Icon: The Grateful Dead
“The Grateful Dead isn’t an event, it’s a process,” guitarist/songwriter/vocalist Jerry Garcia once quipped of the band he cofounded and led until his 1995 death. For 30 years, the Bay Area-based group fearlessly meandered the musical – and geographical – map. Beginning in 1965 as the Warlocks, a prototypical psychedelic band playing Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, the Grateful Dead explored roots music, including blues, country and folk; toasted early rock ‘n ‘rollers (covering Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly); and eventually dipped into reggae rhythms, world music and even slick pop. Along the way, they invented the modern jam band, stretching songs to 30 minutes or so, and building a massive grassroots fan base with its own tie-dyed subculture. Inspired by jazzmen like John Coltrane and such avant-gardists as Ornette Coleman, the Grateful Dead usually preferred improvisation (two guitars, keyboards, bass and a pair of drummers) to concise song structures.
Though some of the band’s studio efforts include tightly arranged tunes, experimentation and extended grooves predominate. Much of the group’s catalog documents live performances, attended by legions of loyal Deadheads traipsing the country. After Garcia’s demise, the Grateful Dead dissolved, though original members – bassist Phil Lesh, guitarist/vocalist Bob Weir, drummer Bill Kreutzmann and longtime percussionist Mickey Hart – have soldiered on in various amalgamations ever since. Over the years, the band also featured a half-dozen different keyboardists, including founding member Ron McKernan (Pigpen), but tragically four of them died young.
AMERICANA DEAD
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Harkening back to Garcia's days as a bluegrass picker, an acoustic-focused selection of country songcraft breathed new life into the Dead. From the first strummed lick of the opener "Uncle John's Band," a rootsy feel predominates: "Will you come with me/ won't you come with me?" the band harmonizes, inviting listeners along on their bucolic path. "A real close-to-the-bone approach, the way they make country & western records," is how Garcia described it. Pals Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (for whom Garcia had just contributed pedal steel on Déjá Vu) effectively taught the Dead about vocal layering - which shines on every track. In addition to steel, Garcia adds to the C&W sonics via banjo (another holdover from his days in Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions) and emotive singing. The Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens kicks in with "Dire Wolf," one of Robert Hunter's most inspired story songs. A rumination on the doomed Altamont festival the previous December, "New Speedway Boogie" channels the Delta blues. The workingmen referenced in the title populate the catchy hoedown "Cumberland Blues" (miners) and FM staple "Casey Jones," the story of a trainman derailed by too much cocaine (note the aural "sniff" as the track starts). Darkness surrounds "Black Peter," a harrowing tale featuring Garcia's fragile vocals and Pigpen's B-3 organ and bluesy harmonica. The latter takes the lead on the tragically prescient "Easy Wind" ("if I live five years..."). Workingman's Dead boosted the band for the first time into the Top 30 and proved that America's preeminent improv band could also write hits - which have since become rock 'n' roll standards.
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Part II of the Dead's ode to roots music, American Beauty, along with its predecessor Workingman's Dead, stands as the band's creative peak. Concise, well written and timeless songs (a collaboration between Hunter and Garcia, Lesh and Weir) convey a wistful beauty, an elegiac feel and a desire for simpler, pastoral times. A feast of harmony singing and acoustic instrumentation, American Beauty hums with a sense of community: The gorgeous opener, "Box of Rain," features Lesh (the song's cowriter) debuting on lead vocals, backed by guitarist David Nelson and bassist Dave Torbert of the Dead's side project, New Riders of the Purple Sage. Rider John Dawson cowrote the outlaw saga "Friend of the Devil" with Hunter and Garcia, whose bluegrass compatriot David Grisman adds atmospheric mandolin trills to the guitarist's finger picking on "Devil" and the contemplative tour de force "Ripple." Another highlight is Bob Weir's lilting "Sugar Magnolia," which promoter Bill Graham once proclaimed his favorite Dead song. Pigpen's sole turn is "Operator," an old-time number featuring his wheezy vocals and harmonica break. Garcia's soulful ruminations on "Attics of My Life," "Candyman" (with guest keyboardists Howard Wales and Ned Lagin), and "Brokedown Palace" show him at his most vulnerable and moving. Concluding with the autobiographical "Truckin'" - the band's signature which injected "What a long, strange trip it's been" into the lexicon - American Beauty is a masterpiece, pure and simple.
