Europe '72: France

Summary

GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST
Episode: Europe '72: France
Date: April 28, 2022

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Episode Overview

In this vibrant episode, hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarnow take listeners to Paris, recapping the Grateful Dead’s two legendary shows at the Olympia Theatre on May 3 and 4, 1972, during the iconic Europe ‘72 tour. The episode explores the band's Parisian adventures, the creative and logistical chaos behind the scenes, memorable musical performances that made the Europe ‘72 album, audience experiences, French cultural collisions, and a near-riot at the ill-fated show in Lille. Through first-person accounts, archival interviews, and music analysis, this installment captures the heady mix of high times, historic performances, and Dead family shenanigans in France.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Arrival & Life in Paris

• The band's journey from Hamburg to Paris was marked by cultural misunderstandings—most notably, the challenge of feeding 52 hungry American hippies in the French countryside during off-restaurant hours.
  Bob Weir:
  “We’d have to go to some little countryside French place...I'd have to go in there with my small knowledge of French, try to talk them into serving 52 really weird-looking people who will be very grateful if they were fed at a time when no one is eating in the entire country.” [05:03]
• The Grand Hôtel expected a 37-piece orchestra, instead receiving the Dead’s “hippie circus,” causing confusion but also leading to many memorable moments.

2. Travel Logistics & “Bozos and Bolos News”

• Rosie McGee details her job creating a newsletter for the crew with practical info and French phrases, leading to the first and possibly only issue of “Bozos and Bolos News.”
  Rosie McGee:
  “...I wrote a short history of Paris and sightseeing and restaurant tips...everyone had a copy under their door when they got up in the morning.” [08:37]
• Regular bulletins became a staple of the tour, filled with jokes, information, and schedule changes, making the band feel like “herding cats.” [10:19]

3. Off-Day Parisian Adventures

• The crew soaked up Parisian culture, aided by local filmmakers who played tour guides.
• Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl wandered through closed museums, eventually enraptured by antique instruments at the Musée de la Musique.
  Mountain Girl:
  “We spent about an hour in there looking at antique instruments. Really old, you know, like a thousand years old… the history of music and musical instruments. We don’t really have a history of that here in this country, but there they’ve got it.” [12:51]
• Steve Parrish and Ramrod, after taking acid with Phil Lesh, had a surreal day exploring Notre Dame and the Louvre—almost causing a cultural incident by opening windows near the Mona Lisa to smoke a joint:
  Steve Parrish:
  “He says, you stupid Americans...the air of Paris will completely destroy this beautiful painting. Don’t you understand that?...If it was that important, they’d be locked, man!” [18:01]

4. Paris Banquet & the Dead’s French Connection

• Warner Bros treated the band and crew to a lavish banquet at La Grande Cascade, complete with fine French cuisine, Cuban cigars, and a cultural exchange when Americans offered the waiters hash pipes as a gesture of “Indian friendship.”
  Rosie McGee:
  “When a pipe was offered to him a moment later, he took a hit, smiled at me, and did the feather pantomime again. I almost fell under the table laughing.” [30:15]

5. Paris Shows at the Olympia Theatre

Audience & Setting

• May ’72 in Paris was marked by a heavy police presence due to post-’68 protest paranoia, though inside, the Olympia crowd matched New York’s intensity and passion. John McIntyre (manager):
  “The audiences in Paris… had already adopted us as their exciting partners, and it was just thrilling, absolutely thrilling.” [36:57]

Pigpen’s Letters

• Pigpen wrote home, bemused by persistent crowd trouble and police agitation, warning kids not to show up ticketless:
  “Pigpen says not to come to a show without a ticket.” [36:01]

Musical Highlights

• Multiple tracks from these nights landed on Europe ’72, including “China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider,” “Tennessee Jed,” “Jack Straw,” and “Sugar Magnolia.”
  David Lemieux:
  “It really does feel like a couple of Saturday Night shows in New York. And the band matches it.” [38:21]

Musicological Deep-Dive: “China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider”

• Robert Hunter shares the trippy origins of “China Cat Sunflower”:
  “There’s a cat dictated China Cat Sunflower to me. How did that happen? I was just sitting on my stomach purring away and saying this stuff. It’s easier then just write it down. I guess it’s plagiarism.” [47:32]
• An extended segment (51:17–56:10) breaks down the seamless musical transition between the two songs, a hallmark of Dead performance.

Song Histories

• “I Know You Rider” traced back to an unnamed Black woman recorded by Alan Lomax in the 1930s.
• “Tennessee Jed” inspired by Hunter’s late-night wanderings in Barcelona and echoes of American folk radio.
  Hunter:
  “It was Barcelona...Fell four flats and broke my spine. And it was so out of place in Barcelona at 2 o’clock…” [68:05]
• “Jack Straw” as the last Weir/Hunter collaboration for decades, originally with different vocal assignments before Garcia and Weir established their alternating parts [80:50].

Audience Reflections

• French Deadheads recall the euphoria and singularity of the Paris shows: Philippe Sicar:
  “It was pure bliss, you know… I expected the five founders of the Great Dead. And there was Keith [Godchaux]. I was surprised because it was so, so good.” [40:50]

6. Psychedelic Mayhem & Second Paris Show

• Rampant use of Owsley’s LSD (with unforeseen potency) resulted in surreal onstage and backstage episodes. Donna Jean Godchaux:
  “…I was sometimes taking 15 hits at a time. It was just normal, normal, normal… I didn’t realize that Owsley had brought in a new batch. And I took like 15 something hits and it was fresh.” [89:15] Steve Parrish:
  “Everybody was on it, man. Everybody was taking it there and it was because it was 10 times stronger… these massive LSD experiences were happening.” [89:39]

7. Load Out & French Crew Sabotage

• Hostile French union crew sabotaged the Dead’s load out by trapping cables under heavy trusses and shutting out the (tripping) American roadies.
  Steve Parrish:
  “They shut the lights off in the building and they dropped the trust...pinning everything to the floor…We must have sat there for about a half hour…it took us hours, man.” [104:01]

8. Lille Disaster & Riot

• The next show's gear truck was sabotaged—an aggrieved Communist (after a chocolate ice cream incident) poured sugar in the Dead’s diesel fuel. The band was stuck in Lille without their equipment; fans waited into the night, some angry and frustrated, but mostly disappointed. Steve Parrish:
  “The truck made it about eight miles out of Paris and it broke down and that was that…There was an audience and there was, you know, the place was full and there was no equipment…And so they were going to cancel the gig.” [110:23]
• Music and lights crew, amidst rising crowd discontent, had to "strike the gear while looking like [they were] setting up gear." Announcements were made in French, but some in the crowd grew rowdy, smashing windows to escape.
  Rosie McGee:
  “So we went one by one into the bathroom of the dressing room and out the window and down a pipe...somehow we all just got out.” [119:31] Phil Lesh (recalling via Cutler):
  “Women and musicians first,” said as they scrambled out the window. [120:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Every day was a fucking crazy adventure. Especially because on days off we took Acid, Phil and Ramrod and myself… The famous trip we made to Notre Dame, which was, at that time, fully intact and just ancient.”
  — Steve Parrish [16:42]
• “Paris sure is mellow in the springtime. Sidewalk cafes, motorbikes on the sidewalks, parked groups just peacefully hanging out outside of bistro. Just like in the movies. It's great.”
  — Excerpt from Pigpen's letter home [16:14]
• “When a pipe was offered to him a moment later, he took a hit, smiled at me, and did the feather pantomime again. I almost fell under the table laughing.”
  — Rosie McGee [30:15]
• “I know you rather gonna miss me when I get gone.”
  — Classic Dead lyric, in discussion of “I Know You Rider” [56:10]
• “You are the best thing to hit Paris since Joan of fucking Arc. Love and thanks.”
  — Telegram from fan Mark Princey [86:06]
• “I took like 15 something hits and it was fresh.”
  — Donna Jean Godchaux, on unexpectedly potent LSD [89:19]
• “Women and musicians first.”
  — Phil Lesh, during escape from Lille dressing room [120:20]

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Important Timestamps

• Arrival & Paris logistics, hotel confusion [05:03–06:59]
• Paris sightseeing (Louvre, Notre Dame, acid trip adventures) [12:19–18:45]
• Crewing, banquets, French culinary culture [25:18–32:05]
• Garcia on communicating through music (interview) [32:05–34:35]
• Olympia Theatre shows, police presence [34:35–39:12]
• Music analysis: China Cat > Rider transition [51:17–56:10]
• The roots and evolution of “Jack Straw” [79:29–84:56]
• Second Paris show, LSD stories & technical mishaps [88:56–93:38]
• Lille riot: sabotage, stranded fans, staff escape [109:29–121:47]

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Conclusion

The Europe '72: France episode vividly rummages through the Dead’s Paris stints, blending musicological analysis, road stories, and French-American countercultural clashes. The voices—band members, Dead family, Deadheads, and historians—paint a memorable portrait of the tour’s highs (both literal and figurative), the Paris shows’ lasting magic, and the chaos that was always only a step behind on the Grateful Dead’s European adventure.

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For full track discussions and archival links, visit dead.net/deadcast. For fan stories, see stories.dead.net.

Transcript

[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 ladies and gargoyles, crepe enthusiasts, welcome back to season five of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thanks for coming along on this journey as we time travel across the pond to 50 years ago and travel with the Grateful Dead on their historic Europe 72 tour. We are bringing new episodes of the.

[Sam Cutler]

Dead Cast to you weekly this season.

[Rich Mahan]

Each episode covers the shows that took place on the Europe 72 tour 50 years to the week after they happened. Visit us at our website dead.netdeadcast and explore the extra materials we have for you to devour for this episode. In fact, we are releasing a daily dose of Europe 72 ephemera during season five for you to sample so there will be new content for you on the regular. Make sure to check your social media. You never know when something cool is going to pop up. [e-mail] deadcast are all of our past episodes from seasons one through four and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform and listen where you like to listen. Did you attend any of the shows on the Europe 72 tour? Do you know somebody who did? Well, get them over to stories.dead.net and record any tales you have about the tour. We're especially interested in hearing from somebody who attended the Netherlands or the Munich shows. There's still time to get you into future episodes covering those, so head on over. We need your stories. How about some Europe 72 music for your collection? July 29th will bring Lyceum 1972 the Complete Recordings Limited Edition, a 24 LP boxed set with four complete shows from the tail end of the Europe 72 tour. Available exclusively at dead.net this one is selling fast folks. If you think you might want to get it, I suggest jumping on it soon. And there's also a newly remastered version of the original Europe 72 album. It'll be available on CD, LP and digitally also on July 29th. Well, this week we travel to the City of Lights, Paris, France for two shows at the famed Olympia Theater on May 3 and May 4, with a third show scheduled that, well, you'll just have to stay tuned to see what happens, won't you? Dawn your berets, grab a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine let's all follow Jesse Jarno for a stroll along the.

[Sam Cutler]

Sam.

[Rich Mahan]

Late On May Day 1972, the Grateful Band arrived in France. They'd been in Europe for exactly a month and had plenty of adventures and made some fantastic music. But in the course of the tour's first 10 performances, they'd only caught two songs that would make it to the original Europe 72 LLP. That would change significantly when they got to Paris, where in the comfortable confines of the Olympia Theatre, they found a welcoming crowd of heads and captured more than twice that five live Dead recordings that virtually every head knows. But to paraphrase the great music documentarian Marty Deburgey, they got more. A lot more. The Bozo bus and the Bolo bus took the two day overland route from Hamburg to Paris with an overnight stop in Konigswinter. As always, we're standing on the shoulders of heads and specifically David Ganz. This next bit of Bob Weir comes from David and Marty Martinez's 1995 interview with him. And it's followed by an interview David did with the Dead's late manager, John McIntyre. Check out David's [e-mail] We'd hit multiple.

