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- [00:02]
A
Step into the sunshine with the latest collab from Dogfish Head and the Grateful Dead. Citrus Daydream Lager this refreshing American lager is brewed with sustainable fonio grain and kissed with citrus and floral notes. It's easy drinking, refreshing and brewed for good vibes only. It joins their fan favorite Juicy Pale Ale for a duo that hits all the right notes. Find these brews near you@dogfish.com Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly. The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the official Podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season 13 of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. I'm your co host Rich Rich Mahan. Thank you so very much for tuning in. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast, we wrap up our three episode arc on the Grateful Dead's 1976 live release Steal youl Face. There are some new Grateful Dead releases you need to know about. First and foremost, check out the recently announced Fillmore auditorium show from July 3, 1966. Yes, you heard that right. 1966 making this one of the earliest live recordings of the Grateful Dead. And now it's available as a 3Lp set and a 2C set. And folks, you got to hear this show to believe how good it sounds. It was recorded by none other than Owsley Bear Stanley. It's been mastered by Jeffrey Norman with speed correction and tape restoration by Plangent Processes. So you know it sounds great. This three LP set is limited to 6,600 copies. That's it and ships on July 3rd, 60 years to the day after it happened. Pre order now@dead.net Also right around the corner now is the 50th anniversary edition of Steal youl Face, the Dead's 1976 live album. It's been remastered and is available for pre order now@dead.net as a 2Lp set with beautiful red, blue and black splatter vinyl. This anniversary edition was newly mastered by Grammy Award winning engineer David Glasser at Air Show Mastering sourced from the plangent processes, restored in speed corrected tapes, lacquers were cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundmann Mastering. The steal your face 50th Anniversary Edition is available now at dead.net and hits the streets on June 26th. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons 1 through 12 and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how you like to listen. Please help the good old Grateful Dead cast by subscribing, sharing us with your friends on social media, hitting that like button and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Very kind, Kind of you. Thank you very much. We have transcripts for many of your favorite Dead cast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast-index and check them out 1976 saw a lot of very happy Dead heads as the Grateful Dead returned to touring after their hiatus. Getting back on the road was only one of the changes in the band's constant evolution. Dig in to see how things were setting up for the band to enter one of their most fertile periods kids ever. Here's Jesse Jarno to lay it all out.
- [04:04]
B
As May turned to June 1976, the Grateful Dead had been through the ringer. They'd spent the spring working on their troubled new double live album, Steal youl Face, and making plans to return to the road for the first time since 1974, as we heard in the first episode of this arc. And then in May, record company president Ron rakow departed with $225,000 that he contended was his and the Dead contended was theirs, which we discussed at length last time. But then, finally, it was time for some good vibes. In the first days of June, the equipment trucks headed north from the Bay Area, bound for Portland's Paramount Theater. The June 3rd and 4th tour openers are now available, with fresh mixes on the new playdead app, a pretty big upgrade from the tapes that had been out there before when not mentioned otherwise, that's what we're listening to Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux when
- [05:22]
C
they came back in 76 and were playing these small theaters. The June tour is one of my favorite tours in Dead history, and it's primarily the playing but also Betty's recordings.
- [05:48]
B
And that's where we'll mostly be hanging out today, in the pleasant vibes of June 1976. In addition to the Play Dead releases, June 1976 is represented, of course, with the June 1976 box set plus a volume of road trips, the Spirit of 76 bonus disc, a Dave's Picks and an edition of the download series Lotta Jams. Thanks to the Wonder of Nature, also known as David Ganz, we've been able to tap into an incredible 1977 interview with Jerry Garcia by the late Adam Bloch. Thanks to David Adam and Adam's own late archivist, Fred Nemo. We've posted links@dead.net deadcast by the time of this interview, the Grateful Dead movie was out and Steal youl Face. Grateful Dead and Round Records were in the rearview mirror.
- [06:56]
D
I want to play, you know, that's what I've always wanted to do, really. I mean, the fact that we got involved in all those other things was we got involved in them by default because the way they worked and the way they were was not satisfactory and sucked. You know, I mean, plainly got involved
- [07:09]
B
by default is slightly passive. The Grateful Dead took on the problems of live sound and record distribution because they wanted to solve them.
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D
So the possibility was, well, maybe if we get involved and put our attention to our energy and so forth into it, maybe we can make it so that it's more like the way we would wish it were. But the truth of the matter was that the megastructure excludes the possibility. It's not like it's not a local thing.
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B
The harsh light of American reality came shining on them.
- [07:40]
D
It's not like, oh, all you have to do to have alternate recording situation is just be an alternate recording situation. It doesn't work that way. You still are dealing with polyvinyl chloride. You're still dealing with distribution and all the other parts of what makes things weird.
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B
As they put it in their newsletter when announcing their return to the road, vacation is too exhausting to continue.
- [08:04]
D
So rather than tilting windmills or dinosaurs, you know, whatever metaphor you like, we just decided the most important thing that we can do is feel good and like what we're doing. It's like, really the most important thing.
- [08:17]
B
In the years leading up to the band's road break, Richard Loren, also known as Zippy, had worked as Jerry Garcia's solo manager before replacing Sam Cutler as the Grateful Dead's booking agent before getting fired by one band member in Europe in 1974 and getting rehired a few weeks later back home in California with a job promotion, sort of.
- [08:38]
E
In 1974, at the end of September, I was hired by Weir to be their manager. Weir came into my office and we want you to be our manager, you know, because that was the only one, the only sane one left.
- [08:55]
B
But that was just in time for the dead to take 18 months off the road. In the meantime, Zippy headed to Egypt, a visit that resulted in the Dead's own trip there a few years later. Bookmark that for another time. In 1976, with Ron Rakow out of the picture Richard Loren had his hands full.
- [09:13]
E
I had more to do with the Grateful Dead than to just book their tour. Just the business end of keeping the Dead solvent with the movie and the expenses.
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F
It was insane.
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E
I had to take care of that. I had nothing to do with the booking. So John Shear was made the tour manager, so I didn't have to deal with that anymore.
- [09:33]
B
John Cher was one of several regional promoters who'd booked the Dead in the Northeast as they grew from theaters to stadiums between 1972 and 1974, and became especially friendly with Garcia during the Dead's year and change. Off the road. His company Monarch Entertainment, organized several tours for the Jerry Garcia Band in smaller venues with good sound. Lorenz saw a way forward, inviting Cher to a meeting at Bobby Weir's house in early 1976. Welcome back promoter John Scher.
- [10:04]
G
My relationship with them as a whole was really pretty new. My relationship really was with Jerry and then grew with the other guys.
- [10:14]
E
I said, john, let's just do a small hall tour. Let's do the music hall in Boston. Let's do the Beacon Theater.
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G
When I went out there and we had this meeting at Bobby's house, they expressed that they knew that they were getting more and more popular, but they didn't want to play bigger places. So I suggested that we go out and we do multiple day theaters, which would take care of some of the. The. The fans desires to get there and see how that went. So this was a. Let's take a step back, be the band that you were when you started this, and then we'll see where we can grow from there.
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B
Sherrod observed the Dead's recent adventures from the relative outside. He wasn't part of their scene.
- [11:02]
G
I spent some time with Rakow. They always wanted to do things their own way. And in those early days, the people that were surrounding them, because there was never really a traditional manager, I mean, as close as it ever came, was John McIntyre. But they let Rackow run with the ball when it clearly wasn't working.
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B
They'd spent their time off the road reinventing their music, the subject of our blues for a LA season. And now, as they prepared to return to live performance, they attempted to imagine new ways to approach touring.
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G
We were there for, I don't know, five, six hours kicking ideas around, and it came as a consensus. I'm not sure necessarily I was the first person to utter mail order, but, you know, as we got there, you know, it started to take a form they disliked. I don't remember if it was Ticketmaster or Ticket Tron at that time, but they sort of, you know, hated that system. At that meeting at Bobby's house, I suggested we do mail order. And they said, fine, and we put it together.
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B
Individual venues had sold tickets by mail order for years. It was a very normal way of doing things until the corporate centralization of ticketing services. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Dead's tour in 1976 might be the first time a whole tour was organized like that. The Grateful Dead would famously later organize their own ticketing service, but that didn't start until 1983. This was the prototype.
- [12:36]
G
I had to hire a bunch of people, friends, family, to satisfy the ticket sales. We ended up having to be there 24 hours a day for weeks got me thrown out of my office.
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B
There were several differences between this first draft mail order and the later iteration. But the key one was that in 1976, every ticket for the east coast tour was sold by mail order with no public on sale whatsoever. John Scher organized the tour.
- [13:05]
G
We managed to sell multiple days out in a whole bunch of cities. That was seemed to everybody at the time of fair. It was a lottery. And when the tickets were gone, the tickets were gone.
