Jesse Jarno (4:02)

At the start of the Here Comes Sunshine box set, time travelers step out into Des Moines, Iowa, May 13, 1973, where the grateful Dead played outdoors at the state fairgrounds. It was an epic show, one of the longest the band ever played. And we've got a suitably epic episode.

Donna Jean Godchaux (4:26)

Sunshine, Sunshine.

Jesse Jarno (4:42)

Grateful. They had archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux, the Dead by this point.

Rich Mahan (4:46)

By May, they'd already done two quite extensive tours. They'd done the Midwest tour in February and then the March tour into April 2nd.

Jesse Jarno (4:54)

They'd hardly taken the six weeks off. In mid April, the band officially formed their own record company, Grateful Dead Records. As we talked about in our first Here Comes Sunshine episode. And Jerry Garcia played extensively with both Merle Saunders and Olden in the way. As we discussed last time in Des Moines, the Grateful Dead began two and a half months of gigs that would build to their biggest ever live performance later that summer at Watkins Glen. The Des Moines recording on Here Comes Sunshine represents a pretty major upgrade from what had previously circulated among collectors.

Rich Mahan (5:26)

I find the Des Moines show to be something that start to finish is the Grateful Dead laying it on the Midwest where they had just played. They had just done a Midwest tour in February with all this new material.

Steve White (5:39)

And here they.

Rich Mahan (5:40)

And they were playing arenas. It was February, smaller arenas. And here they are playing to 15 or 20,000 people outdoors.

Steve White (5:46)

And they're saying, okay everyone, this is.

Rich Mahan (5:49)

The new Grateful Dead.

Steve White (5:50)

Get used to it. Wake up to find out that you.

Jesse Jarno (5:56)

Are the eyes of the world.

Donna Jean Godchaux (6:02)

The.

Jesse Jarno (6:02)

Heart has its beaches, its homeland and.

Steve White (6:06)

Thoughts of its soul.

Rich Mahan (6:12)

We now discover that you are the.

Donna Jean Godchaux (6:15)

Song that the morning sings.

Jesse Jarno (6:21)

The heart has its beats. Unless otherwise noted, all the music in today's episode comes from the May 13, 1973 show in Des Moines. The Dead had just released Europe 72 seven months earlier in November. Since coming back from the Europe tour, they'd introduced a bit of new material, specifically Stella Blue and Mississippi Half step. But in February 1973 added a major batch of new Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter songs to the eyes of the World. Here Comes Sunshine, China Doll, they Love each Other, Road, Jimmy Loose, Lucy and Wave that Flag, which would become US Blues. And they certainly didn't stop playing their older, newer songs. Now they're newer, older songs.

Rich Mahan (7:03)

These shows are like 30 and 32 songs per show. And that's most eras in the Grateful Dead's history. A show is 22 to 25 songs. These are 33, 32 song shows. They don't want to stop playing. Some of them are three set shows they want to play. And they aren't just little songs. There's 20 minute playing in the bands, there's 20 minute other ones. There's things like that.

Jesse Jarno (7:48)

Like a lot of excellent things. Grateful Dead's Des Moines 1973 show began in a record store. Please welcome from Music Circuit, Steve White.

Steve White (7:57)

I had a record store, my wife and I did for 23 years, December 15, 1971, and it closed July 10, 1994. It was records, underground music rags we'd distribute there. It was a head shop too. Pipes, papers, all those things as well, tapestries, sold some stereo equipment. Every now and then I had a good line on stereo equipment. So people would come in, give me their order. I'd order from a distributor and then sell that too.

Jesse Jarno (8:30)

In the early 1970s, music circuit would live up to its name, becoming the state's most popular independent record store and a central node for live music in Iowa and the surrounding regions. And from the Music Circuit Record Store came Music Circuit Presentations Co founded by the self described country bumpkins, Steve White, known as Whizzer, along with his friends John Hoch and Jim Henneberry. Please welcome John Hoc.

John Hoch (8:55)

Steve and Jim and I are long, long time friends and we were, you know, entered in this together. But I think one of the amazing things is we were all very close friends from high school. We stayed friends, we did all this promoting and here we are 50 years later and we're still all very close friends.

Jesse Jarno (9:15)

With a home base at Music Circuit, wizard had begun to sell tickets for concerts in neighboring cities and do promotion around them.

Steve White (9:22)

The way it started was we wanted to make money. We thought promoting rock concerts would be a fun and quick way to make money. And we've our history before we promoted this Dead show was one show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, REO Speedwagon. And after we promoted that show, we thought we were big promoters and on the go. That's how from there wanted to promote the Grateful Dead at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

Jesse Jarno (10:15)

The newly formed Music Circuit presentation certainly aim big.

Steve White (10:19)

The fairgrounds is perfectly suited. It's the Iowa State Fairgrounds had a large grandstand. It has camping space for 10,000 people, and somebody had promoted a show there the year before. And so that's how we pick. I mean, it's the ideal spot, is centrally located in the Midwest.

Jesse Jarno (10:41)

One ongoing theme of this podcast is the way the Grateful Dead seemed to inspire certain streaks of entrepreneurialism and invention and in some ways became a magnet for it. Looking through the Dead's booking in the 1960s, whenever a new psychedelic ballroom opened or festival launched, it was almost required that they book the Dead. That they weren't particularly Deadheads and Music circuit didn't start precisely with the Dead. It would be the Dead that kicked them into gear.

John Hoch (11:06)

We started by going to the Iowa State Fairgrounds and saying, hey, we got this really great idea, you know. You know, here we are, a bunch of rookies, and we'd like to promote big rock concerts at there. And somehow they listened to us and they were interested in making money as well. And they gave us a couple dates.

Jesse Jarno (11:26)

And there was just one question. They how did one even book the Grateful Dead? Their first stop was Sepp Donahauer and Pacific Presentations, who promoted the Dead show at the fox Theater in October 1972, which we covered during our Listen to the river episodes.

Steve White (11:41)

We contacted him first at the recommendation from an ICM booking agent that booked the Iowa State Fair.

Jesse Jarno (11:48)

That didn't work, but it revealed a fascinating tidbit of Grateful Dead information that I don't think has ever been mentioned in the Dead's archives. I noticed a piece of communication between the Music Circuit gang and Sep Donahuer that mentioned a phone call between Music Circuit and Irving Azoff. Irving Azoff would infamously go on to an illustrious career managing the Eagles and some other musicians you may know about. We were able to ask Sep Donahuer about it.

Steve White (12:15)

Irving and I were close from the.

Donna Jean Godchaux (12:17)

Day he la and I introduced him to the Grateful Dead. I have a SX70 Polaroid picture of.

Steve White (12:26)

Rock Scully and Irving Azoff in my office with Irving giving me the finger. That picture is interesting because he was.

Donna Jean Godchaux (12:35)

His introduction to the Grateful Dead that night in my office.

Jesse Jarno (12:39)

So what the hell was Irving Azoff doing negotiating on the part of the Grateful Dead.

Steve White (12:43)

Well, I'm going to tell you a story. Sam Cutler hired Irving.

Donna Jean Godchaux (12:47)

Sam actually pulled Irving into his operation for a short time window and they didn't get along.

Steve White (12:54)

And then Sam fired him or they split up.

Jesse Jarno (12:57)

If all goes according to plan, we'll have Sam back sooner than later. But I did email out of Town co founder Gail Helen, who replied, yes, Irv did work for out of Town Tours for a short time. Less than a week. As I recall, right at our beginning, he couldn't stand our laid back lifestyle. And he was too L. A for us. No harm, no foul, just oil and water. Now it does sound like kind of a good light show.

Steve White (13:19)

Yeah, I can't see those two staying together in a room too long.

Jesse Jarno (13:23)

Music Circuit Presentations must have contacted out of Town exactly during that tiny window when Irving Azoff was apparently trying to escape David Geffen an asylum a few months before, he assumed full time management of the Eagles. Whatever it was he was doing at out of Town Tours that week, it wasn't helpful to Music Circuit Presentations who moved on to plan B. I contacted.

Steve White (13:43)

Barry Fay and told him about the fairgrounds and he wanted me to meet him in Lincoln, Nebraska at Pershing Auditorium where he had an Alice Cooper show he was promoting. And that's where I made contact with him.

Donna Jean Godchaux (14:06)

And.

Steve White (14:07)

And from there he went to Bill Graham and put together the show.

Jesse Jarno (14:11)

Barry Fay of Faline Productions would work with Bill Graham and the Dead for many years. Just as the guys at Music Circuit used the Dead to break into the concert promotion business, it seems Bill Graham was using the Dead to break into Iowa. John Hoch.