[Sam Cutler]

And varied truck stops to the amazement and consternation of the locals. We had two buses like 52 people. And so one of the things that I just remember, I guess Rosie wasn't there because Rosie speaks is French and therefore born in Paris, speaks fluent French. But she must not have been there because I remember a lot of times driving through France in these two buses with 52 hippies and we would be it'd be four in the afternoon and we'd be really hungry and when people like us are really hungry, it's like not a good idea to let that hunger go on any longer because it'll bite burst out in ways that you're not really comfortable with. And so we'd have to go to some little countryside French place. And of course all of France closes down between 2:30 and 7 for food. You just don't. It's not like in this country where there are things that are open all the time and you can eat you know, you can eat whenever. No, that doesn't happen in France. You eat when the meals are cooked in service. And so I would have to go in there with my small knowledge of French, try to talk them into serving 52 really weird looking people who will be very grateful if they were fed at a time when no one is eating in the entire country. And that happened a lot.

[Rich Mahan]

The Grand Hotel in Paris was expecting a 37 piece orchestra. The Beautiful Dead Monsieur? The desk clerk asked Rolling Stone writer Jerry Hopkins, who arrived before the band did. Hopkins met up with the Dead the next day at the crack of noon, a day off before their Paris debut. A number of details come from his great story the Beautiful Dead hit Paris, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast. Rosie McGee was along for the ride, sometimes assisting Sam Cutler, sometimes assisting the recording crew from Alembic, where she worked in the administration side back home. This is from her 2014 conversation with David Ganz for the great book this is All a Dream. We Dreamed.

[Sam Cutler]

So at first Sam had, in each hotel he had a large suite which he could use as his road office. And they had to hand out per diems every day. And there was a large crew of people. So at first I helped, you know, I'd go to his suite in the morning and help hand out the per diems. And then because Francis Carr was with him and he didn't really need my help. So after a while I just, you know, went off and had fun whenever we weren't in a French speaking country.

[Steve Parrish]

Rosie McGee, bless her, she helped a lot, you know, because she spoke perfect French.

[Sam Cutler]

I didn't speak French, a bit of.

[Steve Parrish]

French, but not much.

[Sam Cutler]

I spoke Spanish, but we weren't in Spain, so that didn't help.

[Steve Parrish]

I knew how to say fuck off.

[Sam Cutler]

In about 15 different languages that, that sometimes came in handy. Sam, kudos to him. He put together that whole tour and he tour managed it, he booked it, he, he fronted it, he road managed it and all of that. But my impression of Sam was that he was dismissive of the women. He frequently referred to us in a clump as the old ladies, you know, oh, it's just the old ladies, don't worry about it. And never got to know me as an individual until maybe three years ago.

[Rich Mahan]

But in France, Rosie had some jobs to do. This is from her cool audiobook Dancing with the Dead, which you can acquire via her site Rosiemcgee.com the night before.

[Sam Cutler]

We were to arrive in France, I got to work. My first task was to Write and produce a newsletter that would be helpful to my fellow travelers while they were in Paris. Using several current guidebooks for research, I wrote a short history of Paris and sightseeing and restaurant tips within a short taxi ride or walking distance of the hotel, and some basic French phrases that might come in handy. When we got to the Paris hotel, I typed it up and with the help of the hotel staff, copied and assembled it late that night. Everyone had a copy under their door when they got up in the morning.

[Rich Mahan]

As far as I can tell, the traveling party woke up to the first issue of the Bozos and Bolos News. It might have been the only issue. There were perhaps other in Tor documents, but none of them seem to have survived.

[Steve Parrish]

We produced a daily or every couple of days produced a little kind of.

[Sam Cutler]

Handout thing that maybe, you know, said.

[Steve Parrish]

Well, this has changed or that has changed.

[Rich Mahan]

Alan Trist of Ice 9 Publishing.

[Steve Parrish]

I do remember it really started getting into gear in Paris. We stayed in a wonderful hotel in Palace Grand Hotel. But the publication that was put out every day and sent around to us, I think the first one of those was at Paris.

[Sam Cutler]

There were several.

[Steve Parrish]

They sort of came and went like leaves blown in the wind. I kept none, you know, I wish I had. I don't even really have much memory of the content.

[Sam Cutler]

But there were.

[Steve Parrish]

I know that Hunter had quite a few of his jokes in there about hypnocracy.

[Sam Cutler]

And Sam also had a lot of.

[Steve Parrish]

Very important information about when the bus.

[Sam Cutler]

Was leaving in the morning.

[Steve Parrish]

I mean, he famously described it, his job as like herding cats. That was certainly must have been the case. I was one of the cats most of the time.

[Rich Mahan]

Today is a free day. The Paris issue of Bozos and Bolos News read in the evening. Kinney is hosting a dinner for all of us and a few discreet press people at a very fine restaurant located in the Bois de Boulogne, the city park. But what a park. It is called Le Grand Cascade. And holy shit, is it ever neat. You might even feel like dressing special for it, although you don't have to. It's just that kind of place. There was plenty to do during their off day in Paris. The lighting crew couldn't wait to get there.

[Steve Parrish]

Ben Haller, Candice and I, we bought a Eurail pass. So because you had so many days during things, you didn't have to stay on the bus. And the bus was kind of boring. And if you're in Germany, you can get to Paris three days early. Come on, baby.

[Rich Mahan]

Alan Trist.

[Steve Parrish]

We got Very close with a couple of French filmmakers called Jean Jacques Damiani.

[Sam Cutler]

And Daniel, forget his last name. But they were really into that time period.

[Steve Parrish]

They were trying to make films about the youth movement.

[Sam Cutler]

We later saw a lot of them.

[Steve Parrish]

Because they came to California and hung out over a course of about 10 years in the 70s. Whenever they were in America, they come visit us. And they took us around Paris. They showed us places.

[Sam Cutler]

The famous dinner of Warner Brothers in Luxembourg Gardens. They were so helpful in shepherding us around.

[Steve Parrish]

And I think that's the sense of family that we got in Paris through these people. The sense that these were really people.

[Sam Cutler]

You could be close with. They took us to another famous restaurant in Paris. I forget the name of that. Anton walks down the Seine, past the.

[Steve Parrish]

Bookstores to Notre Dame. You know, they were tour guides in Paris.

[Rich Mahan]

The Daniel, I think, is Daniel Schuster. There's a distant photo of them in the Grateful Dead family album. The first day of sightseeing, the band struck out. As Garcia recounted to Jerry Hopkins, almost every place we went today was closed. The Louvre is closed Tuesdays. We went to Notre Dame and saw that, but we couldn't climb the tower. We went to the Cluny. We saw that it was sacked by the barbarians in the year 350. And before that it was a Roman bath. Flash, flash. History everywhere. You look far out. As Mountain Girl remembers, they did make it back to the Louvre.

[Sam Cutler]

We had a great time. We went around and did all kinds of stuff together. The museums were particularly high on our list. But we went to the Louvre like twice. That was fun because you can only do a little bit at a time in there. It's a little overwhelming. I remember going and looking at the wing of a museum that was all old instruments. I got Jerry, he liked that. And we spent. Spent about an hour in there looking at antique instruments. Really old, you know, like a thousand years old. And, you know, it's really interesting, the history of music and musical instruments. We don't really have a history of that here in this country, but there they've got it.

[Rich Mahan]

I think MG is remembering the Musee de la Musique.

[Steve Parrish]

It was fun to see all the cultural differences with the eating and everything. One night in Paris, Mountain and Jerry had gotten into an elevator. Candace and I got in with him. And then this very elegant couple in a tuxedo and an evening dress and everything get in. And the husband looks at his wife, just not thinking. He says, honey, remind me, I gotta get a haircut. You know, I had hair to my waist at that point. And Mountain and Candace are like giggling away, having a grand time. Mountain was always great. She was salt of the earth. She was just, you know, she was wonderful.

[Rich Mahan]

Keith and Donna Godshow were having a pretty intense go of it in Europe, enjoying themselves but also experiencing a bit of whiplash, being thrown into the center of a traveling circus from which they'd very much been outsiders only six months earlier in Paris.

[Sam Cutler]

Didn't we stay at the Grand Hotel? That was an amazing place. I remember Keith and I were such fish out of water. I was afraid. We were very close to the Louvre and I was afraid to go outside. I was trying to navigate through, like coming off a spaceship and landing on another planet. I was just afraid to do anything or go anywhere. And I wish I could turn back that clock and redo that.

[Rich Mahan]

Dennis Wiz Leonard from the great interview by Blair Jackson we've linked to this is All a dream we dreamed dead.net.

[Sam Cutler]

Deadcast we had a great brunch in somebody's room and you know, it was day off, of course, many. And then we took a walk over to the Olympia Theater when the backstage door was down an alley.

[Rich Mahan]

Depending on which off day they headed to the Olympia, the Dead Crew may have encountered either the post Jim Morrison doors, who played the Olympia on May Day, their only ever appearance in Paris, and following Morrison's death there less than a year before. And on the 2nd of May, the dead crew may have crossed paths with the Canterbury Prague weirdos, the Soft Machine.

[Sam Cutler]

We're leaving to go back to the hotel and Pig has like kind of straggled behind. It's this beautiful cobblestone alley and I look back and there's Pig. He takes his hat off, throws it down on the ground and does a jig on it. Now I got some Paris dirt in my hat.

[Rich Mahan]

Pigpen wrote home to his parents from Paris. Unfortunately, this is the last of his letters that seems to have survived. There certainly could have been more. Thanks, Sully, for both reading these letters and preserving them. This and the rest of the Pigpen archive is in loving hands. You can check out parts of the collection in the Facebook group the cult of Ron McKernan.

[Sam Cutler]

Paris sure is mellow in the springtime. Sidewalk cafes, motorbikes on the sidewalks, parked groups just peacefully hanging out outside of bistro. Just like in the movie. Movies. It's great. And we're only here a few days. Oh, forgot the famous French whores. They're here too.

[Rich Mahan]

Steve Parrish, on the other hand, took Paris by storm, kind of almost literally. He had better luck at Notre Dame in the Louvre than his boss did. Take it away, Parrish.

[Steve Parrish]

Every day was a fucking crazy adventure. Especially because on days off we took Acid, Phil and Ramrod and myself. The famous trip we made to Notre Dame, which was, at that time, fully intact and just ancient. Ancient. And no guards hardly anywhere in the place, man. And so we went in there in the afternoon, and we sat there looking at the Mandela. We were so high. Phil was saying, look at this thing, guys. And it was spinning. It was just like rotating so fast. And you couldn't stop staring at this stained glass window in there. And then I noticed a doorway over on the side here. And so Ramrod and I go over there poking around, and we open the door and there's steps. There's stone steps, man, on a spiral staircase. And the steps were so old that the middle of the steps were worn down by footprints going up to that roof for centuries. And so we started walking. We were so high, we just started walking. And we're walking and walking and going up this spiral staircase. And then where are we? We're on the roof of Notre Dame and where the gargoyles are. And then there's this fucking built little thing in the middle of it.

[Rich Mahan]

And I.

