Bonus Rerun: From the Mars Hotel 50: Ship of Fools

Summary

Summary of "GOOD OL' GRATEFUL DEADCAST" Episode: Bonus Rerun: From the Mars Hotel 50: Ship of Fools

Release Date: August 7, 2025

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Introduction

In this special bonus episode of the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarno delve deep into one of the most pivotal moments in Grateful Dead history—the band’s final performances at Winterland in San Francisco in 1974, leading up to their hiatus and the production of the iconic Grateful Dead movie. Titled "Ship of Fools," this episode not only revisits these legendary shows but also explores the lasting impact of the band's innovations and their enduring legacy.

Final Shows at Winterland

The episode begins by setting the stage for the Winterland performances, which marked the end of an era for the Grateful Dead. Rich Mahan announces the release of the 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Blues for Allah, a three-CD set featuring remastered tracks, unreleased soundchecks, and concert recordings from late 1975 and June 1976 (01:24).

Jesse Jarno recounts the rumors surrounding the band's impending hiatus, highlighting how speculation about their retirement began to circulate even before the band officially decided to take a break (05:03). Bobby Weir shares his perspective on the band's decision to pause touring, emphasizing the need to alleviate the pressures of constant touring and the personal challenges faced by band members, particularly Donna Jean Godchaux balancing family life (07:07).

Making of the Grateful Dead Movie

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the creation of the Grateful Dead movie. Jesse Jarno narrates the spontaneous decision to make a film capturing the band's final shows, detailing the logistical challenges, including raising over two million dollars for production (09:53). The filmmakers, led by Leon Gast, juggled multiple documentary projects simultaneously, highlighting Gast’s hectic schedule during the Fall of 1974 (11:16).

Listeners are introduced to key figures behind the scenes, such as Don Lenzer and Kevin Keating, whose technical expertise was crucial in filming and producing the movie. Jesse shares personal anecdotes from filming, including interactions with band members and fellow Deadheads, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the chaotic yet creative environment of Winterland (14:06).

Personal Stories from Fans

The podcast features heartfelt stories from fans who attended the Winterland shows. Joan Brown, a young Deadhead in 1974, describes her first experience attending a Grateful Dead concert, capturing the intimate and communal atmosphere of Winterland (23:38). She recounts the excitement of winning concert tickets through poker games and her fascination with Jerry Garcia’s performance, which profoundly influenced her musical tastes (25:00).

Gary Lambert and other fans share their unique perspectives, emphasizing the personal connections and memorable moments that solidified Winterland’s reputation as a legendary venue for Dead shows (35:43). These narratives illustrate how the band's music and performances fostered a strong sense of community and personal transformation among attendees.

The Wall of Sound and Its Influence

A notable segment of the episode is dedicated to the Wall of Sound, the groundbreaking audio system developed by the Grateful Dead. Jesse Jarno provides a technical overview of the system, explaining its significance in enhancing live sound quality and its lasting influence on concert sound engineering (81:54).

Listeners learn about the challenges faced during the Wall of Sound's implementation, including the logistical difficulties and the innovative solutions devised by the band's technical team. The podcast also explores how the Wall of Sound inspired other bands and sound engineers, leading to advancements in live sound technology (85:11).

Legacy and Continuing Influence

The hosts reflect on the enduring legacy of the Winterland shows and the Grateful Dead's influence on both music and culture. Jesse Jarno discusses the band's seamless integration of electronic music elements and their improvisational prowess, which left an indelible mark on live performances (74:07).

Rich Mahan highlights the continued reverence for the Grateful Dead within the music community, noting how the Wall of Sound and Winterland shows remain subjects of fascination and study among fans and scholars alike (95:22). The episode concludes by celebrating the Grateful Dead's ability to create timeless music and unforgettable experiences, ensuring their place in the annals of music history.

Notable Quotes

• Jesse Jarno [07:07]: "It was a trial stoppage. Donna Jean... I get to just be a mom and not be on the road."

• Rich Mahan [09:53]: "We needed a lot of money for the movies. In excess of two million dollars."

• Joan Brown [23:38]: "I was hooked. That was it. From that moment on, that's all I wanted to do."

• Jesse Jarno [35:43]: "It was madness. And it was very lax as far as who got to be on the stage and be backstage."

• Rich Mahan [81:54]: "A few episodes back, we noted that before it got codified into the Wall of Sound, Lesh thought of it as the gantry system."

Conclusion

This bonus rerun episode of the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast offers an immersive exploration into a defining chapter of the Grateful Dead’s history. Through personal anecdotes, technical insights, and detailed storytelling, Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarno provide both new fans and lifelong Deadheads with a comprehensive understanding of the band's final Winterland shows, the making of their seminal movie, and the lasting impact of their innovations.

For further information and to access bonus materials, listeners are encouraged to visit dead.net.

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Credits:

• Hosts: Rich Mahan & Jesse Jarno
• Special Thanks: Donna Jean, Gotcho McKay, Ron Rakow, Ned Legion, David Grisman, Elvis Costello, Steve Brown, Richie Peckner, Jerry Pompili, Jim Sullivan, John Perry, Gary Lambert, Jeff Gould, Joan Brown, Michael Parrish, Cory Arnold, Strider Brown, Jay Curley, Rita Fiedler, Renee Tenor, Lee Ronaldo, Gregory Barrett, Ron Long, David Lemieux, Brian Anderson, Sean O', Donnell, and Brian Kehue.
• Executive Producer: Mark Pincus
• Produced for Rhino Entertainment by: Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno

Transcript

[Rich Mahan]

Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with.

[Rich Mahan]

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.

[Jesse Jarno]

Foreign.

[Rich Mahan]

The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast.

[Jesse Jarno]

The official podcast of the Grateful Dead.

[Rich Mahan]

I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring.

[Jesse Jarno]

The music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious.

[Rich Mahan]

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season 12 of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast.

[Jesse Jarno]

I'm your co host Rich Mahan.

[Rich Mahan]

Thank you so very much for tuning in.

[Jesse Jarno]

In this episode of the Good Old.

[Rich Mahan]

Grateful Dead Cast, we drop a timely bonus episode that covers the Grateful Dead's.

[Jesse Jarno]

Final shows at Winterland in San Francisco.

[Rich Mahan]

Before the band's hiatus and the making of the famed Grateful Dead movie which is playing in theaters Everywhere this coming August 14th for meetup at the movies announcing the Grateful Dead Blues for all.

[Jesse Jarno]

A 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition arriving September.

[Rich Mahan]

12, this 3 CD set features the newly remastered album with unreleased soundcheck and concert recordings. The set features almost two hours of unreleased recordings. Among these highlights are rehearsals from the band's August 12, 1975 soundcheck at San.

[Jesse Jarno]

Francisco's Great American Music hall, including the album track Sage and Spirit, Help on.

[Rich Mahan]

The Way, Slipknot and Franklin's Tower. The collection continues with performances from the June 21, 1976 show at the Tower Theater in Penn, Pennsylvania spotlighting Five Blues for all his songs along favorites like.

[Jesse Jarno]

Eyes of the World.

[Rich Mahan]

Rounding out the setter selections from Bill Graham's snack benefit at Kesar Stadium on March 23, 1975. There are also vinyl variants of the.

[Jesse Jarno]

Original album available including a picture disc and a Midnight Fire Red vinyl edition. Looks very cool and a 180 gram black vinyl LP.

[Rich Mahan]

Very cool looking blues for all a.

[Jesse Jarno]

50Th anniversary merch is also now available.

[Rich Mahan]

And all of these can be [e-mail].

[Jesse Jarno]

If you head over to rhino.com you.

[Rich Mahan]

Can pre order the Dolby Atmos mixes for Blues for Allah on Blu ray disc. They were mixed by wizard Stephen Wilson.

[Jesse Jarno]

And are ready to blow your mind. All of these fine releases will be out on September 12th via dead.net and.

[Rich Mahan]

Rhino.Com head on over to dead.net deadcast and check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons 1 through 11, and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you.

[Jesse Jarno]

Can listen how you like to listen.

[Rich Mahan]

Please help the good old Grateful Dead cast by subscribing, sharing us with your friends on social media, hitting that like button, and if the spirit moves you.

[Jesse Jarno]

Leave us a review.

[Rich Mahan]

Thank you very much. Do you have a great story about any of the songs on Blues for Allah? Were you lucky enough to catch the band at one of their two shows in San Francisco in 1975? Then we need to hear from you. Head over to stories.dead.net and record yourself.

[Jesse Jarno]

Telling us all about it.

[Rich Mahan]

You just may hear yourself on a.

[Jesse Jarno]

Future episode of the Dead Cast.

[Rich Mahan]

We have transcripts from many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure and they are available at Dead Head on over and feast the 2025 meetup at the Movies featuring the Grateful.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dead movie is happening this coming August 14th.

[Rich Mahan]

It's in theaters across the country and this time around it has been remastered in 4K and will be available at IMAX theaters for the first time. Make sure to grab your friends and grab [e-mail] make sure to stay until the very end to catch a special performance performance from those Winterland shows that did not make the original movie Friends. This bonus episode of the good old Grateful Dead cast dives into those final.

