differently every time. And sometimes his back was to the camera, like, Jerry, wouldn't you. Where are you going to be when you do your solo? And Jerry goes, I don't know. I'll click Jerry, don't you want to be on camera? Not particularly, no. I don't give a shit. Click, you know, and that was. And then when they. When they got on the air, Jerry was shot out of a cannon. And he played every camera. He knew what every camera was going on. He looked right into the lens and he articulated every word perfectly. Like, he was like, I'll show you how to do it.
- [49:52]
Richard Loren
And.
- [49:53]
Al Franken
And you could see him having fun. He loved. After all that and giving everybody trouble, who enjoyed it the most? You look at the tape and tell me.
- [50:26]
Richard Loren
Trouble with you is the trouble with me, Guys.
- [50:32]
Jesse Jarno
Almost before I knew it, it was like, well, we'll have him out here tomorrow. Well, frankly, it was a beer tomorrow. And I'm like, all right.
- [50:40]
Al Franken
It started by. They flew us out. They did a week at the Warfield, which is a very nice venue to see the Grateful Dead, and got us a room at the. Everybody had rooms at the Holiday Inn because it was right nearby. The first couple of days, we just enjoyed the show. We were walking around the venue, and we knew we were going to pre tape some stuff for the broadcast, and so we had a crew. We had to write something and pre record it there. But the first couple of days, we were just wandering around the venue going, who? Oh, Boy, they sound good. Isn't this great? But we kept gravitating toward this place under the stage where there was one young biker whose sole job it was was to keep people who couldn't stop talking away from the Leslie speakers that Brent had hooked up down below the stage with a microphone hooked up to the Leslie speakers. And so this guy was supposed to keep people from talking nearby because it was for mixing the album. And we just kept going down there and he finally broke a chair leg off and chased us away because we just kept forgetting because we were having so much fun. Oh, I got a great idea. Let's do this, let's do that.
- [51:55]
Jesse Jarno
Everything just happened very fast. The writing. The writing was just me and them. But, you know, I was just there to be a director to say, how are you going to do this? Or, you know, but I wasn't going to tell them what to write. I had an opinion and so did Jerry. A very important one. Franklin and Davis were obviously devoted to each other. They had. They were friends from childhood, and they were like one person, kind of.
- [52:21]
Narrator / Host
In its original and widespread usage, Jerry's kids were the young beneficiaries of comedian Jerry Lewis annual Labor Day telethons in support of the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
- [52:31]
Richard Loren
We have some beautiful kids of mine who would love to march in front of these cameras and say thank you. Personally, I have for the last almost 25 years been their spokesman. So I have to say thank you for them. We will not march them in front of the cameras. We maintain that they have a tremendous integrity and a dignity which we feel we must uphold. And we will march in front of the cameras. We will sweat in front of the cameras, and we will work our hearts out in front of the cameras so that. So that they can sit with complete integrity and dignity.
- [52:59]
Narrator / Host
That bit was from 1974. In the capable hands of Frankenhe Davis, the concept evolved where you might think it would and a few places you might not.
- [53:08]
Jesse Jarno
Tom and I filled in during the breaks. It was a fundraiser for Jerry's Kids. And Jerry's Kids were deadheads that we had a poster, you know, like the representative deadhead, this guy who fell out of the second deck of the.
- [53:25]
Richard Loren
At the Spectrum.
- [53:26]
Jesse Jarno
You know, he went to Egypt and didn't get into the show, that kind of thing. And so the. The conceit was we were doing this Telethon at these 15 venues.
- [53:38]
Al Franken
We did a Jerry's Kids thing, you know, with some pathetic. Please send money to these people. They want to go see the show and they need some help and. And Jerry's Kids. And we're testing my memory now, but then we had a thing, a special gift for someone who donated the most or something, would get Jerry's finger. And so we had Jerry putting his other hand, using his other hand, putting his finger through the hole in the bottom of the little jewel box, you know, with the cotton. And Jerry would hold, yes, here's my finger. And it'll go to whoever, you know, does something or wins the lottery or whatever we were going to do. And of course, during the course of the evening, the finger disappears and you see it wiggling around in the background while we're doing other interviews and stuff. The finger kept crawling around. So it was a running joke through the show that, where's Jerry's finger? You know, it was crawling around.
