Europe ‘72: Lille, Luxembourg, Munich

Summary

GOOD OL' GRATEFUL DEADCAST

Episode: Europe ‘72: Lille, Luxembourg, Munich

Date: May 19, 2022
Hosts: Rich Mahan, Jesse Jarnow

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Overview:

This episode of The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast travels through the Grateful Dead’s final continental European stops on their legendary 1972 tour: Lille (France), Luxembourg, and Munich (West Germany). The hosts and a rich ensemble of guests recount wild road stories, cultural observations, and musical insights, tying the band’s local impact and the intersection of Deadhead mythology, spontaneous mystical experiences, and European counterculture. For seasoned Deadheads and the merely curious alike, this episode situates the band’s performances in the unique physical, social, and psychic spaces they occupied across Europe.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Lille, France: The Real Free Show

[03:54 - 14:36]

• Sabotaged First Attempt, A True Gesture of Goodwill
  The Dead’s Lille show was previously sabotaged by sugar in the band’s truck tanks, leading to a canceled concert and a crowd sent home. The band kept their word, returning a week later for a completely free show in the town’s park (Champ de Mars), a gesture “classic Grateful Dead joint: roll up in the park and jam for the people” ([04:49] Rich Mahan).

• Atmosphere & Audience

  • The crowd included local townspeople, families, coal miners—many who didn’t know who was playing.
  • Memorable descriptions of “little old ladies bundled up in wool coats, with their baguettes in a bag… oh, there’s a concert, I’ll stay and watch that” ([11:52] David Lemieux).
  • Pigpen was notably ill, bundled up against the cold.

• A Unique Show in Tour History

  • “The only proper free gig of Europe 72… They played a full two set show with an ‘Other One’” ([12:48] David Lemieux).
  • The experience left some present as lifelong Dead fans:
    • “Since the concert, I am encoded freely a fan of the Dead, and it was for me like a moment of eternity. It’s a real point of my life that I never forget.” ([13:26] Guest testimony).

• Visual and Emotional Impact

  • Mountain Girl: “My goodness, you’re walking around in a French impressionist painting. I swear. Oh, I’m in a Renoir.” ([10:39])
  • The “impressionist colors of the French countryside” audible in the playing ([12:48] Rich Mahan).

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2. Unexpected Vision: Greenpeace and Mystical Experiences

[14:57 - 29:46]

• Rod Marining’s Story (Greenpeace Founder)

  • Rod relates attending the Lille concert while hitchhiking for an environmental mission. During “the Other One,” he has a striking visionary experience, perceiving himself in a mythological courtroom, confronting the Three Fates from Greek mythology:
    • “All of a sudden, I got sucked into [Jerry Garcia’s] mouth… I was in a courtroom all marble… seven people there… the three sisters of fate.” ([18:45])
    • “Zeus, who’s the Greek God of sky and lightning… cut me off and told me to shut up, basically…”
    • “All of a sudden I was hit by a bolt of lightning and I was back standing in front of Jerry Garcia again.” ([18:45])
    • His friend tells him: “You weren’t moving to the music… there were just whites in your eyes. You looked weird.”
    • “I thought, okay, I don’t think I’m going to be going into any more Grateful Dead concerts for a while. That was too much. But I love the music.”

• Discussion of Unitive/Mystical Experiences at Dead Shows

  • Steve Silberman (author, Deadhead chronicler) contextualizes this as well within cognitive science and Deadhead culture ([26:15]):
    • “30-60% of people report some kind of transcendent experience in their lives.”
    • Silently understood among Deadheads: “...the Grateful Dead brought with them the message it was cool to freak fucking freely.”

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3. Luxembourg: Radio Revolution and Cross-Border Broadcasts

[35:29 - 61:00]

• Radio Luxembourg and its Unique Role

  • Legendary pirate station, “sound of freedom” beaming all over Europe, especially behind the Iron Curtain ([36:05 - 42:43]).
  • Hosted the Grateful Dead for their only officially recorded soundcheck of the tour ([43:23]), and a condensed, two-set radio show played to ~350-500 in the purpose-built theater ([41:36, 46:55]).

• Across-Border Deadheads and Mayhem

  • Mix-up over ticketing after being advertised as a free concert; some fans injured trying to get in. Many French Deadheads made the trek ([53:20]).
  • Inside, a calm, attentive audience; outside, failed expectations of a free-show riot.

• Vivid Descriptions of Venue and Reception

  • Mountain Girl: “Radio Luxembourg… a giant fucking antenna up on whatever high spot they had in Luxembourg… It was partly a museum of old radio gear” ([40:32]).
  • Donna Jean Godchaux: “It would be, to me, the epitome of European culture. It just gave me that sense of, ‘This is why people love Europe.’” ([39:36])

• Technical Details

  • The performance was meticulously mic’d and designed with world broadcast in mind.
  • Unique moments: Bob Weir dedicating a song to his then-partner Frankie ([56:15]).

• Audience Accounts

  • Many UK listeners heard it with “poor reception… blizzards of interference from Neptune or somewhere” ([59:21] Bill Giles).
  • It became a rare, prized tape in the tape-trader circuit despite the static.

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4. Munich: Crossing Into “Deep Space”

[62:10 - 111:29]

• Traveling to Munich, Germany

  • Including a detour to the student-town of Heidelberg—site of previous operetta “The Student Prince” (and family stories from Keith Godchaux) ([62:15 - 62:45]).
  • Band, crew, and companions string-out on acid, marvel at local tourist kitsch and encounter the relentless German culinary monotony (“Wiener schnitzel!”).

• German Deadheads & Political Context

  • Munich on the eve of the 1972 Olympics; city in massive transition and cultural opening ([70:16]).
  • Scirocco, a legendary local music shop, introduced many in the local “Krautrock” and commune scenes to the Dead ([72:05 - 74:17]).

• Musical Highlights

  • Alligator sticker legend: Jerry Garcia’s Stratocaster receives iconic sticker between Lille & Munich, giving birth to the guitar's nickname ([76:45 - 81:22]).
  • Extended discussion of performance, especially “Dark Star > Morning Dew”, regarded as one of the heaviest transitions in Dead history ([100:15 - 105:58]).
    • Graham Boone: “Curiously, Jerry hits that Dark Star riff of his an octave low… Jerry’s not dominating, everybody is standing out” ([100:56 - 101:45]).
    • David Lemieux: Draws parallels to the “dark energy” of later Miami ‘89 shows ([101:46]).

• Concert Atmosphere

  • Stories from both local Germans and American expats/Deadheads highlight early confusion (seated concert, attempts to enforce “no dancing”) quickly giving way to full-blown Deadhead response and mutual cultural exchange.
    • “Those American heads, always setting good examples.” ([95:23] Rich Mahan)
    • Thomas Stork: “It was like a meeting of the conoscenti… a catalyst for a certain scene” ([97:49])

• Unconfirmed Lore

  • Sam Cutler’s tale of a Hitler-mustached fire marshal’s helmet, power outages, and chaos: “A blinding flash… all the lights go out, and a third of Munich now has no electricity…” ([83:33])

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5. Between the Shows: The Swiss Interlude

[111:58 - 142:49]

• Myth Meets Reality: The Bridge of the Grateful Dead

  • Encounter in Lucerne with a bridge adorned with skeletal, “Danse Macabre” artwork, resonating with the band’s own iconography and name myth (“plaque on it… the Bridge of the Grateful Dead” ([119:27 - 121:39] Steve Parish & Alan Trist)).
    • “It was the Grateful Dead. They helped you from beyond and protected you and your family…” ([119:27] Steve Parish)

• Hospitality & Culture Clash

  • The band is met with both amusement and wariness by elite Swiss hoteliers, who roll out the red carpet only to try rolling it back up on seeing the long-haired visitors ([124:09] Phil Lesh/Bob Weir; [124:14 - 124:36] Dennis Leonard).

• Legendary Side Stories

  • Various members recall wild bus rides, crew dosing, and Robert Hunter serenading Swiss cows with a trumpet on LSD during a lunch stop. ([136:46, 136:52])
  • Every restaurant along the way seems to offer only “Wiener schnitzel,” much to the Dead’s exasperation and amusement.

• Fan Perspective:

  • Sebi Bueller (former student, Ecole d'Humanité): Details efforts to get the Dead to play their school, walking explorations with the band, and missing her chance at a souvenir sticker ([127:31, 128:26, 130:05]).
    • “They had invited us to walk down to Meiringen with them… everybody was totally high. There’s a lot of shoveling going on…” ([131:08])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Music as Magic:

  • “There’s a subtly different light shimmering through the band’s playing. I feel like I hear the impressionist colors of the French countryside shining through…”
    ([12:48] Rich Mahan, on Lille)

• On Spontaneous Visions at a Dead Show:

  • “I'm the type of person that likes to think that I'm in 100% control of my destiny... And here I am watching this concert, and I'm just locked on Jerry Garcia... And then I just--all of a sudden, I got sucked into his mouth. Holy crap.”
    ([18:45] Rod Marining, Greenpeace)

• On the Societal Role of Radio Luxembourg:

  • “Radio Luxembourg was the sound of freedom for us because the Soviets would jam the signal... whenever you would hear three beeps, you knew you’d be live to Poland or Czechoslovakia...”
    ([42:43] Radio Luxembourg testimony)

• On the Cultural Exchange in Munich:

  • “With the Grateful Dead, it seemed there's five, six people walking onto the stage, taking up their instruments, joking among each other, joking among the guys in the first row. And they seemed to be some of us only a bit older, maybe.”
    ([91:50] Thomas Stork, German Dead fan)

• On the Swiss Bridge of the Grateful Dead:

  • “The bridge was made out of wrought iron skeletons... and there’s the f***ing name of it... the Bridge of the Grateful Dead... There was a plaque on it that says that.”
    ([119:27] Steve Parish)

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Timeline of Important Segments

• [03:54] — The real story of the Lille free show.
• [10:11] — Vivid descriptions of Lille in springtime, “walking around in a French impressionist painting.”
• [14:57] — Greenpeace founder Rod Marining’s mystical experience at the Dead show.
• [26:15] — Steve Silberman on mysticism in Deadhead culture.
• [35:29] — Introduction to Radio Luxembourg and importance in European radio.
• [43:23] — The Dead’s rare rehearsal and “Big River” soundcheck.
• [53:20] — The Radio Luxembourg free-show confusion and fan mayhem.
• [70:16] — Social transformation of Munich and musical connections with the local psychedelic scene.
• [83:33] — Sam Cutler’s tale of the fire marshal and helmet in Munich.
• [100:15] — Deep dive into the Munich “Dark Star > Morning Dew.”
• [119:27] — The Grateful Dead’s Swiss adventures and the “Bridge of the Grateful Dead.”
• [127:31] — Swiss student stories and intersections with the band.
• [142:49] — Looking ahead to the Lyceum shows in London.

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Tone & Language

The episode is infused with the Deadcast’s typical mix of loving, encyclopedic nerdery and vivid, often hilarious anecdote, switching easily from the mythic to the mundane, the academic to the psychedelic, and from poignant reminiscence to raucous road stories. The varied guest testimonies—ranging from crisp documentary detail to the ruminating, sometimes “altered-state” tangents—mirror the Dead’s own approach to music: exploratory, inclusive, and open to accident.

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Summary

With Lille came spontaneous generosity. Luxembourg highlighted the Grateful Dead’s role as radio and cultural pioneers, drawing a continent-wide (and sometimes confused) crowd. Munich captured both the “dark star” side of the band’s sound and its role as social catalyst in a Europe in flux. These journeys bristled with risk, fun, confusion, and visionary weirdness, and in between the scheduled shows, the band and their entourage immersed themselves in the idiosyncratic landscapes and cultures of continental Europe—sometimes high, sometimes lost, always together. Through local voices, Dead family, and the Dead's own accounts, the episode captures what Europe ‘72 really meant to those who took the ride.

Transcript

[Rich Mahan]

Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale.

[Jesse Jarno]

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.

[Rich Mahan]

Check out dogfish.com for more details and.

[Jesse Jarno]

To find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale.

[Rich Mahan]

Ale in your neck of the woods.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware.

[Rich Mahan]

Please drink responsibly.

[Jesse Jarno]

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 gentlemen, Continental travelers, welcome back to season five of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. I'm I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thanks for coming along on this journey as we time travel across the pond.

[Rich Mahan]

To 50 years ago and tag along.

[Jesse Jarno]

With the Grateful Dead on their historic Europe 72 tour. We're bringing new episodes of the Dead Cast to you weekly this season. Each episode covers the shows that took place on the Europe 72 tour 50 years to the week after they happened.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Foreign.

[Jesse Jarno]

Visit us at our website dead.netdeadcast and explore the extra materials we have for you to devour for this episode. In fact, I'm sure you've noticed we're releasing a daily dose of Europe 72 ephemera during season five.

[Rich Mahan]

There's new content for you on the regular. [e-mail] deadcast are all of our past episodes and from there you can link.

[Jesse Jarno]

To wherever you like to listen. Have we told you we love hearing your stories. Thanks to everyone who has contributed.

[Rich Mahan]

A fair amount of you made it.

[Jesse Jarno]

Into the podcast, so thanks very much for that input and we still want to hear from you. You want to share what Europe 72 means to you? When did you get the record? Head over to stories.dead.net and record those stories about Europe 72.

[Rich Mahan]

We need your input.

