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- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds.
- [00:18]
Jesse Jarno
Check out dogfish.com for more details and.
- [00:21]
Rich Mahan
To find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to.
- [00:51]
Jesse Jarno
Season nine of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast.
- [00:54]
Rich Mahan
I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in.
- [00:58]
Jesse Jarno
We are very happy to be back.
- [01:00]
Rich Mahan
With season nine and we continue our deep dive into the Grateful Dead's 1974 studio album from the Mars Hotel. This episode zooms in on one of the most complex songs the band ever recorded, Phil Lesh's brilliant Unbroken chain. It is the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Deads from the Mars Hotel and.
- [01:21]
Jesse Jarno
To celebrate this, Rhino has a grand.
- [01:23]
Rich Mahan
50Th anniversary release in the works which includes the original album remastered, some really cool early demos of songs from the.
- [01:32]
Jesse Jarno
Album and a previously unreleased live show.
- [01:35]
Rich Mahan
You need to hear because it sounds so fantastic. The Grateful Dead played the University of Nevada, Reno on May 12, 1974 and this show was the first roadshow for the infamous Wall of Sound which debuted weeks earlier at home in San Francisco on March 23rd at the Cow Palace. This audio for this show was cleaned up and remastered by Grammy Award winning engineer David Glass with plangent processes, tape restoration and speed correction and was produced for release by David Lemieux. All of the aforementioned are available as a 3 CD set as well as digitally. There is standard black vinyl dead.net exclusive custom vinyl and a very cool heliotropic vinyl version you have to see to believe its graphics animate when you spin it on your turntable. Very cool. More info and orders are happening now over@dead.net well head on over to dead.net deadcast and check out all of our.
- [02:38]
Jesse Jarno
Past episodes including the complete seasons one.
- [02:42]
Rich Mahan
Through eight and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen where and how and when you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing sharing us with your friends on social media. Hitting that like button and leave us a review. Thank you very much. We do have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Head over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. And where are you at any of these Wall of sound shows in 1974? Well, we want to hear from you. Leave us a recorded message@stories.dead.net and tell us your experiences with the Wall of Sound. We want to hear from you, and.
- [03:27]
Jesse Jarno
We do use them in the Dead.
- [03:29]
Rich Mahan
Cast when we get today's episode's a great example.
- [03:33]
Jesse Jarno
Record your Wall of Sound tour stories@stories.dead.net.
- [03:40]
Rich Mahan
Unbroken chain Phil Lesh really delivered on this amazing composition. The song's complexity is a testament to Phil's musical mind, and the band backs him up as only the Grateful Dead can. From its unusual time signatures to the interplay of different instruments, Unbroken Chain is a great example of the Dead's willingness to push Boundari and defy conventional norms. Here's Jesse Jarno to tell us all about it.
- [04:24]
Jesse Jarno
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Unbroken Chain is one of the most unusual songs in the Grateful Dead songbook. Written by bassist Phil Lesh with his friend the poet Bobby Peterson, the third song on from the Mars Hotel was Lesh's first lead vocal on a Dead album since box of rain, 1970 blue.
- [04:43]
Rich Mahan
Light rain Whoa, Unbroken Chain Looking for familiar faces in an empty window pane.
- [04:54]
Jesse Jarno
It featured an Arp Odyssey appearance by composer Ned Lagin.
- [04:58]
Rich Mahan
Listening for the Secret, Searching for the sound, But I could only hear the Preacher and the Being of His Hand.
- [05:12]
Jesse Jarno
A complex song featuring odd bar lengths and a few time signature changes, Unbroken Chain achieved the unusual feat of becoming a fan favorite without being performed live, at least until its breakout in the spring of 1995, more than 20 years after it appeared on from the Mars Hotel. A cassette copy of Mars Hotel once got stuck in the tape deck of teenage David Lemieux, now Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager. My friends and I, it was always.
- [05:37]
Rich Mahan
You know, four or five guys driving around, exactly as you'd imagine, with our long hair and our tie dyes, driving around my dad's Chevy Cavalier. When that song came on, when An Unbroken Chain came on, we all shut up. Unbroken Chain is such a perfect song. That's a song that I could hear every day, 10 times and never get sick of.
- [06:13]
Jesse Jarno
One young listener who had a similar reaction a few decades after the album's release is Dave Portner, known as AV Tear in the wonderful experimental pop band Animal Collective and on his own great records.
- [06:26]
Rich Mahan
Unbroken Chain really just stood out to me. I remember from the early days of being in junior high and listening to that record, it's more of like a reverse influence, and I don't know if they would have ever heard it, but has parts that sound like Stereo Lab to me, kind of like Dots and Loops era Stereo Lab or something like that. With Ned's modular stuff kind of like coming in and out in there. They're telling me forgiveness is the key to Terry Doe today and that lack forever.
- [07:08]
Jesse Jarno
Animal Collective would create their own singular relationship with Unbroken Chain, which we'll discuss later. David Lemieux we did a Best of.
- [07:15]
Rich Mahan
The Grateful Dead album a few years ago. I think it was called the Very Best of the Grateful Dead with Rhinos. I think there are 17 songs on it, and that was a song that I knew with certainty had to absolutely be on there. A few people were a little surprised on the production side, only because it wasn't a hit. It wasn't a song that people equate with the Grateful Dead. It's not Friend of the Devil and Truck and all those were on it, of course, too. But Unbroken Chain absolutely needed to be on there. It was one of those songs that it's just too good not to be on there.
- [07:48]
Jesse Jarno
Unbroken Chain isn't the only song the Dead didn't play live. All the more testament to its enduring popularity among heads, I think it's grown in stature. Listeners studying from the Mars Hotel in 1974 might notice an unfamiliar name receiving a songwriting credit alongside Phil Lash on both Unbroken Chain and Pride of Cucamonga. It was misspelled, as it turned out, but Bobby Peterson, or Robert M. Peterson for songwriting purposes, no O's in his last name, was an important, fascinating, and almost forgotten figure in Grateful Dead history. We're going to take the scenic route. Please welcome to the Dead cast. Your pal and ours, the parent of Bobby Peterson studies, Christian Crumlish.
- [08:47]
Rich Mahan
I saw my first two dead shows in 84 while I was still in college, and I saw 20 dead shows in 85 or 21 and went out to California to see New Year's. Really into it at that point. And then the spring of 86 was my senior year in college, and I went to all the east coast shows I could get to that spring, and one of them was up in Maine. And in Maine, they debuted this song called Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues that they never ever played again. We got Speed Rainbow and his arcade Android, Revolutionary Hamstring. We sat up all night in the hotel, listening to an audience tape one of our crew had made, trying to write the words down and figure out what this new song was, because we figured it was gonna get played more and good to know about it. And somehow word had gotten out that although Brent and Phil sang it, that the lyrics were by Bobby Peterson. So that was when I first heard of Bobby Peterson and felt, I guess, a slight personal connection because they never played that song again. You know, there's only a couple thousand of us who ever heard it played live, right? Even though Phil's output was so small, I was like, who is this Peterson guy?
- [10:14]
Jesse Jarno
It wasn't easy to find out. Bobby Peterson received his first songwriting credits from the Dead in 1968 for his lyrics to New Potato Caboose. But Anthem of the sun merely noted all selections by Grateful Dead.
- [10:38]
Rich Mahan
Sun Comes Up, Blood Red Wind Yells among the Stone. I connected the dots to the other songs and thought about this very small corpus of songs. There was always a little bit of lore around Unbroken Chain. Any song that people like on an album that there's no live versions of Rosemary, let's say, if there's almost no live versions or no live versions, that kind of creates a special mystique about certain songs. So I think I started looking at that song. I liked Pride of Cucamonga, you know, and I started digging deeper into these other songwriters besides Hunter and Barlow, particularly on the earlier stuff.
- [11:32]
Jesse Jarno
One of the few places to cover Peterson's history in the murky early days of the band is Hank Harrison's Not Always Reliable the Dead Book.
- [11:40]
Rich Mahan
If you read the Dead book and if you read interviews with Phil, tell stories about Peterson. In these interviews, for instance, Peterson was the first guy who got Phil Stone. You know, we introduced him to pot, from what I understand. And so you can see that there's a sense of debt that Peterson didn't get rich and famous. But he was this linking figure that without whom Phil may not have fallen in with the Dead. Ultimately.
- [12:02]
Jesse Jarno
Peterson was born in 1936, four years older than Phil. In that way, he served a classic scene. The cooler, slightly older guy who could fill you in on the world as it existed and also probably knew how to score grass. It didn't take much for Christian to recruit his former roommate, Nicholas Merriweather, into Bobby Peterson studies. Nicholas is the founder of the Grateful Dead Studies Association. Welcome back, Nick.
- [12:27]
Rich Mahan
He was not into the folk scene. He was very much into the jazz scene. He had actually already made friends with some members of Ray Charles Band. He had been a sometime saxophone Player himself. And his whole orientation was toward jazz, not towards folk. He was part of the Kepler scene, very much a part of the Kepler scene. But he's also kind of a loner, and that's why he and Loesch really bond. Peterson had published either a poem or an essay. I think it's probably more likely a poem about either jazz or jazz musicians. And Phil loved it. And that's how their friendship got started.
- [13:03]
Jesse Jarno
Here's how Phil Lesh described it in 1981 to our friend David Ganz, an interview that's now in David's cornerstone book, Conversations with the Dead, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast. Phil Lesh hadn't tried smoking grass yet.
- [13:17]
Rich Mahan
The first people who offered to turn me on were not the kind of people I wanted to get high with. Instinctively, I knew this, so I refused.
- [13:25]
Jesse Jarno
Good thinking. So who did get you high, Phil?
- [13:27]
Rich Mahan
Robert Peterson. He's a poet. We spent most of our time hanging out, reading Henry Miller aloud, that was really fun, man, because there was no future. I loved Ginsburg. I loved his work. Kerouac was okay, but I expected more somehow from on the Road than I. Than I got out of it. When I first read it, rereading it, I get more out of it because I finally met Neil, who is the guy. But I loved Ginsburg. I loved hell so much, I started to set it to music.
- [13:55]
Jesse Jarno
Phil Ash didn't last at the College of San Mateo, but after transferring to UC Berkeley, he stayed friends with Bobby Peterson.
- [14:02]
Rich Mahan
I got a place to live and I got a job, and I reconnected with Peterson. That was the most important part. He turned me on, you know, he taught me everything I knew. Granted, he had lived a lot. He's 4 years old, and through his experience and his native ability, he was into writing, into literature, and he just turned me on to so much. I mean, you can't encompass it.
- [14:27]
Jesse Jarno
Peterson was connected to the bigger underground around the San Francisco Peninsula.
- [14:32]
Rich Mahan
Nicholas Merriweather Peterson was really more a part of the scene than he was an active student. As near as we can tell, he only really was officially enrolled in CSM for one semester. But he hung out there because it was an interesting. And that's one of the orbits of the broader Palo Alto Peninsula bohemian scene that Alan Trist was a part of. Jerry Garcia was a part of. Robert Hunter was a part of the genesis of what becomes the Grateful Dead, in a sense. So Peterson is part of all of.
- [15:03]
Jesse Jarno
That in this way, without Bobby Peterson, no Grateful Dead. Peterson was responsible for connecting Phil Lesh with his future bandmates, we are so happy to welcome back Alan Tristram, friends with both Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter in the Palo Alto days, who later.
- [15:19]
Rich Mahan
Ran Ice 9 Publishing back in Palo Alto. 61. He was part of our freewheeling group there. He was part of the proto bohemian group there. He had his notebook. He was a poet then. Hanging out with a bunch of artists. Jerry and Phil and Willie Legate. You know, everyone was there. It's hard to say what he was actually doing. I don't remember any particular pose of mind, but we were all doing. Doing that thing of trying to find a way that was into the future that was less restrictive than the past had been.
- [15:54]
Jesse Jarno
Peterson was Phil's first friend who moved to San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood. And Phil followed.
