Summer Magic 1985: Greek Theatre, 6/14-6/16

Summary

GOOD OL' GRATEFUL DEADCAST

Episode: Summer Magic 1985: Greek Theatre, 6/14-6/16

Date: July 16, 2026
Hosts: Rich Mahan & Jesse Jarnow

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Episode Overview

This episode takes listeners on a nostalgic journey to the Grateful Dead’s legendary Summer 1985 Greek Theatre shows, as featured in the newly-announced Summer Magic 1985 box set. Hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarnow, alongside special guests—including archivist David Lemieux, band insiders, and Deadhead eyewitnesses—explore the cultural milieu of the Dead’s 20th anniversary, dissect setlist oddities, and unravel stories from backstage, onstage, and the ecstatic crowd. For lifelong fans and newer listeners alike, the episode is a joyous examination of an era where the Dead’s music, Marin counterculture, and fan community converged in luminous, unpredictable ways.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. The ‘Summer Magic 1985’ Box Set and Greek Theater Legacy

• Origins of the Box Set

  • David Lemieux reveals the project started from a desire to honor great music:
    • “A box set like this never starts with a concept. It always starts with great music. And how do we make that great music into a story and into maybe a concept?” (04:09)
  • Greek shows from June 14-16, 1985, were withheld from prior releases in hopes of a bigger commemorative edition.
  • The set features seven shows from the ‘20 Years So Far’ anniversary tour, chronicling a pivotal moment.

• Distinctiveness of 1985 Dead

  • “It's incredibly high energy Grateful Dead...these shows have those jams, have those stretching out moments.” (06:08, David Lemieux)

2. Cultural Context: The Marinassance & Marin County’s Influence

• Marin as Creative Nexus

  • Dave Perlis discusses “the Marinassance”—a Renaissance in Marin marked by the cross-pollination of music, art, literature, and spirituality:
    • “By 1985, this was what was popular culture in America.” (20:23)
  • Influences ranging from Alan Watts to George Lucas, from Huey Lewis to the Beat poets, all mixed with the Dead’s scene.

• Dead’s Role in This Milieu

  • The Grateful Dead are shown as both participants in and catalysts for Marin’s creative explosion.

3. The 20th Anniversary: Band Introspection and Public Perception

• Press Conference Humor and Deflection

  • Iconic, chaotic press conference before the Greek show, exemplified by irreverence:
    • “No, I'm Bill Graham.” (08:38, Bobby Weir)
    • “If nobody has any questions, we can all go home.” (08:54, John Leopold)
  • Discussion about psychedelics met with synchronized band silence, immortalized in a famous photo (11:20–11:51).

• Relationship with Deadheads

  • “They're almost willing us to make it good or helping us to make it good.” (13:10, Phil Lesh, paraphrased)

• Band’s Modest Attitude Toward Milestones

  • “The whole idea is to focus on the art. The idea of celebrating a milestone is just kind of like ‘ew’.” (48:42, Nicholas Merriweather)

4. 1985 Band Activity & Rejuvenation

• Garcia's Personal Journey

  • Recent legal troubles and entry into a drug diversion program reflected in his rejuvenated musical performance (14:35).

• Side Projects and Organization Growth

  • New video projects (e.g., So Far), soundtrack work for the Twilight Zone, and collaborative community engagements.

5. So Far Video & Creative Experimentation

• Inside the Creative Process

  • “Instead, we hire you [Len Del Amico], we put up all the money, and when we're done with it to our satisfaction, then you take it to the market.” (16:49, Garcia’s proposal)
  • Closed-set video sessions at the Marin Civic Center allowed creative rehearsals and rare song revivals, including “Cryptical Envelopment” and “Ain’t Superstitious” (32:52).

• Band Comfort & Production Memories

  • Photographer Rosie McGee recalls a “blissful” reunion with the Dead after over a decade away (35:51).

6. Deadhead Scene & The Greek Theatre Experience

• Audience Energy and Culture

  • General admission, scramble for steps, legendary local personalities like Bill Walton in attendance (45:48).
  • Scene widely compared to a small, interconnected village with vibrant fan art commerce (46:34).
  • “It was a real community.” (61:01, John Leopold)

• Atmosphere & Rituals

  • “The excitement was very palpable. And we all got these Robert Hunter poems as we walked in. So it really felt like an event.” (47:50, John Leopold)

• Legendary Visuals

  • Rick Griffin’s ‘Minuteman’ anniversary stage art, Hunter’s “20th Anniversary Rag” poem handbills (49:50).

7. Memorable Musical Moments & Setlist Oddities

• Song Debuts, Revivals, and Jam Highlights

  • 1985 Greek shows featured “Keep on Growing” (Derek & the Dominoes), “Stagger Lee,” and the first complete “That’s It for the Other One” suite in over a decade (58:54, 91:27).
  • The band’s shifting setlists and revived deep cuts thrilled hardcore fans tracking every show.

• Production & Sound

  • Dan Healy's inventive audio effects, environmental sound manipulation at the Greek, and the evolving role of tapers (59:14, 60:53).

• Community & Dance

  • Euphoric dance scenes in the sunlight and with the wafting scent of eucalyptus (69:22–77:30).
  • “It was a melding, it was a melting down of the individual personality and becoming part of something magical that was larger than yourself.” (77:12, Johnny Dwork)

8. Behind-the-Scenes Vignettes

• Backstage & Offbeat Ephemera

  • Owsley “Bear” Stanley’s presence backstage post-exile from Australia (68:51).
  • Parties at the legendary Grateful Dead Ranch (81:14–84:17), including the once-mythic “giant swing.”

• Urban Legends & Hauntings

  • Secret return visits to Winterland as it was being demolished (85:18–88:32).

• Personal Transformations

  • Deadhead journeys of self-discovery, including haircuts for jobs, cross-country relocation, and giddy aversion to the “straight world” (94:50–96:12).

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On the genesis of the box set:
  “It always starts with great music. And how do we make that great music into a story and into maybe a concept?”
  — David Lemieux (04:09)

• On the press conference spirit:
  “No, I'm Bill Graham.”
  — Bobby Weir (08:38)

• On Deadhead devotion:
  “They're almost willing us to make it good or helping us to make it good.”
  — Phil Lesh (13:10)

• On the transformative Greek crowd:
  “It was a melding, it was a melting down of the individual personality and becoming part of something magical that was larger than yourself.”
  — Johnny Dwork (77:12)

• On iconic anniversary art:
  “These are our symbols too, and we don't have to give them up because someone else is co-opting them. They're ours. We're as American as anybody else.”
  — John Leopold recalling friend Sundance (50:34)

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Detailed Segment Timestamps

• [04:09] – David Lemieux on the concept of box sets and storytelling through music.
• [13:10] – Phil Lesh emphasizes the energy that Deadheads bring to shows.
• [32:52] – The Dead rehearse “Cryptical Envelopment” during So Far video sessions; rare song returns.
• [35:51] – Rosie McGee on her joyful return as photographer.
• [41:48] – The Leopold brothers arrive in California, Deadhead networking central at Blair Jackson’s.
• [49:50] – Handbills with Rick Griffin’s art and Hunter’s poem add ritual to the event.
• [58:54] – Song debut: “Keep On Growing.”
• [61:01] – Marriage on the Greek’s lawn reflects the shows’ communal feel.
• [62:21] – Unique jam out of “China Doll.”
• [68:51] – Owsley Stanley spotted backstage.
• [69:22–77:30] – Johnny Dwork describes the ecstatic dance scenes and “collective unconscious.”
• [81:14–84:17] – Grateful Dead ranch parties and legendary swing experience.
• [85:18–88:32] – Sneaking into Winterland; legendary venue’s last light.
• [91:27] – The epic moment when “That’s It for the Other One” returns to the set.
• [94:50–96:12] – Navigating jobs, haircuts, and the straight world as a Deadhead.

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Closing Thoughts

The episode artfully reconstructs the world of the Grateful Dead during the summer of 1985: a band at a pivotal moment in its history, an audience flourishing as a grassroots culture, and the broader swirl of Marin creativity seeping into all corners of American art and music. With humor, candor, and reverence for odd details, the cast conveys both the mythic status and the deeply personal significance these Greek Theatre shows still hold.

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For longtime Heads and curious newcomers alike, this Deadcast episode is a rich oral history: a multi-sensory trip through a sun-soaked, perfume-scented, music-filled few days when everything seemed possible in Berkeley.

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Want to see the photos and art discussed? Check out the links at dead.net/deadcast. For many more episodes, stories, and setlists, visit the full Deadcast archive.