COSMIC DEAD
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The band's second release is a heady suite of swirling psychedelia, introducing the sound of their Avalon Ballroom gigs to the masses. Picture post-Summer of Love lightshows illustrating "The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get," Part III of the epic "That's It for the Other One." Mixing studio recordings (and a cacophony of instrumentation and feedback) with tapes of live performances - within individual tracks - resulted in what Garcia called a "collage...an approach that's more like electronic music...where you are actually assembling bits and pieces toward an enhanced nonrealistic representation." "Alligator," with a musical nod to Donovan, marks the first recorded Dead song with lyrics by longtime collaborator Robert Hunter. Joining Garcia, Lesh, Weir, Pigpen, Kreutzmann and newcomer Mickey Hart, is John Cage devotee Tom Constanten, who adds avant-garde prepared piano and electronic tape to the opening Suite. Ahead of its time and out of its time - simultaneously.
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Upon its release just prior to the Dead's appearance at Woodstock, most record buyers couldn't even pronounce its name (a palindrome suggested by cover artist Rick Griffin). But for the initiated, Aoxomoxoa was another attempt by the Dead to recreate the hallucinatory glory of their live vibe. With the same lineup as its predecessor, the album blends the experimental ("What's Become of the Baby?") with an early stab at catchy songcraft ("St. Stephen"). Lyricist Hunter collaborated on all eight tracks with Garcia (plus Lesh on "St. Stephen)," and his metaphorical story songs and eloquent poetry henceforth became a Dead staple. Future highlights of Dead shows debut here, including the baroque "Mountains of the Moon" and the trippy "China Cat Sunflower." Aoxomoxoa, recorded between 1968 and 1969, marks the end of the band's full-blown psychedelic expeditions, but elements would survive throughout the next decade of recordings. A note to audiophiles: Aoxomoxoa, the first totally self-produced Dead album, was the first-ever rock album cut on a 16-track recorder.
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The band's premiere on its own Grateful Dead label is also its first without founding member Pigpen, who died in 1973 after years of alcoholism. Hart is also missing in action, taking a sabbatical following inter-band strife. New keyboardist Keith Godchaux, with a bent toward light jazz, co-wrote one track with Robert Hunter (the sax-fueled "Let Me Sing Your Blues Away"), and his wife Donna Godchaux, a former vocalist on Muscle Shoals soul sessions, adds her soprano to the proceedings. Overall, Wake of the Flood documents the Dead's ever-expanding sound: "Weather Report Suite," an ambitious Bob Weir undertaking, includes a prelude and two parts, and features organ, horns, and acoustic and pedal steel guitars, delivered with a South of the Border feel. Garcia sounds forlorn on the lengthy ballad "Row Jimmy" (which he once named as a personal favorite) and cheery on the roadhouse-style number "Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo," featuring fiddler Vassar Clements. "Here Comes Sunshine" is a nod to the Beatles and a sign that pop was being stirred into the sonic stew. Soon to be Deadhead favorites, the achingly beautiful "Stella Blue," accented with pedal steel, and the joyous "Eyes of the World," featuring Garcia's distinctive guitar lines and a singalong chorus, are debuted here. Their first studio recording in three years points to the road ahead.
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The band - featuring the same lineup as on Wake of the Flood - would take a three-year break from touring after cutting this cleanly produced effort. Though there are a couple of clunkers, memorable songs predominate: the rockin' "U.S. Blues" would become the band's theme song for years to come, and the rapturous "Scarlet Begonias" and high-spirited "Loose Lucy" also became Deadhead faves. Lesh's lovely "Unbroken Chain" is intricately arranged, with exquisite guitar by Garcia, and the bassist's countryish "Pride of Cucamonga" features soaring pedal steel by John McFee. The haunting "China Doll" is a baroque number with Keith Godchaux on harpsichord, and the album ends on a solemn note with "Ship of Fools," turned into an extended jam during subsequent concerts.
