Skull & Roses 50: Fillmore East Late Show

Summary

GOOD OL' GRATEFUL DEADCAST

Episode: Skull & Roses 50: Fillmore East Late Show

Original Air Date: June 10, 2021

---

Episode Overview

This episode of the “GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST” celebrates the legendary Fillmore East venue and its vital role in the Grateful Dead’s history, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the “Skull & Roses” live album. Hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarnow, along with special guests, offer a deep dive into backstage stories, vivid accounts of unforgettable shows, and the serendipity of New York’s Lower East Side counterculture. Special emphasis lies on recollections from Alan Arkish—a Fillmore East crew member and future television and film director—who forged a unique friendship with Jerry Garcia.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Legendary Fillmore East and Its Unique Scene

Host Jesse Jarnow and Dead Scholar Blair Jackson set the stage for the episode:

• The Fillmore East, founded by Bill Graham in 1968 in New York’s Lower East Side, quickly became a central venue for the Dead and the wider psychedelic scene.

• The venue stood out for both its stellar sound system and its singular, colorful audience—a far cry from other more suburban or mainstream crowds.

  • Blair Jackson reminisces:

    “There were no bad seats at the Fillmore, even though it was a pretty big balcony. I loved it. Fillmore was tremendous.” (04:04)
    “...that was really one of the first things that distinguished a Dead crowd... how they danced and were up all night at every show.” (04:04)

• The live experience was further characterized by wild line scenes and eccentric attendees—“guys in capes,” vibrant hippie energy, and a uniquely gritty Manhattan vibe (04:04).

---

2. Alan Arkish’s Backstage View: From Usher to Stage Crew

Alan Arkish shares stories from his formative years at the Fillmore East:

• Arkish attended NYU Film School across the street and entered Fillmore culture serendipitously, beginning as an usher for $10 a night (06:05).
• The job evolved into stage crew duty, where he witnessed a spectrum of classic acts, often multiple times in a weekend.
  • Notable moment:

    “I saw the first Led Zeppelin concert in America. I saw the Who when the theater caught fire... First time Santana played in New York.” (06:05)

  • Technological advancements at the Fillmore East led to the invention of true concert sound and lighting—a feat achieved by merging theater expertise with rock show demands (06:05, 09:29).

---

3. Inventing Concert Lighting: Candace Brightman Remembers

Candace Brightman, later the Dead’s lighting director, reflects on the experimental nature of the early Fillmore days:

• The Fillmore East’s lighting crew essentially invented modern concert lighting, improvising with what was available, including old radiators for counterweights.

  “There really was no such thing as concert lighting...we were inventing that. And that was absolutely wonderful. You just can’t imagine what fun it was.” (09:29)

---

4. Alan Arkish Meets Jerry Garcia

A personal and heartfelt anecdote that shaped Alan and Jerry’s lifelong friendship:

• In 1969, Arkish encountered Garcia alone in a dressing room while delivering sodas; Jerry serenaded him with “Mountains of the Moon” on request.

  “He starts playing ‘Mountains of the Moon’ and he plays it and sang it for me in the dressing room while I sat there on the floor... and that was the beginning of my friendship with Jerry.” (14:08)

• Their connection grew through discussions about music, musicianship, and movies—Garcia being open to intellectual conversations, preferring not to be praised but engaged.

---

5. Wild Nights: Memorable Late Shows and Community

Alan describes the surreal, no-curfew, all-night energy of the Fillmore East:

• The Dead had the freedom to play as long as they liked, contributing to legendary gigs, such as the February 14, 1970 late show (now famous as Dick’s Picks 4).
  • Anecdote: After an all-night show, the exhausted crew and musicians stepped out into freshly fallen New York snow, a moment Duane Allman likened to “leaving church” (28:25).

    “Duane Allman goes out... And he turns and he says to Bill Graham, ‘Bill, it's like leaving church.’ And all of us go off in the snow together. So it's like a really magic night.” (28:25)

• The mix of backstage personalities included Hell’s Angels carrying nitrous oxide and even Mickey Hart’s grandparents, who brought cookies to the crew (14:08).

---

6. The Lower East Side Cultural Milieu

Robert Cooperman, poet and Dead enthusiast, paints a rich picture of the Fillmore’s neighborhood:

• The venue was surrounded by head shops, record stores, hippie clothing boutiques, and classic eateries like Ratner’s, where Bill Graham sometimes used a back table as his office (19:56-21:10).
• The street scene was vibrant and eccentric, a key part of what made the Fillmore East both free-spirited and musically progressive.

---

7. Bill Graham’s Vision and Personality

Alan recalls the impact of Graham, beloved and sometimes controversial:

• Graham insisted on professional standards, pep-talking the staff, and providing a show with the refinement of theater.

