Watkins Glen Summer Jam ‘73, Part 2

Summary

GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST

Podcast: GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST
Episode: Watkins Glen Summer Jam ‘73, Part 2
Date: August 10, 2023
Hosts: Rich Mahan, Jesse Jarnow

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the deep dive into the legendary Watkins Glen Summer Jam of July 28, 1973—an epochal event where the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band, and The Band performed to the largest crowd ever assembled for a concert at that time. Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarnow peel back the lore, logistical chaos, musical high points, and cultural ripples of that singular day. Through interviews with musicians, crew, fans, and promoters, the Deadcast paints a vivid, irreverent, and illuminating picture of a festival that became both a high-water mark for communal rock gatherings and a harbinger of the changing times.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Getting to Watkins Glen: The Human Flood

[03:38–10:21]

• The festival quickly swelled far beyond expectations, with crowd estimates between 300,000 and 600,000 people (some say even higher).
• Promoter Jim Koplik recounts existential panic as state police threatened to close the New York Thruway, risking financial ruin since "we never took tickets at the gate, so we don’t know who’s here and who’s not" ([05:18], Jim Koplik).
• Fans describe epic journeys: cars abandoned miles from the site, traffic at a standstill, and miles-long treks on foot.
  • Rebecca Adams: "I swear, I thought we walked 20 miles, but maybe it was only eight or nine miles, but it was a really, really long way. ... And there was no ticket taker" ([12:38], Rebecca Adams).
  • Many entered by climbing through hedges—no security or ticketing presence for most arrivals.

2. Festival Logistics: Chaos and Improvisation

[06:06–17:13]

• Backstage, raw youth and inexperience among organizers fueled a sense of “barely holding on,” according to Koplik.
• Makeshift security included hiring friends last-minute and issuing them “Watkins Glen Security” t-shirts and baseball bats to wave at the fence ([13:36], Tim Meehan’s story).
• Medical tents saw a wide range of issues, including the delivery of a baby born addicted to heroin—highlighting challenges of drug culture ([17:36], Dan o’ Hanklin).
• Despite the mass, police and media noted a relatively well-behaved crowd compared to normal events at the racetrack ([17:02]).

3. Life in the Crowd: Endurance, Connection, and Strange Sights

[10:21–41:03]

• The crowd’s diversity set Watkins Glen apart—not strictly "Deadhead" territory, but a massive cross-section of rock fans.
• Endurance was the watchword: epic journeys to portapotties and water, people sitting atop outhouses and trucks for a better view ([38:24–39:17], Rebecca Adams).
• Weather swings from blazing heat to torrential rain; fans used everything from plastic sheeting to milk crates for shelter ([56:26–57:09]).
• Notable flag symbolism: American, Canadian, and Confederate flags flew on stage, prompting discussions about Southern rock pride versus other meanings ([40:34–41:03]).

4. The Show: The Dead, The Band, and the Allmans Blaze and Weather the Storm

[33:59–56:52]

• The Dead played first (daylight set), followed by The Band (rain-soaked set with eerie thunder and lightning), then the Allman Brothers at night, leading into the Super Jam ([30:02–60:59]).
• Musical High Points:
  • Jim Koplik: "The playing in the band was the high point, I thought … The Watkins Glen show was great … except for the playing in the band; I thought that was particularly awesome." ([34:49], Jim Koplik)
  • Steve Silberman: "It was a very special moment in their music … Keith sounded great, and you know, he was playing a lot with the Fender Rhodes at the time and it's delicious." ([34:36], Steve Silberman)
  • Todd Ellenberg recalls his first “Eyes of the World”: "I was definitely just lost in that. That was amazing." ([35:57–36:14])
• Technical Innovations:
  • Early use of delay towers (with Eventide digital timers) for crowd sound reinforcement ([36:26–36:43]).
  • Pirate radio broadcast by teenage fans—Concert Free Radio—beaming concert audio across the grounds ([59:29–61:10], John Ramsey).
• Backstage Hijinks:
  • John Belushi, future SNL star, “in the Dead's trailer entertaining them,” doing festival shtick ([23:11]).
  • Surreal scenes recounted: Owsley Stanley (Bear) reporting “a big snake moving through the crowd” from the soundboard ([25:47], Rebecca Adams).

5. The Weather: Rain, Mud, and Legendary Perseverance

[41:03–58:41]

• Mid-concert, a violent thunderstorm struck, tearing through the crowd and undermining The Band's set—with Garth Hudson’s legendary organ solo (“Genetic Method”) bridging the weather gap ([55:17–55:57], Jay Curley).
• One fatality marred the event—a skydiver’s flared landing gone tragically wrong ([51:51–52:38]).
• Rebecca Adams: “The rain was really awful … I had a poncho … But we still got really drenched and it was muddy” ([57:09]).

6. The “Super Jam”: Epic, but Disjointed

[68:04–73:43]

• Long-awaited “Summer Jam” collaboration among members of all three bands, but the set was loose, ramshackle, and, at times, surreal:
  • Chuck Leavell: "It was such an impromptu thing and there didn't seem to be a real solid plan …" ([70:32], Chuck Leavell)
  • Rick Danko’s inebriated attempts at Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” (“whoever was singing … they were well greased … lyrics being slurred … a pretty sloppy performance” – [68:48], Chuck Leavell)
  • Eric Nelson: “As the evidence … demonstrates, Robbie [Robertson] almost plays nothing and Jerry [Garcia] pretty much takes it over. … Garcia was on the entire time.” ([71:26], Eric Nelson)
  • Steve Silberman recalls hearing Mountain Jam at sunrise—one of the Dead's last truly dawn-ending blowouts on the east coast ([73:43]).

7. Departures: The Aftermath and Massive Cleanup

[74:52–84:18]

• Attendees describe lost-and-found adventures, sleeping in the grass, and the shock of seeing the venue blanketed in debris ([79:58–80:57]).
• Promoters forgot garbage cans, resulting in a $50,000 cleaning bill: "600,000 people had nowhere to throw anything" ([81:31], Koplik).
• Promoter anecdotes about post-show exhaustion, collecting checks, and freezing on return flights ([87:14–88:04]).

8. Legacy and Influence

[88:31–98:56]

• Watkins Glen inspired California Jam (1974) but closed the curtain on the era of freewheeling mega-festivals.
• Promoters and roadies recount ways the Grateful Dead's technical innovations influenced the Allman Brothers' gear and merchandising ([93:31–97:09], Buddy Thornton, Alan Paul).
• For musicians and fans, the event marked both origins and endings: "Watkins Glen was kind of the beginning of like wandering through fields and coming upon groups of freaky long-haired people" ([100:26], Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth).
• Culturally, it faded quickly from memory—overshadowed in popular imagination by Woodstock, partly due to lack of official recordings and commodified media ([98:56–99:50], Eric Nelson).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Promoter Jim Koplik ([05:18]):
"At the beginning of the day, the New York State Thruway was so packed that we were told by the state police that we're closing the thruway and telling people to turn around and go home ... But thankfully, about 15, 20 minutes later, the New York State Police opened up the thruway again ... that's honestly the most vivid memory for me—thinking, I'm about to go out of business because the New York State thruway is being closed."

Rebecca Adams ([12:38]):
"We walked and had to leave the car behind. And we walked in, and I remember, like, there was no ticket taker. ... And then on the other side, there were all these people, and then there we were."

Gary Lambert ([42:13]):
"Having been to and hated Woodstock, Watkins Glen was kind of like we got suckered into something again ... I a little ashamed to say, but we left at the end of the Dead's first set."

Steve Silberman ([34:05], [37:50], [73:43]):
_"Everybody thinks ... the day of the actual concert was really not good because they see it in light of comparison with the Soundcheck Jam. ... It was fine. It was actually a good show."
_"I had not intentionally taken psychedelics before then, so I was out of my mind really ... Tripping for the first time. It's pretty funny."
"I remember walking towards the highway as members of the Allman Brothers and the Dead played Mountain Jam ... I believe I saw the first light of dawn."

Chuck Leavell ([68:48]):
"…Whoever was singing … they were well greased and pretty well inebriated. … The lyrics were being slurred, and it was a pretty sloppy performance. ... The audience ... started booing."

John Ramsey, Concert Free Radio ([60:59]):
"...He said, you know, we've always wanted to do low power broadcasts of our concerts because, you know, the dead are always very much pro recording. You want to come on the road with us and do that?"

Jay Curley ([79:08]):
"I had smoked all my weed during that long, long day ... But I looked in the mud behind our warehouse pallets and there was 8 ounces in nice tight Ziploc bags of weed ... That's what I smoked on Jerry's birthday a couple days later."

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:38 | Main event: Festival logistics and crowd estimate | | 05:18 | Koplik recalls near disaster as Thruway almost closes | | 10:21 | Rebecca Adams' “rite of passage” and road saga | | 13:36 | Security stories: baseball bats and the fence | | 17:36 | Medical tent, drug culture, and a baby born addicted to heroin | | 23:11 | John Belushi entertaining the Dead backstage | | 25:47 | Owsley Stanley (Bear) and the serpentine “snake” in the crowd | | 30:02 | Dead perform first; taping logistics | | 34:05 | Musical analysis: Dead set praised, especially “Playing in the Band” | | 36:26 | Technical innovations: relay/delay towers | | 38:24 | Crowd navigation and the vista from the field | | 41:03 | Rain hits during The Band's set | | 51:51 | Parachute fatality during The Band's set | | 55:17 | Garth Hudson’s “Genetic Method” organ solo | | 59:29 | Concert Free Radio goes live; backstage audio adventures | | 68:48 | Super Jam: drunken, unruly, but historic | | 73:43 | Mountain Jam continues through dawn | | 79:08 | Post-concert ground score (8 ounces of weed in the mud) | | 81:31 | Cleanup fiasco: $50,000 cleaning bill, garbage mountains | | 88:31 | Legacy: Effects on Dylan, Allmans, and concert business | | 93:31 | Technical exchange: Dead’s influence on Allman Brothers’ sound and merch strategies | | 97:25 | The Dead’s hiatus, and the end of the dead–allmans collaborative era | | 98:56 | Legacy: Watkins Glen’s anti-climax, fading from the 1960s into the more commercial 1970s| | 100:26 | Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth): the 'beginning' for a generation of seekers |

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Concluding Thoughts

Watkins Glen Summer Jam looms large both as a logistical marvel and a cautionary tale. A few vignettes summarize the experience:

• **“The music was the common denominator”—**says Dan o’ Hanklin, reflecting on the endurance and camaraderie.
• The paradox of abundance and scarcity: massive crowd, abundant music, but not enough toilets—or garbage cans.
• Technical innovations (sound reinforcement, audience taping, pirate radio) foreshadowed Deadhead culture.
• Despite the rain, mud, chaos, and exhaustion, for many it was the beginning of an era—community forged, connections made, memories born (and sometimes, lost).
• The Deadcast closes on the lesson that music is a collaborative trip at every level—a shared vision, a “kind of getting high in the same way…”

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Episode closes by honoring the contributions and memories of everyone who made the gathering possible, from musicians to crew to the endlessly inventive and resilient crowd.

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For more detail or to share your own story, visit stories.dead.net—maybe you’ll wind up on a future episode.

Transcript

[Rich Mahan]

Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of.

[Jim Koplik]

The Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious.