[Steve Parrish]

At that time, there was a thing. I think it was in a Rolling Stone song or something, but it said, looking through glass darkly. And then I understood what it meant, because in the old days, I'm talking about in the Middle Ages, when they made glass, it wasn't perfect like our glass now, it had imperfections in it, and it had a lot of soot in it because they made it imperfectly with their heating apparatus. This is basically sand that's heated till it melts into glass. And so these carbon deposits were all through this windows on this room. And I'm. And I'm peering in it, and then I see there's not only the bells, this is the bell room of fucking Notre Dame. And there's straw on the floor where, I swear to God, that's where fucking Quasimodo slept on that pile of straw up there. And that glass was there for all that time. Nobody changed those windows. And so I took Ramrod and he. God bless him, he only read a couple of pages of Tom Sawyer. So I'm telling him about Victor Hugo and Notre Dame and writing this great novel, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, based on truth and stuff like that. And so I'm telling him the story. And there's the gargoyles. You know, we're so high Right? We lean over and put our arms. I put on the. I tell him I do just like Charles Lawton did in the later version was. My favorite version is Lon Chaney's silent version of the Hunchback. Jerry and I love that. We used to watch it all the time. And I go, why was I not made of stone? Like the. You know, as he's talking to the gargoyle, right? And, you know, I'm. And so then we got spooked, and we run down those stairs. He said, something's going to happen. And we go out, just me and Ramrod. We go out in the street. We're walking through Paris, man. And we've been up on the roof looking at it, you know, laid out from Notre Dame. You can imagine what that looked like from there. And so we go over to the Louvre now. And then we bust in there all of a sudden, and there's, you know, because all those books that I read, I say, ramrod, look, there's Winged Victory, you know, this statue with no arms and wings. And there's the Venus to Milo. And we're looking at all this stuff, you know, and we're wandering around in there. And then we go down this long hallway, and there's a tiny little easel with a small picture on it, a portrait down in the corner on, like, about the second floor, right? And so we walk over there. No one's around, man. And we're looking at. And I go, holy, this is the Mona Lisa. And it's not as big as I thought in my life. It's not. Not that big a painting. And so we're looking at it, and we were staring at it. We're really high, man, and I'm looking at Mona Lisa. She's staring back at me and staring at Ramrod at the same time. We couldn't figure it out. We tried to move. She's following us, right? So we go, oh, well, man, we gotta smoke a joint. Because we. We went to Europe, but we had to. I'll tell you all about this later. But we had to bring marijuana because we couldn't go anywhere without marijuana. And we weren't just going to smoke splits, which is what they had in Europe, okay? Hash and tobacco. So we had a joint, a nice fatty that we rolled that morning. And so we. There's a window right here. Here's the Mona Lisa. Here's this window. And it's just what you call French doors, you know, I open the latch, I swing them open, and there's a Stingy little balcony. And we get out there and we light the joint up, and we're smoking and breathing in, you know, the air of France and looking at Opera House and all this stuff. And. And all of a sudden we. I hear footsteps slamming around. I look out, and here comes down one hallway. Every gendarme in the area is running towards us. And then the other side is all the museum guards coming the other way. I go, what the, man? And so they come running over to us. They go, michelle. Michelle, what? What have you done? What have you done? I go, what do you mean? What talking about? He goes, you can't open these. You cannot open these. You cannot go out here. He says, you stupid Americans. He calls us, right? And he pulls us off there. I go, what's the problem? He goes, because the heir of Paris will completely destroy this beautiful painting. Don't you understand that? And he closes the doors. And I said, you think we're stupid in America? Those would be locked, man, if it was that important. And I said, what? I mean, you might think that, but that you get. If you said important, why aren't they locked? So they just let us go, and they were just shaking their heads, you know, shit like that was happening to us all the time, man.

[Rich Mahan]

Far out, Parrish. In Paris, the band met up with another close friend, master tie dye artist Courtney Pollock. During our Skull and Roses side B episode, we spoke with Courtney about his stunning tie dye mandalas that became amp covers for the dead in 1971, and which the Dead were proudly flying all across Europe. In some ways, the grateful dead in 1971 and 1972 might be considered a traveling Courtney Pollock art installation with additional live music. Welcome back, Courtney.

[Sam Cutler]

Well, I went under my own steam, and my arrangement was to meet up with the band during the tour. I actually got a ticket that would go anywhere in the world, and I went to England and visited my folks. And then I took off for Persia, which was, of course, Iran. But I went there, you know, like Persia, the land of mandalas, you know, these wonderful ceramics and tile work, all in the great mandalas. And so that was my personal pursuit. And I fell into this great adventure with a guy I met off the plane. He introduced me to a friend of his who they were friends of the Shah. So we stayed up on the mesa, the palace mesa, in one of these great mansions. They introduced me to one of their friends. They were all at university together, and she and I became an item. But while they were slogging it out during the European tour, which was very successful and it was a great tour. They were essentially working and I was just having a ball dealing in climbs with these jet setters. And they all had their own jets and they had their own branch with all the horses and they were serious jet setters.

[Rich Mahan]

But he brought some work supplies too, just in case, some dyes and cloth. And indeed the Grateful Dead tracked him down and more specifically, Ramrod tracked him down.

[Sam Cutler]

But I understood that they were trying to reach me. We got a phone call through to Ramrod and they needed some more speakerphones to be replaced during the tour. So I actually made some while I was in Persia, mailed some out, then I had some more for when I met them. I could put them on. And that was quite late in the tour, but there was enough stuff there, enough color on the stage, so it wasn't a big deal.

[Rich Mahan]

Courtney went to install the last few pieces himself.

[Sam Cutler]

After a lot of escapades, we went to Europe and then met up with the band in Paris. Band where Gracious and hosted us and my guests for a private party. Just mostly just the band members. Mountain Girl, Warner Brothers. They were part and parcel of this. From time to time they'd show up and take us to dinner. How lovely.

[Rich Mahan]

From Rosie McGee's Dancing with the Dead, Warner Bros.

[Sam Cutler]

Booked an entire restaurant, Le Pavillon de la Grande Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne, and treated us to a celebratory banquet. La Grande Cascade had been built next to a large waterfall as a hunting pavilion for Napoleon III sometime in the 1870s, and it had been turned into a restaurant for the 1900 World's Fair. Its sumptuous interior was typical of the Belle Epoque. The walls were covered with Italian marble. There was gilded ornamentation all around the room. And at night, the illumination from the many oversized crystal chandeliers was stunning.

[Rich Mahan]

Alan Trist.

[Steve Parrish]

There was a big restaurant in the middle of the gardens that the Warner Brothers had hired for the occasion. And it was a slap up feast.

[Sam Cutler]

No doubt they were really trying to.

[Steve Parrish]

Introduce us to French culinary culture and.

[Sam Cutler]

They did a really good job. Before the tour, McIntyre had arranged for.

[Steve Parrish]

The band to have suits made by Nudie, a famous Los Angeles costume maker for the stars. You know, they were very cool, but.

[Sam Cutler]

The band, it wasn't really their thing.

[Steve Parrish]

I remember Garcia wore the jacket once over a pair of jeans. Bobby wore the suit on stage once. But at The Luxembourg Gardens, McIntyre and Matthews both had their Nudie suits.

[Sam Cutler]

They were dressed up and I think Bobby was too.

[Steve Parrish]

That was an odd Little thing to.

[Sam Cutler]

See and I think maybe Cutler did.

[Steve Parrish]

They never were much into them at the time, but obviously they've become kind of treasured mementos.

[Rich Mahan]

Sightings of the band's nudie suits are rare. Garcia had worn the nudie suit pants in London, so they were in his road case somewhere. Janet Fuhrman Warner Brothers Records threw a.

[Sam Cutler]

Party for the band and the crew that was very, very lavish. It was, can't imagine what it must have cost. But there was caviar and pate and all kinds of French delicacies and lots of beverages and sure there was a lot of pot being smoked and a lot of carrying on. There was steaks with bearnaise sauce, had to have bearnaise sauce.

[Rich Mahan]

Unfortunately, Mountain Girl wasn't feeling up to the occasion.

[Sam Cutler]

By the time we got to Paris I was sick and couldn't eat anything. And we all went out to eat at some famous restaurant, lined up on a table of like 25 and I could not eat a single single bite. I was like, oh, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me. Go all the way to Paris to some beautiful fabulous place and not be able to eat it, eat any food and. But everybody else thought it was great. And they lined up a table with, you know, 25 chairs and got everybody in the crew sitting down. Eating this wonderful meal and even just sipping the wine was making me like dizzy, you know, just not feel well. And that happens on when you're traveling abroad. Was missing my kids and you know that thing that you do when you, when you leave your children home with other people. The telephone works, but not that well. Into this gorgeous setting came the hairy horde from America with me as translator on duty. I table hopped quite a bit during the ordering phase of the meal, but generally the experienced staff handled everything with practiced casualness. We had a fabulous multi course meal and the noise level rose as the bottles of fine wine were consumed.

[Steve Parrish]

Ben Haller we ate one night in the water Bologna in Paris in a place called the Crystal Palais. And the road crew is there and the band's there and we have a great meal in this incredible restaurant and at the end of it the waiters graciously come over and give us Cuban cigars. You know, they got turned us on to Cuban cigars. Great. And so the crew members handed them all joints. So as we drove away, we're smoking joint and the, you know, the guys are looking at these curious little cigarettes going what are these? But they're smoking them and feeling good.

[Rich Mahan]

I like Rosie's version.

[Sam Cutler]

After dessert, there were liqueurs, and for some cigars, and for just about everyone, are ubiquitous hash pipes. I believe it was Sonny Hurd, one of the Oregon boys, who first offered a pipe to the maitre d, who gamely and politely took a puff and then smiled. Herd encouraged him to take another and then pass it around to his staff. One of the waiters, a tall and elegant man I'd gotten to know from numerous translations throughout the meal, leaned over and asked me, what is it? Knowing how much the French love the Hollywood concept of the Wild West, I said, it's a special tobacco from America smoked by the Indians as a way of expressing friendship. Indians, you mean? And he put two fingers behind his head to indicate feathers and patted his mouth with his fingertips, as in war. Whoops. That kind of Indians. I laughed out loud and I said, mais oui, c' est a. When a pipe was offered to him a moment later, he took a hit, smiled at me, and did the feather pantomime again. I almost fell under the table laughing.

[Rich Mahan]

The cultural exchange went both ways.

[Steve Parrish]

We had an appreciation for Perrier, and I remember crews all over the world would come to me and say, what is this stuff I've been drinking all night? I'm not high. I feel great. You can't drink Coca Cola all night. They got in at 6 in the morning, and they're probably not going to go home until 6 in the morning. They need to stay awake. They need to stay hydrated, right? And it probably wouldn't be good to have two 12 packs of beer. So we turned the country onto Perrier and onto Heineken.