  “He used to love to give us pep talks... And this everyone remembers, this one afternoon where he starts talking about a beautiful show... ‘You know, a good show is like a beautiful woman. There are beautiful women, but then there’s Ava Gardner.’” (21:19)

---

8. Sound & Light Innovations and Legendary Jams

The Fillmore East’s technical crews broke new ground:

• The on-site eight-track tape machine led to thorough documentation of shows—feeding the riches of Wolfgang’s Vault and many live releases.
• The Joshua Light Show and later Joe’s Lights became synonymous with the Grateful Dead’s cosmic sound, mixing abstract visuals in sync with the band’s improvisations (32:07).

  “We were theatrical... so it wasn’t just spatial, it was temporal. So we move through time with the music...” (32:07)

---

9. The End of the Fillmore Era and Its Afterlife

The Fillmore East closed in summer 1971, but its spirit and alumni lived on:

• The building was remade several times before becoming condos, with the famous facade still visible (34:41).
• Fillmore East alumni, including Ben Haller and Candace Brightman, continued working with the Dead and contributing to the band’s evolving live legacy.

---

10. Alan Arkish and the Dead: A Lifelong Friendship

Alan’s stories extend beyond New York:

• After moving to LA, Arkish kept in touch with Garcia, offering creative feedback on the Grateful Dead Movie and collaborating on oddball projects, like using Garcia’s guitar as sci-fi sound effects for the B-movie “Death Sport” (40:28).
• Alan would trade movie recommendations with Jerry, sharing zany films like “Hellzapoppin’” and Fellini’s “8½.”

  “That’s a Garcia double bill. You know, there’s nothing real about that.” (37:03)

• Alan last saw Jerry in 1995 at Giants Stadium, where Garcia warmly equated Arkish’s TV show to the band’s own sold-out shows:

  “He looks at me, goes, ‘Hey buddy, Tuesday nights at 9pm—that’s Giant Stadium too.’ And that was the kind of guy he was. He did not want to be overpraised, but wanted to let you know he appreciated it.” (41:53)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Blair Jackson on Fillmore crowds:

  “…a lot of, you know, guys on acid, hashgrass. Acid, hashgrass. Acid, hashgrass, you know, a lot of that stuff. And these colorful folks you would see, like, around every show…” (04:04)

• Candace Brightman on the spirit of invention:

  “There really was no such thing as concert lighting... I mean, you just can’t imagine what fun it was.” (09:29)

• Alan Arkish on his first private Jerry performance:

  “He starts playing ‘Mountains of the Moon’ and he plays it and sang it for me in the dressing room while I sat there on the floor.” (14:08)

• Duane Allman, after a transcendent night:

  "Bill, it's like leaving church." (28:25)

• Robert Cooperman on light shows:

  “...it was just incredible because it was like a visual corollary of Dark Star.” (30:54)

• Jerry Garcia, ever gracious:

  “‘Hey buddy, Tuesday nights at 9pm—that’s Giant Stadium too.’” (41:53)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:06 — Introduction to the Fillmore East and its mythos
• 04:04 — Blair Jackson on the Fillmore’s unique Dead scene
• 06:05 — Alan Arkish on joining the Fillmore crew and witnessing iconic concerts
• 09:29 — Candace Brightman on inventing concert lighting
• 14:08 — Alan Arkish’s bonding moment with Jerry Garcia
• 19:56 — Robert Cooperman on the Lower East Side and Fillmore neighborhood culture
• 21:19 — Bill Graham reminiscences and workplace culture
• 28:25 — The legendary February 14, 1970 late show (“Dick’s Picks 4”) experience
• 30:54 — Light shows as psychedelic accompaniment
• 32:07 — Alan Arkish on the Joshua/Joe’s Light Show crew
• 34:41 — The afterlife of the Fillmore East and alumni careers
• 37:03 — Alan’s continued friendship and creative collaboration with Garcia
• 41:53 — Final meeting and signature Garcia wisdom

---

Conclusion

This episode is a kaleidoscopic oral history celebrating the Fillmore East’s vital energy, the Dead’s intertwined journey with the venue, and the friendships, artistry, and improvisational spirit that defined an era. Lively recollections blend with behind-the-scenes details, sketching a bygone scene that remains at the heart of Deadhead lore—equal parts spectacle, experiment, and sincere community.

Transcript

[A]

Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the good old Grateful Dead cast. We are smack dab in the middle of season three, and in this episode we dive a little deeper into into the backstage story of famed New York venue the Fillmore east with good friend of the Dead cast producer Alan Arkish. And don't forget, you can grab new episodes of the good Old Grateful Dead cast right here every other week. Visit us at our website dead.netdeadcast and check out the extra materials we have for you to explore for this episode and all the other episodes. [e-mail] deadcast all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons one and two, and you can link from there to any of the podcasting platforms available so you can listen where you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing hitting the like button. The spirit moves you. Leave us a review. It really does help. Thank you. I'm sure you know by now that it is the 50th anniversary of the Dead's double live album from 1971, Skull and Roses. The expanded anniversary edition of Skull and roses is coming June 25. It has more than an hour of unreleased Music from the Dead's final February Fillmore west show, which was July 2, 1971. Several configurations are available, there's a 2Lp set, a 2Cd set, and of course it'll be available on all the streaming platforms. If you want a physical copy, you can pre order [e-mail] Alan Arkush worked at the Fillmore east as he was going to film school in New York, and he likely caught more good shows during that period than I'll see in my lifetime. He became fast friends with the Grateful Dead and Jerry in particular, as they bonded over their love of movies and sci fi. Alan shares more of those stories in this special episode. Let's see if we can entice Jesse Jarno to leave Brooklyn for a bit and come over to the East Village. Jess.