John Hoch (14:25)

And to me, the number one theme that comes out of it is, I can't believe how many people trusted us, had the confidence in us to do this. We're 23 years old. Other than Steve had no, no real experience in this at all.

Steve White (14:45)

We were the three Iowa country bumpkin stereotypes. So I'm sure Barry Fayg spotted that right off the bat.

John Hoch (14:52)

How Barry Fay and Bill Graham took a, you know, took a chance with us is just mind boggling to me.

Jesse Jarno (15:00)

Though they may have been inexperienced in 1973, much of the music business was inexperienced. Giant tours that rolled smoothly through the heartland from amphitheater to amphitheater were hardly the norm, and everybody was making it up as they went along.

Steve White (15:13)

It wasn't scheduled for the tour. Bill Graham actually talked the Grateful Dead into packing up, coming to Des Moines as a rehearsal, unpacking everything back up, going back to San Francisco and then starting the tour the following week. I mean, he did us a huge favor. We owe a lot. We owe everything to Bill Graham and the grateful dead.

Jesse Jarno (15:36)

The May 13 show at the fairgrounds was the opening of the band's late spring touring season and the opening of Here Comes Sunshine. But the road to Des Moines was anything but direct. Back in San Rafael at Out of Town Tours, the Dead's tour manager and now booking agent, Sam Cutler, was assembling the Dead's spring 73 shows along with his team, a process we're going to examine a little bit more. Sam surrounded himself with an extremely capable support staff. His first hire was Gail Helland, then married to Olympic guitar ace Rick Turner. But Gale had been deeply embedded in the Dead's world for years, starting as a member of the Jefferson Airplane family and soon involved deeply in the Dead's business universe.

Donna Jean Godchaux (16:31)

There was just John McIntyre and me and Lenny Hart. That was it. That was a whole staff.

Jesse Jarno (16:39)

We don't have time for the story today, but someday we'll get to how Gail helped bust Lenny Hart's financial shenanigans and then, with her most excellent memory, helped John McIntyre rebuild the band's operations, becoming a member of the band's ground control at the band's San Rafael headquarters at the corner of 5th and Lincoln, on the back of Working Man's Dead. She's credited as Cosmic Gale.

Donna Jean Godchaux (17:00)

Lady in Waiting My daughter was born December 7, 1971, so I'm the lucky one who got to stay home and do everything for Europe. 72 when they came back from Europe, Sam called me up and said, okay, you've had enough time off now. The baby will be fine. You need to come back to work. I needed money just like everybody else needed money. So I went back to work. We finally got sick of paying everybody else 10% for everything that we did and decided to pay ourselves. So that's when we split into all the companies that that were at 1330 Lincoln.

Jesse Jarno (17:44)

Gail Helen had watched the deals go down and was ready to be a part of them.

Donna Jean Godchaux (17:48)

We moved out of 5th and Lincoln to take over at 1330 Lincoln. That is when we became. We took everything in house. And that was the beginning of out of Town Tours as well. So Frankie Weir took over the being the travel agent. Out of Town Tours was a separate company. It was 80% owned by Sam, 10% owned by me, and 10% owned by Frances girlfriend Frances Carr.

Jesse Jarno (18:22)

In turn, Gail's first hire was Rita Gentry, coming from the Sons of Champlin branch of the Bay Area musical family.

Rita Gentry (18:29)

We didn't realize till after she, you know, hired me and stuff there that we knew each other when we were teenagers, when we roller skated at Skateline at the beach in San Francisco and we dated twins and I was like, oh, my God, how did this happen? And now we went from this little virgin, nice girls to we're in this heavy duty rock and roll whatever together.

Jesse Jarno (19:01)

After the Dead, Rita would go on to a long career working for Bill Graham and recently assembled and published a wonderful oral history. Before I forget moments and experiences with Bill Graham, we've posted a link@dead.net deadcast. One thing that many people, including Rita, brought to the Dead universe, was experience in the straighter corners of the music world.

Rita Gentry (19:22)

I learned contracts for my very first job at 680 Beach street in San Francisco. I worked for a guy that booked artist in, you know, Reno and Tahoe. More like club acts. Anything from a juggler to, you name it. I was living in San Francisco, sharing a house with a married couple, and he managed an act called Natural Act Was, which is a band from back in the day. His name was Jack or John Pochette, AKA Jackrabbit. And Jackrabbit was my roommate and his wife. And what happened was he got offered to be a booker at out of Town Tours. And so he said, you know, do you want to. We have to move to Marin. Do you want to come with us? And I said, yeah, no problem, because, oh, by the way, there's a company that I'm going to work for, out of Town Tours, who is looking for someone that can do contracts. And you do contracts all the time for artists. So I said, okay, perfect. And that was my step into the door of the Grateful Dead realm. And Sam Cutler in our Grateful Dead.

Jesse Jarno (20:37)

In company episode, Rosie McGee described the Annie Leibovitz photo of the band's professional world.

Rita Gentry (20:43)

Gail's sitting next to me with her baby and Jack Jackrabbit is sitting next to me on the other side. And I feel very honored to be in that photo.

Jesse Jarno (20:57)

Many of the people in that photo could be found working at 1330 Lincoln Cosmic Gale.

Donna Jean Godchaux (21:02)

The first floor is street level, so it was pretty mundane, except Frankie moved in there into one corner and had Fly By Night travel there. And then George Walker had office in there, too. And he kind of came and went.

Jesse Jarno (21:18)

You know, the merry prankster George Walker.

Donna Jean Godchaux (21:20)

So we were on the second floor of that building, and it was just a totally normal office building. And if people got on the elevator there and pushed the second Floor by accident. The doors opened to the elevator and all the light covers were. All the lights were covered with tie dyes. It was totally psychedelic. It was insane. It was like they would just go walk backwards, go back into the elevator and push the button. Get me out of here. Where am I? I don't know where I am, but it's not right.

Rita Gentry (21:54)

It was always like a cloud of smoke in the elevator. Smelled like weed constantly.

Donna Jean Godchaux (22:00)

If you got off the elevator on the second floor, it smelled like pot. It was, you know, everything was tie dyed. Courtney covered every single light fixture with tie dyes. And we all just roamed freely in going back and forth to the offices to get everything done. It was really efficient. It really worked well. We had the regular management offices for both the New Riders and the Grateful Dead separately. You know, they had their own offices. Everybody was in 1330 Lincoln pretty much, except the people that stayed down at the main house. And that was mostly like.

Jesse Jarno (22:40)

Down at the band's once and Future office at 5th and Lincoln. Ron Rackow, Jerry Garcia, Steve Brown and others started to assemble grateful LED records at 1330. The tours got put together. Rita Gentry.

Rita Gentry (22:53)

It was quite a little community. I was always afraid of getting dosed. I was always. I was a Coca Cola can drinker and I still drink Coke to this day. And I always would never let my Coke be alone. Ozzie would come in and I would just be like, oh my God, he's going to dose me, you know. But it was always in the back of my mind. Luckily I escaped that thing that it didn't happen to me.

Jesse Jarno (23:23)

Probably a good thing too because there was some real work to get done.

Donna Jean Godchaux (23:26)

Courtney was part of what was going on with the tie dyes and he had a friend named Jerry something or other who was an accountant who taught me how to be the accountant for out of town tours. I mean he sat there with books and taught me how to be an accountant, you know. So we did everything like that to be completely self sustaining. Didn't need to hire other people and pay them. We realized how much we were paying everybody else and said, nah, we can do all of this. We're smart people. We're all done playing, playing, playing.

Jesse Jarno (24:14)

Another woman in the out of town office was Sally Mann Romano, author of the bodacious memoir the Bands with Me, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast when I.

Donna Jean Godchaux (24:23)

Was working for Cutler, they were the number. The Dead were the number one grossing concert act in, in America ahead of the Beach Boys and everything. So they, they Definitely were on the ascendancy.

Jesse Jarno (24:36)

It was an era of megade. Rita Gentry.

Rita Gentry (24:39)

There was a conference room and someone had built this gigantic beautiful table, wooden table.

Jesse Jarno (24:49)

I'm pretty sure that Sam Cutler brought that table back from Europe.

Rita Gentry (24:53)

And then it seemed like each month a new hand carved chair would come in to that office. And then I always wondered what happened to all those beautiful carved chairs. There's a picture in Geralyn Brantless book too. It's taken of me. And it's Ramblin Jack, it's Jackrabbit. It's the manager of Stone Ground. And that's one of my favorite pictures too because we're actually in the out of Town Tours conference room. And it's funny because we hardly ever went in that room. The only people that really went in that room seemed to me was the band or the crew when they were having meetings.