Transcript

[Rich Mahan]

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 [e-mail] 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 Mahan. Thank you so much for tuning in. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we pack the tour van into the time machine and head back to 1985 to look back at the Dead's 20th anniversary summer tour as chronicled in the new, just announced Summer Magic 1985 box set. That's right, this is the new forthcoming big box set from the Grateful Dead Summer Magic 1985. It features seven shows from the band's 20 Years so Far anniversary tour and includes all three Greek Theater shows on June 14th, 15th and 16th, Saratoga Performing Arts center on 6 27, Hershey Park Stadium on 628 and two shows at Meriwether Post Pavilion on June 30th and July 1st. Recorded by Dan Healy and mastered by David Glasser at Air show. Summer Magic 1985 is limited to 10,000 individually numbered copies and is exclusively [e-mail] Pre order your copy today. Hey friends, did you attend any of the shows on the Dead Summer 85 20th Anniversary Tour? If so, we need your stories. Record yourself telling your [e-mail] and you just may hear yourself on a future episode of the Dead Cast. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons 1 through 12. You can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing, sharing with your friends on social media, hitting that like button and if the Spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you very much. We appreciate it and we do have transcripts for many of these great Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. They are [e-mail] deadcast index head on over there and check them out. 1985 saw the Grateful Dead celebrating their 20th anniversary, and their summer tour has become the stuff of legend. The band was in fine form and riding high. Get ready to fill your ears with music and stories from that famed tour as featured on the new Summer Magic 1985 box set. Here's Jesse Jarno.

[John Leopold]

Foreign.

[Jesse Jarno]

We're going to shift into a deep summer mood over these next four episodes of the good old Grateful Dead cast. If it's somewhere where you are right now, stay right there. We've got you. If it's not, hopefully it will be by the end of this episode. From the far weird future, today we Travel back to June 1985. Please welcome back Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

[David Lemieux]

A box set like this never starts with a concept. It always starts with great music. And how do we make that great music into a story and into maybe a concept?

[Jesse Jarno]

David Lemieux set the controls for the heart of the band's 20th anniversary year of 1985.

[David Lemieux]

There are a number of shows from 1985 in particular this summer that I've always had my eye on for a Dave's Picks for a box set. The Greek 85 has sort of intentionally never been released as a Dave's Picks. Out of the thought of doing either a three show, nine CD box from the Greek shows, or possibly something bigger with the Greek from other years all combined, the way we do that sometimes, and we kind of settled on doing it and then I figured, let's do the Greek. And then I started thinking, well, you know, in typical Lemieux fashion of, well, let's get more music out to people. How about a 20 CD box? A 20 CDs for 20 years. It's summer 1985. It's the 20th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. But within that are these seven very distinct shows that tell the story of the three nights at the Greek that open up the summer of 1985. And then later on in the tour, four shows towards the end of the

[Jesse Jarno]

tour, so we'll be going there too. Three shows at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, one at the Saratoga Performing Arts center in New York, which will probably shorthand as spac. One at Hersheypark Stadium in Pennsylvania.

[Len Del Amico]

Mmm, chocolate.

[Jesse Jarno]

And two at the Merryweather Post Pavilion in Maryland. And maybe a few places between.

[David Lemieux]

It's incredibly high energy Grateful Dead that they were also taking chances on. If you listen to let's say 1987 and 88. Very high energy, but the jams were a little lacking like some of those shows end up a little shorter. The stretching out. These shows have those jams, have those stretching out moments.

[Jesse Jarno]

One of the hallmarks of this Grateful Dead period were high variant set lists with all kinds of songs they didn't play in other eras, which will pop up throughout these episodes.

[David Lemieux]

They start kind of really digging deep with down in the Bottom, a classic cover of Keep on Growing, Keep on

[Bobby Weir]

going, Keep on growing, Keep on Going.

[David Lemieux]

I find that each of the shows has something very cool in its own right.

[Jesse Jarno]

So for these next few episodes, we'll be chasing and basking in that summer magic.

[David Lemieux]

I. I love all the box sets that the Grateful Dead have put out, but this one, it's a very meaningful one to me as well, because of my tape trading days starting in 85. And by 86, I wanted the recent stuff, which in 86 meant summer 85. And the first one I heard was 6:15. I said, I want more of this. And then I got the first set of Spak, then I got the second set of Hershey, and then I got the second set of Merryweather.

[Jesse Jarno]

First night, just before the first show at the Greek Theater in June 1985, which is to say, immediately preceding the first notes of this box set, the Dead held a press conference.

[David Lemieux]

There's some great photos of it, and you can just see how much fun they look like they're having. And they're about to go on stage at the. At the Greek in an hour. Clearly, they got their mind on the show ahead, but they knew their obligations, and it didn't mean they have to take them seriously or give the answers that people expected.

[Jesse Jarno]

The first voice you hear in this overture of chaos Goblins is Mickey Hart, followed by Jerry Garcia, Billy Kreutzman, and Phil Lesh. My name is Bill Graham. I am the greatest promoter in the whole world.

[Bobby Weir]

No, I'm Bill Graham.

[Jesse Jarno]

It takes a moment to call the meeting to some kind of order. Somebody make that guy stop looking at me. Stop looking at me.

[David Lemieux]

Well, is this where we throw the.

[Jesse Jarno]

Okay, who's first? Being open to questions?

[Bobby Weir]

I don't know. Has it started yet?

[John Leopold]

If nobody has any questions, we can all go home.

[Jesse Jarno]

The year before, the Dead had added Dennis McNally to their staff as the band's publicist, sidetracking him from the biography he'd started researching and which he wouldn't publish until 2002. Please welcome back to the Deadcast the great Dennis McNally.

[John Leopold]

They knew it was the 20th anniversary because I told them I don't think they ever sort of looked it up to them, it was another show. I started getting a lot of inquiries. 20 years seemed like a terribly long time at the time.

[Rosie McGee]

So I finally.

[John Leopold]

I went to the band. I said, look, I know you're not thrilled with the idea of press conferences, but on the other hand, we can either do this once or I'm going to be bugging you. It's going to be a pain in the butt, so let's do a press conference. And they said, okay. So we set it up for before the show. As a Greek, I borrowed a Grateful that banner from Maruska, and that was the set dressing. And it went reasonably well.

[Jesse Jarno]

This 20 years seems very funny. 20 years sounds like a long time, but it sure doesn't feel like.

[Bobby Weir]

It feels like a blank.

[Jesse Jarno]

It really doesn't. It seems zip, you know, what happened? What happened to our lives, man?

[Bobby Weir]

Right.

[Dave Perlis]

I don't know.

[Bobby Weir]

I don't know.

[Len Del Amico]

A minute ago.

[Bobby Weir]

There we go.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's 1965, right? Yeah.

[Len Del Amico]

And it's just.

[Jesse Jarno]

I mean, it's been very fast, so it's tough to relate to all that

[John Leopold]

stuff, you know, There was a guy, a regular media guy, not part of the Grateful Dead scene, and he said psychedelics was.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, psychedelics and the Grateful Dead, to some people it's synonymous. The drugs still have a large role to play in the appreciation.

[John Leopold]

And there's just dead silence.

[Bobby Weir]

Eh?

[Jesse Jarno]

What'd you say? Well, we have to go now. His lips are moving, but nothing's coming out.

[Bobby Weir]

I thought I saw his lips move.

[John Leopold]

And the guy who I really believe sincerely thought they weren't hearing him or understanding him. So he asked a little louder the same question.

[Jesse Jarno]

Your music in the 80s, the drugs, psychedelics play still play a part in

[Dave Perlis]

the enjoyment and appreciation of Grateful Dead music.

[John Leopold]

And at that exact moment, nobody said anything, but the entire band looked at him.

[Jesse Jarno]

Cue the synchronized six man head swivel cartoon sound effect, please, Rich.

[Rich Mahan]

Yeah, sure. It's right over here.

[John Leopold]

As it happens, he was standing next to Susanna, and as she said, she was smart enough to hit the shutter when that happened. And she's got this wonderful picture of all of them looking at her or him. But, you know, the camera didn't distinguish.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's a pretty amazing photo. All six members of the Grateful Dead gazing directly at the camera, which is to say, gazing directly at you, the viewer, as if you've done something horribly wrong and they couldn't be more embarrassed on your behalf. We've posted a link to the [e-mail] deadcast Garcia briefly makes A semi earnest effort to engage. Does the mind have something to do with it? To an outside journalist, all the brouhaha might have looked a little, you know, funny. The Dead hadn't put out a studio album since Go to Heaven in 1980 and had developed an audience that seemed, on the surface, out of step with expectations about what a popular band's audience was supposed to look and behave like. A reporter tries to bait the band into saying something mean about Deadheads. It seems that no matter what you do, it's always loved. Do you ever wish your audience were a bit more critical, more demanding of you? It's not Blind devotion. They know what they like, you know,

[Bobby Weir]

we couldn't make them come.