- [13:16]
B
It was certainly egalitarian, though. A few Deadheads missed the newsletter announcement and mail order deadlines of May 12 for the Northeast shows and May 19 for Chicago and Pittsburgh. And plenty of Deadheads weren't actually on the Deadheads mailing list to start. There are some disappointed letters in the band's archive. One of my favorites concludes, the important thing for me right now is not to be bummed out at the Grateful Dead as people. Mickey Hart explained the arrangement on WMMR in October 1976.
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H
There's nothing against anybody that isn't a Deadhead, of course. It's just that this was one way of doing things and it was a problem that we had to deal with. This is the problem that we have when we go play places. This is it, you know, to sell out big halls and play not. Not as human as we could and have everybody satisfied or play small places and satisfy ourselves and everybody who's there. And to have a real experience, basically, this is like the way it should be. Music should be intimate like this and relaxed.
- [14:13]
B
As we'll see the shows would be pretty incredible. But the tickets remained in near unobtainable demand. But one of the more fascinating parts of the arrangement was a little bit under the hood. Richard Loren.
- [14:24]
E
He got together with the local promoter
- [14:26]
B
in every city the New arrangement was a way the Grateful Dead could continue to essentially book themselves with a promoter they trusted, who in turn worked with other local promoters and venues.
- [14:36]
G
They knew they could go play live dates. They never trusted agents for a very short time. When I first started with them, they had an agent named Ron Raney at apa, but that lasted maybe one tour. Just didn't trust agents. It wasn't to my benefit to tell them different. Because really, when you work with a band of that stature. And while early in the 70s, maybe even into the 80s, it really was a cult, nobody in the mainstream of the music business took them very seriously.
- [15:21]
B
John Cher had been working so closely with the Garcia band that it was a natural fit. And Cher would serve in the same role for the rest of the Grateful Dead's career. Outside the Bay Area, where Bill Graham continued to handle local shows.
- [15:34]
G
Bill didn't see them as a national act. He knew they were really successful in California, also in the Northwest, especially in Oregon. But he never really saw him becoming a big act everywhere. And they became a big act everywhere. And so I sort of was in the right place at the right time. What Richard and McIntyre and others did, really, was negotiate a few dates a year with Bill Graham. Richard was a very important part in those early days. He was Jerry's manager. He was theoretically the booking agent for the Dead. But I really became that guy. So at the time, they didn't really want to talk about Pest that Tour.
- [16:24]
B
So in 1976, John Cher started to refine a network of relationships that would carry the Dead into their biggest touring years, as always on their own terms. The contracts in the Dead's archive show that almost all of the east coast part of the tour was pretty locked down by around May 1. But as the band got ready to move into the Orpheum in downtown San Francisco for a final round of tech rehearsals before hitting the road, they rearranged their tour schedule just slightly, perhaps to accommodate that which had just hit the fan. Courtesy of Ron Rakow at the time.
- [16:57]
G
I think to a degree they sheltered me a little bit from the ugly shit. I was sort of a fresh new face, so to speak. But no, I don't remember other than, you know, they told me that he left with money at that point. The relationship with them was always looking forward. It took years and years for me to hear first person stories of the of the 60s.
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B
They added a pair of tour opening shows in the Northwest at Portland's Paramount Theater, put on by Cher and the local promoters. Double tickets were available through local ticket outlets, and both nights sold out by gig time. They also rearranged the end of the tour, bowing out of the two shows at Pittsburgh's Syria Mosque, adding a third night in Chicago plus a tour closing stop at their old stomping grounds at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City on July 2, two days before the bicentennial. Fate would have its way with that date, but it was a megade gig, the kind the Dead weren't fond of, but if it had to be anywhere, it might as well be Roosevelt Stadium. They would take home only a tiny bit of the $227,000 in gross receipts, but it's not hard to see that number as standing in for the $225,000 Ron Rakow had left with There was one more piece of business that had to be concluded before the Dead put their operation back into roaming mode. They had to sign off on the last pieces of Steal youl Face.
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I
Get yourself a powder Shark seal that silver vine Lost my power.
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B
Though Steal youl Face was released in June 1976 and the band toured in June 1976, most fans wouldn't be able to find the album in stores should they go home from a show excited to acquire the latest Grateful Dead product. It didn't hit shops until the very last days of the month. Grateful that archivist David Lemieux It's a good looking package.
- [19:17]
C
I'm a big fan of gatefold LPs and when you open it up and you see the gatefold has archival photos and then contemporary photos from 1974 when these things were recorded.
- [19:28]
B
On the right side were 13 shots of the band at Winterland in 1974 taken by Andy Leonard. And on the left side were another batch taken by Marianne Mayer and mostly by Ron Rakow, credited as Cadillac Ron. As we discussed last time, it was Phil Lesh who decided to call the album Steal youl Face because that's how he felt in that moment. And it's my belief that he probably made that decision as a reaction to Ron Rakkow's departure, a point Rakow disputes.
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F
Feared your face was named long before I left now I never asked why. I never asked why about anything. They can call it shit on a shingle as far as I'm concerned. If the music is good, could be.
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B
But the decision would result in perhaps the album's single biggest impact on the Dead's long term legacy, how their logo, designed by Bob Thomas, ended up becoming known as the Steal youl Face. I have faith in you personally that you'll be able to locate a Steal youl Face logo in your immediate vicinity before this timer runs out. David Lemieux But I got one here.
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C
We all now refer to skull and lightning bolt as the Steal your Face Bear. And Bob Thomas actually had a different name, but it's become known as that. So like when you see that little logo on my shirt right now, it's, oh, that's a steal your face. Well, it's not. It's the album that's called Steal youl Face with that on the COVID So yeah, it's interesting how that became that.
- [20:53]
B
We explored the logo's history a little way back in our second ever episode, our first Bear Drop. But to recount it slightly, Owsley Stanley decided the band needed a logo in order to discern their road cases from other bands at festivals and other shared gigs. Here's Starfinder Stanley from the Owsley Stanley Foundation.
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J
He had this image that popped into his head as he was driving in a winter storm in California, saw this circle split by a lightning bolt. He thought that would make a cool logo. So he was talking with a friend who had done some stencil work and he said, oh, I know how to make a stencil that'll be easy to apply that. And he cut out a circle with a jagged edge and you could spray that and flip it over and spray the other side and you'd have the circle with the lightning bolt in the middle. And so they used that. He refined it. Thirteen was a powerful number, the number of letters in Owsley Stanley. And that was always a number that resonated with Bear. So he made it into a 13 point lightning bolt.
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B
The prototype version of the lightning bolt logo can be spotted on photos of the band's road cases starting in June 1969. From there, Bear's friend Bob Thomas expanded on the vision. Thomas had served in Owsley's labs and was a member of the long standing Renaissance Fair ensemble, the Golden Toad. Bob Thomas on the Scottish pipes. We've posted a link to some rare golden toad music at dead.net/deadcast. Owsley's idea was to frame the lightning bolt inside a skull with the outline of the skull's teeth, also spelling out the name Grateful Dead.
- [22:55]
J
So Bob went off and fiddled around with it. Came back the next day and he said, well, wasn't able to get the letters to work, but what do you think of this?
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B
Oddly, the first documented time the familiar logo appears was on T shirts worn by the band and crew in July 1971. About a year into Owsley's two year stint on Terminal island and just before they paid him a visit there. We'll have to consult the timesheet to sort that one out. The logo became ubiquitous around the dead world from 1971 onwards, appearing externally for the first time on Behr's choice in 73, but also on letterheads, backstage passes, tape reels, and anywhere it was possible too. As our dear friend thoughts on the Dead once put it, Slap a steely on it.
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J
Bear always called it the skull and lightning bolt. He didn't like calling it a steal your face.
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B
Given Owsley's stresses making the album, that's no surprise. Ron Rakow.
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F
I never would have called it that. Because the most important thing the Grateful Dead had, the thing that distinguishes the Grateful Dead from every other band, is its logo, period. And I would never in a million years call that logo steal your face. Terrible, terrible, terrible name.
- [24:20]
B
It was on his to do list.
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F
I had a whole other plan for that. I wanted to have a national contest name our logo.
- [24:29]
B
The Dead did not play he's gone during their June 1976 comeback tour, perhaps pointedly, but when it returned in October, people now cheered for this line, one of many lyrics that started getting meta cheers in the post retirement era. Audible even on the soundboard.
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I
Like, I told you what I said, feel your face right off yours.