Jesse Jarno (25:34)

It was serious biz.

Rita Gentry (25:36)

When I think of out of Town tours, I think of Halliburton cases. Everybody had a frickin Halliburton briefcase was with the course, you know, the Dead logo on the thing. Some had rose gold, other one, the road crews had like silver ones. I always wanted a, you know, a Halliburton briefcase.

Jesse Jarno (26:04)

So when the country bumpkins proposed to Barry Fay that the Dead play in Des Moines in May of 73 and Barry Fay suggested it to Bill Graham, it was Sam Cutler's phone at 1330 Lincoln, that range where Graham probably first reached Sally. Man Romano.

Donna Jean Godchaux (26:18)

Oh my God. They're like, you know, they're like the twin towers of hollering. Plus that hilarious thing of executives where nobody wants to be the first one to pick up the fucking phone. Like having the red phone on the President's desk. As you know, Bill and Sam are going to talk to each other. I know later on the Dead were not all that appreciative of how he conducted business. But they got it done. And Sam made the Dead a lot of money. And Bill made everybody a lot of money. I can only remember seeing Bill lose it maybe only once. And I can't remember who he was hollering about, hollering at. It might have been David Crosby or somebody like that. But you didn't even want to be in the blast range. He sort of stepped back once he got it flying. It wasn't a pretty sight. You know, he's just extremely bombastic when he was in that zone. I believe that you could avoid Bill's wrath if you just don't do just incredibly stupid stuff, you know. But Cutler he kind of went in. Once he got going, it was going.

Jesse Jarno (27:25)

Rita Gentry.

Rita Gentry (27:26)

My experience at out of Town Tours was very educational. Educational in ways of survival, educational in the way of dealing with many personalities and many male personalities. You had your management staff, you had your road crew, and then you had your peripheral people, you know, husbands, whatever, Hell's Angels, you name it, they were there. And so I give credit, and hats off to Sam for letting me have that experience, because there was nothing like that. And that was my first experience before Bill, of working with somebody, a boss, who yelled and screamed. It's like, oh, my God. I don't come from that background of yelling and screaming, okay? And when that first started happening, I was going, what the hell have I gotten myself into? But then it's like, okay, you know? Then once they would get off the bone and stop yelling, they would go back to being their normal self. It was just so weird to me.

Donna Jean Godchaux (28:40)

Sally, Part of this deal, too, is like there's this network of sort of promoter. The promoter mafia, you know, I mean, not. I don't mean the real Mafia, but you had to work with these people to get booked into the. To the big show, you know, the big spaces. And John Shearer controlled New York, except for the part that Bill had, and then Larry Maggot had Philadelphia, and I don't remember the guy's name that had Arizona. But these aren't just, like hippies. They weren't like, oh, why don't y' all come play a little? It was a business, and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars were at stake. And you had that. No, like, in New York, those people would have to work with the freaking Teamsters and shit. You couldn't just be all peace and love. I mean, it was the real deal. And that's something that's so amazing to me about Bill is how on both coasts, he worked with Law. People don't realize there's all these dopers coming to these shows. You have to be able to work with law enforcement and the Teamsters and other unions outside of New York. And it wasn't just, oh, let's go, let's put on a play, you know, it wasn't amateur hour. So Cutler and Bill, they knew what they were doing.

Jesse Jarno (29:58)

It was an intense working environment. Rita.

Rita Gentry (30:01)

I think the women had a real camaraderie within there. I mean, I loved Eileen Law, and Gail and I, to this day, are still friends. And that's what I'll say about most all of that. And that family is that we're still stay in touch with each other. And we may not see each other, but we'll send, you know, Christmas cards or an occasional text or email here and there, and phone calls, and it's really. It's really amazing to me.

Donna Jean Godchaux (30:33)

It's fun working with people like that are absolutely at the peak of the entertainment industry. We were getting it done, and the band was making buttloads of money and touring. And the people around all these bands, every band that I've ever known, are good at what they do. They take it seriously, or they wouldn't last very long. And everyone from the roadies, even, you know, no matter if they get drunk and high on occasion, they know how to do their jobs, they do them well, or they just. You can't hang. It's just too much at stake.

Jesse Jarno (31:06)

When the yelling was done, there was a lot of paperwork, and that's when it became Rita's job.

Rita Gentry (31:11)

The bookers would book the shows and do the deals, and then they would give me the information. Fortunately, I don't know where I got this, but I came up with, like, a standard contract, you know, and the same thing back in the day used a typewriter. It was three copies. The. The white, the yellow, and the pink, and you stick it in your typewriter. They would give me the gist of the deals and all that kind of stuff. I would type it up, give it back to them. They would, you know, send it to whoever it was that was booking the show to get it signed, and then I had to follow it through to the very end.

John Hoch (31:43)

So.

Rita Gentry (31:43)

And that was my deal as being the contract mistress.

Jesse Jarno (31:48)

Once the contracts were signed, the tour itineraries would be delivered downstairs to Fly By Night travel. The Grateful Dead didn't rely on tour buses in the early 70s. They flew commercial. Hey, it's Donna. Gene Godshow McKay.

Donna Jean Godchaux (32:00)

I was never on tour with them in a bus. It was flying everywhere. It was flying in limousines, flying hotels and limousines, and flying in hotels and limousines. And that was where everything was at at that time.

Jesse Jarno (32:15)

We talked about Fly By Night travel in our Grateful Dead and Co episode. But to continue with the theme of what it actually required to put on a Grateful Dead show in 1973. We welcome back Rosie McGee, author of the incisive memoir Dancing with the Dead, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast it was.

Rita Gentry (32:33)

The single most difficult and demanding job I've ever had to this day. To this day, there are no computers on my desk. There is not even a fax machine.

Donna Jean Godchaux (32:46)

Yet.

Rita Gentry (32:48)

And here's my list of tools. A telephone headset plugged into the phone, a typewriter, a 40 column accounting pad, a dozen pencils, several large erasers and a jar of bennies. That's it.

Donna Jean Godchaux (33:09)

That's what I had to work with.

Jesse Jarno (33:11)

At some point, an itinerary would arrive from the madhouse on the second floor.

Rita Gentry (33:15)

We would get an initial list. First of all, a tour with just.

Donna Jean Godchaux (33:20)

Randomly, I'm going to say 28 people.

Rita Gentry (33:22)

Going to 37 cities. Okay, so with abandoned crew most often having slightly offset schedules and different travel dates and times and sometimes they stayed in different hotels. First I'd get a list, an initial list of personnel and cities and dates from the booking agent or the band managers, in this case, Sam. I'd start a grid on the 40 column accounting pad in pencil of course, because it's going to be erasing. There's people on the left and the dates in the cities across the top.

Donna Jean Godchaux (34:02)

Then I put on the headset and I'd call the lead airline, which was.

Rita Gentry (34:06)

The first outgoing flight on the tour.

Donna Jean Godchaux (34:10)

Their group desk and I'd verbally give them the list.

Rita Gentry (34:15)

There was no, no, you know, there was no quick way to get it to them in writing. So I verbally gave them the list. They had the computers on their end and there were like room full of mainframes. And one time I got to go and visit a United Airlines mainframe facility at the San Francisco airport.

Donna Jean Godchaux (34:41)

It was really interesting, but they contacted.

Rita Gentry (34:44)

All the downline other airlines to build the air itinerary. And then they called me back and.

Donna Jean Godchaux (34:51)

They verbally gave me what they had.

Rita Gentry (34:53)

Which took about an hour to write.

Donna Jean Godchaux (34:54)

Down, you know, and then I filled.

Rita Gentry (34:58)

In the spreadsheet based on what they told me. Which flight, which date, who, who's going where, when. And in the meantime, Wilma and I would start researching hotels in the 20 pound paper hotel guide, you know, that we had. I mean it literally, it's this gigantic, it's about, I don't know, 8 inches.

Donna Jean Godchaux (35:21)

Thick, this gigantic book and start penciling in hotels.

Jesse Jarno (35:27)

During the brief Lenny Hart regime, there were tales of the dead getting banned from airlines, mostly resolved by the time Fly By Night came into the picture.

Rita Gentry (35:35)

Hotel banning is more common than airline banning. It's easier to trash a hotel room than to get in trouble with an airline.