[Jesse Jarno]

Yeah, that's true, that's true. They're coming for a reason. But they are awfully sensitive and they are.

[John Leopold]

Right or wrong, right?

[David Lemieux]

Yeah.

[Bobby Weir]

We gotta get off first.

[Jesse Jarno]

They're a good audience. I mean, they pay attention.

[Rosie McGee]

We can get them.

[Jesse Jarno]

They can get very quiet. We can take them lots of places. They're no slouches. They're paying attention. They're not just being there. They're into it. And that's nice. That's nice. Phil Lesh is especially assertive about the power of the Deadheads. Yeah, well, they're almost willing us to make it good or helping us to make it good. In fact, almost nothing.

[Bobby Weir]

They are.

[John Leopold]

They are, yeah.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead head support surely meant a lot. We're going to zoom out slightly before we get to the show itself and locate the grateful dead in 1985, both in the Dead and the Head's entwined timelines, but also the slightly bigger picture. The year had started in not anybody's favorite fashion, when Jerry Garcia had gotten busted in his car in Golden Gate park with a briefcase full of hard drugs. Garcia entered what was described as a drug diversion program, and over the next year and change wrestled his way back to something that resembled at least California sobriety. He'd had some hard years, but there's an element of his playing in 1985 that feels like coming to the end of the Fog. In 1985, the Grateful Dead were in a place much busier, more complex and more productive than you might expect based on their public image at the time. Are you working on another Grateful Dead movie? No, not a movie.

[Bobby Weir]

No.

[John Leopold]

Video.

[Len Del Amico]

Something.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, it's a little hard to talk about because it doesn't exist. We've been grinding some cameras and recording

[John Leopold]

some sounds, and what comes of that,

[Jesse Jarno]

we'll see when we get done with it. In 1980. The dead had staged a theatrical simulcast from Radio City Music hall, eventually releasing the results to the television and home video markets, an experiment far less painful than the Grateful Dead movie. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

[Bobby Weir]

Good evening.

[Jesse Jarno]

We're the comedy team of Franken and Davis, and we're gonna do about an hour of comedy.

[Len Del Amico]

Yeah.

[Jesse Jarno]

The person most responsible for the success of Dead Ahead is our next guest. Len Del Amico is the author of Friend of the My Wild Ride with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, published last year, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast about his decade and change as the band's in house video guy. If you've seen any of the band's official video releases from 1987 to 1991, or for that matter, any of the videos of the Dead plane at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, Len Del Amico was directing, almost certainly the person to have filmed them the most on and off for over 15 years. We talked about the Radio City telecast with Len in our Dead Behind Dead Ahead episode. Back in our second season in 1984, he proposed a video project to Garcia built around the Jerry Garcia band. But Garcia had bigger plans.

[Len Del Amico]

They invited me to come to New Year's 84, 85 and to bring my mate. And I knew something was up because we were met at the airport with a livery driver and a sign and taken to a Rolls Royce. I'm like, okay.

[Jesse Jarno]

Garcia had decided that instead of a Garcia Band video, it was going to be a full length Grateful Dead video for the new home video market. Len was invited to a meeting with all six band members, where he laid out a plan to sell a video idea to a company in return for an advance and go from there, they thought.

[Len Del Amico]

And the joint went around and, you know, Jerry smoking a cigarette, okay, how about this? Instead, we hire you, we put up all the money, and when we're done with it to our satisfaction, then you take it to the market. And I'm like, okay, that works for me. All I have to. You know, the hard part is taking. Oh, I don't. I don't have to do the hard part, right? Because once I had a Dead product in hand, I knew if, even if others didn't, you know, the market would go for it.

[Jesse Jarno]

Len soon figured out the reason for the Dead's enthusiasm.

[Len Del Amico]

They were going to take another run at the big time, and it was going to involve an album and video and the whole thing. And he knew all that in January. 85, believe it or not. And he also knew he'd have to clean up and all of that. And boy, was he right. This whole thing was like a master plan. Stay out of jail is number one.

[Jesse Jarno]

Garcia succeeded, thankfully, and they started shooting the video that would become so far in April 1985, two months before the summer Magic Box opens. But it was also a period in which the Grateful Dead organization began to clean up their act as a whole, relatively speaking. Some longtime employees departed. It began an unlikely and indirect route to get near the toppermost of the Popper most. But on the other hand, in 1985, Marin county, where the Dead were based, remained a powerful center of American culture. That's the argument of Mourning in Marin, a new book by Dave Perlis, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast that the dead were part of a vast and under acknowledged cultural moment that he calls the Marinaisons. Welcome to the Dead cast.

[Dave Perlis]

Dave Perlis the Renaissance is is what I see as a spiritual and creative awakening that was sparked by the arrival of bohemians in Marin county after World War II. People from Europe, a lot of people from England, some people from the east coast, and it lasted through the middle 1980s. So when we talk about 1985, we're really talking about the tail end of the marinassance.

[Jesse Jarno]

People often ground the Dead's historical place as a part of the San Francisco music scene or the psychedelic culture at large. But Morning in Marin, named after the Howard Wales composition, of course, finds a place where Bay Area music intersected with lots of other forces.

[Dave Perlis]

Alan Watts, the Zen philosopher, was bringing acid to Marin and to Tamalpais in the late 50s, which is way before, I think, most people realize acid was in the mix, culturally speaking. And this combination of influences led to the Renaissance and masterpieces and influential works from people like Alan Watts, the Beats, including Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lou Welch, Joanne Kiger, who's a wonderful poet, Richard Brodigan, some of the masterpieces of Philip K. Dick, a lot of what people think of his greatest works, the plays of Sam Shepard, a great run of albums from Van Morrison, some of my favorite Van Morrison albums, and the films of George Lucas, Walter Murch, Michael Ritchie, Huey Lewis, and the news had emerged by 1985, and of course, the Grateful Dead. So when you combine all of those cultural influences, all inspired by these same values, by 1985, this was what was popular culture in America.

[Jesse Jarno]

The idea of the Dead rejoining the mainstream wasn't terribly far fetched. Right around then, one of the Dead's closest comrade bands in Marin county was busy being reborn, though without any of its original members. In the spring of 1985, Jefferson Starship's Paul Kantner settled his lawsuit with his now former bandmates. They agreed to drop Jefferson from their band name, becoming simply Starship, and laid the foundation for RCA's investment in Grunt Records to finally pay off with this mega hit recorded almost concurrently with our June 1985 story.

[Bobby Weir]

We built this City We Built this City on Rock and Roll. Build this City.

[Jesse Jarno]

It might not be a coincidence that the video game Rampage was released the following year. The Dead toured throughout the spring of 85, as usual, but that was just the surface. When they weren't on tour, the band began to record new music at their Front street studio in San Rafael, but it wasn't for an album of their own. Merle Saunders had drafted the Dead to help soundtrack the forthcoming reboot of the Twilight Zone, helmed by Phil DeGuerre, who'd been involved with the then scrapped concert film Sunshine Daydream about a decade before. It put the space in the Dead's happy space. The project also connected the band to MIDI technician Bob Bralove, and you can hear more of the Twilight Zone story in our episode about Infrared roses. The Silva Screen label released the soundtrack on CD in 1998. It contains some of Garcia's first pedal steel playing in around a decade. The Nightcrawler Suite also features the Dead's earliest musical crossing with former Springfield Creamery delivery driver and Marin County's biggest star of the moment, Huey Lewis, stepson of great Marin poet Lou Welch. The dad had first rented their Front street warehouse in the early 70s, turning it into a recording studio for the Jerry Garcia bands Cats under the stars in 1977, alongside their office at the edge of downtown San Rafael, Club front became the Dead's clubhouse. The band recorded Shakedown street there in 1978, and Robert Hunter's lyrics for the title track and Gilbert Shelton's cover art both referenced the neighborhood

[Bobby Weir]

Mother Shake it on Shake down street

[Len Del Amico]

used to be

[Bobby Weir]

the heart of town.

[Dave Perlis]

Dave Perlis San Rafael has a canal, and in the 50s and 60s the south side of the canal became industrialized, and Marin does not really have much of an industrial sector. So they put it all in this one place where there were some factories, dumps would go there and stuff, like a lot of auto shops. You could be loud there and there was space there, and it was fairly cheap for office space. So that's why they, you know, started Club Front there.

[Jesse Jarno]

But in 1978, around the time Hunter wrote the lyrics to Shakedown Street. The Dead got some new neighbors. They like to keep a low profile. Less than a mile from the Dead's Front street clubhouse was George Lucas's special effects unit. Industrial Light and Magic.