[Jesse Jarno]

Have you checked out the Europe 72 music that's available now?

[Rich Mahan]

July 29th brings Lyceum 1972 the Complete Recordings Limited Edition.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's a 24 LP box set with four complete shows from the tail end of the Europe 72 tour.

[Rich Mahan]

Available [e-mail] and there's a newly remastered.

[Jesse Jarno]

Version of the original Europe 72 release. It'll be available on CD, LP and digitally also on July 29th.

[Rich Mahan]

Well, here we are running down the.

[Jesse Jarno]

Last three shows from the Europe 72 tour that take place on the continent next week. We Head back to England for a nice run at the Lyceum.

[Rich Mahan]

But before we do, we've got three very cool shows to cover in Europe proper.

[Jesse Jarno]

May 13, 1972, at the Lille Fairgrounds in Lille, France, a live broadcast radio show in Luxembourg on May 16, and a concert in Munich, West Germany, at the Congress hall on May 18th. We'll also do a little sightseeing on our days off. Get your triptychs ready and make sure there's film in your cameras. We're ready to roll with Jesse Jarno.

[Rich Mahan]

The last week and a half of the Grateful Dead's Europe 72 tour was a bit of a hodgepodge. Before they returned to London for the closing shows, the band played three shows in three different countries, hung out in a few others, and had a last bundle of adventures on the continent. On 5 May, the dead had been supposed to play the rotunda outside Lille to recount what happened. At the end of episode five, though, one of the equipment trucks didn't make it. As audience member Daniel Duchenne recalled to.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The band couldn't arrive in such because someone has put sugar in the tanks of the trucks. Sabotage. They also announced that the band would come back in Lille at another date. So we were tired. We have come back home. But without believing too much what we heard.

[Rich Mahan]

The band's return to Lille a week later on 13 May, was a show unlike any other on a tour of already pretty memorable shows. The only proper free gig of Europe 72 is it was a classic Grateful Dead joint. Roll up in the park and jam for the people like the Neor Riot on their previous trip through town. Pretty much everybody in the Dead family has some memories of it. The stories from Phil Lesh and Bob Weir come from the great joint interview by David Ganz and Marty Martinez. If we haven't made it clear, you should totally check out David's book this Is All a Dream We Dreamed, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast.

[Jesse Jarno]

The guy hadn't bolted with the money. He just. I don't, I don't think he could, could, could get it that night to give them their money, their money back for their tickets. But he, he, I think he later gave them back because. And, and if he hadn't done that.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

We wouldn't have gone back to play.

[Jesse Jarno]

And we came back about two, three weeks later.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

We came back and, and played in.

[Jesse Jarno]

The park for free.

[Rich Mahan]

Tour architect Sam Cutler.

[Jesse Jarno]

Anyway, we went back and played this concert in the middle in a town square right in the middle of Lille, and there's several thousand people at it. The promoter was in tears because he'd given all the money back, but he had promised that we would come back and play.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

And everybody was saying, way, way next Saturday. After that, the debt came back. Surprise. Saturday 13th May. The concept with no advertising, no news, no nothing.

[Rich Mahan]

Alan Trist of Einstein Publishing.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's a small village square, remember? I remember the stage stood up on the one end and it was very open. It was a very good atmosphere because the band had returned and done what they said they were going to do. And they were playing in a small, European, traditional old town, you know, it was kind of lovely, you know, I do remember that felt really good.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

My friend Philippe told me, I don't know how he managed to hear that new. He told me, I have to come this Saturday afternoon to hear the concert of the Dead. And I came.

[Rich Mahan]

This is from David Ganz's 2014 interview with Rosie McGee.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Much to the shock of the promoter, we actually kept our promise and we came back, I think it was a week later, and played a free concert in the town square of Lille, where the audience was, you know, the local townspeople who had no idea what the heck was going on. They were, you know, walking their dogs and pushing their baby carts and having lunch and. And whatever. And we set up a little stage and did a gig. And it was a glorious day. It turned out to be really great. The concert took place on the Champ de Mars, the esplanade near the town park, which is a huge place. It is used for fireworks. In 14 July, the French national feast. There were a little crowd wait for the concert. There is perhaps 100, 200 person who waits for the concert after the time the crowd grow. But there was very few people present at the beginning. I had a hard run running from your window. I was home and running, thought, I wonder if.

[Jesse Jarno]

That was one of the highest concerts ever that we ever did in the central marketplace of Lille for about 6,000 coal miners, all standing there in their helmets with black faces and everything. It was really weird with their kind of wives and girlfriends, oh, what is this? These are these crazy Americans. Oh, music is very good.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The people who work around the stage hearing the concert stop, but they didn't know what band play. They stopped hearing the music and it was very nice at their ears, but they didn't know what the Grateful Dead is because there was no advertising, there was no news about this event.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was a beautiful day too. And the light in France there's nothing like it. I mean, it's understandable why it's produced so many great painters. And it was one of those days when we played in the park and there were working people. I mean, really real French working people, the kind that Van Gogh would paint Again, there they were, sitting down in front of it was wonderful. Kids in their strollers, their mothers walking in through the park, stopped off and caught the show. It was great.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Mountain girl, it's a lovely place. My goodness, you're walking around in a French impressionist painting. I swear to God. Oh, I'm in a Renoir. And here's everybody strolling along with me along the. Along the riverbank in this gorgeous place. Leo was very special, and I hope it's still as special today as it was then. You know, it was just so green. And the park I remember that we were supposed to be presenting in had these huge old trees and, you know, with the really wide spread of the branches, you know, where the branches go out like 80ft, you know, these huge old trees. Just one of those places that you remember for how beautiful it was.

[Rich Mahan]

Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

[Jesse Jarno]

They played on a little stage set up with the town behind them, and it was free to anybody. And you look at the people like I think of France in the 70s and I think of little old ladies bundled up in wool coats with the thing over their head, the bonnet thing, the scarf thing, with their baguettes in a bag and maybe a bottle of wine coming over from the shops. And oh, there's a concert. I'll stay and watch that. That's who I see in these pictures. It's not raving mad Deadheads. And it also looks very, very cold. And Pigpen in particular, who was pretty ill. He only had a couple weeks left of touring with the Dead. Pigpen was really bundled up. I don't think that cold is very good for any of them, but not him. But the whole band is bundled up. It was very cold. It was a daytime show, you know, the Dead did a full show. They didn't show up and play for an hour and say, here you go. It's the least we can do. They played a full two set show with an other one.

[Rich Mahan]

There's a subtly different light shimmering through the band's plane. I feel like I hear the impressionist colors of the French countryside shining through this beautiful episode from the first jam. In the other one.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I took some photos. I used to take my camera during the concert. It was a miracle to See the Dead for a free concert in this place. The band, they were in great shape and happy to be here. To be at this time, at this point, at this space. I see on the photo how Jerry Garcia was happy. He smiles, but he smiles always. But this day he plays like a saint. The concert was fantastic. I say it lasted three or four hours since the concert. I am encoded freely a fan of the Dead and it was for me like a moment of eternity. It's a real point of my life that I never forget.

[Rich Mahan]

We've posted a link to Daniel's photos of the free leal [e-mail] deadcast it's hard to know where to place the following story, but let's say it manifested during the other one. Our next guest took perhaps the longest route to Leal than anyone else present, including the band. Please welcome from Vancouver, Canada, Greenpeace co founder Rod Marining.

[Jesse Jarno]

I'm a founder of Greenpeace. Previously, we. We, a group of 13 of us got together and decided that we had. Were fed up with the amount of nuclear testing that was going on. There was a lot of radiation in.

[Rich Mahan]

The atmosphere, but they had a plan.

[Jesse Jarno]

You know, we had a group of people and some of them were in their 50s, 40s, late 40s, and one of us said, well, I think I could get Joni Mitchell to do a benefit concert because she's Canadian and da da da. And they said, oh wow, I never heard of him. Never heard of her. And then there was always this group of two or three people laughing their heads off in the corner because the youth were always the driving force back then. You know, they were the boomers. They were, they were in. Even though we love the direction that some of the older people are giving us. But anyways, so we ended up getting Joanie to do a concert. She brought in James Taylor and two other people.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

They go round and round and they're painted ponies go up and down. We're captured on a carousel.

[Rich Mahan]

That was Joni Mitchell and James Taylor performing the circle game in October 1970, released in 2009 as the Concert that launched Greenpeace. With the funds from the concert, it was on to the next logical step.

[Jesse Jarno]

And we were basically committing group suicide. We were sailing into a nuclear test zone because we just were dedicated to trying to stop the nuclear testing and. And so we just tried to sail into the test zone. There was lots of stories that came about, but we were successful in the end because United States stopped nuclear testing at that time.

[Rich Mahan]

There were funds left over and they continued their mission and decided to do so in the South Pacific. The next step then was to get to Paris to organize it.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, Lille was on the way to Paris. We were hitchhiking. We had very little money.

[Rich Mahan]

You were hitchhiking from Vancouver to Paris?

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, we hitchhiked across Canada because you're 22, and actually back in those days, you could travel faster by hitchhiking because you would travel 24 hours a day by truck and everything, and you could sleep on the way. We got to Gander, Newfoundland, and for $125, you could get a flight from Gander, Newfoundland, to London airport.

[Rich Mahan]

And sure, from there, Leel is on the way.

[Jesse Jarno]

We just came in and drove in, and we're kind of exhausted, but we were fine. And somebody said, oh, there's a music concert in the local park in Lille. And who's playing there? Other Grateful Dead are playing there. Holy shit, man. That's unreal. We were traveling because we had a mission, and you can't go to cross borders with a toque or a couple of joints or even any other drugs because you just don't want to end up in jail. I had a mission to take place, and we were very stone sober at the time.

[Rich Mahan]

We originally tracked down Rod because In Rex Whaler's 2004 history of Greenpeace, Rod tells a Greenpeace related story about seeing the Dead in Lille. And that story's coming. But when we talked to him, something else came up.

[Jesse Jarno]

I haven't told this story for 50 years. It was. It was an amazing, amazing situation. I've only experienced this once, I tell you, was shocking for me, because I'm the type of person that likes to think that I'm in 100% control of my destiny, my fate. I'm the master of my destiny. And here I am watching this concert, and I'm just locked on Jerry Garcia. And Jerry goes into one of his riffs. And I was so intense in his music. I was watching him, and I was watching him, and as I watched him, my focus, focus, focus, focus went right to his mouth, because his mouth was. Every time he went into a rift, his mouth was way open, like, about seemed like about three inches. And he had this black beard and then this black mouth. And then I just. All of a sudden, I got sucked into his mouth. Holy crap. And then I'm waking up on a cold marble floor. I remember the first thing I remember was, this was a marble floor. And I said, what's going on here? I finally got to stand up and all of a sudden I was in a courtroom, but the courtroom was all marble and there was this big, probably 20 foot long marble, big, huge throne in front of me. And there was seven people there. Seven people. At that moment I was stunned. I was in a kind of a stunned state. And I was trying to listen to what was going on here. I was scared to look at them because they seemed to be very powerful dudes and women too. And so I kind of slowly took an eye looked at through the corner of my eye and I started taking a look at what was going on. There was a big screen behind them too, and it had clouds all behind them like a big flat screen tv. Back in those days there wasn't any. But over the years I got to know who those people were because there were various people there that I was able to deduce who they were. The first people I noticed were. They're called the three sisters in Greek mythology. There's a piece I just picked up here called the Pillars of Proverbs. The three sisters of fate are a group of Greek goddesses who weave the thread of time and fate and are assigned mortals their individual destinies at birth. But this wasn't my birth. I sort of there and they were discussing my destiny and my fate. And I was totally indignant that they were discussing my fate and my destiny. And I was like, I was getting like pissed off. I was getting angry. Their names are just so, you know, Antropus, who's the inflexible. Clotho, who's the spinner. Lancesi is the allotter. The older myths identified them as the offspring of Themis. Themis is the goddess of divine law and order. So I'm precinct the story. There's a three sisters now. There's Themis, who's this other goddess and Zeus, who's the Greek God of sky and lightning. And then there was two other people there and one was Neptune and the other one was Gaia. So there were seven people that I was able to identify. And so they were discussing my fate and I protested. I said, look, I. You can't talk about my fate. I am the master of my own destiny. I believe in myself. I don't need you to tell me what I'm going to do or not going to do. I was able to say all those words because Zeus cut me off and told me to shut up, basically. And at the time I was sort of protesting. And behind this hymn was this flat screen tv. There was this. The storms as I was talking the storms were getting. The clouds were getting dark and gloomy, and then lightning started flashing. And all of a sudden I was hit by a bolt of lightning and I was back standing in front of Jerry Garcia again. And my friend who was with me at the time said, oh, well, I'm glad you're back. I thought you were dead there for a minute. And I said, well, why? He says, well, you weren't moving to the music. You were gutted like totally, like a statue. And I looked at your face and I looked right at your eyes and there was no eyes. There was just whites in your eyes. You look weird. And you kind of scared the shit out of me with just the whites of your eyes looking. So I guess my eyes had rolled back and yet I was looking at the stage and human time. I don't know. I really don't know. But it seemed like a long time. It seemed like it could have been hours in this courtroom. And I thought, okay, I don't think I'm going to be going into any more fateful dead concerts for a while. That was too much. But I love the music I came.

[Rich Mahan]

Across in the empty space.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Mid trampoline exploded. Little bus stop in his plate.