Jesse Jarno (35:46)

To that end, we interrupt with a brief but relevant story that we've held onto for a while and is too good not to include in this space. It happened in the fall of 1972, just days after the Fox theater shows on the Listen to the river box set and just before, Fly by Night earned its wings as legit travel agents. We can't stress this enough. Don't try this at home, and especially don't try it at a hotel like the Mark Plaza in downtown Milwaukee. Now the Milwaukee Hilton, where this story took place. To tell it, we have the most excellent lighting director, Candace Brightman.

Donna Jean Godchaux (36:18)

We're doing a gig in Wisconsin. And this would be maybe, well, whenever McGovern was running. So at this hotel, the other people at the hotel were McGovern, who was running for president with his Secret Service people. Then there was a butcher's convention and there was a hairdresser's convention. Mostly gay men and us. So right off the bat. And so that mass in Wisconsin. I grew up in the Chicago area, and that's where we would go to buy fireworks because they're not legal. So everybody had fireworks. Everybody in the band had bought an enormous amount of fireworks. So we have all these people staying in the same hotel. And so the fireworks just started going and going and going.

Jesse Jarno (37:06)

And by going and going, kandas means inside. The dead were shooting fireworks inside. According to Dennis McNally's account, many of the rooms opened up onto the hotel's central atrium and fireworks began to shoot across it, sending Secret Service agents ducking.

Donna Jean Godchaux (37:32)

Total pandemonium. Fireworks. And also when you get into an elevator, you would get into an elevator with a gay hairdresser and a butcher and a. You know, the whole thing was just marvelous. And there was a air shaft. And if you opened your windows to see what was going on in the air shaft, a snowstorm of feathers, because everybody was letting their pillows go and by golly, they had feathers. Would come into your room. So the next morning, the poor dear maids. So I was in heaven, because this is my idea of like, yeah, this is what we're supposed to be doing.

Jesse Jarno (38:08)

Please hold that last mischievous sentiment in your head when considering the following action by one of Candace's employers.

Donna Jean Godchaux (38:14)

And then Kreutzman and came in and grabbed me and pulled me into the bathroom and let off a whole hundreds of M80s and held the door shut. So I was stuck in the bathroom.

Jesse Jarno (38:36)

In Dennis McNally's immortal phrase, Events assume their own momentum.

Donna Jean Godchaux (38:40)

So towards the end, Ben and I, who were the lighting crew, main lighting crew. And we would drive the truck. Sometimes I did, sometimes he did. But, you know, towards two or three o', clock, we thought, you know, well, probably be a good time to get out of here because something you know, I guess they came and arrested some people and stuff.

Jesse Jarno (39:01)

Specifically they arrested one person, Keith Godshow. Apparently not feeling so mild mannered in Milwaukee. When the police showed up and asked him for identification, the piano player told them, fuck you pig. I'm not showing you no fucking id. And so Keith Gotcha went off to jail.

Donna Jean Godchaux (39:17)

Donna Jean, that's a true story. I think Keith and Kreutzman were. I remember being in the room and the window was open to the hotel and were they throwing fireworks out or something? I think it might have been something like that, but it was. Was it during the McGovern?

Jesse Jarno (39:41)

Yep.

Donna Jean Godchaux (39:42)

No wonder he got arrested. I don't know why Kreutzman didn't get arrested. He was part of it.

Jesse Jarno (39:47)

He sure was. Somehow Weir got Kreutzman to an adjacent hotel where the drummer tuned into what was probably legendary Milwaukee overnight jazz DJ Ron Kuzner and achieved something like jazz Nirvana. Weir went back to bailout Keith.

Donna Jean Godchaux (40:01)

So we got in the lights, packed up, gotten a lights truck, I mean our own stuff and drove off. And as we were driving we were, I have an idea, but I would say maybe five miles away from the hotel. We were on some highway or elevated thing, I don't know. And we looked at the hotel and it was just fucking every, you know, hundreds of fireworks were coming out of that air shaft. It was insane and you know, it just felt wonderful.

Jesse Jarno (40:42)

Okay, maybe cross the mark Plaza off that hotel list.

Rita Gentry (40:44)

Rosie we did keep a list of hotels that we couldn't go back to.

Donna Jean Godchaux (40:50)

You know, so that started pretty early.

Jesse Jarno (40:53)

Tours could be bendable things them.

Rita Gentry (40:56)

Sam would call down and say, hey, we're swapping Detroit and Chicago. Baltimore is out and we're adding three dates at the end. So like I said, I put in my notes, shampoo, rinse, repeat many times. So you start to build a tariff for the flights from the 40 pound tariff book that's so heavy it's on a podium and redo, redo, redo, you know, for the pricing of each leg of the flight.

Jesse Jarno (41:28)

And in fact there was lots and lots of this going on during the Grateful dead spring of 1973. In between early May and mid June, the Dead played the five shows that are now on the Here Comes Sunshine box set. But they also cancelled or rescheduled at least another nine that got as far as being publicly advertised and in some cases even on sale. We'll touch on them chronologically as they come up in this series. Thanks so much to the scholars of Jerry Base for sorting through this Info most righteously and where you can see it laid out chronologically. Originally, the Dead were considering opening their spring shows at the football stadium at St. Lawrence University in New York on May 5 on a double bill with the great Leon Russell. In late March, the student paper announced that the university had signed contracts the day before and tickets were to go on sale in April. But possibly that was misreported since that's the last mention I can find of the show after that. The Dead were scheduled to open their May in the Pacific Northwest, May 3rd in Portland, May 5th in Vancouver and May 7th in Seattle. And you can see that Olden and the Way booked their first out of town shows around these gigs, which they did play on May 8th and 9th in Eugene and Portland. The former promoted by the good old Keezis at the Springfield Creamery, Garcia's last show before Des moines on the 13th. But according to local papers, the Dead themselves postponed the Northwest shows because Bill the drummer cut his finger badly, rescheduling for late June shows now featured on the Pacific Northwest box set, including this magnificent bird song from Vancouver on June 22.

Rita Gentry (43:18)

And eventually at the end, like, you know, a couple of days before departure, we would have a marathon night with three of us handwriting tickets pressing hard to go through the four copies of Carbon Stapling. Four sets of tickets together for each traveler. And more than once, the ticketing marathon was interrupted by Sam saying, Detroit and Chicago are back in their original sequence. And you know, tough is hardly the word for that kind of work. I mean, this was crazy. So that's it, that's what it took. And somehow we made it happen and, you know, about lost my mind on it.

Jesse Jarno (44:41)

Meanwhile in Iowa, the guys at music circuit presentations were starting to get their first dose of rock and roll reality.

John Hoch (44:47)

John Hoak I remember the contract that they sent us was a very simple contract. It was two or three pages of contract, very simple, straightforward, easy. And then it had an attachment of an eight page writer that had on there every detail that they wanted. I remember Heineken bottles, not tans, between 38 and 42 degrees. You had to have barbecue chicken at certain times along the way. You know, you had to have the cars to pick them up and all the limit it went on into excruciating detail of everything that they needed.

Steve White (45:29)

Steve White, Bill Graham called me six days before the show and wanted to talk about the show and start asking questions. And about the third question he. I heard him tell his secretary so and so get Barry on the phone right now and so Barry Fay got on the phone and he goes, Barry, I got Mr. White on the phone here. He tells me, you don't have anybody in Des Moines helping out with this show, Is that right? And Barry said, well, White's doing the work. Bill Cramp said, barry White needs all the help he can get. You have to have someone in Des Moines tomorrow morning. And he emphasized morning. And sure enough, Barry Fay's guy was here the next morning putting together a show that we didn't know what we were doing. If you want to be. If you want us to be honest about it, it's embarrassing to say us being great entrepreneurs. And we read that writer, you know, it had Heineken beer and steak and chicken. We thought, we're going to have some cost saving measures. Bring out hot dogs and Old Milwaukee beer. That's one of the things, you know. And Bill Graham, you know, told Barry Fay, white needs all the help he can get.

John Hoch (46:48)

We were smart enough to know that we needed help, whether it was by Barry Fay or Bill Graham or the sound crew or others. We were pretty easy to get along with that way. And what we did is we got the venue, we were able to secure that. And as Steve said, he had a good network, you know, a lot of places, and did a lot of promoting around, especially the state of Iowa and then in the Midwest.

Steve White (47:12)

We'd advertised in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Omaha. The station, I think it was, called Beaker street in Little Rock.

John Hoch (47:29)

Just remember to say hello to the.

Steve White (47:30)

Third man on the two party line.

Donna Jean Godchaux (47:35)

This is kaay, Little Rock. I'm Clyde Clifford.

Jesse Jarno (47:39)

Clyde Clifford's Beaker Street Radio on KAAY in Little Rock was the first underground radio show on a commercial AM station. Starting in 1966.