- [54:34]
Jesse Jarno
That was a bit where, when I heard, I'm like, I don't know. Really? You're going to ask Jerry if we can make comedy out of his fucking missing finger? Yeah, we're going to do it. He'll love it. And when he did it, it wiggles. And I'm like, cut, Jerry. The idea is that it's not. And Tom's like, no, no, no, no, that was better. And then it comes across and we use the music from Jaws.
- [54:58]
Narrator / Host
In the course of putting together the Jerry's Kid sketch, the Grateful Dead found another piece of their particular puzzle. Dennis McNally. The year before, he'd published his first book, Desolate angel, the first serious biography of Jack Kerouac.
- [55:11]
Richard Loren
And they eventually picked a guy named.
- [55:12]
Jesse Jarno
Tumbleweed who looked like a Jerry's Kid, right?
- [55:14]
Richard Loren
You know, long haired. And eventually that was cut out as being too much, too complicated or something.
- [55:20]
Jesse Jarno
But in the process of doing that.
- [55:21]
Richard Loren
They auditioned 10 or 12 people that Eileen Long sort of gathered up from.
- [55:25]
Jesse Jarno
The office who were deadheads who had.
- [55:27]
Richard Loren
Good stories to gather material. And I was one of those people. And in the middle of it, I mentioned to Jerry that. Not in the middle of it, about.
- [55:35]
Jesse Jarno
One minute in and fairly elegantly, I.
- [55:38]
Richard Loren
Thought I mentioned that.
- [55:41]
Jesse Jarno
Oh, by the way, I wrote this.
- [55:42]
Richard Loren
Book about Jack Kerouac and sent it to you.
- [55:44]
Jesse Jarno
Did you ever get it?
- [55:45]
Richard Loren
And he got all excited and we bonded. And after a while, Davis got tired of listening to Kerouac stories because that's.
- [55:53]
Jesse Jarno
Not what the business at hand was about. Jerry would have been glad to spend.
- [55:57]
Richard Loren
The rest of the day, you know, raving about Kerouac. And two months later, long story short, he sent Rock and Alan Tristram to meet with me. And they said, jerry says, why don't you do us?
- [56:07]
Jesse Jarno
Why don't you write a book about the grateful dead?
- [56:09]
Narrator / Host
Dennis McNally began work a few months later before being sidetracked for a decade, shanghaied into a parallel career as the Grateful Dead's publicist in New York. The Dead took over midtown and moved into Radio City Music Hall.
- [56:22]
Jesse Jarno
They brought their mixing board from their own studio, because it had to be that good, and took a room up in the loft in Radio City. They had to knock out pieces of wall to get that mixing board up. This is the most valuable theater in the world. And they have. They have memorial nicks that the dad.
- [56:38]
Narrator / Host
Made this, you know, Richard Loren.
- [56:40]
Richard Loren
We also ran into, you know, some problems with the management at Radio City. Once we went there, this crew came up to us and, hey, management's crazy. They. They need to talk to you there. They're all freaked out. I said, what's going on? So we better go up to the office. So John and I went up to the office. Their suits, their lawyers, management people were there. They were grim faced, and we got to cancel the show. I said, what are you talking about? You have a contract. Cancel the show. What? Cancel the show? He said, well, he says, you've desecrated this historic site. What do you mean? So he's talking about the skeleton posters that were designed for the Warfield. Peter and Dennis designed one for the regular City Music hall, which was, of course, the COVID of the video. And I'm sure it was on also the. Yeah, it was a cover also of the double album. So they were freaked because here was Radio City Music hall with two skeletons.
- [57:29]
Jesse Jarno
They said, we think it implies the death of Radio City, which no one had ever thought that it meant that. I mean, why would it mean. I don't know. I heard this from Jerry's personal manager, Sue Stevens. She kept laughing throughout the story. So the comeback to them was when you allowed the Grateful Dead to hire the room. Did you notice that in the name of the band was the word Dead? Are you unfamiliar with their iconography? They're one of the biggest bands in America. We sent you some iconography. It's on the letterhead, actually.