- [25:06]
B
The words steal your face have, I think, become most often retconned into an expression of a dome melting psychedelic experience, to have one's face stolen. And that's totally accurate too. It's one part of the album's impact. The album cover was also a pretty bold red, white and blue. Almost like they too had been afflicted with bicentennial fever. I think more likely the times finally caught up with the Dead. David Lemieux.
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C
The red and the blue have become official Pantone colors. If you wanted to get your house painted steely red and the blue, you could go to Pantone saying, can I get that number? And they would mix it and you would get Grateful Dead colors, which is amazing. I freaking love that. Because, you know, I used to doodle on my school books and I draw a little steal your face with the 13 point. And I'd find in my markers the red that was closest and the blue that was closest.
- [25:59]
B
Probably on June 1st or 2nd, the Quippies loaded it out of the Orpheum with the rest of the Dead's gear, and it headed north to Portland to open the tour at the Paramount, where the Dead could stop thinking about Everything we've been discussing for the last however many minutes and just be the Grateful Dead. Pat Lee attended both of the tour opening shows in Portland. He'd been a concert taper on and off since 1970 and started recording the Dead a few years after that.
- [26:44]
E
1973 Seattle. I helped my friend Stan Gutowski do his recording of the arena show. And then in 74 I did my first masters with my 152. I did Seattle and Portland in 74.
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B
Pat attended the so called retirement shows in 1974 and connected with some of the legendary Bay Area recordists, including Bob Menke. And almost at the same moment that the Dead retired from the road, the Dead Relics Tape Exchange began publishing a regular fanzine from Brooklyn. Pat was the target audience.
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E
Somewhere I got a hold of Relics magazine and I put an ad in there and I did a little bit of trading with Jerry Moore. I know I did a lot of trading with Harvey Lubar. He's a. Just a great. Any great friend. And we. I go down to California and see him later on when he moved to the West Coast. Just a great guy. I really miss Harv.
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B
Us too. During 1975 especially, the taping scene blew up. And when the Dead returned to the road in 1976, both the dead and the Heads discovered that their popularity hadn't waned at all. And perhaps because of the tape traders even grew. In many ways, the story of the grateful dead in June 1976 is just as much about the Heads as the Dead themselves.
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E
I was used to mellow Northwest scenes like the. The prior Northwest show was at the heck ed in 74. I was first, literally first one in the door. You know, maybe I stood outside for an hour, very mellow, you know, no big deal. Walked in and sat down. But the June 76 shows was a totally different world. It was the first serious crowd scene I'd ever seen at a Grateful Dead show. I mean, everybody elbowing and trying to get in and just a mess. I was overwhelmed. But the other thing, I also remember being in line. Jerry and those guys were in the. In the. In that hotel right above the around, right behind the Paramount. So when we were in line next to the park, you could see, I think, Don and Jerry just sitting around watching us. Yeah, I was in a balcony above the line.
- [29:03]
B
It was chaotic. And Pat thought he knew why.
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E
And I blame it all on those guys from New York. You could hear all these Brooklyn accents and, you know, we were right at the front. I had my deck on my back like I always did. And microphones in the pockets and people just kept crowding in front. We kept getting shoved farther back. It was just crazy trying to get in the door. And it was that way both nights. And so I set my younger brother ahead of me and he got in and saved his seats down on the floor. And so I didn't have a problem coming in the door. All they wanted to do is open up your jacket and then you walk right through. And that's the way it was both nights. So there's no hassle. Any big serious search.
- [29:52]
B
People have been following the Dead from show to show for years, but 1976 is when it became more regular for people to go coast to coast for the express purpose of doing so. Despite being a small theater, the seats weren't reserved at the Paramount.
- [30:06]
E
Totally, totally ga. Total chaos. Sit anywhere inside.
- [30:13]
B
Pat put his eyes on one of the more notorious Deadheads. But like Pat, he was more local.
- [30:19]
E
But right before the show started, literally right before all of a sudden this giant walks right down the aisle, right down all the way to the front of the Paramount where he finally sat down. I mean, he was huge. I just knew it was Bill Walton. I just kind of knew the name Bill Walton. And I know he was a big basketball guy. And of course, we would see him at Oregon shows over the decades afterwards because he still stuck out in a. You know, at Austin Stadium, you could see him from hundreds of yards away.
- [30:54]
B
It was showtime.
- [30:57]
E
I recorded the first night down on the floor about 15th row, and it was just crazy, everybody standing up and yelling. And it's not a bad recording.
- [31:34]
B
If you want a good vibe, check for what it felt like in the Paramount. Get your ears on Pat's tapes.
- [32:07]
I
Again.
- [32:11]
B
Over those two shows in Portland on June 3rd and 4th, they unveiled the newest model of the Dead, the two drummer version, with Phil Lesh no longer singing and Donna Jean taking more precedence in the mix. We'll use the two tour opening shows, spiffied up for the Play Dead app, to give an overview of what was new for the Dead in 1976, blending a bit between the two nights. It was the first year in a decade when the Dead didn't have a new album with new material, but there were plenty of fresh additions to their set list rotation. It wasn't quite a reinvention so much as a reset. We don't have a secret word this season, but if we did, it would be mellow. They debuted two songs from Garcia's Reflections album, opening the first night with Might as well Written about the Festival Express Cross Canada train trip in 1970.
- [33:07]
I
Might as well, might as well, Might as well, Might as well, Might as well, Might as well, Might as well, Might as well, Might as well, might as well
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B
Grateful Ed archivist David Lemieux
- [33:23]
C
Donna's got really good monitors. She has never sounded better. And when you think of the songs on which they're really Bobby and Donna duets and you think of Cassidy and Music never stopped and Looks like Rainbow,
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I
but I'll still sing you a song
- [33:43]
K
written in the letters of your name.
- [34:05]
C
And then the cherry stuff. Scarlet Begonia's Cosmic Charlie. She sounded spectacular. Like, I mean, unbelievable. Again, it's the same Grateful Dead, but it's a different grateful dead.
- [34:17]
B
The 76 version slowed cosmic Charlie down considerably and added gorgeous new three part harmonies with Donna Jean replacing Phil Lesh. I love the way the phrase electric blue curls upwards.
- [34:30]
I
Can it go, can it go? Tell me the news, mama Jesus waiting for way to get to rosy red electric blue I bought you a better for your paper canoe
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E
I get the only Cosmic Charlie I've ever heard and the only Mission in the rain Some
- [35:01]
I
folks would be happy just to have one dream come true but everything you gather is just one that you can lose Come again. Rolling along in the mission in the
- [35:27]
B
rain come again June 1976 is the only time you could hear the Grateful Dead doing Mission in the Rain, a classic song we talked about in the first Steal your Face episode, destined for the Jerry Garcia band repertoire.
- [35:41]
E
There was all these new songs, fabulous songs, you know, Lazy lightning,
- [35:51]
I
Super lazy like me want to meet you Kinda frighten me did you really get me high?
- [36:08]
B
Also from Reflections was They Love each Other, a song the dead played in 1973 at a faster clip and slowing down when the Garcia band adapted it.
- [36:18]
I
They love each other. Oh, you can see that it's true Lord, you can see that it's true
- [36:39]
B
Friend of the Devil returned to the Dead's repertoire with its own Jerry Garcia band retrofitting.
- [36:44]
I
Got Two reasons why I Cried. First one's name Sweet and she's my heart's delight.
- [37:00]
B
And they dug deeper into the Garcia solo catalog and came back with the Wheel, which emerged from a studio improvisation by Garcia and Billy Kreutzman while making Garcia's solo debut in 1971. The amazing studio version has Garcia on every instrument except drums. We explored it in our Garcia episode a few years ago.
- [37:19]
C
David Lemieux if I hadn't known better, I didn't think that was even possible in the live setting. When you Listen to the one on the Garcia album and you're thinking, how can they do this?
- [37:31]
I
The wheel is turning and you can't slow down. You can't let go and you can't hold on. You can't go back and you can't stand still. It.
- [37:51]
C
And they did it. And the long intros and the precision, you know, when they hit it. And then the long outros. I mean, it's. It's. My head swirls thinking about it.
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I
Just a little bit more Round, round, run around Gotta get back to where you belong Little bit harder Just a little bit more Little bit harder than
- [38:24]
B
you Call me more Bobby Weir and John Perry. Barlow finished Cassidy for Weir's solo debut, Ace, in 1972. And on our episode about that album, we explored the song's origins going back to 1970. The Dead played it once in 1974, but it didn't really become a Dead song until they brought it back out in a different key in 76, moving it from F sharp to E. They brought out the old street radical anthem Dancing in the street for the first time since 1971. Now rearranged a bit. It might be a bit more like 70s R&B, but it's definitely got a new sizzle that Deadheads inevitably call the disco version. Let's compare the two, starting with the classic Valentine's Day 1970 iteration.