Steve White (47:49)

We bought a lot of radio, a lot of radio, and a lot of music rags, too.

Jesse Jarno (47:53)

But it was ticketing, where music circuit presentations not only had their act together, but figured out an innovative system all their own. The music circuit record store had sold tickets for numerous local shows. And they had a sense of how that part of it worked. So they built their own network of independent music stores and adjacent heady businesses in the region. John Hoek.

John Hoch (48:12)

Steve really added value, though, is he? He had his own record store music circuit in Des Moines, and he knew a lot of these people that ran these stores. So it was his personal connections that we were really playing off of. And I think it's one of the places we actually added some value by getting. Getting out to such a wide network.

Steve White (48:32)

We picked out our own outlets Predominantly record stores all over the Midwest and the cities that I mentioned before. And once in a while, it'll be like a music store where they sell, you know, band equipment, amps, guitars and all that. And once in a while, a hip clothing store. But most of them are record stores. You know, we probably had 70 ticket outlets that we set up ourselves. And the way we delivered our tickets was by a runner would go out and deliver the tickets and get the people to sign the ticket agreement. Then when we had to replenish the tickets, the Greyhound bus, that was how we put them. Got them to the outlets, put them on the bus. A lot of times they were returned the same way. A lot of times if we hadn't, let's say if we didn't trust the outlet, we'd send somebody to pick them up. But Greyhound Bus helped us out a lot.

Jesse Jarno (49:29)

I don't think it's a controversial take to say that the concert ticketing business has grown pretty convoluted at best in recent decades. And I'll let you fill in your own adjectives for the at worst slot. But if anyone's looking for a new old system to try out, building a regional ticketing agency over a network of independent record stores sounds like a righteous experiment. But there were other places they needed a bit more help.

Steve White (49:51)

We only have good things to say about Bill Graham. Seriously, it's a good thing Bill Graham had somebody come out. Because we were going to pitch a tent on top of the stage, and Bill Graham insisted there couldn't be any poles in the middle. I remember Bill Graham said if we couldn't get something, he was going to bring out his $15,000 roof. And we freaked out at. At the cost of that.

Jesse Jarno (50:17)

Bill Graham's high billing, a favored technique, as the Dead might tell you, eventually resulted in another small piece of rock and roll innovation.

Steve White (50:25)

So we hired the Safeway Scaffold Company here to come in and build a roof. And from then we decided we need our own roof. So we had a ZZ Top concert about two weeks later and were rained out because of no roof. And we designed, patented and put on the road, state of the art roof. It was the standard of measure from 1974 to 1978. People all over the country amazed at these yahoos from Iowa could come up with something like that. But the Eagles toured with it for three years. Eric Clapton was the first one to take a chance on us with that. It was used by other shows throughout the country. Led Zeppelin down in Tampa Bay, Peter Frampton and Richfield Coliseum in Buffalo. That staging roof was used all over the country for a period of about four years.

Jesse Jarno (51:20)

They might have been bumpkins at first, but music circuit would come to contribute to the growing rock culture in the Midwest. There'd be some lessons first, starting when the first roadies rolled into town.

Steve White (51:30)

They showed up one or two days ahead of time. Actually, Kid Candelaria did. I think Parrish was with them. Two other guys, maybe Ramrod. I'm not sure if he was there then. I think he was. There was four of them. I remember that. And I remember pulling up to the fairgrounds. Candelaria said, look at that Marquis. They spelled Grateful Dead wrong. G R E A T F U L. That was a surprise to us too. So that was the first thing we did when we pulled into the fairgrounds. Has gone to change the marquee.

Jesse Jarno (52:06)

Thanks to the incredible Grateful Dead archives at UC Santa Cruz and the very lovely librarians that tend to the paper, we're able to look ever more deeply into the makings of the Grateful Dead. In the spring of 1973, I encourage other scholars to get themselves to the Special collections room in McHenry Library. Some of the details are mundane but fascinating. For example, with a pile of airline receipts, we confirm that Fly By Night didn't assemble the band's itineraries until May 11. From May 12, travel with band and crew arriving the day before the Sunday afternoon show.

Steve White (52:37)

Steve White Back then, the car races at the fairgrounds happened on Saturday night and they would attract 10,000 people every Saturday night. So they took precedence. And we couldn't do a lot of stage building until after the car races ended at 10, and then from 10 till right up to showtime, we were building the stage. But both years the dad and Bill Graham were there, they sat in the grandstand and watched the Saturday night car races with everybody else. 10,000 people at the car race.

Jesse Jarno (53:14)

Imagine Bandon crew at the races in Des Moines on a spring night in 1973. When the races were over, it was time to set up the show. The fairgrounds had a permanent stage, but it wasn't quite dead ready.

Steve White (53:26)

It was a 60 by 60 concrete slab, six and a half feet tall. So the stage was built. It was the sound wings that, you know, had to go up and you couldn't put speakers on it because it obstructed the car races at the time. So, you know, so it wasn't the entire stage. Half of the half the work was already done.

Jesse Jarno (53:47)

Then sometime Sunday morning, they were able to see what the Dead had brought.

John Hoch (53:52)

What was unique, at least as far as we knew at the time, was the kind of sound system they put together.

Steve White (53:58)

We called it the world's largest home stereo outdoors. I mean, that's with all these speakers that look like speakers you'd have in your living room, except there was a mountain of them both years, you know, the 1973 year, compared to the Wall of Sound, 1974. It looks like they just squished the. Everything together behind the band and added the big speaker tweeter cluster behind them.

Jesse Jarno (54:24)

The band's checkbooks also show the rental of an additional system for Des Moines 73 from Bob Hill Sound in St. Louis. Bob Glaza had seen the Dead ones before and remembered the hype around the sound system.

Donna Jean Godchaux (54:36)

I was living in Waterloo, which is about two hours north and east of Des Moines, the fairgrounds everybody was talking about all these speakers piled up on top of each other and the semi trucks full and all the people that it took to assemble it. So that was kind of the big part of the conversation on, oh, you don't want to miss this show. You don't want to miss this show.

Jesse Jarno (55:05)

As always, wherever they traveled, when the Grateful that arrived in town, it was in a subtly different configuration than the version that had last passed through Donna Jean.

Donna Jean Godchaux (55:14)

If we're talking about 73, that's when I got pregnant in the spring of 73. So I did all of those shows up until the end of November, until I was eight months pregnant on the road. I remember telling Garcia, we were in the Grateful Dead office, and we were standing next to the little portable refrigerator in the office, and Jerry was eating yogurt. And I said, jerry, I'm pregnant. That's the way I told him that I was pregnant. I said, I'm pregnant. And he. I remember he. He was kind of in the middle of, you know, putting a spoon of yogurt in his mouth, and he. He just kind of shook his head and kind of grinned and, you know, oh, that's cool. Well, that's cool. And then with Robert Hunter, who is an enigma of a human being. I mean, I loved him so much, but he was. You never knew. You just never knew what he was going to say or where he was going to be at, you know. And so when I told Robert Hunter that I was pregnant, he goes, I will never forget it. He said, all women have that right, except you. That was a Hunter ism. You know, he wasn't really serious, but he was being Hunter, you know, with.

Jesse Jarno (56:46)

A dry, cool wit. Like that he could be a psychedelic lyricist, you know.

Donna Jean Godchaux (56:50)

My perspective is I was so much into being pregnant and having a baby, you know, and then being in one of the biggest rock and roll bands and, and being on tour. It was not like I was pregnant and sitting at an office doing secretarial work or something. You know, I was traveling on stage and on planes and it was very intense. It was. I had way double duty.

Jesse Jarno (57:18)

That's the period covered by this box set and several others besides. Not to mention a few Dicks and Dave's Picks, a few editions of Road Trips, an entry in the Download series, and one studio album.

Donna Jean Godchaux (57:29)

When you have another human being pressing up against your lungs, that's an issue. And so of course it was harder to get a deep breath, you know, So I had to just manage as best I could.

Jesse Jarno (57:43)

The Dead's business records reveal an entwined mess between the band's professional and personal finances, which we talked about with Joe jupil in our Garcia 73 episode. But it was sometimes a happy mess with the band helping Donna and Keith not only buy a house in Stinson beach, but but furnish it with a.

Donna Jean Godchaux (57:58)

Piano that was bought for Keith and me personally and was at our house in Stinson Beach. It was the most beautiful, beautiful nine foot Steinway that had the most glorious sound. And I've heard a lot of Steinways and this one was just pristine. The sound was just incredible.