- [58:03]
Richard Loren
Finally, we settled. We agreed to not sell the posters, and that was it. We may have not sold the posters there, but we continued to sell them because there was nothing wrong with them and they never sued us. I think it was just. Yeah, I think it was just the legal grandstand, quite frankly.
- [58:20]
Narrator / Host
The lawyers patrolled the venue and found their way into the taping of one of the show's centerpiece sketches in which Al Franken portrays Henry Kissinger as a concert taper.
- [58:28]
Jesse Jarno
There's Henry there, and with Tom on the stage, empty. Empty. Radio City, middle of the day, rehearsing and then shooting. And then my production manager comes over, he says, len, we have to stop shooting this. And I just said, what are you talking about? And he says, see those four guys over there? And I looked over and I swear to God, it was like in a Coen brothers film. There were four guys in black suits and ties. They had attache cases. It's like central casting. Send up four lawyers. Yeah, briefcases. Yeah, ties. Good. And there they were. And I'm like, is this something. It's not a gag. Okay, go over there, ask them what they're doing. Oh, I did. And they said, you can't shoot. You can't do that, Dr. Kissinger. And I said, well, why not? And he said, well, they said, that's, you know, it's not allowed. Background is that Kissinger was a product of the Rockefeller dynasty that created him. I just looked at those guys, I said, shelby, go over there and tell them to fuck off. And he went over polite. And they just left.
- [59:31]
Narrator / Host
In the midst of this, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir turned up on Good Morning America to promote the simulcast. We've posted a link@dead.net deadcast. It's pretty amazing. Imagine the brightest, cheeriest set for a television morning show you can imagine, and then drop Garcia and Weir into the middle of it. It looks like cgi. Here are these young people that.
- [59:51]
Richard Loren
I mean, he says, I spend all my money on going to these concerts.
- [59:54]
Al Franken
So do we, you know, I mean.
- [59:57]
Narrator / Host
It costs us as much to work.
- [59:59]
Jesse Jarno
Almost as we make working.
- [60:00]
Narrator / Host
And it's the same, you know. I mean, our commitment to is like theirs. It's the same. We're the same sort of people as them, really.
- [60:06]
Richard Loren
It keeps us going, keeps us off the streets.
- [60:09]
Narrator / Host
On Halloween night at Radio City and movie theaters east of the Mississippi, the Dead kept themselves and plenty of Deadheads off the streets. The evening began with a piece de resistance recorded in the more spacious backstage at the Warfield. An extended and totally blocked out comedy routine with the Grateful Dead made with a single extended eight minute tracking shot. Eat your heart out, good fellas.
- [60:32]
Al Franken
And what we did pre record there was, hey, it's Franken and Davis. We've got our laminated Access anywhere passes. Come on along with us. Let's go hang out with the Grateful Dead backstage. Which of course is the dumbest thing you could say, that was always our formula. It's like, what's the stupidest thing we could do? Come on back with us. And the camera starts following us. And we go right to the buffet table, which was a mock buffet table. It was supposed to look elaborate. And Al picks up some ribs with his bare hand, you know, barbecued ribs. And I'm pouring myself a beer and Ramrod comes up and goes, hey, you guys, that's for the band. And it's like, hey. Pointing to our laminated passes. We're with the band. Come on along. Come on, everybody. So the camera follows us.
- [61:16]
Jesse Jarno
I would encourage everyone, if they could, to go to the YouTube of me and Tom going to each dressing room and asking Jerry and Phil and Bobby and Billy and Mickey each to introduce us. And we offend them all. Here's me, the 29 year old, okay, 30 year old nerd, in the middle of this pirate coven, you know, with unlimited budget, to do something that's really fairly limited. And then SNL star next to me going, okay, this is the way, you know, because Frank is incredibly intelligent. You know, he went to Harvard and, you know, he should have been president. Okay, so we're gonna take the camera and we're gonna, we're gonna take it like this, down this hall and we're gonna go in each of these dressing rooms and we have a script for each of the guys. And I've rehearsed with all of them and I'm like, what? Can't we just break this up? No, no, no. It has to be continuous to be. He was totally right. But we had to do it about 10 times before we got a continuous take.