[Dave Perlis]

Starting with Empire Strikes Back, all the effects for ILM were done in San Rafael by the canal. And starting in 1982, either through Lucas or Walter Murch or Michael Ritchie or ilm, Marin had its hand in Poltergeist et Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Never ending Story. Fletch Goonies Return to Oz and Back to the Future, all just in a period of three years in San Rafael. And this is another example of how Marin's culture was American culture in 1985.

[Jesse Jarno]

Just below we Built this City on Billboard's year end charts for 1985 was another song that was pure Marin and directly connected to the activities going on at ILM's anonymous warehouse.

[Bobby Weir]

Don't need money, don't take fame don't need no credit car to ride this train it's done and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes but it might just save your life that's the power of love that's the power of love

[Dave Perlis]

Huey Lewis and the News as a band are mostly raised in Mill Valley. The Power of Love was recorded in Sausalito at the Record Plant. And then the music video for Power of Love was filmed surreally at this club called Uncle Charlie's, which was in a strip mall in a town called Corta Madera, which is in central Marin. And this is where Huey Lewis and the News really gelled. And now they were back there in 1985 to shoot the Back to the Future video. The DeLorean from the movie was actually there at this small strip mall in Marin. Christopher Lloyd in Doc Doc costume was there. You know, it was a real scene. And this was June of 1985.

[Jesse Jarno]

If my math is right, in the spring of 1985, industrial light and Magic had just finished creating the first completely computer generated movie character for young Sherlock Holmes, and were then hard at work on Ewok's Battle for Endor. It took place maybe a year before the 1985 time frame we're talking about. But at dead.netdeadcast we've posted a link to an interview with special effects legend Phil Tippett about that time. He dosed a little too hard while working on Return of the Jedi.

[Dave Perlis]

Marin is really like a place for fantasy, science fiction, surrealism.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead's work on the new Twilight Zone fit right into the latter day marinassance. Robert Hunter even wrote a few episodes on spec, including one that got produced a segment called the Devil's Alphabet that aired in 1986. Hunter had his first live album out that spring as well, recorded the year before, but titled Live 85.

[Bobby Weir]

I don't know, it must have been the Roses. All I know was it could not be there.

[Jesse Jarno]

The members of the Dead were involved in all kinds of musicing in early 1985. In the first part of the year, Billy Kreutzman and Brett Midland both toured with Kingfish, though it was a bit bumpy. In May, Mickey Hart helped organize a Berkeley performance by the Giotto Monks, one of their first American appearances. Bobby Weir made what might have been his first ever totally solo appearance at a CEVA benefit, notable for at least two reasons. I believe it's the first time Weir sang a Garcia Hunter song outside the Grateful Dead, and also because one of the people on stage with Weir for the finale was the great songwriter and Modern Lovers founder Jonathan Richman. Jerry Garcia jetted off to Illinois to help his buddies Al Franken and Tom Davis record the soundtrack for their confusingly titled movie One More Saturday Night, which sank so thoroughly that it doesn't seem to be online in any form. The band had commenced shooting for so far over three days in April at the Frank Lloyd Wright Design Marin Civic Center. We hope it'll be done later in the year around, maybe November. It wasn't, but whatever. The story of so Far is a happy one released in 1987 to great acclaim and also a story big enough that we can only really touch on the place where it overlaps with our 1985 timeline today.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux, mid April of 1985 so right before those Frost shows, they did a lot of recording for so far. They did two sessions. They went back in November of 85 as well. But the April ones, I mean to me are really where they're at. And they video recorded everything on one inch video from three or four cameras, multi tracked.

[Jesse Jarno]

Are we rolling? Yes, rolling.

[Bobby Weir]

One, two, one, two.

[Jesse Jarno]

Garcia had presented Lend El Amico with an idea he had to sell me on it first.

[Len Del Amico]

We were at his house and he said, picture it like Disney and Fantasia or any animated film up to today, which was 85. They do the soundtrack first and then they start animating against that. And I said, yes, I'm aware, I went to film school and you didn't. I miss him. But. And he said, so we're going to assemble the Soundtrack first. And I'm like, okay, how are we going to do that? We're going to make up a list of songs that we think might make it into the final product that we, you and me, agree. And I'll take care of the band.

[Dave Perlis]

We're to going.

[Jesse Jarno]

The final product mixes video from the shoot at Marin Civic with live footage from New Year's Eve, all held together and intercut with a playful barrage of images and stock footage. The story of its assembly is really fun and uplifting. And Len's book, Friend of the Devil, is great. We've also posted a [e-mail] deadcast to a vintage interview with Lennon Garcia speaking about the process.

[Len Del Amico]

His idea, our idea was no audience. They could do retakes. They could say, well, we just part the. The beginning of playing. We've already got down. We've got a couple of versions of the big middle instrumental, but we don't have the come, the read, the refrain, the redux where it comes back. Let's do that again, knowing we could edit.

[Jesse Jarno]

Not everybody was on board at first

[Len Del Amico]

in talking to Kreitzman. Billy, for example, thought, you know, that the audience was the seventh November, and without them, they never hit those peaks.

[Jesse Jarno]

And at first it seemed like the drummer was correct.

[Len Del Amico]

So the first two days were warm ups. And another test of my ability to do this was I had to not freak out that we were not getting stuff that was good enough. I knew it and I could tell Jerry, but it wouldn't been wise to tell, to talk about it in front of anybody else.

[Jesse Jarno]

But those first few days were productive in other ways.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux I've seen the video sessions from so far. We've got, I don't know, a couple, maybe a dozen, 15 hours of footage.

[Jesse Jarno]

Even if the band wasn't quite ready for their close up, so to speak, they began to dust off songs they hadn't played in a while, including the full version of that's it for the other one, not performed since 1972.

[David Lemieux]

There's a cryptical where Jerry goes over and very slowly plays Cryptical for Brent. And Brent very studiously pays attention to what Jerry is teaching him. They were trying out Crypt a full two months before they busted out at the Greek Dupree's, which was one of these kind of sporadic things that would show up staggerly. Good Night, Irene. There were a lot of things like that down in the Bottom Ain't Superstitious. So that material that would almost be that defining, weird 1985 stuff that was such a big part of the summer of 85 in April. They were running through it.

[Bobby Weir]

Well, I eat superstitions But a black cat cross my jail. It's superstitious but that cat crosses my jail. Moon dust me with no broom, baby Just my line of chain

[Jesse Jarno]

that was Willie Dixon's song I Ain't Superstitious, recorded at the Hershey park show, which we'll talk about in a few more episodes. It was a closed set, but there was a familiar face walking around Marin Civic with a camera.

[Rosie McGee]

I don't remember who specifically invited me, but I was invited as a, I can only say a respected photographer. I wasn't just hey Rosie, we're doing this thing. You want to come over?

[Jesse Jarno]

Please welcome back Rosie McGee, who photographed the dead intensely when she was Phil Lesh's girlfriend in the late 60s and early 70s. We spoke with her in our last episode about the very high summer of 1966. She shot photos and worked in various capacities around the Dead scene through the early 70s when she departed for New Mexico and started a family. She launched a newsletter recently, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast. I knew she'd reconnected with the band later, but it still surprised me to open up a recent edition of her newsletter and see a bushel of cool pictures from the exact other period we're covering this season.

[Rosie McGee]

My husband and I had separated, had divorced, and I was single. Mom and I had moved back into the Bay Area and back into Marin and picked up my camera again.

[Jesse Jarno]

Rosie's so far pictures are in her lavish and severely limited book. My grateful bed photos.

[Rosie McGee]

It wasn't for a specific use. It was just we know you, we trust you. Here's an opportunity. You're more than welcome to come. And it was one of my favorite episodes with Ted that I ever did

[Bobby Weir]

come hear Uncle John's bear by the riverside. Got some things to talk about here. Beside the rising tide.

[Rosie McGee]

It meant so much to me to be back after 11 years of doing something else and being on the outside doing my life. I was back where I was most comfortable and most happy with my good friends Grateful Dead, the family. And I was there as part of the working production crew and it was three days bliss for me.

[Bobby Weir]

Some folks trust reason, but it's just your mind. I don't trust nothing.

[Rosie McGee]

It was a closed set, restricted access kind of situation that the band probably felt very free and relaxed in a way that they might not be at a gig or at a rehearsal or at something where they have an audience. It was just a controlled environment. The sound was perfect, the lighting was gorgeous. And they were just free to just go for it for three days.

[Jesse Jarno]

For Lendell and Miko, the first few days were a little more harrowing. After the second afternoon, he and Garcia checked in about their progress.

[Len Del Amico]

I remember having coffee at Was it Zims at the corner of Sir Francis Drake and 101. And it was very busy and I met him there. We're sitting at the counter and I, you have to put up with all these people walking by going like, holy shit. You know, that whole thing and I'm invisible, which I love. And he was concerned, are we getting anything? And I was like, well, probably. I, you know, the point I'm making is part of my job description was that I had to have faith. And that came from Garcia. He said, you, you, if you don't have faith, then you're going to be a worry ward and you're going to be talking about money all the time. And I don't need that. It's not what I need.