[Jesse Jarno]

Winterland shows in 1974 that were filmed.

[Rich Mahan]

And became the wonderful cinematic creation we.

[Jesse Jarno]

All know and love as the Grateful Dead Movie.

[Rich Mahan]

Bonus materials for this episode are up on dead.net under the season nine episode.

[Jesse Jarno]

Eight page, which covered Ship of Fools, so look there if you want to see any of the extras.

[Rich Mahan]

Get ready to brush up on your.

[Jesse Jarno]

Behind the scenes knowledge of these shows at Winterland and how the Grateful Dead.

[Rich Mahan]

Movie came to be before you check.

[Jesse Jarno]

It out this August 14th.

[Rich Mahan]

Here's Jesse Jarno.

[Jesse Jarno]

Summertime.

[Rich Mahan]

The Grateful Dead liked to have meetings and sometimes kept very good notes. When the dead started 1974, they'd planned to record another album in October and in June, just weeks after finishing the Mars Hotel sessions, they decided quite sensibly to push those sessions back, which they did until November. But by August, they decided to pause from the road for a long while. Word of the Grateful Dead's impending retirement got out into the world even before they'd officially decided to take a break. An unsigned item about the Dead's potential retirement appeared under the headline Dead to Go Dormant in the Oakland Tribune on Aug. 4, a rumor denied by Andy Leonard. But the rumor was all but confirmed a few weeks later in Joel Selvin's San Francisco examiner column, headlined, Is the Dead Going to Die? From there, it circulated out to the dead freaks back East. Lee Reynaldo had just returned from his summer adventures and was getting ready to begin his freshman year of college.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was kind of mysterious that they were taking time off and it wasn't very clear at the time. You know, news traveled a lot slower at the time, and it wasn't very clear why they were getting off the road. We'd heard rumors about, like their trip had just gotten too big and incorporated too many people and it just stopped being as much fun. But I don't know, there were darker rumors about maybe, maybe drugs having something to do with it or just a lot of different unclear stuff.

[Rich Mahan]

Here's how Bobby Weir remembered it going down when he was interviewed that October.

[Jesse Jarno]

I've forgotten who came up with the idea originally. It might have been Danny Rifkin for that matter. But after a particularly grinding tour, which had come on the heels of three relatively grinding tours, it's not that the music was bad, the music was real good, but just the airports and the hotels and everything, everybody was real down. And we were having a general meeting and the idea of, why don't we hang this up for a while and take some of the pressure off. I'm getting old. And everybody just clamored and it seemed just like the thing to do. Ron Rakow when they talked about a time period, they talked about two years, they never talked about one year. So there's that. They were actually talking about stopping being the Grateful Dead, and this was going to tell them whether or not it was a good idea or not. It was a trial stoppage. Donna Jean we had been touring for so long, and from whose ever perspective, it was different, like why we stopped touring at that time. But for me it was like, wow, I get to just be a mom and not be on the road. Which was really hard. If I left Zion behind, it was really hard. If I took him on the road, it was really hard. So my life was very complicated at that time.

[Rich Mahan]

After they decided to take the break, there was still a European tour. We discussed some of the stress points in our Money Money episode. But Donna Jean had her hands full in a very different way.

[Jesse Jarno]

When we went to Europe that year, which was in September, my sister went to Europe with us and took care of Zion. And that was a. He was about 8 months old then, something like that. And that was really tough because we got to England and Zion had diarrhea and a fever. You know, there were no Pampers in London. And we had to scro for baby stuff that we were used to in America. And that was hard. That was really hard.

[Rich Mahan]

The band returned from Europe in late September with only a run at Winterland on their schedule. It was sometime in these weeks that this unfolded.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jerry came to my office. I could tell something was up because he ran from the staircase into my office. And he started talking to me when he was already in the hall. And he gets in. He said, we got to make a movie. This could be the last time the Grateful Dead ever played. So I said, okay. And I got on the phone and I raised the money. Without money, forget movies, man, as we like to say.

[Rich Mahan]

Would that it were so simple.

[Jesse Jarno]

We needed a lot of money for the movies. In excess of two million dollars. Much closer to two and a half million, I expected. Close to that. Well, first of all, the Hell's angel movie was. There was so much film shot, I couldn't see it costing a lot more.

[Rich Mahan]

Steve Brown of Grateful Dead Records could see the logic in the project.

[Jesse Jarno]

They thought of it as, I think, a way to say, if we're going to take the breaks coming next year, which was 75, maybe we should give them something to be able to go see and hear. But it can be in a theater.

[Rich Mahan]

But from the start, the Grateful Dead movie was a Jerry Garcia joint.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jerry, I think, just really felt, yeah, let's do the movie. I kind of really felt he was still the go guy on this thing. And everybody else was kind of like, oh, it's going to interrupt our. On the stage and we're playing and things that kind of. Little things like that came up a few times. I think these were kind of in casual talk. They weren't even in the meetings necessarily. They were just kind of when they were talking about it. And then it came to be.

[Rich Mahan]

Everybody just called it the Movie. And we probably will, too. It was good that Rakow had established an open line with the bank of Boston because Jerry Garcia discovered a habit more expensive than buying and smashing eggs.

[Jesse Jarno]

Nothing burns up money like movies. I mean, cocaine habits don't burn up money like movies.

[Rich Mahan]

The movie was in motion. And on relatively short notice, they contacted the filmmaker already in the Round Reels stable.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's how come Leon Gast got to be the head of production on the Dead movie.

[Rich Mahan]

Leon Gast had a very, very busy autumn in September and October of 1974. He was responsible for filming three different classic documentaries. I'd watch a documentary just about that. While the Dead had been in Europe, Leon Gast was in Africa, if you will.

[Jesse Jarno]

Let's all welcome the world's Godfather of Soul, Soul brother number one, James Brown. James Brown, James Brown, Dave Brown.

[Rich Mahan]

Like pretty much every other film we're discussing, the documentary Soul Power took a long time to make it out, but it's an incredible film about the Zaire 74 Music Festival featuring James Brown, Bill Withers, the Fanya All Stars, Miriam Makeba and more. Check it out. Originally, the Zaire 74 festival was supposed to pair with the George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, Rumble in the Jungle, which was postponed for a month after Foreman cut himself during training. I'm a little unclear about what unfolded. A lot of the sources say that Leon Gass stuck around Zaire, but he had to have gotten back to San Francisco by early October. Though his incredible Oscar winning film When We Were Kings concludes with the Ali foreman fight on October 30th. I'm not sure that Gast or his partners actually went from Zaire to Winterland back to Zaire. Dissenting opinions welcome. Combined with Hell's Angels Forever, that's four documentaries in progress. His hands were absolutely full.

[Jesse Jarno]

We had a fellow inside our family of people, Edward Washington, who was a movie freak. He had a lot of connections in San Francisco. Leon just got people that he knew in that, that he worked with in New York and bingo, I mean, there were some important guys. The Maisel brothers, or at least one of them.

[Rich Mahan]

That'd be Albert Maisels with his brother David. He'd been responsible for Gimme Shelter and was in the process of shooting the equally legendary Gray Gardens. Another unlikely cinematic timeline to align with the Dead movie.

[Jesse Jarno]

The most important guy on the crew in my world was Don Lenzer. If he is not now a famous film shooter, he should be. He was phenomenal.

[Rich Mahan]

Linzer had been on the crew at Woodstock and went on to a distinguished career in documentary filmmaking.

[Jesse Jarno]

And the next phenomenal one was Kevin Keating. Kevin Keating was a permanent part of Leon's organization.

[Rich Mahan]

Kevin Keating also went from Zaire to Winterland. Steve Brown was assigned to brief them.

[Jesse Jarno]

So I drew a little thing for them as how the band moves on the stage and told them where the hot areas are to go and I get to take them around in Winterland and to the places where the people that are going to be good to film the kind of dancers that you're going to be looking for and that kind of thing. And if you go downstairs on their break, they've got this E that they're going to be sucking on, which is. And just the crew, not the band.

[Rich Mahan]

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that it would take almost three years to finish and release the Grateful Dead movie. With any luck, we'll spend some time down the road discussing the intricate production. But today we're going to focus almost entirely on the lived experience of what it was like to see the Grateful dead at their five so called retirement shows at Winterland from October 16th through 20th, 1974, lots of which can be heard on the 5 CD box. The grateful Dead movie.

[Jesse Jarno]

Daybreak Daybreak on the Land.

[Rich Mahan]

With a camera crews at the ready. The Dead invested the shows with a little more thought than usual.

[Jesse Jarno]

Ned Lagin the movie Five Nights at Winterland was scripted in the sense that they wanted certain things in the movie. So they set up certain sequences each and every night. It's why I played every night and why they had me set up and where they wanted me set up next to Garcia, et cetera. To the extent that the sets varied is that they wanted a choice of going from Dark Star into one thing or Dark Star into another thing or another thing into another thing so they could make a choice. There was some discussion about having an acoustic set or doing some acoustic stuff as well, and obviously that didn't happen.