[Rich Mahan]

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season eight of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in as we're about to go to press with this episode. We've just learned of the passing of Robbie Robertson. We'd like to dedicate this episode to his memory and send thanks for all of the amazing music he blessed us with. This episode is part two of our deep dive into the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, the massive one day concert that of course featured the band the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers. Besides being the 50th anniversary of this historic concert event, it's also the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead's monumental 1973 studio album Wake of the Flood. To celebrate this, RINO has a grand 50th anniversary wake of the Flood release which includes the original album remastered, some really cool early demos of songs from the album, and six songs from a live show at McGaugh Memorial hall at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. From 111 73. There will be special vinyl as well as standard black vinyl CDs and digital versions available. More info and preorders are happening now [e-mail] head on over to dead.net deadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons one through seven and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platforms so you can listen. Listen where you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing hitting that like button and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you, very kind of you. We now have transcripts from many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. So hop over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. Thanks to everyone who has left their stories [e-mail] well now we want to hear you Tell your stories about Wake of the Flood or any of the songs on it. Got a tale about the first time you heard Eyes of the World? Or a wild tour yarn about that one version of Let It Grow? No story too big or too small. Record those stories [e-mail] and you just may hear yourself on the Dead cast. There is an option to write your story there, but if possible, please record yourself telling the story. If you need longer than the time allotted, listen, Leave a second one or a third. Thank you very much. Watkins Glen, the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band and the band bigger than Woodstock, but only one day and three bands. Last episode we covered the lead up and the soundcheck day. Let's get into the meat of the matter and the main event with Jesse.

[Narrator/Host]

Jarno, the Watkins Glen Summer Jam, featuring the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and the Band, was originally scheduled to be 12 hours long, running from 12pm to midnight on Saturday, July 28, 1973. But by the time dawn broke on July 28, all three acts had already appeared on the stage, and the Watkins Glen Summer Jam became the largest known musical gathering of humans in the planet's history.

[Jim Koplik]

They're calling it Son of Woodstock, the biggest rock music gathering in four years, maybe the biggest ever. Estimates of the crowd now crammed together at Watkins Glen, New York range from 300,000 to 500,000 people. Highways leading to the concert were packed for the last few days, with traffic at a crawl or a standstill. At some points, cars were backed up for 15 miles.

[Narrator/Host]

We delved deep into the origins of Watkins Glen in our first episode, including the long relationship between the Allman Brothers and the Dead, the legendary public soundcheck, and the epic journey Minnie undertook to get there. As the sun rose on Watkins Glen on the scheduled day of the show, promoters Jim Koplik and Shelley Finkel were still far from out of the water. Please welcome back promoter Jimmy Koplik.

[Jim Koplik]

What I remember most about the show day was at the beginning of the day, the New York State Thruway was so packed that we were told by the state police that we're closing the thruway and telling people to turn around and go home. And I remember going up to Shelley and go, well, then we're going to have to refund everybody their money. And we never took tickets at the gate, so we don't know who's here and who's not here. We're going to end up with all these expenses and have to give everybody their money back. We're going to go broke, I'm going to have to go back to law school. I don't know what I'm going to do. But thankfully, about 15, 20 minutes later, the New York State Police opened up the thruway again. So we didn't have that problem. But that's honestly the most vivid memory for me is thinking, I'm about to go out of business because the New York State through is being closed.

[Narrator/Host]

He still had plenty of problems to solve.

[Jim Koplik]

I was 23 years old. I had no idea what was going on. It was way too much for me to handle. So I was running around like a chicken without a head, to tell you the truth. But again, thankfully I was young enough that I could get from, you know, the back of the house to the front of the house without being tired. I could get in a helicopter and view where the people were. We had to make sure we had enough water for everybody, which we did. We had to make sure we had enough bathrooms for everybody, which we did. We had to make sure that the experience stayed good, which we did.

[Narrator/Host]

On the day the festival was supposed to happen, many were still en route. Brian Schiff and his friend, their car, the Oy Vega, had broken down en route. They'd hitchhiked with a local and had stopped asleep on the way into the grounds.

[Jim Koplik]

When we finally get to the site now it's like five o' clock in the morning or something on Saturday. And the way Watkins Glen was sort of set up was. It was like all hills. So you couldn't even see the stage from where we were. We were like behind hills that was just all people. And they did have like speaker systems set up every, you know, few hundred yards or, or whatever for the sound. But we literally couldn't see the stage. It was, it was beyond, like hills. So the funny thing is, so my friend Larry, he was in the food provisions business and he mainly sold eggs and orange juice and butter at the time. So we're sitting there and finally they start playing music over the pa. And we're sitting there and like I said, I was like, at rfk, where you could move, rally here, we were like sitting there kind of squashed in people just sitting in this gigantic crowd. You can't see the stage. And all of a sudden, as circumstance would have it, the PA system starts playing. I Am the Walrus by the Beatles Corporation T shirts. Stupid Guilty Tuesday man, you've been a naughty boy.

[Rebecca Adams]

You let your face grow long.

[Jim Koplik]

I am the eggman. They are the eggman. And when they get to the Thing where it says, I am the eggman. We, like, looked at each other and said, this is insane. Let's get the hell out of here. Like, we were also. That was Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the next week was when the Dead and the band were playing at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, which we had, you know, tickets for all of them. I know it. Then it ended up the Monday show was canceled, which we didn't know at the time, but we had tickets for all three of those shows. And it was like, we're seeing two of these three bands in a much better venue in 48 hours. This is completely insane.

[Narrator/Host]

Backstage, Tim Meehan was just waking up. He'd gotten a free ride to the festival from his housemate, including a helicopter ride in because her brother had handled the bottled water concession.

[Jim Koplik]

I got up early. We had a tent out back pasture or somewhere, and I walked over to the commissary tent and had my coffee. And there was a dog in the swimming pool. I had to go check that out. So it was a German shepherd. And I've since learned that Bill Graham had a couple of German shepherds. So anyway, Bill Graham was standing next to the pool with, talking to some lady. And I understood from their conversation that they were talking about, you know, logistics and security. And of course, I didn't quite butt in. I timidly excused myself and apologized for overhearing their conversation and jumping in. But if they needed extra security, I had some friends that were coming up. I was going to meet them on Saturday at noon. And this is Saturday at probably 7:30 in the morning, and I'm going to meet these guys at noon. And one of them just came back from Korea is an army vet who was a tank commander. I said, I'm sure he would appreciate a gig working extra security here. So sure enough, that came off without a hitch.

[Narrator/Host]

Others were still coming in. Sociologist Rebecca Adams is one of the parents of Grateful led studies, taking a college class on tour in 1989. In 1973, she was still an undergrad. Welcome back, Rebecca. She'd scored a free ticket to Woodstock in 1969.

[Rebecca Adams]

And I went home and told my parents, oh, I'm going to Woodstock. And they said, no, you're not. So this was a big deal that they knew I was going to Watkins Glen. So it was kind of admission that I was old enough to make my own decisions. So this was a rite of passage in more than one way for me. The summer of 1973, I was in between my junior and senior year At Trinity College, and I was working for the television station, the public television station during summer vacation.

[Narrator/Host]

Rebecca had been seeing the dead since 1970.

[Rebecca Adams]

Even though I identified as a Deadhead, which, you know, now has a much different meaning then, it just meant I liked the music. I didn't feel like this was for Deadheads only, you know, because everybody was going.

[Narrator/Host]

Watkins Glen isn't remembered as a generational event, but it kind of was.

[Rebecca Adams]

On the 27th, we started driving there, and we spent the night at Cornell in Ithaca, which was only about 30 miles away from the venue. And we thought, you know, we'd get up early the next morning and get to the venue early. But when we got out into the traffic, it was almost at a standstill from Ithaca all the way to Watkins Glen. So we got out of the car, and we were sitting on this railing that was next to the road. And I looked down, and there was an entire ounce of marijuana on the ground. And I picked it up, and the traffic was completely at a standstill. So I walked forward, and thinking someone in front of me might have dropped it, and I kept walking forward, saying, whose is this? Who is this? And I don't remember if anyone finally took it or what happened, but I do remember that the person I was going to the show with had finally gotten the car moving, and he. He drove up next to me while I was still trying to find the person who had dropped it.

[Narrator/Host]

If that was yours, get in touch with Rebecca. But then things really came to a halt.

[Rebecca Adams]

People were parking in the middle of the road and abandoning their cars. I do remember we managed to get it pulled over on the side of the road. I swear, I thought we walked 20 miles, but it. Maybe it was only eight or nine miles, but it was a really, really long way. We walked and had to leave the car behind. And we walked in, and I remember, like, there was no ticket taker. And we kind of climbed in through a hedge that was on the side of the road. I remember, you know, pushing the branches out of the way. And then on the other side, there were all these people, and then there we were. Music hadn't started yet when I got there. I didn't miss any of the music on the 28th, but I missed the sound check entirely. By the time we got there, everyone was talking about it.

[Narrator/Host]

Around the time Rebecca poked through the hedge, Tim Meehan's friends got their new jobs.

[Jim Koplik]

The guys from the Great Neck House were right where they were supposed to be at noon backstage on the other side of the fence. Bill's assistant brought him in and there were three or four of them. She issued them Watkins Glenn T shirts that said security, big letters on it, and then handed them baseball bats. And these guys had been camping out on Friday, and this is Saturday morning, and they probably smoked their lunch and they showed up and they were by no means looking for blood, but they were instructed to whack. The fence in the backstage area had a 10 foot hurricane fence. You know, I think it had barbed wire. And some of the pictures, there's some barbed wire that leans over one side so it makes it hard to climb up. But they were worried that someone was going to climb the fence. And they issued these guys baseball bats and said, listen, don't hurt anybody. But if somebody tries to break through the fence and climb over, you know, like a hundred people want to get over, just start whacking the fence with a bat to shake it and freak them out, but don't hurt anybody. And my friends are like, well, I don't know. All right.

[Narrator/Host]

Todd Ellenberg had arrived the night before, but was too wiped to make it over to the sound check.

[Jim Koplik]

We went to the concert field and it was packed. Obviously it was packed. And I'm like, you know, just amazed by the mass of humanity. Just, just in awe. And I'm looking around, then all of a sudden I realize I have lost my friends. I have lost my friends. And that was a bummer. But within about perhaps a half hour, I don't remember how long, I found another group of friends from my hometown, including the younger brother part of our group who we went up there with, and a few other people who I knew pretty well just from hanging out. So I hung out with them the whole day and made sure I wouldn't lose them. We just found our spot, settled down over to Garrettley. There are reports of drugs being sold and used in the crowd on some bad trips like this one. And many of the scenes today seemed like reruns of Woodstock four years ago. As at any huge gathering, there's been some trouble. At least five people died in traffic accidents en route to the event. Hundreds of others needed medical care for injuries or drug overdoses, and more than 40 have been jailed for various misdemeanors. No shortage of drugs, mostly marijuana and mostly overlooked by the police.

[Narrator/Host]

As at other festivals, Allman Brothers front of house. Engineer Buddy Thornton decided to venture out into the grounds.

[Buddy Thornton]

It rained one night and there are mud puddles all out in front of the stage there. And it's nice and sunny, but it Rained, and it all was sloppy, muddy. And I'm standing on stage looking at it, all these people, and there's girls dancing around naked in the mud, right? I'm thinking, man, I gotta. I gotta go check this out. I went down to where the gate is and there's security guards, and I showed him my past, my badge, right? And I said, I'm going to go out here. I'll be back in 30, 40 minutes. You're going to let me back in, right? So I walked out among all these. This craziness, going with people hawking all sorts of things, right? And stacks of water bottles, Porta Potters. Nothing like I'd ever seen in my life. I'm just a country boy, man. I grew up in cotton fields. I'd never seen like that.