[Jesse Jarno]

If it wasn't quite a pep talk, the check in seemed to work.

[Len Del Amico]

So on the third day and we're in Civic, I'm always the first person there and I pull in and the tire hits the curb at 10 and Garcia pulls in right next to me and it's Beamer and I remember the tire hitting the curb. He gets out. Oh man, I can feel it. We're going to get it all today. And I'm like, great to myself, we better. So that's when we got Uncle John's band into playing in the band. Into space. Rhythm devils, not fade away. Okay, so that's a 30 minute chunk which was number one on our list to get. We all knew right away this is. Holy shit. It was just, it was mind boggling. And then Billy said afterwards, he was wiping his brow and he was like, I didn't know we could do that without an audience.

[Jesse Jarno]

As I mentioned before, there's lots more to the so far story, including a nearly two hour director's cut by Dellamico and Garcia. And I really hope we get to conclude this cliffhanger sometime. Len's book Friend of the Devil is a wonderful though very real insider account of working with the dead in the go go 80s. A few years later, the band once again used Marin Civic for a closed set of sessions using the same set of methods to record in the Dark. But we've got to stay in 1985 for now. On our enjoying the ride East Coast Part 2 episode. We spoke with John and David Leopold, twin brothers from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, united in their Dead freakdom. They arrived in the Bay Area probably just as the so far sessions were wrapping at Marin Civic. Welcome back, John Leopold.

[John Leopold]

We came out for Frost and then we were gonna stay out in California, ostensibly to work through the summer. The Frost shows were amazing.

[Jesse Jarno]

The April 27th and 28th, 1985 shows now constitute Dave's picks 49 in California, John and Dave landed at perhaps the nerve center of Deadhead information.

[John Leopold]

We were staying with Blair and Regan,

[Jesse Jarno]

which is to say they were staying at the headquarters for the Golden Blair Jackson and Regan McMahon's amazing dead scene, published from their Oakland home through most of the 1980s and perhaps the decades center for Deadhead fandom. The next scheduled shows were June 8th and 9th in Sacramento.

[John Leopold]

They canceled the Cal Expo show because of the Wagner Ring Cycle thing, which we all thought was, you know, incredibly weird at the time. But, you know, it worked with the. With who those guys were.

[Jesse Jarno]

At Phil Lesh's instigation, the band canceled the Cal Expo gigs so Lesh, Garcia and Weir could attend the San Francisco Opera's production of Richard Wagner's epic multi night Ring cycle. Lesh was asked about it at the Greek Theater press conference. You want to draw any parallels to Wagnerites and Deadheads?

[Bobby Weir]

Well, they both have really good taste.

[Dave Perlis]

Yeah,

[Rosie McGee]

that's it.

[Jesse Jarno]

Phil turned me on to Wagner and he said he's turned me on to lots of other music as well. And you know, he's the guy really.

[Johnny Dwork]

Are there any Wagnerites here?

[John Leopold]

Raise your hand.

[Bobby Weir]

Next.

[Jesse Jarno]

Within the band, Phil Lesh's missionary zeal was once again infectious. He'd made a convert of Bobby Weir.

[John Leopold]

Me.

[Bobby Weir]

Oh yeah, you?

[Jesse Jarno]

Yeah, I got turned on fiercely. Because opera tapers are perhaps even more complete as than dead tapers. The 1985 San Francisco production of the Ring Cycle is now viewable online and we've also posted a link to the golden roads coverage of June 1985. With the cancelled shows, rumors spread of a free gig in Golden Gate park. But instead Merle Saunders and friends performed at the Haight street fair on June 9, which included appearances by Bobby Weir, Brett Midland, John Cipollina and former Kingfish guitarist Robbie Hodd. There was plenty to do for young Deadheads hanging out at Golden Road hq.

[John Leopold]

The Thursday before the Greeks, Blair had a little gathering at his house because he was doing a story on Deadhead professionals. People who were in the professional world who were also Deadhead. You know, lawyers, doctors, and then this Guy, an oral surgeon from Birmingham, Alabama, Bernie Bildwin. And Bernie is, I think he's a month month older than my mother, but he is a prankster at heart and. And we just totally hit it off. We became fast friends and we spent that weekend together. And there was all sorts of craziness in his life, but he is a jokester and we just laughed the entire weekend. Bernie was by then on the Rex foundation board. They reached out to him trying to find people who weren't in the Bay Area to be on the board. And Bernie was one of those people.

[Jesse Jarno]

We talked a bit about the culture of the Dead's Greek theater shows during our Enjoying the Ride bay Area Part 2 season. Built in 1903 on the UC Berkeley campus with massive columns behind the stage, the Dead played the Greek a few times in the 60s on bigger bills, but headlined there annually starting in 1981. As usual, the 1985 Greek shows were Friday, Saturday and Sunday with staggered start times.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux Friday pretty late 7pm and then 5pm on Saturday and then 2 or 3 on Sunday.

[John Leopold]

It was general emissions. So you lined up early and you ran inside and you had your spots. And we usually didn't try to get in the pit. We usually tried to get in the first couple rows of the stone steps. That gave us a better sight line. Except when Bill Waldron would come stand. You know, even standing down below, he was almost too tall. So that happened every once in a while. But you could never give grief to Bill Walton at the Greek.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead scene still felt like a cozy small town compared to what would happen a few years later. John and his brother Dave had founded Printknot, selling year at a glance set list sheets for a dollar with Dave's intricate psychedelic art and lettering.

[John Leopold]

John Leopold, the fan driven art was great and it was small scale. You would walk around the Greek and there were people selling stuff. But there was no shakedown area. There was no place where people set up boots or anything. There's can't do that in Berkeley. But there was all sorts of people selling their wares as they walked around, sometimes even in the show. Again, that part of the scene was also pretty limited. It was a small village.

[Jesse Jarno]

Naturally. Kayron sent a reporter to get a story about the 20th anniversary. Specialist Emil Guillermo was at the Greek Theatre last night for the 20th anniversary performance. This three concert weekend was dead Mecca.

[John Leopold]

Deadheads descended from as far away as

[Jesse Jarno]

Ithaca, New York, and some from other planets. Drugs are still an important part of the Dead experience. Acid, mescaline marijuana was all present. Only a handful of arrests were made.

[John Leopold]

People came from all over the country to be there. So that was great. And then we knew it was the 20th anniversary, but really didn't have any idea of what that would mean.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Grateful Dead played under a special

[John Leopold]

anniversary logo while 10,000 so called deadheads

[Jesse Jarno]

danced under the influence of some kind of magic. Call it Dead aerobics. John Leopold.

[John Leopold]

The excitement was very palpable. And we all got these Robert Hunter poems as we walked in. So it really felt like an event.

[Jesse Jarno]

On one side of the sheet was Robert Hunter's new poem titled 20th Anniversary Rag, with different verses written in the cadences of various Dead tunes. It begins just like Grandma Moses, just like all buying signs. Play the change, however strange, and get it right this time. Of course, both shows are and will be sold out, but overflow crowds will be accommodated with piped in music at a nearby parking lot. I guess you'd call that Muzak for Deadheads. No. No you wouldn't. Great night out at the Greek Theatre to hear anything, any kind of music. Nice, warm, balmy. Please welcome back to the Dead cast Nicholas Merriweather, founder of the Grateful Dead Studies association, who wrote the liner notes for the new summer Magic Box, who we'll hear lots more from next time.

[John Leopold]

The Dead were not about calling attention to themselves. Every aspect of that press conference that they held at the Greek, which was just a masterful stroke of publicity on Denis McNally's part. But all of that, if you look at the tone, if you look at the jocularity, all of that. The whole point is this is a band that shambles on stage as if they've just rolled out of bed. The whole idea is to focus on the art. The idea of celebrating a milestone is just kind of like ew. It's so contrary to what they're thinking of. And I see Hunter's 20th anniversary rag as being kind of in that spirit. It's that sort of grudging, almost reluctant way of saying, right, okay, it's 20 years.

[Rosie McGee]

And that's kind of cool.

[Jesse Jarno]

One of the final stanzas gets a little earnest almost. Thanks for 20 years of being an audience, which is the envy of every other rock and roll band alive. Fuck em if they can't take a joke.

[John Leopold]

They come in and receive that. And see this backdrop. The guy carrying the guitar was on one side of the poem. One side was that graphic and on the other side was the poem.

