B (4:48)

For the third time in four years, the Grateful Dead found themselves making a live album. As Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir reminded the crowd on 29 April 1972 in Hamburg, Germany. Don't worry, everything's gonna be all right. You betcha. See, we're making a record. This is a record. This is all gonna be a record someday. So we're doing songs that a lot of people haven't ever heard before.

C (5:13)

You know how it is.

B (5:14)

Can't do the same stuff forever. Not even us. You end up going colorblind.

D (5:22)

Can I go running? Can I go down Make a shift at the mine Gotta get down to the Goblin mine Gotta get down to the goin that's where I mainly spend my time make up my $5 a day made it in my way.

E (5:52)

There.

B (5:52)

Is perhaps better example of the Grateful Dead preventing colorblindness and doing it their way than Europe 72, the monumental tour and resultant live album released in the fall of that year. As the music industry was embracing the double live LP as a souvenir of rock and roll glory, the Dead upped the stakes. A triple live set featuring not only big jams and some of their most popular songs, but mixed alongside nearly a full Disc's worth of fantastic new material played through their highly customized gear and recorded by their dedicated sound team. Handmade at every stage until manufacture, the songs became not only Deadhead favorites, but some of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter's most enduring work. One fan who saw them for the first time on the Europe 72 tour was none other than Elvis Costello.

F (6:40)

I don't know whether that was ever Jerry or Robert Hunter's ambition to be sort of brought into the Great American Songbook, but if you only took the songs from 70. Well, maybe from the record before American Beauty, there's a few there, but particularly from Working Men's Dead to Mars Hotel, if you only took those songs, they belong in the Great American Songbook. If you only took those, there's a lot more, obviously, and there's all the multiple kind of transformations of these songs, which is what so many Deadheads are, you know, fascinated with the little nuances of the songs and the different explorations. That, as a songwriter, was always less fascinating to me, although I enjoyed it while I was there in its company.

D (7:30)

Tennessee, Tennessee There ain't a place I'd rather be maybe won't you carry.

C (7:44)

Back to Tennessee?

B (7:49)

Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia's songwriting partner, thought of Europe 72 as a continuation of the band's previous two studio albums of original material, Working Man's Dead and American Beauty, both from 1970 and the subjects of the first two seasons of this podcast. Here's Hunter speaking with WLIR's Dennis McNamara in 1978.

C (8:09)

There is a third album in that what I consider a series of Working Man's Dead, American Beauty and then this Grateful Dead album, the live one, Europe. It's.

B (8:18)

Yeah, yeah, Europe 72.

C (8:20)

There was an album of songs which was a companion to those which. Which had He's Gone, Jack Straw, Brown Eyed Women, ramble on Rose, Mr. Charlie, Tennessee Jed, and this is a fine, fat album of songs, I think. I feel that in those three albums I hit kind of the peak of my songwriting.

F (8:43)

The 72 songs have a strange thing. They refer to ragtime and they refer to a lot of things that seem to come out of the twenties. And even though the music is still played by electric rock and roll band, I feel that Those songs from 72 have something in common with the songs of the band from around the. The first two albums, particularly in that it sounds like music that was recorded in the 1880s, except it's all electric. It doesn't make. It's like weird time travel music. To me, that's more extraordinary that ability to summon another time in relatively simple chords. They're not actually that complex without really sounding like a pastiche, but it's a mixture of the phrasing, the humility of the singing, the lyrical idiom, the lyrical references, and the. Just. The. Just how unusual those songs are as a rhythm, this shuffle, this strange, the pulsing rhythm that a lot of them have, like Tennessee Jed and Rabbit Rose both have this strange kind of rhythm that really isn't heard in very much other music.

D (9:57)

Did you say your name was Rambling Rose? Ramble on, baby. Santa Daddy rambled on a Rose.

F (10:18)

It's like something that's been slowed down enormously from another. And that in itself has a psychedelic effect because it sounds like a faster rhythm that's been slowed down, you know, until it reached this other groove.

B (10:32)

Europe 72 wasn't just an album of songs. The liner notes were a literal photo album of the band's European adventures, filled with exquisite images by Marianne Mayer, a member of the Dead's family and co founder of the Heavy Water Light Show. We'll be digging deep into the photo archives and posting them as part of a daily dose across the Dead social media for the duration of this tour's anniversary. If your ears are currently in the spring of 2022, check it out. Of course, it wasn't just the musicians on the road. In 1995, deadcast heroes David Ganz and Marty Martinez interviewed Phil Lesh and Bob Weir on the release of Hundred Year hall, the first individual show from the tour to be issued. Who will be hearing from this great interview throughout the series? Immense thanks as always to David for the audio. Here's Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.

C (11:19)

Well, we took 43 people with us for one thing, so I mean, we just didn't feel right about going over there. Just abandon the crew and everybody wanted to bring their families and so the.

A (11:29)

Office crew and everybody.

C (11:30)

Yeah, and that's. And so that unfortunately set the precedent. So now whenever we go anywhere, that's how we go. So we got there with 43 people and we pretty much, you know, everybody stayed on throughout the whole thing and. But it was quite a show. We hoped that we'd play to enough people every night to make it worth our while. It turned out to be fairly successful, as I remember correctly. I mean, the halls weren't sold out, but it wasn't. It wasn't like some places we played in the States where we could. We'd play in a. In a basketball size arena and there'd.

B (12:04)

Be 300 people vocalist Donna Jean Gotcho joined the band on the road for the first time that spring. Welcome back to the Dead cast, Donna Jean Gotcho. McKay.

D (12:13)

At the time of your 72, that's what I would call really the good old days. There was such an innocence, a quality purpose, passion that was so pure, really, that it was endearing and absolutely irresistible, you know, even, you know, during what people would call the sinful time amidst the drug culture, sexual revolution and all that, there was something that was so pure about that time. And being in the Grateful Dead and the Grateful Dead family and the Grateful Dead scene at that time was just. It was amazing. It was a comedy routine constantly.

B (12:57)

Big Steve Parrish had joined the crew a few years before and. And earlier in 1972, had begun helping on Jerry Garcia's side gigs. We're so pleased to have with us this season Steve Parish.