- [16:00]
Rich Mahan
At that point, I was waiting at 1130 Haight street, which is the corner of Hayden Baker. In those days, the Haight was truly beautiful. This was before anything. It was just a community of people who happened to live there, that all the right people had happened to live there. Somehow a whole bunch of all my people. And like, when Bringing it All back home came out, you could walk down.
- [16:20]
Jesse Jarno
Hay street and hear it coming out of every window. At least that's how I imagine the sentence ends. The side ended there. Bobby Peterson served an important role. As Phil described it to Hank Harrison.
- [16:31]
Rich Mahan
Bobby Peterson was still in contact somehow with Garcia, because he was. He would go and come, you know, on his binges. He would hang out. Palo Alto.
- [16:37]
Jesse Jarno
In the spring of 1965, Peterson received a key piece of intel. Jerry Garcia had a new band called the Warlocks playing every week at a pizza place in Menlo Park. This is from David Gann's 1981 interview.
- [16:50]
Rich Mahan
And then whenever it was that they were playing, we took acid and went down there. Harrison, myself, Peterson, Jane and my girlfriend. And we came bopping in there, man, and it was really happening. Pigpen ate my mind. He just ate my mind with the heart. Singing the blues, man. They wouldn't let you dance, but I did it anyway. And during the set break, Jerry takes me off to a table and he says, listen, man, how'd you like to play bass in this game? Because our bass player is not a musician, we have to tell him where we'll still. I said, by God, I'll give it a try.
- [17:43]
Jesse Jarno
Peterson remained a part of the Dead's extended scene.
- [17:46]
Rich Mahan
Christian Crumlish, Nick, who was very encouraging about this process. He and I, we went on a couple field trips. We Went to the College of San Mateo and gathered anything we could from their archives, their yearbooks, etc, things like that. But it's funny too, because we found a little poster in the library that was talking about famous alumni of College of San Mateo. And they're like, and the drummer for the Grateful Dead. That was pretty funny. Some marketing person didn't do all their homework. But we also went down to the county courthouse as well, San Mateo County Courthouse, and we got out the case files from his arrest. He was arrested in February of 1966 in a little town outside of Santa Cruz, California. And he had a young son. At the time, Didrick would have been like a year and a half or so. And Didrich had fallen asleep. And so Peterson parked the car, left his son asleep, and went inside a bar to get a beer. And when he came out, someone had called the cops and said, hey, there's an abandoned kid. Even though really Bobby was only gone for literally a few minutes. But, you know, Bobby looked like a hippie. And the larger Santa Cruz area is kind of ground zero for the war between mainstream society and hippiedom. And Bobby looks apart. So the cops come and find a little jar, a bouillon jar, that has weed in it. And the reason why that's significant is because Peterson fights the case on grounds of religious freedom.
- [19:15]
Jesse Jarno
So Bobby Peterson got ready to go to bat for the heads of America.
- [19:18]
Rich Mahan
And he thinks it's going to be this huge case that changes the way the US treats cannabis. And they were basing it on the Native American church, you know, peyote rituals, all of that stuff. Stuff. And Kesey's lawyer, Ken Kesey's lawyer signed on to defend him. And it was a huge deal. The trial was covered in not only the Santa Cruz newspaper, San Jose Mercury News, but also in the San Francisco Examiner, Christian Crumlish. I read his statement to the judge, which was written out, like by a writer, you know, by a poet, essentially, in which he was trying to be a test case. He was trying to prove that drug use is both a matter of bodily sovereignty and spiritual freedom.
- [19:58]
Jesse Jarno
Six months after the arrest, the case of Robert M. Peterson went to a juryless trial in Santa Cruz in October 1966. It wasn't maybe the best time to argue for a religious right to use LSD or cannabis.
- [20:11]
Rich Mahan
There's nothing grown up or sophisticated in taking an LSD trip at all. They're just being complete fools. Anyone that would engage in this or indulge in this is just a plain fool.
- [20:25]
Jesse Jarno
Oh, sure, though lsd was still technically legal at the time of Peterson's arrest in February. It achieved illegality in early October 1966, just a week before Peterson's trial. Nicholas Merriweather.
- [20:39]
Rich Mahan
They get a raft load of really significant people to go down and testify on Peterson's behalf, including a really powerful prominent member of San Francisco's liturgical community. The Catholic, Catholic priest speaks on Peterson's behalf. David Smith of the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic speaks on his behalf. Whole bunch of people. So it was a really big deal and they lose. And then Kesey's lawyer very wisely then has an appeal. And the appeal is based on illegal search and seizure. And that part works because the judge concludes that, look, you weren't looking for car registration or something like that when you opened a jar of bouillon. So Peterson gets off, but it takes a huge chunk out of his life. And it leaves him, according to a lot of people, it leaves him feeling fairly bitter towards the legal system because he really thought he had an airtight case in court.
- [21:38]
Jesse Jarno
Peterson presented himself as a poet and was taking his work quite seriously.
- [21:42]
Rich Mahan
Peterson did hold jobs off and on, everything from being a short order cook to a laborer. But he was very serious about viewing himself as a poet. If you look at his typescript drafts of what he was doing and even his manuscript drafts, he's approaching poetry and writing in general seriously. He always puts the date and the place when he finishes a poem. He dates it, he says where he wrote it. If you look at his revisions, one of the things that's, I think, most remarkable about his archive is he paid for early photocopies, electrostats of his poems, because that's one of the ways that he revised. He would type it out, photocopy it, and then make manuscript deletions, additions, whatever emendations on the photocopy.
- [22:35]
Jesse Jarno
The Dead started working on their first piece of music with Bobby PETERSON in early 1967, probably within weeks of his.
- [22:41]
Rich Mahan
Court case, probably sometime in January of 67, is when they start working up New Potato Caboose. The lyrics are fascinating because it could just be a nature poem, but musically it presages what they are going to start doing later that year, which will culminate in Darkstar. And I think you can hear the genesis of all of that with New Potato Caboose. That's their first really serious bid towards musical and lyrical excellence.
- [23:27]
Jesse Jarno
New Potato Caboose can be heard as the Dead's first major original composition. They'd aspired to write complex music with early Originals like Lesh's own Cardboard Cowboy. But New Potato Caboose was the first one that they'd keep in the repertoire for more than a few months, melding Lesh's complex musical vision with the images of the young California poetry Robert M. Peterson.
- [23:47]
Rich Mahan
There's a handwritten copy that got sold at Bonham's at auction several years ago and it's clearly in Phil Lush's hand. The auction got it wrong, got the wrong date and said that it was in pigpens handwriting. It's not. It's very clearly Phil Lush's handwriting. And that has the line above Madonna, two eagles hang against a cloud. Eagles hang against the cloud. The reason why that makes perfect sense is because Peterson is living in the Santa Cruz mountains. He could look out from any one of a number of vantage spots and see Mount Madonna. So above Madonna, two eagles hang against a cloud. Now all of a sudden that makes the entire lyric, the entire song, one of Bobby Peterson's nature poems. And at the time he's writing a lot of those. That's where his unpublished poems about Big Sur come from. That's where he's thinking. It's a huge part of his poetic inspiration. He's taking a cue from both Michael McClure, but especially from Gary Snyder. It just fits in every single way.
- [24:57]
Jesse Jarno
Bobby Peterson's involvement with the Dead helped the Dead to a new direction.
- [25:01]
Rich Mahan
Michael McClure lives in the hate and he's going to rock shows and he tries to give Garcia while the band is still living at 7:10. Because McClure only lives a few blocks away. McClure gives remember the wonderful story of McClure giving Garcia a sheaf of lyrics and Garcia looking sort of dubious about it and attempting to put them to music and then finally giving up. And that's right at the same time that McClure gave Janis Joplin what became oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
- [25:32]
Jesse Jarno
Bobby Peterson was the first poet to work with the Grateful Dead and probably an impetus for Jerry Garcia to draft his old friend Robert Hunter into Service. Later in 1967, with one songwriting credit on a major label album in his pocket. Peterson's small press poetry career began in earnest around the time Anthem of the sun was released in 1968.
- [25:52]
Rich Mahan
His first small press publication was 1968 and that was in a short lived San Francisco poetry magazine called the Willie. And it's interesting, I tracked down the editor who actually remembered he had to drive. He found out where Bobby was living and Bobby was camping and in a forest north of San Francisco. And the editor drove all the way up to meet him at his campsite. And they, over a candle or a Coleman lantern, read a whole bunch of possibilities. And the editor chose two poems to publish in the Willie. And that's how Bobby's very first small press publication came about. Peterson goes through this phase from basically 1968 through 1974, of wanting to participate in what poets later dismissively call the Poe biz. You know, the sequence of getting things to a small press publisher, then putting together a chat book, and then maybe eventually getting a major press publication out of it.
- [27:00]
Jesse Jarno
Put another way, Robert Peterson was a published poet. Robert Hunter was not. Hunter once claimed that the lyrics to Casey Jones were written by Bobby Peterson in a dream. And Hunter merely looked over his shoulder and copied the words down when he awoke. Though Lesh and Peterson wouldn't be as productive as Garcia and Hunter, his existence wound around the Dead scene.
- [27:20]
Rich Mahan
He spent considerable time away from the scene. All of the people who knew him make it a point to mention that he was very gregarious and had a real charisma that drew people to him. But he also very much appreciated solitude and being by himself and was really good about being in nature. And so he would just take off from the scene and be gone for a while. Phil alludes to that and told me that when he was working with Peter Monk, he was speculating. He couldn't remember exactly why, but he said, you know, Peterson may not have been around at that point. You know, he would just kind of take off and go off and travel, go to Mexico, go to Oregon, or just, you know, go off into the woods in Northern California. And he would be gone for a while.
- [28:03]
Jesse Jarno
Though Phil Lesh would receive co writing credits on several songs in the interim. The next song he sang on a Dead album came when 1970s American Beauty opened with Box of Rain. Bobby Peterson was in and out of California in 1970. When Phil Lesh was working on Box of Rain. That summer, Ned Legion, who would play synthesizer on Unbroken Chain, met Peterson for the first time. Please welcome back to the Dead, cast, as Jerry Garcia once called him, good old grateful Ned.
- [28:46]
Rich Mahan
I first met Bobby in 1970, summer of 1970, when I was staying at Phil's house for the summer. And Bobby would come through there, passing through the Bay Area one way or another. And that was in Fairfax. And most of the time Bobby was at Phil's house. He didn't stay at Phil's, but he was there at Phil's, usually in the evening and they drank a huge amount of beer. I never liked beer, so I wasn't a drinker. But I listened to stories and we talked a lot. Bobby and Phil were very close, as I could surmise from youthful Phil experiences. I don't remember how old Bobby was compared to Phil, but Phil was obviously the junior of the two. And they talked for hours and hours late into the night about the times that they shared, the people that they knew, and I listened. For the most part. They were part of the San Francisco beat culture, Bobby and Phil, when they grew up, that was poetry and jazz and beatniks and all the famous beat people of the San Francisco culture that preceded San Francisco as a rock Mount Olympus. Before that, it was the beat culture. Except for maybe Greenwich Village, it was San Francisco.
- [29:59]
Jesse Jarno
Having an album deadline is a great motivator to finish songs, and it would be nearly three full years before the full Grateful Dead made another studio album. So it was in the summer of 1973 when Phil Lesh prepared two new songs for the album that would become Wake of the fl. That's the demo version of Unbroken Chain, first released on the Beyond Description box set. Presumably, Loesch finished the song sometime in the spring of 1973. Though some of the images seem as if they might come from Peterson's nature poetry, it feels more akin to Robert Hunter's work, evoking the infinite and even psychedelic in a way that, like the chord changes, is impossible to pin down to one linear continuity and specifically to my years. Unbroken Chain sounds as if it could be in conversation with Hunter's lyrics to Box of Rain, sharing many of the same images and even the same central rhyme. In some regards it sounds like a relatively straightforward song, but as Lesh's demo demonstrates, there were some things that might not be obvious on first listen.