[Rich Mahan]

In Paris, Jerry Garcia spoke extensively with the French critic, photographer and dead freak Alain Dister, who had lived in the Haight Ashbury for a few years around the time the Dead did. Dister passed away sadly in 2008, but wrote enthusiastically about the Dead in the French magazine Rock and folk. In 2004, he published a French biography of the Dead titled Grateful Dead un les Jean Californie. Dister asked Garcia about whether or not it was important for audiences to understand the band's lyrics. I don't know if it's that important or not. It's like for me, listening to records by Edith Piaf. I don't understand the language with African musicians and singers. I really like those things. But whether I understand them or not is another question. I'm a musician, so I'm more interested in the way they sound rather than by what they say. When Diester asked Garcia about the French underground scene. Garcia deferred from any observations about their current trip. He told Diester, I don't believe this is the only time we'll go to Europe. It's just the beginning here. What I want to do is come here and see what people are, what they do, what happens. I really am interested. It might take me the next five years to find all this by coming twice a year. The important thing is to start to communicate, to spread, to open up. We could envisage a network, groups in each country communicating with each other. Dister told the guitarist that some in the French underground held the Dead up as paragons of revolutionary culture. Garcia demurred, calling the band evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and talked a bit about freak politics. I'd love to read a proper translation of this interview by an actual French speaker. Garcia hinted at what the Dead were planning next, telling the journalist, we're going to try to make our own records ourselves without the help of the big companies. This will be an opportunity for us to make a new step in the freak economy. There's something fantastic like this all over the West Coast. Health foods. It's a freak industry. An industry of millions of dollars. It started when they started growing their own products. And now the big chains of Safeway style stores have started distributing natural products supplied by freaks. Heady stuff and a topic for another day. But if you'd like to get a head start on reading up on the revolutionary story of the freak health food industry, check out Joshua Clark Davis book From Head Shops to Whole Foods the Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast On 3 May, it was time to get to work.

[Steve Parrish]

Ben Haller we played the Olympia as I recall. Fabulous. Those old theaters just have the most wonderful acoustics and you're walking around this.

[Rich Mahan]

History between the soundcheck and the gig Pigpen wrote home. Please welcome back Sully, keeper of the Pigpen archives.

[Sam Cutler]

Just got back from the soundcheck rehearsal. This hall sounds okay. Sold out both nights. However, there are inevitably people without tickets, sometimes hundreds outside, pig baiting and trying to get in. The cops love the bus goals and a lot use tear gas and carry machine guns. There's a rumor afoot that the cops plant agitators inside the halls and use the excuse of left wing extremists causing trouble to disperse. What a cop out? Crowds by any means they deem necessary. And the kids don't help. They come knowing they can't get in. It's sort of a Boolean place to go and hang out for them. And every time the same thing happens, the kids smart of and try and get in and the cops just wanting for an excuse, move in. Why the hell don't the kids without tickets just stay home or something? It happens every time. They know it. The fools hang around rock and roll show at hundreds and cops come eager to crack skulls.

[Rich Mahan]

You hear that, kids? Pigpen says not to come to a show without a ticket. Garcia mentioned the same rumor about agitators to Rolling Stone. And on the anniversary of the May 3, 1968 student revolt, anything seemed possible. Philippe Sicar did have a ticket for the Olympia.

[Sam Cutler]

In fact, both nights there were a lot of police around. It was about four years after the 68 riots in Paris, you know, so there were many, many, not only because it was a dead or because it was a rock performance, but because at that time there were many police everywhere.

[Rich Mahan]

But it didn't get in the way. Multiple reviews of the show mention the police presence outside, with the theater operators looking suspiciously at the hippie crowd. Once past the doors, though, it was apparently a much chiller scene. The late John McIntyre via our friend David Ganz.

[Sam Cutler]

The first time we played the Olympia in Paris and the audiences in Paris, although they were Parisian and therefore spoke a different language, it was like the audiences in New York, the enthusiasm, the kind of. They had already adopted us as their exciting partners, and it was just thrilling, absolutely thrilling. And of course, it's the Olympia, which is Edith Piauff's home, and all those incredible things that have happened there over however many, you know, 100 years, 150 years, however old that hall is. But it's always kind of hard to attribute the music to what was going on that evening. There's always this mystery about it as to when it's going to click and when it's not. And you can never tell. For instance, I would assume that being kind of a Francophile at the time, that the Olympia would have goosed them just the way it did. And the fact that it happened that way was like, even though I expected it, it was a surprise because, you know, just because I thought it was going to be that way doesn't mean it's going to be that way. There's high logic to it all, very high energy and the kind of exciting energy, like at the Fillmore east in New York, you know, it was very similar to. That is what I felt grateful that.

[Rich Mahan]

Archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

[Sam Cutler]

It really does feel like a couple.

[Rich Mahan]

Of Saturday Night shows in New York.

[Sam Cutler]

And the band matches it. And one thing I always found incredibly fascinating about Paris is they did Good Lovin both times, both nights. And they're both.

[Rich Mahan]

They're remarkably different. One of them is a jam oriented.

[Sam Cutler]

No pigpen rap whatsoever.

[Rich Mahan]

It's a jam oriented version. And it's similar going back to the.

[Sam Cutler]

Fillmore east in April 71. They did good Lovin twice also.

[Rich Mahan]

One is jam oriented, no rap.

[Sam Cutler]

It's great.

[Rich Mahan]

And then one is rap oriented. When I say rap oriented, I'm talking Princeton. I'm talking sold Brooklyn Bridge. Dollar and a quarter, Pig pen. Lip of the stage engaged with those 2,000 people. Philippe Sakar had fallen in love with Live Dead.

[Sam Cutler]

First time I saw them was at the Olympia Theater in Paris the next year. It was refurbished about 10 years ago, but it's the same, the same spot near a very famous opera house in Paris. The Olympia Theater is not a huge place I think can hold about 1500 people, no more. But the sound of the. Of the auditorium is fantastic because I had already been there to attend a concert by the mother's invention in 68 and the birds just a few weeks before the Dead. It was not like in England or the States. Absolutely not. I don't really like the music in France. I didn't like it then at all. They were just trying to do the same as the Americans with American songs. It wasn't genuine, you know.

[Rich Mahan]

The rest of the week featured shows by French act Magma on 7 May and Dick Rivers on 9 May, plus Jerry Lee Lewis on 8 May and British Prague band East of Eden on 6 May. The Dead had crossed paths with Magma in France the year before, jamming with him at the Chateau in Errorville. But Magma were on their own more granular French tour and were out of town when the Dead played. Anyway. How do you say let's do this in French?

[Sam Cutler]

I had a hard run. I was with all my friends. We were about five, six people who really liked the Dead much than like love the Dead. There were dead heads already. Not as many as in the States now, but there were some. All of the people I knew who went to see the show were Deadheads. And we were very happy, all of them. I mean, it was fantastic. It's really hard to describe, but it's fantastic experience. I had such great moments and it's. It's really something I can forget. It was. I was so high, without any substance, you know. It was fantastic because I could have been disappointed you know, because I only knew them from records. And usually sometimes it's. It depends on what band. But it can be disappointing. And there wasn't a disappointing. It was the country for me. It's an incredible experience. It was pure bliss, you know. It was bliss all along. Shaking Shake it sugary Just don't tell about you Don't. It was a revelation. It was like it was a. Another. Another band. Not the Dead. I knew it was the Dead. I recognized the people, the musicians. It was a little strange that there was a new musician, Keith Kacho. I didn't know him at all. So I expected the five founders of the Great Dead. And there was Keith Catchow. I was surprised because it was so, so good. It was Richard, I'll meet you at the Jubilee and if that Jubilee don't come maybe I'll meet you all around Just one thing I ask of you. They played some old tunes I knew from records, but not that many. Just China Cats and Flower, of course, Dark Star and the Other One. There were so many new songs which were great, which I loved right away, you know, like He's Gone or Black Footed When Jack Straw. All those things I like very much. It was the first time I heard them.

[Rich Mahan]

And in the case of both new and old songs, Philippe heard versions that made it to Europe 72. If you know one Grateful Dead segue, it might be China Cat Sunflower into I Know youw Rider. And if you only know one China Cat Sunflower into I Know youw Rider, it equally might be the Europe 72 version. You can call it China Rider if you want to sound like a Deadhead, but reducing it to two words with a silent segue notation erases perhaps the most important part, the transition. As my friend Rob Mitchum, who co hosts the 36 from the vault podcast, once put it, I'd be happy living my life in the space between China Cat Sunflower and I Know youw Rider. And appropriate for the Paris version on Europe 72. Like all of Gaul, it's divided into three parts.

[Sam Cutler]

Look for a while at the chime A cat sunflower brown walking jingle in the midnight sun Come, but don't mold it just.

[Rich Mahan]

The band debuted the song in early 1968 and released it on Oxamoxoa in 1969. But the lyrics had been written in 1967, one of three poems Robert Hunter sent to Garcia from New Mexico that transformed their deep friendship into a deep working relationship as songwriting partners. Though China Cat Sunflower itself was written in several other locales.

[Sam Cutler]

A leaf of all colors Plays a golden string pin up to a double E Waterfall over my back.

[Rich Mahan]

Maybe someday we'll get to annotate the lyrics, but today we'll just offer Robert Hunter's story about how he wrote them. Our good buddy Steve Silberman recently uncovered an amazing 1992 interview he conducted with Hunter. And we'll surely find other windows in which to share parts. But Hunter discussed both the skill set and circumstances under which he wrote China Cat Sunflower. Thank you for this, Steve.

[Sam Cutler]

I am able to translate people's scat. I hear English in it. It's almost as though I write down what I hear underneath that. I hear the intention. I don't work that way a lot. I would work more that way, happily, if more people were to give me scat. It's a talent like the rubric cube or something like that. It's something you can do or you can't do. And it comes easily to me, which might be why I like language poetry. I can tell from the rhythms, or lack of rhythms, from the. What do you call them? The disjunctures and the end stoppages. I know what they're avoiding saying.

[Rich Mahan]

Or.

[Sam Cutler]

The meaning that they would like to not be having there comes rushing through to me. I can read the stuff, the text behind the text. Yeah. You know, I understand dogs. You know, I can talk to babies. That's great. There's a cat dictated china cat sunflower to me. How did that happen? I was just sitting on my stomach purring away and saying this stuff. It's easier than just write it down. I guess it's plagiarism.

[Rich Mahan]

Yes, Robert Hunter did just say that a cat dictated china cat sunflower to him. While we thank David Ganz for digitizing that last tape, we also thank him for this next clip from his own 1977 interview with Hunter. Getting further into the mechanics of what Steve later defined in Skeleton Key as cat dictation.

[Sam Cutler]

The germ of it came in Mexico, in Ajahic. I was staying on Lake Chapala. I don't think any of the words for it came exactly. I think the rhythms for it came there. I was writing things to these rhythms. Subsequently, in Palo Alto, I put some of the rhythms into these images. I had a cat sitting on my belly at one point and was in a rather hypersensitive state and followed the cat out to. I believe it was Neptune, but I'm not sure. And there were rainbows across Neptune and cats marching across. Across this rainbow. I thought, I remember that. And this Cat was just taking me on all these cat places, so there's some essence of that in it. All right. I wrote part of it in Mexico and part of it on Neptune.

[Rich Mahan]

No doubt, my dude. But in the 90s, Hunter posted the original handwritten lyric draft for China Cat Sunflower on his website, and on the same sheet of paper just below it, the original poem for what became the 11. We've posted a [e-mail] deadcast they're unquestionably some of Hunter's most psychedelic lyrics, one of the only songs from that period to survive nearly the entirety of the band's career. In part, that's probably because of the jam they figured out for the song. Bob Weir plays the song's dominant lick, though he said that Garcia wrote it. The Jam became one of the first where Weir would contribute co leads along with Garcia, a perfect example of his not quite rhythm guitar playing. When they debuted China cat sunflower in 1968, it always segued into the 11. But once the 11 settled into a nearly monogamous relationship with St. Stephen, the dead seemed determined to find a new destination for China Cat Sunflower, learning how to jam on the song while attempting to make the jam transition into something else. A few times each, they tried doing that rag High Time and Morning Dew. Nothing stuck until the fall of that year. This version of the transition from November 8, 1969 at the Fillmore Auditorium on Dixbyck 16 is pretty enthused. That scent of elation is palpable. And the I know you rider payoff is an early draft of what most post 1969 deadheads might recognize. By 1972, they had it down and played it most nights of the Europe tour, seemingly determined to capture it. The version from Paris is take number eight. To talk about what makes that payoff so powerful, please welcome back musicologist Sean o' Donnell taking dictation from Frankie the Cat. When you're coming out of the final verse, you're doing the same old move.