C (13:09)

We were conquering that continent, there's no question about it, in our own way, in our own time. And when we went there, we were a little apprehensive, you know, because we were going through a phase of Americana all the way. The music was really about American music. The. The way we dressed in jeans and boots and T shirts and all that was very iconic to the cowboys of the West. And our attitude was a lot like that. As big as all outdoors, because we've been fighting since day one with police everywhere, and stagehands weren't so sure about us until they got to love us beyond belief, all those people. But at that time, we still had that attitude of, hey, nothing's gonna stop us. Everybody was young and at their peak, the music was so strong and before the heavy drugs hit. So it's still the end of the Enlightenment period of a lot of psychedelics and great marijuana and great ash over there, too. Lots of good hash. What a great trip. It's one of the highlights of the 70s for us. You know, we had so much fun, and we laughed the whole time. You know, we just laughed and laughed, and everybody was healthy and happy.

B (14:27)

And it wasn't just an adventure either. It was the Grateful Dead coming in hot with one of their tightest lineups, ready to storm the continent. Piano player Keith Godshow joined the band in the fall of 1971, adding an incredibly instinctive voice to the band's improvisation, which we talked about at length in our episode titled Enter Keith Godshow. That fall, mostly working with lyricist Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Pigpen collectively debuted far more than an album's worth of new songs, a powerful continuation of the songwriting they'd begun on Working Man's Dead and American Beauty and Road sharpened by the time they packed their bags. We'll be delving into most of those songs individually over the course of this series. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

G (15:13)

This was the Dead really taking it to Europe. No fatigue, no burnout, no staleness to the repertoire. It was fresh every night.

B (15:21)

Listen to David's brain short circuit slightly as he begins to discuss the tour's mini Peaks.

G (15:26)

The Dead ment business. To me, I mean, the tour peaked several times. It peaked in Wembley. It peaked at the Lyceum beginning and end and throughout. It peaked several times as well. But I do think that little German run, particularly Dusseldorf and Frankfurt, is one peak.

B (15:46)

What we're getting at is that pretty much every show of the tour featured the Grateful Dead playing at the absolute top of their game, which is why we're doing this podcast.

G (15:54)

We're talking apples and apples.

C (15:56)

Before I know it, I'm going to.

G (15:57)

Name 22 shows as peaks.

B (15:59)

This is our thesis, dude. Now, if you will. We ask you to rise and extend a hearty Dead cast salute as we welcome back the architect of the Europe 72 tour, Sam Cutler.

C (16:10)

For me, personally, what was the major significance of the tour is that that was probably, to me, the highlight or the highest point of the Grateful Dead music. I don't think they ever played any better than they played on the Europe 72 tour. But it was also, you know, in a historical sense, you know, the whole old kind of San Francisco 60s thing morphed into this really, really, really tight jazz band that plays rock and roll, as Miles Davis called them, you know, and reached its kind of most, if you like, musically sophisticated effig. I had a really great time on this tour. I didn't bring any family with me or anything, and I was free as a bird.

H (17:30)

And we played great.

C (17:32)

I remember that we played well on this tour, and I enjoyed every bit of it in that period. Keith was just coming into his own, really, and playing with Billy. Billy played like a young God on this. On this tour. I mean, he was. He was everywhere on the drums and just kicking our butts every which way, which is what drummers live to do.

B (18:20)

That was the Other 1. Recorded 26 April at Yar Hunder hall in Frankfurt, Released not just on Hundred year Hall in 1995, but Europe 72 the Complete Recordings, the mammoth 73 CD box set released in 2011. A Story Unto itself. It was a golden age for the Grateful Dead captured beautifully. It took a long time and a lot of work before Phil Lesh could drop base bombs on Frankfurt. Europe 72 didn't happen in a day.

C (19:16)

For American bands. Just like for English bands, you know, there's various kind of standard dreams, really. English bands have always, you know, dreamed of going to America, and American bands have always dreamed of, you know, the grand European tour. Really, you know, it's like two sides of the same coin. So the Grateful Dead, you know, yeah, they wanted to play in Europe and do a proper European tour. The main thing for the Grateful Dead was that it would be weird, fun, interesting, strange, and just the general challenge which the Grateful Dead always loved while I was with them, at least are playing, you know, to an audience who didn't really know who they were. And if the Grateful Dead could have gone and done a gig on Mars, they would have done, you know what I mean? It was something, you know, let's do something that's fucking different, man. Let's play to the Germans playing to the Danish, the French, the Italians, whatever. Just different to California or New York or Texas.

B (20:15)

Until Sam Cutler arrived, the prospect of an actual Grateful Dead tour of Europe was what we now call vaporware. The Dead first announced plans to go to Europe in the fall of 1968. Billboard printed an initial itinerary of a UK tour that included stops in Leicester, Birmingham and Liverpool before hitting the continent for shows in Belgium, Holland, Sweden and Denmark, ending around Halloween. In 1969, just weeks after Woodstock, it was announced that the Dead were going to play for free in Hyde park in London with the Jefferson Airplane, Joanie Mitchell and Crosby Still's Nash and Young. In 1970, there was a scheduled week at the Roundhouse with the Airplane and Quicksilver messenger service. They did successfully make it to the Hollywood Festival in Newcastle under Lyme in 1970, a story you may know from Amir Barlev's crucial Long Strange Trip documentary, which we'll let Sam Cutler tell.

C (21:07)

The BBC, were going to film it memorably, but none of the cameramen seemed to manage to be able to focus after a certain length of time. So the footage comprised of weird things like close up of Phil's feet and, you know, they were completely out of it, man, you know, like totally gonzo. So it never. It never materialized as a film. And there's some footage of it. Finally, it was rescued, some footage from long ago. It's like Garcia kind of peering over his eye highlights, like, looking at the camera like that, you know, and, yeah, close ups on Phil's feet, bits like that. The cameraman were all completely, completely out of it. Nobody I think in Europe really knew, you know, what it would, you know, people weren't used to being dosed in Europe. That was an American form of psychedelic sabotage.