[Rich Mahan]

At Winterland's front door, heads passed under a sign that acknowledged they were being filmed by Round Reels for a movie provisionally titled There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert. The phrase came from Hunter and Garcia's old friend Willie Legate. And you can hear this gentleman who is not Willie Legate repeated in the film.

[Jesse Jarno]

Bottom line of the whole scene is very simply stated, there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.

[Rich Mahan]

Leon Gast and Ron Rackow orchestrated the crew on the ground.

[Jesse Jarno]

He was directing the crew and, and we were working very close together. He was at the sound booth and I was behind Jerry. I'm in the movie a million times. I had headphones and the whole crew had headphones.

[Rich Mahan]

The day didn't have much of a choice in the matter. But Winterland was the perfect place to film their retirement. It was home. Gary Lambert, co host of Tales of the Golden Road it was just like one of.

[Jesse Jarno]

One of the all time great places to see a Dead show and kind of a dump. I mean, it was like. It was, it was. It was built as an ice skating arena. It had seats it had a balcony with seats that were on all four sides. People could sit behind the stage, although not always. They sometimes had that section cleared off and then just a big dance floor. And then there were little auxiliary. There were bars, you know, like, I think the first time I ever saw hall dancing was at Winterland. Perhaps there were some hallways that people would overflow into. You see that guy dancing during Sugar Magnolia in the Grateful Dead movie, The cow. The guy in the cowboy hat. She's got everything Delightful. She's got everything I need. Next, the wheel. When I'm seeing double pays my ticket.

[Rich Mahan]

When I speak outside. Tickets were taken by Willie, the Winterland security guard.

[Jesse Jarno]

Have your ticket out and ready, please. Have your tickets ready. There are two doors, so you cannot carry it back in. I'm sorry, sir. Thank you very kindly. March right in and have a good time. Have them out in red ass. Please have your ticket out.

[Rich Mahan]

Michael Parish had been seeing the Dead since the Live Dead run at the Fillmore West.

[Jesse Jarno]

Willie, was that the guy's name? Bill Graham's forever ticket taker. The big African American guy who's in the Dead movie and the Dead movie. He's like, friendly, you know, come on, come on in. But usually he was just kind of grumpy.

[Rich Mahan]

Rita Fiedler would go on to work on the animation sequence on the Dead movie and didn't actually attend any of the Winterland shows that fall. But this story really catches the vibe of the place.

[Jesse Jarno]

There's aspects of the movie that really, really capture beautifully the concourse where the concessions stand rung around the outside. I remember at one point I had ingested a substance and I was just sort of drifting around. You could easily go between these. This sort of concession area to back inside the show, back and forth. And at one point I was near an exit and I really wanted to get some fresh air. And above the. The door to the exit, it said, no pass out. And there was. There was a cop standing at the door, a security guard, a black guy. And he looked at me and I said, I need to get some fresh air. And he goes, no, pass out. So I said, I'm not going to pass out. You know, it was like I was high as a kite. But I wasn't going to pass out. And I said, no, really, sir, I'm fine. I'll be right back. I just need to get some fresh air. So he let me out. So I went out and then I was able to come back in. Even though I passed outside. I didn't pass out.

[Rich Mahan]

Gary LAMBERT it was 5,500 people, but.

[Jesse Jarno]

It somehow felt bigger. And actually, 5,500 was what some people considered too big back then. You know, those of us who have been spoiled by the Fillmores and those kinds of venues. 5,500 seemed kind of cavernous. I made a point of getting there early enough to get a good spot on the floor most times, but it was just. It was a great unadorned dump and it was just perfect for the purpose of a Dead show.

[Rich Mahan]

In some strange way, I certainly never made it to Winterland, but one way to catch the vibe is to check out the room tone in the space just before the encore.

[Jesse Jarno]

I saw lots of bands at Winterland. I saw shows of variable sound quality at Winterland.

[Rich Mahan]

I saw the famous Springsteen shows in.

[Jesse Jarno]

December of 78 and shows like that. I mean, I had a long run there because I was there right up to the closing night. It could sound terrible. It could sound like a big echoey, cavernous place if the sound people didn't have things dialed in right. The wall of sound sounded extraordinary in there.

[Rich Mahan]

Jeff Gould would go on to found modulus guitars, but in 1974 was just a serious Bay Area dead freak.

[Jesse Jarno]

I saw every Wall of Sound show in the Bay Area, starting with the sneak previews in February. I also remember at Winterland being able to sit up high in the rafters and listen and hear perfectly Morning Dew or Ship of Fools. That big vocal harmonies. It was really the. But I first believed you when I was at Winterland, I would go all over. I mean, sometimes in front of the stage or sometimes I'd be in the very last row just to kind of get a different perspective. And you know, I could be up in the. Up in the rafters and listening to the wall of sound and hearing like Morning Dew or something like that. And it just. It was a very grand experience because you could really hear it. It wasn't just you're far away and everything sounds crappy.

[Rich Mahan]

Multiple nights of the Dead at Winterland was a cause for excitement no matter what. But Joan Brown was a newly minted San Francisco Deadhead in 1974 and left us this story.

[Jesse Jarno]

In 1974 I was an 8th grader and going to maritaland was really not what my parents thought was a great idea for a little girl to do. But there were other parents of my friends that were not so strict. And so I would spend the night at their house and of course we would all go to Winnowland. I think it was in February. It was the first Time I really went to the Dead, to Winoland, to see the Dead by myself. And it was with a bunch of my little girlfriends. And I was hooked. That was it. From that moment on, that's all I wanted to do. And it's all I wanted to listen to. In the fall of 1974, I went to a private high school in San Francisco called Urban. And Urban was probably about six blocks from Winterland. Urban was a hippie, ish alternative high school. For the young and impressionable minds of the Pacific Heights kids in San Francisco. It was kind of a hippie school that we had two classes a day for three hours apiece. Sometimes the kids would smoke in class. Sometimes the teachers would smoke in class. Sometimes the subjects were a little bit off to the left. Sometimes they were right in the center. But one thing that happened in October of 1974. Is everybody was excited. Because the Dead were playing multiple nights at Winterland. And everybody was getting tickets. And if you didn't have tickets, you could always wait in line. So at the afternoon classes, everybody would go and wait in line to grab tickets. But if you're lucky enough to buy your tickets, what we did is during lunchtime, we always had a poker game going. Those Grateful Dead tickets were in the pot multiple times. And multiple times they were won and lost. So I got to go because I. I won some tickets in the pot during lunch in the poker game.

[Rich Mahan]

Five nights was a lot.

[Jesse Jarno]

So according to my journal, I. Going to more than one night of a concert was kind of a new thing for me. And I was not really sure how to break it to my parents. But luckily for me, they were hyper focused on the A's being in the World Series. And they were going three nights themselves to the Coliseum. So I didn't have a lot of explaining to do. About where I was going and what I was doing.

[Rich Mahan]

The first couple nights across the bay in Oakland, the A's were cruising to their third straight World Series victory. With Games 4 and 5 taking place in Oakland. On the nights of the first two Dead shows.

[Jesse Jarno]

Those nights I went with my friends. And we arrived super early. Because in those days I was armed with some orange. Sunshine is also referenced in my journal by or code word or. And we got there early so that we could take the acid. And not have to come home to questions by parents when we were kind of out in outer space. And in those days, they let you in super early. And we found seats at Winoland at the time. Either if you were a dancer, you went downstairs if you wanted to be close to the band, you went on the floor. And if you really wanted to see the band, you could go upstairs in the balcony where people just did not stand up. During the concert. You sat in your seat mostly. And if you wanted to go down, if you wanted to dance, you went downstairs.

[Rich Mahan]

Something that Joan drives home. The Dead were a local band for local people.

[Jesse Jarno]

Half my high school was there, and half the kids from my neighborhood were there, too. So it never felt like. It felt really intimate. And it felt like this is where the place everybody was. And on Monday, if you didn't have a story to tell about Winoland and the shows, then, you know, you really kind of were out of it. You weren't as cool as you thought you were. But for these shows and the seats that I had, they were like the second row on the right hand side of the balcony. Most of the people around me were there for all the nights of the shows. And we kind of had this unspoken agreement that we would save the seats for each other. And I was lucky to be included in that group. And also in that group were some really cute surfer boys from Marin who my girlfriend and I were just thrilled to be sitting near. And these people. For every time that the Grateful Dead played at Winterland, we pretty much had the same group and saved this seas for everybody until Winterland closed, until about, you know, December of 1978. So this was a really tight group that we had. And I never saw these people outside of going to the Grateful Dead. I never saw them again on Just Around Town. This was the only place that I saw them, and I've considered them friends.

[Rich Mahan]

Strider Brown was our avatar for the Sunshine Daydream gig in Veneta in 72 and provided coverage for us speaking about Kezar 73. In 74, Strider was traveling around in the way that one can do if you're in your early 20s and it's 1974. Hey, Strider.