- [31:29]
Rich Mahan
This here is the instrumental. The short length of the pause between the parts of this rhythm is correct.
- [31:44]
Jesse Jarno
The song had a few different sections.
- [31:49]
Rich Mahan
D minor 7th, C major 7th.
- [31:54]
Jesse Jarno
A lot of chords.
- [32:00]
Rich Mahan
D minor 7th, C Major 7th, G minor 7th, F, E minor, more or less.
- [32:20]
Jesse Jarno
Please welcome back from the City College of New York, the Deputy Dean of Arts and Humanities, Sean o'. Donnell.
- [32:26]
Rich Mahan
This may be the most ship in a bottle tune they have, practically with a chart it's playable for the most part. The jam, you have to concentrate, and so on. But the song, you can't play without a chart because it's not in a key, it has no built in harmonic drive. And they have some other tunes that wander or get ambiguous, but this Persistently behaves like it would have been in a key, but it isn't. Listen for the secret searching for the soul time. But I could only hear the preacher and the band of his hand. You arrive at these G chords and they feel like okay, this is a thing. When you're like, okay, maybe this is the dominant chord and we arrived here. It's going to make sense now. And then it reloads and travels through the progression again.
- [33:45]
Jesse Jarno
It's a different kind of song for the Dead.
- [33:46]
Rich Mahan
He's not the same singer as the other guys. He's moving the whole time so he doesn't sit still on like long held notes or do any vocal performative type stuff. And that's where it was different from art song where there'd be some bits about the voice itself where this is more in the sense of sung poetry.
- [34:04]
Jesse Jarno
When the full band got the song to the record plan in August 1973, things did not go as planned.
- [34:12]
Rich Mahan
No, no, no, no, no, no. Nope.
- [34:14]
Jesse Jarno
They tried.
- [34:15]
Rich Mahan
You just simply count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3. Da da da da da da D minor. What's fun about that? It ain't fun. It ain't supposed to be fun. It's just supposed to be right.
- [34:30]
Jesse Jarno
The band spent some time working on it, but perhaps wisely tabled it until a future project.
- [34:35]
Rich Mahan
I kind of think it'd be neat if we. If everybody learned the chords and stuff before we tried to rehearse the thing. True, yeah, that would be helpful. And I don't think I was trying to make a tape with all the wrong chords is going to make a lot of difference.
- [34:50]
Jesse Jarno
They did the same with Pride of Cucamonga, another Lesh Peterson joint that filled them out in the summer of 73 and which would also have to wait for another day. Steve Brown was a production assistant on from the Mars Hotel and witnessed the 1974 sessions.
- [35:04]
Rich Mahan
The work that it took to do Unbroken Chain. Oh boy, that was a real Mount Everest hike, you know. That was. Took a lot of. A lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of detail that Phil kind of oversaw.
- [35:18]
Jesse Jarno
This is actually Steve's voice on the talkback mic during the Unbroken Chain sessions just before Phil's. Please welcome back engineer Brian Kehue, responsible for the recent transfer of the angel share.
- [35:36]
Rich Mahan
I was looking at the number of tapes. Do I have a count? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 12 tapes used different days. I'm looking at April 9th. Takes 1 to 5 and then takes 6 to 15. The next day they come back. On April 10th, they do takes 1 to 32. And that means a whole day of the same song, which is not unheard of nowadays especially. But really that's a lot of work. The next day, April 11, they start over again, counting from take one, and they do 21 more attempted takes at it. And then they come back April 12, the fourth day, and do another 13 takes and take 11 is the one they keep. That is just a lot of work. Just to put it in reference, I think the Beatles did a comparable number of takes of Obla d' Obla Da and the song called Not Guilty, which has the most number of Beatles takes and it never even came out.
- [36:41]
Jesse Jarno
And that's not counting the hours they spent rehearsing it across the street at Sir Before Tracking. There are roughly four hours of takes of Unbroken Chain. And that's not counting a few reels taped over the next year during the making of the Keith and Donna album.
- [36:54]
Rich Mahan
On one of the tapes is partly reused by Keith doing the Godshaw Special Love tape, as it's called the Net's All Empty. Cause the fish.
- [37:22]
Jesse Jarno
That's a tiny taste of sessions for Farewell Jack from the Keith and Donna lp, which ended up on one of the Unbroken Chain tapes. For comparison's sake, after the four surviving hours of Unbroken Chain, the second most amount of tape that survives for from the Mars hotel, a roughly 20 minutes each of tape for US Blues and Scarlet Begonias. The sessions at least went better this time.
- [38:15]
Rich Mahan
There is so much work put into this and the only thing comparable we've seen in their history was the Weather Report Suite. And in both cases the band was really trying and learning and communicating. That obviously had these more epic pieces and a lot of challenges in doing something that's not as simple as Loose Lucy. But in some ways they really make a record more three dimensional to have.
- [38:42]
Jesse Jarno
A track like this than a bunch.
- [38:43]
Rich Mahan
Of three minute boogie songs. So I really appreciate. While it may not be my favorite piece on some of those records is to have a long extended thing with.
- [38:53]
Jesse Jarno
Lots of parts to it.
- [39:11]
Rich Mahan
Those types of tracks are the ones that burn bands out. They actually start to test your patience. Imagine doing something, whether it be a dance routine or trying to paint a painting and you do it, let's see.
- [39:24]
Jesse Jarno
15 times the first day, 32 times.
- [39:26]
Rich Mahan
The second day, 21 times the third day, 13 times the fourth day. That is just a lot of effort. But many people don't mind it. They're just working harder and it's getting closer and it's getting better, so they're not that different, but they do have some developments and some changes from one to the next.
- [39:47]
Jesse Jarno
Thanks to Steve Brown, some extra paperwork for this session survives Nicholas Merriweather.
- [39:53]
Rich Mahan
We don't have a manuscript or typescript draft. All we've got, however, is fascinating. What we've got is a typewritten microphone draft, and that's got basically Jerry Garcia's chord changes that he's writing down. And this would be an 8.5 by 11 type sheet with the lyrics in all caps at the very end, where we've got the two repeated choruses. Unbroken chain of sorrow and Pearl and Unbroken chain of the Western Wind. So in the penultimate verse, the mic stand draft reads, Unbroken chain of sorrow and pearls Unbroken chain of the sea. And of course, what ultimately happens is Unbroken chain of sorrow and pearls Unbroken chain of sky and sea which works much better. Unbroken chain of sorrow and pearls Unbroken chain of sky and sea With Pride.
- [40:55]
Jesse Jarno
Of Cucamonga, which we'll speak about soon, we're able to compare lyric drafts, but it's hard to know for sure how the lyrics to Unbroken Chain evolved.
- [41:03]
Rich Mahan
One of the points that Phil made in his conversation with me is that Jerry and Hunter worked much more collaboratively. Like Hunter would be in the studio, and this is probably in those early days, but it may have begun with Oxamoxwa. What Phil said was that Jerry would tell Hunter things, you know, would say, I need a vowel here, I need a word here, and Hunter would provide it. Whereas Phil actually did his own writing. He actually put words into Bobby's lyrics. Listening for the secret Searching for the sound But I could only hear the preacher and the bayin of his hounds.
- [41:50]
Jesse Jarno
They stacked the vocals up in the ending, especially Weir got a spotlight in one stack. Garcia got a spotlight in the other. Be sure to add some chimes. Track 12 actually has bits of three different keyboard parts. There's a clavinet in the middle, erodes during the gentle vocal reprise, and briefly, a celeste during the outro. There's a vocal overdub that's almost impossible to notice. Listen here on the tracking sheets. The second sheet of the sync reel is labeled Donna ringed N. I think this is the sound of Donna Jean Gadcho singing through a ring modulator to create a drone on the last notes of Unbroken Chain. You can hear the intake of breath just before the drone starts. But the overdub most people remember didn't come from a regular band member.
- [44:15]
Rich Mahan
Listening for the secret Searching for the sound But I could only Hear the preacher and the being of his hand.
- [44:28]
Jesse Jarno
Here it is without the rest of the band. In 1981, an interviewer in Minnesota asked Jerry Garcia how the sound was made.
- [44:42]
Rich Mahan
Arp Odyssey, Little Arp Odyssey. It cuts right through. It's strangely appropriate, that is, it's a nice and musically interesting. It's such a strangely. It's not a sound that you would normally associate with music, but it's nice the way it comes in and off the wall sort of way. And almost any halfway decent hi fi will throw it all over the place as well so that it's like non directional in terms it could be coming from anywhere.
- [45:11]
Jesse Jarno
Playing that Arp Odyssey was Ned Lagin, a friend of the band since they played at MIT in 1970? We've posted a link to our extended Nedcast@Dead.net Deadcast. Ned had been sitting in with the band since 1970, playing piano on the American Beauty version of Candyman. You can hear him on the high chiming Clavichord throughout the February 18, 1971 show that's now on the expanded American Beauty. But Ned's own project, Seastones, was an organic and gradual process that began to come to public fruition later in 1974. Later in the month, Ned came to overdub some sounds onto Unbroken Chain.
- [46:16]
Rich Mahan
That was round or In April of 1974, we'd already decided we were going out on the road to play live later in the spring or summer. I got one of the first arps like I got one of the first Fender Rhodes 88 and I got it in, I don't know, February, March of 73 and came to California with it. I got it back in and it's one of the white ones. It was bought to play live mostly because that's what I was moving to California to do. So it was part of a larger imagined instrument. I had built my own synthesizer boxes. I had interacted with ARP in their original brick building, small brick building facility, and I guess it was Waltham, it was near Brandeis. And I bought some ARP 2500 potted modules and made my own synthesizer boxes before I went to California. And then after arriving In California in 73, I made some customizations to the ARP itself. I ran some wires inside and plugged into the gate and trigger and VCA that was available.
- [47:25]
Jesse Jarno
Ned would perform music from Seastones throughout Dead shows starting in June, joined by Phil Lesh and occasionally Jerry Garcia and other members of the Dead. We'll discuss some of that as we go.
- [47:35]
Rich Mahan
The arc would fit in Phil's BMW trunk. I might have gone with Phil, but in remembering it, I think I went by myself because I think that Bobby.
- [47:44]
Jesse Jarno
Rode with Phil Peterson. That is not Weir.
- [47:48]
Rich Mahan
I think I'm remembering Bobby, but I certainly remember Hunter, because Hunter sat about 2. There were some chairs in front. There's the mix board, and then there's a space in front of the mix board. And then there's a glass window that opens that shows the studio. And there were some chairs in front of the mix board and near where I was set up on my arp. And Hunter was sitting there the whole time with his notebook, writing. Mars Hotel had two real producers. It was said that the Grateful Dead were the producers, but the two producers were Garcia and Phil. When I went in there, Jerry seemed pretty happy. Jerry, I think he liked the room. And some of the members of the band were less happy with the room and the studio and how it sounded and. And that it was a very. How should I say, Tightly run ship. Jerry, Phil and I separately had talked about me potentially adding to various tracks, including Jerry's tracks. Eventually, all that happened was I played on Unbroken Chain. They set me up not in the room, but in the control room in front of the board. On the front side of the board.
- [48:57]
Jesse Jarno
Ned got up to speed on the song.
- [48:59]
Rich Mahan
I saw the words when I went into the studio handwritten. And then I heard in the setup, pass throughs them sung. Though not all the vocals were done, they assumed, and correctly or not, they assumed that the musician that I was in, the training that I had, I could recognize what was going on. For example, it was my assumption, correct or incorrect, that the tune started out in 4, 4. And that if you want to call what they called the bridge, as much as it changed from 73 to 74, was in 11. And then the jam, or what do you want to call it? Jam is in 15. I was playing an Arp Odyssey, and I may have had it through a volume pedal, but otherwise it was just a straight ARP Odyssey. I viewed the tracks that I was doing as parts of a larger mix that would flow between more abstraction and more narrative. It was a sound that was constructed with layers of intent and of. And of colors and time spectra. Knowing Phil and having played with Phil, I understood his thinking intuitively. And Garcia as a producer and Phil as a producer of Unbroken Chain, both trusted my intuition. And they ran Unbroken Chain, and I played a track, and they ran Unbroken Chain a second time, and I played a second track, and they stopped there and said, Both of those tracks are perfect. You're done.