[Jim Koplik]

And state police at the concert say the crowd there today was causing no serious problems. In fact, one policeman said the young people were better behaved than those who usually go to the auto races there.

[Rebecca Adams]

I remember them saying something about from the stage that someone had been born or something like that. But for the most part, it was just, you know, listening to the music and waiting in between the sets.

[Narrator/Host]

Dan o' Hanklin was a veteran of the Springfield Creamery benefit, the first rainbow gathering, and a brutal psychedelic heartbreak at RFK Stadium, which we covered last season.

[Jim Koplik]

Sometime Saturday, I don't know what the heck happened. I hurt my foot and I had to go to the medical tent. And so I'm sitting there waiting, and I can hear the medical personnel in the other room talking about how they had just delivered a baby that was born on heroin, that was born addicted to heroin. And I'm thinking about this and I'm like, yeah, wow, gee, that's degen. And that's what we used to call degen in many of my circles, As I may have explained to you, in my circles, we were all drug snobs. We disdained heroin, we disdained speed, we disdained alcohol. For the most part, the only thing we were interested in was indole, hallucinogens and cannabis. That was it. And I think that was a pretty widespread lifestyle choice among the hippies. It seemed to become blurred later on.

[Narrator/Host]

The medical tent at Watkins Glen was organized by Dr. Willard Nagel. In the run up, he commented to a local newspaper about the positive advice around the planning of medical tents at rock shows. If only he'd been in touch with the doctors from the Haight Street Free Clinic we spoke with on the Kezar Stadium episode. He'd have to wait a few more months for their paper about best practices for exactly the situation he found himself trying to manage. Some newspaper reports indicate that Nagel had help talking through challenging trips from members of the Hog Farm, which would also make sense. More modern heads might describe the Watkins Glen scene as sketchy.

[Jim Koplik]

There was a degen vibe at Watkins Glen. There were a lot of people who were being carried out either because of heat related illnesses or because of drug overdoses problems. I don't remember seeing anybody that was freaking out. But I think it was more to do with overdoses that people were being carried out. It was a very mixed crowd. It was not all a bunch of enlightened psychonauts that were there.

[Narrator/Host]

Groups of people traveled from all over. Some of those groups included actual musical acts. Rebecca Adams was there with some of her musical pals.

[Rebecca Adams]

Outer Space was there as a group. I mean, I don't know if all of them were there, but I know they had backstage passes. So they had some credibility from somewhere.

[Narrator/Host]

The Outer Space Blues Band was one of the first Dead inspired bands in the Northeast. And on Jim Cooper's tape, you can hear Jim's taping partner talking to a woman about a band she'd encountered playing out in the campgrounds. Randy Burns and the Sky Dog Band.

[Jim Koplik]

Give me a time I got nothing I can offer you Give me a time that could make me Any more than what you knew Give me a time maybe just another day or two Give me a time Give me time Marianne.

[Narrator/Host]

Their band name apparently wasn't a tribute to Duane Allman. Randy Burns was a Greenwich Village songwriter who went electric. And by 1973, when acoustic again with Still On Our feet, released in June 1973, a month before Watkins Glen, what would turn out to be their last album, the Sky Dog Band seemingly took a bus to Watkins Glen to jam for the Heads. There are lots of pictures and newspaper accounts of various musical sessions going on in the campgrounds. Our buddy Michael Simmons, stage manager for the Lemmings, who'd seen the band at Nassau Coliseum in March, also went up with his own beat combo.

[Jim Koplik]

Went up with my band, it was called Lawrence and the Arabians. And my drummer had a Chevy van, which he used. You know, everybody had a Chevy van back in those days. As you, I'm sure you've heard, it was the hippie mode of transportation.

[Narrator/Host]

Back in the spring, Michael had gone to see the Dead at Nassau Coliseum with his friends from the comedy troupe the Lemmings. Check out our last episode for an encounter between certified Grateful Dead freak John Belushi and And Long island cops. Some of Michael's friends from the Lemmings had gone up too, including a car with John Belushi and another one of Michael's friends who had a job backstage.

[Jim Koplik]

This friend of mine, Sally Fisher, was working for the publicist who was promoting the concert. And so I said, well, I'll try to find you. I mean, you know, it was 650,000 people. I mean, it was not exactly easy to find people. But I went up to where the gate was and there was a guard there. And, you know, I'll tell you something, man, things were a lot more lax in those days. I just said to the guy at the gate, I'm a friend of Sally Fisher's. Can you get her for me? And he said, sure. So he went and got her, and she came over to the gate, which separated the audience from the backstage area.

[Narrator/Host]

The month before, the Lemmings had released their self titled debut lp. It was rock and roll comedy constructed around the conceit of the Woodchuck Festival of peace, love and death. John Belushi was the MC and clearly knew his festival humor. Okay, now the blue belladonna has been tested and its rukler stops.

[Jim Koplik]

They're getting into it, but the brown.

[Narrator/Host]

Strychnine has been cut with acid, so watch it. If you want to do half, see what happened to the other half, that's up to you.

[Jim Koplik]

And I said, hey, Sally, where's John? And she said, you won't believe it, but he's in the Dead's trailer entertaining them. So he was doing for the Dead what he'd been doing for the cops at Nassau Coliseum. He's basically doing shtick.

[Narrator/Host]

I got some special bummer announcements to make. This is for all you Grateful Dead freaks. The Grateful Dead are dead and they're grateful. But we managed to save Jerry Garcia's fingers.

[Jim Koplik]

They're still moving, all nine of them.

[Narrator/Host]

So don't worry, that's an image I love. John Belushi, several years before achieving any kind of national notoriety, charming his way into the Dead's backstage scene. Of course, Belushi and Dan Aykroyd would later open for the Dead as the Blues Brothers, but they were buddies long before then, too. It sounds like on the sheer force of Belushi's charisma. We mentioned this story to former Saturday Night Live writer Al Franken when we spoke with him for our Santa Barbara 73 episode earlier this year.

[Jim Koplik]

I can easily believe that, you know, he's Belushi. He was a charming, magnetic, bigger than Life guy. So that doesn't surprise me at all. She said, John was terrified of the helicopter ride. They got choppered in and choppered out. Yeah.

[Narrator/Host]

Michael loved the artist's plane, but it wasn't exactly a musical experience.

[Jim Koplik]

One of the things that I find personally interesting about Watkins Glen is that it represented a kind of music that was big in the early 70s, a kind of earthy, early form of Americana. You know, between the Dead, the Allman Brothers and the Band. It just didn't have a name yet, thankfully. And, you know, it was very big with young people like me, who had been a little too young to go to Woodstock, but were perfectly aged to go to watkins Glen in 1973. It just fit right in with the pocket of my generation. All three bands had a similar aesthetic in that they weren't show bands. All three bands were dedicated to the music.

[Narrator/Host]

Promoter Sepp Donahauer from Pacific Presentations had come for the party.

[Jim Koplik]

I was standing on the stage looking out. It's just like a picture burned in my bread. There was people to the horizon. I was like, going like, whoa. He just looked out and the people went to the Horizon.

[Narrator/Host]

In the 90s, Rebecca Adams became friends with Owsley Stanley.

[Rebecca Adams]

I did talk to Bear about Watkins Glenn once because, you know, he was interested in knowing that I had been there. And he told me he was standing up on the soundboard. But he said that he looked out into the audience and there was a snake moving through. A big snake moving through the crowd. And what's so funny about that is I just saw a post on Facebook where some guy claimed he was on the stage and looked out in the audience and saw these snakes going through the crowd. And I just said, oh, my God, you know. Independent verification.

[Narrator/Host]

Allman's roadie, Red Dog, wrote that when you stood on the stage and looked out at the crowd, you just saw bodies and bodies and bodies. The ground up front had a slight upgrade for about 200 yards, then dropped off and a lot of bodies disappeared. After about another 100 yards, bodies appeared again. It looked like a big funnel with a little end right in front of the stage. Backstage, John Ramsey and the other teens from Pirate station Concert Free Radio befriended Alembic sound wizard Ron Wickersham.

[John Ramsey]

When I got the tour backstage with Ron Wickersham, I saw one and he said there were two 16 track recording trucks there. And I said, why two? He says, two separate companies. One was God. Either the Hit, the Hit Factory or the Record Plant. I forget which, because we want to make sure it comes out Maybe my recollection is wrong, but I strongly remember him saying there were two 16 track recording trucks there. And I saw one of them.

[Buddy Thornton]

Buddy Thornton, the record plant truck showed up. They parked out behind the stage. I get out there with Johnny and check out the machines, the same basically set up as we had at rfk. I think I'm back there trying to take boxes opened and ready to put on machines and I hear some something about they're not going to give us a fee. I said, what's going on? And then I think Johnny went out there and talked. Dan Healy didn't want the record plant splitter box used because they thought it was going to degrade the sound out to the front of the house, right? So they're going back and forth about trying to convince Dan Healy that it's not going to screw up the front of the house because I got ground lift switches on the boxes and those buzzes that you hear in live recordings, you know what I mean? They knew what this guy knew what they're doing. And finally he let them split the feeds going to the truck, right? For the brothers set. Now for the Dead. I don't think they wanted anything recorded.

[Narrator/Host]

And as such, there don't seem to be multi track tapes of the Dead at Watkins Glen. Just the usual two track submixes by one of their equipment crew. And even those have some issues. But out in the crowd it was well covered.

[Jim Koplik]

Taper Jim Cooper the next day when we went for the concert, we got in as early as we could. And by the time we got up to the front, most of the good places had people there. But the real good places that had rained, so they had puddles. And what we did was Watkins Glen was great. They had pallets of Poland Spring water that people could take. You could take as much as you wanted. That's what saved the day. You take as much as you wanted. So we took a bunch. But what we did was then we took the empty pallets and we dragged them up there and put them in the, you know, the prime spot. Well, 40ft from the stage or whatever, between the stage and the soundboard, I think it was. So it's funny because in the pictures, there are pictures of the site afterwards with all the garbage and stuff. You can see the pallets there on some of the pictures. Pretty cool. People would come up on the pallets, they would say, oh yeah, wow, pallets. And said, go get more because it was the best spot. It was just, you know, you had like an inch or two of Water there that you didn't want to stand in.

[Narrator/Host]

Not all the tapers were as well prepared in those days. Many tapers had the names of their tape clubs printed on business cards. According to Lohr, when temperatures dropped, certain groups of New York tapers who hadn't been prepared resorted to burning the taper business cards to keep warm for the show.

[Jim Koplik]

The Dead played first, and it was daylight. It was like, I don't know if they started at noon or 1, or it was early. So we had the mics up in first act. We put them up, and the crowd wasn't that dense.

[Narrator/Host]

Promoters Jim Koplik and Shelley Finkel had a good working relationship with Sam Cutler and the Dead, but they discovered they still had some issues to resolve before the show could happen.

[Jim Koplik]

Sam always said to me, I'm one of them. Why he liked working with Shelley, with Shelley was a good businessman. Why he liked working with me is I was a Deadhead. I got it, I understood it. I knew what they wanted. I did what they did. So when Sam came to me with something that somebody else might think would be unreasonable, I got it totally. And we did it. And Sam spoke for the Dead, and I got it. I was one of them. Sam knew that when it came to money, he speak to Shelley. But when it came to parts of the facility that needed to be done that made the fans happy, he came to me.

[Narrator/Host]

But there was one problem that might be defined as structural and procedural as well as political.