[B]

It was no secret that the Grateful Dead loved the Fillmore east in New York, the Lower east side movie theater converted into a rock palace by Bill Graham in 1968 and closed 50 years ago this summer call the Village Theater. When Graham took over, he originally intended to keep using the name until previous owners intervened and Graham created the first branded Fillmore venue outside the actual Fillmore district in San Francisco. The Dead recorded more than half of Skull and roses there in April 1971, their last shows at the venue before Graham closed it that summer. When we were putting together our episode about side D of Skull and Roses, we came back with so many stories about the film Maurice that we decided to split them off into another episode. Everybody loved the Fillmore East. Blair Jackson is a longtime Dead scholar and most recently co author with David Ganz of the oral history this is All a Dream We Dreamed, and was a Fillmore east regular starting in 1970 during 70.

[C]

I saw them at the Fillmore a couple of times, Saw them at the Dead at Midnight series, saw them 5, 15, 70, late show. There were no bad seats at the Fillmore, even though it was a pretty big balcony. I loved it. Fillmore Fillmore was tremendous. It was, you know, there was the first place where I sort of really got into the line scene at all, or the kind of the colorfulness of the line scene seems like at the Capitol, it didn't draw quite as hippie ish a crowd. Maybe it was. Maybe it was a little more suburban, like me. Whereas the Fillmore always had that Fillmore east always had that kind of gritty Manhattan, Lower east side element, both around it and in line. But certainly a lot of, you know, guys want acid hashgrass. Acid hashgrass. Acid hashgrass, you know, a lot of that stuff. And these colorful folks you would see, like, around every show, you know, there's, you know, guys in capes, you know, really, really bizarre and interesting people. So that was the first thing that kind of. That was really one of the first things that distinguished a Dead crowd from other crowds of shows that I was going to with increasing regularity. Like I would go see ten years after at the Fillmore. And that was, that was not a. Even though everybody looked semi hippie ish, it was definitely not the same thing as who you would see or when I'd go see the Birds during that era, which was a fun band at that time, but, you know, the Grateful Dead crowd quickly distinguished itself from other crowds also in terms of how they danced and were up all night at every show. I went to, pretty much almost certainly.

[B]

Every Dead freak listening to this podcast who saw the Grateful Dead has some favorite Dead shows and stories that go with them that they can tell around the campfire to younger heads. But not everybody has stories like Alan Arkish, who went on to an illustrious career in film and television. We heard some great tales in our last episode, but those barely scratched the surface. We're gonna repeat a wee bit from the last time so we can let Alan reintroduce himself, and we'll head off into new space from there.

[D]

I was at NYU Film School. I went the opening night at the Fillmore east and saw Albert King, Tim Buckley, Big Brother in the Holding Company. That was a great show. And then, like, two weeks later, I saw the who. I also saw Traffic there. Oh, I saw opening act Sly and the Family Stone headliner, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The Dead played there, but I didn't see them in June. And then I got a job at the end of the summer because originally Bill Graham had had someone put up a flyer in the men's dorm, and I was living in an apartment, and people had gotten the job as ushers. And one of my roommates, who then moved into my apartment, had a job as an usher. And he said, I don't want to work both nights. You want one night? I said, Yeah, I get $10 to watch, you know, all these bands. And that's how I started as an usher. So that was a summer, late summer of 68. I was there every weekend. And soon he didn't want to do one night even. So I did both nights. And so my job was. I was. It's a theatrical setting. So I was on the first floor, and I was in charge of the section on the left. And so I was always going up and down the aisle and getting people their seats and so forth. It was a great job, needless to say. I saw the first Led Zeppelin concert in America. I saw the who when the theater caught fire. They played Tommy. First time Santana played in New York. I saw every major classic rock band of the period four times in a weekend. So we became connoisseurs of the weeknd, so to speak. It had truly professional sound, sound on a level that hadn't been heard in a rock concert before. So he was right next door to NYU Theatrical School. And there was no jobs in theater then because it was all seniority going to Broadway. And so literally six inches from the theater school is the Lowes Commodore, which became the Fillmore East. So some of the professors and some of the students looking in this theater and they all get jobs and they have all these ideas how to do sound because it'd never been done properly up to that point. And so they designed the rock and roll sound system.

[B]

Even when Owsley Stanley was running the Grateful Dead sound system, the Fillmore east was the only road venue where the Dead didn't insist on setting up their.