- [51:44]
Jesse Jarno
One thing to note is that the longer of those parts. Making the chiming sounds That a lot of people compare to an airplane. Was actually the combination of multiple mono outputs run through a Leslie speaker for two more tracks to create stereo. Here's one of them.
- [52:03]
Rich Mahan
And another.
- [52:10]
Jesse Jarno
And through the Leslie.
- [52:15]
Rich Mahan
I had not even gotten started. I hadn't even thought about it. They just really liked the tracks. And then as the scene developed there at that studio. The possibility of me doing stuff on Jerry's stuff sort of evaporated. I'm not sure. I don't remember why. I just remember getting paid more than I've ever gotten paid in my life for anything. For doing about 20 minutes of work.
- [52:40]
Jesse Jarno
Though Ned may not have spent a lot of time on the performance of those parts. They became an indelible part of both Unbroken Chain and the Dead Studio catalog. It's not a lot of music, as Ned says. But there's a lot of intention in demdar parts. We've posted a link to some of Ned's meditations on unbroken chain@dead.net deadcast.
- [52:59]
Rich Mahan
If you slow them down to, like, quarter speed. You can hear the insides of what it was. Gravity creates the concept of weight or weightlessness. Absence is weightlessness. So we know it as an attractive, quote, attractive force. It's, you know, Isaac Newton and the apple falling from the tree and hitting the ground. But with Einstein, you understand that gravity is a force that acts on light and time. And so with the theory of special. And then general relativity. We get the concepts of bending time and bending light. And if you use those as paralleling visual metaphors with audio metaphors. That's what I meant about creating an audio context in Unbroken Chain by doing those two tracks. And the gravitation is one not of the apple falling from the tree is hitting the ground. It's not an attractive gravitation. It's a gravitation of time bending and light. Bending light. In this case being the light of the poetry. Jerry, because of his background in visual arts. Got the idea that I was painting the tracks in Unbroken Chain. As much as I was playing them. I was actually playing the ARP keyboard and the faders. But the tracks that I was putting on. Were part of the poetic painting of the song. Rather than the melodic or rhythmic structure of the song itself. So it's counterpoint in a poetic and visual way and metaphoric way. As much as it is a musical way. There are harmonics and resonances that are visual. But There are harmonics of time and of rhythm. So I'm playing harmonics of time and rhythm for the Unbroken Chain rhythm track. Bobby wrote poems where there are emotional and intellectual resonances for each word in each phrase. And it was my imagination and desire as a player to capture or produce audio tracks that encompass those emotional and intellectual resonances.
- [56:25]
Jesse Jarno
And now back to speed with the guitar.
- [56:35]
Rich Mahan
Sam.
- [57:01]
Jesse Jarno
The lyricist, dug it, too.
- [57:02]
Rich Mahan
Bobby Peterson really liked what I did on Unbroken Chain, and he told me so. But you could also see it in his eye contact. Someone was listening last year and said he thought that my tracks were what sunshine sounds like. And I just thought that those were beautiful thoughts. And it's a way of getting at what I was thinking about, which is the visual metaphors of the poem. And what sunshine sounds like also to me reflects. Reflects the feeling of connectivity and the meaning that I derived from the song.
- [58:03]
Jesse Jarno
Around the time Ned made his overdub, the band had just resolved another important piece of business. What to actually call the album and what to put on the front cover. Andy Leonard had arrived at Grateful Dead Records as vice president the year before and wound up coordinating album art for Wake of the Flood in an unexpected way, which would feed into the art for the new album in progress.
- [58:23]
Rich Mahan
Bob Seideman was the acting art director at the point that I got there. I never saw him direct any art, but that's how he was introduced to me. And Ciderman's a great shooter, you know, and he did some very cool stuff in. In his day, and he's quite a character. He's an imposing guy. My first job. This is sort of funny. My first job, I think. Think Garcia or Garcia and Racco. I was never quite clear on how this worked. Had given four or five or six of the hot artists out there who had a tradition with the Grateful Dead. You know, Kelly and Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin. There were a bunch of guys. They'd given each of these guys what each of these guys considered to be a firm commission to do the first Grateful Dead Records record company cover. And each of them, jointly and severally, felt that they were the guy. So they did everything from really complicated four foot by four foot oil paintings that took a long time, and only one of them could be the record cover. So guess who got to go talk to the other guys.
- [59:30]
Jesse Jarno
It quickly turned into an adventure.
- [59:32]
Rich Mahan
It was not a happy place for me because these were cool guys, you know, I mean, Kelly and Mouse and Victor Moscoso and. And I think Sideman might have had a Dog in the fight. And I have to go tell all these guys no. So I have these scattershot memories of facing off with these guys. And some of them were just like, yeah, well, it's the Grateful Dead. What do you expect next?
- [59:57]
Jesse Jarno
One of the potential artists was an underground legend that the Dead hadn't worked with before. The incredibly detailed, hyperreal surrealist Robert Williams, Spelled Robt, who came out of the hot rod scene. We've posted a link to his fantastic work@dead.net deadcast I was a big fan.
- [60:14]
Rich Mahan
Of Williams in any case, because I'm a car guy and he's a car guy, and he's obviously completely mad as a hatter in a brilliant way. And I always enjoyed his cartoons and stuff, but the stuff that he did just as art, like Von Dutch and those guys, you know, they started out painting motorcycle tanks and hot rods. And the next thing you know, you've got Rat Fink and. And all these characters that keep appearing in the comic books. And I thought from the East Coast. I thought that was just wild. I mean, that was just wonderful stuff.
- [60:44]
Jesse Jarno
Williams was one of the artists who'd finished his commission, as Andy discovered when he met up with him in la.
- [60:50]
Rich Mahan
It was like, all done. And it was sitting on a chair when I walked into Williams house. And I was just like, whoa, that is cool, man. Look at that. I can't use it. Goodbye. He wasn't pleased because he put some time into it, you know, he put some time and some thought into it. It wasn't on a piece of paper. This was an actual art object. The album was called New Eyes and it was Little Bo Peep with big brand new blue eyes and big eyelashes. And she was still holding her cup that said 5 cents on it. That was full of pencils. And over her shoulder, there was a cartoon wolf with a little wispy mustache turned up at the end. That maybe a top hat or something, you know, with a glitter in his eye. It didn't look good for her. Where he got that, I don't know. I wanted it. I was in favor of it. We couldn't use it because the new eyes lettering in album cover fashion was up at the top. So there was no room to put Grateful Dead or to use a different title on that. Artwork like that wouldn't be possible.
- [61:52]
Jesse Jarno
At one point, the album that became Wake of the Flood had the working title Eyes of the World. So it's possible Williams used that as a prompt.
- [62:00]
Rich Mahan
So we looked at his blood split Mercury or whatever it was for A while. And we chatted about stuff. And we're both trying to make believe we didn't want to punch each other or he made believe he didn't want to punch me. And then we started talking about stuff because he collects some paramilitary gear as a hobby or did. And somebody somehow, somewhere had given Garcia a Luger. And he didn't know what to do with it, didn't have any real interest in it. And I guess I cleaned it or got it open or did something to it for him. So I knew he had it and I knew he didn't have any interest in it. We worked out a deal where Williams got the Luger and Garcia got the art. Carried it there myself. I was so enthusiastic about getting this particular nasty event in my rear view mirror that I went. I went to the Burbank Airport with my rent a Car, put it in the short term parking, gave PSA my 20 bucks, flew to San Francisco, got my car to the parking lot, drove to Stinson, got the Luger from Garcia, went back to sfo, flew to Burbank, got back in my rent a car that I put there this morning, went back to William's house. You know, elapsed time was like the afternoon. And as it was getting dark, we did the deal. And I wrapped up the picture in brown paper. And I remember carrying it on the flight back to SFO and getting the girl to put it in the coat closet for me because there wasn't anywhere else to put it. And that night, late, it ended up up in Stinson. That was the last time I saw it.
- [63:30]
Jesse Jarno
Perhaps somewhere in the Garcia archives is the Robert Williams painting New Eyes. It was probably 10 or so months after that when they needed album artwork again. The thing that actually triggered the story we just heard was a letter in the Dead's archives from Andy to Robert Williams, written in early 19.
- [63:46]
Rich Mahan
I had absolutely no memory of having had any contact with him after the debacle of that first album.
- [63:53]
Jesse Jarno
The letter is fascinating for a number of reasons. It's dated March 21, two days before the sound test at the Cow palace and a week before the Dead began recording at cbs. For starters, the query to Williams included a tape of the album's songs. Andy wrote, we haven't any ideas one way or the other on the title. Listen to the tape and do us a cover and a title.
- [64:15]
Rich Mahan
I know there was a tape because it's mentioned in there. I have no memory of the tape.
- [64:20]
Jesse Jarno
The existence of the tape means that there were recorded versions of a Few songs that the Dead hadn't yet performed. Along with the tape was a song list from Jerry Garcia, along with one line or less descriptions of each song. US Blues is described as R and R, parentheses, soft, Summer, Chapter, Come and Go. China Doll is slow, serious. Unbroken Chain has the longest description, medium tempo, ballad, different parts, symphonic in nature. We'll hear more descriptions from that letter as we get further into the album. The last song included on the list, and maybe also the tape, had a question mark next to it. Donna's Song. It reads, gospel flavor.
- [65:38]
Rich Mahan
I have no idea what Donna's song was. You know, there's stuff in there I don't know anything about because it was clearly early days.
- [65:45]
Jesse Jarno
Hopefully we'll have an answer to that question before too long.
- [65:48]
Rich Mahan
It looks from that letter like I had pitched a couple of guys, Williams included, to see if they had anything. And I don't know who I pitched. And I do not remember getting anything back. If anything had come back that was cool for. From anybody, I'm sure we would have gone with it.
- [66:06]
Jesse Jarno
In short, when the band started making the album, they didn't yet have a title for it.
- [66:11]
Rich Mahan
We didn't have a cover. Somebody was going to have one. There wasn't one. Nobody had one. And finally I had to stamp my foot and go, okay, look, you guys, it's late to do the artwork. I mean, I can get Salt or Inhale to do the screens, and then I can fly to LA and I can pound on somebody's door and get this stuff printed. But it's going to be ugly and it's going to be expensive, and it's going to be late, and we can't do that. That. So we need an album cover, at least the art right now. And I went and cornered Garcia in the studio in San Francisco and said, look, man, what do you want to do? And he said, I don't know. What do you want to do?
- [66:45]
Jesse Jarno
They found their answer a half dozen blocks away from the studio.
- [66:49]
Rich Mahan
And I had just driven by the Mars Hotel. And I thought, well, this place is weird.
- [66:54]
Jesse Jarno
The Mars Hotel at 192 Fourth St. Wasn't exactly a tourist hotel.
- [66:59]
Rich Mahan
And I showed Jerry a snapshot I'd taken of it the day before. And he said, okay, that's cool. Do something with that and do something with that. The Mars Hotel photograph at that point was taken. It was a topic of conversation. Isn't that weird? Look, the Mars Hotel. And it was a miracle the place didn't fall down, actually. But there were some characters that were living There full time.
- [67:22]
Jesse Jarno
Among its many residents over the years was Jack Kerouac, who hid out there briefly on his first trip to San Francisco. After on the Road made him a celebrity mentioned in his book big Sur in 1962. A decade later, in October 1972, David Bowie and Mick Rock shot a bit of the Gene Genie video outside the hotel. Mars Gene Genie lives on his back.