- [39:31]
K
Hey, coming out around the world, you ready for a brand new beat? Summer's here, yeah, the time is right for dancing in the street Dancing in
- [39:47]
I
Chicago, down in New Orleans, New York City. All we need is music, sweet music. There'll be music everywhere.
- [40:15]
B
Weir had a new cover song, Samson and Delilah, learned from the Reverend Gary Davis and magnified. Pat Lee.
- [40:39]
E
The second night I moved to the balcony, just to have some normalcy, if you will. I got to hear a sound check one of the nights. Remember which one? And they sound checked St. Stephen. And I was so excited never having seen a St. Stephen. And then they didn't play it until the East Coast. Did not make me happy.
- [41:00]
B
For the first time since 1970, the band toured without their own PA and relied on different combinations of rented setups. Here's Jerry Garcia assessing the wall of sound. Adam block in 1977, what we built
- [41:14]
D
was a physical model of sound, and it worked, but it's the wrong direction for what the world is involved in right now. You know what I mean? You can't use that much stuff. You can't use that much power. You can't try to brute force information out and that's what that model had
- [41:36]
B
to do with John Schermann.
- [41:39]
G
Slowly but surely, the technology caught up with them and they exceeded it. And they put together their own sound system. But it wasn't a wall of sound.
- [41:51]
D
Now we're working on a different model. We're working on a different approach to the whole idea. The problem solving level of how do you get sound out?
- [41:59]
L
That works.
- [42:00]
D
And we're dealing with it as psychoacoustic phenomena rather than than energy rather than physics. So our handle on it is fundamentally our model would be something like as little as possible having the greatest possible effect.
- [42:18]
B
Pat Lee wasn't totally sold on the new setup.
- [42:21]
E
The prior show I'd seen was the last of the Great Wall. The Wall was an incredible sound. Those October shows, not the 20th, but the 19th, I thought was the best sound I'd ever heard ever. God, it was so good.
- [42:37]
B
The new system lacked in one important respect.
- [42:40]
E
You can hear Jerry, you can hear the keyboard and Bob, but you couldn't hear Phil. Phil to me, just went away after 1974.
- [42:49]
B
Over the next two decades, the grateful Dead would continue to be at the forefront of sound in virtually countless ways. And the bass presence would certainly improve. As with the promoters they were working with, by then, reality was starting to mold slightly more to their vision of how it should be.
- [43:05]
D
Now we're working on. When I say we, I really mean the sort of the small amount of technical, in house technical wing that we have of the Grateful Dead. It's working well. Dan Healy, Jeff Cook, who's got Soundstorm pas, and he's not really an in house guy, but he's a friend.
- [43:26]
B
Pat Lee's got a postscript to the Portland shows that we have to include.
- [43:30]
E
I was also starting to run, you know, for exercise. And so there was a run into coma the next day on 6 5. And so I had my brother drive home from the Paramount after the six floor show. And I tried to sleep on the way home. I ended up getting like two or three hours of sleep, but. But I made it to the race the next morning up in Tacoma. It was called Sound and Narrows. I ran it in in Converse tennis shoes.
- [44:04]
B
Owie.
- [44:05]
E
Yeah, no, no vertical support whatsoever. But, you know, we didn't know anything in 76 about running shoes. And so another friend of mine was also at the show with me. We ran it in these tennis shoes, but right behind us was this big army troop from Fort Lewis, all, you know, singing in cadence the whole way, those little army songs like the Bill Murray movie. So our Whole goal was to not get run down by the Army. And we barely finished. It was a 10k race. I actually made it 6.2 miles.
- [44:50]
B
Pat's tapes got out pretty fast too. And when the tour hit the east coast, the recordings came flying back. Almost certainly the first time it was possible to follow a Dead tour from a distance with only a slight time delay.
- [45:03]
E
That whole tour, I got audience copies of that whole tour, you know, as. As they happen, from my various east coast friends.
- [45:13]
B
After the tour openers in Portland, the whole circus moved across the country for four shows in Boston, two in Manhattan, three in Passaic, four in Philadelphia, and four in Chicago. Promoter John Scher.
- [45:26]
G
My recollection is that every single show was great. Now, from a technical point of view, you know, we played the tapes, there was magic in the air at every show. But no, nothing in particular stands out. I mean, there are shows over the years that stand out. Cornell stands out. You know, for me, Englishtown stands out.
- [45:49]
B
Slow down, buddy. We'll get back to those. It probably goes without saying, but the shows were received ecstatically by Dead freaks.
- [45:57]
G
I've seen many, many hundreds of Grateful Dead shows over the years. And once in a while, they do stink. All right. I always respond to the audience reactions other than those rare times, and they were off. The audience reaction between a good show and a great show wasn't much different. It's afterlife of the tapes, which is
- [46:18]
B
pretty much why we're here. David Lemieux.
- [46:21]
C
Every night on the tour featured incredible first sets and wildly inventive second sets. I think some of the most interesting second sets I ever heard. The Dead do so much weird stuff. So many different sequences.
- [46:35]
B
Relics offered some detailed tour coverage. And maybe the most intriguing article mentions what's only referred to as the grateful dead bus. 12 people who caught the shows in Portland and then headed across the country to Boston. They missed the first night there. They parked outside the venue and made it to the others. Buses had been around the Dead world since the Merry Pranksters and some of the bus Caravan from Stephen Gaskin's Farm commune hit a Dead show or two. And of course, people followed the Dead around in VW microbuses for sure by the early 70s. But this particular bus might be the earliest instance of a full on bus going on Dead tour. Lauren, Gretchen and Gam, or anybody else from the Grateful Dead bus, please check in with us if you're out there. They were obviously committed heads, but other people were having the chance to see the Dead for the very first time. Like Dave Davis of the Grateful Seconds
- [47:27]
M
Blog I saw the Grateful dead for the first time. I was 17 and it was at the Boston Music Hall, June 9, 1976. I basically had no idea how they would perform sets, songs, anything like that. It was like a blank slate.
- [47:47]
B
As it turned out, 1976 was a pretty high variance year. Even if he had seen the Dead the last time through Boston in 1974, it might not have prepared Dave. At his very first show, he heard one of the band's most anticipated revivals. We'll go with Steve Mazner's audience tape.
- [48:05]
M
They finish the first set, they come out and they play St. Stephen for the first time since Halloween 1971.
- [48:17]
I
Sam.
- [48:44]
M
Like a full blown beautiful St Stephen with Donna vocals added. That went into a backwards or upside down Eyes of the World. I don't know what you actually call it, but they played what normally they had in 74. They had played later in the tune at the beginning of the Eyes of the World.
- [49:27]
B
It's the transition jam that used to lead into the 78 coda, the part where the band shifts to different chords under Garcia's solo to create a dramatic mood change. In 1976, the band transplanted that move into the song's introduction. For many versions, we'll flip over to Road Trips, Volume 4. 5. Eyes of the World was one of the few songs to get faster in 76,
- [50:20]
M
And then that went into Let It Grow, which was separated out from the rest of Weather Report. Like even a neophyte like me was like my mind was blown. I couldn't believe it. They finished the show with Franklin's Tower as an encore. The only time that they played Franklin's Tower standalone as an encore. I had tickets the next night, but I didn't have a place to stay, so I ended up selling my ticket, hitchhiking back up to Maine where my family was. But fortunately I was able to come back down for the show on the 12th.
- [50:58]
B
It was the beginning of an excellent adventure for Dave. We've posted links to his projects@dead.net deadcast
- [51:05]
M
both these shows were before I started collecting tapes. I didn't wouldn't start doing that for like another month or so. Just like my memories are so vivid and happy for these two shows and I went on to see a million more.
- [51:22]
H
The Grateful Dead are leaving the stage of Boston's Music Hall Theater. They've done one encore thus far.
- [51:31]
B
They might be coming back to both alleviate the ticket demands and get the word out about Steal youl Face. United Artists repeated the promotional strategy from Skull and Roses, the Dead of a
- [51:42]
H
new two record live album out. It should be in your friendly neighborhood record stores with an the next few
- [51:49]
B
days, a few weeks, but basically. United Artists sponsored radio broadcasts in nearly every city of the tour. And one of the San Francisco shows was syndicated nationally by the King Biscuit Flower Hour. We've included a link to lost Live Dead's post on the tour at dead.net deadcast the Dead's June 12th broadcast from Boston reached pretty far.
- [52:12]
H
Tonight. We've done it over the radio throughout the New England area, courtesy of WBCN and the facilities of WHCN in Hartford, Connecticut and wbru. Our friends down in Providence, Rhode Island. We've been heard throughout the New England area, all the way down in New York. I bet Long Island, I bet is listening to us tonight.