[Rich Mahan]

Rod had a classic version of what's called a spontaneous visionary experience with a huge download of information, often filled out with deep archetypes from mythology and perhaps from beyond the knowledge of the person having the mystical experience in question. Please welcome Steve Silberman, co author of Skeleton Key, A Dictionary for Deadheads and author of the Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.

[Jesse Jarno]

Here's the thing to remember. The subject of so called mystical experiences or unity that experiences is an aspect of human cognition that has been studied a lot. Like, it's not just like something that happens at dead shows or Jerry looked at me or whatever. And in fact, just this morning I was reading through a bunch of old studies and they generally suggest that between 30 to 60% of human beings who are asked this question have had some kind of experience that they felt was completely transcendent that lifted them out of their bodies or out of their circumstances or the particular space they were in or the set of mental problems they were having and gave them a glimpse of something that was profoundly healing or transcendent or really weird. The ability to have what psychologists call a unitive or transcendent or mystical experience is actually just part of the human repertoire of experiences. And it comes with our neurology, or you could say it comes with the fact that we're you know, temporary beings in the universe with a God. You know, it depends on what your frame of reference is. One of the most interesting things, actually, about those studies is that the people who had mystical experiences didn't have them necessarily within a set of references that they were going for that they even believed in. In other words, it's possible to have an experience of God without believing in God. I do think that there was a thing about the community at shows that maximized the chances of having experiences like that. And it was partly because it was part of sort of Deadhead lore. Like, it wasn't said anywhere, but it was sort of part of Deadhead lore that those experiences were available at shows. So you knew that you were surrounded by people who would somehow understand if this happened to you. And not only that, but make it kind of okay.

[Rich Mahan]

Put another way, the Grateful Dead brought with him the message that it was cool to freak fucking freely. In Rod's case, while it was a Dead show, it was only barely a Deadhead crowd, but consisting mostly of French civilians.

[Jesse Jarno]

How is it that the Dead, who were certainly not, you know, oh, let's create a style of music that spontaneously triggers unitive and mystical. You know, they're just, like, playing. You know, they wanted to play, but yet they came up with this form that both musically worked to liberate your mind in a way to go there. And also then Deadheads. And this was something I was very interested in when I was writing Skeleton Key. A dictionary for Deadheads is. Deadheads then improvised a container for those mystical experiences that would make them safe for everybody who was there. And everybody kind of understood what was going on. And yet it's not like the band said this music may trigger. They just played Darkstar. And then Deadheads spontaneously invented the container in the room for those experiences.

[Rich Mahan]

Just like Rod didn't go looking for his spontaneous visionary experience, we didn't go looking for Rod's story about his spontaneous visionary experience. In researching the series, I found a reference in a book that mentioned some activists that Rod happened to make contact with at the performance, important to the next part of the Greenpeace mission.

[Jesse Jarno]

You know, when you meet certain characters, sometimes I wonder if they were actually human. I'm six two, and she was taller than me, so she was about 6 foot 3, 6 foot 4. She had a huge black cape. And she said that, I'm here to guide you through Paris. And she had a friend, too, a small Frenchman. So there was this large. And they were from Ibiza, and very magical people. But the woman had a big black cape, and I remember running it, like having to run to keep up with her as this black cape went up and down stairwells and around corners and everything. So she introduced me to numerous people in Paris. I ended up going on a lecture tour, and the lecture tour was called Green Politics.

[Rich Mahan]

Rod had a pretty amazing time in France. He also crossed paths with Joni Mitchell, who passed through Paris for a few concerts a few weeks after the Dead. It all reinforces a theme that I find fascinating about the Dead shows, becoming a kind of open space for a variety of experiences that one doesn't necessarily associate with rock shows, including facilitating the intersection of activists in Lille, France, in 1972. It was a powerful energy field, and in a way, Rod would contribute to the growing container of Grateful Dead shows. The organization he helped found, Greenpeace, would eventually become a literal fixture in the standard map of a Grateful Dead show in the late 1980s, when there would always be a Greenpeace table just outside the performance area. After the Leal show, the band's rhythm section had a date, a getaway to Monte Carlo. Somebody had gifted Bill Kreutzman and Phil Lesh tickets to the Grand Prix in Monaco. And so, after Sam Cutler handed off the rental car, perhaps inspired by their destination, the route from Lille to the airport in Paris became a street race of their own. As they hit Paris traffic, as Kurtzman described in his memoir, it was getting down to the wire, but we were zigging and zagging our way to the airport, and we weren't talking much because we were all really high on acid. So we communicated without having to say a lot out loud. Phil was a backseat navigator, a human gps. He'd just say, next street left, and bam. We'd careen off to the left, next street right. They made the flight, though. As they pulled into the airport, Kreuzmann made a discovery. I reached under the driver's seat and holy shit. I found a package under there, and holy shit. It had a big bag of cocaine and another big bag of hash in it. Though not averse to LSD and other substances on that tour, Kreuzmann was keeping himself away from the white powders. They dumped it in a trash can as they entered the airport. In his book, Kreuzmann calls out Sam Cutler for leaving the bag there, presumably the tour's coke stash. Before we hear Sam's side of the story, let's call back to what Wiz told us about what he and Rhodey Sonny Herd did with all that Orange, sunshine, lsd. He got gifted in Amsterdam.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

So I had those and you know, heard said, hmm. And we were on this anti blow campaign. So we ground, we kept a few and we ground them up and put it in the blow stash. So it's like, okay, they can have blow, but they're to going to get high too.

[Rich Mahan]

This is how Sam remembers the Leal show.

[Jesse Jarno]

And for reasons which I'm not quite sure why, we all got absolutely fucking off our tits, man out of it. And I was so high. Anyway, I found myself. I don't know what the time was, I really don't know. But anyway, I had a briefcase full of money and everyone's passport and I felt like I was kind of on Jupiter or maybe Saturn. And all these French people were trying to deal with me and I didn't have a word of French. They finally realized I was one of those mad Americans from the gig in the town square. So they took me to the town square. God knows where I was, but it was a long walk all through these different kind of back streets. We finally reached the town square. There wasn't a soul there. No equipment, no stage, nothing. They'd all gone, man, they'd all gone. The two buses that we had and put the equipment on the trucks and gone back to Paris. I'm standing there with everything. It's like, oh my God, you know? So I had to get myself back to Paris and somehow managed to get back to Paris. Everyone was at the hotel, they were all cool, but everyone was so sweet about it, you know, no one said a word. That was how the grape of dead which made me feel intensely embarrassed. It had been much, much easier if everyone had gone. For fuck's sake, man, you know what happened? Where are you? We needed money. Just nothing like, hi man.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Okay, Everything all right?

[Jesse Jarno]

These nice, you know, welcoming smiles from Garcia which immediately, immediately makes you think he can't possibly be really smiling. I know that he thinks I'm a cunt or whatever, you know what I mean? So that was probably my most embarrassing moment as a tour manager. I'm not sure whether I lost the band or they lost me.

[Rich Mahan]

And from Paris to a one night stand with the smallest in person audience of the tour, but unquestionably the largest at home listenership Radio Luxembourg, the Communicator.

[Jesse Jarno]

Here's the news in brave.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

From the.

[Jesse Jarno]

Resources of Britain's top Sunday newspaper.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The appeal court hearing into the rail crisis.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dispute has been adjourned until tomorrow morning. The unions are appealing against the decision.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

To the Industrial Court. The spring bank holiday pop festival at Barney near Lincoln is a near certainty. Now the local county council has withdrawn its opposition.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dan Blocker, known to millions as Hoss.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

And the Western series Bonanza has died.

[Jesse Jarno]

In Hollywood at the age of 43.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

In motor racing, Frenchman Jean Pierre Bertois, driving a BRM, led from start to finish to win the Monaco Grand Prix.

[Rich Mahan]

That was Radio Luxembourg, recorded just days before the Dead arrived. The fabulous 208. It was called in Britain for its spot on the medium wave radio band, but that's in metric. It could be heard around 14:40am in the UK, in Germany on the FM band, in France via long wave and beyond that via shortwave. Aiming itself from the hills of Luxembourg westward towards the uk. It was heard likewise beyond the borders of the communist nations to the east, at least where it wasn't being jammed. Founded in 1933, Radio Luxembourg was the world's first and biggest pirate radio station, defiantly sailing the airwaves of a dozen or more nations. For people in countries with tight national control over radio, which included both England and many countries in the Eastern Bloc, Radio Luxembourg was the only way to hear lots of rock music on the radio. We are so pleased to welcome to the Deadcast from Radio Luxembourg, the DJ who hosted the Dead's visit, Kid Jensen.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

My show on Radio Luxembourg, so mid evening program throughout Europe. That radio station had gazillion listeners everywhere, so it was nice to garner so much interest for one of our programs because one week we'd be Talking to Paul McCartney, another week we'd be talking to and it was sort of a magazine type program that I was hosting at the time that people would usually travel a long way to get to the Grand Duchy.

[Rich Mahan]

Kid Jensen's Dimension can be heard nightly on Radio Luxembourg. Kid Jensen still does radio though. He's David Jensen. Now you can catch both series one and series two of David Jensen's Jazz on Jazz FM Premium. Find out [e-mail] he's also been involved with Parkinson's UK helping people live with Parkinson's disease and has a recent memoir titled for the Record, available from Little Wing Books. In the spring of 1972, Kid Jensen met the Grateful Dead.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

They created quite a bit of mayhem about them before actually arriving in the grand dad Chief Luxembourg Rock Scully was the manager of both the Grateful Dead and the Beach Boys at that time. And I got to know Rock Scully because he came to use interior Luxembourg, doing this and doing that. And he touched baseballs with me and thought how did I think of we did a thing in. I started, I said, why not? This concert hall is ideal for it. And they said, yes, it's kind of 1930s art deco concert hall.

[Rich Mahan]

I don't think Rock Scully served any time as a manager for the Beach Boys, but I like that timeline. Either way, something rock was definitely very involved with was setting up the Dead's live radio broadcasts. They'd revived the art form back home and even brought it with them to Europe. In Denmark, they gave tapes of their first concert to Danish National Radio and during their second, participated in the first totally live rock telecast in the country's history. Like the BBC, Radio Luxembourg had recorded studio sessions in the past, but actually live performances were something different. We talked about the parallels between the Dead and the Beach Boys. And here's one more. In May of 1972, the Beach Boys and the Dead broke the live music barrier at Radio Luxembourg. The Beach Boys, a week before the Dead. Somehow only monophonic tapes of the Beach Boys performance seem to survive, which is too bad. And they're so cruddy, we're not even going to sample them here. Donna Jean Godshow, McKay.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I really enjoyed Luxembourg, which. We had a little jaunt into Luxembourg. And of course, it's a real tiny, tiny, tiny country, which is more like one of our smaller states or something. I mean, it's really tiny, but it was just so quaint and so that. That would be, to me, the epitome of European culture with Luxembourg. Just the look and the smell and everything of it was just really, uniquely European. That really stuck with me that, oh, this is Europe. This is how Europe is and why it's so beautiful. We just walked around it, you know, there was no big deal around it. We were just there walking around. It just gave me that sense of, this is why people love Europe.

[Rich Mahan]

Mountain Girl.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

That was fascinating. Radio Luxembourg, as it turned out, was a giant fucking antenna up on whatever high spot they had in Luxembourg, which is like, not. Not very many high spots. It was this building and it had all this old gear in it, you know, stuff to look at. There was a. It was partly a museum of old radio gear with these tubes and, you know, stuff that had miraculously survived World War II, basically. And I remember getting totally fascinated by their. Their little museum there, because it just had all this old stuff and it was really neat. Jerry Garcia and a couple of the other guys went up to the northern part of Luxembourg just to kind of see the views and look out and see the actual system, which is pumping out their sound, which is second only to Radio Cairo in those days in terms of getability. And that was kind of exciting, seeing that done. But the Grateful Dead themselves loved it. They absolutely loved this part of the trip.

[Rich Mahan]

Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's a theater that was designed for radio play, to mic it properly so that it was an audience, but it was small. I think it was 500 people. It was designed that the band would play to an audience and get that energy, but it was mic'd. And it was designed so that it would sound pristine to be sent out around the world.

[Rich Mahan]

Ben Haller of the Light Crew, when.

[Jesse Jarno]

We played Luxembourg at one point, the sort of winnable, mysterious thing about that was that it was a radio thing and it was fortified, but it had tunnels that went out into the countryside and go for miles and miles and miles through the countryside, so people could be brought in secretly and people could be, you know, extracted secretly. So it had that kind of weird, interesting flavor to it. You know, Were there Nazis here? We're going to find Hitler's old mustache, you know. What was going to happen.

[Rich Mahan]

For many, Radio Luxembourg was sonic liberation from the Grand Duchy. The Dead's music would travel well into the Eastern block if the station wasn't being jammed by the Russians.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

We used to get lots of letters to Polish journalists. Said to me several years ago, the reason that people remember you so much when you go to Poland now is that Radio Luxembourg was the sound of freedom for us because the Soviets would jam the signal and. And you always knew when they would do that, because you get sort of like three beeps, beep, beep, beep. And that means three seconds later, you're live to Poland or Czechoslovakia or wherever else was keeping those people down back in the mid-70s. I know they worked really hard to have that come out, to come off, because it was going to go, you know, basically all over the world. So they took it very seriously.

