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- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. 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. Hello friends. Welcome back to the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. This is episode four of season three and in this episode we lay out side D of Skull and Roses for you. This is of course the Dead's 1971 live release and besides the music on this side of the aforementioned double lp, we also get into some of the backstage behind the scenes shenanigans at the famed film War East. As always, you can get 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. 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 of the podcasting platforms available so you can listen where you prefer. Please help the Good Old Grateful Dead cast by subscribing and hitting the notification button. Give us a like and if you're up to the task, please leave us. Review. It helps more than you realize.
- [01:52]
David Lemieux
Thank you.
- [01:52]
Rich Mahan
Thank you for being kind. You probably have heard that it is the 50th anniversary of the Dead's double live album 1971 Skull and Roses. There is an expanded anniversary edition of Skull and roses coming 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 will be available on your favorite streaming platform. Pre orders are open now@dead.net again. It comes out June 25th. Well, side D of Skull and Roses contains some absolute gems including Wharf Rat and the combo cover of Not Fade Away Going down the Road Feeling bad. As always, Origins and Revelations will be presented yielding some very interesting insight indeed. Time to feed your head with Master Chef Jesse Jarno.
- [03:14]
Narrator/Host
The Grateful Dead spent the first half of 1971 working on the live album that became Skull N Roses. In February, they debuted a bunch of new material at the Capitol Theater in Portchester, recording it on multitrack, which we heard about in episode one of this season. They rolled tape again at San Francisco's Winterland in March and at the dance marathon at the Manhattan center at the beginning of April, which you heard about last episode. But the majority of the album, seven of the 12 songs, were recorded a few weeks later in New York at one of the band's favorite places to play music and one of the all time legendary venues, the Fillmore East. And that's where we're going today, over to Mike Wallace reporting on 60 Minutes in early 1969. If you're puzzled by the hypnotic effect that today's rock musicians have on the young not just on their taste in music, but on their fashions, their manners and morals, spend the next several minutes with us in New York's East Village at a place called Fillmore East. Providing our invocation today is poet Robert Cooperman, reading a piece from his beautiful book Saved by the Dead, available from Liquid Light Press.
- [04:22]
Robert Cooperman
The Angels and the Dead I was running later than the White Rabbit to meet friends at the old Fillmore east to see the Grateful Dead. In my panic that I'd missed the show's first notes, I darted down the Hell's Angels stronghold on East 3rd street, rumored to be a black hole dark star. Anyone who trespassed never seen again. A miracle. One of the two German shepherds that guarded the street's ends didn't go for me with stiletto fangs. But like a wall, there was the biggest angel I never wanted to see again. He grabbed me by the collar, my legs pumping like a cartoon figure, his chains jangling like the bridles. Evil knight's charger, two hammers, I shuddered, slung from his belt like a gunslinger's brace of 45s and more grease in his hair and beard than in his hog's engine and moving parts. Whoa there, little man. He bellowed, more good humored than I'd expected or hoped for. What's the hurry? I'm late. I gasped to see the dead and waved my ticket. I too late, I realized, he might separate me from that Open sesame. But he set me down, told me to enjoy the show. Me and my bros will see you there later, he confided. I waved my delight at that charming reunion and kept running, glad to escape with all my teeth and ribs, though common courtesy had he offered A ride on his Arlie for my grand entrance.
- [06:36]
Narrator/Host
That was caution from June 14, 1968, released on the bonus disc of the Fillmore West 1969 box, recorded at the Dead's first show at Bill Graham's Fillmore east in New York, a few months after he started presenting music there. Opened in 1926 as the Commodore Theater, it became a Lowes movie house and home for Yiddish vaudeville for nearly four decades at the heart of New York's largely Eastern European Lower east side. When Bill Graham took it over, Fillmore east was a vacant movie house on New York's Lower east side. I'm gonna have to stop you right there, though. Mike Wallace, the movie house was far from vacant. Just like the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, the venue had a deep and ongoing musical history when Bill Graham arrived. When the Dead played their first show at the Fillmore east in June 1968, it wasn't their first show in the venue. In 1964 and 1965, local promoters began to put on shows there, including performances by Lenny Bruce, Donovan and Chuck Berry. Known as the Village Theater, there were several years of legendary shows before Bill Graham even set foot in the place. Starting in 1966, Jazz Titans performed there regularly, including John and Alice Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Albert Iler. In the fall of that year, Timothy Leary performed every week. Neighborhood resident Allen Ginsberg read there a number of times, and there were many dance performances. Protests, Love ins and happen ins. There were lots of rock shows too, including the Doors, Cream, the who, the Jimmy Page era, yardbirds, and in December 1967, just after Christmas, two shows by the Grateful Dead where it snowed through the roof of the dilapidated theater. Last year, I put together a detailed chronology of the Village Theatre before Bill Graham arrived, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast. But there's no question it became something different in 1968. It is the place of business of Bill Graham, who is on his way to becoming a millionaire, thanks to the enthusiasms of an affluent young generation that can afford to pay three, four and five dollars a ticket to performances at this house that rock built. Yes, the house was built by rock, but it was also built by rock fans. Today on the Deadcast, we're so delighted to have with us Alan Arkish, director of Rock and Roll High School and other fine motion pictures. And he was at the Fillmore east nearly every weekend from when it opened in 1968 to when it closed in 1971.
- [09:09]
Alan Arkish
I was at NYU Film School. I went the Opening night at the Fillmore east and saw Albert King, Tim Buckley and 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 in 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 a 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 weekend, so to speak.
- [11:00]
Narrator/Host
There are two performances on concert night at 8 and 11:30. The management calls this young 8 o' clock crowd the bubblegum set. Bob Cooperman was a regular at the Fillmore East.
- [11:10]
Robert Cooperman
If there wasn't a movie playing in New York you didn't want to see on a Friday night, you could go to the Fillmore east for 350, sit in the balcony. And I was working at the time, so I could afford it, 550 to sit in the orchestra. And it was a very, very funny experience. You know, there was signs everywhere saying, marijuana use of illegal drugs is illegal and you'll be prosecuted. If caught, you'll be prosecuted to the full extent of a. I can't remember if there were actual security guards or cops there, but the funny thing was the aroma was just unbelievable of really great skunky weeds. And two, once you walked inside, you had to walk past the concession area, which was filled with every kind of food that someone who was stoned, would love little Dixie cups of Haagen Dazs, chocolate ice cream and rum raisin, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, all kinds of stuff. So it was mixed messages. That was definitely the Mecca of shows. I get annoyed if I had to go anyplace else because it was a straight shot from my house.
- [12:20]
Narrator/Host
After their Fillmore east debut, the Dead didn't return to New York until early 1969. Now it's a concert hall for rock music, a showcase for such heroes as tonight's luminaries, the Grateful Dead and the current rock empress, Janis Joplin.