[Jesse Jarno]

Each year at the Greek, the band commissioned a backdrop to cover the giant columns behind the stage, including massive tie dyes by Courtney Pollock. It's a surefire way to identify the year a photograph was taken. In 1985, they had 20th anniversary art. The new graphic was by the great underground artist Rick Griffin. And the piece was titled the Minuteman. With a skeleton in a Revolutionary War hat gripping Garcia's tiger guitar while standing proud in front of an enormous American flag waving wide and high behind him. The graphic hung behind the band at the Greek and through all the shows on this box, please welcome back John's brother, David Leopold, a talented artist and now creative director for the Al Hirschfeld Foundation.

[John Leopold]

When I first saw it, I was disappointed. You know, this was Reagan's America. And I'm like, fucking Minute man, what the fuck? And I'll never forget, I was looking at it and I was sort of grumbling. And our friend Sundance, he's like. And I, and I said something to him, he's like, hey man, these are our symbols too, and we don't have to give them up because someone else is co opting them. They're ours. We're as American as anybody else. And that was a real eye opener to that was like, yeah, well, I'm not giving this up. America, the ideas of freedom and doing what you want is all wrapped up into the Grateful Dead experience. And he helped me see that, and he helped me see what Rick Griffin was doing. And Rick Griffin really sort of brought it home to me.

[Jesse Jarno]

Either way, the idea of walking into a Dead show and receiving a handbill with new Rick Griffin art on one side and a new Robert Hunter poem on the other feels very special.

[John Leopold]

Dave Leopold that's one of the reasons we wanted to go out there. We had been to Chinese New Year's, we'd been to the Frost, we've been to bct. And these were not like any shows you saw on the East Coast. You know, there was a care and attention to just so many different aspects. That was Bill Graham, but also was the Dead. And it was, was Bill Graham because it was the Dead. And it felt very much like a family situation. JOHN they came out and Sergeant Pepper played over the speakers. You know, 20 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper tried to fan the play. The place went nuts.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dave Leopold used it as a prompt for the collage he added to his tour book.

[John Leopold]

My Greek spread is what I imagined the dead sergeant Pepper album would look like. I've got all these collage heads and figures of all kinds of people. Dolly Parton and Bob Dylan and Howling Wolf and, you know, they're all there.

[Jesse Jarno]

We've posted Dave's tourbook [e-mail] deadcast and while the band didn't think much of the anniversary, 20 years was a long time in the music business. And the music we're listening to from 1985 is very different from the jams we focused on last episode in 1966 and the episode before that in 1976. Here's Bobby Weir from the press conference earlier in the day.

[John Leopold]

It'd be hard to describe any change

[Jesse Jarno]

in the music over 20 years.

[John Leopold]

You might be able to readily appreciate

[Jesse Jarno]

it or hear it just by taking

[John Leopold]

a record we made a long time

[Jesse Jarno]

ago and a record we just recently

[David Lemieux]

made, or tape we just recently made and playing them.

[John Leopold]

And they might sound different, but it's

[Jesse Jarno]

amazing to me how similar they sound. Here's Dancing in the street from July 3, 1966, out now on vinyl.

[Bobby Weir]

Come alive around the world.

[Jesse Jarno]

Here it is when the band returned to the road on June 3, 1976 an R&B disco arrangement now on the Playdead app.

[Bobby Weir]

Dancing, dancing, dancing down the street we're rolling out around the world Are you ready for a brand new beat? So much heat and the time is right we're dancing in the street and

[Jesse Jarno]

here it is when they opened with it on the first night at the Greek in 1985, after it returned to something closer to the band 60s arrangements.

[Bobby Weir]

They calling out around the world Are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer's here and the time is right

[Jesse Jarno]

for dancing in the street Another thing I'd like to bookmark here to return to in later episodes. The first six shows on this box set occurred during the last few weeks before MDMA became federally illegal at midnight on July 1, 1985. And the last show in this box set occurred on MDMA's first day of its federal criminality. Dave Leopold by the time we went

[John Leopold]

out to Frost, yeah, it was. It was readily available. And there were things in the news every once in a while, people talking about therapeutic properties and all this. So it was like a secret that everybody knew.

[Jesse Jarno]

We recently spoke with former Dupree diamond news editor Johnny Dwork for our segment on the 1976 Beacon Theater shows. But you may also remember him from our Enjoying the Ride season when he received a hot tip that the dead were going to be reviving Dark Star at the Greek in 1984 and made it all the way cross country on less than 24 hours notice. Obviously, he returned in 1985.

[Johnny Dwork]

I had this whole scene between my new York and Amherst College, Hampshire College scene and my Bay Area scene. That all came together for the Greek theater shows. Those shows were, in their own right, great. The sound was great, except for the part where it wasn't. There was a break in the first set because there was some sort of sound challenge, and they took a break for 10 minutes.

[Jesse Jarno]

When the band returned, they debuted a new cover song by Eric Clapton's briefly lived band, Derek and the Dominoes, a duet by Brent Midland and Phil Lesh, who was starting to sing lead more regularly.

[Bobby Weir]

The game of love was never really showing.

[John Leopold]

John Leopold for Deadhead. My first one to get to Keep On Growing, which was, you know, left field. No one knew that was coming.

[Jesse Jarno]

The new box marks the first official release of the Grateful Dead performing Keep On Growing, released on the 1970 Derek Dominoes album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, apparently written when keyboard player Bobby Whitlock added lyrics to a jam session. One of the tracks, not to feature brother Duane Allman. Actually, this box marks the first two official releases of the Dead doing Keep On Growing, which disappeared in February 1986 after five performances. Stagger Lee also reappeared for the first time since August 1982.

[Bobby Weir]

Bio, bio tell me how can this be? You arrest the girl for turning chicks but you still have a stick alone?

[Jesse Jarno]

The Leopolds were primed for the debuts and revivals and anything else the band wanted to throw out there.

[John Leopold]

John Leopold Because Dave and I did these set list pictures. We tracked every show. We knew what was happening at every show. We got a call from somebody from every show, so we knew what was going on. And the set lists were just, you know, changing all the time. It just seemed very exciting to us.

[Jesse Jarno]

At points in all of these 1985 shows, you might notice a few pieces in the mix that feel like sound effects from front of house engineer Dan Healy. You know what I mean? John Leopold remembers Healy's contributions feeling far more environmental than the tape's capture.

[John Leopold]

What Healy would do in some ways was so in the moment he would throw the sound around. It was such a sort of immediate and personal experience you sort of can't capture because you don't have the quadraphonic speakers. And you can't throw it around as easily on your tape as you could with the high tech sound systems.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux and it's funny, I've listened to those Greek shows a lot over the last almost 40 years, and I'd never noticed that. I never found that any of them ever detracted from the music they were Always almost like Easter eggs, where you could listen to them and hear these little moments where it's like, oh, yeah, that's kind of Healy having fun.

[Bobby Weir]

Turn up the bass drum. Turn up the bass drum.

[Jesse Jarno]

John Leopold Healy.

[John Leopold]

The soundboard was up the stone steps at the Greek. And it was like his kingdom was behind him, too, because all his hapers were. And he. He totally interacted with the fan. People knew him and he talked with people and they asked questions. So, you know, it really felt like our band.

[Jesse Jarno]

The scene inside the Greek was all encompassing.

[John Leopold]

All these things were happening that seemed part of the show, you know,

[Rosie McGee]

so

[John Leopold]

it was just super exciting. I think that first day someone got married up there on the lawn at the Greek, in between sets and stuff like that. So it was a real community.

[Jesse Jarno]

Healy had been responsible for instituting the band's first official taping section the previous October at the Berklee Community Theater. And by summer 1985, it was a fixed part of Grateful Dead shows. Naturally, the taper tickets came rubber stamped with the king of the tapers, Dick Nixon. The second set began with the first Morning Dew set opener since 1973. The big jam suite begins with playing in the band. John Leopold.

[John Leopold]

There's a great jam out of China Doll that's totally unique.

[Jesse Jarno]

Cool moment between Brent Midland and Mickey Hart, I think, jamming on Balaf. During the space segment as Mickey Hart builds layers of drones with the beam. There's also a brief little flash of the Twilight Zone theme, a tease of the band's soundtrack work earlier in the spring. There's another revival near the end of the set. The first version of Comes a Time since October of 1980. Wounded and deep and becoming to my ears, one of the defining songs of the era.

[Bobby Weir]

Comes a time when the blue madman takes your hand says don't you see Gotta make it somehow on the dream

[Jesse Jarno]

still believe A few months after shooting so far, Rosie McGee was at the Greek shows as well.

[Rosie McGee]

Instead of just going to visit and hang out and listen to music and dance, I started bringing my camera again a few times. Took some great photos, photos that I'm very proud of. But that also was a real exciting thing for me to come back and be able to take new photos from a completely different perspective than I had back in the day. I was the girl with the camera that was part of the band's family, and that was a very different thing. And now I had access, but I was still a distance from physical distance from the band.

