Loading summary
Transcript202 lines
- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale.
- [00:03]
Jesse Jarno
Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale.
- [00:23]
Rich Mahan
Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly.
- [00:30]
Jesse Jarno
Foreign 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. Hello friends. Welcome back to the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. This episode of the Dead Cast is our last focusing on Skull and roses, the live 1971 release by the Grateful Dead. And specifically we're focusing on the closing of the Fillmore west and the music that came out of that evening on July 2, 1971 as it comprises the second disc in the 50th anniversary reissue of Skull and Roses. Alan Trist is back with us again in this episode and he lends some incredible insight. As always, you can get new episodes of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast.
- [01:23]
Rich Mahan
Right here every other week.
- [01:26]
Jesse Jarno
Visit us at our website dead.netdeadcast and.
- [01:30]
Rich Mahan
Check out the extra materials we have.
- [01:31]
Jesse Jarno
For you to explore for this episode. Also@dead.net deadcast are all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons one and two, and you can link from there to any and all the podcasting platforms available so you can listen where you like to listen.
- [01:48]
Rich Mahan
Please give us a hand by subscribing. Hit that like button.
- [01:51]
Jesse Jarno
Tell a friend, leave a review. Any and all of that really helps. Thank you. Well, you do know it is the 50th anniversary of the Dead's live double album from 71 Skull and Roses. The expanded edition comes on June 25 that includes more than an hour of unreleased Music from the Dead's final Fillmore west show on July 2, 1971. Several configurations are available, including a 2Lp set, a 2Cd set, and of course it's available digitally via your favorite storage streaming platform. Pre orders are open now@dead.net Speaking of that bonus material on the second disc of Skull and Roses, this episode takes you inside not only the event that music came from, but what the band was up to around that time. What say you and I head down that rabbit hole with your friend and mine? Jesse Jarno.
- [03:04]
Rich Mahan
That was the grateful dead on July 2, 1971, their last show at the Fillmore west in San Francisco, a performance heard on the new expanded edition of Skull and Roses. Two months earlier they'd played their final shows at the Fillmore east in New York, and in between they finished their new live album. 1971 was a year that music changed the world, with albums that both captured the moment and transformed it. Just like most years before, in most sense. Skull and Roses was recorded in the spring and released in the fall. For some context, that span also includes Funkadelic's Maggot Brain, Jethro Tull's Aqua Lung, the Flamin Groovy's Teenage Head, Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, the Beach Boys, Surf's up, the Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers, the Doors, L A Woman, the who's who's Next, the Holy Modal Rounders. Good taste is timeless. Paul and Linda McCartney's Ram, Marvin Gaye's what's Going On, Can's Tago Maggo, Graham Nash's Songs for Beginners, Michael Hurley's Armchair Boogie, John Lennon's Imagine, Joni Mitchell's John Hartford's Aeroplane, Aretha Franklin's Live at the Fillmore West, Frank Zappa and the Mothers at The Fillmore East, June 1971, the Allman Brothers Band at the Fillmore east, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage's self titled debut. Happy 50th to all. One further bit of background, though it wouldn't touch the dead's world for a while yet. It was in June 1971 as well that with the United States mired in Vietnam, Richard Nixon declared war on a new enemy.
- [04:53]
Jesse Jarno
America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy it is necessary to wage a new all out offensive.
- [05:06]
Rich Mahan
The war on drugs was on and like a lot of other wars, the United States maybe didn't understand what they were fighting exactly. It generally had a good soundtrack, though. The Dead finished the main recording for Skull and Roses at the end of April 1971, and then it was back to the promised land. As Sam Cutler described it, California home.
- [05:26]
Jesse Jarno
Marin county, where a man can hang out and get high in some kind of comfort.
- [05:31]
Rich Mahan
Largely thanks to Sam Cutler's field marshaling, the band was able to take three months off the road and do the work of transforming their spring recordings into a new live album to be released that fall. Not that they were planning to take that time off necessarily. The Dead had planned to go on a European tour first to play the Solstice of Glastonbury on the cosmically vibrating Ley line with Stonehenge before heading to the continent to play free shows on barges in the canals of Venice. We talked some about this on our recent bonus episode titled Over There. But we have a little more to add to the story. Earlier in the spring, the band had actually sent an ambassador overseas. Jerry Garcia, and Robert Hunter's old friend Alan Trist, the manager of Ice9 Publishing. We'll be hanging with Alan a bunch today. So here's how Jerry Garcia described him in a Stone Sunday wrap available from Da Capo Hachette wherever books are sold. I've known Alan since he was 18.
- [06:23]
Jesse Jarno
He and I met down in Palo Alto. In fact, he was down there with.
- [06:27]
Rich Mahan
His father, who was working at the Behavioral Sciences Institute.
- [06:30]
Jesse Jarno
That's incredible. And he and I, in fact, and Hunter and Phil were all part of.
- [06:37]
Rich Mahan
That early scene that was like our early scene down there and really grateful. That is a continuation of that. You can hear more from and about Alan in our broke down palace episode.
- [06:47]
Jesse Jarno
Our whole scene is.
- [06:48]
Rich Mahan
I mean, I'm really just one.
- [06:50]
Jesse Jarno
You know, I'm only one component of the Grateful Dead, and I'm of equal.
- [06:55]
Rich Mahan
Unequal unit, you know, with everybody else.
- [06:57]
Jesse Jarno
In it, and everybody else is really.
- [06:59]
Rich Mahan
Far out, you know what I mean? Like, Alan, man, Alan is fantastic. He's like a.
- [07:03]
Jesse Jarno
He's some kind of cosmic diplomat. He's a guy that.
- [07:08]
Rich Mahan
That there isn't anybody. There's no way you could dislike him.
- [07:12]
Jesse Jarno
You know what I mean?
- [07:14]
Rich Mahan
He never disturbs any karma, ever. Though his main gig was as manager of Einstein Publishing, Alan would take many quiet roles in the Dead's world over the next decades. He actually was a diplomat of sorts, and he worked with, like, Near Eastern countries and where there's all that complex protocol.
- [07:33]
Jesse Jarno
You know what I mean about, like.
- [07:35]
Rich Mahan
If you say the wrong thing to.
- [07:36]
Jesse Jarno
The shake, bam, there goes your hand, you know, and it's like all those. All those things are happening.
- [07:41]
Rich Mahan
And it's like being able to move gracefully, you know, through these different worlds, you know, and through the world of English classicism, you know, which is like this academic background. It's like. It really takes some considerable grace. We are so absolutely pleased to welcome back to the Dead cast Alan Trist, who saw some of the Skull and Roses shows in New York en route to his work as a cosmic diplomat.
- [08:01]
Jesse Jarno
When I went to New York, where To England. I think I may have joined them in the east coast somewhere or somewhere on the way, you know, as, you know, part of my prep for going back to do the advancing trip for Europe. I went to England in the spring of 71. The Glastonbury people were, you know, getting ready and they wanted to initiate the Glastonbury Fair with the Grateful Dead. You know, because that was the music and the the values of the 60s that they wanted to bring to the Glastonbury Fair was expressed by the Dead. So I spent a long time with them. Andrew Kerr, he was the main force behind all of it. And I remember staying with down at Worthy Farm with Andrew and Michael several weekends in a row, trying to forget the Grateful Dead, how we could figure this out.