- [12:36]
Alan Arkish
I had not yet seen a miraculous Grateful Dead show. And I was walking home on a Sunday night in February. And so the lights are on on a Sunday night at the Fillmore east and go up to the front door and say, charlie, that's the doorman. I said, who's playing? I had a sandwich with me. And he says, oh, the Dead are rehearsing. I said, really? He says, yeah, yeah. So I walk in and there they are sitting around on the stage with a tub of sodas and stuff. And they were playing that week with Janis Joplin was the other act when she had gone solo. And I guess it was like, we want to support Janice and she's opening in New York. So they booked all these shows. It was that kind of interchangeable atmosphere, you know? And the Dead had not yet scored in New York the way that they would. And so I'm sitting there watching them play, and they would jam a little bit. Actually, what they did was they'd start a song, they get to the jam, they'd sort of fall apart, and then they'd pick up the jam at the end. And they were really just playing the changes and the vocals, etcetera, not doing the all out jams. And I'm eating my sandwich and looking at this giant tub of beer and soda, thinking, man, I would like a beer and start playing. Garcia starts playing this solo and you know that thing he used to do where he would pick somebody in the audience and look at them right in the eye, but then he's also looking like he's looking through you to somewhere else in the universe. And he locks into. And I'm like sitting there like in the first or second row with my feet up on the stage with my sandwich half eaten. And then at the end of the jam, he reaches in, grabs a beer and hands it to me like he read my mind. And that two days they would alternate. So his big brother was second on the Bill was the headliner for the first show and the Deadwood are headliner for the second show. I remember the second show hearing Dark Star and hearing the Eleven and Sage Steven.
- [15:17]
Narrator/Host
The show was released under the name Fillmore East 1169.
- [15:22]
Alan Arkish
Now we saw the whole thing, you know, with the Gong. We saw it and was like the Ushers were really huge fans. So the buzz was on. Oh my God, that's what everyone's talking about. And so the second night was even better, you know, so that was like the intro to the whole series of New York gigs, you know, that made that became like their second home.
- [15:57]
Narrator/Host
We got so many amazing stories from Alan Arkish that we're gonna drop a bunch more as a bonus episode soon. Keep your ears peeled. Over the course of the two years when the Dead played the Fillmore east every few months, Alan watched the band professionalize their operation. Sam Cutler arrived in early 1970.
- [16:16]
Alan Arkish
Sam was like the spearhead of it. He joined after Altamont. McIntyre was who we saw the most, I guess. And McIntyre was like a very more laid back kind of person. Sam was like what you expect a manager to do, you know. But the thing was at the film Maurice, you didn't have to do much managing, you know, you were taken care of. The big problem, the film Maurice was keeping everyone's friends out, you know, making the Dead guest list believable so that everyone could function. No dogs on stage. That was a rule. No dogs. And the other rule we had to have was before you go on stage, you have to put your baby down. You have to put your baby in the room. No babies on stage.
- [17:04]
Narrator/Host
The Dead were through the Fillmore East a ton in 1970, and Alan Arkish has stories about almost all of those shows. But we've gotta get back to Skull and Roses today. Stay tuned for that bonus episode. There were three mind blasting shows with Love and the Allman Brothers in February. There was an acoustic electric early and late show marathon in May. The Dead at midnight in July, sets with a real piano in September, midway through the American Beauty sessions, a last minute jam with Hot Tuna and Traffic in November. That was pretty much the state of the Fillmore east when the Dead were recording Skull N Roses. When we left the band in the last episode, they just played the Three Night Dance Marathon at Manhattan Center April 4th, 5th and 6th, 1971. About to set out for a few weeks on the road with the new sound system they just purchased from Alembic and an expanded road crew to take care of it. You can hear more in our last episode, here's Sam Cutler describing the tour in a promotional letter he wrote about Skull and Roses when it was released in 1971.
- [18:04]
Sam Cutler
Boston and a good two nights in the music hall. Old friends in a groovy city and trying to keep Phil from going to play spaceware on the MIT computers because we haven't got time, men. And we're going to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Piddling first this side of the state in a gymnasium at some anonymous college. It's this place run by the Hamish. And then into Pittsburgh, where we play to 2000 heads in the middle of a bus strike and a Snowstorm that leaves 12,000 empty seats and everyone pissed off back to the bus. You're on the bus or you're off the bus. Where is the dam bus? Flitting between Holiday Inns and uptight campuses in a Greyhound bus with a straight driver who's doing his best to be groovy, but this is all a bit too much. And didn't we fucking drive past here yesterday, goddammit. And we're telling shaggy dog stories over the intercom when everyone hollering shut the fuck up. And stops at small grocery stores where we buy 33 beef sandwiches, 21 with everything, et cetera, and two cases of beers. And no one knows where the hell Pennsylvania is at. Those guys don't even stop Dr. Pepper down there. And it all wears a bit thin, even with some of the old ladies long to cheer things up. No one knows how we got there.
- [19:24]
Narrator/Host
The Dead did a lot of road time in 1970 and 1971, with Cutler leading the charge. As tour manager, he had to deal with room assignments. Probably obvious, but this isn't from the press release.
- [19:36]
Sam Cutler
Well, nobody wanted to run with with Jerry because his feet stank. I told him, you gotta fucking stop wearing. He wore these cowboy boots for a year or something. Basically, no one roomed with Jerry, really. Him and Pig Pen sometimes room together, but by and large, people had their own rooms, man. The crew used to double up because then, you know, it was fun for them anyway. They didn't give a fuck. All the crew ever did was go back to a hotel room and sleep. The time you got to a hotel, if you're on the crew of the Grateful Dead, you were fucked. You just wanted to sleep. I mean, have a shower, sleep. The band, of course, have a bit more time. Because obviously if a band show ends at midnight, let's say the band goes back to a hotel, the crew won't get back to the hotel till three or four in the morning, the time they do the Lower down and all that stuff. The band was heavily in debt. We started off, everybody shared rooms, our shared room. We'd get Jerry for a while. No one wanted to share a room with me. Not no one. Because as soon as I walked into a hotel room, I was on the phone. And when I put the phone down, it rang until 4 in the morning. Because people on the west coast would be calling you. Whatever. It was just like a nightmare. So the first person that for sure roomed on their own was me. Because people would come to my room at all times of the day and night and whatever. People can't say, where's the tour manager? And oh, he's over there lying on the floor unconscious. I don't think so. Or, oh, he's over there drunk. You know, you've got to be on top of things, man. You first off, you've got to be on top of yourself. The role of a tour manager is, you know, extensive and complicated. So it demands diplomacy. It also can demand sheer unadulterated thuggery of the worst, lowest kind. Depends what you're dealing with, you know, I mean, I had a phone call one day, three o' clock in the morning. Sam. I won't say who it was from, but it was Sam, Sam, you got to come down here to my room. And I looked at my watch and said, it's fucking three o' clock in the morning, man. What's going on? There's a guy in my room with a gun. We don't go, fuck off, man, it's three o' clock in the morning. Go fuck yourself. It's not my problem. So, you know, you deal with that, you deal with all kinds of things.