- [62:15]
Al Franken
And we went and visited. You know, Bob Weir was using a hair blower, you know, to make his hair pretty. And we had an actress playing Kreutzman's wife, and I hit on her. And Brent comes up and I don't recognize him. And I ask him if he could go out and score some beer for me. Just all the worst things that you could say to the Grateful Dead. And we get in with Phil and Jerry. It's like, hey, Phil, Jerry, do you mind if we come in? Well, actually, we're trying to figure out what, what the set's going to be, if you don't mind. Oh, no, we'll just be a minute. We want to come in.
- [62:46]
Richard Loren
Oh.
- [62:47]
Al Franken
And Al goes, oh, this is a beautiful guitar. It wasn't really joyous guitar, but it was a Stratocaster, a sunburst, really nice. 1. And Al has got the ribs in his hand. He sets the ribs down and picks up by the neck, picks up the guitar. Oh, this is a beautiful guitar. And then he drops it, right? So that worked out really well. And it fit in at Radio City. Really did look like we were backstage at Radio City. It just fit in really nicely.
- [63:13]
Narrator / Host
Len Delameco lined up the video so that Al Franken, Tom Davis and Brent Midland stepped from the taped segment of the Warfield shown on screens at Radio City directly onto the stage.
- [63:23]
Jesse Jarno
The conceit was that this was live backstage and it worked perfectly. So we swapped out. We did the edit from tape to live just as they came through the door from, you know, and they were in the same clothes. We needed that to be indisputably so for it to work.
- [63:37]
Narrator / Host
Here's Dan lynch, known to some of us as NYC Taper, who attended the Halloween show as a teenager.
- [63:42]
Jesse Jarno
It's Halloween of my senior year of high school, so it was a big day for me from beginning to end. I remember that day. Not just that night, but I remember that day like everyone's wearing costumes. A lot of people wearing costumes. Maybe not everybody, but a lot of people wearing costumes. Not only in high school that day, but also at the show. And so that created kind of like a special sort of, like otherworldly kind of atmosphere to it. I was wearing a white spacesuit with a propeller beanie hat. That was what I had worn to high school that day and that I also wore to the Grateful Dead show. Cause I thought the whole space thing was a good theme. Other friends of mine from high school who couldn't get into that particular show were doing the simulcast thing, which I think was at the Calderon in Amstad, if I'm not mistaken. When we got into the room, the show, I think, had sort of started. And I remember getting in to the main room and not going upstairs, just going onto the floor and walking down the aisle as far as I could get. And the aisles were stuffed. No one was moving, and no ushers were clearing the aisles or anything. So I was literally on the floor in the center aisle, probably about halfway back for the whole show. I have no idea where my ticket was, honestly, no idea. The lights had gone down, which made it a lot easier to get into, you know, the floor. And I remember this very specifically, getting in and getting as far down as I could. And I was alone. Like my sister and her boyfriend and whoever else we came with, you know, went their own separate ways. If there were ushers there, they weren't doing much because Dead shows in that era, the whole room was filled with a fog of pot smoke. So even you weren't actually smoking. You got a contact high.
- [65:17]
Narrator / Host
At movie theaters around the east coast, there were raging smoke filled Halloween parties.
- [65:21]
Jesse Jarno
There was a costume contest that involved remote cameras. Fifteen or 20 years later, I'm married and I'm meeting my wife's friend and she says, oh, I'm so. And so I won the costume contest. I'm like, what are you talking about? And she's like, Halloween, 1980, Boston. I was the one who won the costume contest. She was a mushroom cactus or something. She was completely covered up. I wouldn't have known. But, yeah, costume contest. This was, I believe, my sixth Grateful Dead show. My first one was in 1978 at Giants Stadium. So that's the only stadium show I saw in that era. And then all of the other ones were in either Nassau Coliseum or Madison Square Garden. So, you know, those are obviously much bigger rooms. So the whole Radio City thing, it was kind of a culture shock. And, you know, coming into this beautiful, you know, ballroomish old theater and, you know, getting in, getting down into these, you know, plush seats, it was a very different experience than all of my other prior Grateful Dead experiences. When the lights came up, which was twice, because, as you know, there were three sets, it was like musical chairs to get into a seat because otherwise the ushers would kick you out. So I remember actually getting into a seat, not my seat, certainly, and sitting down in between sets and, you know, watching the entertainment that followed, the Al Franken and Tom Davis stuff and, you know, some of the things that they did in between sets, which was highly entertaining.