[D]

Own pa. Chip Monk, who became the guy at Woodstock who says, don't take the brown acid. The brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. It's suggested that you do stay away from that. He was the lighting designer at the film Maurice when it opened. And the Joshua Light show behind the.

[B]

Bands was a giant screen. And behind the giant screen, the Joshua Light show. Doing wondrous things. We'll get back to them. Chipmunk's crew had come from the Anderson Theater, a few blocks down Second Avenue. And perhaps the Village Theater's only real competition in the early days. One member of Chipmunk's lighting crew would become the Dead's full time lighting director in 1972. Please welcome back Candace Brightman.

[E]

The Anderson Theater was before the Fillmore East. We were at the Anderson Theater and there was a bunch of people who knew Bill Graham and they persuaded him to open the Fillmore East. And then we moved over there. There really was no such thing as concert lighting. So we moved into this theater, which of course had. I don't know what kind of lighting system it had, but I think none. And we just built a lighting system and. And one of the things that we had to do was to fly a front lighting position. So we rigged all this stuff through the ceiling and to get counterweights so that we could pull this truss up and down. You know, to load it up, we used radiators, old, abandoned. I mean, we used anything we could find in the theater that was heavy. So it was very different than nowadays. A lot of fun. And it was an adventure. I'll probably keep talking about this. I love adventures and I love them when they're really hair raising. So we were inventing things and it was a very good group of people, really intelligent group of people. The key technical director was the guy who taught theater at nyu, Chris Langhart. And so everything was an adventure and it wasn't a business. It was a few years after that maybe when I started to realize, oh, this is going to be a big business. This is really going to be something. But at that point, we were all just working together to put on a show and we were inventing things because people usually, as far as I know, if they were going to do a big rock show, it would be at an arena somewhere. And there was no concert lighting. So we were kind of inventing that. And that was absolutely wonderful. I mean, you just can't imagine what fun it was.

[B]

By the time Alan Arkish had established himself with the Fillmore east, he was already a pretty devoted rock fan.

[D]

I was at College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. So this is the fall of 66, and I used to read the Herald Tribune on Sundays, and they had a magazine section. And this one Sunday, I see there's a lead article by Tom Wolf, has all this strange lettering, and it was by Ken Kesey. So I took it back to the dorm, I read it, and I was hooked because there was actually a series of articles that became the Acid Test. And that's when I heard. I guess they were referred to. I don't know if they referred to first as the Warlocks and that, but it was about their involvement with Ken Kesey and Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. So it kind of stuck in my head. And then I was working at the college radio station, and of course, somebody ever ran, of course, Billboard magazine or anything like that. And there was no rock press to speak of at the time. I started reading about the Grateful Dead and so people lauding them. So I bought the first record just sight unseen, you know, and I really liked the first record. And I saw them on their first New York tour. I saw them at the Cafe A Go Go in Greenwichville, which. Which was a little club below the Bleecker Street Cinema. And I had seen Paul Butterfield there and the Jim Questin Jug Band and that kind of stuff. And so that was June of 67, which is a red letter day because it's also the day that I heard, this is ready, guys. Ready for a true boomer moment. Okay? In the afternoon of that day, I get home from college and we all gather my house, and we listen to Sergeant Pepper. And then we get in the car, we drive to New York City to see the Grateful Dead for the first time. And I have to say, the Dead were only. Okay. I had seen the Airplane at the Cafe Go Go. And by then, no, I hadn't seen the Doors yet. But, you know, they were okay. You know, it was like their first tour. And I guess I saw them a couple of times over the course of the next year or two, but nothing that I Said, this is the band that everyone's talking about. It had, you know, it's that Dead thing where you gotta get him on the right night or, you know.

[B]

But in February 1969, that all changed for Alan when the Dead came through for two nights. We heard about those gigs in our last episode. And once he got it, he really got it and had plenty more chances to have his mind blasted over the next two years.

[D]