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he Dead's obsession with Egyptology would take them to the Great Pyramid for a historic series of concerts under a full moon in 1978. But three years earlier, this masterful set introduced some of the band's best new songs. Fueled by Garcia's inventive guitar playing, the heady triumvirate "Help on the Way," "Slipknot" and "Franklin's Tower" would become live favorites. Weir's "The Music Never Stopped" introduced the latest band anthem, and his instrumental "Sage and Spirit" offered an acoustic oasis of serene beauty. The return of Hart resulted in drumming extravaganzas, and the exotic chanting of the title track offers a glance back to their experimental musical suites of the '60s. Frequently name-checked by Garcia as a personal favorite, he once said Blues for Allah was "the first record we've made in years where we really had fun. We laughed a lot and got good and crazy. We had an opportunity to get weirder than we normally get." Indeed, this final release on their own label would be the next-to-last Dead studio album attempting full-on strange over slick.
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The epic title track, an all-time favorite among Deadheads, is an anomaly on this polished effort: the group's debut on Arista (following the demise of the band's label) and the first with an outside producer (Keith Olsen) in nearly a decade. "It actually sounds like a record," Garcia pointed out after its release. "People won't believe it's us." The 15-minute "Terrapin Station Medley" marks the Dead's final studio venture into cosmic adventuring (and the first and only with orchestration by Paul Buckmaster). Elsewhere on the overblown set, the Dead does Martha and the Vandellas (a disco-y "Dancin' in the Streets") and the Bible (a sterile "Samson and Delilah"). Weir's "Estimated Prophet" flirts with a reggae beat, but gets buried by Tom Scott's overdone brass.
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"There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert," says a bumpersticker that's graced thousands of vans, Frisbees and guitar cases. Between 1965 and 1995, the Grateful Dead played more than 2,300 concerts attended by a half million people, spanning three generations. Live/Dead marks the first of dozens of Grateful Dead concert docs, many of which tape traders passed along for decades. This particular outing looks back at the ballroom-era Dead, showing the group finding its feet (or head, rather) as tour guides for psychedelic journeys at San Francisco's Fillmore and Avalon. Featuring the original expanded lineup (including drummer Hart, in tandem with Kreutzmann, and keyboardist Tom Constanten), Live/Dead is all about the jam: The slowly building "Dark Star," six minutes before the vocals start and clocking in at nearly a half hour; "The Eleven"; and "We Bid You Goodnight" epitomize the Dead's legendary second-set instrumental noodling - sometimes transcendent, sometimes sleep-inducing. Also here is Pigpen's raucous spotlight, "Turn on Your Love Light," fifteen minutes of bluesy testifying. A trip down memory lane, for sure.
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Showcasing both the jam and the countrified vibe found on 1970's Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, this is the live album that explains legions of Deadheads flocking to show after show. A spare lineup (minus Constanten and Hart) perhaps helped keep the focus on the song during these spring 1971 concerts performed in New York City (plus one track from Frisco's Winterland, a rollicking cover of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode"). The Grateful Dead liked to test drive their new tunes before cutting them in the studio, and three of their finest debut here: the bouncy roots rocker "Bertha," the anthemic "Playing in the Band," with Weir on lead vocals, and the bluesy "Wharf Rat," a harrowing tale of a down-but-not-out wino. With Garcia inhabiting the protagonist, via quavering vocals and skeletal guitar lines, guest Merl Saunders (a frequent collaborator on Garcia side projects) contributes a gospel-tinged organ. On the improv tip, the 18-minute opus "The Other One" (with an extended Kreutzmann workout) sprang from '68's cosmic Anthem of the Sun. The overall feel is earthy, however: Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," blues standards "Big Boss Man" and "Big Railroad Blues," and from John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) "Me and My Uncle." The late Janis Joplin is remembered with a heartfelt cover of her posthumous hit, Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee." The show-closing medley, "Not Fade Away/Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad" references band heroes Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley. As for the album title, the band's choice, Skullfuck, was nixed by their record label, whose bland choice was soon replaced by "Skull and Roses," a nickname for the iconic cover art by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley.