[Rich Mahan]

The band had a whole day scheduled there for soundcheck, the only officially recorded soundcheck of the tour included on the box set. Though the tour itinerary doesn't always line up with actual travel. Possibly this is from the day before the show, May 15, 1972. It reveals the Dead playing a song that wasn't in their normal repertoire just yet, though it would be within a few months, though, sung by somebody else.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

It tore me up every time I heard her draw Southern DRONE lit my dream went back downstairs.

[Rich Mahan]

That was Jerry Garcia singing Johnny Cash's Big River. Weir had sung it Over New Year's at Winterland. And it entered the band songless, permanently like that, in 9-72. But this oddity is pretty fun.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

She loves you Bigger River Falling off We met willow how to cry Cry, cry, cry.

[Rich Mahan]

This is from the great interview David Ganz did with the late Grateful dead manager John McIntyre for the oral history. This is all a dream we dreamed. We've posted a [e-mail] deadcast I'm remembering.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

It as being really, really weird. But first of all, Luxembourg is a weird place. How so? It's just really strange. I mean, like, try to find a good meal there. I mean, you think you're in France, but then try to find a good meal. It's just kind of. And they have a language that's a construct. It wasn't a natural language and they made it up. And I don't know, I just got weird feelings from Luxembourg and that whole RTL being such a force in Europe. And so it's like this technological presence. So I don't remember the music specifically, but I just remember having weird feelings about the place and the whole thing. RTL is the French pronunciation of rtl, Radio Television Luxembourg. But it's called RTL because that's the way the French pronounced it.

[Rich Mahan]

Philippe Sicart had caught both shows in Paris and scored a ticket for Luxembourg.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I had worked like an odd job, you know, a few months earlier for a DJ for Radio Luxembourg. It's a Luxembourg radio station because there was a branch of the. Of the radio station in Paris and he was the. The official DJ of the Paris branch. So I worked for him, I worked with him. He had a small store of selling records, you know, he used me as someone who worked there. I worked only for three or four months. It was just a month or a month and a half before the Dead shows.

[Rich Mahan]

And then Philippe ran into his boss at the Olympia Theater. Dead shows in early May.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

He was with the dad. He was on the behind the scenes with them. He recognized me and I was near the stage and he called me and he gave me a ticket to go to see them in Luxembourg. Not only to me, to other people too. That's why there were many French people who went to Luxembourg. Not that so many, because it was a small, very small auditorium. So I had a free ticket. I gave some to my friends and we went to Luxembourg. I drove with a friend of mine to Luxembourg, which is about 250km from Paris. Luxembourg is a very small country. It's one of the smallest country in the world. It's very tiny. What about the. It was raining. I remember that. Raining hard. Rain, raining all night. It was great to get into the auditorium there. It was a very state of the art auditorium, you know, for that at that time it was very small. We were about 4, 500 at most. Because it was a very small room, a very small auditarian. But it was very modern, very, very sophisticated. That's why they played so well. And the sound was fantastic. It was a bit different from Paris, but he was very, very good. It was a very short concert, short gig, because they had a slot for Kid Jensen.

[Rich Mahan]

It didn't quite unfold as planned.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I was on stage with the band, getting ready to kind of see the band off on a gig which would eventually entail five hours at least in one of those marathons or dead concerts that became legendary. Anyway, that was. Suddenly I heard this like a. Like a button or somebody was pushing, suppressing something like a switchblade. Well, it might have been like a switchblade.

[Rich Mahan]

Let's pause here and flashback to what Steve Parish told us a few episodes ago on the topic of switchblades.

[Jesse Jarno]

We bought them everywhere we could because they were illegal in America, man. Like if somebody was fucking with somebody, you hear blades. And everybody would flick their switch blades and fucking just that shut everybody up.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I heard this click. I looked down at my navel there. It wasn't just a navel anymore. There was a dagger, this street knife was pointing at my stomach. And this guy says, who are you? I said, sorry. He said, who the fuck are you? And I said, I'm Kate Jensen. This is my show. And they're gonna be doing interviews and talking about what they're up to. And he said, there's only one kid on this flight and that's me.

[Rich Mahan]

That would be Kid Candelario telling Kid Jensen what's what. Now, presumably moments after that happened, let's send it over to 1972 era Kid Jensen on stage with the Dead at the Villa Louveni.

[Jesse Jarno]

Thank you, Mark Wesley in the newsroom. This is Kid Jansen. Good morning. In the Theater hall in the Villa Louvini in Luxembourg. And for the second time in the history of Radio Luxembourg, a three hour live broadcast tonight with one of the pioneer groups that have changed the whole course of contemporary music over their last.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Seven years in existence.

[Jesse Jarno]

Originally a jug band in 1964, they are today rated as America's finest.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

To all you listeners here in the.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hall, good morning on shortwave around the world, three FM stations in Germany, on the French Long Wave and on the Medium Wave Band, a Great Britain 208 meters. Radio Luxembourg welcomes the Grateful Dead. It's a condensed show. It's still a full two set Grateful Dead show a little bit shorter. All of the jams are a little bit shorter. The other one isn't 25 minutes, it's shorter, but it's a really well played show. I feel that, like you said about Bickershaw, that, you know, the rap is that they blew it at the big ones. And likewise they often, you know, they might not have been able to play it up to the level of the radio, but they. At this show, they played a show that I think anybody tuning in would be intrigued. They'd say, wow, I want to know more about this band.

[Rich Mahan]

In fact, like the band's appearance on Danish television earlier in the tour, their slot on Radio Luxembourg was actually groundbreaking. European radio had tight restrictions on music that was actually live, which resulted in many artists recording sessions for various BBC programs. But in the spring of 1972, Radio Luxembourg offered extended performance slots to both the Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead. A few weeks later, Melody Maker in the UK ran an article titled the Dead in a sign of hope. Just like at home, the Dead were radio pioneers in Europe.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

It was supposed to be between midnight and two and they played a little longer, like two and a half hours. And it was, you probably know that it was broadcast not only in Luxembourg, but Germany, France, England. There were some people from Luxembourg, of course, from Paris, and maybe a few Germans too, because as you know, or maybe you don't know, Luxembourg is between France and Germany. Good morning or good afternoon or whatever.

[Jesse Jarno]

It is, wherever you are. Special hello to all our friends in California where it's now 4 o' clock in the afternoon and sunny.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

They played Hamburg just before coming to Paris. So maybe they handed over some free tickets to Germans, Some Germans.

[Rich Mahan]

At Radio Luxembourg, the Dead also experienced something else they were familiar with from home, but hadn't yet encountered in Europe too many fans. The Luxembourg Times noted that the show had been advertised as a free concert over the airwaves, but nobody had bothered to say anything about needing a ticket if they were going to come in person. The Dead's reputation for free shows clearly preceded them.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

It's probably closer to a scuffle than Orion, I would say.

[Rich Mahan]

This hadn't happened to the Beach Boys, Melodymaker reported, because of a rather silly announcement on the French service of Luxembourg. Several hundred Deadheads traveled from France thinking they would see a free concert with admission to all they Found that the station's small theater where the recording took place held only 350. Some were left outside. There were scuffles with two security guards. Really just jobsworths. One guy in the crowd tried to climb in, fell ten foot into the waterless moat and suffered spinal injuries. According to the Luxembourg Times, because of the confusion around ticketing, there still ended up being empty seats inside the tiny theater with the dead's family sitting around them on the stage.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

All people were sitting because the same as in Paris, there was no floor for dancing. People were very. They were not mad like in Paris. They were just very relaxed. And the dead were very relaxed too, of course, like always. And it was a very great. To me, it was not as great as in Paris because it was not so many songs and it wasn't the same mood.

[Jesse Jarno]

I love the Luxembourg show again. It reminds me a little bit of a full month earlier on April 14th at Tivoli. I use this rainbow kind of metaphor, the vibe, the colors I see when I listen to it, and the brightness of Tivoli. First night they did get some work.

[Rich Mahan]

Done in Luxembourg, sort of.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, this child I got, he's a little chill.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Running out of money on a deep morbid.

[Jesse Jarno]

Gonna wake up in.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The morning oh, I'm gonna back my back Gonna beat it.

[Rich Mahan]

Seems that the Luxembourg version of Beat It on down the Line made it as far as the overdubbing process for an inclusion on Europe 72 on July 10th. Back at Alembic, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh all did a round of vocals wiping out their originals. If you've ever listened to the version of Beat It on down the Line from Luxembourg and thought, wow, sweet harmonies, it's because they're overdubs. Another moment I like is when Bob Weir dedicates a song to his sweetie and in some accounts, inspiration for the particular song they're about to play.

[Jesse Jarno]

And if Frankie's still listening, this one's for you.

[Rich Mahan]

Frankie Weir was along for most of the Europe 72 tour, so perhaps she was just listening back in Paris, who knows?

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

It was rainy, was not very interesting. No, we went back right away after the show. We went to a bar to have a beer and then we rode back to Paris.

[Rich Mahan]

The Melody Maker reported on the aftermath of the skirmish at the show. There is 50 quids worth of damage to a door, doubtless seen through the eyes of many Luxembourg citizens, for whom the major spectacle in their lives has been the signing of the EEC papers. There it appeared like some riot. It's A pity these bankers, restaurant owners and shopkeepers could not have been inside that recording theater last Thursday to see Jerry Garcia smile and smile and smile is something on its own. Still, if you were tuned in, you must have got the picture. There's almost a visual element about live radio, you dig?

[Jesse Jarno]

We do.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Actually it was a broadcast in France, so a friend of mine who couldn't come to Luxembourg recorded it on a tape he recorded from the radio, the radio show, because it was broadcast live, you know, so the sound was not great. But during many years it was the only tape I had of the Dead in Europe.

[Rich Mahan]

Lots of the heads we spoke with for our episode about the UK shows were listening to 15 year old Richard Parkinson had seen the Dead at Newcastle in April and was a big fan of Radio Luxembourg.

[Jesse Jarno]

The first one I actually owned was the Garcia first solo record which I won from a radio contest. And that was probably like a couple of months before the concert. The Radio Luxembourg was the people I won the Garcia album from. So they used to have a rock show that would be on at one o' clock in the morning, which typically you'd fall asleep just as it came on radio sort of plugged to your ear and ended up. Remember they used to have those acid batteries before they got alkaline batteries and the acid would weep out to them when they ran down. So you'd fall asleep at night, wake up and there'd be acid all over your fingers on the radio. I heard the show on Radio Luxembourg.

[Rich Mahan]

Chris Jones the other thing for UK.

[Jesse Jarno]

Heads is Radio Luxembourg. They did the show and I recorded that as well. Again, it was poor. Radio Luxembourg is poor receptionist Worse than actually much worse than being there and listening to the muddy sound of it. You know, it really was poor reception going up and down, AM recording and things. So AM Broadc. But again, that was another thing I'd never heard on Radio Luxembourg. Them doing a whole show like that or a large part of it.

[Rich Mahan]

Bill Giles the other thing that we.

[Jesse Jarno]

Did get in the UK was the Radio Luxembourg. I mean again, it was like, oh wow, you know, the Grateful Dead on the radio, Fantastic. Far out as, of course it was, but 208 meters medium wave and then like these sort of. The sound quality, let's say, wasn't very good. And then there were these sort of blizzards of interference from Neptune or somewhere.

[Rich Mahan]

When it became execrable in the northwest, it came in loud and clear for Richard Parkinson.

[Jesse Jarno]

Yeah, Luxembourg for some reason actually carried particularly that time of night. I didn't even know tape Recorder. And to be honest, I wouldn't have known how to tape anything because the tape recorder I'd ever seen at that point was the kind of microphone on it which you'd have had to hold up to a transistor radio.

[Rich Mahan]

Bill Giles was on it.

[Jesse Jarno]

I even stuck a microphone in front of my radio, was trying to record it and I mean, the recording was utterly dreadful.

[Rich Mahan]

Chris Jones too.

[Jesse Jarno]

My dad had one of those what they called stereograms then, which was one of those things, you know, which could get the radio and I just put the mic next to the speaker on the. Or between the two speakers on the floor, proudly. So it would have been pretty poor recording. But yeah, it was fun. It was something to do when you're that age. And as someone who had no real.

[Rich Mahan]

Idea about audio back then, I mean.

[Jesse Jarno]

Stereo was a new thing for most of us in Britain in those days. I got my first stereo for my 21st birthday. That was secondhand kit.

[Rich Mahan]

But hey, it was a dead tape that had all those new songs.

[Jesse Jarno]

But it wasn't an easy listen.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

They tried anyway.

[Rich Mahan]

Simon Phillips had just recorded Bickershaw a week and a half earlier. He knew better than to try to make a tape of Radio Luxembourg, but did so anyway.

[Jesse Jarno]

But in the UK we only got Radio Luxembourg again on the medium wave and it fluctuated in and out, so you got all this static, so you have two or three minutes of really clear music and then it would go and then disappear and then drift back in. So it was never usable as a tape trade, but I had it and you know, there were bits of it that were listenable.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

It's time to end another day of broadcasting originating from our studios in the Villa Lavini in the city of Luxembourg. Luxembourg, Europe. We hope you enjoy this program and that you'll join us tonight on 208 meters in a medium wave band. For more music at 7:30, this is Paul Burnett. On behalf of the entire staff and management of the English service of radio Luxembourg, including DJs Chit Jensen, Dave Christian, Bob Stewart and Mark Wesley, wishing you a pleasant good evening and good morning.