They were there so often and we knew, we get to know them so well that when they came back In June of 69, now we were ready, you know. All right, this is now. We're going to see a great Grateful Dead show. And the Friday night show was killer. Friday night, late show, one of these two, 3am things. Because there was no limit at the Fillmore east how long you could play. My job, I was on the stage crew by then, so I would be working on the stage crew. But my other job as part of the stage crew was to set up the dressing rooms of beer and soda, that kind of thing. And that was. This is well before contract riders, you know, you got a case of beer and a case of soda. And so I would. Friday, I'd buy it for the weekend, and then Saturday I would come in like about. The shows would start 7:30, and I'd come in about four and fill up the ice chests and carry them up to three flights and then carry the soda up. I'd start the top and work down. And so the Jed were headlining. And I'm backing into their dressing room late afternoon, you know, and use my butt to kick it open, you know. So it slams open and Garcia is sitting in the dressing room. There's nobody. It's like only 10 people in the theater. Sound crew, lighting crew, no musicians. And he's sitting alone in the dressing room playing the guitar. And it's like, oh, sorry, you know. And he says, no, man, do what you got to do. So I start putting the soda away. So how old is he in 1969? 26. Yeah. So it's. It's that Garcia with that kind of, you know, that on fire eyes things, you know. And I'm sitting there putting this over. I'm trying to make a conversation of some, you know, great show last night, all that stuff. And when are you guys gonna do a live album? He goes, oh, we got one in the can now. We just finished it. It's coming out. I said, can't wait, you know. And Ox and Mox had just come out. I told him how much I Liked it. And I said, I really like the song Mountains of the Moon, you know. And also, he's backlit, you know. It's like, you know, he's always smoking Pall Malls or whatever it was. So he's got this halo, you know. I'm remembering it a little differently than probably it was, but I'm a filmmaker. I can't help it. I've got a lick. And he says, oh, yeah. I said, that's great. Do you ever play it live? He goes, oh, no, hardly ever. Hardly ever. Okay, well, too bad, you know, great show last night. Says, oh, tonight's gonna be better. And as I finish it off, he starts playing Mountains of the Moon. And he plays it and sang it for me in the dressing room while I sat there on the floor. And I go, thank you. He goes, later, man. And that was the beginning of my friendship with Jerry. Now we have bonded. So whenever they were there, we would talk, you know. And he knew I was in film school and all this kind of stuff. He was a very, very open person, especially if you came to him with an intellectual kind of conversation. He didn't want to hear you say how great he was. By asking him musical questions, basically, I was curious how he got to be who he was, you know, who his favorite musicians are. And that was the first time I heard the Django Reinhardt was from him and Blind Willie Johnson. And, oh, there's a great pianist, jazz pianist, who improvises that he loves. And, you know, so he'd have musical conversations until you got to know him a little bit. And then we would go into movies and stuff. So they were there every three months, and I saw just about every show that they did. The other thing that they did, it was that June concert that I was talking about. June, I think, 69. That incredible Saturday night where I had brought the soda up. We took all the equipment out of the Fillmore, the sound system, and brought it up to Central park and set it up in the band shell. And they played for free that afternoon. And the Airplane who were in town showed up. It was that, you know, and then we packed it all up and brought it back. You know, it's good to be 21 and not need sleep, you know, And I do not want to forget that. One of the number one things that the Dead brought with them were Mickey Hart's grandparents. So after they started appearing after the first time, and we got them chairs on the stage, they come back the next night, and she's got a box of cookies for Us, So now it's a ritual. They keep showing up for the early shows. And we set up a chair right near. Right near Mickey's drums in Garcia and sit down. They. Oh, and his grandmother always brought us cookies. That's kind of the atmosphere, you know. And then while she's eating the cookies and everything, that I'd be. The back door would be a knock and there would be like eight of Hell's Angels, because Hell's Angels headquarters were only about five blocks away carrying nitrous oxide, you know. And, you know, you're not going to say, do you have a pass? You know, I mean, see you pass. Oh, hi, guys. And they go up to the dressing room, you know.

[B]

The scene on the Lower east side was thriving. Two blocks to the north was St. Mark's Place, where you could suck down an egg cream day or night at Gem Spa, pick up magazines from around the world, or perhaps get recruited by the Yippies. Just around the corner was the Electric Circus. In our episode about Psy D, we heard a few Fillmore east poems from Robert Cooperman from his book Saved by the Dead. Welcome back, Bob.

[F]

There were all kinds of, like antique and hippie clothing stores. There was a place called the Psychedelica Tessen or something like that right near NYU on the tonier side of the neighborhood. Lots of record stores, head shops. Of course, Second Avenue was really interesting. There was the Fillmore. Right next door was Ratner's.

[B]

During the daytime, Bill Graham could sometimes be spotted using a rear table at Ratner's as his office.

[F]

Ratner's was called in New York a dairy restaurant, which means it did not serve fowl or flesh, but fish was okay. And obviously dairy dishes like blintzes, cheese blintzes, potato pancakes, which were my favorites. Fish dinners. My parents liked to go there a lot when I was a little kid. My brother and I would go with them, obviously. I remember one time we were in the mountains and we came back to New York. We had to drive through that neighborhood and my parents were hungry, so we stopped there. And my mother, whenever we would go there, she would have this gigantic bag and just dump all the rolls up that they would give you for free into the bag and then say, can I have some more? You know. Those roles were incredible, though.

[B]

Bill Graham lived in the Bay Area, where he also put on shows at the Fillmore west in Winterland and oversaw a growing empire. He was in New York constantly, more.

[D]

Than you'd think would be humanly possible, considering it was a longer Flight. Then, you know, he just really put in the hours. And he was the biggest fan of the place. You know, he had imbued a sense of putting on the best show, which, you know, which works in New York, because New York is based on hierarchy. You know, it's all like theater. So there's an owner, there's the person directing the show. You know, there's that triangle. And Bill was at the top of the triangle. And he used to love to give us pep talks. And so he would sit everyone down, and if he was there, and he was there early enough, all the ushers, everyone would sit on the stage. By 10 minutes, we're going to show up and talk about how great it is and what bands we got tonight and who he had seen and how he had given Santana the song by Tito Puente and whatever he was talking about. And this everyone loved. Remembers this one afternoon where he starts talking about a beautiful show. We're going to have a beautiful show tonight. You know, and we got Traffic or Cat Stevens. It's going to be a beautiful show. He says, you know, a good show. It's like a beautiful women woman. You know, there are beautiful women, but then there's Ava Gardner. And we go, ava gardner. We're like 22 years old. Julie Christie, you know, it became a running gag. Oh, you look like Ava Gardner tonight.