- [52:32]
B
One result was the proliferation of some very good live tapes, which probably not only helped stoke the demand for future shows, but the desire to go to more than one of them. WBCN interviewed some heads outside the music hall who accidentally articulated why playing smaller venues wasn't going to work.
- [52:49]
H
You would go to as many shows
- [52:50]
B
as I could get a ticket, right?
- [52:53]
I
Nothing would stop me.
- [52:54]
F
You don't think that they're getting losing
- [52:57]
J
any of their old flowers?
- [53:00]
E
Well, I mean, they're not like they
- [53:01]
B
were in the old times because everybody keeps changing.
- [53:03]
I
But now I change too.
- [53:05]
B
That's a good attitude, but it's that enthusiasm. There's your problem with your small theater plan right there. There were other complications too. The new mail order system was imperfect. You may know Rob Leitstein from his many roles in the satellite radio universe, or perhaps as the legacy keeper for the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Or maybe just from some show somewhere. We spoke with him in our episode about Virginia 78. I got the ticket order for the Beacon theater shows in 76. I know at the time what a certified check was and I found out the hard way. So when they got my personal check
- [53:42]
F
and I got it returned with no
- [53:43]
B
tickets, I was like, oh, duh, okay, live and learn. So I didn't get to go to the Beacon shows and was I guess, too young and didn't have it in the mind yet.
- [53:56]
F
Just go, you know.
- [53:59]
B
New York was more than just the band's home away from home.
- [54:02]
G
Promoter JOHN the New York area crowds were always a step above anyplace else. That's not taking anything away from anyplace else. But they were bigger in New York than they were in San Francisco. Although I have no way to prove that.
- [54:19]
B
I think there's a truth to that. Outside the Beacon on opening night, June 14, fans massed in the street and nearly caused a riot. Inside, a reporter interviewed Bobby Weir and Mickey Hart. I was just outside.
- [54:32]
N
There's a whole bunch of people almost in tears.
- [54:34]
B
They're crying they couldn't get tickets.
- [54:35]
N
Don't you think you owe it to your fans to go into a Shea Stadium or a Madison Square Garden and do a concert so everybody can get tickets?
- [54:41]
L
This place was built for music, and Shea Stadium obviously was built for sports. And music doesn't come come across real well in a sporting rink. And if you had a boxing match here, it wouldn't be all that great. You know, you'd probably want to do a boxing match in Shea Stadium.
- [54:59]
B
Certainly the band was psyched to be in smaller rooms again and played like it. But it wasn't a tenable solution. It turned out the math was wrong. If the Dead could fill a 20,000 capacity venue in a city, it wasn't the same as playing four nights at a 5,000 capacity venue. Because many of those 5,000 fans would want to attend multiple shows. Here's Bobby Weir speaking with WMMR in September 1976.
- [55:24]
L
Because we couldn't play smaller halls because we would have trouble outside. That happened again on this last tour. When we tried playing smaller halls again, we got more trouble outside, even though we played several nights in a given location. When we played in New York, for instance, there were twice as many kids outside as inside and the streets filled up.
- [55:40]
B
One of the kids outside on that first night was a teenager named Johnny Dwark. You may know Johnny from editing the fantastic zine Dupree's Diamond News or on the Deadcast for rapping rhapsodic about the Venita 72 Darkstar and his miracle dash to catch the song's revival at the Greek in 84. In 1976, he hadn't yet seen the Dead.
- [56:02]
N
I went to the Beacon Theater for the first show with a hundred dollars in my pocket. Which not only is a lot of money for a 15 year old, but it's also something like over $500 in money these days, right? So I was really seriously dedicated to see the Grateful Dead. At the time we thought that this was just going to be like a reunion tour and that they were never going to tour again. So there was this extra urgency to see them.
- [56:36]
B
What Johnny found outside the Beacon was something new.
- [56:39]
N
I had become in 1975, a soda jerk selling soda at the Woolman skating rink for the Shaffer Music Festival. And so There were these one or two summers in 75, 76 where I got to see many of those shows for free. By 1976, I'd seen a lot of concert scenes, a lot of scenes outside shows I was going to show. It's like crazy there. But there was this hippie scene with these dancing, long haired people outside the Beacon Theater that was like my beginning hint at, oh, this is different than the other scenes.
- [57:18]
B
Sounds like Johnny encountered the Grateful Dead bus. I mentioned before there was some sort
- [57:23]
N
of early Grateful Dead commune type hippie bus that was parked outside the Beacon. And there were a bunch of Grateful Dead hippie women in long flowing dresses who got out of the vehicle and started spinning around and dancing. I think there were people playing music and there was some sort of vibe of that that I definitely did not ever see at any of the other concerts up until that time.
- [57:53]
B
But Johnny struck out on tickets that first night.
- [57:56]
N
There were no tickets to be had for any price whatsoever.
- [58:00]
B
Johnny Dwark had found his mission.
- [58:03]
N
So the next day I headed off to the Beacon Theater earlier early afternoon, and I was walking from my parents house in forest Hills, Queens, NY to the subway and I happened upon a kid named Tony who I hadn't seen since camp years before that. And we stopped on the street outside his house and we were talking for a couple of minutes, catching up. And he asked me near the end of the conversation, where are you headed? And I told him, there's this band called the Grateful Dead that is playing at the Beacon Theater and I couldn't get in last night and I love them and I so want to see them. And I'm a little nervous, so I'm headed in early and Tony says to me, funny you should say that. I was just talking to my dad who's the lawyer for the Beacon Theater, when I was upstairs a couple of minutes ago, and he offered me tickets because he got free tickets for any show at the Beacon Theater. And Tony tells me, you know, I don't really like the Grateful Dead. So I told my dad, nah, not interested. Should we call my dad and see if he still has the tickets?
- [59:11]
B
And so Johnny scored miracle 11th row tickets for his first Dead show. He went to retrieve them from Tony's father's office.
- [59:18]
N
I get these tickets and I'm in a state of shock, like my body is filled with adrenaline and I'm trembling, holding these tickets like these Miracle tickets. And I devised this plan for what I would do on the way to the show. I had already started hanging out in Central park on Frisbee Hill, learning to become a really good Frisbee player. And there was a really cool hippie scene there. And I decided that I would walk up 6th Avenue, cross over into Central park, and walk up the carriage road and go to Frisbee Hill and show off my tickets to my Frisbee playing friends while smoking a lot of the really good blonde hash that was going around Central park at the time. And right when I get to the corner of 6th Avenue and Central park south, the light turns red. And this guy next to me taps me on the shoulder. He saw that I was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt. And he says, hey, man, you know the Grateful Dead are staying at the hotel here. And I look up and it's the St. Moritz. And at the time, the St. Moritz was the fanciest, most expensive hotel in New York City. And it was the sort of place that you needed at least a sport coat and a button down shirt to get past the doorman. You know, super ritzy, high class, and very expensive. And I turned to the guy and I'm like, the Grateful Dinner Hippies. Like, they're not staying at the most expensive hotel in New York. And he's like, actually, they are. Yesterday at this time, a green Winnebago pulled around and double parked in front of the taxi stand. And a long hair got out, who I later learned was Rex Jackson, and ran past the guys who were the doormen with their red Johnny Walker top hat and tails outfits. And the doorman gave a tip of his hat, and Rex ran in in a Grateful Dead T shirt, and out came the Dead and drove off. And I was like, I don't know about that. And right as I said that, in disbelief, the light turned and a green Winnebago pulls around the corner, double parks in front of the taxi stand, and Rex Jackson gets out, gets the tip of approval of the hat of the doorman and runs inside. Well, that piqued my curiosity. So I walked over in between two taxis, and I peeked in the RV window. And right on cue, the Great Appointment Maker makes something happen that I will carry to my grave. Right as I lean in and look in the Winnebago window, I get a tap on the shoulder and I turn around and it's Jerry Garcia. The man tapped me on the shoulder in the middle of Manhattan on the way to my first Grateful Dead show. Oh, my God. So this all happened so quickly. He says, hey, man, mind if I get by And I smile at him and I go, sure, no problem. And he puts his hand out to shake my hand, and I shake Jerry Garcia's hand. And he goes in the rv and right behind him is Bob Weir, who shakes my hand, and then Phil Lesh, who shakes my hand, and then every other member of the Grateful Dead, all of whom shake my hand. And they go in the rv and
- [63:19]
B
there's a delightful little punctuation mark.
- [63:21]
N
And then the weirdest thing happens before they take off. A car going the other direction on Central park south stops and in the middle of traffic, and a hippie girl gets out of the backseat with a fresh baked pie in her hand, runs up to the rv, knocks on the window and hands a pie to the Grateful Dead and runs back to the car and gets off. And then the RV takes off.