Jesse Jarno (58:20)

That'd be a Steinway model D, serial number 428912B2785. In case anybody wants to track down the God Show Family Steinway. Check out our Donna Jean episode for more memories of that scene. The band also purchased an electric keyboard for Keith that spring, as he put it mildly on Waer that September.

Donna Jean Godchaux (58:40)

Yeah, I'm starting to get turned on to different, different text.

Jesse Jarno (59:05)

That was more from the Vancouver Bird song. Some Wawa on the Roads Too. Keith Gadshaw's roads would become one of the subtly defining sounds of the period. Though people track Jerry Garcia's guitars pretty obsessively and it's not too hard to tell when a Rhodes shows up in the mix. The archives also reveal that Bill Kreutzman was rocking a new drum kit in May 1973. That's the sound of Bill the drummer swinging on a mahogany thermoglass Ludwig kit with Roger's Super 10 snare drum acquired from Frank's Drum Shop in Chicago for $964.50 minus $647 from an unspecified trade in. Shipped from Chicago to the house at 5th and Lincoln in the first days of May, ready to be broken in at the Des Moines Fairground. It can be seen in pictures of.

Donna Jean Godchaux (60:04)

Roll.

Jesse Jarno (60:22)

Earlier in the year, the day after the band's show at Maples Pavilion at Stanford University, the band did a complete gear inventory for insurance purposes. They listed three guitars totaling a value of $1,200, and one Alembic custom base valued at $5,000, around $34,000 today. By the time they got to Iowa, Jerry Garcia had some new gear, too. But we'll get to that. It's getting near Showtime promoter Steve white.

Steve White (60:49)

We sold 12,000 tickets in advance. Three at the door, 3,000 at the door.

Jesse Jarno (60:54)

Promoter John Hoch.

John Hoch (60:56)

The tickets were priced at the exorbitant amount of $5 in advance and $6 the day of the concert.

Jesse Jarno (61:04)

That's roughly $34 and $41 in modern terms.

John Hoch (61:08)

So we knew there'd be a lot of people coming up that day. And it turned out for most of it was beautiful weather, which in May, early May in Iowa is not a guarantee. It could have been doing a lot of really bad things. And we knew there'd be people, a lot of people, thousands of people coming up. And we didn't trust anybody to sell and take the money for the cash for these tickets. So we brought in our parents.

Steve White (61:35)

My.

John Hoch (61:35)

Parents, Jim's parents, Steve's parents were the ones in there. We had no security, nobody guarding this stuff. And 3,000 people are coming up there and buying tickets and giving all cash. And that's how we did it.

Jesse Jarno (61:52)

They'd played in Iowa in February, but this was their only Midwest stop in the later spring. And lots of people came from out of town, like Bob Glaza and his sister.

Donna Jean Godchaux (62:00)

And I remember driving down there thinking, well, maybe we're going to see one of these semis. Maybe. What will it look like? What? You know, is it. Is it going to be just floating on air, or is it going to be all decked out and fancied out with painting on the side of it?

Jesse Jarno (62:17)

It wasn't quite the dead they met in the road.

Donna Jean Godchaux (62:20)

We got stopped on the way down to Des Moines. There was a big traffic accident and we had to stop. And of course, we were a little bit nervous because we were, you know, all sorts of crazy high. And we thought the police, of course, were stopping us for no good reason. I was living in Waterloo. It was a couple hours away. The concert was a couple hours away. And I remember, I think it Was on a Mother's Day. And so we were kind of in hot water with our mothers.

Jesse Jarno (62:58)

As Ralph Kiner once said, it's Mother's Day, so all you mothers out there, happy birthday.

Steve White (63:04)

A renowned, nationally known Boys Glee Club showed up to buy tickets. It was the Hells Angels. I mean, they were from all. I remember, San Francisco, San Rafael, San Luispo, Louisiana. Phoenix. On the back of their jackets and, you know, other parts of the western United States. They pulled up, parked right in front of the grand and. But, you know, we didn't hear a peep out of them. Security was our friends. And back then, the security drank beer on the job. So, you know, it was a bunch of drunken security that was, you know, on the job there that day.

John Hoch (63:41)

Maybe 30 of our friends between 30 and 50 and. Yeah, but nobody with any experience or expertise in it. It was, you know, crazy bite, you know, with hindsight, I can remember, though, a number of our friends were backstage and, you know, wives and girlfriends. And I do remember that my wife at the time was. Was a big Dead fan. And Phil Lesh came off the stage and winked at her. And she melted right on the spot. She thought that the highlight. That was the highlight of her life.

Jesse Jarno (64:14)

Joe Gauthier had come into contact with Music Circuit when he helped put on a Dead show at the University of Iowa in February and sold tickets through the record store. He attests to some of the craziness.

Donna Jean Godchaux (64:25)

We were backstage in the parking lot for the Backstage and we were in a friend of mine's car, and he spilled a quarter, quarter ounce of coke on his carpet in his car. So that was kind of strange, watching people salvage that.

Jesse Jarno (64:41)

It was not quite what the Music Circuit guys expected.

John Hoch (64:44)

Chaos. Chaos. We. We didn't do a good job at all of. This is our chance to be big shots. And we had all of our friends back there was. It was a mess. We were putting out a lot of fires. We were busy and we were working and we were trying to make sure everything that. And I think part of it was making sure that, you know, the Dead themselves were happy that, you know, their crew was happy that Bill and Barry, you know, they were, you know, ordering us around. So we were. We were hopping. Very little sleep there for. For a couple days.

Jesse Jarno (65:15)

Wizard remembers Bill Graham's presence playing football.

Steve White (65:18)

With Barry Fay backstage. They had a football. They were passing back and forth.

Jesse Jarno (65:23)

But it was a day that Bill Graham went to work.

Steve White (65:25)

Bill Graham was a stagehand. That was the 1973 year he got in. And again, it was all of her friends that were the stagehands. So he saw an experience, let's just put it that way. Barry Fay was up making announcements, and this is before barricades were being used. And some kid kept grabbing at the microphone. Well, then the Grateful Dead came on and played, and the same kid was grabbing at Jerry's microphone. And off the side of a stage, like a bolt of lightning, Bill Graham came darting across the stage and did a stage dive into the audience and went out and grabbed the kid, threw him out of the show.

Jesse Jarno (66:07)

Please welcome the Grateful Dead.

Steve White (66:14)

Left my home in Norfolk, Virginia California.

Jesse Jarno (66:18)

On my mind Straddle that Greyhound and.

Steve White (66:22)

Road did pass Ryland on across Caroline.

Jesse Jarno (66:27)

Every now and then a Dead tape will start with the sound mix slightly out of alignment. As you can hear, that's one way to tell this isn't a pure soundboard mix that captures only what was going into the hall, but rather a submix run through a mixer and mixed with intention onto two track. Oftentimes, the recordist would spend the opening song getting the balance just right. But by the end of the Promised Land, things are hunky dory.

Donna Jean Godchaux (67:17)

Bob Glassa it wasn't a super hot day, you know, it was. It was warm enough, but it wasn't really hot. We went in just to find a place to sit. There wasn't any going through. I'm sure we had a picnic basket or something to carry food in or drink in. And there was no kind of rifling through that to see what you were carrying in. It was all pretty loose as far as that goes. They had just piles and piles of speakers. And I don't remember it being so loud, I couldn't think. But I do remember that the sound was pretty amazing.

Jesse Jarno (68:26)

It was a True Dead Marathon. 4 hours and 21 minutes of music over three sets. They took their time, not really getting into extended jamming until later in the afternoon playing some of their newest songs. John Vann of the Des Moines Register described the scene as a rock concert that combined elements of circus, a convention of Shriners, and a department store shopping crowd. Three days before Christmas.

Donna Jean Godchaux (69:04)

I remember there was somebody walking around, like in a jester suit or some sort of regalia or costume or outfit at whatever you want to call it, you know, there were a lot of halter tops. There were a lot of long, flowing gowns. Most guys walked around without a shirt on, you know, and, you know, there was always cool Grateful Dead T shirts.

Jesse Jarno (69:35)

One semi new piece of music was what Deadheads call the feelin groovy transition in between China Cat, Sunflower and I know you, Rider. The Dead had been playing variations on Simon and Garfunkel's feeling groovy since 1970, usually in Darkstar. But in spring 1973, it migrated gloriously into China Cat, where it lived until the band took their road hiatus in 1975. Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux this is.

Steve White (70:28)

A tour unlike a lot of other.