[Jesse Jarno]

I had been traveling up in Western Canada in late September, early October of 74. Me and a friend, Mandy had gone to visit an old high school friend whose parents were Canadian, lived in Vancouver. So we were in Vancouver, pretty sure that's where Mandy got word that the Dead are going to be retiring. They're playing their final concerts in about, whatever, a week and a half. I'm just taking a guess. And so she took the B line down to the Bay Area. And I made my way down at a slower rate, say. And so that's why I missed the opening night of October 16th, I did hitchhike from Canada down to the Bay Area to make it for the October 74 dead shows. And I had to stop in Eugene on the way south.

[Rich Mahan]

Dead fans of All Stripes descended on Winterland however they could. Jerry Pompili was the house manager at the venue.

[Jesse Jarno]

I'm in the Grateful Dead movie. There's a scene where me talking to Angelo the Hell's angel on stage, trying to convince him to move his bike off the stage. He'll be here at 5 o'. Clock. It's not so much you guys, it's.

[Rich Mahan]

The people that you guys have had.

[Jesse Jarno]

Confrontations with during the years. They see someone in here with colors on and they remember the time.

[Rich Mahan]

Maybe he got stomped by seven Angels and goes berserk. I mean, I've seen it happen.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, you know what? Sandy's flying out here from New York.

[Rich Mahan]

And I know he's not taking his patch off, so he's coming along.

[Jesse Jarno]

And then there's another scene. It's me, but it's shot from behind and it's at the back door and there's two Hell's Angels trying to worm their way in and me telling them to go off. What you don't see is two guys with guns standing on either side of me. But hey, you know. Jeff Gould, the first night, at least I remember getting there early enough to be in line and to be let in. And it was just really fun and joyful to kind of just run into the empty place.

[Rich Mahan]

We've spoken with Jay Curley a few times, most recently on our Watkins Glen episode in the fall of 1974. He'd just made his move to the Bay Area and was ready to see the Dead on their home turf.

[Jesse Jarno]

I didn't even have a crush walking in the front door. They were so different than east coast shows. I couldn't believe it. Especially the Wednesday, the first show, the 16th. I mean, it went from Seastones into space, into Warfare, back into space, into Eyes of the World. And I was like thinking, wow, these west coast shows are really laid back.

[Rich Mahan]

It's a candidate for the jammiest Dead show ever. After closing the first set with a 31 minute playing in the band for the first time in American soil, Ned Legion's Seastones transitioned into a full performance by the Dead, first moving into Warfrat, then Eyes of the world, an 85 minute sequence that was a reverse of the Alexandra palace performance we spoke about last episode.

[Jesse Jarno]

The genesis of the middle set occurred in March of 74. It was assumed that half the time, not half the time, the Grateful Dead would say we would segue into the Grateful Dead. It turned out to be 25 or 26% of the time, which is still a sizable amount for a separate or quasi separate act. Jay Curley Wonderland got so hot. It was sardine time. But. And Lord knows, Bill Graham called it his schmitz. You know, he sold the tickets and then they didn't rip them at the door, brought them to the ticket window and resold them. Jeff Gould, at least, first couple nights. There's also in San Francisco, he Wait. You know, I mean, it was like getting close to 100 degrees. So it was like a packed Winterland. You know, it just. It was pretty. Pretty sweaty and crazy up on stage.

[Rich Mahan]

It was fucking chaos. Even more so than the usual Grateful Dead gigs at Winterland. Seriously, go watch the movie. If you track the performances of the movie chronologically, you can see how many people were crowding up there night after night, culminating in the final show on the 20th, where people are almost literally hanging from the rafters. And that's not to mention a certain roadie who is allegedly dropping puddles of acid on people's wrists in order to even get on the stage by the final night. Donna Jean.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was madness. And it was very lax as far as who got to be on the stage and be backstage as well as on stage, you know, dancing around or, you know, doing their thing. That was then. That's no longer now. That's for sure.

[Rich Mahan]

There's one amazing short sequence of the movie where you see a few kids dancing to the foot of Keith Godchaux's grand piano, followed a few seconds later by an enormous fireball by the pyrotechnics enthusiast a few feet behind them.

[Jesse Jarno]

His name was Boots. He was a pyrotechnic guy. And there was a real explosion, many.

[Rich Mahan]

Real explosions, constantly through the whole movie. Really. I haven't tracked which nights. Boots Jaffe was blowing flames towards the ceiling. Maybe all of them. Hopefully we'll get to talk to Boots sometime.

[Jesse Jarno]

That was his gig. That was his gig. I don't remember if that happened elsewhere, but I know it did constantly during that time.

[Rich Mahan]

The Baby Zion God show had made it to nearly every dead show in 74, but missed Winterland.

[Jesse Jarno]

When we did the movie Zion, we stayed in San Francisco with the Miyako and Zion's grandparents. Keith's mom and dad took care of him at the Miyako while we did our thing. So he was not at the shows. He was like nine Months old, I think. Something like that.

[Rich Mahan]

Exactly like that. Actually, the first night was Bob Weir's 27th birthday. As Phil Lesh reminded.

[Jesse Jarno]

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday, dear robin.

[Rich Mahan]

Counting the 50 minutes of seastones and jamming en route into the second set, there were more than four hours of music. One of the longest shows ever. Only four more to go.

[Jesse Jarno]

Thanks for dropping by. Thanks for being in our movie. Every day of shooting, Jerry and I went in the afternoon, like at noon. We went and found a clump of crew people and sat around and bullshit with them and smoke joints with them and what have you. And they were mostly in a hotel above a man shop on the main street in Sausalito. And we went there and daily and hung out with those guys and talked to them. And Kevin Keating and Don Lenzer shot those meetings. Those meetings are incredible. Incredible. They're on film, Lot of film. There's so much great footage there. It's just. I'm thinking particularly of a day Jerry and I went to meet those guys in the hotel in Sausalito. And somebody said to Jerry, what's the most important thing that the Grateful Dead done for you? And Jerry said, everything. I met Dylan. That's what he said. I met. He said it like a breathless fan.

[Rich Mahan]

Garcia had met Dylan a few times, but most fresh on his mind was probably a semi recent jam session in Stinson Beach.

[Jesse Jarno]

They came up to jam. I don't know what the. What the story was. Dylan was over at Jerry's house and Mountain Girl told me about it that evening.

[Rich Mahan]

They was Bob Dylan and David Grisman. Last year I interviewed Grisman for Aquarium Drunkard, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast. And I asked him about this story which took place a few months before the Dead movie was filmed.

[Jesse Jarno]

I got a call in 1974 out of the blue from Bob Dylan, who I thought it was a joke, wanted to take a mandolin lesson. So I said, come on over. And an hour or two later he was on my back porch.

[Rich Mahan]

That was the mandolin overdub that Dylan himself played on Blood on the tracks. If you see her, say hello. Recorded just a few months after his lessons.

[Jesse Jarno]

Stayed for three days. I believe we went over Jerry's house during that. He still owes money for that. About $15 a lesson.

[Rich Mahan]

Had to throw that story in there. Jay Curley.

[Jesse Jarno]

I had a bunch of friends from Connecticut staying with me in my little apartment. We, me and a friend of mine from Columbia rented a flat in the Fillmore and it was all of 75 bucks a month. Drunkard's dream, if I were to see one. Anyway, we went en masse into Winterlands.

[Rich Mahan]

There was just one problem. Well, three problems.

[Jesse Jarno]

I was semi broke when the tickets went on sale. So I got one for the 20th and then they added the 16th, so I got a 16th. And I didn't have any idea about seeing the other shows. But on that Thursday the 17th, Strider Brown, my old friend, came to my apartment and said, what are you guys doing here? Let's go get some tickets. I said, what are you talking about? It's been sold out for months now. He said, oh, they got tickets at the door. I had showed up on the 17th and like, you know, the mid afternoon or whatever. And they were looking bummed out, Jay and our other friend Mandy. And I said, well, I hear there's tickets for sale at the box office. I may have gotten that hot tip or whatever from somebody. I hitched a ride from down into the Bay area from down I5. We went over there and we bought tickets for the I believe following four nights to my east coast brain. They just went, what? And so we were living like 10 blocks away from Wonderland. And so we walked over there and there was nobody in line, you know, and in front of the ticket window and this woman was sitting in there looking completely bored. And I went over and said, have you got tickets for tonight? She goes, yeah, how many you want? I almost fell on the ground. I said, do you? How about four? She goes, no problem. Here, dink dank. $6 each. I was hip to the trip, and so I went on the 18th and 19th and stood in line for increasing amounts of time. And so I was able to see all five shows.

[Rich Mahan]

I love the scenes outside Winterland in the Grateful Dead movie.

[Jesse Jarno]

You know the Grateful Dead? Sure, I have a ticket. You want to see? Well, you can't stone right now.

[Rich Mahan]

I know.

[Jesse Jarno]

I'm just trying to get my space together so that I can go into the show. I just came from a phone call.

[Rich Mahan]

Been there so many times. In fact, I just came from a phone call and I'm getting my space together right now. The 17th is when our friend Gary Lambert made his entrance from stage left or right even.