- [66:53]
Narrator / Host
Though they taped much of the comedy of the Warfield, there were some live bits to execute, too. Tom Davis waited into the audience for trivia contests.
- [67:01]
Al Franken
Your question is who dosed Jack Kennedy? Lee Harvey Osley?
- [67:07]
Narrator / Host
That's right.
- [67:08]
Al Franken
That's absolutely right.
- [67:09]
Richard Loren
Don, what do we. What do we have for our winner over here?
- [67:13]
Al Franken
Oh, boy. Ron, you get a Marvel Frozen crime yawning turkey and enjoy that turkey, but please don't take it into the balcony. The fire marshal won't permit us to bring frozen turkeys into the balcony.
- [67:25]
Richard Loren
Thanks a lot, Rob.
- [67:27]
Narrator / Host
During the Jerry Kids segment, Tom Davis allegedly gets dosed with lsd, wanders onto the stage and begins to climb onto the scaffolding and take off his clothes. A hallowed Grateful Dead concert movie tradition.
- [67:38]
Richard Loren
Get Steve Paris or his colleague. Someone get Tom off the stage. He could hurt himself.
- [67:46]
Jesse Jarno
Tom.
- [67:47]
Richard Loren
Tom, come back.
- [67:48]
Narrator / Host
To me.
- [67:49]
Richard Loren
Tom. Tom.
- [67:54]
Jesse Jarno
Oh no, he's gonna hurt himself.
- [67:58]
Richard Loren
Tom.
- [68:01]
Al Franken
Tom, don't.
- [68:04]
Richard Loren
Come on. Get him.
- [68:06]
Narrator / Host
Len Dellamico has something to reveal about Tom Davis performance on Halloween 1980.
- [68:11]
Jesse Jarno
He's hot, he's on acid, he's acting, but he's also really on acid. What you're seeing is a, I don't know, a nine inch ledge that's used by bonded and insured union members to change light bulbs or something. And they probably have a scaffold that moves. It's not meant to be walked upon. Okay. And this takes me to my point about Tom. He was completely fearless. You know, he was brash, sharp as hell, but his fearlessness was just remarkable. He would do anything for comedy. I should not have allowed that to happen. And he was high on acid. And if he had told me that, I would definitely. I would have just said come on. But I didn't know until it was over. But the audience lost their mind.
- [68:58]
Narrator / Host
If it was the first live concert simulcast to movie theaters, then it was almost certainly the first simulcast acid trip too. And the first kept on coming even after the shows themselves were over. Another person who came into the Grateful Deads world with the 15th anniversary shows was engineer Jeffrey Norman, who served as an editor on Dead Set, the electric double lp and would become an in house studio engineer in the decades to follow.
- [69:21]
Rich Mahan
It was 1980, 81. It was with Radio City Music hall that you know, the electric version of Reckoning Dead Set. And that was mixed by Bob and Betty. And I think that and the Reckoning is one of the best sounding albums ever. They had this great technique that had to do with putting the audience on a separate machine. The multitrack was the recording and then the audience pair of mics was on a four track machine without getting too technical. And they locked together by time code. Okay, they both had time code that told the machines to go together. But by adjusting the offset of the time code you could move, move the audience close to the stage. And so the audience made it. I mean, take a listen to those. There's just. It's very nicely ambient, but you still have the close mic sound of the instruments. And it was a great technique. Now you could do it easily in the digital world, but back then in the analog world, to move tracks in time separate from other tracks is, well, very difficult to do. That's when I started. Was assistant engineer for the. Do the editing. I did the editing for that album.
- [70:30]
Narrator / Host
Though they may have originally planned to try to catch a single perfect show for the Album. The tapes made by Dan Healy, Bob and Betty in the Warfield and at Radio City were combed through for their best takes. And as the Dead well knew from Skull and roses in Europe 72, even the best live albums sometimes require some studio magic, or at least massaging. It was Jeffrey Norman's job to make sure everything fit.