[Sam Cutler]

To D, the dominant of your G Mixolydian that you were in. And you could just go back. It could be another post verse lead.

[Rich Mahan]

That then takes you right back.

[Sam Cutler]

So you're on D already.

[Steve Parrish]

And then there's a moment where you.

[Rich Mahan]

Realize, no, we're not going back.

[Sam Cutler]

Now.

[Rich Mahan]

If you know the tune, of course.

[Steve Parrish]

You'Re already ready for it to not go back.

[Sam Cutler]

You've already heard this pairing a bunch.

[Rich Mahan]

Of times, but still harmonically, it could.

[Steve Parrish]

Just return in the same old way. So through sheer force of will they're not going back.

[Rich Mahan]

As soon as they're not going back.

[Sam Cutler]

Even though they don't go somewhere new, you're like, oh, we're off and we're going somewhere. And that's really hard to pull off convincingly.

[Rich Mahan]

Like to not stagnate. They roll into a thing where we're moving, but we haven't gone anywhere in terms of the sort of pitch content, you know, the harmony. And so we sit on this D.

[Steve Parrish]

Or D7 for a while and everybody.

[Rich Mahan]

Is just doing sort of unstable D7ish things. So it feels like a jam, but not harmonically.

[Sam Cutler]

It's a one chord jam.

[Rich Mahan]

And so you, you, you have to.

[Sam Cutler]

Make that convincingly sound like it arrived somewhere. I'd like to say there's some moment.

[Rich Mahan]

You know, Music analyst it's like, oh.

[Sam Cutler]

They did this and they use this chord progression and suddenly they, they were there.

[Steve Parrish]

And it's not a case of that.

[Rich Mahan]

You kind of get there through little incremental changes. So the bass and drums kind of.

[Sam Cutler]

Slip into the pulse of Ryder long before we get there.

[Steve Parrish]

Bob does a few familiar riffs, sort of the.

[Rich Mahan]

The most notable one would be those.

[Sam Cutler]

High triads he does where he does.

[Steve Parrish]

C to D back and for.

[Rich Mahan]

It feels like a clear marker, like, oh, we've arrived, but there's still a fair amount of music after that where.

[Steve Parrish]

We don't actually arrive yet. So it's really just like a landmark, like, oh, we're almost there, we're getting there. And then it's a little bit of.

[Sam Cutler]

Role reversal since Bob is taking the.

[Rich Mahan]

Control for that whole passage.

[Sam Cutler]

And then Jerry kicks in a little before Ryder comes.

[Rich Mahan]

It's sort of like, oh, things are.

[Steve Parrish]

Returning to normal in some way.

[Sam Cutler]

We had this destabilization of everyone was.

[Rich Mahan]

Doing something a little different.

[Sam Cutler]

And then he takes over leading the way.

[Steve Parrish]

And then that's when they finally kick into it.

[Rich Mahan]

But. But it's still on a D chord.

[Sam Cutler]

The groove has to change.

[Rich Mahan]

But they could have just changed the groove. So reinterpreting a chord like that happens fairly commonly in music, but usually it's okay, we're just going to reinterpret it and go. The thing that's different here is they.

[Sam Cutler]

Reinterpret it and say, we're going to.

[Steve Parrish]

Live in this crack between the two songs for a while.

[Rich Mahan]

And you have this sense of onward motion the whole time, like you're moving but you're going around the block, at least until the song changes.

[Sam Cutler]

I know you rather don't miss me when I Go I know you rather gonna miss me when I get.

[Rich Mahan]

And now the Grateful Dead are playing I know you Rider. It was a song the Dead had been playing for a long time. One of the very first folk numbers they electrified as the Warlocks. It features on the oldest tape of the band, the Autumn Records demo, recorded under the name the Emergency crew in 1965. Now on birth of the Dead. Back then it was a little fast.

[Sam Cutler]

Me when I go, you miss your baby from rolling in your arms.

[Rich Mahan]

And that's more or less how it sounded in the electric versions on tape between 1965 and the summer of 1967, when it disappeared for two years before meeting China Cat. But before we go any further, let's talk about where I Know youw Rider really comes from. It's listed everywhere as a traditional song, and while there's a chance it's actually that the song's history is far more complex, this is the earliest recorded version.

[Sam Cutler]

Well, I know you Ryder, you're gonna miss me when I'm gone oh yes, I know you Rider Gonna miss me when I'm gone Gonna miss your ever lovin mama from rolling in your arms.

[Rich Mahan]

If that doesn't sound like a version from the dawn of recording back in the early 20th century, it's because it's not. The first officially released version of I Know youw Rider was recorded in 1960 by Tosi Aaron. Though it would explode into the folk world, in some senses, it was in part a new song. The song first appears in the 1934 edition of John Lomax's American Ballads and Folk Songs under the title Woman Blue, prefaced with a note. An 18 year old black girl in prison for murder sang the tune and the first stanza of these blues. This is followed by a transcribed melody and lyrics, and then a number of other verses collected elsewhere, some of which turn up in the Dead version, some of which don't. Many of the songs that Alan and John Lomax found during their decades of song collecting showed up in multiple variants or have since emerged from other song collectors or sets of recordings. This is not the case with Woman Blue. That is, there is a greater than average chance that I Know youw Rider is not a traditional song at all, but written in a recognizable way by an unnamed black woman at Parchman Farm in Mississippi or Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, either by the woman who sang into the Lomaxes or someone else nearby. I corresponded with Todd Harvey at the Library of Congress, who notes the repertoire of the Parchment. Women's Penitentiary is barely known. The Song could have been common currency around that camp, just as Rosie was in the men's camp. So that's our theory. Woman Blue, AKA I know you Rider, was written in a fundamental way by an unnamed black woman in a prison camp in the early 1930s and sung for John and Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress in the summer of 1933 by her or someone who probably knew her. Though they would become famed for their field recordings, they'd only just the month before acquired a 315 pound recording machine and disk cutter that required another 75 pound battery to operate. No recording of Woman Blue survives, however. Probably it was taken down the even more old school way, with Alan Lomax himself capturing the words on paper with his transcription of the melody after the Lomaxes published it in 1934, though it was nearly another quarter century before the song was heard from again. During that thick, heavy period of folk song collecting that also contained two separate folk song booms, the song form of I know you Rider didn't surface. It was in the mid-1950s, though, that a collegiate folk singer named Bob Coltman founded in the Lomax book. I resurrected and debuted the song he wrote. I followed the tune given in Lomax roughly, but not exactly, changed the song from a woman's to a man's point of view, dropped two verses and was its first arranger. Coltman spread the tune from there, but it made one more important evolution before it got to the version we know. In the summer of 1958, Bob Koltman taught the song to Harry Tuft. Please welcome, from the Denver Folklore Center, Harry Tuft.

[Sam Cutler]

Bob Coltman, who took the words out of a Lomax book, added a melody from another source and gave it to me in this way. I know you rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone I know you writer gonna miss me when I'm gone Gonna miss your rolling in your arms well, I. So that's the song that I sang when sitting around Dick Weissman's apartment in 1910, maybe summer of 1960, when Dick was working with John Phillips and Scott McKenzie to start the Journeyman. And there were a number of songs that I sang that John liked. He liked this one a lot. But John had that gift of arrangement. And so from that very simple, straightforward forward one, he just added a few chords that really made all the difference. And it's the fact that he added those chords to what is now the way the song is sung today that really is the proof that this was sort of the lineage of I know your writer so he added, came out like this Lay down last night trying to get my rest I laid down last night trying to get my rest My mind kept rambling like wild geese in the west.

[Rich Mahan]

Yes, the reprehensible John Phillips, later of the Mamas and the Papas, also credited with writing Me and My uncle and who we discussed in our side C episode of our Skull and Roses season. Oy, fucking John Phillips. Phillips never recorded the song nor took credit for it, but by 1963 it sounded pretty familiar.

[Steve Parrish]

Well I know you right are gonna.

[Sam Cutler]

Miss me when I'm gone well I know you right are gonna miss me when I'm gone You're gonna miss your daddy a rolling in your arms well the sun's gonna shine on my back door someday I said the sun's gonna shine in my back door.

[Rich Mahan]

Back in San Francisco after the tour, the band whittled it down to three versions of the China Cat Sunflower, I know you Rider combination Copenhagen, Hamburg and Paris and picked Paris Garcia. Weir and Loesch overdubbed entirely new vocals on July 13th at Alembic, with Garcia apparently making another pass on August 8th. Though Donna didn't sing on Rider during the tour, she's on the studio track sheet sharing track 12 with Weir with the parenthetical acapella. Maybe she's in the mix here.

[Sam Cutler]

I know you riding gonna miss me when I miss your baby from Rolling in your Eyes.

[Rich Mahan]

Ryder had a few lives in the Dead's repertoire. In 1970, just after they'd attached it to China Cat Sunflower, it became part of the band's acoustic set, like this one From Harper College May 2, 1970 on Dick's Picks 8. While adjacent to Judy Henske's arrangement and vibe, it still used the John Phillips melody. Besides the 1970 acoustic sets and the versions that led to Europe 72 in 1973 and 1974, the band migrated the so called Feelin Groovy jam into the transition, sometimes called the Uncle John's Jam, but those are different chords, making for a number of extra jammy segues. This One is from June 28, 1974 on Dixpix 12, where it was labeled Mindleft Body Jam with some perfectly inscrutable Latvalian logic.

[Sam Cutler]

SA.

[Rich Mahan]

And so China Rider lived happily ever after, for the most part, a constant in the repertoire nearly every year through 1995. It wasn't the only song they caught during that first set on the First Night in Paris. Despite its title, lyrics and pretty much everything about it, Tennessee Jet is in Some ways the most European song on Europe 72. This is from David Ganz's wonderful 1977 interview with lyricist Robert Hunter, published in David's great book, Conversations with the dead, available from perfectible.net. thanks for this, David.

[Sam Cutler]

Oh, it was Barcelona. I keep thinking it was Madrid, but it was. It was Barcelona. Christie and I were out until all hours drinking vino tinto. We were staggering back to our hotel that night. There's this church, this little alleyway in a very, very high church building on either side, so that it's very cavernous, you know, and like any sound you make walking down the street just resonates and resonates. And there's this guy walking ahead of us, plus mouth harp, you know, twang, twang, ta ta, twang, ta ta, twang, ta ta, twang. And I was good and drunk and I started. Fell four flats and broke my spine. And it was so out of place in Barcelona at 2 o', clock, this guy walking half a block down. And I just made the verses up. When I got back to the hotel room, I just jotted them down like that. And that's how that happened. It's a good place to write a country song. It had that feeling of whatever country feeling or whatever kind of thing it had was just like so absurd in the context of Barcelona like that that it became realer than real. I wrote a good deal there. I wrote that. Won't you sing, Melinda? Won't you sing for me? Like that. Looking down into the street in Barcelona, all the rain was falling, you know, it was just really lovely. Good experience.