- [22:01]
Narrator/Host
Now back to our regularly scheduled 1971 press release.
- [22:05]
Sam Cutler
And as soon as it's all become Obama, just as quickly it ends. We change plans while we're making them and fly to Bangor, Maine, where we've never been, and there's going to be some freaks up there. And then inexplicably, to Durham, North Carolina. The truck driver, Slow Joe, cruising through 2,000 miles in 48 hours with two gigs, three girlfriends and no sleep, no magic, no highs, the door dampening down struggle of getting it on one more time without sleep or a break. And I tell you, man, I'm ill and I think I'll make it. But if the agent was only here, man, if only the bloody agent were here, we'd tell him, man, by God, we'd let him know what we think of his little act. And then New York City, where we recognize people and the Fillmore east is almost home.
- [22:53]
Narrator/Host
And it really was almost home. Just to clarify, this isn't part of that press release either.
- [22:58]
Sam Cutler
I mean, Bill Graham was an asshole on a business level. He and I used to have. I mean, I've had fist fights with him. So we had huge rousing of it about the money and this and that and the other. But when it comes to running shows, Bill was wonderful. No, no question about that. And he had wonderful crew, and I wouldn't dream of knocking that. He was just a bit greedy. You know, that's the power that drives the promoter. The job of a tour manager. And somebody like me, I was the agent and co manager of the Grateful Dead, was, you're welcome to be greedy. Just don't be fucking greedy with my band. The security at the Fillmore was tight. You know, it was run beautifully. You know, all the box office thing was all together. The lighting, the staging, the production, everything was great. The venue was clean. You know, all the little things that add up to make an environment that all you need now is the Allman Brothers or the Grateful Dead or the band or someone special to play there, and it's just going to be, you know, perfect. So Bill, you know, in many ways, he set the bar as to, you know, how to. How to do a show, how to do it right, you know, so beautiful. I mean, he personally, and I mean, you know, credit where credit's due. He personally basically was responsible for the whole thing of, you know, rock and roll posters. Bill paid for them and Adam made, you know, and it became an art form in itself. They became collectible, didn't they? You know, so the rock and roll poster, the name of the band on the. On the. The front of the theater, advertising in local media, advertising in local radio, all these things that go up to go into making a show successful he was really, really good at. And he had a crack team, all of whom loved him. As I say, he always produced great shows.
- [25:00]
Alan Arkish
They were part of us, and each of their personalities was something that we respected.
- [25:06]
Narrator/Host
And like.
- [25:07]
Alan Arkish
Like, for instance, Pigpen really didn't want that big backstage scene, you know, and he wasn't a big dope smoker or anything, and he needed quiet. So he would go down below the stage with the tech crew, and we set up a couch and everything for him and a little table with a lamp and, you know, got him his Jack Daniels, whatever he was drinking, and he just hang there.
- [25:32]
Narrator/Host
But when the Dead arrived at The Fillmore east for five shows. At the end of April 1971, they were met with the news that Bill Graham would be closing both the Fillmores east and west at the beginning of the summer.
- [25:43]
Sam Cutler
So the Fillmore East, I mean, it was very special. The problem with the Fillmore east was that as the music business expanded, it wasn't big enough. That's why Bill closed it. I mean, that's why he went to doing shows out on Long island and in Madison Square Garden. And places like that needed a bigger capacity because, you know, a band plays three, four hours. Well, they could play for 5,000 people, 8,000 people, 10,000 people one time. But Watkins Glen, we play for 610,000 people. So it's all down to, you know, how big's the venue, can you fill it? You know, the music business is a bums on seats business. How many bums can you put on how many seats? So, you know, the Fillmore east, we were doing two shows a day there because, you know, that's what it was necessary to do, that. We outgrew that as a band and Bill outgrew it as a promoter.
- [26:38]
Narrator/Host
Graham wouldn't announce the venue's closing until the end of the Dead's week of shows that became the bulk of Skull and Roses. He held a press conference and was sure to credit the venue's staff. The audio is a bit boomy, so you might have to squint your ears, but it's a good example of Bill Graham in flight.
- [26:54]
Sam Cutler
The part that I have in the staff is frightening. I sometimes go overboard.
- [26:58]
Narrator/Host
I fear a melodrama.
- [27:00]
Sam Cutler
Speaking about when you talk about.
- [27:04]
Narrator/Host
Dedication.
- [27:05]
Sam Cutler
To what you think is right and to quality and to relation to the public and respectively, artists and the public. I think the understanding area people remember this place. I haven't drawn from the east. And it's not some boss being nice.
- [27:21]
Narrator/Host
On his way out.
- [27:22]
Sam Cutler
It's like everybody always say nice things.
- [27:24]
Narrator/Host
When somebody died on Christmas. This is not the case.
- [27:28]
Sam Cutler
I can't express my gratitude and I should think that not from a monetary standpoint. Nobody's really going to know what's going on. I'm not talking about Blood Ware. Until this thing dissipated and the kid goes uptown to some yak yak club where the PA is in the toilet. To appreciate what this did, I had.
- [27:53]
Narrator/Host
To look up yak yak. Thanks to the Jewish Language Project, I now know that yak is Yiddish slang for a rowdy, non Jewish hooligan. I've been trying to work it into sentences ever since this has been your Deadcast Yiddish lesson for the week. It was during the course of negotiating a month of shows at the Metropolitan Opera House that Graham reached his breaking point. He blamed bands and their managers for wanting too much money. The detail about the gigs at the Met is only worth noting because it apparently figured into the Grateful Dead's plans for 1971. According to manager John McIntyre's rough map for the year, an extraordinary two page document found by our colleague Joe Jupiel of Jerrybase.com over the summer, the Dead were planning to head to Europe, a trip we'll talk about on a future episode. McEntire sketched out a loose list of gigs to play before departure in June. Item one, leave California with powerhouse Gig for Bread or free. Item two, leave New York with giant publicity behind New York, Metropolitan Opera and or Central Park. And at least as of the Fillmore shows in April, Central park was still in play.
- [29:03]
Sam Cutler
Allow us a permit. On June 14, these gentlemen will be in Central Park.
- [29:10]
Narrator/Host
It wasn't to be, though. The Dead and the Dead freaks did get five more nights at the Filmore East.