B (22:04)

And depending if you think it'd be a good thing for the BBC to have made a documentary about the dead in 1970, also a particularly American form of self sabotage. Seriously though, check out Long's Train Trip and its extra features for a Glimpse of the Dead's version of Don't Look Back. In 1971, the band made it as far as France, only to have their festival slot rained out, A story we told in our episode last year titled the Closing of the Fillmore West. Of course, there were even grander plans foiled for that spring, including bard shows on the canals of Venice. That tour would have been to promote the band's new live album, paid for by Warner Bros. But the two LP set known as Skull and Roses hit a few snags en route, a story we told during the first episode of our Skull N Roses season and the tour got cancelled. It took Sam Cutler to get it right. In early 1970, Sam took over the band's booking, a story we told starting with our high time episode in season one, everybody caught up. John McIntyre, a close band friend, took over management of the band's non road life. John died sadly in 2012, but our pal David Ganz was gracious enough to share an interview he conducted. You can read lots more from the late John McIntyre and David and Blair Jackson's essential book this Is All a Dream. We Dreamed. We've posted a link@dead.net Deadcast MacIntyre credits Sam Cutler entirely for Europe 72 Sam.

I (23:28)

Did a magnificent job of putting that tour together. He really, really did. It was like pulling a rabbit out of the hat. He did it better than anyone could have. You know, kudos to Sam for putting that together. It was really spectacular getting the bookings and making it financially possible to do along with Warner Brothers support, etc. All the other things that we had.

C (23:50)

Jerry and I on and off, we'd, you know, hang out and rap about it and what was possible and what was, you know, impossible. The Grateful Dead's record sales in Europe were pathetic up at that time, you know, which was one of the reasons for doing the tour was to introduce Europe to the Grateful Dead and the Grateful Dead to Europe, for that matter.

B (24:10)

They hit on a plan to record the tour and release a live album with Warner Bros. Advance in Turn helping pay the band's travel expenses.

C (24:18)

It would keep Warner Bros. Happy, though that wasn't particularly a consideration on the Grateful Dead's part, although in return for that, Warner Brothers would support the tour and help make it happen. We managed to do the whole tour and not have it cost the band any money, which in itself was a miracle because we took like 52 people around Europe.

B (24:39)

The groundwork for Europe 72 began nearly a year earlier, probably almost exactly at the same moment that they abandoned the plan for a full Europe 71 tour. Alan Trist was a friend of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, going back to their days in the Palo Alto beatnik ooze. We've used this bit of audio before, but here's Jerry Garcia introducing Alan in the great Stone Sunday rap interview with Charles Reich from Garcia. A signpost to new space which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast. Our whole scene is. I mean, I'm really just one. You know, I'm only one component of the Grateful Dead and I'm of equal unequal unit, you know, with everybody else in it. And everybody else is really far out, you know what I mean? Like Alan, man, Alan is fantastic. He's like a. He's some kind of cosmic diplomat. There's. He's a guy that. There isn't anybody. There's no way you could dislike him, you know what I mean? He never disturbs any karma, ever.

J (25:39)

I was going there a year in advance. I joined the Grateful Dead office in November of 1970. Earlier that year, in the summer, the Medicine Ball caravan came over to England, which was supposed to have the Grateful Dead as part of their great trip to the east, you know. But the Dead couldn't go, as often happened, so Stone Ground came in instead. And my flat in London, because I was already. I was expecting to welcome the Dead, became sort of a headquarters for all the activity that happened around Stoneground and the various concerts that they gave in England. That was one attempt of the band to come to England during that time. In the summer of 1970, I made connections with one Andrew Kerr, who was the founder of the Glastonbury Festival in England, which still goes to this day, and one of the most successful long term festivals of Grateful Dead. The idea that he came to me with in London at that flat headquarters that I had was that the Grateful Dead should like be the star lineup for the first Glastonbury Festival, which was scheduled for 1971. We tried to make that happen. The band was really interested. The Glastonbury Festival was to be modeled on the American style festival that the Grateful Dead was so prominent in starting.

B (27:14)

They wanted to initiate the Glastonbury Fair.

D (27:18)

With the Grateful Dead, because that was.

B (27:20)

The music and the. The values of the 60s that they.

C (27:23)

Wanted to bring to the Glastonbury Fair.

I (27:26)

Was expressed by the Dead.

B (27:28)

So I spent a long time with them.

J (27:30)

I was down at the site several weekends and we became friends in 1971, the fall tour. I had already made all these connections in England from 1970-71. So it was natural for me to be the point man for promotion and press activities in Europe, because they were now going to do the tour in 72. So it didn't happen in 70, it didn't happen in 71. But now Sam Cutler was trying to set it up for 1972. So since I had all these connections already set up, I peeled off from the fall tour in New York and went to England to reactivate all those connections that I already had made in the last couple of years there. And I was there for quite a long time in the fall of 71. I don't know, several weeks. I went all over the continent. I went to the different Warner Brothers offices in Hamburg, in London, in Denmark, and also visited many of the press, the underground press, as we called it back then, both in England and in Germany and Denmark. All of the journalists were very interested that the band were to come over, so they wanted to get set up. At that time, the relationship with Warner Brothers was going through those changes, which you know about, that were happening in the Warner Brothers days. But they were really all positive. The Warner Brothers were intrigued by the format of music that the Grateful Dead played, even though it didn't fit into their three and a half minute idea. And this was certainly recognized by Warner Brothers in Europe. They loved the idea that the banner holders of the San Francisco sound were coming over.

B (29:19)

Alan attempted to line up a gig in a Dutch castle, but Sam told him that it wasn't exactly feasible. Around the time that Allen was hitting the local Warner Brothers offices, Sam Cutler returned to the continent to scout potential venues.