[Rich Mahan]

Now that you've heard that description, try not to hear the twang of the jaw harp in the song's main guitar riff that echoes every line.

[Sam Cutler]

Train, you know, you better wind up dead. You don't head back to Tennessee Jail.

[Rich Mahan]

As we well know here at the Dead Cast, Robert Hunter was deeply studied in the American folkways, pulling out references to songs and movies and pop culture ephemera. But was he tuned into this when he was 4 years old?

[Sam Cutler]

Here he goes, Tennessee. Get him. Got him. Dead center. That's Jed Sloan. Tennessee Jed, deadliest man with a rifle ever to ride the western plains.

[Steve Parrish]

Brought to you every day, Mondays through.

[Sam Cutler]

Friday, by the bakers of Enriched Tip Top.

[Rich Mahan]

It's entirely possible he was. Tennessee Jed hits target assessed a representative from the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in the trade publication Radio Showmanship, declaring Tennessee Jed to be the number two children's radio show in the New York area, starring Elton Britt, who played and yodeled the role of Tennessee Jed. It aired on 25 stations nationwide, perhaps including one in listening range of young Robert Hunter. Or maybe Hunter was referencing the 60s Midwestern food franchise Tennessee Jed's open pit barbecue Jury's out, really. But that's an incredibly American folk lineage indeed. From white bread sponsored yodeling children's radio cowboy to barbecue joint namesake to stone slow motion boogie.

[Sam Cutler]

Drink all day and rock all night. Law come to get you if you don't walk right. Got a letter this morning, baby all in red. You better head back to Tennessee Jed.

[Rich Mahan]

Our buddy Blair Jackson once asked Garcia about the roots of the Original songs on Europe 72, like Ramble on Rose and Tennessee Jed. Garcia told him, I haven't the slightest idea. They just come out of my mind. Sometimes I think, yeah, this is kind of like a record I once heard somewhere. But I never find him. The rhythms come from my background and rhythm and blues more than anything else, but they also come from a kind of rhythmically hip country and western style like Jerry Reed and people like that Memphis more than Nashville. Some of the old California country and western stuff. Old Buck Owens had some nifty rhythmic ideas in it, as opposed to the old 44 stuff just plunking away. Tennessee Jet is a cop from that world, although not consciously. And it's not from any specific tune, just the feel that was Don Rich's solo on Love's Gonna Live Here Again by Buck Owens. If you can imagine Robert Hunter extrapolating a set of lyrics from a catch meows. Imagine Jerry Garcia deriving a songwriting style from the guitar breaks of early 60s country music. When Tennessee Jed debuted in the fall of 71, it was a few clicks faster than how it settled for the album. Take this is from Chicago, October 22, 1971, from Dave's Picks 3.

[Sam Cutler]

Man, you know, it's like I said, you just good. Head back to Tennessee, Dad. Tennessee, Tennessee.

[Rich Mahan]

The Paris version they used on the album was take number eight. Other contenders were versions from Empire, Pool and Amsterdam. Garcia, Lesh and Weir did their overdubs back home at Alembic on July 11, 1972, Garcia leaving his original vocal on the tape as well. When David Crosby called the Grateful Dead's music electric Dixieland, I don't know if he was literally thinking of Tennessee Jed, but it's how I hear it. And after the Europe 72 version, it kept slowing down. And the electric Dixieland gets more prominent with more and more rhythmic space opened up for everyone to happily bounce and tootle together. Like this version from Eugene. January 22, 1978. Now Dave's picks 23.

[Sam Cutler]

Sam.

[Rich Mahan]

And it gets slower from there. Salt to taste. It was a particularly Garcia esque groove, one blessed by the legendary drummer and vocalist Levon Helm. The first song on his final album, electric dirt from 2009, a rich man.

[Sam Cutler]

Step on my forehead when you get back, you better butter my bridge. Well, you know, that is just like I said, you better hurry on back to Tennessee. Jed.

[Rich Mahan]

Back to Paris 1973 Philippe Siccar.

[Sam Cutler]

It was something organic, you know, like. So at times I couldn't. I couldn't say, what's this sound from? Is it Jerry? Is it Weir? Is. Was impossible to. Sometimes was just a mix. It was a whole thing, you know, just a whole. It was organic. It was. And I was really in love with the texture of the. Of the sounds. Sing Me Back Home, a song that.

[Rich Mahan]

Used to hear.

[Sam Cutler]

Make My Home memories come alive.

[Rich Mahan]

The Dead played Merle Haggard Sing Me Back Home a few times in 1971, but this was the first time with Donna Jean Godshow out in the tape truck. Wiz noted on the tape box, Sing Me Back Home is worthy. Several versions would be pulled for album consideration.

[Sam Cutler]

It was strange because at the end of the first set, this the first night, on the third, after they played Casey Jones, just before the intermission, people then thought it was the end, you know. And I remember Bob Weir was telling them, it's just 20 minutes, we're going to be back and it's intermission, intermission, intermission. But people didn't understand. They didn't understand him. So they were leaving the theater and then they understood afterwards that it was just the intermission. Fortunately for them, fortunately, the second set.

[Rich Mahan]

On the first night in Paris, included a monster hour long truckin other one wharf rat sequence with me and Bobby McGee inside. Though the version of truckin on Europe 72 is from London at the end of the tour. The Paris version was the only version highlighted on the mixes made at the tour's end. It's pretty tight. And the second set also included another classic Dead track Featured on Europe 72. We can share the women, we can.

[Sam Cutler]

Share the wine.

[Rich Mahan]

We can share what.

[Sam Cutler]

We got a view.

[Rich Mahan]

Jack Straw debuted in the fall of 1971 alongside Tennessee Jed and the other new original songs destined for Europe 72. The story of two outlaws on the run discovering their own morality and mortality continued on in the mode Robert Hunter discovered circa Working Man's Dead. Over the course of 1971, Bob Weir and Robert Hunter had a much ballyhooed creative falling out. In one version, Hunter couldn't stand what Weir did to Sugar Magnolia, which was discussed in Our American Beauty season. But they kept working together after that, at least long enough to have another battle over the song that became One More Saturday Night, with Hunter removing his name from the credits. So it was that Jackstraw became the last Hunter Weir collaboration for some 20 years, and some of the tweaks might be Weir's. We've Posted [e-mail] Deadcast to both Hunter's original handwritten lyrics and Alex Allen's close look at the song. There was one change in the song's presentation that did alter it in a revealing way.

[Sam Cutler]

Now Ain't that Heaven Singing hurts my ears to listen Chillin it burns my.

[Rich Mahan]

Eyes to see that was the Homburg version of Jack Straw. Just a few days before the album take, you may notice that Bob Weir takes both of the vocals in the song's B section. The same is true on the version from the second Night in Paris. At the vocal overdub sessions over the summer, Jerry Garcia added his I just.

[Sam Cutler]

Jumped the watchman right outside the fence Took his rings for my turkey.

[Steve Parrish]

Hurts.

[Sam Cutler]

My ears to listen.

[Rich Mahan]

Six days later in Amsterdam, Garcia began singing his parts live with a few stumbles, and we are occasionally forgetting that Garcia had taken over some lines.

[Sam Cutler]

This next number, you get the pleasure of watching me blank out and sing Garcia's part.

[Rich Mahan]

The two vocal parts seem to represent the dialogue of two different characters, Garcia singing the part of Shannon, and Weir singing the part of Jack Straw himself. Weir, Garcia and Lesh did a vocal overdub session at Alembic on July 12, and then wiped those for another session on August 7. On July 10, before the vocal work began, Weir added an additional track of guitar to the mix, taking up the space where the new lead vocal track would often go. As such, all the vocals on the box set are overdubs, with Weir, Garcia and Lesh harmonizing in the same room where they recorded Working Man's Dead Sounds great.

[Sam Cutler]

Jack Star from Wichita got his money.

[Steve Parrish]

Down.

[Sam Cutler]

Heal the shadow grave and let his body down Half a mile from Tucson Moving much too slow.

[Rich Mahan]

A few Years after the song's release on Europe 72, there were a few more changes, one small, one large. During the spring of 74, Weir and Garcia added a little harmonized guitar intro that stuck around like this. That was from June 23, 1974 in Miami. Now Dave's picks 34 a few days after the intro's debut and Weir did change a lyric occasionally to reference their new label boss Clive Davis. Like this version from the Philadelphia Spectrum in 79 road trips, volume one, number one.

[Sam Cutler]

We used to play for Silver, now we play for Clive.

[Rich Mahan]

Used to play for Silver, now we play for Clive didn't last too long, only a bit in 1979 and 1980 with a few versions where we are saying used to play for acid, now we play for Clive. Makes for some fun folklore. The bigger change came after the band returned to the road in the later 70s with Mickey Hart back in tow on a second drum kit. From there, Jackstar evolved from a minimalist psychedelic spaghetti western to a full on shoot em up Hollywood blockbuster. This is from 10-10-1980 at the Warfield in San Francisco, released on the expanded Dead set with a little extra Garcia juice and double drummer Thunder.

[Sam Cutler]

Sa.

[Steve Parrish]

Which.

[Rich Mahan]

Is a good deal more intense than how they did it in Paris in 72. Here's the entirety of that jam peak.

[Sam Cutler]

There were seats only. There was no space for dancing at all. I've never been to many shows, rock shows in France, more in England, in the States, but not in France. But usually people are seated, especially in a theater like Olympia. But people were very exulting. They were, as you can hear, maybe on the cities of those shows, people are really, they are getting mad at the end.

[Rich Mahan]

Almost every night was Saturday in the spring of 72, this particular one falling on a Wednesday. The band received a telegram at the Grand Hotel the next day from a fan named Mark Princey, which has survived in the Great Fled archives. It read in its entirety, you are the best thing to hit Paris since Joan of fucking Arc. Love and thanks. I've laughed over this telegram for years and sad that I was only recently able to locate Mark Princi online and a few months too late. Mark apparently passed away around Thanksgiving of 2021. Much love to his family and friends. We've linked to a colorful [e-mail] deadcast. The second night at the Olympia would become legendary too. According to the Rolling Stone report, the cops scaled back their presence considerably. In fact, the Dead would catch another Europe 72 song. But it was legendary for other reasons. Let's start with Steve Parish, just recovered from his big trip to and at the Louvre.

[Steve Parrish]

We're at the Olympic Theater now and we set up and I'm sitting on the drum riser and I'm smoking a joint, a big fat farmer and I'm dropping this knife into the stage right there where I'm sitting on the edge of Our riser. Boom, boom. And then I pick, pulling it out, and I look down, and there's the two shiny shoes of a gendarme. I knew right away this is a cop. No question about it. I go up the blue trousers, and then he's standing there with a machine gun. French cops at those days, they brought machine guns. They had these briefcase submachine guns, man. It was so cool. But they all were carrying them at the concert because they say. I said, why are you guys carrying these machine guns? They said, riot. Riot. You know, they always thought. They thought anything to do with rock and roll was a riot. So anyway, he's looking at the knife. I got the knife in one hand. A felony. That's a felony in the United States at the time, and a joint the other. That was eight years in San Quentin. So I'm going, oh, man, I'm man. And he goes, me sure. Be sure your cigarette. No, no, no, no, no. And I thought, oh, I better put it out, you know? And he. He didn't even know that it was marijuana. He thought, God, you ever smelled a Galois or a Jtain? French cigarettes, they. They smell like stink weed, man. And so he didn't even care. He thought I was smoking some kind of cigarette. He didn't. He didn't give a fuck about the knife. He pointed to a sign. And because I spent about 10 minutes in French class without cutting it, I knew that what he meant up there, the sign meant, you know, no smoking. And so I said, okay, man, okay. I ain't gonna smoke anymore. Don't worry.