- [63:56]
B
We're going to detour into Central park with Johnny to see his Frisbee pals now, because they were part of one of the most significant under the radar countercultural scenes in the country in the mid-1970s that hung around the Sheep Meadow, Frisbee Hill, the Bethesda Fountain, and the Central Park Bandshell.
- [64:13]
N
There was this really great confluence of these different social circles. There was the disco roller skate scene, there was the Frisbee players, there was the druggie psychedelic scene. There was the Afro Cuban Latin music scene. And we all sort of intermingled, and that was super sweet.
- [64:35]
B
The teens who hung around were known collectively as the Parkys. And I wrote a bunch about the Parkys in my book, A Biography of Psychedelic America. Then there was the group that hung
- [64:45]
N
around the Nomberg Bandshell, a notorious, infamous scene. Behind the bandshell was the place where people got and did drugs, where you could be hidden from the eternally present police squad car that would hang out near the bandshell, but up behind the bandshell, under the wisteria trees, the Wisteria Vines. It was this little hidden enclave that it was inconvenient for people to walk through there.
- [65:15]
B
For New Yorkers, Johnny is referring to the pergola that now functions as the westernmost exit to Central park summer stage held on Rumsey Playfield. The Parkets who held down the fort also counted among them some of the first white New York graffiti writers who helped transform street tagging into an expressive and sometimes collective psychedelic art form. And among those graffiti writers were an even more select crew who imported potent LSD from the West Coast. Remains of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a connection ongoing since 1970, and distributed it to various scenes around New York, including CBGB and other artie enclaves by that point of the New York punk and artie weirdo groups. Patti Smith had released her debut the previous fall. The first Ramones album came out in April 1976, and the same week the Dead were in town in June, Blondie released their debut single X Offender on the small label Private Stock and played a three night run at CBs to celebrate.
- [66:17]
I
I know you wouldn't go. You'd watch my heart burst then if you'd step in. I had to know, so I asked. You just had to act.
- [66:31]
B
The Central park acid dealers moved through many social circles. One of them, Johnny Crunch, was half brother to Saturday Night Live star Chevy Chase. And some of the early SNL cast and writers might come through. Jean Michel Basquiat was a pal of the Parkys. Naturally, many of them were dead freaks too. The Parkies had a special relationship with the Beacon Theater, not far from the park's western edge, where Ron Delsner began promoting rock shows in 1975.
- [66:59]
N
All those legendary bands used to play at the Beacon Theater. And so of course all the freaks in Central park, the Parkies were going to the Beacon Theater shows. And then, you know, we would all go to behind the Bancho or Frisbee Hill to get high before the Beacon Theater shows.
- [67:17]
B
But the Parky connection to the Beacon ran deep. Bill Rock was one of the secret agent acid trafficking graffiti writers I mentioned before. These next few clips are from interviews I did for Heads.
- [67:28]
O
The Beacon and the Palladium were our spots. We didn't miss any of those shows. Anytime the Dead or Hot Tuna or the New Riders or any Haight Ashbury related thing, we were there.
- [67:42]
B
There were many legendary New York shows by Hot Tuna in this era, both psychedelically long and psychedelically loud. Bill Rock named their graffiti squad the Rolling Thunder Writers.
- [67:53]
O
We were like totally Rick Griffin freak rtw. Like worshipped the Haight Ashbury poster artists. You know, Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, Mouse Kelly. They were like God.
- [68:07]
B
Another hardcore teenage bandshell Parky and Rolling Thunder writer was Johnny Crunch, who sometimes slept behind the bandshell.
- [68:14]
O
I had split from my home, had
- [68:17]
B
run away, lived there, lived in the
- [68:19]
A
beacon Theater on 74th street and Broadway. Up inside it there are, I discovered catwalks up above the roof. And I did a rather famous tag on the top of a chandelier.
- [68:31]
O
A point of Chandler.
- [68:32]
B
The Beacon wasn't the pristine restored palace it is today. People would look up and go, how the fuck, you know, how would anybody get up there?
- [68:40]
A
And happily, it's been fixed.
- [68:42]
B
Crunch Wasn't the only parky who knew the secret of the Beacon chandelier. Johnny Dwork.
- [68:47]
N
It was either in 1975 or 1976 that Cotter and I somehow found out that you could go into the basement of the hotel next to the Beacon Theater and through the boiler room, if memory serves me correct, you could go to like, maybe it was a spiral staircase that went all the way up to the room that is above the ceiling of the Beacon Theater. And then you could go out on a walkway and then go down a ladder into the giant chandelier where they changed the light bulbs. And this was super sketchy. Like, it was really scary. And it was open to the back of the upper balcony, so you could hear the music really echoey, but you couldn't see the stage. And it was really uncomfortable and sketchy to be there. But there was one of those late shows at the Beacon Theater of Hot Tuna that I managed to go up and spend about half of the show there. And I eventually gave up because it was so sketchy and the sound was absolutely horrible.
- [70:04]
B
Hot Tuna's Beacon shows were just a month before the Dead, May 8 and May 9. Did he consider it an option when he couldn't get in for the first night of the Dead?
- [70:13]
N
No, it was just too sketchy.
- [70:15]
B
Fair. But when you listen to the recordings of the Dead at the Beacon from June 1976, just imagine that there's a pretty good or at least non zero chance that there are some parkys listening from inside the chandelier.
- [70:28]
K
When I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole no one could steal me, right?
- [70:35]
I
Mama try, Mama tried Mama tried to raise me better but earthly and I
- [70:41]
K
did not at least no one but
- [70:43]
B
me to blame this mama shadow. Not that the parkys were worried like Johnny Dwark. The Beacon Theater in 76 would be Bill Rock's first dead show. But he made it inside on the first night.
- [70:55]
O
Famous dead show for us was the Beacon 1976 riot turned into a riot. Cops on horses and it was trashed. We used to call the sneak in Beacon. And usually if you get caught, it would end up in violence, you know, like it just would go crazy and the cops would chase the crowd.
- [71:16]
B
There are many more parky stories in heads. On the second night, Johnny Dwark caught a suitably legendary Dead show. And that every dead show from 1976 might now be considered legendary.
- [71:39]
I
Once in a while, if you get your eye in the strangest of places if you're looking it around.
- [71:47]
B
But Johnny also experienced the minor whiplash that almost inevitably happened when someone discovered the Dead through live tapes and then went to go see their current incarnation.
- [71:56]
N
The show itself didn't really compare to the Grateful Dead music that I had been listening to up until that point. You know, I became a Deadhead listening to tapes of the Europe 72 Tour and the epic live Dead album, and then the Europe 72 album, the Late show from 21370 and 51570 at the Fillmore East. So, you know, it took some getting used to. But by the time the Grateful Dead really fully got back into it in 1977 and I had begun touring, the magic was there again.
- [72:32]
B
I'd argue that the Dead found that particular mojo again by the middle of the summer. We're pretty deep into the weeds of the June tour, and we're not going to go through every stop, but I'll recommend a few shows if you're looking to get down. As the tour progressed, the band got more and more inventive with the set list sequences, and by the fall, things were arguably at their wackiest of all time from the summer. Both the June 26 and June 28 shows in Chicago are especially fantastic and Definitely don't miss July 16th and 17th at the Orpheum in San Francisco. Now Dave's picks 18. The tour was scheduled to conclude with a big money bicentennial gig at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City on July 2, but on June 18, a teen was fatally stabbed outside a show by yes, and the city forced John Cher and the band to postpone for a month. In the meantime, Steal youl Face seems to have arrived in stores during the last few days of June, just as the Dead were finishing up in Chicago. Grateful that archivist David Lemieux when you
- [74:16]
C
go see the dead in summer 76 and they come to New York and play the Beacon Theater and you go buy their newest album, Steal youl Face, you're like, oh, that's not what I was hearing.
- [74:26]
B
That's partly true. The Dead were certainly different, but nearly all the songs on Steal youl Face were in play in the band's rotation at some point in 1976. Casey Jones would return in 1977, and it would take until 1990 for Black Throated Wind to come back. As is our practice on the Dead cast, when going through the band's official albums, we do little dives into the songs that didn't feature on previous Dead world releases. In the first Steal your Face episode, we offered Pocket Histories of the Promised Land and Around and around, both by Chuck Barry Today we first detail Johnny Cash's big river will a bitter accident
- [75:05]
K
in St. Paul, Minnesota strolled me up Every time I heard her dog I saw my dog well, I heard my dream Went back downstream to ford it Never defode and I followed you Big
- [75:17]
B
river when you come like the promised land and around and around if you saw the dead in June 1976, there was a pretty good chance you'd see Bobby Weir sing Big River. The Grateful Dead would become famous for playing different set lists every night. But that wasn't yet the case. In 1976 weirded Big river all four nights in Boston, for example. Big river, as you likely know, is by Johnny Cash. He was inspired to write the song after reading a magazine article about the Mississippi river, conceiving it first as a 12 bar blues before sun Records owner Sam Phillips insisted they put a beat Underneath was a top 10 country hit for cash in 1950.