- [08:57]
Rich Mahan
Unfortunately, the Dead didn't have a new live album to promote just yet, so Warner Bros. Promise of European tour funding disappeared. It wasn't the last time. A delay in the band's album making schedule caused a change in their touring, so they spent May, June and July off the road, mostly with time to get high and finish up Skull and Roses in some kind of comfort. Not long after Alan returned from Europe, he was commissioned to write liner notes for Skull N Roses, an essay titled Alive Again, which was mind blowing for me to find out, since Alive Again happens to be the name of another podcast I've been involved with recently about Fish's Trey Anastasio. The essay was unearthed by our most righteous pal Nicholas Merriweather, set to be published for the first time in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the Grateful Dead studies Association. Watch deadstudies.org for more details. We've persuaded Alan to read some of it for us.
- [09:47]
Jesse Jarno
June the Marin hills are brown and hot. It's time to lay back and let the cosmic fly tickle your nose slowly. The band Hunter and Bob and Betty and Steve Barnard and just about everyone else from time to time are in and out of the studio, listening and selecting, thinking back to the feeling of the performance, looking for the crisp and chunky overdubbing, a ragged harmony or blunt discord.
- [10:20]
Rich Mahan
Some of those overdubs came from organist Merle Saunders. That was Jerry Garcia with Merle Saunders, Bill Vitt and Martin Fierro at the Keystone Corner in San Francisco on May 21, 1971, recently released as Garcia Live, Volume 15. During the three months between Dead Tours, Garcia played some 17 shows with Merle Saunders, eight with the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and four with the Grateful Dead. And it's in here that the live album became real. Welcome back as well. Bob Matthews, who co produced Skull and Roses with the band, and Betty Cantor Jackson.
- [11:19]
Jesse Jarno
Merle traveled With Jerry's current solo band. I don't remember what they called themselves.
- [11:25]
Rich Mahan
They didn't really call themselves anything just yet. Merle Saunders would overdub Hammond B3 on three songs for Skull and Wharf Rat playing in the band and Bertha. That was an early, rough mix of Bertha with a little more of Merle's organ part. A decade later, a journalist asked Jerry Garcia how David Grisman had come to be on American Beauty, and Garcia said he was around. Grisman's such a great musician if he's around and you can get him and there's a tune. And the same is likely true of Merle Saunders. But that wasn't the only overdub. Turns out Bob Matthews does remember something about the mysterious piano that was added to the fantastic Wharf Rat, recorded in the Fillmore east in April.
- [12:42]
Jesse Jarno
I'll get up and fly away I'll get up and fly away Fly away It's a rhythmic part, and it marches out to that. It was either Jerry or Phil, I believe, and that would make sense. And I suspect probably it was Jerry, because working with him later on his solo album, he would do that kind of, you know, a rhythmic piano part to balance with another texture.
- [13:21]
Rich Mahan
They worked hard on the album, tweaking the recordings in subtle ways.
- [13:24]
Jesse Jarno
There were some things that were improved. I mean, generally for performance to make it the cut to be even worked on, then it had to be pretty good performance. We did Skull N Roses and we did overdub vocals. We did them in the studio and it sounded like they were in the studio.
- [13:41]
Rich Mahan
It would become a technical challenge. The band would have to conquer Skull N Roses internally.
- [13:46]
Jesse Jarno
We had problems artistically amongst us all, and it was a result of doing the overdubs concurrently live. That is to say, if we were doing a song that had a lead singer and three backups, if all four of those microphones are all happening and are open and recording at the same time, it confuses the phase and it doesn't sound as good. Somehow it all gets together to quality, to a master tape which captures the real live sound of the Grateful Dead on stage in interaction with the audience, leading to the high place of unity, harmony, energy, where you can catch a glimpse of a vision.
- [14:33]
Rich Mahan
They'd experiment and improve on the method the next time out. One of the reasons they were able to experiment, improve, was that Bob Matthews and Betty Kanter had taken over the recording studio formerly known as Pacific High, and transformed it into alembic. Having their own studio also gave the Grateful Dead a chance to do something that would only become a Trend in the 80s and 90s. In 1971, around the time they wrapped up Skull and Roses, they got back to work on an album that had already taken a good deal of their time and caused a good deal of aggravation. Here's the dad on Kate PPC radio in 1970, offering a helpful pronunciation guide.
- [15:08]
Jesse Jarno
Oxamoxoa. Oxomoxoa. Oxo Moxo or Oxo? Oxomoxa. Oxamoxo. Oxomox. A Waxomoxoa Auxamoxoa didn't pay itself off until four or five years later, after Jerry and I, when I had my own studio, Alembic. When I got that, Jerry said, okay, finally we got our own studio that we don't have to worry about building unless we come up with something we like. We went in and we remixed. Jerry and I and Betty remixed the Waxamoxoa on our own nickel remixed.
- [15:45]
Rich Mahan
In September 1971, Phil Lesh would follow up with his own new mix of Anthem of the sun, both stripping down some of the psychedelic chaos of the originals for more direct realizations of the music. If one Deadhead Rite of Passage is to learn the difference between the individual song the Other One, and the full suite called that's it for the Other One, Another is to have favorite individual live versions of the Other One. But it's still another rite of passage to know the difference between the 1968 mix of that's it for the Other.
- [16:12]
Jesse Jarno
One, Sam.
- [16:44]
Rich Mahan
And the one from 1971. But that's a project for Another Day. There was lots happening around Alembic in the summer of 1971. One session that happened in those months was by none other than Allen Ginsberg, produced by the legendary British underground journalist Barry Mil. That was from Pacific High Studio Mantras, eventually released on the Holy Soul Jelly Roll box set, notable because it represents the first studio session by the late Arthur Russell, who would soon migrate to New York and become a powerful voice in the downtown music scene, crossing between punk, minimalism, songwriting and dance music. This is the Fly from those same Alembic sessions in the summer of 1971. If thought is life and strength and.
- [18:17]
Jesse Jarno
Breath, and the one the thought is.
- [18:22]
Rich Mahan
Death, then am I a happy fly.
- [18:26]
Jesse Jarno
If I live or if I die?
- [18:31]
Rich Mahan
The Grateful Dead only played four gigs in this window, three in San Francisco and one out of town, and all of them are fascinating. At the end of May, they played two nights at Winterland. The May 29 show made national headlines when a reported 1,000 people got inadvertently dosed on LSD from giant garbage cans filled with water. Witness saw nudes in the Winterland Crowd was the headline in the examiner. The Berkeley Barb ran with Winterland on the floor like dying fish. Minnie ended up in the emergency room. Not a good scene. The city threatened to take Bill Graham's license away. Bill Graham didn't lose his license, but he definitely lost his shit from an organizational point of view. Second night went better. The May 30, 1971 show was a record store day release a few years back. Up on stage at Winterland that weekend, Jerry Garcia was debuting his newest guitar. He'd received it in return for playing on a session that January for Graham Nash. Phil Lesh on bass, David Crosby on guitar, Neil Young on piano, Jerry Garcia on pedal steel.
- [20:03]
Jesse Jarno
But it's alright I'm okay How are you? For what it's worth I must say I love you and in my bed late at night I miss you Someone is gonna date my heart no one is gonna break my heart again Making songs for beginners also at the same time, in my spare time. And Jerry played a steel guitar on I Used to Be a King and maybe one other thing. I didn't pay him for the session. I didn't know what we were supposed to do, you know. So I gave him a Fender Strat that I bought in, I think Phoenix many years earlier when I was with the Hollies and we came here probably 67. And I bought this vintage strap and I gave it to Jerry and he immediately put on an Alligator sticker. And that became the Alligator guitar, which just recently sold for over $400,000.
- [21:20]
Rich Mahan
Like every other piece of gear on the Dead stage, it was soon cracked open at Alembic and rewired. Maybe even on the bench. Exactly. While the Dead were working on Skull and Roses inside the studio, please welcome back guitar maker Rick Turner.