[Rich Mahan]

From Luxembourg, the band made a second pass through Heidelberg en route to Munich.

[Jesse Jarno]

Steve Parish, the place where the student prince was written in Heidelberg. And then Keith Gottschow went off about that playing and talking about all that story of the student prince and Heidelberg. When it's summertime in Heidelberg there's beauty everywhere.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

All the trees dressed in the Sunday best and the breast and the.

[Rich Mahan]

Blazing the square that was summertime in Heidelberg from the 1924 operetta by Sigmund Romberg, based on the earlier play Old Heidelberg. Keith Godchau's father Hal directed a version in 1964, and it's a good bet that Keith absorbed it while playing as a teenager in the pit orchestra. I wish we had more stories From Keith on Europe 72, but if you'd like to know more, check out our Enter Keith God show episode from last season.

[Jesse Jarno]

We were so stoned on acid that that day we went walking around and we were so high, we laid on the bus for hours. And we had. A couple of us had gone to a souvenir shop in Heidelberg. They had all these skulls, right? They were rubber skulls, but when you pressed on the top of them, they had a laugh machine in them. They'd start laughing hysterically. And so when you're high on acid and you're hearing the skull laughing your hand, everybody just laughing along with the skull. And we were pulling the batteries in and out and stopping it, and it was just hilarious. So we start walking around the town and we come to the castle now. And on these castle bas relief, up and down the castle are these faces of all these people. And so we're looking at them and we're going, well, there's a lady in waiting or something. There's a knight and there's a priest, and there's this. And then. Wait a minute, who are these people? And they looked like fools, you know, like. Like fools of the kind that. Making faces, no masks, but you could tell from the structure of their faces and their teeth that they were fools. And so there we saw St Gilbert, and we named him that, you know. And so St Gilbert, also represented in southern Germany, was very different. And I remember visiting that incredible castle of Ludwig or somebody up on the hill with several people. You got a sense of the old European castle builders in that show, in.

[Rich Mahan]

That castle in Munich, Donogne Godscho Mackay.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

One thing that was very important to me was being around Pigpen. When he was off stage, he was more subdued. Like when Keith and I talked with him in that hotel room in Heidelberg, Germany, almost all day, he was very subdued, but very clear and sweet. I mean, just his sweetness was something that was just. I'll never forget.

[Jesse Jarno]

So the whole tour, wherever you pulled into every truck stop, wherever we tried to eat, here's 50 hungry stoned hippies coming into these truck stops. They weren't ready for us. Very different than American truck stops. And so all he had ready to go was Wiener Schnitzel. All throughout Germany. You know what? Can I get a hot dog? Can I get a hamburger? No, we have Zenishnitzel. So that's all we ate. And we were sick of it, man.

[Rich Mahan]

Mountain Girl.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

We did worry about the European cops. And the drivers asked us a few times not to smoke on the bus. And so we'd have little stops along the way. Get off and puff, get off and puff and go back on again. But then they loosened up after a while. I mean, they kind of had to. So it took a little while to get all that straightened out. But it. It was. We had some. We had some very good grass with us for. Thank you. Whoever. Whatever. Angel dropped that in our lap when we got there. Yeah, Customs, they definitely. They really liked looking us over very closely. Moving through an international border for. For most of us who had never done that before, this was new. All new territory. Our tour manager handled those with considerable grace. And a palm. And he just went out there and did what he did and everything was fine. Oh, wait a minute. Except for going to Germany. I remember that we did have a little. We had a little issues going into Germany. And I think. I think it cost rock a couple of hundred bucks there. But they let us through. But it took. It took cash. But they didn't like us. That was the thing. They didn't. Didn't like us there in Germany. They really. And they're kind of going. You can hear them talking. Anyway, we. That all worked out. And Germany was just so different, you know, such a different. Different place to be from sort of the happy. The happy dance we've been doing through England and France.

[Rich Mahan]

During one of the band's German tour stops, Jerry Garcia got some songwriting done. Because the song didn't emerge on stage until after the band's return home. I'm going to guess it was later in the tour. Robert Hunter had written the lyrics nearly two years earlier at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. In Europe, Garcia finally found the melody.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

They melted to a tree A bright broken angel sings from a guitar.

[Rich Mahan]

The band debuted Stella Blue at their first show after Europe at the Hollywood bowl on June 17th. What we just heard was from Seattle on July 21st, volume 10 of the download series. But we'll have to wait for another episode to go deeper into Stella Blue. The crew used their free time in Munich for less sensitive activities.

[Jesse Jarno]

So of course, we had to go to a German beer hall in Munich.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

And.

[Jesse Jarno]

We went to the one right where the beer. Where Hitler had his beer hall pushed. It's called man the fucking Famous Munich push, man, where he tried to get the Nazi party to shove him down everybody's throat, but it backfired on him. And so here are the girls. We're there, you know, you go in the piss in a big trough with all these other drunk Germans, and then you're in this fucking place and the women are carrying these steins four and man, these giant ones, and you're drinking. Really. For the first year, I didn't like beer until I tasted German beer and English beer. Wow. I mean, at that time, there were no breweries in America like that making real beer. It was all just phony beer, as I call it, you know, 3.2. This was real strong beer. And so we got pretty messed up. Munich is a very interesting town, you know, so it felt like a modern Germany connecting with the southern part of Europe, you know, it was. It was very good. But I do remember this one journalist who I forget her name, who later visited US in 74 tour in London. But I forget what she wrote for, but she must have been one of the press people that I was involved.

[Rich Mahan]

With to guide us through Munich in 1972. Please welcome local head Thomas Stork, then a teenager.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's southern Germany. It's a beer town. It's politically conservative. But in that particular moment in history was really blooming up. It was the year of the Olympics. Munich was awarded the Olympic summer games in 1972, a few years earlier. So the last four to five years, and I was going to school in Schwabing, right almost in the middle of town. Everything started to be upgraded in view of the Olympics coming and Munich being the shop window of Germany for the world. That was 36 years after the Olympics in Berlin, Hitler's Olympics. And now the idea was to present the new democratic Germany that was part of the Western unit, part of NATO, part of the European Community, and peaceful. A lot of money flew into Munich from the state government, from the federal government. We got our subway train installed. We got a pedestrian zone in the middle of the city where there was cars and buses and a lot of dirt. All of a sudden it was wide open and light and friendly. And for the summer of the Olympics, or the whole spring leading into the.

[Rich Mahan]

Summer, in the dead's Europe 72 files there are some articles about opportunities for pop groups at the Munich Olympics. And perhaps it was in the original conception of the trip, they let go.

[Jesse Jarno]

Of the strict German rules at that time, where the shops had to close at six in the evening, everything was closing. And on Saturdays Everything was closing at 12 noon, including of course, record stores and everything else. And all of a sudden you could go shopping at 9 in the evening, listen to music in a head shop, buy records and meet a lot of people that you hadn't met before. Scirocco was one of those stores that came up in Munich.

[Rich Mahan]

From 1970 until they closed in 2015, Scirocco was a nerve center of the Munich music scene, selling magazine comics, records and more.

[Jesse Jarno]

Siroko was incubated in the back of a Photoshop in Schwabing, which Irmgard Weigelt led. She was the lady that was responsible for a lot of people finding the music that will shape their life. If I can use the big words here, because she was really good at it. She would talk to people, find out their interests, and then start asking them, well, have you listened to this? You may want to listen to that. And she was the one that in 1972, sometime early, maybe in April or in March, when the tickets went on sale, told me, well, there's this band coming to the Deutsches Museum called the Grateful Dead that you may want to see that they may be in your pocket.

[Rich Mahan]

Irmgardt Wold's store had become a home for local psychedelic bands.

[Jesse Jarno]

She. I think she actually managed Amandu for a. For a bit.

[Rich Mahan]

That was Amendul 2, the title track of their 1969 album Phallus Die.

[Jesse Jarno]

We had a hippie scene in Munich, obviously there's the infamous story of one of the more prominent communes which also had ties to the Amanduhl group. Hijacked Peter Green a couple of years earlier and put him on acid and he never recovered, so the story goes. And those were members of the so called High Fish commune. And there were a bunch of those and either living in big old flats in Schwabing, or by that time having moved out to the country somewhere. I think Aman Dul, where they were living out in the country. And they split into two groups at some point. I sort of knew it marginally because all those guys were. Again, I was 16 and the duels were in their early mid 20s. So that was like hippie aristocracy.

[Rich Mahan]

Amadul 1 and the slightly slicker Aman Duel 2 were homegrown bands of the Munich commune scene and oddball entries into the already odd world of Kosmich music that we discussed in our West Germany episode. The late Peter Leopold was drummer in the original Amandul and the early iteration of Amandul 2. Gerhard Ruhl, Irmgard's son, who owned Siroka later, remember that Peter Leopold regularly sat in the imitation leather beanbag and scrutinized every customer, squinting over his glasses and asking, do you like the Dead? Something else happened around this point in the tour, which we'll acknowledge here. There are no known photographs of the Dead's gig in Luxembourg on May 16. There are, however, photographs of the dead in Munich two days later. In the Munich photos, Jerry Garcia's Stratocaster has a new sticker on the pick guard that wasn't there when the Dead played in Lille. A very hungry alligator with a fork and knife and bib.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was a real particular favorite of mine, a Stratocaster, which was given to him by Graham Nash. Because when I was on the first tour away from everybody, with Jerry, at Hooterol with Howard Wales, we were up in upstate New York in the winter. And that guitar just completely fell apart on the first note Jerry played. And so I had put this other plate on there, a Masonite plate, to replace what cracked from the cold weather. And it was a moment between me and Jerry where he was playing and I put all the guts back in the guitar, taped him in there. It was a cool thing. So we love that guitar.

[Rich Mahan]

We went into the backstory of Alligator in our Black Peter episode during season one of the Dead cast, when we were joined by none other than Graham Nash. In addition to stickers on the exterior, the interior of the Stratocaster was significantly modified as well. One of the two Alembic technicians responsible for working on Alligator was Rick Turner, the guitar genius we spoke with during our Skull N Roses side B episode and had hoped to speak with further.

[Jesse Jarno]

Alligator was this constant work in progress.

[Rich Mahan]

Rick was a master brass worker, which we talked about last time.

[Jesse Jarno]

Alligator just kind of evolved out of that whole, let's throw a bunch of brass at it and see what happens.

[Rich Mahan]

Earlier this year, Rick passed away suddenly. And enormous love to his family, friends and colleagues. Our friends Tim lynch and David Gann spoke with Rick about alligator on the KPFA fundraising marathon in 2020. Thanks to them for this audio. Please support KPFA and or your local MON commercial radio station.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jerry brought it to us at Alembic, which was at that time in San Francisco over on Judah street to Alembicize. And in those days, we were just starting to build instruments from scratch. But modding existing instruments was, you know, that's what.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

What you did.

[Jesse Jarno]

I mean, a lot of that was thanks to Bear, who never saw a piece of equipment that he didn't think he could make better. Jerry brought it to us. And what can you do?

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

It originally had, I hate to call.

[Jesse Jarno]

Them tremolos because they're actually vibratos. He didn't like that. So we. We filled the cavity with polyurethane and put in what I was developing as the alembic bridge with a block of brass under it as a sustained block. And one thing led to another. And, you know, it came through our hands. I don't know, probably five or six times. Each time different things got added. And eventually it became the first instrument that we put one of the Ron Wickersham designed stratoblasters into a preamp that would do two things. It would allow greater output from the instrument, but it would also decouple the instrument from the cable. And so all the highs that were sparkly, highs that were in the pickup would make it to the amplifier.

[Rich Mahan]

The photos show the sticker going onto the guitar in either Munich or Luxembourg. But Steve Parish remembers the sticker arriving in a different city and provides us with the origin story.

[Jesse Jarno]

That was the guitar he was playing that day. We were in London, and we were in this place that was like a cathedral, sort of. And we were in there in the afternoon. Kid was playing around with this airplane that he had gotten in England. That you could wind it up and it would shoot across the room and fly. We were paying attention to that. And Jerry was always there early with us when we set up. And he was now tinkering around with the guitar. And in comes Sonny Hurd. And Heard had been out shopping in London and he found all these stickers. And we couldn't believe how cool they were, man. We went, wow, look at these. They were really beautiful. And so there was one of an alligator with a bib, a dinner bib on, and a knife and fork in each hand. And he was just drooling and he's coming for dinner. And so we stuck that right on that guitar. And that guitar at that moment became the Alligator.

[Rich Mahan]

So the Alligator sticker came to the guitar by way of Sonny Herd, muddying the waters slightly. There are photos of Kid Candelario flying a model airplane around a big cathedral like venue during sound check. But they're from the Music Halle of Hamburg. Uli Torti and Volkmar Rupp created an offline collection of dated dead photos which we spoke about in our West Germany episode. Uli is especially engaged by the Alligator mystery.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Nobody ever claimed copyright to it, and nobody gets any credit for being a designer. But we know it must be between Lille and Munich. And it became the most famous sticker on this guitar because the guitar was named after it. One thing is for sure. The Alligator is going out for a meal. He has his fork and his knife ready, and he has his napkin around. So he's going out for food. This sticker has to come from a food place. I'm sure about that. When you drive from Lille to Luxembourg, which was the gig in between, you drive through Belgium. You don't drive to France. It's a short way to drive through Belgium to Luxembourg, and instead to drive to France. And my take on the Alligator is that it was like a roadside fast food place for French fries. Belgium is famous for French fries, You know, I can't prove it. It's just a feeling. We didn't see it in Lille, we see it in Munich. In between is Luxembourg. When you go from Lille to Luxembourg, you drive to Belgium. And Belgium is famous for French fries. And they travel by bus. They need something to eat. They stop over, they walk in, and hey, look at this.