- [76:05]
K
Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry and I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky and the tears that I cried for that woman Are gonna flood you Big river and I'm gonna sit right
- [76:22]
B
here until I die Like Chuck Berry's the Promised Land, It's a classic geographical song headed south down the Mississippi river from St. Paul. The protagonists of the two songs could theoretically cross paths in New Orleans. The lyrics to Big river are brilliant. Johnny Cash deserves some kind of award for the rhyme Cavortin in Davenport. Bob Dylan told Robert Hilburn in 2005, there are so many ways you can go at something in a song. One thing is to give life to inanimate objects. Johnny Cash is good at that. He's got the line, a freighter said she's been here but she's gone Boy, she's gone. That's great. A freighter says she's been here. That's high art. If you do that once in a song, you usually turn it on its head right then and there.
- [77:09]
K
And you took me to St. Louis. Later on down the river a freighter said she's been here but she's gone
- [77:19]
B
Boy, she's gone there's also this line lost verse from Big river, which I suppose the Promised Land Greyhound could pass through as well.
- [77:28]
K
Now I rolled into Natchez the next day down the river but there wasn't much there to make around to stay very long she got moving in her blood and got it all from you Big river one why'd you make that gal that way?
- [77:51]
B
I'm also curious about where Weir learned Big River. I'm sure he knew the Johnny Cash version, but listen to the quantity of tears Cash cries in the original.
- [78:01]
K
Now I taught the Weepin Willow how to cry
- [78:07]
B
one cry. Here's Bill Monroe's version from 1960.
- [78:11]
I
Now taught the weeping willow how to cry to cry Hannah shows the clouds now to cover up a clear blue
- [78:20]
B
sky Two cries Ah, ah, ah. But Weir would sing it with three, which could have been his own invention, though several artists got there first, notably Ian and Sylvia in 1967.
- [78:34]
K
Will I talk Weepin Willow how to Cry, Cry, Cry Taunt the Clouds
- [78:44]
B
and much closer to home, High country, the band of Garcia and Hunter's former housemate Butch Waller. Garcia performed it with them like this in 1969, and they released their version in 1971, just before the Dead started doing it. Once it was in the Dead's repertoire, it never left, belonging to the small minority of songs that, to my ears, didn't really change when Mickey Hart returned to the band in 1975. Here it is in 1994 at Boston Garden from the 30 trips around the sunbox.
- [79:41]
I
I won't surround here till I die
- [79:45]
K
I won't sit right here till I
- [79:47]
I
die I'm going right here until I die.
- [79:58]
B
The Dead didn't perform Marty Robbins El paso during their 1976 comeback tour, immediately preceding the release of Steal youl Face. But that almost seems like an accident, because Weir had so many other pieces of music to contend with. It bopped into the Dead's repertoire in the summer of 1970, perhaps not entirely to the liking of his bandmates at first.
- [80:19]
D
Okay, now here's where Weir gets his wish at the expense of everybody.
- [80:27]
B
Like Weir's other staples on Steal youl Face that we've discussed in these episodes, Big River, Johnny B. Goode and the Promised Land, El Paso is a massive hit. Unlike those songs and their authors, Marty Robbins wasn't quite revered by the psychedelic freaks nor the brewing outlaw country heads. But man, did Weir love singing El Paso. As Robbins told it, he'd been intending to write a song about El Paso for a few years when he finally drove through in 1957 on his way to Phoenix and thought of the first line.
- [81:08]
K
Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl,
- [81:16]
B
he said. The rest spilled out over the trip, like watching a movie, until he pulled over and wrote it down.
- [81:22]
K
One night a wild young cowboy came in, wild as the West Texas wind, Dashing and daring A drink he was sharing with wicked Felina, the girl that I love so in anger I challenged his right for the love of this maiden Downward his hand for the gun that he wore.
- [81:51]
B
Robbins played Phoenix at least twice in 1957 and was born in Glendale, so he may have been back at other times. But if he was describing the trip to play the State Fair in November 1957, the song was written almost exactly at the same moment as Big River. Once the Dead took it up more regularly in later 1971, it became an inescapable part of the band's shows, usually in the first set. But because of its solo guitar intro, it could also easily come out of jams, which Weir did only sparingly, serving as the incredible cosmic punchline of the legendary August 27, 1972 Dark Star.
- [82:33]
J
Sa.
- [83:05]
B
Out in the west Texas town of
- [83:07]
K
El Paso I fell in love with
- [83:10]
B
a Mexican girl El Paso remained hot and heavy in the Dead's rotation through 1995, and I think this is another reason Dead fans didn't quite go for steal your face. Dead tapes were circulating pretty furiously in these years, accelerating during their road hiatus. And unlike every other LP the Dead had released previously, live or studio, it offered nothing they couldn't find on most live tapes. Nor did it offer the Dead Plane their top shelf material. It didn't please the Dead, it didn't please the Heads, and it certainly didn't please the critics. Here's Robert Hunter speaking with David Ganz in 1977. An interview in Conversations with the Dead, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast my most
- [83:53]
D
unfavorite critic of all, the man I Love to hate, Lester Bangs of Cream, said very succinctly, steal your face.
- [84:01]
N
Ha.
- [84:01]
D
Steal your money is more like it.
- [84:03]
B
Hunter cited Lester Bangs a few times for this review over the years, but it turns out the review wasn't by Lester Bangs, but by his fellow Cream writer Kevin Doyle. We're not going to belabor the bummer side of Steal youl Face much longer, but frame it a little bit as a learning experience. Please welcome to the Deadcast John Brackett, author of the wonderful book Live the Grateful Dead, Live Recordings and the Ideology of Liveness from Duke University Press's Studies in the Grateful Dead series.
- [84:34]
P
I don't think it's an album that's kind of worth trying to rehabilitate in any way. I mean, it is kind of what it is, but I think in many ways this record kind of serves an important purpose.
- [84:47]
B
John's book is largely about how the Dead approached their own live recordings, reconstructing their artistic thought process while building their legendary and very curated live albums. In that regard, Steal youl Face is the last of the original line of Dead live albums like Europe 72 and Skull and Roses. It has overdubs.
- [85:06]
P
Steal youl Face is also very important to kind of keep in mind when we look ahead towards Reckoning Dead Set, because the whole approach, the whole approach to recording those records, the whole approach to producing and sequencing those albums, is so far beyond kind of all of the planning and stuff that went into
- [85:30]
B
Steal youl Face on those albums. Betty Cantor Jackson would notably continue Owsley's quad experiment of trying to capture some sense of spatiality, devising her own brilliant system for capturing the audience, a topic we talked about a little bit during our Dead Behind Dead Ahead episode. Even as Steal youl Face was arriving in stores, there were some future archival projects under consideration.
- [86:10]
P
I think it comes at a time as they're beginning to think about, all right, what is the value of our archive and what are gonna be the standards and expectations of some of our live recordings now moving forward? Given the preponderance of tapes with Ron
- [86:29]
B
Rakow out of the picture, it was left to Steve Brown and others to maybe keep Grateful Dead Records and Round Records afloat. It was in this window that Steve landed on a scheme for a line of low budget albums, ground records.
- [86:43]
P
As far as ground records, they were looking at everything in their vault that could work. Outtakes from Garcia, solo records, jams from, you know, Blues for a la, unreleased stuff for that live stuff, old and in the way. They were just looking at almost anything that they thought could kind of work compilations as well, based on themes and things like that.
- [87:04]
B
One of the surviving documents is Steve's outline for a compilation album of train themed songs drawn from across the Dead's universe, including Glendale Train by the New Riders, the Jerry Garcia Band playing Mystery Train and others. Silly. But compilations like that were soon common at truck stops across the country. We've posted a link to some of John Brackett's writing on ground records@dead.net deadcast as well as a link to his excellent, even newer book Touch of Grey, or how the Grateful Dead Became Pop Stars, which is way out of our bounds for today, but maybe another time.
- [87:39]
P
Probably just kind of throwing any ideas out at that point, seeing what might stick.
- [87:44]
B
What I believe is the final document of the Grateful Dead records era is dated July 28, 1976. A sales tally for Steal youl Face, selling just over 225,000 copies from its release a month earlier. Very close to Ron rakow's projection of 250,000 copies, which it probably did at some point, not too far thereafter. But after July 1976, no more sales reports, at least in the Dead's files, and probably no more record company either way.