[Jesse Jarno]

I had already determined to move to the Bay Area. The timing just worked out that way. In fact, I think the announcement of the Wonderland show has probably hastened my trip by a few weeks. But it was really fortuitous timing. So I saw four out of the five. I actually landed in San Francisco the night of the first show on the 16th, on Bobby's birthday. And then I saw the last four in a row.

[Rich Mahan]

Garry walked right onto a movie set.

[Jesse Jarno]

And then there was the phenomenon of the movie being made while that was going on. And, you know, there's that famous scene where the guy in the bar is, like, talking about what a load of crap it is. Just up, though, this film, man, make cash off everybody. This. This is the biggest pile of I've ever seen the dad ever do. Oh, you're nuts, man. I remember there was some disgruntlement about, like, camera placements blocking people's view and stuff like that. There was like a boom camera, which was not like modern boom camera. It was like actually a guy sitting in a chair, you know, on a boom, which was manually, like, moved around and if you were careful, could knock your head off as it. As it panned down toward the stage.

[Rich Mahan]

There was a little point of contention.

[Jesse Jarno]

There for people who usually had a spot on the floor where they could see everything and were kind of being, you know, moved around to make room for that. It seemed minor to me. It didn't really seem terribly disruptive to the enjoyment to me. Jay Curley I stood behind one of the cameras three out of five nights. There was a nice little window where I could see through to the stage right next to the camera. And they never really got in my way. And you see people crawling around the stage with their cameras and stuff like that, but they never got in the way.

[Rich Mahan]

Naturally. A few of our friends ended up in the movie. Gary Lambert I am actually seen in.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Grateful Dead movie in a couple of shots. Look for me during One more Saturday Night. It will expose a little editing flaw because I'm singing along and my lips are moving like I think about two beats after the notes are actually sung. Jeff Gould I'm in the movie during Sugar Magnolia. Some big dude in the crowd in a blue work shirt and a ponytail and a beard, dancing.

[Rich Mahan]

After seeing the crowd on the earlier nights, the film crew were able to scout out some talent.

[Jesse Jarno]

There was one very handsome guy, had a mustache and sort of light reddish hair. Brown, light reddish hair. And he knew the words to every song. And sometimes we had him mouthing the words and Jerry singing them.

[Rich Mahan]

Says online somewhere that his name is Greg.

[Jesse Jarno]

I think his name is Greg. Also Greg.

[Rich Mahan]

If you're out there, get in [e-mail] they planted him in the front row, and you can see him throughout the movie.

[Jesse Jarno]

Wave. I play wave. He danced his ass off and his shirt was really sweaty. And at the end of the night, I took off my film crew shirt and gave it. We changed shirts and I went backstage and Jerry. And this is on film. Jerry said, what the fuck happened to you? That was a funny moment.

[Rich Mahan]

There's a wide spectrum of Dead freakdom between the curious and the committed. Cory Arnold, who you may know as the proprietor of the Lost Live Dead blog and other endeavors, was in a very particular place in his own arc.

[Jesse Jarno]

I'd already seen him twice at Winterland, and this was my third time at Winterland, my fifth Dead show. I was kind of conscious of what I was hearing. I had a couple of Dead bootlegs. I remember that I recognized just about every song. But I didn't come out going, what are those songs? I knew, again, it was real conscious experience. They play the first set. They do a long playing in the band. I take a break. I was used to the break. We're hanging out, and then the lights come down a little bit and some people come on stage. One person came on stage. It was a keyboard player. It wasn't Keith. And then Phil comes out and he starts tuning up. And we're like, what's this? They tune up, tune up, tune up. And after a while you go, they're not tuning up. And you could feel it under. Coming up from your feet. It wasn't like, I didn't say, gee, I want to go home and listen to this. But it was weird. Yeah. No explanation, no discussion, no idea what was going to go on. And then after 20 minutes, Phil unplugged his bass, walked off stage, and the other guy walked off stage. And no one announced Dead. Nobody said, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Seastone. They just did. It did add to the weirdness of the whole thing. The next day was Friday. Joel Salvin had gone Wednesday, but because of the time, he couldn't. His Wednesday night report couldn't get into the paper till Friday morning. And in the Friday morning Chronicle, he said between sets, Phil Lesh and keyboard player Ned Legion played some electronic sounds. And I went, oh, the guy who was on American Beauty. Selvin didn't call it Seastones.

[Rich Mahan]

It was the first public acknowledgement of the electronic performances that Ned and Phil had been staging since late June. The Dead played some of the finest shows of the year. And while we know the Dead returned to the road in 76, every night of the Winterland Run marked the final versions of certain parts of the Dead's repertoire. The Thursday show, we're Talking about, for example, is the last time they did Ramble On Rose with the original vocal arrangement from Europe 72 with Lesh singing on the chorus.

[Jesse Jarno]

Baby.

[Rich Mahan]

It was the final one drummer version of the other one at the heart of the second set and the final single drummer version of the impossibly quiet Stella Blue.

[Jesse Jarno]

It seems like all this life was just a dream. Jay Curley Either Thursday or Saturday, the crowd just went nuts at the end of the show before us Blues. And everybody was jumping up and down and yelling with their arms in the air. And Phil came around his stack and looked at this oscilloscope, and when he finally got to the microphone, he said, congratulations, people, you make more noise than we do.

[Rich Mahan]

Strider.

[Jesse Jarno]

And then being October in the Bay Area, the nights are kind of crisp and the air quality is usually really good, and the breezes off the ocean and everything. Yeah, it was, you know, call it golden memories, definitely.

[Rich Mahan]

The shows were everything Joan Brown could have wanted and more.

[Jesse Jarno]

For those nights. I was the most free and happy and musically inspired that I've ever been in my whole entire life. The Grateful Dead spoke something in me that I could not believe. And I felt like it was such a privilege to be there, and it was such a privilege to look around and realize there really weren't that many girls that like the Grateful Dead at this time in place. And it was really a great time for me as a young teenager to get to know myself. And the Dead were a big, huge part of it.

[Rich Mahan]

Our ultra reliable witness, Michael Parish, was a seasoned head by then.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was common knowledge that was kind of the end for now, at least for the Dead. But I have to say, I mean, I got tickets as soon as I knew they'd gone on sale. Santa Cruz drove over to the Sears in Capitola, which was the nearest place there was a ticket trot outlet, and had no trouble getting tickets. I went to the last three Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

[Rich Mahan]

The Friday show included the last full version of the weather report suite with Garcia's beautiful faux steel guitar licks on the prelude.

[Jesse Jarno]

We do now tell me why summer's.

[Rich Mahan]

Fade and roses die Last ship of fools for now, too. The version on steal your face.

[Jesse Jarno]

Sam.

[Rich Mahan]

Both Friday and Sunday became three set shows, among the last time the Dead's flexibility flexed in that particular way. Friday the 18th was goodbye to a few more things. It was the last time that Seastones flowed into a Dead set and it was a doozy. Dead Legion.

[Jesse Jarno]

And it was already known in advance that at least three of all five nights we would do electronic music, and at least three of those nights it would segue into the Grateful Dead. The goal was to get Dark Star, Warf Rat, Morning Dew, and some of the others where Jerry liked what I did and how I helped shape the flow.

[Rich Mahan]

The Seastone set on the 18th was a high point for many. Jay Curley was ready.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Friday show is my personal favorite. I do have a memory of having a wonderful conversation with this pretty lady. And all of a sudden Ned comes out and she goes, oh, I hate this. And she runs into the lobby, and I think, oh, well, so much for that.

[Rich Mahan]

Michael Parrish.

[Jesse Jarno]

Ned and Phil to Dark Star in the Morning Dew. That was just transcendent. Probably musical high point of that whole week, for sure. I still think that that's one of the best pieces of music I ever heard. The Grateful Dead.

[Rich Mahan]

Jeff Gould.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's just beyond the crazy bio sonic sounds or whatever you want to call it. He's a good musician, too. Like, some of them had a really good flow more than others, but it was definitely a cool thing. It just. Once again, it's not Casey Jones. It takes so many forms. The Ned and Phil show is a pretty extreme thing, but it was all part of where everybody was going. Ned Legion, October 18, going from the Seastone sewer jam into Morning Dew. Garcia and Phil, in particular, understood the significance of that. And doing that with Eyes of the World also had significance. It wasn't that these people were just playing what came into their heads at the time. Oh, I loved it. At that point. I think I'd already gone down the Charles Ives rabbit hole. And, I mean, it was fascinating. It was so loud and just so different than anything you would normally associate with even the dad's weirdest jams. But again, the way that the Ned and Phil part of that show flowed into the Dead coming out was really just perfect.

[Rich Mahan]

In 1981, David Gan spoke with Phil Lesh about this segment included in his book Conversations with the Dead, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast there was one nice time at Winterland.

[Jesse Jarno]

In fact, the closing Winterland sort of drifted in. Yeah, that was great. That was great dark stuff. That was fabulous. That was fabulous. It's in the movie, and Ned is in the movie, but he hasn't got any credits.