Rich Mahan (70:30)

Tours in 72 and early 73. It is very well documented on photos, these five shows in particular. There are plenty of photos from all five shows. Many photographers, first of all, that you've got 20,000 people at each of these shows or more, and so lots of people with amateur cameras, amateur photographers, but then lots of newspapers came out and professionals. So it's a very well documented era visually. Unfortunately, no film, little Super 8 stuff, but otherwise nothing. But there's a lot of photos.

Jesse Jarno (71:02)

We'll once again shout out the Jerry Garcia instrument history by Mike Clem on the Grateful Dead guide, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast as well as Uli and Volke, the photo detectives. Their diligent work reveals Garcia playing a few rarely spotted guitars at the Des Moines show. In most of the pictures, Garcia is playing Alligator, the super custom Stratocaster that we've discussed a few times, notably around the munich stop of Europe, 72, his primary guitar from mid-1971 to late 1973. But the Des Moines show is the only time Garcia is known to have played the Eagle, his first custom guitar by Alembics Doug Irwin, commissioned in 1970, built from curly maple in 1971 and apparently not played on stage until Des Moines in May 1973. There's some particular out of tuneness by the time the band hits I know you Rider. That made me wonder if it was the sound of guitar that wasn't quite ready for battlefield conditions. But just because Garcia didn't take to the Eagle, eventually passing it along to longtime roadie Ramrod, he was still quite taken by Doug Irwin's guitar skills. In the Grateful Dead Spring 1973 checkbook is a $500 check to Doug Irwin, dated June 13, exactly a month later with a memo note deposit on Garcia's guitar. It's the instrument that would become known as Wolf, and we'll pick up its story another day. But weirdly, and for reasons that aren't clear at a distance, Garcia actually played three guitars that day.

Rich Mahan (72:40)

It's interesting, Jerry playing different guitars just astounds me because, you know, I Saw so many Dead shows where, I mean.

Steve White (72:48)

The thought of Jerry changing guitar.

Rich Mahan (72:49)

When I see other bands where, you know, the tech would run out and give the guitar player a tune guitar every song, it's like, what is that? I mean, I didn't understand it.

Steve White (73:00)

And then, you know, the Grateful Dead.

Rich Mahan (73:03)

Literally all three of them on guitars and bass, didn't change ever.

Jesse Jarno (73:08)

The other guitar was another singular piece that Garcia played in November and December 1972, and which resurfaced one last time in Des Moines with giant numbers running up the fretboard. It's known as the Erlewine Strat. And to tell us a little about it, please welcome, from Erlewine Guitars, Dan Erleman. Let's take another detour, shall we? We're going to bop back briefly now to 1967 when the dead played in.

Steve White (73:32)

Ann Arbor, where I was from. In those days, they played at west park and our band opened for them. We had a blues band called the Prime Mover.

Jesse Jarno (74:03)

That was Endless Blues from the self titled Prime Movers release for you Michigan freak Lorists. This particular lineup of the Prime Movers that played with the dad did not feature drummer Iggy Pop, but rather Jesse Crawford, who later became the MC5's hype man.

Steve White (74:17)

And we kind of laid around outside the BN show and another band played and talked with Jerry. And he came over to my shop because I had a repair shop and I was making some guitars and he wanted to come visit. And when he. When he came over, I was. Had just finished making a neck for a 1939 Martin D18 body that I had. It came without a neck and kind of beat up. But it was one of my favorite guitars and I made it. It was my first acoustic neck that I ever made. I had an ebony fingerboard on it and I had numbers that were jigsawed out of ivory. So you had 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12. And he really liked that. He thought that was great. And he said, I want to. I want to get a guitar from you and I want those numbers in it. And we. He wanted a Stratocaster guitar because I was also making guitars out of this black walnut that I had electric guitars, and that was 67. And we went out to San Francisco at the end of that summer. And I saw Jerry again down on the Haight Ashbury area, walking the streets. Of course. He goes, hey, Dan, I'm still serious about that guitar. I'll be getting a hold of you. But he never really got back a hold of me until late 69 and finally called me up and said, I want to get that guitar. So that's when I started making it for him. And when it was finally done in 71, we flew to San Francisco and crossed the Bay City Bridge up into the St. Helena area of California in the wine country. Because my wife's uncle had a ranch in the top of the hills above Santolina. And Jerry drove up there to get his guitar. We shipped it out on the plane with us and he drove up in a Porsche. I remember that. And he was just such a friendly guy.

Jesse Jarno (76:23)

There's some sweet Super 8 footage of Dan passing the guitar to Garcia. We've posted a link@dead.net deadcast there's one.

Steve White (76:30)

Of them where Jerry's holding the guitar like this and pointing at it. And another one where he's handing me money. I charged him 500 bucks for it and he gave me $900, which was a huge. I mean he was a generous man that way with. With money and with luthiers. He supported practically. I think any guitar builder he met.

Jesse Jarno (76:54)

He was.

Steve White (76:55)

He was sharing his money.

Jesse Jarno (76:57)

As with pretty much all of Garcia's guitars, it was tweaked.

Steve White (77:00)

Really. It's just a Stratocaster. Except Jerry wanted a Tunematic bridge like Gibson has. Aviator One stop tailpiece. He didn't want to tremolo. He wanted a brass nut. And that was the first brass nut I'd ever made to me. He invented the brass nut, but. Or maybe Alembic invented that. I'm not sure.

Jesse Jarno (77:25)

We'll refer you back to our side B episode of the Skull and Roses season for a conversation with the late Rick Turner of Alembic and his adventures with fine brass.

Steve White (77:33)

It had Brazilian rosewood numbers inlaid in it and the neck was maple, hard maple and rosewood pick guard strap pickups and pretty basic.

Jesse Jarno (77:46)

Other than that, the guitar disappeared from circulation after Des Moines. Lately Dan's been making updated models. We've posted links to his work@dead.net deadcast though I know the lore, I can't say my ear is fine tuned enough to pick out the sounds of the Erlowine. Strat versus Alligator versus Eagle. All speculation welcome in the comments on this episode's page. Dead.netDeadcast now back to the Dead show. The end of the first set featured a one time pairing instigated by Bob Weir that worked surprisingly well. Tagging around and around onto the end of Done. Ease Me In.

Steve White (78:42)

Willie Jones was jumping going round and round. It's really n rocking. What a crazy sound. Although they Never stopped rocking.

Jesse Jarno (79:01)

Could have been a contender for the most part. It was quite a groovy day, but not entirely. I'll throw a content warning here for a little bit of violence, maybe forward three minutes if you need to, over to promoter Steve White.

Steve White (79:15)

But some kid had bolt cutters and was trying to cut his way through the fence. And Jim, our partner, went and took the bolt cutters away from him. And when he turned his back, the kid pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the back. And so Jim came walking through the backstage, and he had these bib overalls on, and he said, I just got stabbed. And I kind of looked at him funny, but when I turned around and looked at him, every time his heart beat, blood would squirt out the hole in his pants. And I knew who this kid was. I said, is it the guy with the long hair and glasses with a bunch? And he said, yeah. So four of us went out in the audience trying to find this kid, and we found him. I came up from. He was a little guy, about 140 pounds. I came up from behind him, put a bear hug on him, down by his wrist, And I picked him up, started to carry him out, and somehow he got his knife out of his holster and he started stabbing me with it. But I had his wrist so constrained, the only place the blade luckily went was into my belt. So, you know, it didn't poke through. But while he's trying to stab me, he stabbed himself. And so his friends all surrounded us. I let him go. He ran through the grandstand. The four of us chased him through the grandstand, down Grand Avenue to the main gate that was closed. And he turned around, he said, I'm going to waste you for it, guys, if you come any closer. And all of a sudden, this kid out of nowhere comes and tackles the guy and takes the knife away from him. Well, Bill Graham wanted to meet this guy, so we brought him to the fairgrounds administration building. And Bill Graham says, that was a very brave thing you did, Mr. Whatever his name was. Bill Graham always called everybody Mr. When I was around him. And the kid says, I'm from the south side of Chicago. So all he had was a knife.

Jesse Jarno (81:17)

And yes, Jim was miraculously okay.

Steve White (81:20)

Do you want to an ambulance that checked some EMTs? And they told him he was real lucky that the knife went in between an organ, his kidney and his spine, and they stitched him up, I guess.

Jesse Jarno (81:35)

But besides that, I haven't come across any remotely negative memories of the day, and many were outright magical.

Donna Jean Godchaux (81:41)

Bob Glaza and probably my biggest memory of it was when they played Looks Like Rain and went into Here Comes Sunshine. And there was clouds moving across at least where I could see and behind the stage.