- [67:45]
Rich Mahan
The Gene Genie loves. As soon as Garcia nodded his head up and down the next morning, I was out there. When the sun came up to take the pictures. I mean, we had no time left.
- [68:04]
Jesse Jarno
With Mars Hotel in play, the band and their friends began riffing. Production assistant Steve Brown.
- [68:10]
Rich Mahan
We're thinking about calling it Rumors from the Mars Hotel, Ugly Rumors from the Mars Hotel. And so we wrote down all the different versions of Spelling rumors.
- [68:21]
Jesse Jarno
One of the fun documents in Steve's collection is a piece of paper in Steve and Garcia's handwritings.
- [68:26]
Rich Mahan
We'd be sitting there, you know, writing all these different things. My writing, his writing, you know, stuff. The rumors. R O O O W E R S Rumors. And then here's one with rumors with two eights. Rumor, 8, 8, 8 R M E R R Z And where's another good one here? R U N N E R S Runners. And I don't know who wrote this bottom one here, but it's W R U M O O R S. Huh? Yeah. No, we had fun. We're getting high, you know, and he's drinking a little, you know, coffee with a little bit of liquid. Yeah, right. It's late at night. It's 3:00am you know, we gotta get out of here. Okay.
- [69:31]
Jesse Jarno
The album needed a back cover too.
- [69:34]
Rich Mahan
We decided that for the Mars Hotel we needed to have a scene where the Rumors, the Ugly rumors, would be actually seen. And so we put them all in my van, the whole band, and drove over to Eddy street to the Cadillac Hotel and put them into the main lounge lobby area there. Put up some chairs and sat them all in there. Had Andy Leonard come in and take a nice picture of them all sitting there. I used to drive Jerry home all the time to Snitzen or Tiburon or wherever we came from, the studio, stuff that went on a lot. But to have the all. All of them in my van was really cool. And it was a carpeted van and it had a couch in it and stuff. And so it was nice, you know, it was a Fort Econoline and it was all paneled inside and soundproof. But it was kind of like taking a paddy wagon with the Criminals.
- [70:22]
Jesse Jarno
And they are located on the other side of Market street from both CBS studios and the Mars Hotel itself. The Cadillac Hotel actually had some dead ties. Jerry Garcia lived there briefly in 1961 with his buddy John the Cool Winter, who was responsible for introducing him to Phil Lesh, part of the same circle of friends as Bobby Peterson, Andy Leonard.
- [70:43]
Rich Mahan
That was an interesting shoot because those guys really kind of don't wanna. And if somebody wants them to do something like that, then they really don't wanna. But we had to do it. They knew we had to do it. And there was an extra piece of juice in there because it was their record company this time. So they couldn't really get hissy and walk off. Because it was Warner Brothers. I couldn't make sport out of it because they'd be making themselves mad because it's their record company. So everybody knew we had to do the shoot, but, boy, we had to go fast and get her done. Took 20 minutes. How long can you get everybody to sit down? I mean, I walked around with a bunch of $5 bills and got some of the boys that had taken over the lobby that lived there. Said, guys, look, I got something for you. But you got to go outside for half an hour. Here's five bucks. So I had to clear out the lobby. Then we had to move the furniture. So there was some prep time. I didn't want to empty the lobby of the hotel if the band wasn't going to show up. So it all kind of happened at the same time.
- [71:38]
Jesse Jarno
On the back cover, the band is lit by the glow of a television.
- [71:42]
Rich Mahan
I actually had some pretty good experience shooting at stuff lit by the light from the television. And you can't use a television. You have to have a television box with a light in it.
- [71:51]
Jesse Jarno
We've posted links to Andy's original untouched photos@dead.net deadcast cast this glass window.
- [71:57]
Rich Mahan
My van was in the original picture in the background and stuff there. And that was interesting because he had all the regular guests that were staying there. Such as they were not guests, but the rumors that stayed in that hotel, the actual rumors. And here's this Grateful Dead people downstairs in this lobby of theirs having this whole scene go on. So that was kind of an interesting situation.
- [72:22]
Jesse Jarno
Unlike the Mars Hotel, the Cadillac is still there at 380 Eddy street in San Francisco's Tenderloin. If you'd like to recreate the photo yourself. It was maybe during the photo shoot itself that they decided that it was possibly in bad form to refer to the residents of the Mars Hotel as ugly rumors.
- [72:38]
Rich Mahan
We decided a lot of these people are kind of down and out that are staying in this kind of a slum hotel. And it would be kind of not nice to use rumors from the Mars Hotel.
- [72:50]
Jesse Jarno
Sometime in this period, the artist team of Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly moved into their new headquarters in San Rafael, known as the Peanut Gallery, alongside fellow artist Victor Moscoso, about a half dozen blocks from the Dead's office. It put a group of world class artists in even easier reach. Mouse and Kelly would take Annie Leonard's photo of the Mars Hotel and place it on something like Mars with rock craters, a lava layer, two moons hanging in the sky, and the glow of an alien civilization just over the visible horizon. Alton Kelly noted to Blair Jackson that they enlarged the Mars Hotel sign too. If you look closely at the COVID you can still see the shadow of the original smaller sign. The art was an assemblage of an acrylic background painting, Andy's photos and more pieces placed to connect them.
- [73:37]
Rich Mahan
When they actually took and did the COVID of the album, they had it on a 4x4 original art and stuff at B Street over there where they had had the Peanut gallery where Mouse and Kelly worked. So I came over one because I would always go over and check on how the art is coming and stuff and how it looks and take sometimes pictures of it, Polaroids and show it to the band, to Jerry, mainly hanging.
- [73:59]
Jesse Jarno
On the lobby wall of the Cadillac Hotel behind where the band sat for the back cover was a stuffed alligator. But there aren't alligators on Mars.
- [74:07]
Rich Mahan
Kelly and Mouse wound up then decoring them as actual space creatures, as it were, instead of stuff making interesting and taking the alligator that was on the wall and stuff and adding extra legs to it.
- [74:23]
Jesse Jarno
The ugly rumors phrase was still floating around too.
- [74:26]
Rich Mahan
They would have like ugly rumors written in this weird unreadable kind of lettering and stuff. And it's on a separate piece laying there. And here's the Mars Hotel and here's the mar scape. And then he would take layers and put the actual words up there. Well, I grabbed that and took it just to see what it would look like up there. And Mouse and Keller stand behind me and I hold it up there like that, but I held it up upside down and backwards and they go perfect. And it came out that way. And that's how it got printed. So it was like this great mistake adding to art.
- [75:05]
Jesse Jarno
Andy Leonard.
- [75:06]
Rich Mahan
Fifteen years later, I ran into Mouse at some place at the bar in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I Said, hey, hey, whatever happened to the original artwork from that thing? Because it was all pasted together and drawn on. I mean, it was a real project. It shot okay and then printed fine. But I mean, it was a piece of work. It wasn't a hand painted all in one piece picture. You know, it was painted on pictures and then pictures pasted on pictures. He said the UPS truck ran over it. So I'm waiting to see. At one point in history, somebody's got the Mars Hotel artwork.
- [75:37]
Jesse Jarno
The Dead were in the studio through at least May 5, probably mixing up until it was time to go on tour. There were some culture clashes, according to some reports. Stephen Barnard, who co produced American Beauty, stopped by CBS during the sessions.
- [75:51]
Rich Mahan
Mars Hotel, which was mixed by Roy Siegel, a really old time CBS guy moved in from New York, very grumpy and he really hated that stuff. And I remember going to, to the sessions at Columbia and watching the, you know, just get this awful face and everybody's hovering around him and I'm getting out of here. I can't, you know, I just don't even see this.
- [76:13]
Jesse Jarno
Steve Brown remembers another result of the culture clash, which we don't wish on any engineer on either side of the generation gap.
- [76:20]
Rich Mahan
At one point when they actually dosed Roy, I think, which was kind of cool. Roy was having a good time. We got, got some stuff done, despite his kind of being a little bit, you know, different that night.
- [76:36]
Jesse Jarno
The Dead finished mixing the album sometime around May 5, with a tour set to open in Reno a week later. With the studio version of Unbroken Chain fresh in their minds, this would have been the time to perform it.
- [76:47]
Rich Mahan
Ned Legion, you did have a question that you asked me before about whether there was any consideration of doing it live while I was around. And there was, was no consideration of that. They were not planning on doing new tunes extensively because they weren't planning to play extensively. And what you have to understand is that for a long time, meaning in 1974, but even maybe reaching back into 73, in some ways there was a desire for the graceful Dead to retire. It hadn't been announced, it hadn't been discussed publicly, but In May of 74, it wasn't assumed that the Grateful Dead would have been around a year later. But that's an insider thing, not a public thing. There was murmurs of it, but I knew by Mars Hotel I knew something. I knew that these tours were important tours. They might be the last tours.
- [77:52]
Jesse Jarno
It was a topic that wouldn't be voiced out loud within the Dead until later that Summer. With the album done, though, they barely had time to pack. It was time to hit the road. That was from the band's first road gig of 1974 in Reno on May 12th. Now on the from the Mars Hotel 53 CD set. Earlier in the year, Richard Loren had replaced Sam Cutler as the band's booking agent.
- [78:32]
Rich Mahan
I was asked to book the tour as soon as I was hired. It came to be that the first thing on their agenda was the sound system. And, oh, we have the New York agent to do it. Jerry gave the nod to me, to John, and I booked the motherfucker. It was hell. Hell. I had to deal with all these fucking different promoters in every city. Every city had a different promoter. And that was before the era, really, of John Shear, who later on became my tour manager. And that tour, I did it all myself, man. I went through hell. I dealt with promoters in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, L.A. dealing with everything. The expenses, the sound system, the requirements, the food. It was more than booking a tour. I mean, I booked tours for the Airplane and the Doors and bail guys out of jail. I mean, I did a lot of that. But this was the big meatball. This was the big baby. I was put to test.
- [79:29]
Jesse Jarno
Richard had managed Jerry Garcia's career outside the dead since late 1972, but he was still new to the Grateful Dead mothership.
- [79:37]
Rich Mahan
It was grueling. It was one of the hardest experiences in my life as an agent or in anything, because I had to deal with the cocaine cowboys. It was hard. There was a lot of resentment of me coming in after Cutler because Cutler was really very close to all the crew. They were the guys that humped all the equipment. So when I came in, who the fuck are you, man? I hadn't been part of the 65, 1970, you know, get high on acid. I just came out of the business world of music in New York in 1970 and was dropped into Jerry's thing. And these guys, they were just ready to get on me. So it was a really, really hard tour to put together.
- [80:16]
Jesse Jarno
Another reason the tour was no picnic to put together was the wall of sound. It was a huge pain in the neck right from the start. Here's how Owsley Stanley remembered it to David Gans in 1991. Now in David's magnificent conversations with the Dead, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast. Thanks, David and Bear.
- [80:34]
Rich Mahan
The thing was such a monster. It required so many people, so much bureaucracy, so much logistics, so many trucks, so many stages, so many boxes, so Much wire, so many amps.
- [80:49]
Jesse Jarno
It became this huge thing, right?
- [80:51]
Rich Mahan
Enormous.
- [80:52]
Jesse Jarno
Because it was very inefficient.
- [80:54]
Rich Mahan
It was capable of producing a sound. But we produced the sound with three truckloads worth of stuff that you could do with One half of the stuff the dead carry normally is in the.
- [81:04]
Jesse Jarno
PA. Just 1/2 of that, or less.
- [81:06]
Rich Mahan
Than one half of that would produce the same kind of sound. As effective as that, if it were configured correctly.
- [81:14]
Jesse Jarno
It was configured unlike any other sound system pretty much before or since. I was out in the hall listening.
- [81:20]
Rich Mahan
To it or walking around or tweaking something on stage. There was no sound mixer. That big system did not have a sound mixer. That sound mixer was the musicians themselves. And to the extent that they could properly hear what was going on and to the extent that they were communicating with each other and with the sound technicians who were wandering around out in.