- [88:15]
I
But.
- [88:38]
B
At the beginning of August, the Dead came back to the east coast to make up their date at Roosevelt Stadium. They tacked on another at Cult park in Hartford, which, based on memories of attendees, turned into exactly the kind of cop infested megadette gig they'd been trying to avoid. And those east coast shows were intended to be a leaping off point for something even grander. Europe 76, or at least one show in London. Bill Graham had booked the 80,000 capacity Wembley Stadium for an event he billed as Greetings from San Francisco with the Dead, Santana and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. If you've ever seen photos of Garcia and Carlos Santana together from this era, it was to promote this gig, at least in the States. Santana had a new top 10 album, Amigos. But as you might already know, the London gig didn't happen. They needed to sell 50,000 tickets to Break even, and by mid July had sold just 11,000. Bill Graham pulled the plug by the end of the month. We've posted a link To Lost Live Dead's article about the show at dead.netdeadcast Back home, the darkness doubled again for a minute. We've got one more round of Bummers to flush out before we can sight Terrapin off in the shimmering distance.
- [90:16]
E
Ron Rakow When I came back from
- [90:19]
F
LA and lost my authority over Round Records, I couldn't write a. I couldn't do anything, I couldn't. I couldn't get my own furniture back.
- [90:29]
B
They had one more meeting when the band returned from their summer gigging, and at some point Rakow's lawyers and the Dead's lawyer Hal Cant sauntered off to continue the discussion.
- [90:39]
F
They went out to dinner and they left me with the Grateful Dead in my office. And everybody in that room wanted to kill me, except one guy and his name was Jerry Garcia. And they had just come back from their tour. And Jerry pulled the chair up and we sat knees to knees. Our knees were touching. And he told me about every gig on the tour and what songs they played and so on. And everybody was pissed off. McIntyre. I heard him muttering, God, he's not calling Raquel out, he's just talking about the tour. The reason for that is Garcia felt guilty. He knew he fucked me, not them.
- [91:20]
E
He fucked me.
- [91:22]
B
It's debatable, but Nobody came out a winner for sure. There was fallout everywhere. According to David Brown's book so Many Roads, Garcia's weekly salary was even cut down in retribution. Somewhere in the chaos, the accounting for round records grew entirely muddled or simply ignored. To use one example, United Artists continued to press many editions of Olden in the Way all around the world until UA themselves went out of business in 1980. Money that never made it back to David Grisman or the other participants, either because UA didn't pay it, or there was nobody around to tend to the accounting or some combination thereof. It was a prolonged accounting error that caused a long rupture in Garcia and Grisman's friendship.
- [92:17]
I
The will hang there. I live my life with sorrow since Mother and Daddy
- [92:39]
F
are
- [92:41]
I
dead.
- [92:50]
B
Meanwhile, work on the Grateful Dead movie continued onwards, ever onwards. A story we'll get to conclude one of these years. And in early September 1976, the dead family faced an unthinkable tragedy.
- [93:03]
F
Rex Jackson died.
- [93:05]
B
He joined the Dead's crew in time for Europe 72. One of the Pendleton Cowboys that grew up with Ramrod and one of the band's in house recordists.
- [93:14]
F
Rex was as tall as a forward on a basketball team and he looked like Clark Gable, the actor. And he was devastatingly handsome and very affable guy. When he smiled, the whole room lit up and he smiled a lot.
- [93:34]
B
A few years later, the dad would name the Rex foundation after him.
- [93:37]
F
Rex was like my pupil. He decided, I don't want to be an equipment guy anymore. I want to be a businessman like you.
- [93:45]
B
And in the mid-1970s, he'd been working his way up from the equipment crew to a road manager position with eyes set higher. He'd married Dead sound engineer and fellow taper Betty Kanter, and had a son together, Cole. His death was about as enormous a tragedy as they could experience around then. Ron Rackow was getting ready to exit the Dead scene, though still had a few open projects with Garcia, including the Dead movie.
- [94:10]
F
Jerry and I had a reason to meet, and I suggested that we meet at this French restaurant directly overlooking the place where Rex died. I did that on purpose. I knew that the death of Rex was having a very heavy effect on Jerry. They were tight. We had lunch and we talked about Rex. And Rex was a good guy, really good guy.
- [94:40]
B
We're going to touch on something next that we're not going to mention a lot and maybe not even again, but does need to be mentioned as we move deeper into the Grateful Dead story.
- [94:49]
F
We're in this. In this place this restaurant, French restaurant, I forget the name of it. Towards Sausalito on. On the land side of the road. And Jerry said, I just ran into a new drug. It's called Persian. So I said, what's Persian? So he said, well, let's go out to the car. I'll turn you on.
- [95:11]
B
To some referred to as Persian opium, it was a form of heroin that Garcia used on and off for the rest of his life. A silent background to the rest of the Grateful Dead story. Never defining it, but unquestionably a presence. After that, Rakow and Garcia were only in sporadic contact.
- [95:32]
F
I talked to him once or twice, but he was a totally different guy. He was a totally different guy. We would get together on the road every day at 9:30 in the morning. When the next. Several years later, he played in Los Angeles or months later, and I called him at 10 o' clock and he was sound asleep. It was a whole different scene for him.
- [95:56]
B
And so Ron Rakkow exits the picture, though we're not gonna be rid of him quite that easily. As we fold back into earlier Dead eras, there was a lot of amazing music and many more adventures to come. But one that came to an end with Ron Rakkow's departure was the Dead's dalliance with holigraphy and sponsoring the research of Eugene Dahlgoff, a story we detailed in our King Solomon's Marbles episode last year. One More Time. Gene Dolgoff.
- [96:23]
Q
Ron and Jerry and Bob Weir would often send me money so that we could be doing the research on this. So I do remember checks from Round Records, but whenever I'd see them, they'd give me cash.
- [96:40]
B
Occasionally, they'd call for updates. I have a hard time imagining this call unfolding exactly as described.
- [96:46]
Q
But nonetheless, one day, Jerry and Bob call me up and they say, you won't believe this. I said, what? They said, ron, meaning Ron Rackow, went to the bank account, took out all of our money, and he skipped the country. I said, are you kidding? They said, no, we're broke. We don't have any money. We can't send you any money. This was amazing, shocking news. And so that kind of ended the project.
- [97:17]
B
The next year, the late BAM writer Adam Block asked Jerry Garcia about the holography project. Garcia acknowledged that it was no longer in their scope, but was clearly keeping his eye on the new technologies coming down the pipe.
- [97:29]
D
I have a feeling that video discs and all the other kinds of sort of mutated in between technology. And also there's digital recording as an idea that's growing by leaves and bounds. So since then, it may be that that idea has been exceeded.
- [97:50]
B
We'd once again like to thank David Ganz for unearthing these tapes. And we've once again posted links to the late Adam Block's work@dead.net Deadcast By 1977, the Dead were both one of the biggest rock bands in the country, but also settling into a period of new austerity. By their standards, that didn't mean they weren't going to dream big.
- [98:11]
D
All of those ideas, they're all sound, but they all have the same element of unreality. I mean, in other words, we would do anything that anybody let us do. That's what it boils down to. I mean, we don't, you know, but we can't really afford to do much. We just always are operate at a loss. Doesn't matter whether we make huge amounts of money or hardly anything. We always function at a loss, just the way we are. Everybody accepts that. And it's not like a complaint or anything, but it's the truth.
- [98:38]
B
By the summer of 1976, the dead were back in the studio, making demos and preparing to sign a new record contract with the late Clive Davis. A story for another season. But record contracts aren't what the Grateful Dead ever fantasized about.
- [98:53]
D
The majority of our fantasies we've never been able to get out of our system. It's one of the things that keeps us going. The economic realities of the execution of a fantasy, those things also a lot of things don't stand the test.
- [99:04]
B
Things were always changing in the Dead. And in late summer 1976, as Grateful Dead Records shut down like an LP sinking over the horizon, receding in the rear view, it was hard to see the golden age for the band that was just ahead of them. But morning would come soon.
- [99:33]
D
A lot of times, like certain fantasies have incredible longevity, too. On the other hand, there's certain ideas that have been plodding along that we've had sort of along. And they're so old to us now that it's like they're like old, familiar friends. But they're still unresolved and it might be need to resolve them sometime. But maybe we will and maybe we won't.
- [100:17]
A
Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. Friends. We'd like to thank our special guests in this episode. Richard Loren, John Scherer, Ron Rackow, Eugene Dolgoff, Pat Lee, Johnny Dwark, Dave Davis, Rob Blitzstein, John Brackett, Starfinder Stanley and David Lemieux. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz, for your ongoing contributions of audio from your interview archive. Thank you, David. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Doron Tyson. All rights reserved.