[B]

The Fillmore east was part of the Lower east side experience. Not everybody was enamored with Bill Graham, and various charges against him could be read in the pages of the East Village Other and rat Subterranean News. But to musicians, it was clear that the Fillmore was the classiest game in town. And they responded.

[D]

There was an eight track tape machine in the basement that had been brought, and it was such an effort to get it down there that they kind of left it there. So whoever wanted to record would do that. Or they record off a truck outside parked in the street. The whole place had amazing sounds. And we used to think, not we. I was just a stage crew member. But they would tune the. The whole theater so that they would put pads up in certain places and they had pink noise generators and white noise generators, and they would spend a Sunday just getting a place. Each week they learned a little more. And the sound department and the tech crew had the whole basement basically theirs with their shop and everything. So they had a TV down there that had a picture of the stage. There's this one camera in the center and a blurry black and white picture. And that way, also behind the light show screen, the Light show could see what was going on, but they ran sound down there, which just happened to also go up to a loft nearby. And they recorded everything, every group. That's how all that stuff is on Wolfgang's Vault, because it also recorded in the basement. Sometimes, if you were nice, if everyone loved the show, they'd make you a copy.

[B]

It's February 1970. First up is a young group from the south called the Allman Brothers Band. The Owsley Stanley foundation has released music from all three of their Fillmore east performances that month.

[D]

And already on that Thursday, it was the Allmans and the Dead are playing and a group called Love from la. Halfway through the night before the Dead went on for the late show in the Allmans, the Fleetwood Mac shows up. And that's the Peter Green version of Fleetwood Mac. And so they go on stage and there's a famous photos of, you know, Dwayne Allman, Jerry and Peter Green jamming. And either they asked or they were dosed, I don't know which, but they got really high and Mick Fleetwood couldn't stand up, and he was playing cowbell, sitting on the floor. And at the end, as everyone's leaving the theater, he's going, the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead. And so we all know that, okay, if Osley is the sound man this weekend, don't put any drinks down or whatever, you know, because you got.

[E]

Sometimes I feel.

[D]

Sometimes I feel. So we got through Thursday okay. We got through Friday okay. Now it's Saturday. We're thinking, okay, Saturday night in New York, the almonds are flying. You know, it was a way they're playing the Dead Are Just On Fire. Don't drink anything, you know, because you have Hell's Angels coming in the back door. It's just. It could not be crazier, you know. And so I take the water that was kind of water cools the big glass. Then now they make them out of plastic. A big glass bottle, huge, heavy. So I. It's empty. It's like about seven. Seven show is going to start. Something. I take that and I look around and I see about 20ft away is Ramrod and Parrish and Red Dog, who is the Almonds roadie. So I don't. I think they're not looking at me. So I run to the basement, grab the new bottle, run back, pour it on. And now Sonny Hurd is there, too, and just looking at me, and he got that funny smile. And that was it. Well, they put it in the water and I said, steve, was it you? And he said, nah, it was Sonny. Sonny Hurd did it. Well, well, this is glorious Sunday morning. The Grateful Goddamn Dead.

[B]

If you know, you know. And if you don't. This is the Late show from February 14, 1970, now known as Dick's Picks 4.

[D]

So when people say to me, what was the best Grateful Dead show you ever saw at the Phil Morris, I used to say that night, but I'm not objective, you know, and because a part of that night in the Late Show I spent lying down on the stage behind the screen because everyone was like, in another place, staring up at the light show screen while they played Dark Star and my friend Jonathan Kaplan, who became a director, next to me were all the whole crew, whole backstage crew. Like most of them are lying on the floor. That's the Night of the Feeling groovy. Dark Star. That was the night they played all night long. And I guess it was about 5:00am 5:30am, 6, whatever, when they finished. You know, you listen to that set, it's amazing. The doors open and the. You could kind of smoke in the theater. These big shafts of sunlight are coming in. Now. None of us. None of us have been outside since four in the afternoon, right, Because. And we walk out and it has snowed and 6th street is covered in snow. Like only in New York for the few footsteps, you know, just. And snow is coming down. And we all walk out like, oh, my God. And Duane Allman goes out. He's the first out the door. And Jerry and everyone standing in the doorway going out with Bill Graham. And he turns and he says to Bill Graham, he says, bill, it's like leaving church. And all of us go off in the snow together. So it's like a really magic night. But when I went and got the Dix Picks four and played it, I said, it really was a great show.

[E]

You know.

[D]

And I have since listened to it lying on the floor to just check. And yes, it was.