- [29:14]
Sam Cutler
However, some very good friends of ours and yours, the Grateful Dead.
- [29:30]
Alan Arkish
It was always exciting and it was to have them there for five nights and have all that to look forward to. So the last one, I guess, was in April of 71, which became skull and Roses.
- [29:45]
Narrator/Host
Down in Pig Pen Zone under the stage is where the Alembic crew set up their gear for the live album in progress.
- [29:51]
Sam Cutler
Bob and Betty established a recording booth under the stage. The equipment crew struggle for the last time with three tons of shit that feels like 40. And the road managers back at the hotel spewing his heart out and sure he's going to die. Behind all the changing plans. Everyone's dead on their feet but incredibly ready to play.
- [30:10]
Alan Arkish
This was like the lab for them because there was no time limit, they could play all they wanted. And it became a really common thing for Jerry to come early with acoustic guitar and hang out with the stage crew and play guitar, you know, and they just. Everyone could have a bunch of guitar players on the stage crew so that it became a very friendly give and take atmosphere.
- [30:35]
Narrator/Host
Gary Lambert saw the Dead virtually every time they came through the Fillmore east and wrote liner notes for the new 50th anniversary skull and Roses reissue.
- [30:43]
Alan Arkish
The Grateful Dead really brought it on.
- [30:45]
Narrator/Host
The east coast and on the west coast there was a sense of, oh.
- [30:48]
Alan Arkish
Yeah, the boys are back and the.
- [30:52]
Narrator/Host
Dead may play a little more late.
- [30:53]
Alan Arkish
I mean, there's obviously incendiary shows from the west coast as well, but the east coast did tend to bring out the monster in them. And of course, a multiple night run.
- [31:04]
Narrator/Host
At Fillmore east would seem natural to the purposes of recording a live album. Because it was the Fillmore, because the.
- [31:12]
Alan Arkish
Dead were so comfortable there, and because they had multiple nights to play this stuff.
- [31:16]
Sam Cutler
The Fillmore becomes a transformed world of tie dyes and flashing green and red lights and meters peering through the half plume. And the 16 tracks squatting ready to catch every nuance, everything trim and snug. A home away from home, a good place to get high in. And the misery becomes less and less. And for getting too many dumb miles to all those other places soon forgotten, the band plays its way to that next airplane ride that'll cruise us all to California and home in Marin county where a man can hang out and get high in some kind of comfort.
- [31:50]
Narrator/Host
It really was their lab from virtually the first time they played there, often previewing songs from their next albums. And in the case of the April 1971 shows, in some cases, it literally was their next album. Seven tracks were recorded there. Music featured on all four sides. On side A, Bertha and Mama Tried, the version of the other one that took up the entirety of side B. And on side C, me and My Uncle Big Boss man and me and Bobby McGee. It's the Fillmore east at the beginning of side D too. Keen eared listeners might notice that side D begins in much the same way side B ends, with the band floating into a new Jerry Garcia Robert Hunter song Worf rat. During the 80s, Dennis McNally interviewed Jerry Garcia extensively for his amazing biography Long Strange Trip. And many of those interviews have been gathered into the print and audiobook Jerry on Jerry. Are they all Wolf from Hachette? Garcia said something fascinating about the music he created for Warf Rat before Robert Hunter had even given him words.
- [33:18]
Jerry Garcia
As a writer, I've had ideas where I thought, I want to write a song that addresses the situation as it's really happening. That is to say, the experience of standing on stage and playing to this huge group of people in real time. And I would like to have a song that addresses that. And I've had a few ideas that, that I thought were gonna be that, but then they didn't turn out to be that. Warfrat was one of them.
- [33:44]
Narrator/Host
Another one was Terrapin Station. But they both had the same intent.
- [33:48]
Jerry Garcia
As I was thinking, jeez, it'd be great to have a song that is like now it's that moment on stage. Where we could all look at each other, you know, and say, okay, here we are. You know, we're in the now. You know, here we are in the now. Let's address this situation as it's happening in the now. You know, it was like writing a song that addresses that somehow. Although how to do it without it being a total bullshit trip was something that totally escaped me. I mean, I don't know what I would want to say, apart from, isn't it great to be here? And isn't it swell that we're all here? It's like, I know the power of that moment, you know?
- [34:24]
Narrator/Host
Robert Hunter sidestepped the issue with Warfrat by giving Garcia one of his most cinematic opening lines.
- [34:31]
Robert Hunter
Amanda Hel.
- [34:48]
Narrator/Host
Though Garcia clearly sang the first line of the song as Old Man Down, Robert Hunter's published version of the song has the opening lyric of the song as Wharf Rat Down. It appears like that, with a few other small changes in a handwritten draft of the lyrics that Hunter posted in the 90s. You can see them at dead.net deadcast or@hunterarchive.com in the 1972 interview known as A Stone Sunday Rap, Jerry Garcia and Yale law professor Charles Reich discuss Wharf Rat throughout. The interview makes up the second half of the classic book a signpost to new space available from Da Capo Press and Hachette. Wherever books are sold here, the topic has turned to different neighborhoods in San Francisco.
- [35:33]
Sam Cutler
Polk street is the great kind of.
- [35:36]
David Lemieux
Cruising pickup street of San Francisco.
- [35:39]
Jerry Garcia
Right.
- [35:39]
Narrator/Host
And I can stand there and let people look at me and realize they're looking me over as a piece of flesh.
- [35:46]
Jerry Garcia
Right? Right.
- [35:48]
Sam Cutler
Rejecting me.
- [35:51]
Narrator/Host
But it's my experience of being a.
- [35:53]
David Lemieux
Piece of flesh instead of being, like, looked at as so and so.
- [35:57]
Narrator/Host
Right. Like, so far.
- [35:58]
Jerry Garcia
It's another space. Sure. It's far. It is far out, right?
- [36:00]
Narrator/Host
Incredibly far out.
- [36:01]
Jerry Garcia
All that stuff is far out, man. All that stuff. You ought to cruise the Tenderloin sometime. That's one of my places.
- [36:06]
Narrator/Host
The Tenderloin is another side of me.
- [36:09]
Jerry Garcia
Yeah. I go to those kind of places.
- [36:11]
Sam Cutler
It has that thing you sang about, like a wharf rat. Down, down, down and dirty.
- [36:17]
Jerry Garcia
It's real, man. It is fucking real, and everybody knows it, too.
- [36:20]
Sam Cutler
Yeah.
- [36:21]
Narrator/Host
You know, the Tenderloin, where Garcia can imagine the character from Warfrat is still recognizable as the same shakedown street, like, liminal space it would have been in the early seventies.
- [36:32]
Robert Hunter
Blind and dirty.