Jesse Jarno (82:07)

But it's all right.

Steve White (82:09)

Cause I love you.

Donna Jean Godchaux (82:14)

That's not gonna change. And the clouds would cover the. The sun and it surely looks like rain. And then back and forth. That was pretty cool.

Jesse Jarno (82:41)

But I'll still sing you last songs written in the letters of your name. The Des Moines Register noted this moment as well in their review writing. At times the subject of the jam was the weather. When clouds passed overhead, the musicians got into a chant with their music. It looks like rain. It looks like rain. Looks like rain. As the clouds passed, another chant came forth. Here is sunshine. Here is sunshine. Close. At some point in the day it did rain a little bit. Though people's memories differ on when it happened. The scrupulous reporter at the Des Moines Register noted that at about 4pm all the singing about the weather backfired and things turned ugly. Temperatures dropped 10 degrees. A brisk wind started chilling the crowd and a few raindrops fell.

Donna Jean Godchaux (84:10)

It was a unique kind of rain, just a short lived rain. Didn't get muddy or anything like that. A very light rain, which is kind of uncommon for Iowa. Usually you'd get a drenching rain.

Jesse Jarno (84:27)

Whizzer.

Steve White (84:28)

It rained. It just stopped raining. When the Dead came on, it was what? The stage was wet. Jerry was getting electrocuted on stage and he got electrocuted a couple times.

Jesse Jarno (84:41)

Yikes.

Steve White (84:42)

And then the rainbow came out over the stage just as the rain stopped. It was pretty cool.

Donna Jean Godchaux (84:47)

Bob Glaza I would say midway through the show it was anything dramatic right at the end or anything. I don't, I don't remember anything dramatic about it. The most drama, like I say, was, was when they were playing Joe Gothier. They started playing Here Comes Sunshine. And there, there was a double rainbow. Makes me think of the ice cream kids.

Steve White (85:10)

That was something. It was a double rainbow.

Jesse Jarno (85:13)

John Ho.

John Hoch (85:14)

It just blew us away when that happened. I think even the band was really taken by that. It was, it was very special.

Jesse Jarno (85:21)

Photographer Larry Kasparak caught one of the rainbows. We've posted a link to his shot@dead.net.

Steve White (85:26)

Deadcast Jim owned a maintenance company at the time and one of his employees attended the show and the following day he said, how did you guys make that rainbow come out over the stage? He thought it was something, some production aspect.

Jesse Jarno (85:42)

Promoter and Dead cast guest Peter Shapiro experienced a similar round of wonderment when rainbows appeared over one of the Fare Thee well shows in Santa Clara in 2015.

John Hoch (85:51)

Maybe it's the obvious. It was a great show and people had a wonderful time and people were rocking to it and they played beautifully and they played for hour after hour with just a few breaks there, and it was a magical day.

Jesse Jarno (86:09)

After Here Comes Sunshine and the version of the rainbow that appeared, at least in Joe's stub, the day's serious jamming started. There's a 30 minute version of playing in the band that floats across rolling seas.

Donna Jean Godchaux (86:20)

Sam.

Jesse Jarno (86:46)

The waves get bigger and storms rage. There are no obvious transoceanic whirlpools and the ship emerges. Garcia sounds the main 10 theme as if to indicate he's spotted Land in the third set. The big jam sequence is quite symbolic of the era, and they'd repeat it a few weeks later in San Francisco. He's Gone into Truckin', into the other one, into Eyes of the World, into China dollar we talked extensively about He's Gone in our Netherlands episode of Europe 72 by spring of 73, it had grown a vocal outro that had began as a studio overdub on the live album in the Eyes, Hearts and Ears of Minnie, He's Gone had become a tribute to Pigpen, who passed away only two months previously with its soulful, bluesy outro. By spring, they'd also built a transition that allowed them to upshift right into Truckin', one of the few places where a count off and a Segway mark might coexist. And it got tighter as the year went on. We got way into Truckin in our American Beauty season. Of course, in Des Moines we had substituted a regional variant into the lyrics for what I think was the first time.

Steve White (89:27)

Chicago, New York in the morning, it's all on the same street, your typical.

Jesse Jarno (89:31)

City and bombing a typical daydream. Also geographically accurate. If you pick up Route 80 off the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan, you can take it to Des Moines, almost all the way to the fairgrounds. That spring, Truckin had also developed a new peak, signaled by Garcia playing a higher octave version of the riff that they'd also learned to play a little less sloppily. It was a period of mini duo jams between Phil Lesh and Billy Kreutzman and an era of many gnarly other one entrances. Sick feedback. Weir it's a full 20 minute excursion. It gets into some conversational weirdness en route to the first verse, and the post verse is a long drumless float, an origin point of latter day space, segments out the other side, almost like a crossfade, comes the piece that pins this sequence as 1973, along with here Comes Sunshine. Eyes of the World was Garcia and Hunter's newest set piece and included the long outro and 78 time that the band had developed collectively on stage earlier that year. Only played in 73 and 74, which we'll unpack more fully in the future. And at this performance, as it was in many of its earliest versions, it was Eyes of the World moving into the incredibly fragile China Doll.

Donna Jean Godchaux (92:56)

Pistol shot at 9 o' clock. The bells of heaven rain Tell me what you done it for.

Jesse Jarno (93:28)

In our American Beauty season, we discussed whether or not Ripple and Broke Down Palvis were written to be played together like a miniature suite. And I wonder if Eyes of the World and China Doll weren't similarly conceived. Another topic to bookmark in this incredibly rich year of Grateful Dead music. Other memories, by the way, have the rainstorm coming later in the day with a rainbow emerging during Sugar Magnolia. So let's imagine a stub where the rainbow's appearing here, too.

Rich Mahan (94:04)

Crawling out your window.

Donna Jean Godchaux (94:07)

Going, going in the window.

Jesse Jarno (94:11)

They never. For the Dead, it was a hearty Sunday afternoon in Iowa. Steve White of Music Circuit, when this.

Steve White (94:24)

Show was over, when this show was over, Bill Graham got on the phone to me and went, Mr. White, you fucked this show up. You fucked it up, you fuck. He says the only thing you know how to do is sell tickets. And that, I guess, is what brought him back the second time. I'm surprised Bill Graham and the Grateful Dead gave us a second chance, if you want to know the truth.

Jesse Jarno (94:52)

John Hoke.

John Hoch (94:53)

Our arrangement with Barry Fay was that we would split the profits 50, 50 with him. And the end of it. Bill Graham says, we're going to do this third, third, third. And we go, well, we have this deal, that's 50, 50. And he says, if you ever want to have the Grateful Dead here again, it's third, third, third. We said, yes, sir.

Jesse Jarno (95:19)

And Bill Graham did, in fact, work with Music Circuit presentations again, bringing the Wall of Sound to the fairgrounds on June 16, 1974, later released as Road Trips Vol.

Steve White (95:55)

But after that first year, he was pleased. At the second year, we learned a.

John Hoch (96:00)

Lot, and we went from 15,000 to 18,000.

Steve White (96:04)

I wonder to this day, if Bill Graham were still alive, if there'd be anything like a live nation. I don't think there would be. I think he would have used his power to keep it the way it was rather than the Walmart of concert promoters.

Jesse Jarno (96:20)

Now Live Nation, we can Dream Whizzer. The music system that wizard pioneered continued to serve Music Circuit presentations all the way through 1990. It was the beginning of an enterprising period.

John Hoch (96:32)

In addition to these rock concerts, Steve and Jim and I opened a bar called the Daily Planet and we had a lot of live music.

Steve White (96:42)

We brought in some good music. You know, Sons of Champlin, I can remember we had them. Freddie King, Harvey Mandel.

Jesse Jarno (96:49)

The bar didn't quite work, but the concert business did. Though John Hoak and Jim Henneberry dropped out later in the 70s for more traditional careers, all three remained tight and wizard kept presenting with Music Circuit for decades, building the Iowa Jam and bringing countless gigs to the region. The Dead had a gig the week after Des Moines and so do we. See you next time.

Rich Mahan (97:42)

Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old old Grateful Dead cast. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode Donna Jean Gotcho, Gail Helland, rita Gentry, Rosie McGee, Sally Mann Romano, Steve White, John Hoke, Candace Brightman, Dan Erlewine, Sep Donahauer, Bob Glaza, Joe Gothier and David Lemieux. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast, David Gans for contributing audio from his interview archive. Thanks very much for tuning in. Don't forget to like, subscribe and share an episode on your social media and give us your 1973 tour stories by recording yours over at stories.Dead.net executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus and Doron Tyson, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.