C (29:32)

There'd been many a tour done of Europe and many gigs done in, you know, if you wanted to play in France, well, you played in Paris, you know what I mean? If you're going from France, you're going to Holland, then you know what's in the way. Well, you could play in Lille in northern France. You could play in Belgium, you know what I mean? You could play in Rotterdam. There's only a Finite number of places that you can play. It's all a kind of bums on seats equation, really. A band like the Grateful Dead in Europe at that time, wouldn't be playing stadiums that held 50, 60, 70,000 people. They didn't want to do that anyway. What the Grateful Dead wanted to do was play in places that were acoustically sympathetic to the kind of music that the Grateful Dead made. To use that car analogy, you finally got the perfect car. It's all, you know, like Formula One. You got the great car, you got the great driver. He's not going to be driving it on an unmade road. He's going to be driving it in a sophisticated racetrack environment. And the same with the Grateful Dead. You've got it all together now. Where are they going to play? Well, let's have them play in places like the Munich Opera House, where Mozart played. Like these unbelievable places with incredible historical significances attached to them. In London, we played the Lyceum, which was in. In the Strand, which is a famous old London theater. And the Grateful Dead loved it. And it was just their cup of tea. You know, 2,500, 3,000 people. Perfect sized facility. We played in the Tivoli and Copenhagen again, a similar kind of place. And so at that time in the evolution of the band, the band was best suited to a 2, 3, 4,000 seat auditorium. They felt they could reach everyone and they could provide the sound that was of phenomenal quality, hi fi style quality within those environments. So that basically was what I was looking for. I went and got it together with John Morris and people like that. And they were very good. You know, they were. They were far out.

B (31:39)

They had plans to open and close the tour at a London theater that had recently been refurbished almost directly to the Dead's needs. Five nights from April 5th through 9th, then three more from May 26th through 28th. In London, Sam met up with John Morris, who'd managed the Fillmore east for years. You may know John's voice from such festivals as Woodstock. We apologize for the noise of the choppity choppity, but it seems there are a few cars blocking a road, so we're flying everybody in.

G (32:13)

I almost made the worst part in.

B (32:14)

The world about high musicians, but we'll skip that. Please welcome to the Dead cast, John Morris.

H (32:20)

After Woodstock, after I left for Fillmore, I moved to London because I was married to an English lady and I'd been interested in doing something in London. Searched for about a year and a half with a guy named Jean Claude Kaufman, who Is my friend and partner. And we finally found the Rainbow. The Rainbow was an old movie theater which more like the Fillmore in New York.

B (32:46)

The ill starred story of John Morris's attempt to open a Bill Graham style venue in London not only put pieces and people in place for the Dead's Europe 72 adventure, it accidentally positioned the Dead as pioneers of a new continental touring circuit. If you're gonna open a Bill Graham style venue in London, you obviously need a light show. So bouncing around Europe in 1972 was our most excellent Dead cast pal, Alan Arkish, then a member of Joe's Lights, also known as the Fillmore East's Joshua Light show. Minus Joshua White. Welcome back, Alan. John Morris had bought a theater or.

A (33:20)

Had gotten a theater or whatever called the Rainbow Theater. He was going to turn that into.

B (33:27)

A premier rock and roll theater in England.

A (33:31)

It had an orchestra pit, it was a big theater.

C (33:35)

It was one of four theaters that.

A (33:38)

Existed at the time that were all designed by the same guy. They were called the Odeons. These were movie palaces. Each interior had a different architectural design based on a different country.

B (33:54)

And they had in the top row.

A (33:58)

A village built into where the. The decorations met the ceiling. And there was an Italian village on 1. There was a French village and it was an English whatever. And in between sets, well, in between.

C (34:17)

Movies, they would make it.

A (34:19)

They had this kind of glass projector that would have clouds go by on the ceiling.

B (34:28)

I never saw it work because by.

C (34:30)

The time we got there, its day.

B (34:33)

Had come and gone.

A (34:34)

Aside from being the mixture of the light show, I was kind of appointed the person who would talk to people.

C (34:41)

About business a bit.

A (34:43)

We knew the Dead were coming at some point.

B (34:45)

They opened in November 1971 with the whole. But the venue struggled.

H (34:50)

What happened in the end was getting axe to come from America to England was really hard because there was no support. They couldn't do that tour. Mountain, for instance, came twice because they were personal friends. But they didn't have the tours to back it up.

B (35:08)

In the spring of 1972, just as the Dead were heading home, Billboard ran a two part series on the challenges of American bands touring Europe. There wasn't enough money in it. And European acts made better livings touring the States than on the continent. It was under these conditions that John Morris organized an independent promoters alliance.

H (35:27)

There was Fritz Rau in Germany, Knut Thorbensen in Denmark, Claude Knobbs in Switzerland, Barry Visser in Holland and Norbert Gamson in Paris. So what we did was we figured, we got together and talked to everybody and I got them interested in the idea of booking together to bring everything in. Because one guy like me or, say, Barry or Fritz, going to California and trying to book an act and take it to Europe, had to then sell it on to other people. So that if we went in with the idea of, hi there, we'll give you a whole tour from one end to the other, that's how it would work. Norbert Gamson. Norbert was sort of brought in because we needed somebody in France. He wasn't a strong promoter on his own. What I did with the EPA thing was I realized that I needed to work with everybody and I talked Knud and Fritz into doing it. And then we went out and got everybody else. Claude Dobbs, God rest his soul, who was in Montreux, where they didn't do the Dead. I don't think he was great. He was mainly a jazz person. But he expanded and he was totally open to working anywhere.

B (36:48)

This list of promoters describes the Grateful Dead's arc across Europe in 1972, from the UK to Denmark to Germany to France to the Netherlands. With a few switchbacks en route, they were the first riders of a new circuit.

H (37:01)

The Dead was a good example. And I did the same thing with Paul McCartney. When we did the Wings thing. I would call or somebody would call and say, let's meet in, say, Montreux on such and such a day and talk about. I think we can talk about. I can. Tina Turner, McCartney, Santana, whatever, and put it together that way.

B (37:25)

Paul McCartney's Wings Over Europe tour launched in France on 7 July, and over the next two months hit virtually the same regions the Dead had been through two months earlier.

H (37:34)

The Dead tour was pretty much Knud, Anders, Jefferson, his partner, and Fritz and me. And we got together, I think, probably in Copenhagen and sat down with a map and just worked out how we could do it. The Dead were booked to come do the Rainbow, and I had arranged for that when the Rainbow went down, when it went bankrupt.

B (37:58)

As the Rainbow collapsed, tour preparations continued, with contracts signed in early February, including for a trio of shows at to be determined venues in Switzerland. A topic for another day.

C (38:10)

No, 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 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 read a lot less people, but it was a Compromise.