[Jim Koplik]

We realized once we called Summer Jam and everybody called it Summer Jam, we said, oh, shit, we got to make sure now that the bands do a jam at the end of the show. So we went to the Dead first because we knew they were opening and they had to stay around for 12 hours. They wouldn't commit to the jam. The Ormans wouldn't commit to the jam. The band themselves wouldn't commit to the jam. So the whole day during the show on Saturday, I was scurrying around talking to Sam Cutler, Greg Allman, Jerry Bunky. God, you gotta get the bands to jam together. It's, you know, we called it Summer Jam. We screwed up. If you guys don't jam together, and they wouldn't commit to the very last minute that they would actually jam together. So we almost misnamed.

[Narrator/Host]

One of his problems was even getting the debt on stage to begin with.

[Jim Koplik]

Sam the businessman saw 600,000 people out in front and said, you only paid us for 150,000 people. We want a bonus. So I said, well, you know, we Only got paid for 150,000 people, so you really shouldn't get a bonus. And Sam looked at me and said, then we're not getting on stage. I go, if you don't get on stage, we're gonna have a riot. He goes, I know, that's why I'm saying it. I want $25,000. So we agreed to get $25,000, which we had on hand, thank goodness. And we said, Sam, please do me a favor. Don't tell anybody that we gave you this extra 25 grand. One of the men who made it all possible, Mr. Bill Graham. Just a few words, Phil.

[John Ramsey]

From Marin county in California to Watkins.

[Jim Koplik]

Glen in New York, here we go. The Grateful the Dead were great on the sound check, but I think it was just too early in the day for the Dead. No one probably slept the night before.

[Narrator/Host]

Throughout this episode we'll be sampling Jim's audience tapes of the show. Lee Ronaldo of Sonic Youth was there as a 17 year old dead freak.

[Jim Koplik]

It was nice because the night before they played in the evening and they were under the colored lights. And then the next day they kind of kicked things off in the afternoon. And so it was kind of like getting to see them in both incarnations. Like a daytime Dead set is kind of a different story than under the Stars Nighttime with all the colorful lights and things.

[Narrator/Host]

Steve Silberman was there as a teenager and would become the co author of Skeleton Key, A Dictionary for Deadheads.

[Steve Silberman]

Everybody thinks that the day of the actual concert was like really not good because they see it in light of comparison with the Soundcheck Jam. Even Dick Lot Vala used to dismiss the day of the concert as not very interesting. It was fine. It was actually a good show.

[Jim Koplik]

You know, I just remember they played beautifully. I really, really. I loved them so much at the time. And I remember feeling like, you know, it was just such an incredibly good concert.

[Steve Silberman]

It was a very special moment in their music, partly because of how Keith sounded and you know, he was playing a lot with the Offender Rhodes at the time and it's delicious. I love that incarnation of the Dead.

[Narrator/Host]

Jay Curley.

[Jim Koplik]

The playing in the band was the high point, I thought. I mean, I'd seen that Nassau show and I seen the September 72 shows and of course the 69 and 610 shows. And the Watkins Glen show was great and all. It wasn't as superlative as those other concerts, except for the playing in the band. I thought that was particularly awesome.

[Narrator/Host]

And though it's not a show where Deadologists Study every note. It was still a show to savor from beginning to end, especially if you were just starting to see the Dead. Todd Ellenberg had seen his first Dead show in September at the Stanley Theatre in Jersey City.

[Jim Koplik]

There's some things I remember very clearly. I remember being really taken with Eyes of the World because I'd never heard that before. And you know, I was definitely got just lost in that. That was like amazing. I was like, wow, this is new. And it was really something.

[Narrator/Host]

We'll have lots more to say about Eyes of the World soon. Todd was also ear witness to the band's experiment with the delay towers powered by Eventide's digital timers.

[Jim Koplik]

We were very close to the first set of relay speakers. It sounded good, sounded very good. I mean, it wasn't like being up front by the pa, but it still sounded good. It was definitely loud. Dan o' Hanklin the whole vibe was one of endurance.

[Narrator/Host]

Dano had made a raft out of Pallet several days previously, but they were just barely hanging on.

[Jim Koplik]

The crowd was packed. We were packed on our little raft. Everybody was sweaty and greasy and just miserable. And we were digging on the music that was the one common denominator. And we were pretty much digging on each other. And we had a couple of people that were not in our satellite social groups that were very attracted to our little pirate raft and came and hung out with us. And there were two guys from Great Britain came and hung out with us. I don't know why. They were attracted to the Jolly Roger, perhaps. You know, I think the English pirates were the first ones to use that. But one guy was like, oh yeah, the Grateful Dead, they're great. But you know, Yardbirds, they were a great band too, man. They were so good and they were so good in concert. Just like the Grateful Dead, he was saying. And I'm like, oh, that's cool, man.

[Steve Silberman]

Steve Silberman you know, nobody had water except there were all these boda bags going around in the audience, which were these leather bags that would be filled with wine or water. And, you know, after a while, like I was feeling really weird. And I had not intentionally taken psychedelics before then, so I was out of my mind really. You know, it was like, you know, it was like 15 year old little nudnik running around with no sleeping bag, like tripping for the first time. It's pretty funny.

[Narrator/Host]

Rebecca Adams.

[Rebecca Adams]

It was a big expedition to go to a porta potty or to get water. It was, you know, it was a lot of fun because we knew we were at the biggest party on Earth, but it was also challenging. It was packed, and you had to, like, keep your space that if you didn't keep your space, it was gone. We could hear it perfectly well, but it was really hard to see. And people were on top of anything they could get on top of. The outhouses all had people sitting on them. When you went in to use the porta Potty, there would be all these people's legs over the doors. And there was this truck that a lot of people were standing on, too. So people were planning to get better views.

[Narrator/Host]

Rebecca's photos include one with people sitting on top of some building related to the racetrack's infrastructure. But in general, it was a mass of humanity swarmed over the speedway. Comparing an aerial photograph with online maps. I think the stage was in a big open field a little bit east of the racetrack itself, just south of where the Nature Lux and Stars luxury Glamp grounds is currently located. Rebecca Adams would earn her PhD and become the first sociologist to seriously study the Dead's fan base. Though she'd been seeing the dead casually since 1970, in 1973, Rebecca was still making new discoveries.

[Rebecca Adams]

I do remember being surprised by the Confederate flag. There was at least one Confederate flag. There may have been more than one. And I remember someone saying to me, oh, that's an Ahman's Brothers band. And since I'd never heard them live and had no sense of what an Allman Brothers band would be like, that was new information to me that Allman Brothers bands were Southern. It could be just that. It was regional pride. I mean, Almond Brothers pride could have been just like that pirate flag. You know, we have this Confederate flag because we want to find people we know who are Southern.

[Narrator/Host]

I suppose this is a decent time to mention that three flags flew from the Watkins Glen stage itself to represent the three bands. The American flag, the Canadian flag, and the Confederate flag.

[Rebecca Adams]

Among an older cohort of music bands down here, it symbolized the south and Southern pride, not pride in everything the south had ever done.

[Narrator/Host]

Still kind of unsettling. Bob Student was there with his Super 8 camera.

[Jim Koplik]

The second day, I kind of walked down where the big structure was and the sound crew and climbed up there to get some shots. Then after too many people climbed up, they told us all to get down. And then I actually went to the front of the stage as far as I could get, and you can see some video clips of that. But when you got up close, the stage was like 20ft off the ground. You couldn't see anyone, so you back up a little bit. The temperature was in the 80s today at the concert, and by late afternoon, food and water supplies were beginning to run low. But that didn't stop the music. It's scheduled to go on until midnight. Officials here agree that mainly the crowd has been peaceful and good humored. And it's all very different from Woodstock, where there was a drastic shortage of food, water and sanitary facilities. After that, New York State toughened its requirements for such gatherings. And at Watkins Glen there was plenty of free water, a thousand portable toilets, and a good supply of food.

[Narrator/Host]

Dead cast pal Gary Lambert was a veteran of countless dead shows since 1968, including Woodstock. Watkins Glen wasn't for him either.

[Gary Lambert]

I revered the band utterly. I respected the Allman Brothers. I was never a massive Allman Brothers fan, but I knew they were great at what they did. But the lore of that seemed worth trying out. But I burned out on the hundreds of thousands of hippies stranded art form the first time it happened. And the experience did not improve the second time for me. I wasn't there in time for the sound check, which of course now everyone remembers, if anything, more fondly than the show itself. For an event that is considered so monumental, for me, it was a kind of an annoyance. Having been to and hated Woodstock, Watkins Glenn was kind of like we got suckered into something again. I got pretty close at one point during the Dead set. And, you know, I was impressed with the sound for what it was. But if you were way off to the sides or, I mean, people were more than half a mile away from the music. So even though they improved things greatly over Woodstock in that regard, and the Dead insisted on last minute measures to make it even better. In a space that sprawling and with that many people and delay towers not as sophisticated as they would become. There was no real way that they could cover all that territory and serve the music to all those people. And I a little ashamed to say, but we left at the end of the Dead's first set. It was just, this is not worth it. Getting out of here is going to be hell if we wait for the rest of the crowd. We made all those calculations and we fled. And I haven't really regretted it since. Within weeks of Watkins Glen, you could see the Grateful Dead at Roosevelt. Roosevelt Stadium was the biggest place they were playing outside of Watkins Glen at that point with the band. In fact, it was not a real hard question for me to say, do I really want to be here?

[Narrator/Host]

Brian Schiff and his crew were Also trying to make their exit. Their car, the Oy Vega, had broken down en route, and they'd hitched a ride with a local named Ron.

[Jim Koplik]

So we start walking down, and now here's a really crazy part. We run into this Ron again, because he decided he was leaving too. Finally, we get down to the road and many, many people had the same idea that we did, but no one could get their car out because they were all, like I said, it was like a parking lot all facing in one direction. So everyone is there where everyone starts breaking in the cars. They're using hangers, they're using everything you could imagine. I guess most of the cars were locked, I don't remember, but most of them were. But in those days it was a little easier. And everyone was basically breaking in the cars, putting them in gear, taking off the emergency brake, and like, pushing them off the side of the road so that they could turn their car around to get out.

[Narrator/Host]

Alan Paul is the author of the great new book Brothers and Sisters, which features the inside dope on the Allmans and their chaos making. Manager Phil Walben of Capricorn Records.

[Jim Koplik]

So the Dead is playing, and somewhere in there, either while they were playing or in between or when the band was playing, Phil Walden shows up. He comes down in a helicopter and he goes up to Bunky Odom and Willie Perkins, who's the road manager, and he says, what kind of overage are we getting on this deal? And they say, well, you know, we're not getting any overage. This was a flat money deal. And he goes, I just came in on a helicopter. Do you have any idea how many people are out there? You know, the hell with this, we're getting more money. And they say, well, it's a free show. And Phil apparently just goes completely bonkers. What do you mean, free show? We don't play free shows. To hell with that. He goes absolutely insane. And he says, look, you go figure out a way to get more money or we're pulling the band. So Bunky says, oh, look, let me take care of this. So he goes over to Red Dog and Twigs London, who are in charge of the stage for the Allmer Brothers. And he says, look, we're not going to leave, we're not going to pull out of here, but we have to at least be ready to act like we are. So just be ready to start moving gear when I tell them.

[Narrator/Host]

Like Sam Cutler, Bunky Odom got his band more money. Jim Koplik.