- [36:38]
Jerry Garcia
Yeah. Hunter once, once wore eye patches on his eyes for a couple of weeks. To be blind, you know was blind like spent a couple of weeks blind.
- [36:47]
Robert Hunter
A blind man ask me for a dime, a dime for a cup of coffee.
- [36:56]
Narrator/Host
Got a dime, dime for a cup of coffee. Speaking of Warfrat being cinematic, that's Marlon Brando getting panhandled in the fantastic 1954 film on the Waterfront, taking place among the wharfs of Hoboken. Big props to Scott Matter for noticing this and notifying David Dodd, keeper of the crucial annotated Grateful Dead lyric site and a possible writing cue for lyricist Robert Hunter.
- [37:20]
Robert Hunter
I got no time, but I got some time to hear his story.
- [37:27]
Narrator/Host
And here the narrator changes, and Warfrat becomes something powerful.
- [37:30]
Robert Hunter
My name is August west and I love my pearly finger best more than my wife.
- [38:00]
Narrator/Host
From the moment the song was introduced into Grateful that set lists in 1971, it followed a long psychedelic jam. Warfrat remained a Late show staple in that slot, and Dead set lists in every taurine year thereafter, part of Garcia's rotation with other songs like Black Peter and Stella Blue. Because of this, in my mind, I'd always thought of it as part of that subset of the Garcia Hunter collaboration that are sometimes called the Jerry ballads. But I recently spoke with multi instrumentalist Dave Harrington, one half of the duo Darkseid, who has a very different take on how Warfrat fits in.
- [38:35]
Dave Harrington
Warfrat, to me, is like the apex of a particular. Of, like the particular slice of the dead of, like, their. Their musical investigations. That is the well that I always, always return to the meeting point between the storytelling and the modal journey, the really long connective tissue that I see to the other musics that are so central to me. It's in Warfrat. It's like the same part of me that is. That always goes back to Bitches Brew. It lights up that same part of my brain. I see them as speaking the same language. I listen to it in the lane of morning dew, Dark Star Weather Report suite. Those are like the cuts that I feel like I play along to the most that I like, really investigate. Jerry's long arc approaches in his solos where he's like, where the. Where he's building the structure. And the song structure isn't dictating his improvisational choices in the same way.
- [39:41]
Narrator/Host
It's a really fascinating way to consider Warfrat. And in fact, when the song was debuted on February 18, 1971, at the Capitol Theater, the band segued into the song out of Darkstar. This is the first time the band ever played the song, and the audience erupts in cheers as it coalesces as natural a reaction as a musician could ever possibly hope for. The chiming harp like sound is Ned Lagin playing clavichord. It was the first night of recording for the live album that became Skull and Roses, which we heard about at length in episode one. And you can hear more about Ned Lagin on our bonus Ned Cast from last season. The whole performance can be heard on the expanded 50th anniversary edition of American Beauty. And as the first wharf rat turned back into Darkstar, it blossomed into what was named the Beautiful Jam on the so Many Roads box set. And while Warfare never quite did that again, there are a few versions from the later 70s that seem to drift through Dark Star territory before they get to the song, even though it's obvious from the very first version that with a slight turning of the key the song could go there. I'd never exactly thought about the song in quite those terms.
- [41:48]
Dave Harrington
I love that I think of it one way and you think of it the other way, and I think that that is what makes it. That it can occupy both of those streams, is what makes it such a special song to me because I feel like, you know, as a guy who I spend half of my musical life working in a improvisational kind of post jam, post jazz, whatever you want to call it, context. And the other half working in a more song oriented world with my band Dark side or working with singers as a producer. And so I feel like I'm always trying to get. I'm always trying to see where the two meet.
- [42:56]
Narrator/Host
That was a little bit of a Liberty Bell by Darkside from their forthcoming album Spiral out this July from Matador Warfrat was played twice during the Fillmore east run, and in fact the version used on Skull and Roses came out of Darkstar as well. Just like the debut recorded on April 26, the second night of the run. There are a few things to note about the version on the album, which has a few bits of studio sweetening. If listening closely on headphones, it's possible to hear some bleed through from the original live vocals, and on a few places there are some doubled Garcia vocals as well. The most obvious instrumental overdub comes during the song's pleading and hopeful middle section.
- [43:38]
Robert Hunter
But I'll get back on my feet.
- [43:50]
Sam Cutler
So.
- [43:58]
Robert Hunter
The Good Lord women.
- [44:05]
Narrator/Host
The Hammond B3 part is played by Merle Saunders, who'd been playing with Jerry Garcia in local clubs for the better part of the previous year, and who can also be heard on Bertha and playing in the Band Elsewhere on Skull N Roses, he's credited in the album's liner notes, but listen again. And there's another instrument in the mix too. Someone's playing piano as well.
- [44:56]
Robert Hunter
I'll get up and fly away I'll get up and fly away Fly away.
- [45:15]
Narrator/Host
And they don't get a liner notes credit. Gary Lambert.
- [45:19]
Alan Arkish
I've always been of the opinion that.
- [45:21]
Narrator/Host
It'S Jerry playing piano on Warfrat.
- [45:23]
Alan Arkish
It just sounds like him to me. From what I knew of his piano.
- [45:26]
Narrator/Host
Playing, I agree with Gary. The piano, which starts at the beginning of the song, is a simple part almost of a piece with the rhythm section and in line with a kind of piano playing Garcia did on Box of Rain and a few other places. We've asked a few people who might know, and nobody seems to remember who did it. It's right there through the end of the song. In the 70s, mini turntables were affixed with record changers that allowed listeners to cue up the first side of another disc, which would drop down at the conclusion of the previous disc's first side. And which is why a lot of double albums from the era, including Skull and Roses, came with sides A and D on the first disc and sides B and C on the second. If listeners noticed that side B ended with the beginning of Warfrat, just as the Dead did it, most often in concert, they could set their turntables to go from side B directly to side D. And in the 1972 Stone Sunday rap, it seems like that's how both Charles Reich and Jerry Garcia remember the album. Charles Reich marvels at the way Skull and Roses is sequenced.
- [46:50]
David Lemieux
It starts when you leave home with your mama trying to tell me right.
- [46:55]
Sam Cutler
Then you're playing in the band, and.
- [46:57]
David Lemieux
Then you go through the other one, and then you come out after the.
- [47:02]
Jerry Garcia
Other one with going down the road feeling bad.
- [47:04]
Narrator/Host
Yeah. Amusingly enough, Jerry's missing a few songs, probably more remembering how the sequence happened at shows.
- [47:10]
Jerry Garcia
It wasn't conscious. You know what I mean? I mean, those songs chose themselves, but.
- [47:15]
Sam Cutler
They chose themselves in an order.