- [21:33]
Jesse Jarno
Alligator was this constant work in progress up to a point.
- [21:37]
Rich Mahan
Over the next years, the guitar was rewired extensively. We've posted a link@dead.net deadcast with more info on Alligator's internal and external history. But along with tuning pegs, gears, bridges, frets, pickup covers, inboard volume blaster and more, the guitar also showcased Rick Turner's brass work.
- [21:56]
Jesse Jarno
Brass is a very craftsman friendly metal and so, you know, and making the nuts and all that. And so Alligator just kind of evolved out of that whole throw a bunch of brass at it and see what happens. You know, there's the more decorative aspect, which I really learned when I was out in Point Reyes. Pre Alembic I was doing about halftime work for a silversmith out there named Ann Dick. She was the ex wife of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, by the way. And she was a pretty well known silversmith and jewelry maker. And she had several of us set up in kind of a cottage industry thing where I'd have a workbench at home and oxy saddle and torch and hammers and anvils and, you know, she'd kind of rough out designs and I'd, I'd make them. And a lot of it involved that hammered brass look of that you see on a lot of early Olympic stuff. And so I took it over from small pieces that were, you know, earrings and necklaces up into the full size parts for the guitars.
- [23:28]
Rich Mahan
Alligator would spend most of the summer on the alembic bench, but it did get to see Europe. The Grateful Dead played one road gig during the late spring of 1971 and made landfall on the continent for the first time. Working in the front office at alembic was Rosie McGee, who helped give us a tour of the sound amplification, Recording and instrument building company in our side B episode. In her great book, Dancing with the dead, available from Rosiemcgee.com, she recounts that dead manager John McIntyre arrived in the stuffy Alembic office one weekday afternoon and. And began her latest adventure with three alluring words. Got a passport.
- [24:02]
Jesse Jarno
The Dead had been hired to play this big outdoor festival outside of Paris by a wealthy high fashion clothing designer. He was a French guy, he wanted to put together this festival and he had, everything was put together. I mean, those kind of festivals take months to organize. So he organized his whole thing and he booked the Dead to come over all expenses, stay in hotels and blah, blah, blah. You know, it was going to be fantastic. And John McIntyre and I went three days in advance to advance the show. And because I spoke fluent French, I was along as interpreter for John and for the band. So we went to Paris and they took us out to the site, which is its own little detour. The site was like a fake western town. It had a street, it had a saloon, it had a jail, like one of those touristy things you see in Arizona. It was a working tourist place. Nobody was there when we went to advance the site and just to check out the stage and, and all of that. And we were actually able to walk into the saloon and have a beer and everything was copacetic. It was great.
- [25:36]
Rich Mahan
French television reported on the site.
- [25:38]
Jesse Jarno
Visit Cesaire Chersaine, Eruption de Francais insuisse des Allemands Larry Lassen, John McIntyre, the manager the dreadful Bed Lancashel John the Uncle John's Band Ille meme oui, le dead.
- [25:56]
Rich Mahan
Rosie McGee returned to her role as Grateful Dead interpreter for this Dead cast. She translates 4pm on stage eruption. Two French guys, one Swiss, two Germans. Near the stage, John McIntyre, the manager of the Grateful Dead, the Uncle John of Uncle John's Band. He has confirmed that, yes, the Dead arrive tomorrow and will play here on Sunday. I don't see McIntyre in the clip. I do, however, see umbrellas. 4:45 already for 1/2 hour, the rain has been falling without stop on the stage, in the audience.
- [26:33]
Jesse Jarno
We went back to Paris. John and I were put up at the most expensive, gorgeous hotel, the Creon Hotel in Paris. That was a wonderful couple of nights. So the band was going to follow three days later and fly over with all of their gear. And while the band was flying over, there was a huge deluge of a rainstorm that completely mudded out and flooded out the site of the festival and it had to be canceled at the last minute. The band was already on its way. Once the band was going to arrive, we would move from Paris to the Chateau d', Heruville, which is about 30 miles outside of Paris and was made famous by Elton John. Honky Chateau. It's owned by a film score musician and composer who had a recording studio on the third floor and a bunch of rooms and people like bands could come there. I think the Stones actually went there once for a while and they could come and be lodged in one of the buildings on the chateau grounds and record there and they could be there for weeks. The promoter of the festival got an idea. He had to recoup some of his costs somehow. So he decided to throw a party at the chateau on the chateau grounds and have the Dead play. And then he invited some friends from a TV station in Paris to come out and film the whole thing and that that would be sold. Also he wanted to record them, had them come into the studio to try to record. That was a weird. A weird night. I don't think it worked out. Maybe he was trying to have the band play with some of the French musicians that were around. I don't remember. That recording never worked out.
- [28:55]
Rich Mahan
Various magazine articles and books recount different parts of the jam session in the studio. At one point, the Dead were apparently rehearsing the song Sugaree, which they'd debut a month and change later back home. Some jams seemingly involved the British group Bus Bastis others involved, the jazz drummer Jerry Grinelli, who is then part of Bill Hamm's Light Sound Dimension multimedia squad. Also along for the trip. Most intriguingly, according to Phil Lesh's memoir Searching for the Sound, they were members of the French Prague band Magma, who sang in their own fictional language, Kobayan. This is from the 1971 album 1001° Centigrade. A little bit of Riya Salal H taq. Apologies to any Kobayan speakers for my mangled pronunciation. So far, no tapes of Phil Lesh jamming with Magma have surfaced.
- [30:11]
Jesse Jarno
Then there was this party. Arrowville is really a village. It's not even a town, I don't think. I think it's a pretty small area. And so he needed to invite people to have an audience for this filming. The gear was all there at the chateau. They invited the local police chief and the villagers who had no idea what the heck, you know, was like. The, the master of the manor was inviting them. It was very kind of feudal, you know. F E U D A L that the master of the manor, I mean he threw a heck of a party. There was so much food and wine and it was just a fabulous party and the dad played and the only lighting was from the film lights from the video crew, from the film crew because it was at night and of course we all got highs.
- [31:17]
Rich Mahan
You can see it all in the film of the night. The French audience and camera crew also got to see the debut of a beautiful piece of rock and roll stagecraft. A line of alembicized amplifiers completely covered in Courtney Pollock's eye popping tie dyes document in Rosie's beautiful photos.
- [31:33]
Jesse Jarno
I believe that was the first time that Courtney's tie dyes were, you know, freshly dyed. Beautiful mandalas where he took like four cabinets and then created a big rectangular mandala and then cut it into quarters to put on the four cabinets so that when they're stacked it created the big circle.
- [32:00]
Rich Mahan
Until then, Rosie had been the band's in house tie dyer. We heard the first part of Courtney's story in our side B episode. But to pick up where we left.