[Rich Mahan]

But then I took another turn. There are a few accounts of the blowout that ensued. Let's start with Donna Jean. Hey, Donna.

[Sam Cutler]

That was in Paris at the Olympia Theater. And what had happened was the acid that we were taking from Owsley, we were in Europe for quite a while, and so it got less and less strong because it was older.

[Rich Mahan]

Though Owsley was in jail, his LSD supply continued to fuel the dead.

[Sam Cutler]

And so, you know, I was sometimes taking 15 hits at a time. It was just normal, normal, normal. And then I didn't realize that Owsley had brought in a new batch. And I took like 15 something hits and it was fresh.

[Steve Parrish]

Alsley was in prison, and so it befell Ramrod to get our stash of psychedelics together. Ramrod, bless his heart, was trying to make the right batch up for us in a liquid form. And it was 10 times stronger than what we took home. And so at home, you took either one drop or two, you know, and that was like a pretty. Considered a major dose of acid. So here in Europe, we couldn't figure out why we were getting so fucked up, you know. And everybody was on it, man. Everybody was taking it there and it was because it was 10 times stronger. And so these massive LSD experiences were happening.

[Rich Mahan]

Alan Trist of Ice9 Publishing was along for this ride.

[Steve Parrish]

I do remember in Paris at that.

[Sam Cutler]

Gig, I think we were all a.

[Steve Parrish]

Little bit high on that gig at Paris and seeing things through special eyes.

[Sam Cutler]

And I do remember watching Keith for.

[Steve Parrish]

Hours play the piano. It was an extraordinary experience. We were all quite out there and. And Keith was really expressing his music through his whole body. He had a large frame.

[Sam Cutler]

And I found myself underneath Keith's piano, which was, you know, the nine foot Steinway and just grooving to the Grateful Dead.

[Steve Parrish]

Oh, man.

[Sam Cutler]

You know, and I was just in this world of listening to the Grateful Dead. God, this is great. And then when I remembered that I was in the band and somehow I got up and I did it.

[Rich Mahan]

So where in the show did this happen? Let's not think too hard about it. But Donna didn't have too many vocal slots yet. She sang on the show opening Greatest Story Ever Told and a few songs near the end of the night. But I bet this is the song Donna had to get out from under the piano to sing Play In Play.

[Sam Cutler]

To this day, I don't know how I got up and got to the microphone. Insane, I don't know. But somehow I did get up there and finish the concert. But that was an eye opener for me.

[Rich Mahan]

She was and is a total pro. Courtney Pollock didn't have that problem. He came with his own supply.

[Sam Cutler]

I like the Clear Light, which is the window pane, the original window pane. They're about an 8 inch square, clear little canes. And they were 200 mics each. And they were absolutely super, super. I'd never had anything as good because I was friends with the creator of the Clearlight. So I used to trade him a mandala for a thousand hits.

[Rich Mahan]

Good exchange rate.

[Sam Cutler]

I went to Persia. I had some nice clothes that my girlfriend at the time had found handmade for me. And they were beautiful. They were. Well, they were velvets and silks. I looked like a million bucks with long hair. And of course I was an object of curiosity in Persia. I had no money to speak of, but I had a thousand hits of Clear Light on me. I was able to get around just fine, thank you very much. I had it in a rose patch on the Back of my pants, the ones I was wearing.

[Rich Mahan]

No matter where you got your acid or didn't, this was one of those nights, and not just on stage. Philippe Sicar went back for the second show.

[Sam Cutler]

My favorite was the fourth because of Dark Star. For me, Dark Star is the best. I was in a special state, as if I was really high. Not only because it was the Dead, but because when they began to play, it was a whole trip. I was so happy. And I remember I was in love with an English woman who was in London, who had seen the Dead before me because she was. The second Wembley gig on April 8th, she told me, oh, Gerry Garcia is a genius. And she wasn't that attracted to pop music or rock or whatever, that she was more into classical music. But she. She told me that she liked Georgia very much. He played so well in Paris one, especially during Dark. I remember it was. I can remember it was during Dark Star on the fourth, the second night, I thought of my loved one in London. I thought it was the apex of my life, you know? I don't know. I thought it was in paradise, really. It's really hard to. It was something big. Something big in my heart, in my soul.

[Rich Mahan]

As I said, it was one of those nights. Please welcome back Graham Boone.

[Sam Cutler]

Listen to Bob's soft vamping, beautiful voicings.

[Rich Mahan]

And then Jerry takes off on his.

[Sam Cutler]

Solo, hitting high A. And then we're away from the Dark Star progression. Beautiful exploratory moment.

[Rich Mahan]

This is a long and dreamy Dark Star filled with long and dreamy episodes. I'll note that, like me and probably like you, Graham doesn't really like when people chomp over the music either. But I love having Graham point out the changing constellations of Dark Star in real time. Plus, you can always listen later on without all of our chomping via compact disc, cassette tape, your local streaming service, or even the World Wide Web. Back to Graham.

[Sam Cutler]

In the middle of.

[Rich Mahan]

A really active, spacey jam. Listen to that rolling sound of Keith's.

[Sam Cutler]

Piano playing picked up by Jerry with some rolling riffs.

[Rich Mahan]

Seems like we might be in the.

[Sam Cutler]

Key of D major.

[Rich Mahan]

Always interesting for me, the way they.

[Sam Cutler]

Settle in different places, but then they keep going. Jerry getting into a riff that starts to drive the jam. You can hear the different guys responding to what Jerry's doing. Wonderful responses from Bill. Jerry takes off from there. Phil, super active. Beautiful chords from Bob. Glorious. So much energy, but so free at the same time.

[Rich Mahan]

One of my favorite things about this Dark Star is the drum break. And more specifically, why it's almost inaccurate to call it a drum break. The band is just floating through freeness and dissolve into a segment of Billy Kreutzman the so called Gang of One playing solo. And if you can call it a drum solo, it's one of the chiller drum solos in Rock.

[Sam Cutler]

It.

[Rich Mahan]

And it doesn't get much flashier from there. I like the moment in the second part of the jam where Lesh leads the band into the so called feelin groovy theme. Garcia perhaps suggests it's time to slide back into Darkstar, but then Weir casts the deciding vote and they soar into a great feeling groovy jam. This is from a little bit later with almost a slight flavor of the 11. In fact, if you acquired the 2012 record store date release of this Dark Star, you can flip directly to Europe 72 side D to hear what happens next. In the midst of the Paris chaos, they managed to track the version of Sugar Magnolia that began side D of Europe 72. You can hear the last few notes of Dark Star. The song had changed a good deal since its appearance on American Beauty two years earlier.

[Sam Cutler]

I don't care so much baby down by the river who she'd have to.

[Rich Mahan]

Come up soon for Dare over the course of two years of performances, the band smoothed Weir's Cajun influenced groove into a powerful set closer. We went pretty deep into the writing and long evolution of Sugar Magnolia in our episode during the American Beauty season, and we'll refer you back there for the nitty gritty of how the Sunshine Daydream coda emerged as a piece of music of its own, especially after Jerry Garcia added a wah wah pedal to his arsenal on the Europe 72 version. You can hear Donna Jean singing during the song's finale.

[Sam Cutler]

Sunshine daydream.

[Rich Mahan]

But like Garcia's Jack Straw vocal, that's a post tour edition on August 4th, back at Alembic, we are added a new guitar part, unusual for the album on August 7th, Weir Garcia and Lesh overdub new vocals. On August 8th, an uncredited member of the band added Maracas and Donna Jean added her own vocal part. From then on, she sang on the live versions of the song as well.

[Sam Cutler]

Sa.

[Rich Mahan]

One more Wednesday night, but it was far from over.

[Steve Parrish]

Steve Parrish the Union crew didn't want to talk to Candace. She got in a tiff with them as usual and they didn't want to take orders from a woman. They were very angry and so as soon as the band stopped playing and this is a night we all picked to take A lot of acid. I don't think Ben and Candace did, but we did. The crew guys ramrod myself, Jackson, Kid and her. Yeah, we were pretty high.

[Rich Mahan]

Alan Trist.

[Steve Parrish]

The loadout was particularly interesting. I remember Rex Jackson all over the place, but we managed to. And now we still hadn't figured out the LSD mystery. And we're high as a kite, man. The whole crew, I mean. And the band leaves. They're done with the show at this beautiful Olympic. Olympic Theater, which was really rough loading. And now the union decides to with us. They shut the lights off in the building and they dropped the trust, the lighting trust, right on our cables, man, pinning everything to the floor and a fucking heavy truss. And then they split. And I grabbed this one Frenchman, I go, where are you going, man? And he just. All he started doing was fucking around with his hair and playing games and telling me about Candace yelling at him. And they split and left us in the dark, man. And I'm talking about a cobblestone way to load out. And so now we sat down in the front row, myself, Jackson and Kid and Sonny Hurd. And we're staring at the gear. We didn't know what to do, we were so high. And this fucking big truss is there. We must have sat there for about a half hour. It felt longer. And I don't know, man, I just snapped and I stood up and I said, no, these guys are not getting the better of me. And I just wanted a time, man. Took every cable, I unplug it from the amp, and then I snaked it through underneath this fucking truss and, you know, got it out one at a time, rolled them up, man. Made the pile like I knew it was. The guys were just sitting there watching me, till one by one at a time, they got up. Once I had all the cables out from under that truss, and then we had to lift everything over that and take him down a dark alleyway in cobblestones. We had one flashlight in the truck and we loaded that truck, man, to the end. It took us hours, man. Finally, people started helping me one at a time. But not everybody.

[Rich Mahan]

The trucks were loaded and ready to roll to the next show, two and a half hours north, near the Belgian border. But there was another twist. The band's original itinerary had this show listed at the Lille Opera House, but the gig was actually rescheduled nearby. Which brings me to a side note. Before I try to pronounce the location of the show, I'd like to offer a blanket apology to all native speakers of French, German, Dutch, Danish, Swiss and English for any words or proper names that I may have mangled during this transcontinental season of the Dead cast, especially if you were a guest and the mangling involved your name. With that in mind, the Dead's 5th of May show was rescheduled from the Lille Opera House to the Rotunda in the adjoining town Fashtiminil, just outside Lille. It would have taken place on the seventh anniversary of the very first Warlock show in 1965. Not that probably any of the guys in the band remembered that and not that the gig happened. This is from David Ganz and Marty Martinez's great 1995 interview with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh. It started the night before in Paris.

[Sam Cutler]

Where a couple of communists decided that. Decided that everybody should be able to.

[Steve Parrish]

Go to the show for free.

[Sam Cutler]

This is when we were playing in the Olympia Theater in Paris, which held what, 1500 people, if that, maybe. Maybe more like eight. Now, he decided this in stark ignorance of the economics of the matter.

[Steve Parrish]

He got shown the door, too.

[Sam Cutler]

And that didn't. That didn't pretty up his mindset any.

[Steve Parrish]

So he decided what he was going.