- [81:38]
Jesse Jarno
The hall was to the extent that.
- [81:39]
Rich Mahan
The mix was perfect and the sound was perfect.
- [81:42]
Jesse Jarno
Helping to realize, translate, refine and inspire Bayer's ideas was Ron Wickersheim, co founder of Alembic, with his wife, the incredible Susan Wickersham. David Gann spoke with them in 2014 about the wall. We've linked to both Alembic and David's projects@dead.net deadcast.
- [81:59]
Rich Mahan
Bear is a catalyst to bring forces.
- [82:01]
Jesse Jarno
Together is what he is. That's what he's good at.
- [82:04]
Rich Mahan
He recognizes talent. He does have some crazy ideas, let's face it. He got us to move to Nevada, but he never got me to move to Australia as much as he tried to.
- [82:14]
Jesse Jarno
Bear became the initial patron of Alembec, who established themselves in late 1968.
- [82:19]
Rich Mahan
Bear said we have to improve the quality of recorded live music.
- [82:23]
Jesse Jarno
That was his mandate and that's what we started doing.
- [82:27]
Rich Mahan
We had more contact with Bear than we did with a lot of the band. Most of our stuff was done at a limbic or on site at a show or something.
- [82:36]
Jesse Jarno
Bear was a driving force.
- [82:38]
Rich Mahan
Bear was into the details the same as I am. So our interactions was on details. I mean, he was about every solder joint, every detail of how you roll up the cords, how you make it, you know, how stuff gets packed for the road. He wasn't just an overview, he was involved. So it feels like if you leave out the details, then you're not showing what Bear was and what it was about. He could point out the problem. He was to going good at communicating between what the musician. There's a musician language and there's a engineering language that there's no translation Table.
- [83:17]
Jesse Jarno
At first, the Dead rented what was known as the Alembic pa. They didn't break it. Well, maybe a few times, but they did buy it, including the Wall of Sound.
- [83:26]
Rich Mahan
The Wall of Sound was a Grateful Dead project. They owned the Wall of Sound. We engineered it. They own owned it prior to that. Lots of people played through it. So it was just a PA for hire. But then when it needed to grow faster than we could self finance it, then the Grateful Dead took it over. The Olympic roadies for the PA became Grateful Dead employees. So they bought all of the equipment.
- [83:53]
Jesse Jarno
Ron went on the road with the Dead on and off from late 1972 through early 1974, where he'd scout out a venue in advance and figure out the best way to address its acoustics.
- [84:04]
Rich Mahan
We had this collection of devices that we could array in completely different way to be optimized for the hall. So I would go ahead, set it up in my mind what would do. And the promoter and local scaffolding guys would have the gear, all kinds of gear, to make what we needed. Then that road crew would come and we discuss what the plan would be. And they would do. I mean, you can't imagine how. I don't think any other road crew in the world doing stuff maybe outside of the big road crews they have for motion pictures that do these amazing things with big budgets, but with the size, budget, and the dedication of the road crew. They would take this, you know, saw wood, make shelving, do the scaffolding construction, and we would make a sound system for that room that was appropriate to the acoustics of that room.
- [85:05]
Jesse Jarno
Ron wasn't always the most social member of the Dead family. He's much more comfortable with books. Crew member Richie Peckner, who helped assemble the Wall of Sound, attests to this.
- [85:15]
Rich Mahan
I would really close with Ron when we go on the road together. We'd room together because only a few people would like to get up early on the road. And he and I were two of them. So we decided we'd room together so he wouldn't be in somebody's room who was staying up late at night in order to sleep in. When we go to these different cities, the first thing he'd do is go to the library and then look up research on sound engineering over the past 50, 60, 100 years, whatever, and wind up extracting information out of these historical textbooks or reports that often would be kept in some secure place in the library. They weren't part of the public part of the library, but he was able to get access to the documents because he was an engineer. And that was fascinating because he was maintaining that a lot of this stuff had been figured out and nobody had really just applied it to what the Grateful Dead was trying to do. So he kind of was approaching his design from existing research and existing experiments. So that was pretty interesting to see how he worked that.
- [86:24]
Jesse Jarno
Originally, Bayer's idea for the PA was to mimic a home stereo. But Ron Wickersham helped Bayer get to the central idea behind the Wall of Sound, which was a configuration of multiple single point sound system systems, one for each musician and the vocalists.
- [86:38]
Rich Mahan
I taught him the single one thing, not the idea, because other people had done that. It was a common thing. But what Bear would do is you didn't hang out on stage or stuff. You walked around the audience and ran around the audience and listened really carefully to what it was, and you could hear these cone filtering effects effects and the comb filtering effects in a large hall are enormously bad. They're just crazy. They still happen. If you buy the most expensive sound system, it's the interface of acoustics. It's physics. It's not the quality of the individual components.
- [87:22]
Jesse Jarno
Not only did Richie Pechner help build the Wall of Sound and set it up at shows across the country in 1974, he took many wonderful pictures, which you've likely seen adorning Grateful Dead archival releases.
- [87:33]
Rich Mahan
We were literally building it right up till that tour. It was a work in progress. It was a kind of design as you go adventure. There were engineers and a lot of input on what it should be. And then between that and having it made and taken on the road, there was a slight disconnect in that the chain of command wasn't as clear as it could be.
- [88:01]
Jesse Jarno
Journalist Brian Anderson is working on a book about the Wall of Sound called Loud and Clear, to be published next year by St. Martin's Press. We've posted a link@dead.net deadcast.
- [88:11]
Rich Mahan
They had their custom staging and custom scaffolding that was in effect there. But notably, if you look at pictures of that Reno show, you see that the work that was being done on the modular center Cluster was complete.
- [88:25]
Jesse Jarno
The modular center cluster of the Wall of Sound is the beautiful curved array that delivered the vocals hung in the center of the stage.
- [88:32]
Rich Mahan
The center cluster was actually built at an iron shop down the street because the inside is all metal. And then we encased it and put the speakers in after the metal frame was made. Counter Zippers Ironworks. They make stair rails, handrails, gates, anything that could be Welded. Early on, it was a blacksmith shop. When his dad had it, it was a blacksmith shop. And it kind of morphed into a metal fabrication shop. And the owner was, at first, was a little skeptical of us if he's coming over, trying to engage him in this thing. But we were paying for him to weld and experiment, and he kind of guided us in some of the metal configuration. So we knew what we wanted and he knew how to make it happen. So it's a good experience.
- [89:26]
Jesse Jarno
And so the crowning piece of the wall came together.
- [89:29]
Rich Mahan
That center cluster actually was two halves that we bolted together, actually two quarters. And it made a half because it was too heavy to make it one piece. There was so much innovation and engineering going on to get that to the point where it was roadworthy. It's just amazing that we were able to pull it off because when you look back on it, some of us knew some things and none of us knew everything. But to collaborate and pull it off, to me just seems like an incredible achievement. Knowing all, all the ups and downs and false starts and dead end leads and just everything that goes on that went on to get to the point where it was working, I think was really an incredible journey.
- [90:17]
Jesse Jarno
Though the Wall of Sound kept changing. The introduction of the cluster was a turning point.
- [90:22]
Rich Mahan
That final wall of Sound thing with the aluminum center cluster and all that, at that point, I didn't need to go on the road because they had to only book that in the halls that were appropriate for that.
- [90:36]
Jesse Jarno
On May 12, the wall got its biggest test yet. It had been tried at home at Winterland and the unforgiving Cow palace, but Reno was its first massive outdoor show. There was even a bit of local panic when word got out about what the Dead were bringing to town. A few days before the Dead arrived, the Reno Evening Gazette ran with the front page headline, new rock Concert Fear super powerful Sound. And it was left to the promoters to explain that, yes, this was the most powerful sound system ever built, but it wasn't necessarily the loudest. And when the Dead finally got to town and set up, that was when Wally.
- [91:11]
Rich Mahan
Do not call me that.
- [91:12]
Jesse Jarno
Met the Washoe Zephyr winds.
- [91:14]
Rich Mahan
You all got some great wind out here. I gotta tell you, if we could be as half as. As long as this wind, we'd be doing all right.
- [91:26]
Jesse Jarno
I'll just let the wall read from Wikipedia here.
- [91:28]
Rich Mahan
The Washoe Zephyr is a seasonal diurnal wind which occurs across western Nevada, just east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It blows primarily in the Summer from mid afternoon until late in the evening, from the west to southwest becoming quite gusty. Does anybody out there know what time the Washoe Zephyr pulls out of town? Well, pray for it to pull out soon, would you?
- [91:55]
Jesse Jarno
The May 12 show from Reno now comprises discs two and three of from the Mars Hotel 50, where engineer Dave Glasser also had to do battle with the Washoe Zephyr. After listening to the long circulating tape, I'm ready to deem. David Glasser 1, Washoe Zephyr 0.
- [92:11]
Rich Mahan
At Reno, there was no sound check. We were literally plugging stuff in when the show was supposed to start. And because it was outdoors, there were people in there. Usually you can keep the doors closed while you're setting up, but an outdoor show, they can't have people rushing in, so they let them in earlier. They were literally working while people were hanging out and trying to get a good spot and all that.
- [92:35]
Jesse Jarno
Steve Brown from Grateful Dead Records was in Reno for the Wall's road debut.
- [92:38]
Rich Mahan
The scariest part, though, is when we took it to Reno and had to put it up there. And that was the first time we did an outdoor gig with it. And there was like a goddamn hurricane winds up there that day. It was really scary. Everybody that had to play on stage with this thing behind him was like freaking out. It was like, oh. They kept looking over their shoulder and we weren't really sure. And it was in this big open field, a big open football field, whatever.
- [93:05]
Jesse Jarno
Drummer Billy Kreutzman was a bit skeptical.
- [93:07]
Rich Mahan
The first time he saw it up. His riser was underneath it. And he said, I'm not playing under that. But that was a general rule. He didn't move under it when it went indoors. He just said, I'm not playing under that. It was like horribly scary for him, I'm sure.
- [93:29]
Jesse Jarno
And, you know, fair.
- [93:30]
Rich Mahan
He had inside information. He knew all the people that put it together. Trust me. The vocal stack that was right above his head. Yeah, those were all the vocal things. Yeah, those were just dangling. That was hanging like a big chandelier. We were not convinced that we'd figured everything out engineering wise, in terms of what it would take to like, say, knock over one of those stacks. So we were all kind of watching and paying attention and maybe a little paranoia would creep in, there'd be a gust and you'd look up. Did that move because the last thing you wanted to do was kill a band member.
- [94:12]
Jesse Jarno
Oh, well, only one thing to do. The Washoe Zephyr is pretty obvious in the photos. Of the day. Listener Eric Gray left us this story@stories.dead.net he left for the show from South Lake Tahoe.
- [94:34]
Rich Mahan
I stood out in front of my place with a big sign, I remember written on cardboard. It just said dead on it or the dead. So that's all it took. And we got our rides and we ended up at the show. And what I remember with the show is the wind, man, the wind was like blowing and those big wall of sound speakers were like swaying. And we're wondering, damn, you know, what's going to happen with those speakers. And really also the sound was getting blown around in a strange kind of way too plan out here for you folks. This glorious afternoon and all this wind kind of makes you feel humble. It might make you feel humble, man, it just makes me sweat. And I'd take in just a little smidgen of acid. It was more than enough. And I'm sitting up there on the, I guess it would be the eastern, very top of the eastern stands, right? We were up there and we can hear the sound, we can hear the music. We're dancing around and the sound is kind of blowing around with the wind and the speakers are swaying and.
- [95:51]
Jesse Jarno
But in the second stage that there's some excellent jamming. I love this big descending peak right before the only verse of the other.
- [95:57]
Rich Mahan
One, Spanish Lady Come to Me and.
- [96:24]
Jesse Jarno
Then the full two part Mind Left Body theme with Garcia on slide acting as a bridge into road. Jimmy Ron Racko of Grateful Dead Records had a pretty memorable time in Reno.