- [32:08]
Jesse Jarno
Off, I think he showed up at Weir's Ranch out in Nicasio sometime in early 71. He had some of his mandalas already and T shirts I guess, and his work was gorgeous, you know, beautiful. Rex Jackson was living there also and he said, hey, you know, we love your work. And so Rex said, hey, why don't you do a set for our amps? I believe at the time the Covers that I had done for the Dead's band amps were starting to fade and shred and, you know, it was time to replace them anyway. So the next thing that happened is he came into Alembic and one thing led to another, and I gladly turned over the tie dye assignment to Courtney, who had beautiful skills. And it was just too much for me to even continue doing, even if I'd had the skill to do it. Rex Jackson had seen right off he went, yeah, you can do the speaker fronts. So that's how that happened. I saw their stacks in the studio. You know, this is the ensemble for weird stuff. This is the two big base cabinets for Phil's. This is Garcia's stacks. So I said, okay, I'm just going to measure up everything and see how the stage is organized. And kind of designed our color blocks. So where with four cabinets came together, like with Weir's stack and Garcia's stack at the time, I created a mandala out of four quadrants. They were all fitted together. Basically, I creased the centers by this much both directions, so they concentinate. So when I made them mandala, it was perfect, which still allowed room for framing. So when it was framed, they all fit together like one piece. So, you know, I had a certain color range for Weir, certain color range for fill. And of course, the Garcia's stacks were more reds and purples. Weirs were greens and blues, and lashes were purples and blues, you know, Pisces. So anyway, that was the first commission with Grape for Dead was the stage stuff. And from then on, I did, of course, for individual band members. Everybody got a big mandala. Typically it would go over their bed. And most of all, the children that were born back then were born under Courtney Tiedye mandala. Anybody got sick in hospital, I put up a mandala in the room, you know, as healing and familiar color, you know, something that was, you know, familiar. And, you know, those early years were everything was tie dyed. You know, the parties out at Mickey's. I put up a lot of tie dye big pieces and costume brews wearing tie dye shirts. They were lovely, joyous free days. You know, life was simpler and more innocent in many respects, of course. And so the 70s were actually just a wonderful time. That was the golden age of rock and roll between, you know, the mid to late 60s to the, you know, mid to late 70s. And I got to be there for that. Rock and roll was still in its infancy. And we'd cobble things together, make it up as we went along.
- [35:43]
Rich Mahan
It was a blast of new color for the French countryside. While in France, there was apparently another attempt to get the band across the Channel to England. But according to 1972's Book of the Dead, they heard it was raining. And having already been rained out once that weekend, they decided to pass. Ironically, it wasn't raining at Glastonbury that weekend, though the mud would become a feature when the festival relaunched later in the 70s.
- [36:07]
Jesse Jarno
The next day, we were able to go to Paris as tourists. That's one of my fondest memories of my time with the Dead, was taking Jerry and Hunter Weir and a couple other people to the Eiffel Tower. And that was. Oh, I loved that day. I mean, it was a gorgeous day. The sun was shining and, you know, that's where I was born and it's my hometown here. To be with them in that place was fantastic. So we just went in there as tourists, and I think in the other Rent a car, Phil and McIntyre and a couple other people went off to Versailles for the day. Just an unusual week. And like I say in my book, you know, a week later, I was back at my desk at Alembic in the dark. You know, did this really happen?
- [37:06]
Rich Mahan
Rosie McGee's book Dancing with the Dead has the proof in beautiful full color. Check it out. But with Rosie back at her post in the stuffy Alembic office, the Dead got back to work on their album. A few blocks away at the Fillmore west, though, a different movie was playing out. Bill Graham had decided to close down the Fillmore's east and west, which we heard about in our side D episode. A documentary titled the Last Days was released the following year. Its soundtrack included a bonus 7 inch with Bill Graham letting loose.
- [37:35]
Jesse Jarno
When you have overheads like we had 18 grand in New York. I mean, non talent just to run 18 a week to run Fillmore East. It cost $12,000 a week to run Fillmore west, whether I had a show or not. So shouldn't I put in a show and try to make those ends meet now? We did. The point is not that we weren't able to cut it. It's what we had to go through to run every week. The price that had to be paid during the day to make the shit go down at night.
- [38:05]
Rich Mahan
The room known as the Fillmore west had once been known as the Carousel Ballroom, and its marquee still had that name, too. For a brief period in 1968, it was run by a conglomerate of bands. The Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
- [38:19]
Jesse Jarno
Dear Mother, I think I lost it at the carousel last week. Jamie took me to the dance, and I haven't been the same since. The carousel must be magic, because I've really been transformed. This weekend. I'm going all through three nights to hear the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and a new English group called Fleetwood Mac. I'm not doing this just to make you and Daddy suffer, but Jamie says suffering is your thing, so what can I say?
- [38:49]
Rich Mahan
It was a legendary few months. Owsley Stanley was sound engineer. With many of his sonic journals being preserved and recently released, Roney Stanley organized Tuesday night jams. Future Dead manager John McIntyre worked in the kitchen.
- [39:03]
Jesse Jarno
It's only $2.50 on Friday and Saturday and only $2 on Sunday. Or one silver dollar anytime. And don't worry about me. Eating the food at the carousel is fantastic. Please understand, Mother, I've got to go, even if it means risking my sanity. But really, with the airplane, the Dead, groovy old Mac, and the Garden of Delights doing the light show, what could be bad?
- [39:30]
Rich Mahan
You might be surprised to learn that the business part didn't quite pan out. So in June 1968, Bill Graham moved his operations out of the Fillmore Auditorium, took over the carousel, and rebranded it the Fillmore West. Just a few months after turning New York's Village Theater into the Fillmore east, the building was and is at a virtually unavoidable intersection in downtown San Francisco. Michael Parrish saw shows there as a teenager.
- [39:54]
Jesse Jarno
It's such an unlikely setting because I was there at Market in Van Ness, and it was over the Buick dealership. So, I mean, you've seen the pictures of people lined up, and they go around the block down Van Ness, and you walk in, and it's this really narrow staircase. And then you walk up the stairs and they take your tickets.
- [40:18]
Rich Mahan
There's some great footage of the inside. And outside of the Fillmore west in the Fillmore, the Last Days documentary, there's.
- [40:24]
Jesse Jarno
Kind of a narrow stairway, and then they're taking the tickets to the top. But it was Willie. Was that the guy's name? Bill Graham's forever ticket taker. The big African American guy who's in the Dead movie. And the Dead movie, he's, like, friendly, you know, Come on. Come on in. Have your ticket already ready, please. Have your ticket ready. There are two doors, so you cannot get it back in. I'm sorry, sir. Thank you very kindly. Park right in and have a good time. Have them out and ready, please. But usually he was just kind of grumpy. And, and then you, you walk in and, and there's this, this hallway where the coat check is. And that's also where you would pick up your posters at the end of the show. You could always get a poster for the next weekend's show, but then that was pretty well lit. And then you walk in and there's this really dark, long, kind of relatively low room with, you know, most people are just sitting on the floor.
- [41:35]
Rich Mahan
Ellen Arkish worked at the Fillmore east from 1968 to 1971 and remembers how completely different the Fillmore west felt.
- [41:42]
Jesse Jarno
I went to the Fillmore west in the summer of 68 and I saw a benefit with the Steve Miller Band when Boss Skaggs was in it. I saw the opening act was a new band called the Santana Blues Band and Big Brother. So it was a. You sat on the floor. It was not theatrical. It was like hanging and watching the show, which was, you know, nothing wrong with that. And that was fun. Over to the side, there's these really. I never even tried the sofas, but they didn't look like something you'd want to sit on. And then there was, you know, up in the back was, was where the light show set up at the, at the very back of the hall. And then there was kind of this, this weird little hallway to the side which was elevated about six feet. And I didn't learn until probably the third or fourth time I went there that you could go over there and get a really good view because you were elevated above people above the floor. So, you know, you just kind of be on the floor and it was. They never turned the lights on. And it's probably just as well they didn't turn the lights on because I don't think you wanted to see what the floor looked like. I'm sure that they mopped the floor as well beforehand.
- [42:55]
Rich Mahan
But still, the floor did seem pretty clean, actually, when the lights were on and nobody was there. You might even notice the markings of a full size basketball court. In the Fillmore the Last Days documentary, you can watch footage of the Rowan brothers rehearsing while Graham and his crew play basketball on the floor. There's also footage of Jerry Garcia sound checking on pedal steel with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Bill Graham was a fan.