B (38:26)

At a band meeting, Garcia declared, fuck it, everyone goes. There are different accountings of how many heads were in the touring party and let's say they're all correct. But the band's official pre Tour itinerary lists 43 mid tour. A Rolling Stone reporter counted 48, breaking it down to seven musicians, five managers, a five person office staff, 10 roadies, four drivers and 17 miscellaneous family members.

C (38:53)

Everyone wanted to go to Europe on the European tour. So that was the family, as it were. Where does the family begin and where does it end? Well, we could have taken 200 people to Europe if we'd had the financial wherewithal to support that number of people. But we managed to get round Europe with 52 people and we didn't lose one of them. It's easy to not remember that music is a collaborative trip on every level throughout a whole scene, you know, so it's a band, it's sound people, it's lights people, it's all the production crew, it's the crew itself who are working like slaves there, you know what I mean? Humping God knows how much equipment all about. There's a lot of people involved. So everybody has to be on the same page, Everyone has to have the same feeling.

B (39:44)

Europe 72 is a family affair with many old friends and new. Wandering through frame on the bus was Rosie McGee, who we spoke with extensively in our Skull and Roses side B and bearcast LA 66 episodes about her associations with the band as Tie Dyer, photographer, translator, office manager and more. This is from one of David Ganz's interviews for this Is All a Dream we dreamed. Thanks, David.

D (40:09)

I was brought along as part of the promise that was made to all of us in 1967 that whoever was around from this original group of 67, we made a list of everybody who'd get to go if we all got to go to Europe. There was 25 people on it and I was on that list because I was right in the heart of it in 67. And when five years later they went.

G (40:39)

They kept their promise.

D (40:42)

But of course by then the list had grown to 50 because of the crew and. But I was still on the list and partly because I spoke fluent French and I had already demonstrated how important it was to have an interpreter when I went to Europe. At first I wanted to be of help more than just when we were in a French speaking country because I didn't have any other duties and at the time I was working for Alembic. So I was listed on the recording crew, which really got some people kind of tagged, you know, but in the program book, it says recording crew, and then it says rose. And on the album, well, the fact was that I was.

G (41:32)

I was working for Alembic, and I helped them a lot.

D (41:35)

I did stuff. That's all that does matter. I had wonderful, wonderful time. It was a lot of fun. And we got high at all the gigs in these wonderful concert halls in Europe.

B (41:49)

At the band's bustling office at Fifth and Lincoln in San Rafael, the band and family prepared for departure. Pigpen wasn't feeling his best, but was determined to go on the tour, helping out at the office, stapling the itineraries filled with hotel addresses, exchange rates, record company contacts and other useful info.

C (42:08)

Tours, man, are like military battles, you know, the famous aphorism no plan survives a battle. No plan really goes perfectly on a tour.

B (42:19)

On the Europe 72 campaign, the sound reinforcement, recording and instrument design company Alembic were the band's first line of defense. Spun off by former Ampex engineer Ron Wickersham with his wife Susan with the encouragement of owsley, the Europe 72 tour was perhaps the peak for all three of Alembic's original functions. Live sound recording and instrument design working together in literal concert. One Alembic employee in the recording truck on the tour was Janet Fuhrman, founder of Furman Sound in the late 70s, building preamps for the Dead and many others. And back then known as Jim. Welcome to the Deadcast, Janet.

G (42:57)

I began by building prototypes for my boss, Ron Wickersham, who was a really smart guy and a great mentor to me. And then I started doing maintenance on the Dead's equipment, beginning with guitar amps. And I did a lot of not only repairs, but modifications. Not only the Dead's equipment, although that was the biggest part of it, but also other bands in the area. The Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills Nash and Young, lots of others. And I kind of eventually got to be an expert in modifying guitar amps. We had a program, we called it Olympicization, that. That was, you know, kind of way of beefing up guitar amps, making them more rugged, more road worthy. They took a lot of rough handling, those roadies or big, strong guys who could heave stuff around. And things wound up being shipped upside down. And, you know, we didn't want the tubes to fall out. And so, you know, one of the kinds of things we did was putting clamps on the tube sockets to keep the tubes from falling out. We replaced any kind of part that was known to have a weakness and we had a lot of experience in what could go wrong. So, you know, we replaced a lot of coupling capacitors with ones that were better able to withstand the rigors of the road. And we added some other features to make the noise lower. It was probably about two months after I'd been hired at Alembic. When I was. I was still mainly guitar amp tech. And the way I kind of got to know everybody was after the Dead had been out on the road for a while, they come back into San Francisco one day, a truck would roll up and eight of the roadie guys, I could rattle off all their names. It would arrive and bring in a bunch of amps that failed on the road and bring them over to my workbench. And that would be my work for the next week. Once they had unloaded all that stuff, then they'd start drinking beer and smoking pot. And, you know, it would usually be the afternoon, you know, I get involved in a little bit of that. And I guess they thought it was time for my initiation ritual because I had a beer and somebody put a couple drops of. Well, it was disguised as murine eye drops. I'm sure you heard that murine bottle story had a couple drops in it. And so it took a while for the effect to come on. I was already in my car, driving home. Hit me while I was in rush hour traffic on the Bay Bridge heading to Berkeley. And that rush hour traffic was really fascinating. After I'd been at Olympic for a year or so, I kind of learned the ropes. I was asked to go on the road with the Dead. And I was more than happy to accept that offer. I was thrilled to have the opportunity. My role was sort of duel. I was the equipment tech, the person who could be called on to repair stuff if necessary at the last minute. And if a live recording was to be done, I was part of the recording crew along with Betty Kanter and Wizard. So, yeah, Europe 72, that was one of the great trips.

B (46:51)

Whenever we hear the beautifully recorded music from the Europe 72 tour, it's because of the incredible work of the Alembic team, led by Bob Matthews and Betty Kanter, David Lemieux.

G (47:02)

The entire tour was recorded to 2 inch tape, which is 16 track tape. Same stuff as Skull and Roses and.

B (47:09)

Live Dead, the same machine used to record Skull and Roses and Live Dead. In fact, the Ampex MM1000, the heart of Alembic, sometimes known as prototype number two. But it had mutated some.