[Rich Mahan]

That's also in the category of getting ahead of ourselves. In 1974, as the dead prepare to retire from the road and make their new album, the horizons of Seastones were a bright color in their musical landscapes.

[Jesse Jarno]

Yeah, that Seastone stuff is Just amazing seastones into Dark Star, into Morning Dew. I mean, whoa. I listen to it once a year at least.

[Rich Mahan]

It was the last version of Darkstar until 1978, the last of the single drummer era. And in that way, the last of a developing thread that had grown from a Jam in September 1967 and developed gradually over the next seven years. It was definitely the end of an era. While We Care.

[Jesse Jarno]

October 19th. For the first six or seven minutes of the set two performance, I go out and play synthesizer alone. And I used rhythm boxes and computer control, rhythm boxes that I had built from popular electronic circuitry to generate electronic machine rhythms. Today we take it for granted that people can have electronic drums and electronic percussion, but we no longer have the duality. Oh, it sounds like a machine or it sounds like a robot. It's robot music. Or, you know, all the derogatory terms that. That I heard. One guy came up, I think it was during the movie, and there's movie footage for this. When I was playing solo synthesizer before Phil had come out, a guy came up right in my face on stage.

[Rich Mahan]

And reached out to touch the synthesizer.

[Jesse Jarno]

And I just brushed his hand away. And he sat there for a while and then he just cooled out. He was in some place.

[Rich Mahan]

If he had been angry, I would assume that he would just knock stuff.

[Jesse Jarno]

Over or been really hostile. He felt more like he was in a very young child state. And Garcia.

[Rich Mahan]

Garcia said to me, he said.

[Jesse Jarno]

After that, he said to me, you know, it's really far out. Really amazing stuff happens when you play. Some of it's cool and some of it's not cool. He said, that one was really cool.

[Rich Mahan]

There were so many departures from the songbook during the Saturday show that we'll only note a few. It was the last time they played the original uptempo Friend of the Devil before it slowed down.

[Jesse Jarno]

Didn't get to sleep that night till the morning came to rest.

[Rich Mahan]

For Mars Hotel. It was the last version of loose Lucy until 1990, the final version with Donna Jean Godschow. For some reason, they played Mama Tried for the first time since August 71, which is a mite sloppy. Garcia and Donna do Dolly Parton's Tomorrow Is Forever for the first time since 72. And the last time with the Dead is gone.

[Jesse Jarno]

But Tomorrow is Forever. Joan Brown In 1974, I had mostly just listened to albums with my ear pressed against the speaker. And now as I sat in Wonderland, the music hit me. It hit me so much that even though I was in my seat, I just Couldn't even contain myself. My favorite song before these shows was Let It Grow from the Wake of the Flood album. After these shows it became Scarlet Begonias.

[Rich Mahan]

I picked up my mat, shiz was.

[Jesse Jarno]

Closing the door had one of those flashes. I've been there before. Been there before. Well, most of the other guys in the group were always talking about the guitar and how Jerry was playing or how Bob was playing or even Phil. Me as a girl, I was mostly focused on Donna and her. How she was swaying back and forth on stage and the joy with which Jerry was playing. I just remember being so captivated by his smile and his expressions and the appreciation that he had with playing for the music. And that's really what I remember from those shows mostly is my admiration for Jerry. And after those shows, Scarlet Begonias was definitely my favorite song. I was always a boogier, but this was it for me.

[Rich Mahan]

And if you check out the bonus disc for the Dead movie dvd, you can watch the long jammed out final single drummer Scarlet Begonias. The tickets for the show on the 20th were stamped the last one for reasons we discussed before. There are very few ticket stubs from Winterland shows, but there are several from this run and Grateful that is misspelled G R E A T E F U L. For Deadheads in attendance, every song might be its last performance.

[Jesse Jarno]

And now, ladies and gentlemen, here he is, the 43 year old Perfect Master, Mr. Bill Graham.

[Rich Mahan]

Bill Graham nailed the dialogue, understanding the assignment and delivering one of his great truths.

[Jesse Jarno]

Thank you, thank you for coming. As it should be on a Sunday night in San Francisco, the Grateful Day.

[Rich Mahan]

Strider.

[Jesse Jarno]

The final night, Jay, our friend Mandy, myself and a couple other people I know that we got seats in the front row balcony on the north side of Winterland Auditorium. And we sat next to to Shea Ray or Ray Sewell, who was down from Eugene with his partner at the time, Joyce, and their fellow partner Dave, who was also in the restaurant business with Jay Ray. So it was a pretty cool vantage point in perspective. Certainly I can say I was high as a kite. And watching them open up with cold rain and snow was very exciting.

[Rich Mahan]

The first set contained the final American Beauty song played with the original vocal blend.

[Jesse Jarno]

I love you more than words can tell Listen to the river Sing sweet songs to rock my soul. And then seeing the second drum set being set up, that was like anticipation, whatever it might be. It was a charged atmosphere from Grateful.

[Rich Mahan]

Ed Records and round reels. Ron Rakow.

[Jesse Jarno]

Two guys came to me that are really heavy in the Grateful Dead and really heavy in my life. 2. Two guys, both from Pendleton, Oregon. Rex Jackson and Ramrod. We were making a movie in October 1974. We were playing at Winterland, and the night before the last gig, Rex Jackson came to me because I was producing the movie. And he said, you know, we talked about it, we being he and Ramrod, really, and I guess some other guys were around, but he met. He and Ramrod, we talked about it, and we'd like to get Mickey up on stage and have him be in the movie. That. That's part of our history. And I said, that's a great idea. So they called Mickey the next morning and Gerald answered the phone and she said, the Rex Jackson and Ramrod are on the phone for you. And he said, no, I don't want to talk to anybody that's not in the band. She said, I think you should do that. You should take this phone call. So one time he easily relented. I guess just. He had good feelings about those two guys. And they told him they wanted to come out and get his drum shit and set it up at Winterland. And he said, is it okay with the other guys in the band? And they said, of course. So they didn't even know. The fact is, they didn't even know. Nobody knew this was going to happen. But equipment guys, the equipment guys, as a block, a political block in a lifestyle, in a tribe, had so much power that they could execute it in this kind of way. It's pretty fucking amazing. The guy that really could have stopped it and didn't was Kreutzman.

[Rich Mahan]

Feelings were shifting things and would keep shifting, but in that moment, the return of Mickey Hart was no easy thing. In his memoir, Deal, Billy Kwartzman made a point of addressing this night and the sudden reappearance of his erstwhile drumming partner, writing, I've never really spoken publicly about this, but I'll be clear here. I objected to having Mickey sit in with us that night, and I think I was probably somewhat vocal about that. Backstage, I enjoyed being the only drummer, and I didn't want that to change. I got territorial about it. Mickey didn't know the new material, and we hadn't rehearsed or played with him in years, so I didn't think that it could possibly be any good, and it wasn't that night. Personally, I was insulted that everybody else backstage rallied behind Mickey. The whole situation became really uncomfortable for me.

[Jesse Jarno]

Groisman was a very, very gracious guy. You know, he really was secure in his position because he didn't stop it. So Mickey played. But at that point the band stopped going out on tour, so we didn't know whether Mickey would be included. When, as and if a resurrection happened, nobody knew. Nobody knew. And then it just happened. If somebody is responsible for that, of Mickey getting back into the Grateful Dead, it's Rex Jackson.

[Rich Mahan]

Since Kreutzman had asked him to leave the band in 1971, also detailed in Deal, Mickey had gradually started to welcome his former bandmates to sessions at his Barnes Studio, collaborating at different points with everybody but Kreutzman on various studio projects. Donogene Godshow McKay had recorded for Robert Hunter's Tales of the Great Rum Runners, but somebody else may have been engineering that session.

[Jesse Jarno]

But the first time I met Mickey was when we were making the movie at Winterland while I was in the band. He played the first time with the Grateful Dead. I don't think I had met him before that.

[Rich Mahan]

To Heads at Winterland, it was pretty obvious what was about to go down. When the second drum kit went up. Jay Curley was up with Strider Brown in the balcony.

[Jesse Jarno]

Incredible pot that smoked smoked me into a psychedelic state. But as soon as I saw them bringing out more drum risers, I said, whoa, something's going on here. I hadn't taken acid for any of the shows, so I ran down to the floor and just said, does anybody have any acid? And the guy in front of me turned around and said, here, asking you shall receive. Yeah, as soon as I saw that drum riser, I knew that I needed some acid and, you know, danced my brains out for all five nights. Really, it was. It was incredible. He came for playing in the band and then he was there for the third set as well.

[Rich Mahan]

Mickey Hart had a co writing credit on the song, but had only performed on the song's debut version three years earlier. You can hear Ned Simpson there too, Michael Parrish.

[Jesse Jarno]

You know that that third night was. Was so emotional because, well, I mean, you knew what was happening and then. And then Nikki showed up. I mean, you could, you can see it in, in the movie too, but I mean, you could see that they were really emotional about it as well.