[Jesse Jarno]

One of Rosie's most beautiful photos comes probably from after the first night at

[Rosie McGee]

the Greek, the one I call Aftermath, which is a black and white photo, was probably at the end of day one, when the theater had been emptied of people, was dead silent. And I went back down the audience stairs and saw a completely deserted Greek theater and with all of the amps and the cabinets covered for the night because they were going to have a gig the next day. And just this huge spotlight in the upper right hand corner shining down on it. And it's completely deserted amphitheater with a surprisingly small amount of litter. There's like, you know, soda cups and whatever. I don't know, there's some. Some trash on the. On the. On the ground, but there's not very much. I was on a podcast with Ottil Burbridge and his. His podcast partner Mike Vinoja. We showed that photo and Ottilie wanted to talk about it. And Mike made the comment that what it was is only moments earlier or minutes earlier, the place had been vibrating with the energy at the end of a gig with hundreds of people. And, you know, and then it got emptied out and the energy was still hanging in the air. And when he asked me, I think he asked me, was the energy still

[John Leopold]

hanging in the air?

[Rosie McGee]

And I said, yeah, it's. It was a very unique moment.

[Jesse Jarno]

Of course, Rosie hung out for the

[Rosie McGee]

whole weekend as they became more and more successful and they played larger and larger venues and more and more people wanted to get backstage or talk to them or whatever. It became less of a friendly family scene back there. And so over time, I started just going less often to see the shows and mostly hanging out at the sound booth with Dan Healy, who I met when I was 17 years old, before I ever met the dad. He always welcomed me and gave me a pass so I could come and go as I pleased.

[Jesse Jarno]

The middle of the three Greek shows started around 5pm Rosie took her other favorite picture of the weekend as the band got ready to play.

[Rosie McGee]

One is of Phil with his back to the audience. He's just fiddling with his gear right before the show. He's on stage by himself in the audience. About 2/3 of the way up the slope, there's this huge banner.

[Jesse Jarno]

It takes about a dozen people to hold up and reads, Happy 20th boys.

[Rosie McGee]

Phil's looking at his gear and then kind of looking away, and he's got this interesting look in his eyes, you know, pondering the 20 years thing. So that's one of my favorite photos.

[Jesse Jarno]

One character caught by Rosie's roving eye was Owsley. Stanley sitting on a road case just behind the band. There's another photo of him hanging on stage with Phil Lesh. Baer had moved to Australia not long before, and this was very likely his first trip back. A longtime Berkeley resident, it's nice to know he was part of the 20th anniversary celebration. The following Vibe report will be soundtracked by pieces of the July 15 show. As the sun begins to set on the Greek Theater, please welcome back Johnny Dwork.

[Johnny Dwork]

After a hot day in Berkeley that as the air cooled down, the air started to move and the smell of the eucalyptus trees up at the back of the Greek Theater wafted down into the amphitheater. And so that classic Northern California nature smell was present. It was a form of aromatherapy. Between that and the super dank Bud that was being smoked. Off stage right midway up the amphitheater, right at the far edge of where the seats ended, middle of the amphitheater. At every one of those Greek Theater shows, there was a gaggle of long haired, beautiful goddesses who dressed in velvet and lingerie and they would dance themselves into exuberant ecstasy.

[John Leopold]

John Leopold if you're looking at the stage, it would be on the right hand side, about three quarters of the way up in the stone steps. And there were three women who would dance and, and moan orgasmically, like during the entire show. And if you were unfortunate enough to be sitting here, they did it the entire show.

[Johnny Dwork]

Johnny Dwark I think there were six or eight of them, something like that. And there was something very endearing and, and beautiful about that that I don't recall seeing at any other conc. One of those Greek shows in 85 is one of my most enduring precious Grateful Dead flashbacks, which is I'm sitting up near the soundboard and I remember this because it was still light out and I would go back and forth between the Grateful Dead mosh pit on the floor of the Greek Theater and the sweet spot right in front of Healy, where I had some friends that were taping. And I would go back and forth during those shows between the place I like to hear from and the place I like to dance. Anybody who danced at the Greek Theater down on the floor in the middle of that thing knows that that was a very, very special dance scene. It was different than the Spinners up top. It was more like an ecstatic dance scene in that people were really sort of like all collectively dissolving away their individual being and going into a heightened flow state in which their movements were controlled by the movements of the collective, not unlike the way that certain birds will all gather by the tens of thousands and fly through the air. Same way that also small fish will swim through the ocean in large groups of tens of thousands of them. And all seem to move in flow state as though they all are of one mind. And that's what that dance scene was like down on the floor at those Greek theater shows. And it was extraordinary because you could go down there and just let yourself be moved by the collective unconscious and everybody all sort of became one collective protoplasm. So I had taken a break from that scene and I went back up to the sweet spot near the board. And there's a point, I'll never forget this, at which one of Bill Graham's blue coat security people went slowly walking right through the middle of that dance scene. And I witnessed that dance scene literally go like this, where they would open up right to the place where that person was walking slowly through and then swallow the back of the. Of the hole that they had just. That the person had just walked through, right? And nobody was thinking of doing this. It was the collective unconscious all just being present in the moment and seeing other walk through and making space for other and then closing back up and becoming one again. That remains an enduring example for me of one of the most beautiful aspects of the Grateful Dead scene that there was a part of the Grateful Dead scene where you could be dancing with many people, where there were no seats, and you could let go and enter into flow state and you could be one with many. And I think that was sort of like the quintessential moment of communion that

[David Lemieux]

really

[Johnny Dwork]

converted many people into thinking that Grateful Dead was their church. It was a melding, it was a melting down of the individual personality and becoming part of something magical that was larger than yourself.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux, I mean, the whole middle night of the Greek. But that opening sequence to open the second set with the china writer and the sailor, St. Terebin, it's. This is some of the bonafide best Grateful Dead ever.

[Jesse Jarno]

Another cool piece of the drum sequence is an early example of when somebody, I think Dan Healy, makes a loop and keeps it running like a drone. A regular piece of the rhythm devil's sonic trickery in years to come. Maybe my favorite part of the show is the magical turnover from the wheel into Gimme Some Lovin'. This was apparently a contender for the so many Rhodes box. We've got a few Bay Area side trips to make before we get to the Sunday afternoon closer, starting with Johnny Dwark's Saturday night post show hang.

[Johnny Dwork]

I had a friend in college who became close friends with Mickey Hart.

[Jesse Jarno]

This was the same friend who provided Johnny with the tip off that a dark star crash was imminent at the Greek. The previous summer, Mickey moved to his

[Johnny Dwork]

new ranch from the old Novato Ranch that had the Rolling Thunder studio on it. Sometime 1984, 1985, something like that. And he still had yet to sell the Novato Ranch. And David became the property manager for that old legendary ranch, which I believe is the place where there's those famous photos of the Grateful Dead wearing guns, right? And cowboy hats and riding horses, right? And it's the place where the Rolling Thunder album and the Apocalypse now sessions happened.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was a pretty major moment in Marin county history, really. Mickey Hart had occupied what many locals just called the Grateful Dead Ranch in Nevada in early 1969. And it instantly became a social and musical hub for the flourishing Marin scene, even before it became one of the great undersung studios of the era in the 70s.

[Johnny Dwork]

So David was living at that old Grateful Dead ranch during those 84 and 85 years where the Dead were playing the Greek Theater. And so on the Saturday night of those three day Greek theater runs,

[Rosie McGee]

we

[Johnny Dwork]

would go back to the Grateful Dead Ranch and get high a second time.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Grateful Dead Ranch was about to disappear off the map, but there were still wild times to be had there.

[Johnny Dwork]

I double dosed at the 1985 Nevada ranch party that started at whatever midnight. And just as I was coming on, a friend of mine said, hey, I got something really interesting to show you. And he takes me out to the hill behind the music studio, that barn, that studio is where the famous photo of the Grateful Dead with the big flag and Jerry Garcia is wearing a poncho.

[Jesse Jarno]

We most recently visited Mickey's ranch on the Dead cast when we talked about the Diga Rhythm Band during our Steal youl Face episodes. But Mickey Hart's studio hosted sessions with musicians that ranged from bluegrass fiddler Chubby Wise to bio music synthesist Ned Legian. From percussion master Zakir Hussain to master songwriter Robert Hunter. It was a good run.

[Johnny Dwork]

This friend brings me out to the hill outside that studio on the old Grateful dead ranch around 1 o' clock in the morning. I'm just starting to trip again. And we climb up this steep hill amongst the old eucalyptus and we climb up into one of these giant old eucalyptus and there's a rope. That's the kind of rope that ties off a giant ship, like an 8 inch thick hemp rope. If you've Ever seen the film Celebration at Big Sur? There's a moment where John Sebastian gets up on stage at Esalen and says,

[Jesse Jarno]

I've been here for a little while. And I stayed, went and hung out

[John Leopold]

at the Grateful Dead ranch for a

[Jesse Jarno]

couple of days and swung on the swing. They got the grooviest swing in the whole world out there.