G (47:21)

And that was Ron Wickersham's project of repackaging our 16 track recorder, the Ampex MM1000, into a video chassis, which was made for recording on videotape, which was also 2 inch tape, like the tape that you needed to use for 16 track audio. The reason for doing that was that the standard chassis for an MM1000 could only accommodate 11 inch tape reels. We needed 14 inch reels because we were recording at 15 inches per second, which is really fast but gives you a highest quality. Recording really eats up tape. And we wanted to be able to record 90 minute set, which is what you need for a band like the Grateful Dead that just does long sets and doesn't work with a set list, just plays whatever they want in a completely unpredictable way. We didn't want to have to change reels of tape in the middle of a song. So we wanted to have as few reel changes as possible. So big reels had to remount the whole recorder on a video chassis which was much more open. Another one of my jobs was, was to calibrate the 16 track to accommodate the kind of tape that we had to use, which was sort of not the standard tape. We used thinner tape than would normally be used for 16 track recording in order to get more tape on the reels. So needed special bias. And I was the one who tweaked that before each shot.

B (49:14)

The new tapes require new boxes, really big cans.

G (49:18)

The big blue ones, like they weigh, I'm not exaggerating, they must weigh 15 or 20 pounds each. I don't know. It's a massive amount of weight on these things. And if you've ever picked these things up, they've got these handles. And if you try to grab two at the same time, they can really break your knuckles. I believe they were from 2 inch quad video because that's what the machine ultimately started out as. The 2 inch quad video, which were the giant reels for television use. It was sent over in a shipping container. And within that container were flight cases, some of which were like army surplus that we modified. Those were really strong, rugged cases. And we modified them to work with the equipment we had. Some of them were kind of standard anvil cases. But the MM1000 needed a special case and that came with the video chassis that we repackaged it into. And we also had a special case for the tape library because there were all of these reels of 14 inch tape. And each one of those reels had to be spliced out of two 11 inch reels. So that was something that the recording crew did before we left for Europe, and that was the result of a couple of nights of work.

B (50:39)

The Alembic crew worked up right to the last minute meeting up with the band in New York just before they hopped to London. Dennis Leonard, known as wizard, was a recent addition to Alembic. This is via our dear buddy, David Ganz.

I (50:52)

I basically was with the guys for around 10 years. I started in November of 1971. I was a friend since 68, 69, and then started working for them in November of 71. And I think 69 was the first time I had carte blanche to go backstage. The arrangements for my girlfriend and Jim's wife were that we had to pay for their airfare. It was not a lot, and it included San Francisco and the two hops in Europe and back. And I paid it gladly. And, you know, they had said, everything else is going to be fine. There'll be food, you know, you're having a hotel, etc. Etc. Etc. We were fairly new to the organization. The week before they went to did the do the Academy of Music. And we stayed behind because we were literally misses, you know, story for some last minute shit. But we were called to a meeting up at Lincoln, and I had no idea why. I was living at the city in the city at the time, and Furman was living in Berkeley. And get up there and, you know, there's like nothing on the agenda that seems like it's for me. And then at the 11th hour, you know who Sonny Hurd was, right? Well, Sonny had been back up in Oregon just hanging out, and he wasn't a part of the crew just previous to this, and he really wanted to go. And he showed up at this meeting, and the meeting's almost done, and Sam Cutler reaches into his briefcase and says, holy fuck, look what I have here. It's a fucking extra airplane ticket to the tour. What the fuck am I gonna. Oh, my God, Sonny Hurd's here. Hey, Sonny, you want to go on the tour? Like that? And after Cutler gives heard the ticket, he says, now, Furman and Wiz, listen, we feel rather bad about making you guys pay for your old ladies to go on the tour. So what we've worked out, since you've already paid for the ticket, is we're gonna give Mary and Kathy some per diem, and by the end of the tour, you'll be a few hundred dollars ahead. Is that okay? I mean, it truly was one for all and all for one. I think the music was born out of the sociology because I don't Think that they could have possibly had the emotional, spiritual and mental freedom if they didn't have the support structure of a family?

B (53:40)

When Garcia said, fuck it, everybody goes, he meant it. There were multiple strategies for bringing other supplies along, but the Baron's gear modifiers had some of their own innovations.

G (53:50)

I know there were some pretty elaborate preparations to bring it with us, involving, as I recall, a hollowed out power transformer. Whatever it was, it managed to make the trip across the ocean intact. It wasn't just pot. Those guys loved their LSD too. That was not something that I would want to take and then have to do a job that involved some responsibility.

C (54:17)

There was enough pot that Jerry got to smoke, I think, one joint a day of California grass. Then he had with hashish in Europe. And I think he finally learned to like it. Maybe. But no, we got Heimer.

B (54:34)

When a member of the old school Grateful Dead family uses the phrase we got high, it doesn't always refer to smoking grass. Some of their substances came in micrograms too.

C (54:43)

We got high, of course, but I mean, that's not a function of vast volumes of material. If you want to keep 50 people high for a couple of months, probably a volume like that would get in that cup. So it ain't that hard. That's not that hard to hide. Then you have this. This is a recent model, but I have very bad eyes, so I have to put eye drops in my eyes.

B (55:10)

In case it wasn't clear on our zoom conversation, Sam just held up an eyedropper to demonstrate for everyone who stayed high.

C (55:17)

Everyone stayed high, ma'.

H (55:18)

Am.

C (55:18)

Of course, that was a given. It was a great pleasure, I think, on the Grateful Dead's park to realize there was a lot of high people in Europe. I mean, the whole 60s thing happened all over the world. Didn't just happen in San Francisco. The LSD was being made in maybe 30 different university laboratories throughout Europe. There were young people who were studying to be biochemists and chemists who had access to university laboratories and who had professors who didn't have a fucking clue about what was going on. So, you know, in England, for example, you had London University, they made acid there. You had the University of Sussex at Brighton, they made it there. They had the University of Manchester, they made it there. They had Cambridge and Oxford, of course. So there's all kinds of acid being made and nobody really knew what it was in the broader community. And the same in Europe. It was being made in Holland, it was been made in Belgium, it's been made In France, it was legal for a while. There Sandoz was making it. And certainly anybody that was interested in chemistry knew about the discovery of LSD.