- [43:52]
Jesse Jarno
Jerry Garcia is the granddaddy of them all. I think he's the big Papa Bear of what rock music should have been. I think he and the group stand for what the utopia that never was is. Was.
- [44:09]
Rich Mahan
The day Bill Graham describes here could very well be the Grateful Dead's last appearance at the Fillmore West, July 2, 1971. Music from this night is featured on the new 50th anniversary edition of Skull and Roses.
- [44:22]
Jesse Jarno
On the day of a gig, he's there at 11 o' clock in the the morning or 2 o' clock in the afternoon, way ahead of everybody else. And he's one of the heavies, but he's there. And he's there to rehearse, and he's there to check the sound. And you say, you ready to go? You sure? I'm ready to go. You want to play more? Sure I want to play more. He wants to play. When he's not playing with the Dead, he'll be hanging out at the Matrix or he'll be hanging out at some club.
- [44:40]
Rich Mahan
During the Dead's last show at the Fillmore West, Jerry Garcia played with all three acts first, along with Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzman as the rhythm section, plus David Grisman on mandolin. Garcia played pedal steel with the Rowan Brothers, some of which was later released on their now and then collection.
- [44:57]
Jesse Jarno
We're going to begin with a group that is relatively new to me and to some of you friends of the Deads and the new writers, would you welcome, please, the Rowan Brothers. Come on, people, let's be on our way. We'll put on our costumes, bring the music along. Come on, friends, we'll sing a happy song.
- [45:25]
Rich Mahan
And Garcia played pedal steel with the New Riders.
- [45:28]
Jesse Jarno
One of the things that makes Marin.
- [45:29]
Rich Mahan
County as sunny as it is.
- [45:30]
Jesse Jarno
The New Riders of the Purple Sage down in the.
- [45:53]
Rich Mahan
There's also some footage of Graham hanging backstage with the Dead here, interacting with Bob Weir.
- [45:58]
Jesse Jarno
This man is responsible for my being crippled for life. Show me shoulders having gone for pop fly score that game. We won, didn't we?
- [46:07]
Rich Mahan
Turns out Weir gave us some background for that exchange when we dove into the history of the great Poeds own softball team in our Ripple episode, which we'll repeat here. After the Dead ringer shellacked Graham's team, they split up into new teams for the afternoon.
- [46:21]
Jesse Jarno
He had to pitch, of course, and I was playing for his base. Somebody popped a fly up on the first base line and, you know, I didn't figure I had to call for it because it's pop fly on the first baseline and that's my job. And so I'm standing there and I come in a little bit and I run into Bill Graham, who is busy trying to glory hog a bit, as was his way. We had a nasty Little collision there, and he landed on the ground and I guess broke his shoulder. And so from that point on, about every other time we'd run into each other, he'd pull his shirt down and show me where his shoulder had been broken and all that kind of stuff. Tried to make me feel bad. And I tell him, listen, Bill, that, you know, it was my job to catch that fly, that fly ball. What were you doing on the first baseline? You know, that was the nature of our relationship. He was a. Bill Graham was a great guy. Something of a crook, but a great guy.
- [47:23]
Rich Mahan
With cameras rolling for the Fillmores documentary, Weir gave Graham a great meta introduction. They should have used this in the movie.
- [47:30]
Jesse Jarno
And now here he is, folks, the protagonist. After all is said and done over the years and all the shit that's gone down, I'm very grateful to them for the joy they brought to all of us. And I consider them friends. The Grateful Dead.
- [47:52]
Rich Mahan
The Dead's last night at the Fillmore west was a good old Grateful Dead boogie. Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
- [47:59]
Jesse Jarno
They went to Eruville, to France, and did the little thing there on the lawn. And then that rolls into the closing of the Fillmore West. And I feel that by then, especially after the Fillmore east shows that run in April, that, to me, is where everything gelled. And if that had been the ban, if Pigpen had stayed healthy and they wouldn't have hired Keith, it would have been a very different band for the next ten years or longer. I don't know. I'm a big fan of this show. We considered doing the whole show before remembering or realizing that we didn't have the first set in the Grateful Dead's vault on master tape. And we do like to work for master tapes.
- [48:40]
Rich Mahan
The Dead had just spent some serious time editing their live album, and the Fillmore west music reflects that.
- [48:46]
Jesse Jarno
It's kind of a condensed version of the Skull and Roses album for the hometown crowd, and I really love it. Plus, it's a nice, healthy dose of Pig Pen. With the good loving and a couple other things, you do get a wonderful good lovin at the Fillmore West. And I think that showing Pig Pen being extremely healthy before, you know, a summer of 71 required those few months off. That also required the Dead to hire Keith. Not knowing what the future is going to hold for Pigpen. Crash.
- [50:08]
Rich Mahan
The show is being broadcast on the radio, and Phil Lash offered a dedication.
- [50:12]
Jesse Jarno
We'd like to dedicate this next one to our former Salman Owsley, who's now in jail, and I hope he's listening out there tonight.
- [50:21]
Rich Mahan
Owsley Stanley was at the Terminal Island Correctional Facility in San Pedro, where the Dead would perform for him and other prisoners a month later. Bear was then halfway through a two year prison stint for making lsd, a plotline we promise we'll get back to sooner or later.
- [50:42]
Jesse Jarno
The other day they waited the sky was dark and faded solemnly they stayed he has to die.
- [51:03]
Rich Mahan
The version of the Other One was only two performances down the road from the take used on Skull and Roses, recorded in April in New York. But it's a notably different flavor.
- [51:12]
Jesse Jarno
It comes down again to the Fillmore east, being that New York energy that kind of inspires the Grateful Dead to new heights, whereas the Fillmore west is like home. And that's the vibe you get on this. So where you get the chaos of the Other One on Skull and Roses from the Fillmore east, you get a very different other one on this one. And I love it. I love this one. It's more of a deep introspective space as opposed to a chaotic blow the roof off the place.
- [52:09]
Rich Mahan
Though the band had been playing the Other One for over three years, it was only since the previous fall that they'd really started jamming on it, letting the song's rhythm fall apart and resolve sometimes over and over again. In mid-1971, with the dead jamming mostly as a quartet, the Other One found new dimensions nearly every time they played it.
- [52:51]
Jesse Jarno
Whoa.
- [52:53]
Rich Mahan
That's awesome. Check out the rest on the expanded 50th anniversary edition of Skull and Roses. It's a great set and it supplements Skull and Roses. Well, missing from the disc is Casey Jones, which you can hear along with the Johnny B. Goode encore on the album. Properly known as Bill Graham Presents in San Francisco, the Last Days, the Dead dragged their heels on giving Graham music from their performance. Funny story about that. To tell it, here's Stephen Barnard, house engineer at Wally Heiders, co producer of American Beauty, David Crosby, if I Can Only Remember My Name, and the various endeavors of the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. We talked to him a lot during season two of the Dead cast. In late summer of 1971, the Dead hired him for another mixing session.
- [53:38]
Jesse Jarno
There was a booking, I think it was, for Bill Graham Presents. It wasn't for many tracks or something. It was like piece of cake. And the excuse was that we're mixing the soundtrack for this film and Jerry was there and we got through that in like 20 minutes.
- [53:56]
Rich Mahan
And indeed, Steven Barnard gets a Credit in the Fillmore Last Days documentary.
- [54:09]
Jesse Jarno
Go Go, Go Johnny, Go Johnny.