[B]

60 Minutes reported from the Fillmore east in 1969.

[G]

To the uninitiate, the Fillmore sound is deafening. The amplifiers turned up almost to infinity. The colored lights playing on the backdrop in psychedelic suggestion seem to stun the young crowd, to mesmerize them. They sit quietly in uniform, dressed alike, haircut alike, alike in the anesthesia they give the performers tonight, the Grateful Dead and their rock and blues heroine, Janis Joplin.

[B]

Go suck an egg cream, buddy. Bob Cooperman would like a word with you.

[F]

I love those light shows. I'd never seen anything like them before. At first they would. They Seemed very. Just pulsing colors, you know, and then. But there was one show of the Deads when they started Dark Star, and it was a guy. I even wrote a poem about this for my next book. A guy in a convertible Cadillac. I can't remember if it was simulated live action or cartoon. And his hair is blowing in the wind, and he's just tooling down a desert road, and all of a sudden he takes off into outer space. And he's going past the planets into deep space. And it was just incredible because it was like a visual corollary of Dark Star. I remember one light show for Darkstar. It seemed to me like it was light dancing off the planets to begin the universe. And I may have been stoned. I don't know.

[B]

Haven't seen the Joshua Light show in action in more recent years. I'm with Bob. Alan Arkish joined the light show crew not long after those February 70 gigs when it changed its name to Joe's Lights but remained otherwise the same.

[D]

I joined the light show right out of film school. And I was with them. So now I'm working with them. And I was a light show. What's called a mixer, the light show. Unlike San Francisco light show. San Francisco light shows are like paintings, you know, beautiful, decorating the walls and everything. And front projection. We were theatrical, and everyone had come from theater. So there was a sense of drama as a set move that the Joe's Lights and Joshua Light show did. So it wasn't just spatial, it was temporal. So we move through time with the music. So we may start with a certain effect at the beginning of a song and have it mutate throughout the song and come back to it at the end to give it closure. And everybody had an instrument, and the lighting out front was coordinated with that. So it seemed like the Dead were getting really into a deep, dark star. The lighting designer would say, all right, everybody turn off all the lights. And we would go to completely black stage and have just the light show going. Or one time he had the ushers come up and aim flashlights at the person they wanted to see. It was, you know, very coordinated. And we come back at the end and we had images that we put up to match the band. But we were mostly abstract. But it was very structured, you know, and at the end of every set, it would say the name of the band and we, you know, on the screen and we'd open with the name of the band. And, you know, it was. It was a theatrical experience. By the time we got to 71, we had it down. We knew what effects worked best with the band. It would be me on the headphones choosing what liquids and stuff, another guy from the light show, the two stage managers right and left, the sound man, the lighting guy, and three people on spotlights. So there would be a running conversation about what was going on and incredible focus about what we can do to make it even better than the last time. And so that was part of the show. It was very much. You had film students and theater students, you know, and there was nobody who was just hanging to get high. You know, we were pretty serious, but we also were, you know, crazy funny.

[B]

Bill Graham closed down the Fillmore east In early summer 1971, just after the Dead recorded their Skull and Roses shows there. We talked about that a bit in our side D episode. By the end of 1972, other promoters had taken over the venue. Over the next years, it was sometimes known as the New Fillmore East. After Graham threatened action, it was known as the NFE Theater, then the Village East. Sometimes one word, sometimes two. In 1980, the theater was gutted and turned into the Saint, one of the most extravagant clubs of the late disco era, complete with planetarium style dome and light show. Bob weir played a 60s ball there in 1986. The Saint closed in 1988, and in 1997 the rest of the building was gutted and turned into condos. Check out the [e-mail] deadcast because of the oddities of New York architecture, the front of the venue led down a narrow path to a much bigger building in the back. And so while the theater itself is gone, the facade of the Fillmore east remains recognizable. At the corner of Second Avenue and East sixth street, it's now a bank. There are some great Amelie Rothschild photos inside, including one of the dead in January 1970. If you look closely in the crowd, you can see our friend Gary Lambert. Many Fillmore east alum went on to distinguish careers around the Dead and in adjacent worlds.

[D]

Ben Haller was a guy who worked at the Fillmore east and ended up working on the lighting crew of the Dead and him and Candace, Candace Brightman, who was the lighting design. Now, Candace had also worked in the Fillmore east and then from there the Dead hired her. So Ben and Candace were with the lighting crew. And Ben is an old friend of mine and used to live in his van in front of my house where we had no money. So Ben and I would always go see Parish before the show and we always brought something, you know, like chili pepper Lights and things like that. So it was always like, we're friends. Let's hang out. And that's when Jerry would just sit and we'd all talk and everything, you know, and that was very nice. Never tried to go back to the hotel after the show for all the craziness, you know, just kept it friendly, and it was very gratifying.

[B]

As Alan's film career got going, he and Garcia stayed in touch. This isn't strictly about the Fillmore east, but, like, the Fillmore east, we don't have a curfew either. If anyone asks, it's a private party.