[Jim Koplik]

Bunky did it in a very polite manner. Sam, you know, threatened us, but we didn't have another $25,000 on us. So I had to put somebody in a helicopter on that Saturday, flying them back to Connecticut, go to a couple of ticket outlets and pick up $25,000 and come back with 25 grand in 20s and fives and tens. And we dumped it out from a paper bag onto a table. And the Allmans got their 25 grand in 20s, fives and tens in order for them to play. And I think they took the stage sometime around 8 o' clock at night. But we spent most of the day in Connecticut. This fellow who's no longer with us, Brad, who was our ticket manager, went and collected the extra 25 grand. So, yeah, we got extortion, but we had to do it. All these years later, I'm interviewing Bunkie and I'm interviewing Sam Cutler. Neither of them knew that the other until I told them. They didn't know that the other guys had gotten more money. And both of them ultimately were relieved because they had carried a certain amount of guilt with them for decades about sort of screwing over their partner. Because, you know, Bunky and Sam really like each other. They still, all these years later, they have great respect for each other, which, again, that's why they were able to work this out and why the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead quit playing together after those guys were no longer there. So Bunkie literally said to me, I told him the story about cutler demanding the $20,000. And he said, you know, I never knew that, but I feel really good about that. I'm so glad he got more money, because he said, what did Sam say? So I said, well, let me call Sam back. So I told Sam about once I had gotten the facts about the Allman Brothers payment, and Sam's actual reaction was good on him. When Brad turned the bag over, his underwear came out with the money. They didn't want to touch the money. I go, okay, fine, don't touch the money. Then they said, no, we'll touch the money.

[Narrator/Host]

And while the notorious folk rock shark Albert Grossman was backstage, he apparently didn't attempt to renegotiate his client's contract based on the new crowd size.

[Jim Koplik]

Ironically, I think the band probably had the perfect time. Really. I mean, they weren't too early and they weren't too late.

[Narrator/Host]

Perfect might be a strong word for it, but I'd love the tag team introduction by Sam Cutler and Bill Graham ready for the award show circuit.

[Jim Koplik]

We wanted to make an especially warm welcome to our friends and musicians on.

[Buddy Thornton]

Stage because we waited a long time.

[Jim Koplik]

To hear music which is real close to our hearts. Bill it's been such a long time. Like we're waiting for good wine is worth the wait.

[Narrator/Host]

The band released their own Live at Watkins glen album in 1994, and it sounds great, as you can tell, but there's just one problem. Almost none of it is actually from Watkins Glen. That version of Chuck Berry's Back to Memphis is an outtake from Moondog Matinee, with added crowd noise. Here's a bit of the real thing, thanks to Jim Cooper. We'll revisit the band's fake Watkins Glenn album later in the episode.

[Jim Koplik]

Jay Curly the Dead played to a nice bright sunny day, and as soon as they got off the stage, the clouds came and then the band started to play. Hey, man, you know what?

[Narrator/Host]

It's getting kind of cloudy.

[Rebecca Adams]

You know.

[Narrator/Host]

I think if we all really concentrated a million of us, we can make it rain, man. So let's hear rain, Chad, and let's make it rain, okay?

[Jim Koplik]

Ring, ring, ring, ring.

[Narrator/Host]

Eric Nelson had driven from Ohio, especially excited to see the band.

[Eric Nelson]

Moondog Matinee had not come out yet. Again, chronology. Moondog Matinee would be released in October a few months later, and the band came out and did five or six songs, if I recall, that were oldies, so right there it wasn't quite what you wanted. And I remember vividly the weather getting worse and worse.

[Narrator/Host]

Steve Silberman the band moment that blew.

[Steve Silberman]

My mind was when the lightning and thunder started during the band set, and you could literally, like see lightning striking around the arena and they were still playing.

[Narrator/Host]

There's a photo from the band set that I love, with the speaker system half covered in rain gear. Surrounding Richard Manuel Steinway is a motley crew of people looking like drunks at a piano bar. Phil Lesh is leaning on the piano, Bill Graham is covering the electric keyboard with a tarp, and Keith Godshow stands at the back, smiling, seemingly watching Richard Manuel's hands over his shoulders. The band set was also the occasion of the weekend's only on site fatality. Eric Alden.

[Jim Koplik]

There was that weird incident with the parachute guy, you know, catching fire. There was more than one guy that parachuted that day, and they had flares taped to their ankles, sort of, you know, to make smoke as they came down. And then the one guy caught fire and died, you know, which was kind of a downer when you heard it in the crowd. Todd Ellenberg I remember seeing them come down. A couple friends in my Group good friends saw the body in the woods, which was the woods to the left of the stage. One of my friends was really high and started freaking out, and my other friend said, you know, push them away. Let's get the fuck out of here.

[Narrator/Host]

According to local newspaper reports, Willard Smith was a veteran parachutist and instructor, a veteran of some 2000 jumps who jumped out of a plane armed with flares, which misfired and ended in Smith's grisly death. The rain came soon. I spoke with the late Harvey Lubar, co founder of the Hell's Honkies Tape Club, when I wrote my book Heads, and I'm happy to have some of his voice here.

[Jim Koplik]

After the Dead set, when the Dead played, man, it had to be 95 degrees and then it started pouring like Woodstock. If you ever listen to the band set, you could hear the thunder.

[Narrator/Host]

The band did release part of this segment as too wet to work on the across the Great Divide box set. But given their record with archival releases, I'm not sure that thunder wasn't overdubbed, just like the Woodstock soundtrack. For reasons we'll get to largely. I don't hear it anywhere on Jim Cooper's audience tape.

[Jim Koplik]

I had plastic coverings for everybody that I went with and we made a little tent. It was see through because I'd been to enough concerts that people in New York would throw things at you if you had an umbrella because you'd be blocking their view of the stage. But if you had see through plastic and you just put it over yourself, you know, and you made a hole so you had fresh air coming in. Nobody ever complained.

[Narrator/Host]

Though. There wasn't a central shakedown street of vendors as Dead shows would become known for. There was still bootleg merch around Todd Ellenberg.

[Jim Koplik]

We were in back, pretty close, just in back of the first set of Relay Towers. And there was like some stand right by us selling T shirts and like head shop items and stuff like that. Was not official shirts. I don't think there were any. I don't think there was any official merch. Not at that thing. No way.

[Narrator/Host]

As far as I know, the only official Watkins Glen shirts were the ones produced for the very large community backstage, not sold publicly. Hit us [e-mail] if you've got other info. The rainstorm was the band's legendary Watkins Glen moment, when the group exited the stage, except for organist Garth Hudson, partially shielded from the rain. Jay Curley.

[Jim Koplik]

And it started to rain. So they all left the stage again because they didn't want to get electrocuted. And they hung out. Everybody was hanging out, waiting for the rain to pass. But then Garth Hudson got up on his organ, which was way in the back of the stage, out of the rain, and proceeded to play Genetic method for like 45min.

[Narrator/Host]

On the band's music from Big Pink. The song Chest fever featured a 40 second organ introduction by the wizard Garth Hudson live. It had become a solo spotlight for Hudson, growing ever larger. And on Rock of Ages, the live album the group released in 1972, it received its own name, the Genetic Method. The version at Watkins glen was only eight minutes when caught on tape, but still, eight minutes of Garth Hudson is like 45 minutes on any other planet. Eric Nelson A point though, from again.

[Eric Nelson]

Someone who was there. The rain during the band set wasn't necessarily a bad thing because everyone was really hot and to get kind of soaked and wet wasn't the worst thing in the world. And once Garth came out to kill time with his magnificent organ solo, no one was feeling a tremendous amount of pain. It clearly threw the band's set momentum off Harvey Lubar.

[Jim Koplik]

Not too far from us was a woman with a newborn, and she didn't even have a freaking umbrella with a newborn. So I had these long strips of plastic and we gave them to her to cover the baby and we got drenched.

[Rebecca Adams]

Rebecca Adams the rain was really awful. And by this time we had joined with other people from Trinity. And there's one guy in those photographs Dick has, who has a little kind of fishing hat on. He taught me something about going to concerts. He had a milk carton and he brought all of his stuff in in the milk carton and turned it upside down and sat on it during the rainstorm and he gave me one and I had a poncho. So I sat down on this milk cart with my poncho and kind of just sat there, you know, listening to the music during the rain. But we still got really drenched and it was muddy and there were people not right where we were, but we could hear them and see them, you know, if we walked a little, who were sliding in the mud. And, you know, we knew from Woodstock that was something people did, but we did not participate in that. But I remember I was soaking and that's when I discovered the person I had gone to the show with had not brought the dry clothes in. He had decided that his pack was too heavy and he left them. I had carried in what I had promised to carry in. So we had food. I don't remember what but we had something to eat, so that was not good news.

[Jim Koplik]

Jay Curley and then the band came back on. They went into a chest fever. Of course, we were campers, so we had our ponchos, we had our boots, you know, we were, we were ready. But that band said that's when the rain happened. And then after the band went off, then it started getting dark and it was just misty. It was like down on the bayou time.

[Narrator/Host]

Sometime in the mid afternoon, the gang from Concert Free Radio finally achieved the original goals of their station.

[John Ramsey]

The whole idea was to broadcast the concerts to the masses, you know, both on premises and off. We didn't know the delay towers were there. A lot of people that went to woodstock, I'd say 80% of the people never even heard it. Being facetious, but the sound was minimal. There were just a bunch of cabinets on the stage. So we wanted to try and help people if they brought FM radio so they'd be able to hear it. And then we supplement that with our own programming.

[Narrator/Host]

So the Connecticut teenagers outfitted their own radio studio in an rv, worked their way backstage, got on the air and created possibly the biggest pirate radio station in North American history. But they also made a rookie mistake.

[John Ramsey]

We got there and set up at the press area, the closest we could get, which was a good 500ft from the stage. And we didn't have enough cable. I think we brought 150ft of cable. Being naive to thinking we'd be close enough.

[Narrator/Host]

They found their savior in Ron Wickersham, founder of Alembic, who'd helped design the delay towers for the festival.

[John Ramsey]

We got to meet at the festival of Ron Winkersham, who was, I think the owner, if not the head of the Alembic sound system, which was the wall of sound. And he said to me, I spent a lot of time with him, he said, you know, we've always wanted to do low power broadcasts of our concerts because, you know, the dead are always very much pro recording. You want to come on the road with us and do that. And I had a girlfriend at home, I had family, I had other stuff going on, so I turned it down. And who knows if I'd even be alive today if I'd done that. But he said they wanted to broadcast, but they never had anybody to do it.

[Narrator/Host]

In the 1980s, longtime radio enthusiast Dan Healy would occasionally send out low powered FM signals too. These days, streaming and satellite radio have pretty much solved the problem of permacasting shows.

[John Ramsey]

Wasn't until Saturday, I would say midday Maybe the band was playing. I forget the order that Ron Winkersham, he'd been by a couple of times. He said, well, why don't you broadcast the show? We said, we don't have enough wire. And he goes, you know, we don't have any wire left over either, because we use thousands of feet of wire. But if you want to, you can bring the transmitter up on the stage and we'll plug it into the board mix. He gave me a backstage pass, an onstage pass, and a special T shirt. That was the final. There were three levels of security to get up there, as you can imagine. So I. You know, we signed off. I grabbed this 90 pound transmitter, which was half of my weight at the time, and lugged it some 500ft and then upped on the scaffolding. I was on stage right near all the Macintosh amps, so it's pretty cool to see all those Mac 2300s all doing their thing. And then climbed up the three or four stories up on the scaffolding to put the antenna up there with duct tape. And then he said, you know, I want to give you a feed of the whole mix, but I can't. We've lost the intercom to the sound booth out front, and we've sent runners out there, but they never come back. He said, the best I can give you is a vocal mix. So that we got a vocal mix, which from. I never listened to it because I didn't have a portable radio, but people said it sounded pretty good. So maybe it wasn't just vocals, or maybe the vocal mics were picking up other stuff. And I said, I'm thinking to myself, if I got a tour backstage, I got fed. I met the roadies to the Grateful Dead, which is pretty impressive. They had those spotlight trucks back there, which were neat, and then a couple of big above ground swimming pools. But I said to myself, I'm not leaving this transmitter because I'll never get it back. So I spent the whole day and night up on stage, and that was fine until I was in shorts and a T shirt because it was a hot day in July. That night it started raining and it got really chilly, so I was freezing up there. But no way I was gonna leave it until it was all over and I could bring the transmitter back because I figured I'd never see it again.