[Rich Mahan]

Our attempts to track down Alligator and the annals of Belgian palm free art have so far proven unsuccessful. And there are no known photos of the Luxembourg show. But by the time the band hit Munich, Alligator was ready to bare its teeth. Here's a story about the Munich show that doesn't turn up on the tape quite as described, nor in the newspaper reviews or memories we've been able to locate. So let's say that maybe this happened during the soundcheck. It's a great story, and I have no doubt that it occurred in at least one fractalization of the Grateful Dead multiverse. Take it away, Sam Cutler.

[Jesse Jarno]

I mean, another memorable occasion was in Munich. We played in the Munich Opera House, right? This fucking building, right? Huge old building that had been there some stupid date, you know, like 1750, and had survived the Second World War bombing of Munich and God knows what else. And we were playing there, and there was this. There was a fire marshal, right, who had the unfortunate characteristic of looking exactly like Adolf Hitler. He actually had a mustache that was like that, you know, that Hitler had, you know, a little kind of mustache right in the middle of it, under his nose. So we all thought this was hilarious, right? And his whole thing was he was. He had to be 75, if not 80. And his whole thing was, no one can smoke. There's no smoking.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Nick.

[Jesse Jarno]

Nick is Bolton. Is Bolton. Everyone used to walk around going, it's boating. And they're completely fucking ignoring him and the smoking joints and everything. And the guy was Getting so worked up about it. Anyway, the concert started. That was all good. Did a couple of numbers, and Garcia decided he wanted to smoke a joint. So he gets this. He's got a joint in his pocket, you know, already rolled. You know, being gonna roll a joint on stage, he just pulls it out, lights out as a couple of totes, and puts it on this ashtray on top of his amp, right? So this guy, the. The fire marshal.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Her.

[Jesse Jarno]

Mr. Fire Marshal, he's got a bronze helmet on that makes him look like Alexander the Great. Incredible helmet, right? Yeah. And he sees all this shit going on, and there's smoke coming out of the ashtray on top of Garcia's hand. Well, he's not having this. So he takes a bucket of water, runs forward and dumps it on top of the ashtray. A whole bucket of water. Can you imagine? I mean, it's a miracle the guy wasn't killed. Anyway, there is this blinding flash. I mean, like you would not fucking believe. All the lights go out, and there's Third of Munich now has no electricity. A third of a city of like 3 million people. No electricity, man, Right? So then, of course, everybody in the audience pulls out their lighters. This is all like, no smoking, no. No light, you know, no smoking, no flames. And they're all sitting there with their light as a light, right? Chaos. Chaos, right? So, yeah, eventually, after about 15 minutes of being in the dark, the emergency generators kick in and everything. And there's like, at least there's a little bit of light, right? And this guy comes up to me, he goes, are you some manager? The manager of the building needs to see me emergency, like, now, okay? So I can't see the manager of the building. And he goes. He says, oh. He said, you know, somebody attacked as a fire marshal. And I'm like, no, really terrible, you know? Oh, God.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

You know?

[Jesse Jarno]

And then he goes, yeah, And. And the fire marshal lost his helmet. So I'm trying not to laugh, right? This brass helmet he was wearing, he said, that helmet has been in Munich Opera House since the time of Napoleon. Yeah, right, 1812 or something, right? He says, we have to have it back. He said, it's a valuable artifact. And I said, well, you know, I don't know who's got it, but I'll do my best, you know what I mean? So I had to call all the crew to go. I know. Fucking at it. You know what I mean? Because the crew kicked his ass and stole his helmet. So I got them all together. They're all standing I said, listen, in the interest of American German relations and the electricity ain't going to come back on until this happens, I got to have the helmet back, you know, no questions asked. And it got, you know, miraculously the helmet appeared. The old bastard got the fucking helmet put on his head. And then I had a germ. I had a German girl there, and I was telling her to tell him exactly what I said. She refused to say it. Well, basically, I told her, if you do anything like that again, man, we'll drag you out the back and shoot you. And I'm about kick your ass. It'll be worse than that. It was still more than your helmet. We'll fucking take your head off your shoulders, you know what I mean? He's an odd man. I can't say this to him. So you tell him that.

[Rich Mahan]

As local Dead freak Thomas Stork points out, the Congress hall at Deutsch Museum was a newer venue built after World War II. And perhaps Sam is recalling a skirmish at a more venerable institution. Or on the other hand, Thomas also points out Phil Lesh's announcement that begins the official recording of the Munich show.

[Jesse Jarno]

We're having a few minor technical difficulties, so we know that you'll understand.

[Rich Mahan]

Let's just say the helmet got returned. There were lots of Southern German Dead fans about to see their first Dead show. Mimi Jones was not one of them.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

After I graduated from high school and I had gone off to college and dropped out promptly after a quarter because I thought, I'm not ready for that. So. And my family was living in Germany for a year, and so I fooled around for a bit and went over there with them. But prior to that, we used to go in high school. In fact, my mom and dad would let me go on school nights up to Winterland, like they had no idea what was going on. I have a twin brother, and he had gone with my folks and I had gone off to school. So we. So I come over there, college dropout, like. And then we see that they're playing, and we just said, oh, my God, we have to go do this, because this is going to be nuts. I want to say it was a week night because it looked like people were coming home from work. It was five or so, six or so in the evening. So there were the people riding the train, train home or the streetcar home, because they were all in their business clothes. Of course, they always look like they were in their business clothes in Germany. But anyway, I remember coming on to. We took some purple microdot and I Remember coming on to that on the street part with my brother and going, oh, boy, are we really doing this? I remember riding the streetcar and seeing all the people in their suits and trying not to laugh because you know how that goes. Maybe, you know, I don't know.

[Rich Mahan]

Oh, we know.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Then we went in, made it into the beautiful hall. I mean, it's just. And I had been there before in the day, you know, just been there to visit and. And see the museum. And so I knew what it looked like. And it was just. I just remember it was just glorious. It was so elegant and thinking, oh, this is really pretty in here. I remember coming, arriving, having to have a beer because it was just too weird. And beer was always plentiful and good there. So that was a good thing. And sitting in this beautiful, all white marble little alcove that was the coffee area where they served beer in the evening. And there was chandeliers and gold and, you know, it's the antithesis to what Winterland. And so it was. And then we went in to go to the. To go in and you. And it's all rows of chairs, and they were white chairs. And I remember looking at my brother and going, huh, this is going to be interesting. And so, because you can't sit still when they're playing.

[Jesse Jarno]

In the Deutsches Museum, which was a seated hall, narrow and very long, which was unfortunate because if you were in the back, you may have had a good sound, but you didn't see a lot because it was a long route. I was fortunate that I had tickets in the fourth row so I could see what's going on on stage. My girlfriend and I were seated pretty much center, fourth row. It was like the 10th or 12th concert I saw. And from the very beginning, I had the feeling this was different. All the other bands I've seen so far, there seemed to be an immediate wall or some sort of curtain or whatever between the band and the audience. The band was always on some sort of pedestal. And usually the lead singer or maybe the guitar player was on a pedestal on the pedestal. So it was like it was a hierarchy. See the star and his band, and then there's us. And with the Grateful Dead, it seemed there's five, six people walking onto the stage, taking up their instruments, joking among each other, joking among the guys in the first row. And they seem to be some of us only a bit older, maybe.

[Rich Mahan]

David Lemieux again.

[Jesse Jarno]

I really do like the Munich show a lot. It was given big consideration for release on its own at one Time or another. Munich has the Hamburg vibe. Yep. Dark. It's a dark energy. I didn't know anything about the Grateful Dead, really, at that point. I had one album, Garcia solo album, that was the one. Other than that, I didn't have any Grateful Dead record. And they played one song, I think, of Garcia's album.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

You don't sit in a chair. Who sits in a chair? So we decided we wouldn't sit in the chairs. And so we got up when the music was starting. We were dancing around in our little spot there. And the guys came over and said, nein, nein, nein, in German. They told us we had to sit down, and we just looked at them and just laughed. My brother kind of has a firm voice, and he just probably looked at them and said, nope. In German. Nope. It's not going to happen. So. Esg nicht. Right. So it's not going to happen. And so we didn't. We stood up and danced and had a great time. As far as I recall, other people were beginning to stand up and dance, too. And they probably realized, well, this is a lost cause, because pretty soon everybody's going to be standing up. And I think we just happen to be the first people or one of the first people to get up and do what you do when the Dead are playing.

[Rich Mahan]

Those American heads, always setting good examples.

[Jesse Jarno]

Three songs in, I had different. Three different lead singers already. And you wouldn't know if the fourth guy, the freaky guy with the bass, if he wouldn't start singing a song of his own. Very, very soon.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Gonna miss your baby from rolling in your eyes they were just beginning to be worldwide, I think. And it felt like. I felt like I was the old hand, you know, like, okay, you guys, this is what you're supposed to do. This is what you're supposed to do. Because they were very formal and tapping their toes and sitting in their chairs and drinking their beers outside. You couldn't drink in the hall itself. And then they loosened up.

[Jesse Jarno]

I was fascinated. And I realized, this is something else. And I remember I had 20 marks in my pocket to go for something. I don't know. And in intermission, I went out, and there was a stand there, I think, from one of the local record stores. And they had four or five piles of albums. What was then the Grateful Dead oeuvre. They had Workingmen's dad and American Beauty and Life Dead, of course, and Scarlet and Roses and maybe a couple more and a couple T shirts with, I think, with the skeleton roses design. And it was A matter of either or. LPs would cost 18 marks and the T shirt was about the same. So I went for the record and I didn't know what to get. And I went by the pictures and I thought, well, graphically, Workingman's Dead looks the most interesting. So I went for that one, bought that one, carried it, held it for the remainder of the show and took it home with me, listened to it, liked it a lot, and realized this is not what I just heard in the concert. This is a punster Galvo. This is the different kind of Grateful Death.

[Rich Mahan]

Thomas got to do some sightseeing during the set break as well.

[Jesse Jarno]

I realized there were a lot of really long hairs that you wouldn't see a lot in the city at that point, at least not in that concentration. During the intermission, there were a lot of people, you know, walking in the aisles, you know, with the big kaftan coats, like the Afghan stuff that came over. It was a sight to see, but it was. Those were, I mean, people you looked kind of up on and they looked kind of arrogantly down on you because we were like the young folk, you know, we were not interesting at that point. And I wasn't taking any drugs at that age. I didn't know how to put my finger on it then. But in retrospect, it seems like it was like a meeting of the conoscenti. You know, everybody, they all came, they all gathered together for that because the Grateful Dead were coming and they were like the catalyst for a certain scene. So everybody felt kind of drawn to it. And I think, if I remember correctly, and I should have read, tried to find it again, the article that appeared in the local newspaper and the leading newspaper, maybe Gerhard Hull quotes it at some point, was written by Rainer Langhans, who was one of the members of the Commune. He was a boyfriend of Ussi Obermeyer for a while, and she was the pin up girl who also had a fling with Jagger. And I think she was good friends with Kief or the Rolling Stones in general. And. And she's still some sort of local icon.

[Rich Mahan]

Ushi Obermeyer and Ranier Langhans were centers of the radical Munich commune world. An underground power couple associated with Commune one. And a deep tangent we don't quite have the space for today.

[Jesse Jarno]

Rainer Langhans wrote the review of the show, and I remember that he seemed to talk more about the audience than about the music. My memory is fading at this point, but he was kind of acknowledging the fact that this was like a meeting of him and his friends from the. I don't know, from the country hippie dom of whatever.

[Rich Mahan]

At least in the Ranier Langhan's review I've been able to locate. He wasn't impressed by the mere rock and roll and country and blues and R and B of the first set, but was more into the second. He gave readers a German taste of the signpost to NewSpace interview of which we're all so fond. Langens doesn't mention it, but in Munich, Alligator got to play Darkstar. Please welcome back musicologist Graham Boone.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Curiously, Jerry hits that Dark Star riff of his an octave low, and what that does is to mark an articulation so they can start the next part of this great first jam. You can hear that triplet style that he uses. Da da da da da da. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. Bill getting into the middle of it, really strong playing.

[Jesse Jarno]

What's so nice is that while Jerry's.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Very present, he's just not dominating. Everybody is standing out.

[Rich Mahan]

David Lemieux.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's got the. That kind of dark energy from Miami of 1989, that big dark star in Miami 89, where they go very deep. You know, our good friend in Portland, Mr. Completely, he was not only there, but he's also got a very good critical ear, and he's very descriptive. And that Miami dark Star, his descriptions of it are just perfect. I wasn't there, but I've listened to it enough, and he just paints that color.

[Rich Mahan]

David is referring to our episode from last year titled Infrared Roses that delved into the Dead's MIDI years and the Miami 89 Dark Star in particular.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's kind of the vibe I get from the Munich show and the Dark Star itself. And it's a very long dark star.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

In the middle of an intense dramatic jam. Jerry picking sharp shards of chromatic bending notes and Phil throwing out intense feedback.