- [54:25]
Rich Mahan
But when they were done mixing, Steve Barncard got a surprise.
- [54:28]
Jesse Jarno
And then all these guys were rolling in a bunch of nitrous tanks over these big tanks. I didn't know what exactly what. I didn't know about the nitrous culture here yet, but it was. It carefully set up a bunch of nitrous tanks with distribution hoses. And, you know, and they had these carts that wheeled them in. And then all these people came in from somewhere. I don't, you know, I don't even know where they parked because there's no parking. Hardly any parking around the studio. But maybe they came in a bus. They probably came in a bus. There were women and I don't think there were any kids. They kept the kids out of there. But there was definitely some, you know, heads, okay, we called them heads. People that ingested substances. Right. So they set up. I said, oh, this is cool. And, you know, so they set up all the tanks. And I. I don't. I don't remember partaking. I was, I was still working for, you know, I mean, I smoked weed all the time in the studio. And I figured at one point I was unfairable. So.
- [55:28]
Rich Mahan
Nitrous was part of the dead's internal culture in the 60s and early 70s. Jerry Garcia described its effects to Charles REICH in the 1972 interview, a stone Sunday Rap, available in the book A Signpost to New Space, available from Da Capo Hachette. I think what it does is it. It triggers your I'm dying mechanism.
- [55:47]
Jesse Jarno
You know what I mean? It tickles it because it's like an oxygen starvation thing. Whoa. Yeah.
- [55:54]
Rich Mahan
An opening occurs and it's far out.
- [55:59]
Jesse Jarno
The nitrous oxide place is synchronous and synchronous and things happen super fast. Like fast.
- [56:04]
Rich Mahan
It's like it's calculator space and they.
- [56:07]
Jesse Jarno
Roll the tanks in. It was just basically a nitrous party. And there must have been maybe 30, 40 people in the room. It was awesome and very organized. There was a circle of people that were partaking. And then they had a spotter that held onto the tank to make sure it wouldn't fall over on people. And he didn't have a hose, so only the people that were on the floor cross legged got hoses. And I said, wow, this is an opportunity. So I went to the tape library, got a roll of tape, a fresh roll of tape.
- [56:39]
Rich Mahan
Yes, dear listeners, there's tape.
- [56:41]
Jesse Jarno
Take one. We're ready. We're ready. We're ready. Roll em. Let's roll.
- [56:47]
Rich Mahan
If you do it with other people, and there are other people who are, you know, have.
- [56:51]
Jesse Jarno
Are similarly programmed, you have, you know, just a telepathic thing.
- [56:55]
Rich Mahan
That's fantastic.
- [56:56]
Jesse Jarno
Just unbelievable. You know, it's just, you know, like, like in the old Walt Disney comic.
- [57:02]
Rich Mahan
Books, they used to have Huey, Dewey and Louie, the three nephews, speaking sentences, you know, adjacently. So one would say the first half of the sentence, the other would say the middle half.
- [57:10]
Jesse Jarno
The other. Finish it. Yeah, that's.
- [57:12]
Rich Mahan
That's nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is that world.
- [57:14]
Jesse Jarno
You'll notice that the red light is on my feet. Real step, real to. And.
- [57:30]
Rich Mahan
We need some tanks.
- [57:31]
Jesse Jarno
We need some marijuana. Don't say that on the air.
- [57:35]
Rich Mahan
It was creative mayhem.
- [57:37]
Jesse Jarno
And also put by delay off of the playback head. I made whatever was getting recorded come back through the speakers. That's right. Rebound. And so there's this tape of this nitrous party with the wonderful Jerry Garcia laugh. And, you know, because he had this distinctive, you know, you knew it was him. You could take the very loud and very catching kind of frivolity that injects you. Oh, it was one of the most wonderful recording experiences.
- [59:20]
Rich Mahan
As Sally Mann Romano told us during our side C episode. Unlike other bands in the local music scene, the Grateful Dead actually hung out together. A wholesome span of activities that included both nitrous parties and softball games. Bill Graham got his soundtrack cuts.
- [59:35]
Jesse Jarno
This old engine makes it on time. Deep Central Station quarter. Tonight, It's Railboat Junction 17 2. You know, it's trapping again. Diving that tree.
- [60:06]
Rich Mahan
The Grateful Dead took good advantage of their antipathy for authority, which had one of its more visible moments when the Dead decided on the name for what is properly their self titled 1971 live album, a name we've avoided saying so far during this podcast. Even though it's what many Dead freaks.
- [60:21]
Jesse Jarno
Call the album, I rarely call it straight up Grateful Dead, which is the album title.
- [60:26]
Rich Mahan
I still do refer to it primarily.
- [60:27]
Jesse Jarno
As Skull N Roses.
- [60:29]
Rich Mahan
If I'm not being recorded for a.
- [60:30]
Jesse Jarno
Podcast and I'm with somebody I'm very familiar with, I will refer to it by one of its other names.
- [60:35]
Rich Mahan
By this point, we're all friends. I hope so. We'll now tell the story of how the Grateful Dead wanted to title their 1971 live album Skull Fuck. Cosmic Ambassador Alan Trist was around the.
- [60:47]
Jesse Jarno
Skull Fuck and all of that. Yeah, I was sure it was going round and round amongst us all at that time. I don't remember anything except that Warner Brothers refused to call it Skull Fuck. You know, everybody thought, oh, yeah, this is great. But the record company didn't think so.
- [61:12]
Rich Mahan
You can't do this to me. Warner Brothers president Joe Smith told Grateful dead manager John McIntyre upon being informed of the name the band wanted to use. It's not me, McIntyre reportedly told him. It's all of us. We're all doing it to you.
- [61:25]
Jesse Jarno
I just remember going down to see Joe Smith with McIntyre and how can you know? We'd meet in Joe Smith's office in la. He was quite a charming guy, you know. Absolutely. He was very tolerant, you know, of the Grateful Deads shenanigans. He valued the music as he saw it as a vector in popular music that was going to become powerful. And he wanted the Grateful Dead on board, you know, and for all of our craziness, he was very tolerant of it. I liked him for that, you know.
- [62:07]
Rich Mahan
It was Phil Lesh who first broached the idea of calling the record Skull Fucking. Nearly five dozen members of the Dead family flew to LA for a meeting, which Warner Bros. Moved to a conference room at the infamous Continental Riot House. It was dead absurdity at full flight and made for an incredible comic tableau. Roxcully colorfully described Warner Bros. And the Dead facing off across tables as being like the north and South Korea Unilateral Treaty Conference. Everyone sounded very rational. New writers of the Purple Sage drummer Spencer Dryden told Blair Jackson. It was almost like everyone in the room took a turn in trying to explain to these straight guys from Warners why it made perfect sense for the record to be called Skull Fuck. People had these long explanations explaining the words on all sorts of different levels. Totally serious. And the Warner guys were very polite. I think a lot of people in the room believed it would happen, though, because like I said, everyone had their reason and they all sounded like good ones. But that's the Grateful Dead. They were never exactly in tune with the real world. Of course, that's one reason why they're great. Skull Fuck was an attitude. Phil lesch said in 1979. He was also a bargaining chip.
- [63:37]
Jesse Jarno
Skull Fuck. Okay, you know, definitely a bad joke. You know, it might well have been thrown around as part of the relationship with Warner Brothers, you know, you know, rile them up and then go another direction, you know.