[Johnny Dwork]

He hands me this rope and it has tied a giant knot on the bottom with a piece of plywood that's cut out in the shape of a penis and testicles. Just as I'm starting to trip balls, I realize, oh, my golly, this is the swing that John Sebastian sung about. And the friend says, don't swing out in a straight line. Swing out in an arc and go in circles. And right as I take that first

[Dave Perlis]

swing,

[Johnny Dwork]

the drugs come on.

[Jesse Jarno]

The first minute and a half.

[John Leopold]

Well, hey, it feels like a minute and a half. It's only a second and a half.

[Jesse Jarno]

Like the first second and a half. It's like you get the feeling like you already wiped yourself out. You say, wow, here I got on

[John Leopold]

the swing and I wipe myself out.

[Jesse Jarno]

And then a second and a half

[Rosie McGee]

later,

[Johnny Dwork]

And the whole air smells like eucalyptus and it's warm, and I'm now swinging in this enormous circle in the warm eucalyptus scented air. And my skin is just completely tingling from being high and rushing through that warm air. And it's one of those moments that you remember the rest of your life.

[Jesse Jarno]

There were all kinds of changes afoot in the landscape. This story probably took place slightly later in the chronological summer, but fits right next to Johnny Dwark's story on the more cosmic calendar of Grateful Dead history. John Leopold.

[John Leopold]

In the early summer of 85, I met Steve Brown.

[Jesse Jarno]

Steve Brown was a faithful employee of Grateful Dead and Round Records. We've spoken with him numerous times, especially during our wake of the flood season. He no longer worked for the Dead, but was still a major head.

[John Leopold]

One day he calls me up and he goes, do you want to go to Winterland? And I was like, steve, Winterland is closed. And he goes, let's go before they tear it down.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead had closed it out on New Year's 1978. Going into 1979, the city had announced plans that spring to replace it with apartments.

[John Leopold]

We drove over to Winterland and it was all locked up, but there was no one there. So we climbed in a window and we walk in and they've torn. They had torn off the roof, so there was natural light coming in, but there was rubble all over the floor. And Steve was like this amazing guy because he had been there when it was an ice skating rink. He had been in a band that played on the stage at Winterland. He had produced the Bob Free Memorial Bookie. And so he would tell me stories as we walked along. He's like, you want to go backstage at Winterland? And we went backstage stage. And then at the end, he's like, well, you know, I used to always sit in this one chair upstairs, or this one section upstairs. I want to do it one more time. So we went and to get upstairs, they had a ramp and there were no lights and I had never been there. So it was all. He seemed very at ease. We didn't have a flashlight or anything.

[Jesse Jarno]

I love the idea that more than a half dozen years after it closed, Steve Brown could still navigate Winterland in the dark.

[John Leopold]

And so we make our way up. We come up on the balcony and it's this amazing scene. The sunlight is just beaming in there. It's really angelic, this light. And there's still confetti and trash from the New Year 78 show on the floor.

[Bobby Weir]

Three, two, two and a half, two minus one quarter. The joint nearest. Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, everybody.

[John Leopold]

So he finds a plastic champagne glass, we fill it with confetti that was on the floor. There's a hat. And then we found this plaster rose that was part of the ceiling design. And we go sit down in section 120 and we're just taking in the scene. And then after about 3 minutes, 4 minutes, we both get up at this very same time without saying anything, we turn around and rip the chair out and we're going to take it home. Explosions. We climb out that window and right as we get there, there's three guys from Portland. They're coming to do the same thing we just did. You know, it was like, good luck.

[Jesse Jarno]

The last show of the weekend started at 3 p. Sunday morning came down hard on Johnny Dwark the next day.

[Johnny Dwork]

At that Sunday 1985 show, I remember being so burnt out that I had to lie down for a nap. And I remember being too crispy to really enjoy that 85 Greek Sunday show. And that was the point where I made the decision that I was going to take better care of myself and have a better relationship with psychedelics and not burn as hard as I had burned up until that time. And so I got to have this experience of having too much without having gotten irrevocably burnt out from the experience. And I Was able to pull myself back from overdoing it.

[Bobby Weir]

Had a feeling I was falling, falling, falling I turned around to see

[Dave Perlis]

that

[Bobby Weir]

a voice calling Lord, you was running

[John Leopold]

back to me

[Jesse Jarno]

There's a debut of sorts in the first set.

[Bobby Weir]

Woke up this morning Fell around for my shoes that's when I knew I had them walking blues I woke up this morning look around go around by my shoes

[Johnny Dwork]

that's when I knew I ever walk away.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was part of an ongoing trend developing since the late 1970s, Bobby Weir reviving covers once sung by Pigpen. Walkin Blues is fairly obscure among those, at least on the Dead side, with only one tape fragment from a 1967 radio documentary.

[Bobby Weir]

I'm gonna leave in the morning if I have to ride the blind I've been mistreated now don't mind dying I'm gonna leave in the morning if I have to ride.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead did it once back in Boz Skags in 1982. But the Greek 85 version marks its entrance into Weir's repertoire for Deadheads, though the show's real headline was almost certainly the revival of the Complete that's it for the Other Ones suite for the first time since 1972. Obviously we're going to listen to the very beginning from an audience tape in order to hear the heads, as they say, lose their shit. In some ways, the song received a full reset, back to the compact length of the earliest versions from 1967. But the mere prospect of hearing the Grateful Dead revive cryptical envelopment in 1985 was astounding. If they revive that, they could revive anything.

[John Leopold]

Dave Leopold it was the 20th anniversary that was exciting on its own. And then they're breaking out all these songs and playing songs you never heard before. And we thought the playing was really great. And I was like, yeah, I want to see more of this.

[Bobby Weir]

Spanish lady Come to me she lays on me this love the rainbows spiral round and round and tremble and explode.

[John Leopold]

For a 19 year old kid, this was an absolute magic carpet.

[Jesse Jarno]

Another plot was unfolding beneath the Greek shows. For the Leopold brothers, the plan was

[John Leopold]

for us to go out to California, establish residency and then start school, you know, transfer out to a UC school and pay low tuition and live out in Northern California. Part of that was getting a job. JOHN we ended up signing up for a temp agency and I went out to get try to do an interview, get a job as a runner for a lawyer's office. And they said, you sound like really good, but you look too much like the Guy we just fired, so we're not going to hire you. And I'm like, what? Well, I went back home and I said, how did yours go, Dave? And he goes, oh, no. They told me I couldn't go on the interview because if I wouldn't cut my hair. And he goes, and I'm not cutting my hair.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dave Leopold.

[John Leopold]

I just soon realized that I was not going to be cut out for the straight world. I was 19 years old and the idea of spending the summer or any other time in an office was just, no, it didn't work for me.

[Bobby Weir]

Almost cut my hair. It happened just the other day.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was an easier choice for John.

[John Leopold]

And I was like, well, maybe I cut my hair. Maybe I can get the job. So I, that I called the temp agency, they let me go on the interview, and I ended up getting the job in the copy room, mail room for Booz Allen and Hamilton. And that's I, you know, they paid me $10 an hour, which in 1985 was like a lot of money. So I ended up never going back home. Dave I haven't really had a real haircut since I was 18, and now I just trim it about every six months. But for years, I didn't even cut it.

[Bobby Weir]

It's getting kind of long. I could have said it was in my way, but I didn't, and I wonder why.

[John Leopold]

And then they played these great shows at the Greek, and my touring buddies were like, oh, come on, man, you don't want to miss this. And I was like, you're right. And I decided to go on tour in like a day or two. Packed my bag and jumped in the car with these guys.

[Bobby Weir]

I feel like letting my freak fly.

[Jesse Jarno]

For John Leopold, the plan worked. He got a job, established residency, and quickly met his soon to be wife, who was also at the Greek shows in 85. Though they didn't know each other yet, we'll surely talk to both of them down the line, but Dave Leopold will be one of our third eyewitnesses for the rest of the shows on this box.

[John Leopold]

We essentially moved out to California to see more shows. And now there was going to be three weeks of shows and I'm like, I don't want to miss this.

[Jesse Jarno]

He wouldn't.

[Rich Mahan]

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. Dennis McNally, Len Delamico, Rosie McGee, John Leopold, Dave Leopold, Johnny Dwark, David Lemieux, Nicholas Merriweather and Dave Perlis. Extra Special thanks to Friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. 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 Doran Tyson. All rights resort reserved.