[Jesse Jarno]

With those low dyads often centering on.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

D but sounding like they're coming from some deep space cataclysm. Those sounds turned into incredible vibrations and rumbles out of the amplifier. And now both Keith and Phil have.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dropped out, and we have a duet.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Between Jared and Bob. Even Bill drops that. And here we have a chance to really listen to the way Bob thinks and feels his way through his guitar playing.

[Rich Mahan]

Probably around this time, Mr. Completely's heady German forerunners were floating over the concert hall, looking down at the stage. We'll drop us back down into the middle of what Tapers call the Tiger Jam, with Garcia leaning on his wawa pedal to create wild space. Growling.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Here at the end of this.

[Jesse Jarno]

Great Tiger Jam, still going super, super chromatic, super jagged.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Everybody pitching starts to come out. Sherry slowing it down, Kate slowing it down. Getting a little bit quieter. And then the note of D starts to emerge. Jerry started hitting a picking riff around.

[Jesse Jarno]

D.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

And all of a sudden Phil emerges in the key of D. And Bob and Keith, everybody in the new home of D major. Jerry's settling down the music. And then out of it all comes Morning Dew. It feels like it's a distant planet. At the same time feels like home.

[Rich Mahan]

And so it was the first dark star into Morning Dew, perhaps the heaviest of all dead transitions. One they'd play another half dozen times or so before their road hiatus in October 1974.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Walk me out in the morning. Do you.

[Jesse Jarno]

One fun fact or a sad fun fact? I couldn't stay for the whole show. What was also unusual, they played longer than most bands and I was chaperoning my girlfriend who was underage, and her father was supposed to pick her up in front of the venue. And we set a time which I thought would leave us enough time to, after the show, have a beer somewhere and talk about the show. But it turned out the Dead. I was keeping looking at my watch and the Dead were still playing and eventually said, well, I think we do have to go, because your father will be there and there will be no place to park. He will pick you up on the run in front of the building. So we had to leave and from the set list, eventually found out that we left on the last song before the final song. I think Sing Me Back Home. We left during that. So I remember it was a slow song that we left during, but I think it was either 11:30 or approaching 12 away.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Enter.

[Jesse Jarno]

Before.

[Rich Mahan]

A sad, sweet song for a sad, sweet story. But more sweet because Thomas was now a dead freak. He did go home with a new copy of Working Man's Dead. But there was just one problem.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was missing the one song that I was. That really stuck in my mind. I didn't know what it was. I just know there was this one song with sort of a. I wasn't a musician then, didn't know a lot of music. But what. What was a descending chord sequence? Four descending chords. Very, very distinctive. Talking about Jack Straw and it's. It wasn't out then. So I was. After that May show. The first thing after I didn't find a song on Working Man's Dead, I started going through the whole back catalog, buying some borrowing Some and not finding drag straw because it wasn't out there. And then in November or December, walking through the city and walking by some other record store, the shop window, they had the Europe 72 album, which I didn't know that was coming out in the window. And a couple of days later I went back and bought it. And there I had my jackstraw jack.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Star from Wichita got his body down.

[Rich Mahan]

It'd be a few years yet before Thomas hit the dead tape trading scene and found a copy of the Munich show.

[Jesse Jarno]

Maybe the first one actually was an audience, but the next one, it was a sixth or seventh generation soundboard cassette. I went through a couple of different versions and I got as far as a. I think it was a second generation, claimed to be a second generation, but I doubt it actually was. It was probably a third or fourth generation cassette of at least the second set of the Munich show, which had the Dark star, which I got from a friend in Felton in California, near Santa Cruz. And I stayed at his house and some late night dubbed that tape from his state of the art tape deck. Everything in his house was dusty except for his photographs and the tape collection. And so I dubbed the tape, not even listening because we were talking or whatever, and onto my Walkman Professional, what was then the state of the art tape machine. And then I remember driving back to the Bay Area to my other friends where I was staying, stopping at a foggy beach somewhere north of, north of Santa Cruz and listen to the tape for the first time, walking a foggy beach in California, listening to the Munich dark star. And I never heard it so clear. So that was fantastic.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

SAM.

[Rich Mahan]

If you glance at the Europe 72 itinerary, you'll notice a five day gap between the show in Munich on 18th of May and the opening night at the Lyceum on 23 May. It wasn't an intentional gap, but it also underscores one of the only slight problems of the tour. There weren't enough gigs for Jerry Garcia, Sam Cutler.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jerry's one of those guys, like many great musicians, but perhaps unique in that he wanted to play every day, you know, I mean, he couldn't play. He couldn't be asked too much. He'd play in the daytime, he'd play in the evening, but certainly every day. So you can't, you know, lump around Europe with 50 or 60 people and play every day. It just doesn't, you know, you might be able to do it nowadays, you know, with a, you know, your own airplane and blah, blah, blah.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Blah, blah, blah.

[Jesse Jarno]

Back in 1972, that wasn't possible. So as it happened, you know, at the end of the tour, the only thing that Jerry was unhappy about was that he hadn't played enough. But.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

But.

[Jesse Jarno]

From a management perspective, you know, this might be a bit cruel to say it, but in a sense, you know, you want to keep them hungry. You know, you need Jerry. It's not just, you know, just another gig, you know what I mean? It's a gig that he spent three days waiting to play. And he's just, you know, itching to get out there and, you know, just throw some hand grenades there, you know what I mean, and really make it happen, you know. And so that was one of the reasons, I think, amongst many, why the tour was a great success musically.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Mountain Girl, I think they wanted. What he really wanted was more rehearsal time, you know, because. Because that's the only way he could keep. Keep in shape physically for. For playing, you know, a full gig. He really wanted to be able to rehearse a couple hours a day. And that just wasn't on the menu. He grumbled about that. He did pretty frequently. A tour is not in. In the. In my control or the band's control. It's already all set up, you know, you can't fix it, and you're stuck with whatever was laid down, you know, three months ago by somebody with the various hotel reservations, you know, the scheduling, all of that stuff. And, man, you gotta be there for an X hour, and it's already like, you know, it's like you looking at your riftwatch all the time. I really had a great time on that tour because, you know, it was just. It had its. It had its hurdles for us non performers, you know, not on the crew, not playing. Not playing on stage and just coming along. So that was. That was a little odd sometimes. And did not have a role, because I'm used to having a role. You know, I was the tech for the Assetist. I ran all the gear. I did all that stuff. I didn't have a role in. In all of this, the new the Grateful Dead world. And that was tough. I like to work, you know, I like to work during. I would either. Either hang out by the back door to make sure nothing. Nothing got stolen because, you know, you know, the back door, the band's on stage, nobody's looking at the door. So I would hang out sort of backstage and just observe. I think I was observer, and if everything seemed okay, I would go sit. I would sit out front somewhere. But I was very critical, and I need to keep my inner critic satisfied. I really love just, you know, checking, being very, very open to whatever they played and super observant about who was not maybe missing that intro piece or stuff like that. And then Jerry and I would talk about it later. There wasn't much for me to be a functionary other than just coming along as the missus, you know, and that was fun. I wanted to just stay clear, free and clear and available to, you know, run to the store to get beer, you know, basically, that was it. Or change money, you know. Tiny tasks I took on tiny tasks.

[Rich Mahan]

The original tour contracts had actually specified two trips to Switzerland with two gigs at To Be Determined venues between May 13th and May 16th and another between May 20th and 24th. They were the only unspecified venues on the itinerary.

[Jesse Jarno]

We couldn't get enough enthusiasm for all these shows in Switzerland, so we went there anyway, and it was beautiful. You can't go everywhere. I mean, we didn't go to Italy, we didn't go to Spain. You know, there's only so many gigs you can put together, you know, and the travel and all that. And, you know, I mean, the fact of the matter is we could have done a lot more gigs if we've had a lot less people, but it was a compromise.

[Rich Mahan]

I'll throw some speculation into the mix here as well. In February, when the contracts were signed, Swiss promoter Claude Knobbs had recently lost his primary rock venue in Montreux when it burned down. You might know the story, if not allow Deep Purple to fill you in. It actually takes them a moment to get to the storytelling part. So, like, fire up your smoke machines and fix yourself a drink while Deep Purple rattles your skull.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

We all came out to Mantra on the Lake Flapper and the Mother.

[Rich Mahan]

Ergo, Smoke on the Water, in which the Montreux Casino burned down in early December 1971. Then, just as the Dead were coming through in the spring, a certain other band commandeered another likely spot, the Rialto Theater, for a few weeks of rehearsals before their own world tour. That was the Rolling Stones at the Rialto theater in mid May 1972. A video clip that was incidentally aired on the same episode of the Beat Club as the Dead. Anyway, memories are blurry. There'd be at least one Stone's Dead crossover in Switzerland, but we'll hold off on that momentarily. There were no gigs, but many memorable moments.

[Jesse Jarno]

Steve Parish Then when the sun came up, we're still on the bus all night. And now we're in Switzerland and we're in Lake Lucerne, and that's where our destination was. And we're crossing over this bridge, and we pull over because there was a double rainbow over this lake, man. It was another lake in Switzerland. I don't remember the lake of it, but we crossed over this bridge that was a wrought iron bridge. And we pulled the two buses over, right? And so I get out, and then I. I take that iconic double rainbow that day became. I think it was Mountain Girl that saw it first. And we pulled over to look at it, and those became the iconic double rainbow that was on the album and all this other stuff. But here's the fucking kicker, man. We're at the back of the bus. I go back here to smoke a pipe of hash, you know, I think with Alan Trist, and I look at the bridge and I go, what? I couldn't believe my eyes. The bridge was made out of wrought iron skeletons from one end to the other, crossing this feeder part of the lake, you know, that was feeding into it. And it was made from skeletons holding onto each other's ankle and bending across like a bridge framework. And then it had a real bridge all built into it. And there's the fucking name of it. You know what it was? It was the Bridge of the Grateful Dead. And it was about the European myth that we began talking about right at that point, that if you were in the time of the great plague and you were wandering around Europe and there was lots of dead bodies everywhere, and if you took the time to bury a corpse that you found and give it, wrap it and clean it and put it to grave, then that was the Grateful Dead. They helped you from beyond and protected you and your family. And so that's the myth of the Grateful Dead. And here's the fucking bridge with a plaque on it. A plaque on it that says that we were just couldn't believe it.

[Rich Mahan]

Marianne Mayer's photo of the Swiss rainbow would be featured on the inside of the original YERP 72 and mimicked in Mouse and Kelly's cover art. Alan Trist in.

[Jesse Jarno]

Lucerne is a very old Swiss town that is interesting because it has a lake. The Lake Lucerne has two covered bridges which are medieval. One of them from the 13th century covered bridge that has had a series of 45 paintings under the roof that was still extant, although I think maybe there are only 30 or so left. But they were from the medieval tradition of the Danse Macabre, which is. And they all were pictures of skeletons dancing in various situations under this bridge. The Danse Macabre was a medieval institution that was designed to, to make people aware that death was always with us. It was incredibly popular. You know, there were festivals of the Danse Macabre. There were various points in all Europe, all over Europe. The fact that it was memorialized in this bridge is pretty unusual. And of course it was very interesting to us because there's the skeleton as the iconic image of band's logos and so on. And I visited that bridge with, with, with Parish and he was totally amazed. What I remember was the incredible excitement that Steve showed and seeing and seeing all these pictures, you know, from, from so long ago that kind of connected by arc of history to our iconic use of that image, you know, it was really great. I think Phil was on that tour with me as well with us when we went across that bridge.

[Rich Mahan]

Here's Phil Lesh and Bob Weir from the great 1995 interview by David Ganz and Marty Martinez.

[Jesse Jarno]

I remember we went got to the Grand Hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland and they had been expecting an orchestra, you know, like 43 piece orchestra, you know, maybe some kind of chamber orchestra. That's what they thought we were a musical group or, you know, maybe some kind of dance orchestra. Who did? How did they know? They took one look at us and decided that we weren't the right kind of people to stay in their hotel. But unfortunately for them, we had already paid the bill in advance so they pretty much had to let us stay there. Five star hotel. Yeah. Have you seen pictures of what we looked like in 1972?

[Rich Mahan]

And Dennis Wiz Leonard from Blair Jackson's 2011 conversation.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The hotel in Switzerland was a real stiff upper lip, dodgy old joint. And I remember like Healy had this.

[Jesse Jarno]

Like really, really, really hideous tie dye.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Shirt and they just couldn't stand him in the lobby. I mean it was, it was, it was ugly for a fucking hippie because.

[Jesse Jarno]

We stayed at Lake Lucerne. Oh my God, what a night we had there, man. Beautiful time at that place. They came out when we pulled up. Did Mountain Girl tell you about this? When we pulled up and she got to the bus, the door opened and here are footmen with powdered wigs and they rolling out the red carpet to us, man. Ah, the band is here. And they took one look at Mountain Girl and they looked at each other and they rolled that red carpet right back up, man. So they fucking couldn't believe that here were all these hippies at the hotel. They were disgusted with us, man. At Lake Lucerne. It was all these really high class Europeans, man. And so, you know, you hear you got these glass knobs that look like your grandmother's house, man, and, and all this fig degree everywhere and all these beautiful old things. And the rooms were exquisite, with balconies looking over the lake. And we had a great time there on the lake. We rented some speedboats, had a wonderful time.