- [47:18]
Jerry Garcia
That's true. That's true.
- [47:20]
Sam Cutler
I mean, like, first Choose Left Home.
- [47:21]
David Lemieux
And then you had the psychedelic time.
- [47:23]
Narrator/Host
And then you had.
- [47:24]
David Lemieux
And Wuf Rat is being way down, hoping for salvation.
- [47:28]
Narrator/Host
Right.
- [47:28]
Jerry Garcia
Well, that's like an alternate bummer. That's like a possible ending.
- [47:32]
Narrator/Host
Yeah.
- [47:33]
Sam Cutler
Now, I understand this is the bad.
- [47:34]
Narrator/Host
News and this is the good news.
- [47:35]
Jerry Garcia
And this is, you know.
- [47:38]
Narrator/Host
But in a certain way, maybe Wolf.
- [47:39]
David Lemieux
Rat's a place you could imagine being if you had to be like, Bombay, sure, sure, man.
- [47:46]
Jerry Garcia
I know that guy.
- [47:46]
Narrator/Host
It was a song that Garcia clearly identified with on a deep level. Later in his career, when Garcia began creating visual art again, he made a drawing titled August west, featuring the song's character as he apparently envisioned him. We've linked to an image@dead.net deadcast it's the only time he apparently made a drawing with a title overtly connected to one of his own songs. And in the mid-1980s, Deadheads found an even deeper meaning in the song, using it for the name of an unaffiliated sobriety group that began to meet at set breaks at Dead shows. They can still be identified by their giant affirming bushels of yellow balloons. At gigs by Denning Company, Darkstar Orchestra and elsewhere, the friends of August W are out there one show at a time. As their saying goes I'll get up.
- [48:36]
Robert Hunter
And fly away I'll get up and fly away Fly away.
- [48:52]
Narrator/Host
That was recorded at the film Maurice two days after the version on Skull and Roses.
- [48:56]
Dave Harrington
The other version that I love is the one that I got on CD in high school when they put out the Ladies and Gentlemen, Grateful Dead. That's from Also from New York and from like the same run of shows.
- [49:07]
Narrator/Host
As Skull and Roses, released in the fall of 2000. Ladies and gentlemen, the Grateful Dead is a stone classic Grateful Dead box set. It's all beautifully recorded Music from the Dead's five closing shows at the Fillmore east in April 1971. It also reveals some interesting things about Skull and Roses. We have with us the set's producer, ladies gentlemen, non Binary Friends, Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
- [49:34]
David Lemieux
Ladies and gentlemen, was the first really big thing I did while working for the band. It came out of my love of Skull and Roses, because that was to me, I mean, my love of the Dead started the second I heard them, and that was the golden road. But it was Skull and Rose is the one that always talked to me. We actually had decided to do a 4 CD set and also a 15 CD box set. We were going to do it as the first, you know, this is 21 years ago. We were going to do it as a complete run as well as a 4 CD compilation. The complete run was going to be for, you know, a limited edition. It would be for the collectors, it'd be a lot of money. But then the 4 CD would be the compilation as it ended up being. So that ended up just being something. I worked on the compilation for many months while Jeffrey did the mixes. But a problem we faced was that a lot of the lead vocals on a lot of the multi tracks for I don't know how many songs, maybe a dozen songs had been erased with the intention of recording a studio track at Overdub over that track. And they never went back and did it. And in particular there were two versions of Loser that they had considered. Obviously they considered it for Skull and Roses. So these were all songs they'd considered for Skull and Roses and had erased the lead vocal track. Only the lead vocal, primarily Jerry songs. And they never went back and re recorded them. Wouldn't have been ideal to use in a live box set setting, but we would have done what we had to do. But there were several songs like that so we scrapped the idea of doing a complete run.
- [51:02]
Narrator/Host
In a sense, these songs with wiped vocals constitute the outtakes for Skull N Roses versions that the Dead decided were keepers but didn't use on the final album.
- [51:12]
David Lemieux
There was a Bertha, There was a Morning Dew There were two losers. I believe there was a war frat, but I'm not certain. It got very frustrating to the point that we kind of just stopped taking notes on them when we realized that it. Because at the beginning it was oh, it's only going to be one or two songs. We could somehow figure something out here. But then it got to be prevalent enough that we decided not to proceed with the 15 CD box.
- [51:33]
Narrator/Host
It does suggest a pretty intense listening project. But the Dead were only looking at a certain class of songs trying not to repeat music from previous recordings. With the exception of the sidelong Other One jam, there was lots of incredible music made that week that didn't fit into that category.
- [51:49]
Sam Cutler
But here, here is almost home. The band sleeps all day and evenings are spent at the Fillmore. The Big Apple, the Grateful Dead doing their uptown for all New York with interviews and out of mind telephones that never stop ringing and pretty girls with tired faces. You can't imagine why it is that they never turn this particular band on. It worked with all the other ones and our friends. The few Islands of Sanity is in the midst of it all. They're taking photos, rolling joints, trying to keep out of the way of people taking care of business. And the tour managers smuggling in Hell's Angels through the back do while equipment guys smuggling ladies through the front and everyone's tripping on the light show.
- [52:31]
Narrator/Host
It was a guest studded five days at the Fillmore. East High School senior Blair Jackson caught two of the shows. Coincidentally, the knights of the two versions of War frat we heard from, but also caught two guest appearances.
- [52:43]
David Lemieux
I had senioritis. I didn't care, you know, I went 4:26 and 4:28. 426 was the only time I saw Duane Allman. 428 was the only time I saw TC play with a Grateful Dead. I love that show. I kid you not. I was literally in the back row of the balcony for that 428 show. And I just had grand old time, just standing on my seat or whatever, you know.
- [53:05]
Narrator/Host
A long circulating rumor was that Tom Constantin sat in with the Dead at the Fillmore east on April 28 because Pigpen was dosed on acid and incapable of playing. But Pigpen sounded pretty great otherwise. That set, more likely, as Blair knew it, was because TC was living in New York at the time and appearing in the off, off, off St. Mark's Place show Tarot, which we heard about in episode two. His sit in can be heard on disc two of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Grateful Dead. It's a pretty excellent D. If you want to hear the rest of that, check out Ladies and gentlemen, the Grateful Dead. As you can tell, what was left over was anything but leftovers.
- [54:11]
David Lemieux
The way we structured that album, ladies and gentlemen, was focusing on. There were the big jams we wanted to get on, which were the Alligator Jam, the Dark Star with TC Jam, and we wanted one of the two Good Lovins. We had two phenomenal versions to choose from. It was a really tough choice because they were so different. One was a rap, one was a. One was a jam, and we went with the rap. We wanted it to be a focus on Pigpen, if not the whole 4 CD set. But we did want it to be kind of a big tribute to pigpen because Europe 72 pig was a big part of it, but he wasn't at his best. Whereas I think In April of 1971, Pigtun was at his best.