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The Grateful Dead toured Europe for the first time in 1972, playing 22 shows in six countries over a two-month period. Both the exhilaration and exhaustion of such an enterprise is exhibited on this lengthy document. The tour marks an ailing Pigpen's last stand, and his harmonica and organ playing is minimal, with blues standard "Hurts Me Too" and his own "Mr. Charlie" his vocal swansongs. New keyboardist Keith Godchaux's spirited piano fuels the fiery "Cumberland Blues," and Donna Godchaux's harmonies add a rich texture to the vocals throughout. The country-rock vein of Workingman's Dead and American Beauty predominate among a tasty crop of new tunes: the rollicking "Tennessee Jed," loping "He's Gone" (introducing the lyric "steal your face right off your head"), fetching "Brown Eyed Women," and name-checking "Rambling Rose." Bob Weir's presence has become stronger, with powerful versions of his "One More Saturday Night," "Jackstraw," and "Sugar Magnolia." A pair of snoozy jams ("Epilogue," "Prelude") mar an otherwise stellar set.
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By far the Dead's best album of the '80s, Reckoning documents the band's live acoustic sets at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre and New York's Radio City in 1980. The years ahead would propel the band into the commercial stratosphere, as the most successful touring act in the country; their studio albums becoming increasingly slick and soulless. Here, though, is the grassroots Dead, performing reworked, stripped-down versions of songs spanning the previous decade: "Cassidy," "Dire Wolf," "Ripple," "China Doll." Covers include country classics, like George Jones's "The Race Is On," bluegrass nuggets (Bill Monroe's "Rosalie McFall"), and traditional numbers such as "Jack-a-Roe" and "Deep Ellum Blues." Subdued yet haunting, this is the Grateful Dead playing with heart and soul.
![Grateful Dead [Skull & Roses] [Live] album cover](http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/119/292/11929252/300x300.jpg)
![Europe '72 [Live] album cover](http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/119/291/11929165/300x300.jpg)
POLISHED DEAD
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The Dead goes full-blown disco with this turn in the road. The Young Rascals' "Good Lovin'," which the band played loose 'n' live for years, gets the life squeezed out of it. The presence of Little Feat's Lowell George, who served as producer, should have made Shakedown Street a contender; instead it's nearly a bust. Garcia's guitar is practically unrecognizable, and there is a disturbing sheen throughout. But all is not lost: "Fire on the Mountain," co-written by Hart and Hunter, gained needed dynamics when played live; the Hart-Kreutzmann percussion piece "Serengetti" is a meditative respite, and the dance-pop title track is annoyingly catchy, a guilty pleasure. Donna and Keith Godchaux, both prominently featured here, exited the band the following year.
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Keyboardist Brent Mydland debuts on this slight batch of slick pop, the Grateful Dead's first release of the '80s. Still looking for a hit, the band soared up the charts with the album's barnburner "Alabama Getaway" (the band's second-biggest smash). Mydland's pair of originals ("Far From Me" and "Easy to Love You"), with vocals a deadringer for Michael McDonald, took the band straight into MOR territory. Synthesizer trumps guitar here, with the only hints of the old rootsy Dead being the Garcia/Hunter ballad "Althea" and the 1928 folk-blues number, "Don't Ease Me In." Symbolizing the new, constrained Dead, the Hart/Kreutzmann spotlight, "Antwerp's Placebo (The Plumber)," clocks in at barely half a minute. Phil Lesh later referred to the album as "dogshit."
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This ironically titled release would be the Grateful Dead's final studio effort and the follow-up to the massively successful hit "Touch of Grey" (from In the Dark). Synthesizers and mediocre material result in an overwhelmingly bland and lifeless set, bringing their '80s ride to a close. Brent Mydland, who would die the following year of a drug overdose, took the reins, singing four out of nine numbers, while other Dead members phone it in. Jerry Garcia sounds weary on the title track and the cheerless "Foolish Heart." He'd already overcome heroin addiction and a diabetic stroke; six years later, during another stint in rehab, a coronary would kill him. Remember the Dead as they were — not as they ended.