[Rich Mahan]

Donna Jean Godsho McKay.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

They were not expecting the Grateful Dead, being who the Grateful Dead was. And from what I can remember, Rock Scully had to literally go in and, and take over the place and say, look, you can't kick us out. Because it was an extremely swanky hotel, you know, with the clientele just being very uppity. And here this band of weirdos, you know, come marching through their hotel and they didn't like it at all. And we almost got kicked out, but we, we ended up being able to stay there but by the skin of our teeth.

[Jesse Jarno]

Rock Scully had gone to school in Switzerland as a boy, so he wanted to relive to fill our minds and not think about that.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The gigs were blown out and that was beautiful. And of course, Rock Scully was really familiar with that territory. And I remember being in this beautiful chalet. I can't remember if it was actually Austria or Switzerland, but it was somewhere in either place. And just the beauty and was just magnificent. Yeah, the Alps or something else. Just something else. No wonder people like to ski there. Switzerland was really, really fun. Rock's parents were living right around or in or around Lucerne. We met his parents and they took us up into some mountain, the whole group.

[Rich Mahan]

Longtime Dead manager Rock Scully's stepfather, in fact was the renowned writer and public intellectual Milton Mayer, who spent part of the 1950s at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.

[Jesse Jarno]

And now Milton Mayer.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Every European knows something that no American knows.

[Jesse Jarno]

The black market.

[Rich Mahan]

By 1972, Milton Mayer was associated with the Ecole d Humanity in Switzerland. One of its students was a teenager named Sebi Bueller. She was already a Dead fan.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Born and raised in New Jersey, I listened to Alison Steele, the Night Bird, wnew and then I lived in Princeton. We had a really great college radio station. My first ed show was in Princeton in April 71. And my friends and I, so I was a freshman in high school. We crawled underneath the stage and came up and sat on the speakers on the stage and we were singing. I'm sure we're on somebody's tape somewhere. I did go to the final Fillmore east concert as a 14 year old in New York. Probably not with my parents real permission.

[Jesse Jarno]

But I still have the poster.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

So the Dead were part of my life. And because it was 1971 and I was a freshman in high school, being kind of rebellious, my parents decided to ship me overseas to this small, eclectic international boarding School. About 120 students, K through 12. In February 72, I wrote to my parents and I said, there's a planned trip to London with Debbie and Lars, two teachers that I'm really interested in. And they had approved my going.

[Jesse Jarno]

So this was a group of about.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

10 students with two teachers on a spring break. It was, I think, Easter. And we get to London. We saw Elton John at the Roundhouse, which was amazing because we were 10ft away on the ground. Went to see Falstaff at Covent Garden Opera House. Pretty amazing. Clockwork Orange, pretty frightening. And then we went to see the Grateful Dead. And literally walking down the street, I ran into somebody I knew from New Jersey who happened to be in London. We both ran into each other again inside the Dead show. So pretty amazing, my memories.

[Jesse Jarno]

We went both nights.

[Rich Mahan]

Well, that certainly sounds like an excellent Easter vacation.

[Jesse Jarno]

April 18th. And I sent my parents a letter.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

All scribbled in blue ink. The Grateful Dead might play here at the Acol.

[Jesse Jarno]

Rock Scully, who is the son of.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Jane and Milton Mayer, Jane's son by her first marriage, is the manager of the Dead.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, he used to go to school here.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I didn't know that. And his parents have a house up the road. They're closely connected with the school Milton gives Quaker on doct in seminars.

[Jesse Jarno]

He's really famous.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Well, Rock told Jane during his Christmas stay here that it would be really too bad if they couldn't play here during their stay in Switzerland. Well, Sunny, a girl here told Jane Sully's mom about the concert we saw in London. Jane told Sunny about Rocks wanting to play here. So the school wrote a letter and we all signed it, including the headmaster, Natalie and Armin and Edith, who is the highest, highest at the school. I'm really excited because the Dead are known for giving free concerts. And lots of people here who know.

[Jesse Jarno]

Rock say it will go through.

[Rich Mahan]

Given the canceled Switzerland shows and Jerry Garcia's desire to play as much as possible, I'm actually a little surprised that a Dead gig didn't manifest.

[Jesse Jarno]

May 9.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The Grateful Dead aren't coming here.

[Jesse Jarno]

But then I wrote this letter, and.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

May 22nd was a Monday. And I wrote, dear family, Saturday afternoon, a bunch of Americans, 20 in quotes, walked down the street. Now take it.

[Jesse Jarno]

This is a Swiss Alpine village with.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

More cows than people and very narrow roads. So this group walked down the street by the school. It turned out to be the Grateful Dead. They had invited us to walk down to Meiringen with them, which is the town down in the valley. It was really nice. Of course I'm not going to tell my parents what was going on. Everybody was totally high. There's a lot of shoveling going on.

[Jesse Jarno]

I mean, no one had hiking boots on.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The band was coming from a city, you know, they're on tour. So the women probably had on big clunky funky shoes and they could not walk the alpine paths. Jerry and Pigpen did not walk down with us, Bob.

[Jesse Jarno]

And you know it just a magical moment.

[Rich Mahan]

The Dead had wandered around the campus too.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

Here's what Tony can't sent to me. My parents were on the tour with the Dead as my father was their sole legal counsel for 35 years. They visited the Acol with Rock and the others. Bob Weir was so impressed with the Acol that he talked me into going there. And the other funny twist is Hans Zimmer, who won a Oscar for his. His at.

[Jesse Jarno]

For his musical score.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I mean, he's very famous. He was at the Eagle. So he was there. I don't know if he was there the weekend the Dead showed up, but he was there with us hanging. So there's a slight Hans Zimmer got a little Grateful Dead influence in his.

[Jesse Jarno]

Early.

[Rich Mahan]

That of course, being ripples in the sand from Hans Zimmer's Oscar winning score for Dune. And now back to Seb's letter home.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

They were so funny, always playing baseball and Meiringen. They boarded their buses. One with a cooker and one with a bathroom.

[Jesse Jarno]

I guess it was one with a bar and one with a bathroom.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

And left for London again. And then the US While walking, everyone at the bottom started playing baseball. One guy almost hit Sunny, a girl in our school. Another missed the ball, went under the railroad train. We were at the railroad station. Was so funny. They offered us stickers but we refused because I felt like a teeny bopper. Even without accepting that, I would have felt really awful. And now I wish I'd accepted it. Wiz the buses dropped us off at the top of this path and we.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hiked down a beautiful mountain path and.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

We stopped somewhere and had lunch up in the mountains. And then ended up down in this town. Not where we started. And the buses picked us up. And on the way out back to wherever we were going was the triple rainbow.

[Rich Mahan]

Here's How Steve Parish remembered Switzerland.

[Jesse Jarno]

So now Rock decides the next day he's got to do something with all of us, man. So we walk those that wanted to. We all take a hike up from the train station, which is right down in the flats up this beautiful Swiss mountainside. And we're walking up there and we got every experience known to your Swiss there. We could hear the cows lowing around us and people milking them and bells clinking in the fog on this Swiss mountain and the piles of hay everywhere. And the Swiss misses running around and the guys with the fucking Swiss horns blowing them for fucking ricotas or whatever they wanted to get even. Heard a guy popping off with a fucking automatic machine gun. We call the Swiss army the Swiss Army. Everybody gets a machine gun. We were talking, walking up and here come these school girls, man, these young 18 to 25 year old schoolgirls, barefoot in beautiful Swiss dresses. And they were tired. Could the strong American boys carry them on our backs up the hill? And we did that gladly, man. And we get up to the hotel down on the top of the mountain. And there's a beautiful white hotel, man, in a beautiful cafeteria. We're starving. And we just go laughing. We go, they won't have wienersnitzel here. There's no way. There's Wiener schnitzel, man. And so we get in there and we all just pile into the dining room. There's no one else in there but us. We take a bunch of tables and we're all happy. And then in comes this waitress and she goes, well, somebody says, can I get some spaghetti? And she goes, no, can I get steak? We have no steaks. What do you have? Zenishnitzel? Venus. All we have, that's all we serve. Oh no. Everybody lets out this big groan. And then everybody says, well, you know what? Just bring all the wine you got. Just, we're gonna get drunk and eat Wiener schnitzel, man. Bring it all out here. And then she goes, this is a Christian hotel and we do not serve wine. And so everybody turned, the whole room turned and looked at Scully. And I think he ran out of the building actually and ran down the fucking hill.

[Rich Mahan]

Here's what Mountain Girl remembers about the Alps. A story that could have taken place during either or both of the previous stories.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

I think the funnest part that was going through the Alps because we all took a little dose and were just floating, you know, it was just so floaty up there. We got up into the. Into Switzerland, you know, and we're just Knocked out by Switzerland. I mean, that. That really got us. Rock Scully, who was the manager at that point, had us go up, up, up, up, up, up the mountains to this place that he remembered because he had spent a bunch of time, I guess, going to school in Switzerland as a young person. And so we went up to a place called Nearingen, which is basically the top of. The top of where you could ever get a bus. And it was. It's a lunch place where you can go in and have lunch. Everybody went in and had lunch except for me and Hunter and Jerry and Christy. All had taken Acid Jet Day. So we had. We went and we trotted right up to the fence, which is where the big, beautiful Swiss cows were grazing. I mean, really, they're as big as tanks, I swear. And they, they. Each one has a bell. Each bell is a different tone. And Hunter got out his trumpet and decided he was going to serenade the cows. His trumpet way up there in the, you know, way up in the. In the valley, in the. In the Alps, you know, high. We were. We were. Went uphill a long way to get to that place. And so we're. We're laughing so hard and Hunter's going black toot, toot on his trumpet, and it's echoing way down into. You know, he could just. Because you can just see for 100 miles down these valleys from up there. And the cows would just turn around and look. And then at some point in this, I mean, he was being. That we just doing that a little bit. Well, one of his toots got the cow's attention. He obviously hit the note and they all came gabbling, galloping up over to the fence. They were okay with just huge cows just galloping over the fence, looking at us like, you know, what the hell? You're. You're. You're playing the magic note. We have to come over. So they were. They were just wonderful, these huge brown cows and so interested in us because I don't think they got too many visitors up there. And everybody else had lunch and kind of missed it. So that was. That was our glorious moment in Switzerland. High and happy, really happy. Mr. Furtive, he. He ducked every picture. But yes, there might be some of him from the. Up there in Switzerland with his trumpet, because he. Playing the trumpet to the cows was just. It was such a riot. He would wander off from the bus, you know, and go toot, you know, and have some. I don't know. You know, Hunter was such an. A marvelously complex person. And you never quite knew Which. Which of the complexities you would encounter?

[Rich Mahan]

The lighting crew remembers their departure from the mountain.

[Jesse Jarno]

Ben Holler, One time we were up and we got up in the Alps, we had a couple days off. Usually when you do a European tour, it's one or two shows a day. If you look at that schedule, it was one or two show, one show, two or three days, days off, One show, two or three days off. It was fabulous, right? So we went up in the Alps and we had a pleasant meal. We went for a little hike in the Alps, way high up in this little village. And then we went and got in the bus. And fortunately, Candice and I got on the bus with the. I think we got in the bus for the bathroom. We always wanted to get in the bus for the bathroom. You know, you could get a drink anywhere, but, you know, you can't piss in the aisle. So anyway, so the other bus, all the crew got in and they took off. They took off like a bad aisle. Where'd they go? And so we got our bus. We have this wonderful leisurely drive down, and we get down to the valley floor. The other bus has been there for two hours, Right. The crew is standing outside, ash and white, kind of holding onto the bus or whatever.

[Rich Mahan]

Candace Brightman.

[Various Guests and Interviewees]

The bus was marvelous, being on the bus. And one time we had this really nice. I think he was a Swiss bus driver. This is a terrible thing. But somebody dosed him and we were in Switzerland, and he drove up into a mountain town in Switzerland that no bus had ever tried to get into before. Yeah. And then all the people in this town were going, oh, my God, someone.

[Jesse Jarno]

Had dosed the bus driver. So the bus went down, you know, I mean, you know, twice as fast as we did. Ugh.

[Rich Mahan]

Horse Fence. There were four shows and one tour stop left. At least one BOLO bailed on the bus and flew from Geneva to London. As Phil Lesh recalled in his memoir, Searching for the Sound, with Keith Richards in the seat next to me, we talk mostly about what a drag commercial air travel is.

[Jesse Jarno]

Thanks very much for tuning in, and huge thanks to our guests in this episode, including Sam Cutler, Steve Parrish, Donna Jean Gotcha McKay, Mountain Girl, Rick Turner, Rosie McGee, Alan Trist, Candace Brightman, Ben Holler, Kid Jensen, Rod Marining, Philippe Sicard, Daniel Duchene, Thomas Storch, Sebi Buhler, Meanie.

[Rich Mahan]

Richard Parkinson, Chris Jones, Bill Giles, Simon Phillips, Uli Tutti, David Lemieux, Steve Silverman and Graham Boone.

[Jesse Jarno]

Also, special thanks to David Ganz and.

[Rich Mahan]

Blair Jackson for providing archival interview Audio.

[Jesse Jarno]

Please don't forget to like and subscribe and leave us a review. Thanks very much.

[Rich Mahan]

Next week we start the four show.

[Jesse Jarno]

Run at the Lyceum in London. And you know, you won't want to miss those. See you there. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus and Dorin Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.