[Narrator/Host]

By the time the sun went down, Steve Silberman really needed to go.

[Steve Silberman]

I literally remember not being able to pee for, like a full day. Like, you know, maybe the main concert day or whatever. The actual performance was good, but at some point I had to go pee. I couldn't hold it anymore. And I was tripping balls and didn't even know what that was, you know, so I'm like wandering around. I do remember slipping in and out of thinking that I was back home in New York, you know, like I didn't know where I was. And plus it was dark and I was dehydrated and, you know, all these things. And then finally when I did get to pee, it was in a portisan that was on fire because people had set the portisans on fire. So I'm literally running into this portisan that's on fire. Peeing, peeing more than I ever had to in my entire life.

[Jim Koplik]

Alan Paul going last and being the final act of the night turned out to be like a terrible thing. Because it rained, it got cold, people were exhausted. People have been out there all weekend. So the extent that Phil demanded they go laugh, it was kind of a stupid demand that backfired. Anyhow. Jay Curley and did a nice bright sunny day. Then the band had rain and then the Allman Brothers had fog.

[Narrator/Host]

Though the Allman Brothers played last, their sets were shorter than the Dead's. About a half hour of music less, not counting the Super Jam. As with the Dead, it was a perfectly solid Allman set. Come and Go Blues even made it to their official 1976 live album, Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil$G. Which means that there are actually some sweet sounding multi tracks of the Allman set and the Super Jam beyond. Backstage, Tim Meehan's friends had gone AWOL from their security job and had made it to the free beer.

[Jim Koplik]

We proceeded to party and have a couple beers from the horse troughs. And one of the dudes from the Great Neck house was a guy named P.J. o'. Connor. He was the tank commander from Got drafted and sent to Korea instead of Vietnam. And he was a character with. You know, by that time he'd grown his hair out and had a beard and a cowboy hat on and his Watkins Glenn security T shirt. And we were hanging out back there in this little community of mobile homes or trailers, job trailers. And somebody shouts out across the trash barrels, hey, pj, you old son of a. Son of a. Whatever. And it turns out it was one of his crew that was in his tank in Korea, another army vet who was now a roadie for the band. And then that dude went back in the trailer, produced a bottle of tequila, and within 10 minutes were out in this little Impromptu courtyard, slugging tequila with, you know, Robbie Robertson came out, and he certainly had his share.

[Narrator/Host]

The Almond set became the backdrop for Steve Silberman's further adventures.

[Steve Silberman]

I decided that I needed to get away from the crowd at some point. So the music is going on. So I wander sort of up the hills away from the crowd. And I suddenly come across a Lover's Leap where there are cars parked with, like, local kids, you know, making out in the cars and stuff. And they had their radios on and loud and tuned to the pirate radio station that was broadcasting the show. And what was so wild was that because of the way that sound travels through the air. I was actually hearing it come out of the car radios slightly before it came out of the valley behind me or the glen behind me. So there was this weird temporal displacement involving the sound delay towers of the car radios. So that added to an even more extreme unreality feeling. And then I walked back and I think I started walking towards the highway because I decided to hitchhike back. Because I don't remember if the highway was still closed or whatever. But it was hard to get in.

[Narrator/Host]

And out of the Glen Lee Ronaldo.

[Jim Koplik]

Especially with the rain break. It really went on and, you know, nobody minded that in the least. I mean, everybody was there for it. It was great. We were close to the stage and we were not leaving, that's for sure.

[Narrator/Host]

Eric Nelson.

[Eric Nelson]

One of the reasons I have such little memory of the Allman Brothers set was I had, in my innocence a Quaalude and Jack Daniels cocktail. Which pretty much knocked me out for the entire two hours of the Allman Brothers. And I came to as the jam was going and I was fine and.

[Narrator/Host]

Locked in the Super Jam. Late Saturday night, early Sunday morning was what Minnie had come for. Though Eric took it for granted that there was going to be a summer jam. At the end of the summer Jam, Jim Koplik had spent part of the day trying to make sure that actually went down.

[Eric Nelson]

Everyone knew there was going to be a big jam. And I, of course, being a Robbie Robertson fanatic, couldn't wait to see Robbie Robertson rule the jam. And I was quite disappointed in what wound up happening.

[Narrator/Host]

Just like Eric. The tapes were a bit messy. Making the total picture a little bit confusing to reconstruct. It began around 2 in the morning when Rick Danko and members of the band joined the Allmans for Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come. And the Buddy Holly hit Raining in My Heart. Before members of the Dead came out.

[Jim Koplik]

Chuck Lavelle it was a fun experience. I do have one memory of the band, and that is, I guess maybe it was Danko or Manuel, I'm not sure. But anyway, the band started the song. I Was Born by the River. A Change Is Going to Come, right? Sam Cooke song. And whoever was singing it, and I can't remember exactly, but they were willing greased and pretty well inebriated. And so the lyrics were being slurred and it was a pretty sloppy performance. And of course, it's a very slow song. And I remember the audience kind of scratching their heads and looking at the stage and started booing, you know, and whoever was singing said, oh, oh, you don't. You don't like that one, huh? Okay, okay, I got another one, I got another one. And he started the same song again. I Was Born. And it was a humorous moment. So that one didn't go over so well, I'm afraid.

[Narrator/Host]

On Jim Cooper's audience tape, people are getting restless, for sure. Richard Manuel led them in if youf've Ever Been Mistreated. And Rick Danko sang a song that often gets labeled La Dee Da Day based on its chorus, but no author has ever been identified. Given that the band had just recorded their covers album, Moondog Matinee, I assume they did it at those sessions. And it sounds a bit New Orleans ish to me. If you can identify it, get in touch. Chuck Lavelle.

[Jim Koplik]

It was such an impromptu thing and there didn't seem to be a real solid plan as to what we were going to do. Just somebody holler out a song in this key and okay, we go. You know, it was fun, obviously, just the fact that we were all playing together in some way, shape or form. So it was a joy to be involved in the jam as well.

[Narrator/Host]

Jay Curley.

[Jim Koplik]

I remember the jam being really interesting. I also remember Rick Danko, he was really high in the interlude between songs. He took this wooden chair and put it in the middle of the stage, had an acoustic guitar and started wailing away at the guitar. Nobody could hear him, barely anybody could see him. But he was having a lovely time in the middle of the stage, whacking away at this guitar.

[Narrator/Host]

There are a few moments on the tape that could map to this, and you can go look in yourself if you want.

[Eric Nelson]

It's been a long day of music. A lot of sunburned, burned out people, including burned out musicians. And I remember looking forward to seeing Robbie Robertson wail because I felt his playing in his set had been very perfunctory and didn't sound, frankly, as good as Rock of Ages. And as the evidence, the audio evidence demonstrates, Robbie almost plays nothing and Jerry pretty much takes it over. And Garcia was on, I think, the entire time. You know, I sensed it then and you can hear it now, that the traditional Grateful Dead blow big gig theorem did not apply to Watkins Glen. Their main set on Saturday was good. The sound check was spectacular, and Garcia really came to play during the Jam last episode.

[Narrator/Host]

Donna Jean told us about hanging out with Danko backstage and singing Percy Sledge's Warm and Tender Love, which she'd sung on when she was just 19 years old. Danko and Garcia sang it on stage during the Super Jam, but I think Donna and Keith may have coptered out of Watkins Glen stage left by then, though it's plenty fun to hear Danko and Garcia duet.

[Jim Koplik]

Let me rock you.

[Narrator/Host]

But the real juice came during Mountain Jam. Ihors lebecki the other thing that I.

[Jim Koplik]

Remember is the Mountain Jam, which was like the final jam that everybody played on. That was actually pretty good. I was surprised, you know, that was like so late at night. But it really sounded good.

[Steve Silberman]

Steve Silberman I remember walking towards the highway as members of the Allman Brothers and the Dead played Mountain Jam. Actually, as I believe, maybe I'm conflating memories, but I believe I saw the first light of dawn. Like that's the only dead, you know, one hears all the time. Oh, they used to play all night.

[Narrator/Host]

While a few of their New Year shows in San Francisco would continue to see dawn, this might have been the last truly late night Dead jam on the East Coast. Todd Ellenberg had been separated from his friends at the beginning of the day, but he'd driven, so he had no worry of being stranded. He just had to find the car.

[Jim Koplik]

I didn't stay to the end of the jam, but finally, and it took me a long time to find my way back to where we were camping. I was really lost walking on the race track. I did find the race track, which was kind of weird. I thought, that's it, you know, I'm just going to wander around all night. Maybe I'll find some place to crash out. Because by this point I don't think I got back to my campsite till like probably three in the morning or something. I don't know. It was very late and I was all alone, you know, just kind of wandering around.

[Narrator/Host]

He got back to the Dodge Dart eventually. In the crowd, the end of weekend vibes were getting a little degen Dano.

[Jim Koplik]

So the crowd Starts to thin out. And of course, being that I was kind of like the host of the pirate raft, even though I kind of hitchhiked there, all my friends left before me, except for one other person. As the crowd thinned out, there were a bunch of bikers who had actually pulled up in kind of a semicircle in front of us. I don't know when that had happened. And they were all just kind of sitting on their big choppers, relaxing on their seat right in front of us. And one guy was shooting up with one of those little makeshift works that has a little balloon on the end of it. And I'm just looking at this and I'm like, hey, this is a real slice of life, huh? And then they roll home, you know, they start up their hurleys and they take off. And I turned to my friend and I said, that must have been speed, right? I mean, they're shooting up speed so they can do the trip. That must be it. But it was, it was Djen Tim Meehan. It moved into the Mountain Jam segment where we all went back. And at that point, security had been somewhat lax, so my button didn't matter anymore. And like, you know, my guys were going up on the staging and we were hanging out on the side. But my last cognizant memory of that night was the Allman Brothers playing Mountain Jam with, you know, the Dead and the band jumping in with him and Robbie Robertson. I was off wing of the stage at that point, but I saw Robbie almost pitch himself over this into the 12 foot mosh pit. Somebody grabbed him by the belt, made the save. Then as I was getting back to head to my tent, I certainly had enough party and enough festivities and the band was still playing on, or I should say the. The Allman Brothers were still playing the Mountain Jam. And I looked up on the staging, high up there, there was my buddy PJ with his Watkins Glenn security T shirt on his cowboy hat, rocking out, dancing on top of the staging.

[Narrator/Host]

At the end of the night, Sam Cutler returned to the stage.

[Jim Koplik]

I looked at my watch at the time, was 3:30, three good numbers. Hey, let's all thank each other and all the musicians one more time for making this such a groovy concert. Thanks to the musicians for playing and all you people for. And also thanks to all the people who helped us get it together. Watkins Club was out of sight when.