- [63:56]
Rich Mahan
Warner Bros. Told the Dead that they couldn't sell an album called Skull Fuck at Sears, Corvettes and other department stores. There are no minutes known to have been kept at the Unilateral Treaty Conference. But the Dead might have asked in response, well, what are you gonna do to sell the album at department stores? The Dead agreed for the album to be released with no title at all, just the name Grateful Dead. Warner Brothers budgeted $100,000 for radio broadcasts from across the band's fall tour.
- [64:22]
Jesse Jarno
They were definitely on board. They wanted to make this one work, you know, very definitely.
- [64:26]
Rich Mahan
Now back to Alan's original liner notes for Skull and Roses.
- [64:30]
Jesse Jarno
Meanwhile, Alton Kelly, knowing that that's what it's all about, is working on the album cover art. Looking for an image to fit the idea. He digs up the old poster that he and Stanley Mouse created for a Grateful Dead concert at the Avalon Ballroom. Kelly had found E.J. sullivan's engraving of the Rose Crown skeleton in an old edition of the Rubaiyat of omar Khayyam in 1966.
- [65:00]
Rich Mahan
In 2000, Mouse and Kelly appeared together at the trip's poster show. This is Maus.
- [65:05]
Jesse Jarno
Yeah, we were doing posters for the, for the Avalon. And there was this band called the Grateful Dead. And it was a neat name. So figured out trying to figure out a good poster for it. So we went to the public library and we do this like every week. We'd go to the public library and go back in the stacks. They had all these really cool books and we just raged through.
- [65:34]
Rich Mahan
But Kelly remembered it slightly differently.
- [65:37]
Jesse Jarno
Great. But as I remember with the Rubio, I think we had that garage. No, no, you came out of the stack and said, look at this. Oh, okay, right. And we just went and stuck it on the poster and colored it in and yeah, it turned out to be a real winner. It was like they were practically the in house artists. You know, they were always in the office and I, I, I would go down with, with Kelly in particular to the print shops, you know, and it was fascinating to learn the process of how they went from an original idea to coming on the COVID You know, they were masters at all stages of the process. Yeah, you know, I mean, there were Rick Griffin was around, there was the other artists of the times, but somehow it all fell down upon Kelly and Mouse to be the major forces there. Yeah, well, they got the idea, you know, they got the feeling of how the art could express the music perhaps better than anyone else.
- [67:00]
Rich Mahan
You know, make no mistake, Skull Fuck was every bit as commercial as Working Man's Dead in American Beauty. It also came with some of the Dead's most iconic cover art. In a career full of iconic cover art. Cover art reproduced on a small sticker that came with the first press ins and soon thereafter on ubiquitous T shirts, authorized and illicit, plain white and swirled with tie dye.
- [67:21]
Jesse Jarno
We pretty much called it Skull and Roses. I mean, the Skull fuck. It was a certain moniker for it that had a certain cachet, but it. It really was deep, you know, Skull and Roses says a lot more.
- [67:39]
Rich Mahan
Originally used to promote shows at the avalon Ballroom in September 1966, the skeleton on the COVID of Skull and Roses was originally drawn by British illustrator Edmund Sullivan around 1900. An illustration for the 26th Quatrain of the Rubaiyad of Omar Khayyam, as transliterated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. To explain some of the mystic moods of Skull and Roses, we have Nicholas Meriwether of the Haight Street Art center and president of the Grateful Dead Studies Association. Nick pulled out not one, but two different editions of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam during our zoom conversation. Clearly the right head for the job.
- [68:15]
Jesse Jarno
Omar Khayyam is, you know, he's a Persian mystic. His dates are 1048 through 1122. He's basically a Persian philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. And. And the Rubaiyat is this. It's remarkable because it seems to express very much a kind of romantic, bohemian worldview, even though it's ancient.
- [68:41]
Rich Mahan
Omar Khayyam was rediscovered and transliterated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859, and Edward Fitzgerald's transliteration was discovered and illustrated by Edmund Sullivan around 1900. And in turn, Edmund Sullivan's illustration was discovered by Mouse and Kelly and colored in.
- [68:57]
Jesse Jarno
That's it. The skeleton says it. He says it all fits in his head. And the COVID art takes shape. Grateful Dead is a heavy name needing a heavy picture, but one that reflects the ambiguity of joy. The skeleton says it. Strong, light and elegant, coherent harmony. It relates to the live sound everyone has wanted on a Dead record since the Avalon days and a glimpse of a vision. Maus credits Kelly for actually finding the illustration, but they're both going about it in kind of the same way that Garcia went about finding the band's name. It's that bibliomancy, that sense of you flip open something and just let it happen.
- [69:53]
Rich Mahan
In both cases, they're kind of directing.
- [69:55]
Jesse Jarno
Their search like Garcia goes for a big scholarly dictionary.
- [70:00]
Rich Mahan
That's interesting.
- [70:02]
Jesse Jarno
Mouse and Kelly go to the illustrated book section of San Francisco Public Library. They knew that that was a rich resource. What's interesting about it is Mouse and.
- [70:13]
Rich Mahan
Kelly are both art school trained. They're art school dropouts, but they've got.
- [70:17]
Jesse Jarno
This real awareness of the Rich potential that late 19th, early 20th century illustration and design has. Edmund Sullivan is part of that international movement that gives us art nouveau, that gives us Jungenstiel. And there was a big exhibition at Berkeley in 1965 on the Jugenstiel movement. And that's where Wes Wilson went and.
- [70:44]
Rich Mahan
Had his huge epiphany that. Oh my gosh.
- [70:46]
Jesse Jarno
And that exhibition at Berkeley really is a seminal event in what would become the San Francisco poster renaissance. When I used to hang out at their studio, they would talk a lot about the French fin de sircle artists and poster artists. And that was their model because those French poster artists would do exactly what Kelly and Mouse do. They'd find images and they'd render them in different contexts, different colors and so on. I think that's where Kelly and Mouse got their inspiration from, was an earlier period of expressive art like that. It's a tradition that goes on probably to this day. Although I have not been in touch touch with how they weren't much with poster art recently.
- [71:44]
Rich Mahan
Bohemians rediscovering Bohemians rediscovering bohemians rediscovering bohemians over 800 years then slapped on album covers, stickers, T shirts and beyond, ready for future rediscovery by other bohemians. Something else significant happened in the spring of 1971 that made this a particularly swollen moment of transmission.
- [72:02]
Jesse Jarno
They get their official notice of incorporation in not 1970, but spring of 1971, April of 1971. They are registered as a California corporation. So it's right around then that Kelly is working up the art for Skull and Roses. So it would make sense that that, for example, became their first business card. And, you know, would. It's not their first logo letterhead, it's their second. Actually, they had an earlier one, but this is the one that actually really kind of fits and ends up being, you know, established. And they end up using that or modified form of that for the rest of their career.
- [72:45]
Rich Mahan
Now back to Alan's original liner notes for Skull and Roses.
- [72:48]
Jesse Jarno
While the band and crew are ricocheting around the country, invisible to communication in a space time warp of airship shuttles and time zones, the folks back at the office are taking care of other business, always staying in tune with what's happening out on the road, Shipping out forgotten items, conveying messages and developing plans.
- [73:13]
Rich Mahan
The interior of the album's gatefold included a note that would have enormous ramifications. Dead freaks unite. It read, who are you? Where are you? How are you? Send us your name and address and we'll keep you informed.
- [73:26]
Jesse Jarno
It was very much Jerry's impetus to put that notice on the album. You know, there's been various stories about that and how it came about, but it was Jerry who made that happen.
- [73:38]
Rich Mahan
Sam Cutler was involved in the establishment of the mailing list as well. He's got his own riff on the call to the Dead freaks.