B (56:32)

Early 1972 was likely the global peak of LSD production and consumption. A history I detail in my book Heads, a biography of psychedelic America, now available as an audiobook from Hachette, wherever you get your audiobooks in Cambridge. Powered by the chemist Richard Kemp, the LSD tabs known as microdots began to flood the global underground marketplaces. Europe was as ready as it would ever be for the Grateful Dead. That was the sound of the Grateful Dead landing in New York March 21, 1972, at the Academy of Music, released on the bonus disc to Dave's picks 15. The band settled into the Hotel Navarro in Central park south as the extended family began to assemble. Along for the Europe 72 tour was Merry Prankster and Righteous Human Being, Mount Girl, Jerry Garcia's longtime partner. And likewise along for the ride. On this season of the Dead cast, we couldn't be more honored and happy to welcome Mountain Girl.

D (57:49)

We were all in New York together. The whole crew kind of came out to the east to do our launch. You know, we played some really funky plays in way downtown Manhattan. It was like back in the old days. The venues open to the Grateful Dead were sometimes quite limited.

B (58:06)

After Bill Graham closed the Fillmore east in spring 71, Howard Stein had begun to promote shows in New York, establishing himself at the Academy of Music on 14th street just off Union Square, where the Dead moved in for seven shows. Also known in the late 70s as the Palladium, it became a fan and band favorite, run down and comfortable, still showing kung fu movies on off days. In 1972, one head who saw the Dead at the Academy was Bill Weber, who you may remember from our St. Louis 72 episode from last season. The only time I got to see Pigpen were like three shows at the Academy of Music as they were going.

C (59:03)

To Europe in 72. Oh, my God, those shows were off the charts. It was spring break.

G (59:09)

It was a trip.

B (59:10)

We happened to see the Dead. The shows were sold out, but Deadhead magic worked for Bill and his friends. You could find the ticket.

C (59:16)

It was six or seven nights if I remember right or so.

B (59:19)

It was a long run up to heading to Europe. The Academy of Music wasn't a huge place. What five thousand, six thousand, I don't know. Wasn't huge.

C (59:29)

But it wasn't difficult to get tickets. I mean, you had to work at.

B (59:33)

It, but you weren't like scalping Outrageous prices or anything you could find a ticket.

C (59:38)

I had been to the Fillmore before.

B (59:40)

And it reminded me a little bit of the Fillmore, if I remember, but.

C (59:45)

Nothing like the Fox.

B (59:47)

One show I really remember was they.

C (59:49)

Opened for Bo Diddley.

B (59:51)

They were the backup band for Bo Diddley.

C (60:31)

That was the Hell's Angels night, right?

B (60:32)

Yep. March 25, 1972. Now released in part on Dick's Picks Volume 30. Mountain Girl Remembers that night too early.

D (60:42)

That one. That was kind of a scene. And there was. There was a lot of us and not that many of them.

B (60:48)

It was Grateful Dead brand chaos. I was 19 at the time, and one of the shows was hosted by.

C (60:54)

The New York Hells Angels, and they.

B (60:57)

Were the concessionaires and the ticket takers.

C (60:59)

And the ushers and stuff.

B (61:01)

I was so intimidated by these big.

C (61:04)

I had never seen guys this big before. You know, I'm going up and buying a soda from him or something.

B (61:13)

The March 25, 1972 show was also the introduction of the Grateful Dead's newest member, just in time for the band's European tour. This here is Donna, and that's Keith playing piano. Donna Godchau sang briefly with the Dead on New Year's Eve at Winterland, recorded vocals on several songs for Bob Weir's solo album ace in February 1972, where Weir began calling her Donna Jean for the first time in her life. But Donna Jean Godshow really only joined the Grateful Dead at the Academy in March 1972.

D (61:47)

Are you lonely for me, baby? Are you lonely for me, baby? Yes, I am. Why you don't.

B (62:12)

That was the only known Grateful Dead version of Are you lonely for me? Written by Burt Burns, popularized by Freddie Scott, and covered by Jerry Garcia in his sideband with Merle Saunders in those years. We talked extensively with Donna Jean during our special episode last year titled Donna Jean, which you should definitely check out if you haven't. We'll have lots of news stories from Donna this season, but for now, here's what she told us about the Academy shows. Ladies and gentlemen, incredible non binary pals of the Dead cast, please welcome Mrs. Donna Jean Godsho McKay.

D (62:43)

We started that tour in New York and I remember the second time I was on stage with the Grateful Dead was at, I believe it was the Academy of Music in New York. Was it with the Hell's Angel? It was a benefit.

B (63:00)

It was only Donna's second time ever performing on a stage and her New York debut in a party filled with Hell's Angels. Sounds scary to me.

D (63:08)

You know, it should have been if I had the liquor sense in my head. But I didn't, and I was not afraid. And one of the reasons I was not afraid is that the Angels were very respectful of the band and really especially of me. You know, they were told by the president, don't mess with her. And they respected that. And so I never did have any fear. I always felt protected, and they were always very kind to me.

G (63:37)

And so here I am, this little.

D (63:39)

Girl from Muscle Shoals, Alabama. You know, all of a sudden, I'm like, New York with the Grateful Dead on this stage, going to Europe. And it was just. Can you tell I'm at a loss for words? It was unbelievable to be in that place at that time with that band and just getting my feet wet in that kind of a situation to where I'm in front of people, no earphones, no cloistering, no controlled environment, and everything is out of control. And so rather than having all of my comfort zones, I had no comfort zone. It was just like being in another world. And I'm not exaggerating there. It was like being in another world. You could have cut the energy with a knife. You know, it was just. You can talk about energy all day long, but when you experience it, you know, from one place to the next or one moment to the next, it was heightened, not only because it was New York, but the Hells Angels were there. And I think New York probably prepared me for the next nine years of my life. I'm gonna stop. I wanna stop. Thank you, David.

B (65:33)

One new crew member they picked up when the tour came through the academy was New Yorker Candace Brightman, the band's very first lighting director and would work with the band and its members through 1995 and even beyond. They'd first made her acquaintance during Candace's years at the Fillmore east and then working for Howard Stein at the Capitol Theatre in Portchester and elsewhere. We talked to Candace about those years during the first episode of our Skull and Roses season. During her years at the Capitol, she'd become friends with many of the acts she worked with. In early 1972, one of them was going on tour, and Candace wanted to do their lights. But it wasn't the Dead.