- [54:50]
Robert Hunter
Tell you what I was doing the.
- [54:52]
Narrator/Host
Reason I was down on the street.
- [54:54]
Robert Hunter
Like this Me and my old lady had fallen out and I knew that I need something Couldn't get along without it Went down and got me some.
- [55:07]
Jerry Garcia
Rest.
- [55:18]
Narrator/Host
The Good Lovin was recorded on opening night at The Fillmore East, April 25. The day before, the Dead had played at Duke University in North Carolina, part of a spring fling that included the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Mountain, as well as the Beach Boys. That same week, as it turned out, the Beach Boys had signed a new management deal with Bill Graham's Milliard Agency in an attempt to make their image a bit hipper. And at least according to Keith Badman's indispensable Beach Boys day by day chronology, seemingly the first move was for Bill Graham to pair the Beach Boys with the Dead at the Fillmore East. The appearance gets mixed reviews, but I definitely suggest you seek out the version of Okie from Muskogee, which I think plays to both bands strong suits. But there was another guest plan for that night, as Alan Arkish remembers all too well.
- [56:05]
Alan Arkish
Did the Beach Boys play with him that week? Oh, my God. That was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. Okay, all right. So Dylan would come to the Fillmore. Now, Dylan at this point is the great white whale, right? He's There are sightings, but you're never gonna catch him, you know, and he wasn't touring or nothing. And he would come to the Fillmore and. And we had to let him in. And nobody could say that he was there. And he'd sit in the sound booth and watch. And he came there for Neil Young, and he came there for Mad Dogs, an Englishman. If you listen to that record, they acknowledge that he's there before they sing Girl from the North Country. Whatever it was that they sang, it was the Dylan song. And so he shows up that night for the Dead, and he's up in the booth, and all of a sudden the Beach Boys show up, and the Beach Boys go out and jam with them. Now, we were crazy professional in that we, whenever memorized, told you that when a band would appear to be a Slide with their name on it. So we had a Beach Boy slide, but certainly had a Dead slide. And in our hopes and dreams, we had made a Dylan slide. And, you know, it's going on tonight. And all of a sudden, over the headphones, it says, dylan's probably gonna play. Dylan's probably gonna play.
- [57:27]
Sam Cutler
Holy shit.
- [57:28]
Alan Arkish
You know? And I take the Grateful Dead end of the set slide out of the main projector and put in the Dylan slide. So when he walks on stage, boom, New lines go crazy. Well, he didn't. He was gonna go on, I guess, for the encore. So when the Dead finish their set, I forgot that I had taken the Dead slide out, and I put up Bob Dylan and the place goes crazy, and I slam it down as quick as I can. And the next thing I see walking across the stage from above is Bob Dylan heading out the back door, followed closely by Bill Graham, who stands in the middle of the stage looking up at me goes, you come down. Yeah, it was a little uncomfortable it.
- [58:17]
Narrator/Host
Would take another 15 years for Dillman and the Dead to get on stage together, though their relationship was far more complex than that. Something I wrote about a few years ago and which we've posted a link to@dead.net deadcast each night becomes a struggle.
- [58:31]
Sam Cutler
Towards that final escape, and the audience, knowing that the filmer is to close, picks up on all the elements of desperation that seems to typify the close of a major tour. Hard to play out, to really cook, especially after so many uptight places, each with its own peculiarity that it's laid on you and that now sweeps around in everyone's personal ozone like mini memories to disturb both concentration and expression.
- [58:58]
Narrator/Host
Three of the five nights at the Fillmore east the Dead closed their second set with a combination that would close Skull and Roses Not Fade Away into going down the road feeling bad. The version they used on the album came from the Manhattan Center a few weeks earlier.
- [59:35]
Robert Hunter
Don't give your love to me.
- [59:39]
Narrator/Host
Like Johnny B. Goode Not Fade Away is a cornerstone of rock music written and recorded in 1957. It's credited to Charles Hardin, a pseudonym for Buddy Holly, and his producer Norman Petty, though probably it's mostly Holly's creation.
- [59:54]
Robert Hunter
I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna.
- [59:59]
Narrator/Host
Are you gonna give your love to me?
- [60:04]
Robert Hunter
I wanna love you night and day. You know my love will not fade away. Oh well, you know my love will not fade away.
- [60:20]
Narrator/Host
And though the Dead were surely Buddy Holly fans, they were seemingly even bigger Rolling Stones fans, and their arrangement owes more to the Stones 1964 single, right from the first chords of the intro.
- [60:40]
Sam Cutler
I wanna tell you how it's gonna be.
- [60:44]
Narrator/Host
You're gonna give your love to me.
- [60:49]
Robert Hunter
I'm gonna love you night and day.
- [60:57]
Narrator/Host
The Dead did it a bit in the early days, with vocals by Bob Weir and harmonica by Pigpen. There were also slightly different lyrics. Source unknown. This version is from a mystery date in 1966, released on rare cuts and odd.
- [61:19]
Robert Hunter
Hey baby, that's no lie.
- [61:37]
Narrator/Host
The song disappeared from the Dead's repertoire for a few years, but came back in a big way in late 1969 with a mellower feel they'd adopt for the rest of their career. Over the course of 1970, though, the jam got wider and wider, but Bob Weir did make one very tiny addition to the song that turned out to have huge implications. Here's how Buddy and Mick put Love is love not fade away. And here's the Dead on Ladies and.
- [62:14]
Sam Cutler
Gentlemen.
- [62:31]
Narrator/Host
We are saying love is love too, but the Addition of hour expanded the song even further. Not Fade Away, of course, became one of the Dead and the Dead Head's signature songs, with the audience clapping and singing along with the song's groove, known as the Bo Diddley beat for the guitarist who popularized was a trend that gained momentum, especially in the early 80s, and became a regular part of shows, with the band adapting the Cricket's original mmm bop bop ending back to the song. Occasionally, the Dead would pick nop Fade Away back up and continue it. More often, though, Dead Heads would continue to clap the song on their way back into the parking lot, where it might become the basis of a drum circle out on Shakedown Street. Here's what it sounded like on July 9, 1989, from the giant Stadium box set.
- [63:34]
Robert Hunter
Not Fade Away.
- [63:46]
Narrator/Host
Jerry Garcia spoke with Dennis McNally about not fade Away in an interview and alluded to the way the Dead's version had transformed from the original. This is included in Jerry on Jerry, the Print and audiobook from Hachette. Interestingly enough, this is the conclusion of the same line of conversation in which Jerry was speaking about his original intent for the music of Warfrat that we heard to write a song for a specific situation.