- [97:03]
Rich Mahan
The Grateful Dead played in Reno, Nevada and on the stage during the gig I proposed to Emily and we drove to the Chapel of Promise in Reno, Nevada. Keith, Donna and Weir got in the backseat of the car. We walked off the stage. They got into my car and my car was not a roomy car. It was a two door Volkswagen with back seats. And they were singing acapella, going to the chapel and going to get married. Three of them in the back.
- [97:52]
Jesse Jarno
The Wall's second road gig in Missoula, Montana is now Dave's pick's.
- [98:02]
Rich Mahan
It.
- [98:28]
Jesse Jarno
But mostly for our storytelling purposes. We're going to let Steve Brown and Richie Pechner tell us a story about the Wall of Sound's first international experience. Take it away, Steve.
- [98:38]
Rich Mahan
We played Missoula, Montana at the university. We go to the hotel after the gig and everybody is told because we're going to go to Vancouver. If you've got personal stash, make sure you give it to the crew to put in the trucks. You take the speakers out, you put the stuff in behind the speakers, you screw the speakers back in, you drive the truck into Canada. Real simple. Anyway, so we get in the station wagon the next morning and Jerry's sitting there, I'm sitting in there and stuff. Now is everybody got their stuff taken care of and they don't have it with them? And it's in the trucks. Jerry's yeah, man. Okay, so we get into Vancouver, we get our bags, we get in line, we go through the customs guy, Jerry's in front of me, I'm there with my suitcase and they put it up on the counter and they open it up. T shirt, Levi's, baggie. Here's this donkey dick sized kula from our Maui ranch, you know, of Maui Waui. And. And the guy is this older guy, you know, looks at it, holds it up in front of Jerry like that and he goes, what is this? J says, oh, a fan gave it to me tea. Well, at that moment I'm having a glan kong, which is a sudden rush of to the heart. I was five people behind him in the customs line. I mean, it was like we were going, oh shit, what a bonehead move. The crew would pride ourselves. In fact, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this for broadcast, but doesn't matter now. We used to, because we were building all this equipment. We would build in hidden stash places in certain pieces of equipment. So we knew what the liability was. And we also knew we needed to take certain things with us that we didn't want to be discovered. So we would take great lengths to be able to conceal things cleverly and always got away with it. So to see that, it was kind of like, what was he thinking? Because I'm next in line, I know I'm clean, but look at the. This guy, he's holding up. And then the guy looks over to the exit doors over there and there's this hippie standing over there, long haired hippie guy. And the customs guy signals to this long haired hippie guy to come over. I go, what? And this hippie guy comes over, obviously an agent also. And they both turn their backs to us and they're holding the bag up, up, and he opens it up for this guy to smell. And the guy's smelling it. And then the guy happens to look over and do a double take on who it is that's standing there scared as. And it's Jerry Garcia. And so this hippie guy who's an agent apparently goes to the guy that's found this thing in his bag there. The custom agent. And the custom agents as well. And the guy goes, I don't know. And I'm going, yes, we're out. We're free. We're free. The customs guy wasn't going for it. Custom guy says, we're gonna have this guy security person take you to the back room. And I'm next in line. And so they went through my bag really carefully, my suitcase at the moment, it was like, oh, my God, you know, what's gonna happen now? I mean, we knew it was against the law. Nobody was kidding themselves about the danger. And the crew took it very seriously when we were on the road. So we took extra care in working things out equipment wise. So, yeah, it was kind of like, oops, somebody forgot. As soon as I got to the phone, I called the office and they said, call Hal Cant. And then Hal can't. Called back through the office and said, the deal is to find the money. Most expensive lawyer in Vancouver and find the main guy, the main big guy there and get his name, you know, I'll get his name. Actually, Hal was trying to help from his end, and we did. It was about 15 hours later or so. Jerry's back at the hotel. But what wound up happening is they banned Jerry from Canada for, like, two years, and Jerry was banned from being in Canada for two years. So that was the worst it. But in any case, we got to play the gig and nobody got hurt. But the grand clone was definitely one of those moments where, oh, my God, this is the end of everything as we know it. You know, sudden rush of to the heart.
- [103:38]
Jesse Jarno
But with two off days between the Missoula gig on May 14 and the Vancouver show in the 17, there was not only time to liberate their Garcia, but actually get everything set up properly.
- [103:48]
Rich Mahan
Brian Anderson, the Vancouver 74 Pacific Northwest Wall sound shows. That was a moment where they actually had time for a soundtrack. So they had everything set up. They were able to call the band. They came over from the hotel, had some time before doors opened to do like, a proper, just sort of like experimental, like, let's get weird kind of sound check. And a lot of the road crew were looking around at each other, kind of like patting each other on the backs, like, holy shit. Like, we did it. So that Vancouver stop was definitely like another momentous plot point in the life of the Wall of Sound. Everybody could chill a little bit in a tour that had no chill. Up to that moment, everything had been hectic and. And barely able to pull it off. By showtime, you could sense this relief that everybody was feeling really good about what we had done, because, boom, we were able to sound check it. It sounded absolutely incredible. It was almost like the musicians wanted to, one at a time, come off the stage and go out in front and hear what it sounded like, because we were just going, oh, man, this is killer.
- [105:02]
Jesse Jarno
The Vancouver 74 show is now on the Pacific Northwest box set. Highly recommended. One small or big thing to note is that the PNE Coliseum in Vancouver is where Owsley's original sound system for the Dead met its own final defeat in the summer of 1966.
- [105:17]
Rich Mahan
We'll use a simple syllable to test our microphones tonight. The syllable is narc, narc, narc this. Narc, narc, nar, narc, narc, narc. The. That's what a dog with a hair lip says. Grateful Dead from San Francisco.
- [105:43]
Jesse Jarno
You can hear some of those gigs on a record store day release from 2017. After that, Owsley went off to make more acid and eventually reconceive his approach to live sound. They were still figuring it out.
- [105:54]
Rich Mahan
One of the things that became obvious, I think, in the first week was the thing that took the longest was the scaffolding. So we'd show up with a 40 foot truck with the PA in it and have to wait because the scaffolding hadn't been erected in time. So that was easily solvable by ordering a second scaffolding setup to leapfrog each gig. So when we got there, the scaffolding was up and we could start setting up the wall. The frequency of the gigs was based on a previous setup, and it didn't adjust to the new setup, which took longer. It physically just took longer to get it ready. Once you got to the venue, we were basically behind the eight ball in terms of getting it set up in the time frame that the tour had set out. So one of the unique things about that one photo of mine with the band on the stage is that was the first time that we had it set up and running before the doors open so the band could actually do a sound check. I think it was by then abundantly clear from there on out that the rig was never set up the same way, because things were just changing at such a rapid pace. How they were loading in and out and how they locked the cabinets together, how they angled certain speakers to enhance the directionality of the sound to fit the space, and on and on and on. In everything that they did with the wall, they were always trying to figure out how to be more efficient. Everything was always changing, and Bob Weir especially was always wanting to try different things and change things up gig to gig. I know he maybe also had a hand in actualizing some of the ported speaker cabinets that you can see on Wall of Sound shows. If you look closely at some of the pictures in his stacks, you can see some of those speakers are actually ported, which is interesting. Garcia, by contrast, had a way of trying to keep a stability when it came to his rig within the rig. He was open to using Macintosh amps, of course, the famous Bugman amp, but he kind of always liked his Fender twin too. He liked stability.
- [108:34]
Jesse Jarno
There wasn't going to be a lot of stability with the Wall of Sound or return to its story next time. From the Mars Hotel was released in June 1974. Surely it wasn't long before a Deadhead wondered when they might hear Unbroken Chain live, or if they'd only just missed it. Some Deadhead interviewers asked Jerry Garcia about it in 1981.
- [109:12]
Rich Mahan
I don't remember that we've ever done.
- [109:14]
Jesse Jarno
On Broken Chain, but that didn't stop it from being a constant topic of speculation among heads on the Usenet. The REC Music GDED frequently asked questions file included. Question 28 has unbroken chain ever been performed live?
- [109:28]
Rich Mahan
No. Apparently there is a version of Unbroken Chain from the Mars Hotel studio session circulating on copies of 12.12.73 from the Omni, but it is not a sound check. Rather, from the above mentioned sessions in 1974. Christian Crumlish There was always a little bit of roar around Unbroken Chain. You probably remember there was that rumor that when they finally played it that would be the end or something like that.
- [109:55]
Jesse Jarno
In fact, I have heard that rumor, but I'm not sure I ever heard it Prior to the Dead's last show. Did anyone get in touch@stories.dead.net but it still became a legit fan favorite from the New Yorker, Nick Palmgarten I got.
- [110:10]
Rich Mahan
To know Mars Hotel when it came out on CD. I think this was like 1986 or something. A friend of mine had a fancy stereo and was the first guy I knew that had a CD player. So that was this new technology, this was this brand new thing and he had like, like six CDs because they were new and because of the way they looked, the way that they shine and you get that little rainbow on them. They look like space age, you know. Now they're almost completely obsolete.
- [110:38]
Jesse Jarno
In 1986 from the Mars Hotel was the only Grateful that album on CD from the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab.
- [110:44]
Rich Mahan
We were Deadheads. We were used to listening to crappy bootlegs and crappy tapes. So this sounded great. I thought, oh, digital sound, this is the shit. It changes everything. I think what originally attracted me to Mars Hotel was it was this sort of feast of good sound, like just the immaculate sound of it. There was that jet engine sound passing from one speaker to the other in stereo on Unbroken Chain. There's something about that. It was like, wow, you know, and then in a way, it's, you know, it was like a premonition of the 80s, smack dab in 1974. And of course, this was at the time we were listening to this CD. It was in the 80s. And so that was the sound that we were sort of surrounded by in real time, the chimney. Since years kind of 83 to 86, and all those gongs and chimes and stuff. Mars Hotel on CD seemed consistent with that era and the way things sounded when you were at the shows or when you were getting suddenly these new really crisp soundboards of, like, 85, 86. And so it kind of weirdly dovetailed with what we were into. And it was a different kind of thing from, like, that Woody Americana of the albums that preceded it, which we didn't even get to experience firsthand as much because the sound, such as it was at those shows was sort of bigger and more modern, I guess.
- [112:22]
Jesse Jarno
It would take another decade or so for the Dead to bring Unbroken Chain into modernity. Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux Breakouts were.
- [112:29]
Rich Mahan
The best when you were there. When you heard about you. Whether it was Dark Star, Help on the Way or Addicts or whatever it.
- [112:34]
Jesse Jarno
Was, they were the best.
- [112:35]
Rich Mahan
But I gotta say, Unbroken Chain could have been the most unexpected breakout and largely the most welcome one as well.
- [112:44]
Jesse Jarno
In the spring of 1995, the grateful Ed finally got back to it.
- [112:49]
Rich Mahan
What's the first chord there? E minor, F major, 7, D minor, 7, E minor, G.
- [113:04]
Jesse Jarno
That's from a sound check in Philadelphia in March 1995, where they really had to put back together piece by piece. Phil's son Graham had requested it, and who is Phil to say no? Two days later they did it.
- [113:16]
Rich Mahan
I still listen to the audience tape of the breakout in Philadelphia, and I get goosebumps listening to it because they end the first set with a typical first set closer. And then they don't walk off stage and then they go into it and you're like, oh, what's this little thing? And you know. And then you. When people pick up on the chord progress and then Phil starts singing. It's like goosebumps talking about it. Who I had friends who saw saw a lot of shows in 95 and they got to see it four or five, six times. I envy that. I wish I had seen it.
- [114:31]
Jesse Jarno
And the Dead went ahead and played it 10 times in 1995. The song has been in the repertoire of a number of post Grateful Dead projects, including the Dead, Further and of course Phil Lesh and Friends. Like the classic shows with Trey Anastasio, Paige McConnell, Steve Kimok and John Molo. In 1990, listener and journalist Seth Mnookin shared a pretty powerful Unbroken Chain story with us.