[D]

I came out to Los Angeles in 73. So throughout the 70s, I was in LA. So I saw the Dead play Hollywood bowl in Santa Barbara. I saw the. The big sound system shows in Santa Barbara. And they were in town a lot because that's where they did Turpin Station. And they also were mixing and editing some of the movie. And by then I was working for Roger Corman. And so Jerry would have me come and look at the movie and give notes, and I knew the editor, and I actually cut the trailer for the movie. The Grateful Dead movie. Yeah. And that was fun. So they were in town so much, they used to come over. Parrish and Jerry, and mostly those guys, and sometimes Ramrod, Sometimes some of the other guys would come to my. I had a little house on Lexington between Highland and La Brea, and I was visiting them up in San Francisco, and I had showed Jerry and the band my first movie, Hollywood Billboard and Rock and Roll High School in their hotel. I brought a projector, and they all watched it. So I thought to surprise Jerry, because he said, come and have dinner with us. I brought a projector, and I brought Howard Hawks movie Only Angels have Wings. And so Mountain Girl made dinner and a bunch of their friends, and we watched the movie afterwards. So Jerry and I shared a lot of movie stuff. So he would come over my apartment, we'd watch movies, you know, and I would. If he knew he was in town, I always made sure I had a stack of the kind of movies that he would like. And one night. Have you guys ever heard of a movie called Hell's a Poppin? It's online. It's called Hell's a Poppin. It is the movie equivalent of the Kool Aid Acid Test, but a comedy with, like, if the Marx Brothers were in it, but they're not. Olson and Johnson, it constantly breaks the third, fourth, and fifth wall. The projectionist is a character, and he comments on what's going on, on the screen, on screen. People get up on the audience and they walk away. It's just totally crazy. And it completely blew Jerry's mind. It's a very, very funny movie, but truly surreal. So we saw that on a double bill with Fellini's Eight and a Half. That was. That's a Garcia double bill. You know, there's nothing real about that. And so, so he used to come over. We watch science fiction movies, you know them, the one about the giant ants and the LA river and, you know, so we spent a lot of time talking and hanging out and I would go out to the studio where they were recording Terrapin Station. So I had a friendly relationship with. I did not ever want to feel like I was going to abuse it.

[B]

If you'd like to program your own Alan Arques Jerry Garcia Movie Night. We've posted a list of these movies and a few [e-mail] deadcast one item on Allen's long career in television and film is the movie Heartbeats, starring Bernadette Peters and the perhaps late Andy Kaufman. Garcia gets credit for some sound effects. Turns out it's a more complicated story and he was mostly deleted from the final picture. But it turned up an even more interesting piece of cinema trivia that I definitely didn't know.

[D]

I was doing this Roger Corman movies. I hadn't done Rock and Roll High School yet. And I was trying to save some really bad samurai biker science fiction movie called Death Sport. There are no Olympic Games, World Series or Super Bowls. There is only Death Sport. And it's a lot of ray guns and futuristic motorcycles and it's really bad. And I was telling Jerry about it and I said, I said, jerry, even you couldn't help this. He says, well, if you need anything, I said, do you want to send me some sci fi sounds, you know, like laser beams and so forth, and I'll cut them in. So he stayed up one night and on his guitar he did all kinds of sounds. If you see the movie, the death machines and all that stuff have Garcia.

[B]

Feedback notes twisted in and everything, naturally and perfectly. Garcia's guitar becomes the sound cue for the mutants. You can hear him here during a battle involving flaming torches. You can imagine where it goes from there. Alan and Jerry stayed buddies.

[D]

Yeah, I always made a point when I started doing a lot of television to bring Jerry VHS of whatever show I was doing because he always showed interest, you know, and we had now been friends for a long time. And he was a very gracious person, you know. And the last time that I saw him was the summer of 95 at Giant Stadium. I went out both nights to see him play with Dylan and Candace. And I went out to get Candace. I went in her van out there. So we're sitting there and the sun is going down in Giant Stadium. It's like filling up. And so he says, what are you, what are you doing? You know, I said, well, I got this show on CBS. It's going to be on every Tuesday night at 9. It's called Central Park West. I'm feeling like kind of like a nighttime soap opera, you know, trying to do something I haven't done before, you know. He goes, oh, it's Tuesday nights on. Yeah. So I'm looking out at this. I said, jerry, look at the stadium filling up. I saw you guys at the Cafe of Gogo. You know, there's 80 people. And he looks at me, goes, hey buddy, Tuesday nights at 9pm That's Giant Stadium too. And that was the kind of guy he was. You know, he did not want to be over praised, but he wanted to let you know that he appreciated it. But also look at who you are.

[E]

Sam.

[A]

That was the feeling. Groovy jam from the Dark Star On Dick's picks four recorded during the February 13, 1970 late show when everyone was super electrified. Many thanks to Alan Arkish for the Technicolor behind the scenes tales. Thanks very much for tuning in. Take care and we'll see you next episode. 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.