[Sam Cutler]

To do was in the. In the gas tank of our diesel. Actually, he didn't do that until after the show when we went back to the hotel and Rex and Sonny and I were up on the balcony and we poured and somebody. I don't remember who poured. No, not. Not a bucket of water. Chocolate ice cream on his mauve velvet jacket. This was a communist.

[Rich Mahan]

Communist.

[Sam Cutler]

Communist wearing a movie velvet jacket. It was very, very chic. Bourgeois Communist. Is that. That's not a contradiction in terms? Apparently in France, yeah. I mean, the sky's the limit.

[Rich Mahan]

And Rosie McGee, after, I think we.

[Sam Cutler]

Had two nights or three nights in Paris at the Olympia Theater. Two nights at the Olympia Theater. And the next gig was in Lille, which is an industrial town, how many miles north of Paris. I don't remember how far it is. And during the night or what. At the last Olympia gig, there was a Frenchman outside our hotel after the gig, yelling up at the windows about that the concert should have been free. And. And he was very upset and screaming and yelling and whatever. So Jackson, Rex Jackson was eating ice cream in his hotel room and the windows did open and he dropped ice cream on the guy. The guy had a very fancy velvet jacket, which is legendary now. And that really upset him so badly. After the chocolate ice cream came down on his jacket, I think he got a little miffed.

[Steve Parrish]

And so that ticked him off a.

[Sam Cutler]

Bit that was, I think, the final trigger that caused him to a b. Put water in the diesel fuel tanks of our trucks so that our equipment couldn't go anywhere. So he went out and he pissed.

[Steve Parrish]

In the fuel tank of the truck.

[Sam Cutler]

That was his Parisian method of complaining.

[Steve Parrish]

About his treatment, you know. And of course the truck was driving.

[Sam Cutler]

The next day we were playing in.

[Steve Parrish]

Lille in northern France. And of course it got halfway there and when it, you know, had gone through the petrol and got to the piss, of course, trucks don't run on piss. So the truck broke down, right?

[Sam Cutler]

And so the next morning everybody got up. The truck headed out of town first, bright and early. And then we all got up and got on the bus and headed to Lyon. Lille.

[Steve Parrish]

Oh, Lille, right.

[Rich Mahan]

Right by the Belgian border, yeah.

[Sam Cutler]

And well, the. The truck made it about eight miles out of Paris and it broke down and that was that. And that was that. But we didn't know this. Somebody had put, I believe, sugar in the gas tank. And it was not a mystery who had done it to their thinking. But the truck wouldn't run. But by the time they discovered this, the band, including me, had already taken off for Leo.

[Rich Mahan]

In the venue was a room full of fans, most of them waiting to see their first Dead show. Please welcome to the Dead cast Daniel Duchenne.

[Sam Cutler]

We were three friends. We are great fans of the Dead. So we bought tickets for Fashtie Menil for the concert that was planned on 5 May 72. Philippe's father drove us by car.

[Rich Mahan]

The Bozo bus at least made it to the hotel in Lille and by then knew what happened to the truck. Jerry Garcia stayed behind, but some of his bandmates pressed on to the venue.

[Sam Cutler]

Anyway, the concert was planned on 8 or 9pm so we were. We were in the hall and we waited for hours because the Dead was not there. We arrived. We arrived at the.

[Steve Parrish]

At the hall in Lille to a.

[Sam Cutler]

Mob of irate Frenchmen shouting, power to the people. We shall overcome. Anti American stuff.

[Steve Parrish]

The equipment truck never arrived, so we.

[Sam Cutler]

Had to cancel it.

[Steve Parrish]

It was almost a riot.

[Rich Mahan]

One of the trucks made it though, with the recording gear and the lighting system. This is from Blair Jackson's great interview with Dennis Wiz Leonard. Check out Blair's book, An American Life.

[Sam Cutler]

We got there and, you know, it was crazy. The carpet was down. The carpet lived in the recording truck as well. The carpet, the snake was in the venue, the lights were up and that's it, man.

[Rich Mahan]

Lightning Director Candace Brightman.

[Sam Cutler]

Ben and I set up. We had everything you know, we had all the whole lighting system up and the audience came in and no band, no band showed up. And these people weren't. They weren't like a Grateful Dead. They were like, hey, you know, we waited long enough. They were. They were about to be violent. There was an audience and there was, you know, the place was full and there was no equipment because then they, you know, it wasn't cell phones and all of that. You know, the communication wasn't there. Maybe they were able to get a hold of somebody and say, hey, we had to go get another truck. We're not going to be able to get there for a while. They didn't know the equipment just wasn't there. And the gig had started or the time for the gig had passed and the audience was getting restless. Phil. And so they were going to cancel the gig. And Phil, I think it was Phil and Bobby went out. And why they didn't ask me to go out and speak French for them is a mystery. Unless they were thinking to protect me from the rowdy locals, I don't know. The audience was pretty pissed off. We waited till midnight or 1am we were very frustrated. And since it was deemed that my French was the best in the crew, the best in the group, I was awarded the onerous signal honor of explaining the howling mob.

[Steve Parrish]

To go out and tell a howling mob that, hey, folks, no show tonight.

[Sam Cutler]

Ben and I had to strike the gear while looking like we were setting up gear, which I don't know how we did, but we did that. We bring things out from backstage and then I'll take away part of the lighting. So then they were sitting in a room with a bunch of weird shit on the stage that had nothing to do with the Grateful Dead.

[Rich Mahan]

Courtney Pollock and his girlfriend were there.

[Sam Cutler]

None of our crew spoke fluent French, so they sent my girlfriend out because she spoke English, Persian and French, because she was French, Swiss and Persian in her heritage. Anyway, so she went out, brave as you please, with this wonderful cultured accent because it came from a highly cultured family, and told the crowd, which were already, you know, they'd be waiting a long time waiting for the music to start. And of course it was not going to start. Sam asked, if you get out there and tell them that they weren't going to have a concert, they could get their tickets, they could redeem their tickets, you know, get their money back or apply to, you know, the next gig elsewhere. Meanwhile, she stepped out there onto the stage, very self confident person, announces to the angry crowd that there Won't be a concert. The equipment didn't show up around one hour. Some musicians or roadies announced that the trucks of the band couldn't arrive in Fash because someone has put sugar in the tanks of the tracks. Sabotage in Paris. I guess we promised everyone we'd come back. We'll play a free concert.

[Steve Parrish]

Please don't burn the fucking place down, you know.

[Sam Cutler]

The French were, well, upset, but they also announced that the band would come back in Lille at another date. So we were tired. We. We have come back home. But without believing too much what we aired. The guy hadn't bolted with the money. He just. I don't think he could get it that night to give them their money back for their tickets. But I think he later gave them back, and if he hadn't done that, we wouldn't have gone back to play. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. There was a bunch of chaos. We barricaded ourselves in the dresser room and the, you know, audience was getting more restless. I think a promoter came out and said what we'd said. Nobody believed it. And it seemed like we were going to get into really bad trouble.

[Steve Parrish]

They didn't take it real well. So we retreated. We adjourned rather quickly to the dressing room.

[Sam Cutler]

And we spent about 30 seconds in there wondering, what the hell.

[Steve Parrish]

What the Sam Hill are we going to do now? Do we have to go back out.

[Sam Cutler]

There and talk to them again? So right after she made the announcement and, you know, the grumbling start turning to a roar and a surge towards the stage. And I grabbed her and Ali and Patricia, Victoria's sister, and we hightail it. And I had parked my car. We had. We'd gone to England aboard a Rolls Bentley because it was the kind of car she liked to, you know, drive around in and hightailed it out ahead of the angry crowd. We had a shortcut for the highway because we're backstage.

[Rich Mahan]

Daniel remembers the situation being a little less fraught.

[Sam Cutler]

I don't feel the angriness for this evening. The audience was not very angry, not very frustrated. They wait for hours without any information, but they were not very angry. That was the Grateful Dead audience. They were not angry people, but they were frustrated and tired.

[Rich Mahan]

Daniel's friend Philippe offers some evidence of the chaos, though he emails. People were very angry, but no fight. The windows of the exit doors of the Rotunda were blown out under the pressure of people who wanted to leave. They had been closed to prevent people from getting in. During the concert, I think nobody was hurt. Some Cops came.

[Sam Cutler]

Oof.

[Rich Mahan]

Thank you, Philippe and Daniel. That gives some excellent context to the dead family's memory of events. Rosie McGee.

[Sam Cutler]

So we went one by one into the bathroom of the dressing room and out the window and down a pipe to. I think it was a top of a. There was a truck parked right below there, so it wasn't very long of a drop. And somehow we all just got out.

[Steve Parrish]

The window, and meanwhile, the door was starting to go thump, thump, thump, bulging a little bit. We could see that that was gonna hold for about, oh, maybe a minute and a half. And we had one avenue of escape.

[Sam Cutler]

And that was out the window and down a drain pipe, just sort of climbing, holding onto the drain pipe down three stories. Actually, it was only a story and a half, Bob, really. You could have jumped it, really, but.

[Rich Mahan]

It would have hurt when you landed.

[Sam Cutler]

Yeah, we would have had a lot of broken ankles. Anyways, so as we were leaving that gig, we had to go out the dressing room window because the. It got to be kind of a riot situation. It got scary. Not to me, of course, but anyway, it got scary. And so I remember Phil was going out the dressing room window, and he said, women and musicians first, and that's who went up first. We, you know, scrambled out of there. Donna Jean, but it probably was Rex Jackson that hoisted me out of the window. I can't remember if it was a dressing room or a bathroom, but I got hoisted out the window with a lot of other people, you know, of the band and crew and everything. I don't remember anything after that, but I remember that getting. Getting through that window. I lowered Donna Jean out the.

[Steve Parrish]

Out of the window of the dressing room, which was on the first floor. And the equipment guys. I was holding her by the hands, lowering her down, and the equipment guys grabbed her underneath.

[Sam Cutler]

Meanwhile, the band and everybody else that's in the hot seat are all clambering onto a helicopter from. Taking off.

[Rich Mahan]

Well, more like a BOLO bus than a helicopter.

[Steve Parrish]

So we were out of there, out.

[Sam Cutler]

The back window, down the drainpipe, and running for the bus.

[Steve Parrish]

A quick, quick sprint for the bus. We left a little rose on the.

[Sam Cutler]

On the windowsill there, and then the bus was, you know, revved up, just waiting for us, and we ran like hell and got on the bus and bailed out of town.

[Rich Mahan]

And so are we. See you next time.

[Sam Cutler]

Sunshine Sunshine Day Dream Sweep over daydream thanks very much for tuning in, folks.

[Rich Mahan]

And huge thanks to our guests in this episode, including Sam Cutler, Steve Parish, Donna Jean Godshell McKay, Mountain Girl, Rosie McGee, Alan Trist, Candace Brightman, Ben Holler, Janet Furman, Daniel Duchenne, David Lemieux, Graham Boone, Sully, Courtney Pollock, Philippe Sacade, Sean o' Donnell and Harry Tuft. Also special thanks to David Ganz and Steve Silberman for providing archival interview audio. Did you travel over to Europe to.

[Sam Cutler]

Catch any of the shows in 1972?

[Rich Mahan]

Well, don't forget to go to stories.dead.net where you can record yourself telling your tale. We definitely want to hear from you, especially if you are at any of the shows in the Netherlands or in Munich. Tell your friends. Please don't forget to like and subscribe and leave us a review if you're so inclined. Thank you very much. Well, who's up for popping back over to England for a festival gig? See you there next week. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.