D (66:28)

It was the Mahavishnu Orchestra show somewhere in upstate New York. The name of the promoters, a guy named Phil Hack, and come and said, if you'll pay my expenses, I'll do the show for free. Because I wanted to see Mahavishnu Orchestra. I loved that band at the time, and I hadn't noticed Garcia And Wales. Oh, God. And so I went there and did that gig. And Garcia was watching the male Vishnu lighting. And then he came around and asked if I would do the European tour. I said, what would it pay? I mean, I wasn't like, oh, gosh, really? And he said, well, sometimes we don't pay people anything to forget that.

B (67:14)

But the gig was great, and she reconnected with Jerry Garcia.

D (67:19)

I went to this guy, Chip Monk, who hired me first to do Anderson.

B (67:23)

Remember Chipmunk?

C (67:25)

The brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. It's suggested that you do stay away from that.

D (67:34)

And I asked him to recommend somebody to be my crew chief. And he recommended Ben Haller. And Ben Haller is one of those people, they can do anything. If you want something stunning carpentry done, he can do it. If he's working on a film shoot and they need a circular stairway for the camera to come down, he'll build a stairway. If you need lights that have color changers, they didn't used to have that. Ben built them for me. He just could do anything. And he was a large, forceful person who never, you know, never was violent or anything, but nobody messed with him. He was on that tour. And then we got together on that tour, became boyfriend and girlfriend.

B (68:16)

Like Candace. Ben Haller was a veteran of the Fillmore East. Ever seen that giant sign that read Grateful Dead in light bulbs that would descend from the ceiling near the end of the show? That was Ben.

E (68:27)

I built the sign. Arthur, Max and I. Arthur went on to become the production designer for Ridley Scott. We went on the streets in New York, stole a sheet of plywood, stole some lights from the San Geneiro Fest, and Arthur and I built it, you know, and then Bill got it and did the light show at the Fillmore. But that's pretty much a setup that was happening when they went to Europe. I was with the light show in all this stuff. I did stage crew. We even for a while, would sneak in and replace seats in the theater so they had more seats. We actually expanded the capacity of the place to make more money. Was an old vaudeville theater. And so it closed, and we get hired to go to the Rainbow Theater in London. So we were in Finsbury park at the Rainbow Theater where they shot Tommy. They shot parts of Tommy, the Beatles that played there. The beautiful old theater. Then that started to close, and the dead were coming through. And Candace had taken over the lighting or just started the lighting. We were good friends, and she knew I had some experience in Europe. I Ended up building a couple of follow spots. They really didn't have portable follow spots in Europe, so I built a couple.

B (69:48)

Just like their guitars, their amps, their PA system and their recording setup, the Grateful Dead would set off for Europe with some seriously modified lighting gear. And just like all that other technology, the Dead's crew would continue to innovate for the next decades.

E (70:02)

They didn't have follow spots that traveled in Europe, so I had to make some and I had to come up with some transformers because, you know, it's 110 in America and 220 over there. There is a lot of that stuff sort of available because of the American military over there.

B (70:21)

It wasn't all sunshine and roses. As Candace prepared for departure, though having her first encounter with the band's notorious.

D (70:27)

Crew, they took their. A certain kind of serious drug and put it in my gear. In my gear. This is the way the roadies were. And the guy that they had bought the drugs from said, you know that all their stuff is in your gear. And me and Beth thought it was been there at that point anyway. I thought, oh, I don't exactly have to pack. I could just take it. I mean, what are they going to complain if they can't find it? But I decided to stay out of it. And then I had this dealer guy go talk to them about it and tell him that if they didn't get rid of it, I would. So it was kind of dog eat dog.

B (71:11)

Living with the Dead, by the late Grateful Dead comrade and sometimes manager Rock Scully is one of the more factually blurry but most incredibly enthusiastic and infectious books in the Dead canon. If you're looking to find an accurate Grateful Dead chronology, check Jerry Bass. If you're looking for a vivid description of going to JFK airport in New York to deal with customs, check out Rock's book. He was there, probably. He wrote, I have to go down to customs at Kennedy Airport to pre clear and sign for the gear. Seeing it all stacked up in one place is a chilling sight. A mountain of gear in this huge bonded warehouse like the last seen in Citizen Kane. The customs guy has a giant book with all our stuff inventoried in it. He says, I want to see box 400 and whatever it was by Caramba. The problem is, I don't know where the fuck that particular crate is. Look, the best thing you can do, man, sir, is pick a box from the boxes here and then look at the inventory and check it out. In the end, they inspect one box and one speaker cabinet. Get Fed up and say screw it. Rock was also the narrator of his own abridged audiobook, available from Time Warner. And we'll let Rock help sign us off today.

C (72:23)

Look out, ye ancient fingernails.

B (72:25)

The barbarians are coming.

C (72:26)

Open the gates.

B (72:28)

Saracens with 5000 watt ants will soon.

C (72:31)

Be storming the Bastille. Not that the dead are just another.

B (72:34)

Band of uncouth rowdies, Motel demolishing loons.

C (72:38)

Or shark copulating deviates on the road. Boorish wine awry like Grand Funk or satanic deviates like Led Zeppelin. Our crusade is basically molecular.

B (72:51)

And so the Molecular Crusaders boarded a jet at JFK Airport in New York on April Fool's Day, 1972, bound for London.

D (73:01)

Sunshine daydream Walking in the tall trees growing where the window moving like a red rock now come on over sweeter Sunshine Sunshine daydream Sunshine daydream Sleeping on your daydream Sunshine.

A (73:35)

Thanks very much for tuning in. And a huge thanks to our guests in this first episode of season five. Alan Trist, Alan Arkish, Ben Holler, Bill Weber, Candace Brightman, David Lemieux, Donna Jean Godshell McKay, Elvis Costello, Janet Furman, John Morris, John McIntyre, Mountain Girl, Rosie McGee and Sam Cutler. Also special thanks to David Gans for providing archival interview audio. Did you travel over to Europe to catch any of the shows in 1972? Well, don't forget to go to dead.net where you can record yourself telling a tour story. We definitely want to hear from you. Tell your friends. And please don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks very much. Now on to England. See you at the next show. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.