[John Ramsey]

We shut down the transmitter which was on the stage for the jam at the end, like three or four o'clock Sunday morning. We shut it down and I carried it back to the studio so we could resume broadcasting. And for whatever reason, because I'm a radio geek, I'm tuning around the FM radio that we had there while my ray transmitter is warming up. And it had to have been a college station. I hear the station another station say, you know, normally we stay on all night, but we're going off early tonight because everybody's listening to that other station. If I didn't hear that myself, if my best friend told me that, I probably wouldn't believe it because it's so ridiculous. But I heard it myself. It had to be some college station that was getting calls because I'm in a given radio DJ doesn't know who's listening to what, and a commercial station is not going to shut off no matter what because they've got commercials to run. But if it was a college dj, he probably got a whole bunch of calls from people saying, hey, have you heard of this other station that's on? And then he found out about it and he said, well, why bother to broadcast for the next two hours because nobody else is listening.

[Narrator/Host]

Concert free radio couldn't go anywhere anyway and kept on broadcasting as people started to gather themselves for their trips home. Jay Curley.

[Jim Koplik]

I had smoked all my weed during that long, long day, and I didn't have anything more when the concert was over and the lights came up. But I looked in the mud behind our warehouse pallets and there was 8 ounces in nice tight Ziploc bags of weed. There was a half a pound sitting there in the mud. And so I kept one bag and passed seven out. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. There was a whole half a pound sitting in the mud. I'm telling you, that's what I smoked on Jerry's birthday a couple days later.

[Narrator/Host]

Sweet ground score. I'm going to go ahead and assume that Jay found the same immaculate ounce that Rebecca found earlier, still floating around each successive dead freak trying to find its owner until it arrived at Jay.

[Jim Koplik]

My one friend who was left. We walked out. It was in the morning. We weren't going to get much sleep. We walked away from the festival grounds, but we knew we had to get some sleep. So we just passed out right in the grass, in the long, 5 inch long grass, which was already wet with dew, with no sleeping bags or anything. Fortunately, it was hot, it was warm at night. We got a couple of hours of sleep and then woke up feeling absolutely filthy, cruddy and miserable, and then hitchhiked back to Fairfield county from the finger Legs.

[Rebecca Adams]

Rebecca Adams the place was trashed. I mean, I remember when we left, you had to walk over the debris and. But in fairness to the people who attended the shows, there was no place to put garbage.

[Narrator/Host]

One thing that I think is wild about Watkins Glen is that by the end of the weekend, the front of the stage was covered with graffiti. Degen indeed. Apparently there are still legends of cars left abandoned in the woods, told every year by sportscasters. When the races return to Watkins Glen.

[Rebecca Adams]

There were big piles of garbage. When you would walk with your trash and see one of those big piles and put your trash on one of those big piles, but even those were few and far between. Probably people had just started those piles out of desperation to clear some room.

[Jim Koplik]

Promoter Jim Kopleck the next day, the sun comes up and Shelly and I are standing on the stage. And I have a picture of us standing on stage and we look out onto the field and I remember looking at Shelly and said, we forgot something. And he goes, what do we forget? I said, we forgot garbage cans. We had forgotten to put garbage cans in the audience. The place was a mess. It was disgusting. And we had made this deal with this cleaning company called Schmatz Cleaners. And we were paying them $5,000 to clean up the site. Afterwards, when they saw the site and we had not put out garbage cans, they said, we want $50,000 to clean it up. Which was a ton of money. I mean, listen, the almonds got 110 grand. The dead got 110 grand, and the band got 75 grand. The cleaning company wanted 50 grand. So we fought with them to get the price down. And they had us over, over a barrel. We had no choice. The state health department came in later that Monday and said, if you don't clean this place up, we're going to arrest you and Shelly. And so we agreed to pay them the $50,000 to clean it up. But that was the memory I have most. It was an absolute pile of garbage out there. 600,000 people had nowhere to throw anything.

[Narrator/Host]

David Dow with CBS News.

[Jim Koplik]

The end of what may be the largest mass gathering in American history. Left in its wake a now familiar problem. Traffic. A crowd estimated at 600,000 clogging the same roads it clogged coming in just a day earlier in the. In the sea of mud. They leave behind another problem. Miles and miles of beer cans and wine bottles. Yet there is surprise here at the relatively small number of serious problems.

[Narrator/Host]

Over to IHOR Slabicki with the Dead cast. News flash.

[Jim Koplik]

Leaving Watkins Glen Uzole, I'm gonna say most of it was downhill. So a lot of cars just coasted out of there. So it wasn't like, you know, you're sitting in somebody's car and they're driving. They're just, you know, I guess unlocked the ignition. I don't know if unlocked the ignition or the column so they could steer. But it was just coasting, which was, you know, kind of cool. You're seeing all these cars and no sound, you know, no engine sounds or anything like that. Police say it may be midweek before the last appreciative rock fan has left here. Another week before the sea of debris is entirely cleaned up. Bigger than Woodstock, they say, here in all dimensions. I ended up going to Watkins Glen with my friend. And after that we went camping in the Adirondacks. So it kind of worked out, you know, we're already at Watkins Glen and it was just hitchhiking another hundred miles or so up to the Adirondack State park, which I think was like. Took two rides to get there.

[Narrator/Host]

Rebecca Adams and her friend had to get back to their car. The friend who hadn't carried the dry clothes from the car into the concert site.

[Rebecca Adams]

I also remember coming back the day after the concert and it was still there, you know, so it wasn't a total disaster. But we drove to my parents house in Connecticut. And I remember telling my mother on the way into my parents house, he can't come in, I'm finished with him.

[Narrator/Host]

Steve Silberman was back in New York near the first blink of dawn.

[Steve Silberman]

My very last moments of getting home from Watkins Glen are very funny memory, which is that I stuck my thumb out when I got to the highway and pretty quickly got picked up by. By a couple of sort of guy friends, guys in their early 20s. And they were wonderful, very, very sweet. And they drove me all the way to Staten island actually. And for the first time in my life, I took the Staten island ferry to get to Queens, I think, or wherever I was going. And I remember seeing someone reading. I forget if it was the New York Post or the Daily News on the ferry. And the big headline said 500,000 hippies drown in sea of mud or something like that. It was like I was just there and I was in fact covered with mud for sure. I must have been quite a spectacle. But even though it was not a great experience, really being there, it left me with a good feeling. And so I basically ended up going to 8674 and becoming a Deadhead. Stone Deadhead for life after that. I have a picture of myself taken a week later in Provincetown, and, boy, do I ever look happy. You know, I was like. I was switched on.

[Narrator/Host]

Back at Watkins Glen, Concert Free Radio was still on the air.

[John Ramsey]

I don't think we left until Monday sometime. We just. We were talking to the police about the roads. We didn't want to leave. You know, if we left early, we'd just be stuck in traffic for probably 10 or 20 hours. And so we continue to provide the music and give the traffic reports and stuff that the police provided to us. So I think we provided a service.

[Narrator/Host]

As people were leaving, Jerry Garcia went straight from Watkins Glen by helicopter to Mount Holly, New Jersey, for a sentencing. He and Robert Hunter had decided to drive between shows on the band spring tour back in March and got pulled over. Where substances were found in what some of us call the briefcase of infinite felonies. On July 30, Garcia was sentenced to probation and to see a psychiatrist. That same day, the first of three scheduled shows by the Dead and the band at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City was canceled for no reason that was publicly announced, but perhaps due to the hassles of getting their gear down to Jersey City in time for more gigs. For Bunky Odom of the Paragon Agency, the first order of business was sleep.

[Jim Koplik]

I flew out that Sunday afternoon to New York, and I checked in the Essex House until the switchboard. I said, I'm not taking any calls. Nope, no calls whatsoever. I'm gonna get me a bite to eat and I'm going to bed. Don't let anybody bother me. I'm not even here.

[Narrator/Host]

And the second order of business was actual business collecting money.

[Jim Koplik]

One reason I had to go to New York was that I think it was Ticketron. They held the money in. I had to be there Monday morning to get the check Ticketron was going to give. I don't know what it was for. Another $150,000. Picked that up.

[Narrator/Host]

Sepp Donahauer of Pacific Presentations was there as a guest of the Dead and Bill Graham. They stuck around for a few days afterwards to celebrate Garcia's birthday in Jersey City, then flew home.

[Jim Koplik]

When we went home, the band, Cutler I and Bill Graham were all on a Learjet. And I remember, like, freezing our ass off because the heater broke in the plane. And do you know how cold it gets at 40,000ft? So, man, we're all in there just freezing our ass off in this little Lear flying back to the West Coast. You had to stop for fuel in Pueblo, Colorado.

[Narrator/Host]

Watkins Glen had a number of impacts of varying sizes.

[Jim Koplik]

Allen Paul, both the Allman Brothers and the Dead had also said, oh, get Dylan, get Dylan. Well, you know, Dylan hadn't performed since 1966. So they did put out the offer to Dylan as well, who did turn it down, but was aware of it and really was paying attention to it. And apparently he asked the guys in the band a lot of questions about Watkins Glenn and the great success of it and, you know, was a factor in him deciding to come back and do that tour with them in 1974.

[Narrator/Host]

That was Bob Dylan and the band on tour. 74 from the official live album before the Flood, though Dylan Heads will tell you to check out the raw tapes. The Dead and the Almonds had one more super jam to unfurl. Bunky Odom.

[Jim Koplik]

The New Year's show was at the Cal Palace. Dick William with Capricorn put it together for a radio show. I sold the radio show to Landlubber, which clothing company at that time I probably still are, and Pioneer speakers. They sponsored it.

[Narrator/Host]

The broadcast had been organized by Dick Woolley, the Capricorn A and R representative who'd been savagely beaten by Allman's roadies at RFK in June.

[Jim Koplik]

He was also apparently the first person to really come up with the concept of a coast to coast and then even international through military live radio broadcast, which was later that year, 12-31-73, New Year's Eve at the Cow palace, which became a de facto Allman Brothers Grateful Dead collaboration. And I think to this day it's still had the largest audience of a live radio show in that time of the year. Somebody could have done better. But at that time it was a coast to coast radio show from the Cow Palace.

[Narrator/Host]

The dad had been playing New Year shows for Bill Graham every year since 1967. Besides 1969 into 1970, which they played in Boston for 1973 into 1974, it was time for a break.

[Jim Koplik]

This guy comes out of way up in the rafters with nothing but a diaper on. The father time is Bill Graham. He was all the time Chuck Lavelle. That was the first time Bill decided to costume up. I think he wore the diapers, as I recall, and floated down from the ceiling of the Cow palace onto the stage at midnight.

[Narrator/Host]

It was the beginning of a long traditions that Deadheads would come to know well. Bill Graham flying in from the back of the venue in some specially hung vehicle. But for Deadheads and Allman's Freaks. The highlight of the tape came when the guests stopped by.

[Buddy Thornton]

A lot of people showed up to jam, including, I think, Jerry Garcia and, I don't know who all jammed. It was like herding cats on a sound. But Owsley may have used a water pistol to finally get Butch Trucks, because Butch was hiding his bottle of wine under his drum stool. But Owsley figured out how to squirt him.

[Jim Koplik]

That was a crazy gig. Butch Trucks got pretty severely dosed with acid by Owsley on that show. And I think he asked Billy Crutchman to sit in on some of the songs. Because I just remember Butch saying, man, I was playing my drums and they just started flying away from me, and I kept chasing them.

[Narrator/Host]

Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzman join the Allmans for over an hour of jams with Garcia and Dickey Betts getting deep into conversation. It was during this trip that the Dead and the Allmans made a few final connections.