- [73:44]
Jesse Jarno
Deadheads unite. You have nothing to lose but your brain was a. A sly dig at the Communist Manifesto, which was written in 1845 or something like that, which said, workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains was the opening line, the Communist Manifesto. So I took the mickey out of that and put, deadheads of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your brains, you know, and invited people to send us their address initially so that we could tell them where we were going to be playing. So what it was, like, targeted, in effect, targeted advertising, so we could send information to people who we knew would love to buy our tickets. So, you know what I mean? They didn't catch it on some local radio station or on a newspaper where they might well miss it. It actually went direct to them. So that built up very quickly. You know, people wanted to know where the band was playing and what was going on, and that, in turn, you know, developed into a kind of a newsletter and God knows what else, you know, so it was a. You know, one of those things that just started off. We weren't sure really what. What, you know, nobody in the Grateful Dead ever knew where we knew how to begin things, where things ended. Who knows? You know what I mean? That's. That's what it was about, man. It was about seeing where things flow, how they go and, you know, all of that. So it was a good start. And we used to use the album basically as a method of reaching people, because, you know, quite simply, if people bought the album, then we knew they loved the Grateful Dead.
- [75:24]
Rich Mahan
Alan Trist became one of the people tasked with figuring out what to do with the new mailing list.
- [75:29]
Jesse Jarno
I became the person who was the editor of the. The Deadhead newsletter that went out. Eileen, Laura, and myself, and Marianne Meyer were involved in doing that. Pretty soon after that notice went out and the letter started coming in, you know, and we had to respond to them and send out dates of tours and flesh out a newsletter that was more interesting than just the dates. That was a lot. Lot of fun. It certainly gave one a feeling that the energies of the band were in touch with other energies out there, you know, and they were Mutually informing each other. That was a great part of the sense that the band was in touch with the times, movements forward.
- [76:19]
Rich Mahan
You know, sometimes the stoned hippies have pretty good ideas. And the Dead's mailing list was both functional and symbolic.
- [76:26]
Jesse Jarno
It didn't directly affect the music as such, but it certainly affected how the Grateful Dead kept it real and stayed in touch with their people, you know, and kept it down home, you know, and simple and not too expensive and righteous. Truly, Grateful Dead, it was important that they were righteous people and they not only behaved in a righteous way, but, you know, ticket prices were righteous. Yeah. You know, make everyone feel that we're all singing from the same hymn sheet, if that's the right phrase.
- [77:02]
Rich Mahan
Skull N Roses is the first Dead album with a really significant amount of promotional swag, a sign of the attention Warner Brothers was giving it, as our friend Eric Schwartz discovered. Eric hosts the radio show Lone Star Dead in Dallas and is one of the world's foremost collectors of Dead ephemera and memorabilia. We've posted some links to his collection@dead.net.
- [77:22]
Jesse Jarno
Deadcast in the wild here in Dallas, there was a yard sale. Dallas was a real hub for the record labels. And there was a record executive here in Dallas. His name was Tom Sims and he was a Warner Brother exec. And at his estate sale, in the trash was a reel to reel recording, a reel to reel tape that basically was trash that we picked up. Inside of it was a huge reel that says Warner Bros. Records, number one gradeful Dead. It's misspelled with a D. And then inside of that is a letter saying from Larry Kane Productions in Houston.
- [78:09]
Rich Mahan
When Eric got it transferred, he found perhaps the world's first television ad for the Grateful Dead never aired.
- [78:15]
Jesse Jarno
Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead is alive and well.
- [78:21]
Rich Mahan
You can see the whole thing embedded@dead.net.
- [78:24]
Jesse Jarno
Deadcast an original San Francisco's Grateful Dead. Can't you hear me?
- [78:38]
Rich Mahan
It was hardly a masterpiece of marketing and the exact opposite of the newly established mailing list, but it was an experimental era for everybody. Warner brothers made some 10,000 T shirts with, to quote the merchandising material, the rose crowned skull of their new album cover. Blazing chest height in four color splendor. Tower Records declared it dead month and employees wore the shirts at work. There were patches, stickers, decals, iron ons, and in several cities, promotions involving caskets and hearses. Some people are just real sickos, you know.
- [79:09]
Jesse Jarno
Seven great LPs on Warner Bros. Records. The Grateful Dead. The movie Sox mocks up live to King Men's the American Grateful Dead the Grateful Dead alive and well on Warner Brothers.
- [79:28]
Rich Mahan
Alan Trist's liner note essay for Skull n Roses was jettisoned in favor of a photo of the band taken by Bob Seideman in the yard outside the band's office at 5th and Lincoln in San Rafael. There are five Grateful Deads in this picture, the same five musicians that played as the Warlocks a half dozen years and several centuries earlier. They had one more summer together, which we'll leave untouched here. By the time the album came out in the fall, things changed again.
- [79:54]
Jesse Jarno
He went so big you just told that's just about all.
- [80:15]
Rich Mahan
One surprising fan of Skull and Roses was the proto punk champion Lester Bangs, who reviewed it for Cream in November 1971. He wrote that it was, quote, not only great American music but a total personification of the American west, both as a musical genre and, more importantly, state of mind. And even if I still think they're Tom Hippies and probably will never learn to love them for their own smug selves, I've at least stopped worrying. Because now I know at last that they can, when great galloping googamooga the karmic vibes are right Play some mighty rock and roll in spite of everything, and I can hardly believe it myself, I'm a Grateful Dead fan. Music journalist and scholar Lenny Kaye, then just starting to play with Patti Smith, had been a fervent Dead supporter but wasn't totally sold on the new album when he reviewed it for Rolling Stone. He suggested it was, quote, an interlude for the Grateful Dead, a resting place where they've stopped over to brace themselves for the next series of atmospheric excursions. Skullfuck hit number 25 with a bullet on the Billboard chart and became their first certified gold album, meaning it shipped over 250,000 discs, which by RIAA rules meant at least 125,000 copies of the double album. That's still a whole lot. There are some great pictures of the Dead receiving their gold records from Joe Smith. In one, Bob Weir is grinning and flashing bunny ears behind Smith's head. In another, Weir holds the gold record while Garcia attempts to light it on fire. Prevalent in record stores that year, along with Skull n Roses, were newfangled bootleg LPs in varying degrees of sound quality. If you knew where to look, too, you could increasingly find tapes made by bold Deadhead recordists out in the audience, sometimes incurring the wrath of Sam Cutler, as on this recording from Philadelphia in 1970.
- [82:14]
Jesse Jarno
Turn it off. Turn it off.
- [82:20]
Rich Mahan
But better than the tapes, you might just be able to go see the Grateful Dead out on the road somewhere in America in spring, summer, fall and winter of 1971.
- [82:29]
Jesse Jarno
And now we have caught up with the present. The record is out. The Grateful Dead and the New Riders of the Purple Sage are on the road again. Midwest in the second, second half of October. South and Southwest in November. East coast in December with new material alive again.
- [82:49]
Rich Mahan
But now it's 2021, and you can no longer go see the 1971 Grateful Dead on the road. You can, however, crank up Skull and Rose.
- [82:59]
Jesse Jarno
Feeling good was good enough for Good enough for me. Good night. Good night, brother. You know, all good things must come to an end sooner. Ladies, good night. Good night to you, darling. Good night. Good night. These business brothers take care of the madam. Good night. Hope you enjoyed the show. It was a good show. I couldn't have done much better myself. Good night. Right up. That was Willie the Doorman saying, all good things must come to an end. And while that old adage is true, and this is the last episode about Skull and Roses, fear not, friends, we have more Dead cast episodes in store for you this season. Take care out there, and we'll see you next episode. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.