- [115:13]
Rich Mahan
I started listening to the Dead in high school, and I fell for them pretty hard almost right away.
- [115:18]
Jesse Jarno
But it wasn't until 1990 that I began doing real touring.
- [115:22]
Rich Mahan
I hit five shows that March, including the March 24th show in Albany. That became dozing at the nick and.
- [115:28]
Jesse Jarno
The RFK show that summer that included.
- [115:31]
Rich Mahan
Just an absolutely phenomenal 25 minute Dark Star. And so there were also seven or.
- [115:37]
Jesse Jarno
Eight official releases that I listened to.
- [115:38]
Rich Mahan
A ton, including Mars Hotel. My favorite song on the album was always Unbroken Chain, and there wasn't really.
- [115:45]
Jesse Jarno
Anything in second place.
- [115:46]
Rich Mahan
I loved everything about it.
- [116:03]
Jesse Jarno
Not long after I graduated from college.
- [116:05]
Rich Mahan
And moved to New York, I developed a heroin habit of my own and I was high the last time I ever saw the band, which was June.
- [116:12]
Jesse Jarno
19, 1995 and Giant Stadium. The first set was rough, but the.
- [116:18]
Rich Mahan
Second set was absolutely brutal.
- [116:20]
Jesse Jarno
There was an Unbroken Chain, but it didn't go well.
- [116:23]
Rich Mahan
The next two years were incredibly dark ones. So dark that even now, more than.
- [116:28]
Jesse Jarno
A quarter of a century later, it.
- [116:30]
Rich Mahan
Scares me to think about them.
- [116:32]
Jesse Jarno
A lot of people I knew died during those years. Seth tried to get clean, and again and again.
- [116:38]
Rich Mahan
My stint at McLean's was the 12th.
- [116:40]
Jesse Jarno
Time I'd been in some sort of detox facility over the previous 24 months. So one night on the outside was incredibly risky.
- [116:49]
Rich Mahan
I was planning on spending that night with a woman I knew, and I biked to her apartment with my walkman. On listening to Unbroken Chain, there's a freedom about biking on near deserted city streets at night that is almost spiritual. But that night, as I was listening to Unbroken Chain, I had what I guess I would call now some sort of moment of clarity. Addiction, for me at least, was all consuming. I couldn't give myself over to anything else when I was in the throes of full blown addiction, because my top.
- [117:19]
Jesse Jarno
Priority was always, always locating, acquiring and.
- [117:23]
Rich Mahan
Using dope and in that way, looking back, it felt like I was in.
- [117:29]
Jesse Jarno
Some sort of prison on my bike that night.
- [117:33]
Rich Mahan
Everything about Unbroken Chain, its freedom itself.
- [117:36]
Jesse Jarno
Ecstasy, the way it conveyed the wonder.
- [117:38]
Rich Mahan
Of human creation and creativity.
- [117:58]
Jesse Jarno
The blissful.
- [117:59]
Rich Mahan
Commingling of consciousnesses that's part of group.
- [118:01]
Jesse Jarno
Improvisation and experimentation, felt like giant arrows of neon showing me what might be.
- [118:07]
Rich Mahan
Possible if I could quit using dope. And by extension, the pitiful, painful display.
- [118:13]
Jesse Jarno
I'd seen in Giant Stadium a few years earlier was where I would be headed otherwise.
- [118:18]
Rich Mahan
I didn't use that night and flew.
- [118:20]
Jesse Jarno
To Florida the next day.
- [118:22]
Rich Mahan
And I haven't used heroin in more than 26 years. I turned 52 in a couple of weeks, which is just a year younger.
- [118:29]
Jesse Jarno
Than Jerry was when he died.
- [118:30]
Rich Mahan
And apart from the songs on American Beauty and Working Man's Dead, unbroken Chain.
- [118:35]
Jesse Jarno
Is one of the few studio tracks I listen to regularly, and it always.
- [118:39]
Rich Mahan
Reminds me of how close I came to not being here today and how.
- [118:43]
Jesse Jarno
Grateful I am that I chose a different path. Unbroken Chain isn't a song covered casually, and it doesn't usually get performed outside the Dead world. We've spoken a lot on the Dead cast about how the Dead's music has seeded artists that followed them with both their songbook and approach. The righteous band Animal Collective did, however, sample Unbroken Chain on their tune what Would I want sky in 2009.
- [119:39]
Rich Mahan
You feeling lonely? You're not the only Is everything all right? You're feeling stuck.
- [119:52]
Jesse Jarno
That was four words from Unbroken Chain. Sky, Woe, I walk looped over and over until it resembles the phrase what Would I Want sky to talk about how Unbroken Chain seeded a whole new song. Please welcome from Animal Collective, Davey Terre, sometimes known as Dave Portner. Dave's close to my age, one of the last generation to discover the band while they were still the Grateful Dead.
- [120:15]
Rich Mahan
I got into the Dead via Skeletons from the Closet, Greatest Hits. When I was in fifth grade, maybe got the cassette. I had cousins that were into the band, and I would just listen to a lot of the music that they were listening to. So, yeah, I got that tape and from there just dive into everything. And Touch of Gray was around that time. And so they were kind of visible in a lot of realms. And I started to go see them or just have an interest to go check them out, like in the early 90s. 91, 92 till the end, seeing the RFK shows, saw some Philly shows, Spectrum. I had infrared roses. Face was huge for me. And I. I remember just being at the RFK shows. And that just being, like, such a moment, I mean, it was definitely a lot different in the, say, in the 90s as it was compared to the 80s or like, earlier times when they had been doing it. So it's cool that way, too. But we got into psychedelic and, like, you kind of like, freak out jammier music, like, really early on. That was a really important part to music to us, and kind of like the improvisational part. So having the Dead around at that time to still be able to check that out was awesome.
- [121:49]
Jesse Jarno
The future members of Animal Collective got way into the Dead together, liked them a lot, and collected tapes.
- [121:55]
Rich Mahan
In high school with Brian, there was a guy that worked at our school cafeteria that was ahead and just would make us tapes and then simultaneously got into all the records.
- [122:06]
Jesse Jarno
But the members of Animal Collective got into a lot of different sounds together. And the group they formed didn't sound much like the Dead, except in spirit.
- [122:28]
Rich Mahan
You need your lunch, you need a crush Think too much about the cry Soul capture doesn't need a reason.
- [122:49]
Jesse Jarno
That was Soul Capturer from Animal Collective's most recent album, Isn't it now? Animal Collective are a psychedelic band in a different way than the Dead, aiming for transcendence with a pretty different sonic palette. But live Animal Collective transition between songs, with unknowns in between, play material they haven't yet recorded, and keep pushing forward. In 2008 and 2009, they assembled their successful album Merryweather Post Pavilion, named after the local amphitheater where, not coincidentally, the Dead played and they got into their newest fade.
- [123:20]
Rich Mahan
We were delving heavily into sampling stuff in that time, like the Merryweather era. I think Noah started leading the way with the person pitch stuff and just kind of looping stuff. We were just trying to gather a lot of songs. I would just go through time periods of diving for samples or diving for a loop that would be cool enough or sound good enough to work for a song. I was most concerned about getting, like, the right beat and having it be, like a good break or a good beaty loop to get the rhythm going. I'll find the loop and then try and see if I can make a vocal melody over top of the loop.
- [123:57]
Jesse Jarno
It's a different kind of songwriting than figuring out chords on a guitar or a piano. During the process, Dave remembered his Deadhead training.
- [124:04]
Rich Mahan
I'd been into Unbroken Chain since hearing the record for the first time kind of in junior high. Just thought one night, oh, maybe I could go to that song. That seems like an unlikely Dead song to sample. Like, it might be Tougher to sample something more popular, say, like Scarlet Bonus from Mars Hotel or something like that. And I think because it had that kind of reverse. It almost sounds like a reverse bell plus modular thing happening in it that keeps coming back into the song. I think that element in it. I thought of it as a loop, a potential loop. I wasn't, like, necessarily trying to get the loop that I did.
- [124:41]
Jesse Jarno
Looping has lots of origins, but nearly any history will point back to Steve Reich's pivotal 1965 piece, it's gonna Rain, where the composer looped a sample of a San Francisco street preacher named Brother Walter until he became a new piece of music. It's Gonna Rain and the origins of looping and minimalism share a peculiar Grateful dead connection. In 1964, Steve Reich was playing in a new music ensemble with Phil Lesh and Tom Constantinople. Reich made his original live tape of It's Gonna Rain with a tape deck he shared with Lesh. So with that in mind.
- [125:24]
Rich Mahan
Whoa, I woke sky Whoa, sky Whoa, I woke sky Whoa, sky Whoa, I.
- [125:35]
Jesse Jarno
Woke sky Steve didn't have access to the multi tracks, though.
- [125:39]
Rich Mahan
But then, by by chance almost, I grabbed the section that I did, which has Phil saying the word sky first. Actually, that's the start of the loop, but, like, the more the loop gets going, it gets reversed, so sky comes later. So in my head, it just became Phil saying, what would I want, Sky? What would I want?
- [125:59]
Jesse Jarno
Sky Whoa, I awoke sky Whoa, I.
- [126:03]
Rich Mahan
Awoke sky Whoa, I awoke sky When I did the chord change with the computer, just sort of messing around to see. Seeing if I could have the. The. The chord change in the song, it just worked so well to me. It became so catchy. I, like, couldn't stop. I couldn't get it out of my head. So I just felt like that was the loop. That was the one I had to use. The sky gets filled up too fast in the T. See, man saying, you gotta give me some money Stop the daydream indoors when the point of horizon is hiding from you what was you once? Sky, Sky Will I want sky Sky.
- [127:03]
Jesse Jarno
It led a few years later to an invitation from Mickey Hart to collaborate at Hart Studio in California.
- [127:09]
Rich Mahan
I went out there to his home studio, his house, spent some days checking out the music. He gave me a large notebook of Hunter lyrics. Listen to stuff he had recorded. Just try and, like, come up with some. Some melodies and some singing, like, top lines over. Over it. And it was. Yeah, it was a fun time just to kind of have the freedom to just take the songs to where I was staying at night and listen to them and try and work with the lyrics to be able to come up with some stuff. How are you to know me? When life is finally run how are you to tell me from another wayward son? How are you to know me?
- [127:58]
Jesse Jarno
That was Wayward Son for Mickey Hart's 2017 album Ramu.
- [128:02]
Rich Mahan
It's awesome to feel connected to that musically. Their music means so much to me and has, you know, changed my perception of music so much.
- [128:10]
Jesse Jarno
The same way that the Grateful Dead are connected in the 60s to figures like Steve Reich and in the 70s to Ned Lagin, Dave Portner's presence on Ramu connects them to the next waves of musicians perpetuating itself down through the generations. Westward in the wagons across the sands of time. And maybe something about an unbroken chain.
- [128:31]
Rich Mahan
Of the western window. Broken chain of you and me. Let me hear that. Let me hear the whole thing, would you? Just through the phones. Well, I never got to see the Dead play Unbroken Chain live, but I did see Phil and Friends played a couple of years ago, and I count that as a win. I absolutely love the Jam section. It's such a cool progression. Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. Friends. Friends. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode. Ned Lagin, Dave Portner, Alan Trist, Ron Rakow, Andy Leonard, Steve Brown, Richard Loren, Richie Peckner, Steven Barncard, Eric Bray, David Lemieux, Brian Kehue, Nick Palmgarden, Nicholas Merriweather, Kristen Krumlish, Sean o', Donnell, Brian Anderson and Seth Minooka. Extra special thanks to friend of the.
- [129:56]
Jesse Jarno
Dead cast, David Gans.
- [129:57]
Rich Mahan
His ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive are invaluable to us. Thank you, David. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you in the next episode. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Doran Tyson. All rights reserved.