[Jim Koplik]

We became friends, and as we did some shows on the West Coast, Bill and Susale invited Roselane and myself to his house when we were there. And we went and hung out and had a great time. And so we became pretty good friends back in the day.

[Narrator/Host]

It led to one of the many subtle ways that the Dead influenced the Almond. We mentioned this in our RFK episodes, but it probably happened more in this time frame.

[Jim Koplik]

We observed what Susa Lacroixman was doing with the merchandise for the Dead. And if you recall, we had a roadie that did our advance work. His name was Gerald Evans, but everybody called him Buffalo. And Buffalo came to me and he said, hey, man, have you seen one of their old ladies is selling the T shirts? Why don't we do the same thing, you know? And that way we could pay for the girls to come to the gigs, take claims separately from us if need be, and they can make a dime or two. And so, yeah, that's what happened. And his girlfriend Kathy and my wife, Rose Lane, would haul those boxes up into the stadium. They got the logos, they got the prints done for the T shirts and. And sold them right out of the box up in the stadium. And of course, this was before the days of strict licensing in the concession stands and whatnot. So it was just strictly almost a bootleg thing.

[Narrator/Host]

The business was somewhat forcibly folded into the band's official merchandise arm, Great Southern. But it was just one of the many ways the Dead influenced the Allmans.

[Jim Koplik]

All of us paid very close attention to what the Dead were doing with their audio situation because they were really ahead of the Curve. I mean, we all admitted that. We all knew that they had some great technicians that were designing and building cabinets for the band. Both the backline material amplifiers as well as the front of house monitors. And so I just remember Buddy and all of our guys. I think they were all quite impressed and quite wowed with the way the Dead was handling that.

[Narrator/Host]

Engineer Buddy Thornton had a productive trip west.

[Buddy Thornton]

That's when I went out to Alembic, bought some stuff. When I started working for the Brothers. I actually went to Olympic once. And I don't know who I talked to there, maybe Iran. And bought two preamps that they had built. Really cool. And a few cabinets, 15s and maybe some 12. And then we started a wood shop in Macon. Building our own somewhat modeled after the Dead system.

[Jim Koplik]

Then. Allman's biographer, Alan Paul Dickey, was really hip to that. And when they started playing shows and he got a load of that and the seriousness with which they took things from the guitar amps to the whole sound system, he was really impressed. And he told Buddy, who was on the road doing front of house sound for them. But also was the engineer who engineered Brothers and Sisters. He engineered Highway Call, Dickie solo album, Laid Back. Everything they were doing in that era and everything coming out of Capricorn Studios. And he just said to Buddy, you know, figure this out. And then Healy and some of the other Dead Thunk guys were happy to share. From that situation forward, we actually started mimicking to some degree, some of the backline, Specifically my keyboard rig. I remember Buddy and some of the other technicians on our team designed some cabinets that were sort of modeled more or less after some of the monitoring that the Dead had. And they sounded great. You know, the Dead were always very, very particular about their sound and about their mixing, Especially about any recording. And I admired them for that. And we tried, in a way, to follow those footsteps a little bit.

[Buddy Thornton]

The final setup that I built. And the guys with me built these cabinets and stacked them up very similar to what the Dead were doing.

[Narrator/Host]

But New Year's at the Cow palace was the closing of a chapter.

[Buddy Thornton]

That's the last time that I know that they did anything with the Dead.

[Jim Koplik]

The Grateful Dead took their hiatus in 1974. By the time they came back, the Allman Brothers were virtually breaking up. They were sort of teetering. Then they did break up in 76. And then when they got back together in 78, you know, Southern rock was riding high.

[Narrator/Host]

It was during the Allman's break that the Dead played their next Giant Festival at Raceway park in Englishtown, New Jersey, with the Marshall Tucker Band, also represented by Bunky Odom. But that was it.

[Jim Koplik]

Sam Cutler left the Grateful Dead after they broke up in 1976 for the first time. Bunky Odom never worked again for the Allman Brothers. Those two guys had been really close with one another. They were the ones who worked together to make the RFK happen. They were the ones who worked together to make Watkins Glen happen.

[Narrator/Host]

Thanks, guys. There was an attempt at a super show with the two bands over Thanksgiving 1981 at the Tangerine bowl in Orlando. Even advertised with reference to Watkins Glen. But apparently not enough tickets were sold and the show was canceled. Or maybe it was just a throwback to the Ontario Motor Speedway. Dead allman's gig in May 7th. Who's to say? Certainly not me. The bond between the Dead and the Allmans was revived in the 21st century by Phil Lesh, especially, who reconnected with the Allmans individually and collectively, eventually leading to a seemingly permanent blur between the two musical families, exemplified by musicians like Ottilie Burbridge, Jimmy Herring and Warren Haynes, who all exist in both worlds. Woodstock Nation got all the press, but Watkins Glen Nation is still out there too.

[Eric Nelson]

Eric Nelson I talked earlier about us going thinking, oh, this will be our Woodstock. I do distinctly remember a sense of almost anti climax where we all went to this thing and there are 600,000 people there. It's this huge titanic event and it faded from memory immediately afterwards.

[Jim Koplik]

It just.

[Eric Nelson]

There was a lack of consequence to everything, which in hindsight, now one can say that's the transition from the unruly significant 60s to the commodified Rolling Stone moves to New York 70s where you don't want to read too much into it. But I think there was a palpable sense of a non event there. And in hindsight, to me, the only real event there was. The Dead produced 19 minutes or so of the greatest music of their collective career without anyone noticing at the time.

[Narrator/Host]

By some measures, Watkins Glen marked the end of the original period of counterculture adjacent rock festivals. The next year, directly inspired By Watkins Glen, California Jam would sell 250,000 tickets with a slightly less hippie friendly lineup featuring Deep Purple, the Eagles and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, with help from Sepp Donahauer in Pacific Presentations. By the time the Dead played Englishtown in 1977, the site was boxed in with shipping containers. There would be no repeat of Watkins Glen, but for some attendees, Watkins Glen represented a beginning. Lee Reynaldo was finding the path, it.

[Jim Koplik]

Loomed large for me and for my friends who I went with. And you know, it was kind of the beginning. That was summer of 73 and the next summer 74, like between high school and college, one of those same guys and I did a round the country all summer long road trip in 74. And so Watkins Glen to me was the beginning. And the road trip we took in 74, which was like two months long and literally like we're driving across the country for the first time. And at some point somewhere in the Midwest or in the Southwest, I got some model paints and painted a Grateful Dead skull with the lightning bolt on the trunk of the Volkswagen Bug we were riding in. So and wrote over it in like old timey letters. California or bus. So I mean, like that was funny. But on that trip we stayed in campgrounds a lot. So there were lots of freaks staying in campgrounds. And Watkins Glen was kind of the beginning of like wandering through fields and coming upon like groups of freaky long haired people, you know, like living this crazy life outside of the society to some degree. And so Watkins Glenn was kind of the forerunner of like this first trip across the country and a lot of stuff that happened after that.

[Narrator/Host]

After graduating from college, Lee would co found Sonic Youth with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. And though their music grew from the New York punk and art scenes that Lee had crossed into in the interim, I could totally hear the Dead's music at the heart of some of my favorite Sonic Youth. That was Anagramma, the first track on Sonic Youth series of SYR records from the late 90s. Celestial improvisations that often orbit in parallel to Dark Star. I also recommend the diamond sea from their 1995 album Washing Machine. If you're looking for an entry point with Watkins Glen deep inside it, it's hard to say if it's the cause or the effect. But one reason why Watkins Glen disappeared from the cultural memory so completely is because there was no official commodified documentation of it. We mentioned the knockoff album from Pickwick Records. The King's Road plays the heavy sounds of Watkins Glenn.

[Jim Koplik]

We're All Right Casey Jones.

[Narrator/Host]

Though speaking of fake Dead crowds, the next year the California branch of the National Lampoon put out their own Dead adjacent material. Cocaine Express debuted on the National Lampoon Radio Hour. Written and performed by Tony Sharon, It's a little bit on the frozen nose, complete with lots of lead bass and overflowing with drug double entendres. Another way to look at Watkins Glen and its aftermath is that it was the Grateful Dead's deepest and biggest incursion into mainstream American culture, a time when references to their lore fit into the birth of underground comedy.

[Jim Koplik]

I can roll all night with you baby gotta know it just in front of you we can't get it off but I can get it on and we'll be drunk in til the break of dawn.

[Narrator/Host]

It was a peak of influence that they wouldn't match again until the surprise hit of Touch of Grey a decade and a half later. It was a period when the Dead were part of the common cultural language, and even if Watkins Glen didn't become part of the broader culture, it became a bullet point for Deadheads biggest concert in North American history. Check There were various reports about a release of the Watkins Glen Super Jam for benefit causes, and one Allmans track was on their official live album. Scholars have turned up an acetate that indicate that the band were slated to release an official Watkins Glen live album in early 1974 titled Is Everybody Wet the Band at Watkins Glen? We've linked Dag Bradin's exhaustive chronology of the band in this era, but its track list seems to exactly match the fake Watkins Glenn album released in the 1990s. My guess is that the faked version was created in late 1973 or early in 1974, shelved, and then rediscovered in the 90s. And nobody remembered that it was faked or knew how to consult Jim Cooper's tapes to compare it to the real thing. It also means that the fake Watkins Glen album album was in some ways a not quite dry run for the Enhanced Basement Tapes album they would release in 1975, featuring false stereo overdubs and a few songs not recorded in the basement. So it goes. They did put a tiny bit of actual Watkins Glen jamming on the album, and it's pretty great. We'll let Sam Cutler have the last words on the matter. A month afterwards, Rolling Stone reported that there would be no Watkins Glen movie quoting the Grateful Dead are sick and tired of being given cornball ideas for rock movies. The Grateful Dead are delighted that Watkins Glen is only a fond memory and that there will be no further commercial exploitation of what was a tasteful musical trip. End quote. Thanks Sam, for that Watkins Glenn and everything.

[Jim Koplik]

It's easy to not remember that music is a collaborative trip on every level throughout a whole scene. You know, so it's a band, it's sound people, it's lights people, it's all the production crew, it's the crew itself.

[Buddy Thornton]

Who are working like slaves there, you.

[Jim Koplik]

Know what I mean? Humping God knows how much equipment all about, you know, there's a lot of people involved. So everybody has to be on the same page. Everyone has to have the same feeling, you know what I mean? Man, this is. And so, you know, I mean, it's not all down to me, that's for sure, but a lot of it was down to me, for sure. But what it's really down to is a kind of shared vision thing, you know, that everybody's really on the same page and, and getting high in the same way, which we did, you know, every before every gig, we, we, the band and crew would get high together, you know, and little microdose and go out there and, and do it.

[Rich Mahan]

Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode. Sam Cutler, Donna Jean Gotcha, McKay, Bonkey Odom, Chuck Lavelle, Jim Koplik, Buddy Thornton, Sepp Donahauer, Lee Ronaldo, Steve Silberman, Rebecca Adams, Gary Lambert, John Ramsey, Tim Meehan, Michael Simmons, Dan Henklein, Eric Nelson, Bob Student, Jim Cooper, Harvey Lubar, Todd Ellenberg, Ihor Slabicki, Jay Curley, Brian Schiff, Eric Alden, David Lemieux and Alan Paul. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast, David Gans, for contributing audio from his interview archive. Thanks very much for tuning in. Don't forget to, like, subscribe and share an episode on your social media and give us your Wake of the flood related stories by recording yours [e-mail] Executive Producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.