[Rich Mahan]

Ned Lagin was in the mix, just as he had been on Mickey Hart's last show on February 18, 1971.

[Jesse Jarno]

And after that, the Grateful Dead were retired. So it wasn't like you were joining a band. It was like I was there for the last iteration playing keyboards in the band, but I was never a member of the band. And my goal personally was to Play.

[Rich Mahan]

With them because I enjoyed it, but.

[Jesse Jarno]

To also do my own thing. Jay yeah, everybody was really excited about the Good Loving, having not heard it since Pig died.

[Rich Mahan]

In singing Good Lovin in Winterland, Weir actually became the third Grateful Dead vocalist to sing the song, which had begun as a Garcia vehicle in 66 before Mr. Penn took it over in 69. Deep into the encore in the 20th, they played a powerful Mississippi Half Step, and it's hard not to hear Garcia leaning into the Fare Thee well bent in the lyrics.

[Jesse Jarno]

If all you've got to live for is what you left behind get yourself up out of charge and steal that silver mine.

[Rich Mahan]

In our Ro Jimmy episode, we unearthed a wonderful story from an old David Ganz interview in which Hunter discusses Half Step as being about his own journey to get on his way and start his life for real. Many rivers to cross Moving to the Bay Area, Gary Lambert was still working on his unpublished guitar player profile of Bobby. Weird.

[Jesse Jarno]

I saw him the last night at Winterland in October 74, and you know, and there was talk this is the end. This is the end of the Grateful Dead. And Bobby just said, you ain't seen the last of us. And he was very confident of that. And then Bobby talked more about that when we spoke after the tour was over and after the Winterland shows, there were so many things contributing to it, but he also spoke very optimistically about the future because they were already starting to make plans for Blues For Allah and all of that. Bobby had some preliminary tunes in his head.

[Rich Mahan]

This is how Bob Weir described it the day after the final Winterland show in an interview conducted for the movie included in the Look Back documentary on the 2004 DVD.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, I view it as one big continuum. I see nothing ending and nothing beginning right now. I've been working at something for the last 10 or 12 years that I'm just continuing to work on. I'm going to start to focus more on a particular aspect that being my recording career, but it's my music that I've been working on.

[Rich Mahan]

Within a month, Weir would debut his new band, Kingfisher.

[Jesse Jarno]

Creepy fire in your eyes Is that desire in the sky I keep on trying but I, I can't get through.

[Rich Mahan]

Billy Kurtzman felt that way too. Interviewed a few days after the so called retirement. Now in the Look Back documentary, I.

[Jesse Jarno]

Think it was played up as a last concert a lot, you know, but I just, I just think a cooling period of time where we can just find our own ways and it's really nice right now to Just be able to sit back for a few months and know that you don't have to make an airplane flight and that you feel really good and you got a good place to live. That's just. That's all I need. I don't have to worry about the band. The band I think will take care of itself when the time feels really good. We'll get together, rehearse new material, probably do another album after Christmas. I hope we do. And this time I hope we find an engineer that we work with. Ruel.

[Rich Mahan]

Sorry, Roy Siegel. Keith and Donna didn't get to weigh in on how they felt at the.

[Jesse Jarno]

End of the concert. Keith and I got dosed at the last gig and that's when the camera crew were coming out at our house at Stinson beach to do our interview for the movie and everybody got dosed and nobody. The cameraman couldn't work, Keith and I couldn't talk. You know, that's why we don't have an interview in the movie is we got so dosed that last night.

[Rich Mahan]

The so called retirement was an attempt to reset and recenter themselves creatively and otherwise. Having just arrived in the Bay Area and seen five dead shows in a row, Jay Curley had a healthy music head's perspective on it.

[Jesse Jarno]

Everybody was saying, oh my God, everything's gonna end. I'll never see Jerry again. And that didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me because sitting in my pocket was a ticket for Halloween with Jerry and Merle. So I said, oh, okay, well I guess I'll just go see Jerry and Merle a million times. Which is what I did. The first show was on a Wednesday. The Sunday before that Atuna played for free in Golden Gate Park. The weekend after that Sun Ra played at the Keystone Corner. And this is like music everywhere all the time. I just couldn't believe it.

[Rich Mahan]

It turned out to be a pretty life changing five nights for Jeff Gould.

[Jesse Jarno]

Quite tiring at the end of five nights. He went all five nights, you know, and most of us did go. My wife had just returned from a Peace Corps in Africa and we knew each other in high school and so that was our first time. Usual date was the first night of the Five Night Series.

[Rich Mahan]

Happy. Almost 50th. The shows also sparked an idea.

[Jesse Jarno]

Phil's playing his bass and I noticed this huge freaking lambswool strap he's got on and I think boy, that bass must be heavy. And at the time I had started that summer working in this aerospace down down peninsula. Ford Aerospace we were building satellite antennas and stuff like that. One of the more famous things is the Voyager. You know, it's still out there. That's been great. But what I was doing the daytime was building structures that were like, lightweight and strong. Because when it takes something in outer space, it costs a lot of money for every kilogram that you have to lift into orbit.

[Rich Mahan]

A few episodes back, we noted that before it got codified into the Wall of Sound, Lesh thought of it as the gantry system. After the scaffolding system used to launch heavy objects into orbit, it just seemed.

[Jesse Jarno]

To me that this base was really heavy. So I went back and talked to some of my supervisors and then I contacted Alembic. So basically what I did was I came back to Alembic to the repair shop and brought them a bunch of trinkets. I can't remember why they were, you know, little pieces of stuff made from these materials. It turned out they were very interested and Rick and Ron came down to visit me at the plant.

[Rich Mahan]

Journalist Brian Anderson, working on a book about the Wall of Sound, Loud and Clear, has made it a mission to track down as many pieces of the wall as possible. We've linked to Brian's [e-mail] deadcast. Please welcome back Bryan Anderson.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead would kind of bequeath some of that gear to groups at their discretion. You know, Bay Area bands, buddy bands that they could sort of trust. So even in its afterlife, the Wall of Sound was really kind of a valuable resource in that regard. And I've also spoken with some other various tech and crew folk who ended up taking little parts of the system for themselves to incorporate into their home stereo setups, for example. So nothing huge, we're talking maybe like a pair of 12 inch speaker drivers or something, or maybe a cabinet or two. So there was a little bit of that going on as well. In other cases, bits of the Wall of Sound just sort of eked out literally around the globe. And a small part of it actually ended up in my living room. I purchased a unit in the most recent Sotheby's auction. And to my knowledge, it is a vocal fill monitor from the Wall of Sound. And it weighs, you know, 65 pounds. I could crawl into it, it's that big and it's sitting in the corner of my living room and it's a literal hunk of junk to some eyes. But, you know, knowing some of the places it's been and all of the sound waves that flowed out of it and the people who were able to experience Music flowing through it just sort of, you know, it gives me that woo woo feeling, if you will.

[Rich Mahan]

Richie Pechner had helped build the wall.

[Jesse Jarno]

The truth is they were just cabinets, you know, they're speaker cabinets. So if you were a guitar player and you could get one of Jerry's twin 12 inch JBLs, that was it. People had friends and it was just kind of all got disseminated around Phil's bass cabinets. There were so many of those, you could give them away for a year to people that knew people. It wasn't like they had a sale, per se.

[Rich Mahan]

One of the bands that inherited parts of the Wall were Osiris, a Palo Alto group fronted by Kevin McKernan, Pigpen's younger brother. We included this story a few seasons back, but we'll put it in its proper chronological place now. Please welcome back Osiris Rode.

[Jesse Jarno]

Sully and Garcia really had a soft spot for Kevin, way beyond any sort of standard person that's in the music industry. And so Kevin and I drove up to the Dead office because, you know, Kevin was putting together this band with his friends, you know, Scott and the other Kevin and Al and Sam Sheets and Keith Moore played with him too. And Kevin and I drove up and his brother Studebaker, Kevin Ole Leadfoot, we got up there and Garcia basically just gave us or gave him hope. Truck bed full of like Mac amps and those speakers, the hard trucker speakers that were part of the Euro72 tour and most likely were on the Wall of Sound. You know, that's kind of half the battle is getting decent gear. So they started playing gigs like they did free shows at Stanford, the Frost M Theater, but also up by the Tressiter.

[Rich Mahan]

Union Strider and Jay saw Osiris open for Garcia and Saunders on Halloween that year even. Here's a little bit of Osiris hook, line and Sinker, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast thanks, Sully.

[Jesse Jarno]

I know that you've been fishing for quite some time look for me who would take your life Special love just about all the time when you jump a joy Stop singing all she wants.

[Rich Mahan]

More than bands getting pieces of the Wall of Sound were bands influenced by the Wall of Sound. Ron Long left us this awesome story.

[Jesse Jarno]

We were a Dead cover band in the 1970s and we lived in Oldsmar, Florida, in a place called the Oldsmar Hotel. We felt cosmically connected to the Dead all the time. And we went to D.C. to hear the Wallace. We were blown away by the sound and we went back and Created our own system with custom JBL15s on base, reflex cabinets powered by Crown, Cerwin, Vega and phased linear amps run through an alpha glancing mixing board. We stacked the Barks and ran all our instruments through the mixer and we killed it in clubs and outdoor concerts. That's how they became the Barks.