- [64:11]
Jerry Garcia
I never have succeeded in doing that thing of writing a song that was big. I wanted to write a song that's big. As big as the situation is, I could never pull it off, at least not yet. Some songs have grown to that size. Not Fade Away is a fabulous song considering it's just. And I loved it when it was a rock and roll. I mean, I loved it when I was a kid. And doing it now always, almost always gives me a thrill. It stands my hair on it. It's just a great song.
- [64:40]
Narrator/Host
It certainly was transformed. One of the first transformations came in the fall of 1970, when they began to pair it with another new song they'd started playing. The Segway sounded like this on Skull N Roses. SA Going down the Road Feeling Bad is a genuine folk song.
- [65:27]
Robert Hunter
Going down the road feeling bad.
- [65:32]
Narrator/Host
Going.
- [65:32]
Robert Hunter
Down the road feeling bad Going down the road feeling bad yeah, yeah don't wanna chill this old lady.
- [65:47]
Narrator/Host
Sometimes Woody Guthrie receives credit for it, but here's the earliest recorded version under the name Lonesome Road Blues by Harry Witter from 1923, when Woody was all of 11 years old. It sounds pretty familiar already.
- [66:00]
Sam Cutler
Oh, I'm going down this road getting mad oh, I'm going down this road getting mad oh, I'm going down this road get in mad and I ain't.
- [66:13]
Narrator/Host
Gonna be Treated just that way oh.
- [66:17]
Sam Cutler
I'm going right a chili wind never blow oh I'm gonna dwind a kitty man there by blow oh I'm gonna.
- [66:25]
Narrator/Host
Dry that kitty man there by blow and I ain't gonna be treated this that way it appeared on a spate of recordings in the 1920s under different titles, even before the legendary Bristol sessions of 1927 that marked a turning point for commercial recordings of American folk music. The origins of the song seem thoroughly lost. Seemingly it didn't even seem to pass through a broadside phase where its lyrics circulated as text. It was a well traveled song in the folk revival. It was pretty different from the Dead version, but almost certainly Jerry Garcia was familiar with the Elizabeth Cotton take From her classic 1957 Folkways album, Folk Songs with instrumentals and guitar that also contained oh babe, it Ain't no lie and Freight Train.
- [67:10]
Robert Hunter
Going down the road feeling bad honey baby Lord Going down the road feeling bad Honey babe Lord Going down the road feeling bad I don't want to be treated this old way.
- [67:29]
Narrator/Host
But the version the Dead played like me and Bobby McGee came to them in the summer of 1970 on the festival Express tour. Jerry Garcia learned this song from Delaney Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie. It appeared on the Delaney and Bonnie and Friends album Motel, shot in early 1971.
- [67:46]
Robert Hunter
Duane Allman is playing slide guitar.
- [68:09]
Narrator/Host
John Fogarty seemingly invented the word choogle in 1969 with Creedence Clearwater Revival song Keep on Chooglin. But over a half century later it's come to mean a certain approach to music as well. To Deadologists and our dear departed friend. Thoughts on the Dead the Grateful Dead were a definition of a band that choogled, and they were at their very choogliest in the sweets anchored by Not Fade Away and Going down the road Feeling Bad Sam. Though the Dead endeavored not to repeat themselves in another way, Skull and Roses ended the same way that Live Dead did just two years earlier. That was the instrumental version of Bid you Good Night, the spiritual that the Dead had sung a cappella starting in 1968. They learned the song from a version performed by Joseph Spence and the Pindar family recorded in the Bahamas in 1965 by Jody Stecker, a bluegrass picking pal of Jerry Garcia.
- [69:59]
Robert Hunter
Lord good night Eat all the children that would not be good Good night Lord good night I remember right well I remember right well Good night Lord good night I wanna walk in Jerusalem just like John Good night Lord good night Good night He was part of.
- [70:21]
Narrator/Host
The Dead's repertoire on and off through 1978 before disappearing for a decade. But appropriately, they sang it as their final encore at the Fillmore east on April 29, 1971.
- [70:33]
Robert Hunter
Lay down, my dear brothers, lay down and take your rest. I won't you lay your head upon your Savior's breast.
- [70:50]
Narrator/Host
It was technically the early morning of April 30th, Alan Arkosh's birthday.
- [70:54]
Robert Hunter
Happy birthday, Alan, I love you oh but Jesus loves you the best and I bid you good night, Good night, good night. And I bid you good night, Good night, good night.
- [71:20]
Sam Cutler
And then Bill Graham saying thank you to everyone and back to the hotel for one last fling. And it's a 9:15 flight from JFK and we're all going home. Nobody says a thing. Everyone sleeps on the plane. The album covers all that and more. It breathes hunters lyrics and the craft of the Grateful Dead as musicians. It tells of all the struggles and hardships of the road. Perhaps somewhere in the music it tells of the difference between east and West. Most of all, it gives a beautifully recorded slice of one month in the life of the Grateful Dead's music, sounding as it sounded four months ago on hot summer evenings in New York City, somewhere out there on the road where nobody knew if it was going to be good until we got home and listened to it all again and we knew we had a record on our hands.
- [72:13]
Narrator/Host
There are more pieces of the Skull and Roses story to uncover, including the bonus disc on the new 50th anniversary edition, and much more. But we'll sign off with one more poem from Robert Cooperman included in his lovely book Saved by the Dead, available from Liquid Light Press. We've posted a link@dead.net deadcast and we.
- [72:32]
Robert Cooperman
Bid you good night to Fillmore East. For years the Grateful Dead close their shows with the acapella versions of that old gospel hymn about loving each other but Jesus loving us best, the crowd's arms draped around the shoulders of friends or complete strangers and swaying to the melody. The song sent us into the dawn with smiles sweet as ice cream. Maybe we'd stop at Ratner's for omelets and those tiny crunchy egg washed rolls that were as good in their way as the Dead. Or maybe we trudged to the subway almost empty, no maniac with a knife gun or the always rumored ax or on the show's menorah glow we'd amble the almost 200 blocks to our neighborhood, trucking along on the soaring of gorgeous exhaustion, mauling the lyrics too. And we bid you good night and all the other wonderful songs. The city blossoming? Noisy, Insane.
- [73:39]
Robert Hunter
And I bid you good night? Good night, good night? And I bid you good night? Good night, good night.
- [74:01]
Rich Mahan
Even though this is the end of PSY D and thereby the last of our episodes on Skull and Roses, fear not, we have new routes to explore down the musical highway that is the Grateful Dead. And we're pretty sure you're gonna dig what we've got packed for the trip. Long and strange is the way we like it. Stay weird, take care of yourself and each other, and we'll see you next time. 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.