- [70:53]
Rich Mahan
That was all because it was vinyl. There was only 22 minutes on the side of a record. And usually you go longer, but you lose by doing that. But, yeah, the idea was we had to fit. It was four record or two record set, four sides, and to fit a performance on there. And so a lot of things had to be cut. And then in hindsight, as I got to be more really familiar with what I was doing as far as the essence of Grateful Dead, it's a shame. Fire on the Mountain. I remember cutting, cutting it in half. Or solos that I would cut, have to cut for because of time. The only way musically it would work would be, well, cut out the good part, go for, you know, leave the lee. You know, cut out near the beginning and come back at the end so that it all made sense. Well, was. It was sort of like they left it to me, you know, and. But the idea was you got to get this down. This has got to fit in this amount of time. So I would just look at it musically and didn't cut out vocals and try to make it so that it would at least flow. But again, I had to cut out a lot of, you know, good playing to do that.
- [71:58]
Narrator / Host
Even if Reckoning and Dead Set are from different nights of the shows, Dead Ahead isn't, in fact, by itself. Dead Ahead represented something quietly new for the Grateful Dead, now taken for granted, the first commercial release of a nearly complete live show. Phil Lesh was experiencing some technical problems on the 31st, so with the exception of two acoustic songs flown in from October 30, everything else came from Halloween within that. Another quiet first on the Dead release was the inclusion of the sections labeled Rhythm Devils and space, beginning with Europe 72. The dead had sometimes named their jams for live releases, probably in part to share songwriting royalties. In the spring of 1980, Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzman had released an album titled the Rhythm Devils Play River Music, a document of their soundtrack work for Apocalypse Now. And it was the first time the most formless part of the second set had a name. Space. Space. Space. Space. Space. Space. Space. Space.
- [72:56]
Al Franken
Space. Space.
- [72:58]
Richard Loren
Space. Space.
- [72:59]
Al Franken
Space.
- [73:00]
Richard Loren
Space.
- [73:34]
Narrator / Host
When Len Del Amico and Jerry Garcia edited the video into what became Dead Ahead. That portion of the show became a platform for experimentation, too. As the Grateful Dead's 15th anniversary began to turn into their 16th, they continued to stay weird.
- [73:48]
Jesse Jarno
We decided to put some little effects into Dead Ahead to get our feet wet. There was no digital anything in 1980. Imagine that. So these were analog effects machines that we were using. And analog effects are fundamentally different. They don't look like digital effects. They're different. And I think they may someday come back. Like the use of a theremin. I know the drum solo was shortened because Billy Cobham isn't in it, and he was there. We shot that when we post produced this show. And so far, which was much more complex technically, the people post production houses were like, well, wait a minute. This is $1,000 an hour. You know that, right? Ian Garcia is there. Like, you think we care? Because I'd be like, so show me what's this machine? And they'd go, well, it's an image strobe modulator. It's an interrociter. Movie fans will get that reference. And we'd be like, what does it do? Really? You want to stop and get a. Yeah, show us what it does. And you would. And we're like, I think we can use that. And they'd be like, well, you have to have storyboards, and you have to figure that out. You can't just come in here and really. Yes, we can. Sit down, relax. And the results were just. I don't know. It's so. It's hard to describe because it was so exciting. And the next day, those same. They were always guys. We'd come in and they were different. They were like changed people. It's like they've been free.
- [75:46]
Rich Mahan
Every time I listen to these two albums, I'm taken back to when I first heard them. I especially love Dark Hollow and Monkey and the Engineer on Reckoning. And I'm always amazed how the transition from Feel Like a Stranger into Franklin's tower on Dead Set rivals the transition in the epic Help on the Way, Slipknot, Franklin's tower on one from the vault from 8 hours, 13 minutes and 75 seconds. Both reckoning and Dead Set are winners from start to finish. Thanks very much for tuning in. Visit us over@dead.net deadcast. You'll never know what you find.
- [76:20]
Richard Loren
Be well.
- [76:22]
Rich Mahan
Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus and Doron Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.