[Rich Mahan]

The quality and intention of the wall of sound were obvious. The actual signal chain could be harder to discern. That is how to create one sound from several individual PAs and no mixer. One band influenced by seeing the PA behind the band was the German group CAN, who we heard from a little bit last time.

[Jesse Jarno]

You be the be the me. See.

[Rich Mahan]

We'Re going to repeat a bit from our Europe 72 season when CAN's engineer Renee Tinner told us about a photo of the dead, possibly from Munich 74 and how that sent the CAN engineering team down a new path.

[Jesse Jarno]

I got the inspiration from a picture in the paper of their equipment setup on one of those concerts there in Germany. It inspired my colleague and me to take up that spirit of having a wall of sound behind the bank.

[Rich Mahan]

They didn't have schematics and could only do what they saw in the photo.

[Jesse Jarno]

We just practically crude any loudspeaker we could find in the studio and mounted it on a construction kind of. There were not boxes with. There was nothing on the back, just all these speakers behind the blank. No, no boxes really. You know, just loudspeakers mounted one to each other. Most of the speakers were pretty shitty speakers, apart From a few JBLs and the rest was crap. I cannot even say what it was.

[Rich Mahan]

In photos of the era, the banner centered around something that looks like the wall's center cluster.

[Jesse Jarno]

I doubt it was the same quality as of today. I cannot say because I didn't hear. But the inspiration came of having many speakers behind the band.

[Rich Mahan]

I'm pretty sure that system is in effect on the newest Cannes archival release, recorded in Aston in 1977, available from mute Records. An audience tape even. Perhaps the wall of sound's biggest impact came with two bands you almost certainly wouldn't expect, including one of the most popular in the world. Big thanks to Queen City Jams for helping us to this info. The first were underground legends and noted Deadheads black flag. In 1986, days after black Flag played their final show, they were spotted in the parking lot at Alpine Valley, catching some Dead gigs on the way home. It was sometime on that last tour as well that their sound man Dave Rat, convinced them to try stacking the gear behind the band without Monitors, he wrote on his blog. On the upside, the system was incredibly clear sounding, while on the downside, it sounded a bit distant. And the sound bleeding into the mics was cumbersome enough not to continue with that setup 20 years later, Dave Rat got to try again. By then, he was running sound for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The evolution of sound systems from giant globs of speakers to finesse full narrow line arrays created the opportunity to cover large venues with multiple systems utilizing minimal space. The entire Wall of sound was 26,000 watts. Current systems run at 10 times that power and are a fraction of that size. Plus, we now have the capability of effectively predicting the sonic coverage in a venue based on room dimensions. What this means is that with today's sound system technology, multiple sound systems can be hung conventionally to either side of the band rather than stacked behind them without blocking sight lines, creating an inconspicuous yet effective implementation of the concept. After testing out systems at home using live multitracks, Rat first wanted to run three systems, but decided that the addition of a third system was subtle compared to expanding to just two. I'm not sure how long that system stayed in use, but in 2006 anyway, the red Hot Chili Peppers were touring with a wall influenced speaker system. The Wall of Sound became legend, but first it had to earn its name. There are some in print references from 1974 to the PA being called the Wall of Sound, but the name didn't really catch on until sometime in the 1980s. Brian Anderson.

[Jesse Jarno]

It sort of came after the fact, the tag, you know, wall of Sound.

[Rich Mahan]

The next year, Alembic published a paper about what was still just called the.

[Jesse Jarno]

Grateful Bed system that was published in 1975, I believe, in the Audio Engineering Society of America. That paper was divided into two parts. The first was written by Don Davis of Synergetic Audio Concept in California and. Right. Part two was by Ron Wickersham of Alembic. And that was presented at the 51st Convention of the AES in May of 1975. By that point, you know, spring of 1975, all parties who were involved in this magnificent sound project had had a moment to sort of like reflect and just sort of like digest everything that had happened. And yeah, that paper coming out in a respectable journal, that was huge at.

[Rich Mahan]

The time, the system had been an incredible experiment and really quite dangerous.

[Jesse Jarno]

Another thing that I find so remarkable about the Wall of Sound is that no one died as a direct result of working on this thing. No one got crushed under a heap of speakers. Nobody fell three stories off the top of the scaffolding when they were tilting a cabinet way up there. Nobody got electrocuted to death. Like, it's amazing that nothing like that happened. If you talk to some folks who were there working on that thing, when they were setting that thing up, it was like that was kind of sober time. Like, no one was drinking, no one was getting too fucked up because the risk was too high. The margin for error was razor thin, and they just weren't gonna risk that. But even still, at a time before, like, OSHA standards were really, really, really strict, nobody got seriously injured or died as a direct result of working on the wall of sound.

[Rich Mahan]

Owsley did fall off the scaffolding at some point, possibly in Oakland, and hurt his arm. But by 1975, the wall of sound had disappeared. The Mars Hotel itself wasn't long for the world either. We got this fun story from listener Gregory Barrett.

[Jesse Jarno]

Back in the early 1970s, I used to take any visiting friends to the Hotel Mars in San Francisco. I wouldn't tell them where I was taking them, but it was part of the tourist destination list that I had. And we'd hang out in the lobby. Imagine my surprise when I saw the album come out. It reminded me of how I felt when I lived in Turlock, California, and they dedicated an entire side of Europe, 72, to the people of Turlock, California. Of course, by now I need to tell you that this next number rose straight to the top of the charts in Turlock, California, numero uno. And stayed there for a week or two. They loved us in Turlock and we love them for that. It just goes to Show there's only 300 of us in the world. We all just run around real fast.

[Rich Mahan]

Sometime in 1975 or 1976, the last residents were kicked out of the Mars Hotel and the hotel was gutted. Ron Rackow is president of Grateful Dead Records.

[Jesse Jarno]

I have the sign that identified the Mars Hotel as the Mars Hotel. I was in my office in San Rafael. Somebody walked upstairs, right in, didn't even stop. Like he knew everybody, which he didn't. And he said, I just went to the auction of all the stuff at the Mars Hotel, and I want you to have this. And he gave it to me and turned around and left. I don't even know who the guy's name is.

[Rich Mahan]

Rakow still has it on the front door of his room.

[Jesse Jarno]

It says, Hotel Mars Rooms. Those are all equal sized, big letters, 3 inch letters by the day, comma, week or Month, hot and cold, water, steam heat in every room.

[Rich Mahan]

Sometime around then, the crew working on the animated opening sequence for the Grateful Dead movie, caught wind of the impending destruction. Rita Fiedler.

[Jesse Jarno]

I lived on Brunel Hill, which is right on the edge of the Mission District. And the route I took to go over to Mill Valley, and I would occasionally drive by a portion south of Market street where the. The actual Mars Hotel was. It was on its last leg, so to speak. It had been, I think, marked for demolition. And I just took note of it. It was just like a half, you know, just something you notice as you're driving by. Well, I. I began to see there was more activity on certain times that I drive by, like, oh, my gosh, they're really starting to take down this building. And I mentioned it to Gary and I said, you know, that the actual Mars Hotel, you know, it's down there south of Market, and they're really serious about demolishing that. You know, maybe we should, we should do something about it. So we scrambled and Gary got a camera and several of us, a handful of us, went down to the site because I said, you know, Gary, really, really, we need to do this. It's going to happen really soon. There was actually just the front wall literally standing. So when we got there, that's indeed what had happened, that it was the very last push that Gary was able to film of this bulldozer boom, knocking down the front marquee that said Mars Hotel. All of that, yeah, Pretty dramatic.

[Rich Mahan]

The ship of fools kept sailing in and out of the mists of Grateful dead history after 1974. No doubt a ghost ship where one might find the spirits of Precarious Lee, Cadillac, Ronald, some friends of rock, Scully's friends, and the embodiment of every earnestly intentioned bad decision in the band's history. Or maybe your own. Thanks for listening.

[Jesse Jarno]

See, look away from me.

[Rich Mahan]

Thank you very much for tuning in.

[Jesse Jarno]

To the good old Grateful Dead cast. Friends. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode.

[Rich Mahan]

Donna Jean, Gotcho McKay, Ron Rakow, Ned Legion, David Grisman, Elvis Costello, Steve Brown, Richie Peckner, Jerry Pompili, Jim Sullivan, John Perry, Gary Lambert, Jeff Gould, Joan Brown, Michael Parrish, Cory Arnold, Strider Brown, Jay.

[Jesse Jarno]

Curley, Rita Fiedler, Renee Tenor, Lee Ronaldo.

[Rich Mahan]

Gregory Barrett, Ron Long, David Lemieux, Brian Anderson, Sean o', Donnell and Brian Kehue.

[Jesse Jarno]

Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archives. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus.

[Rich Mahan]

Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno.

[Jesse Jarno]

Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Doron Tyson. All rights reserved.