Phil Lesh Interviews

1979

Phil Lesh...a slight, likable man whose intellectual curiosity was not satisfied by a formal education in music and composition, nor by a couple seasons of dropping acid in the Haight, and who enrolled in the Dead as a kind of protracted graduate study in both of the previous disciplines. . . . 

Phil Lesh lives in a small house in the Marin County hamlet of Fairfax, with a red Lotus and a large library of classical records (Bruckner is on the turntable when I arrive). Lesh, who studied composition with Luciano Berio before he started hanging out at the fringes of Ken Kesey's Stanford acid scene with Garcia, was a prolific songwriter for the Dead during the Aoxomoxoa-American Beauty period - arguably the height of their musical creativity. He has had several formal music projects on hold for the past few years.

"I have a project in the back of my head. A symphonic poem. You're familiar with the form? Invented by Liszt in the nineteenth century. Mine is based on Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan.' You know the poem? An opium dream, or so they say. It's for percussion, synthesizer and voices. That's one project, and there are others, but the rehearsal time for all the players is so expensive... Right now I'm just playing the bass. I'm kind of bored with trying to write for the Grateful Dead, because I tend to write some pretty dense shit, and it's almost antithetical to rock 'n' roll skill. It's hard to get them to play it. That period around Live/Dead, when the music was a little more complex - that was the peak for me. Now we've gotten into a format. 

"But I don't get bored with being in the Grateful Dead. To me, the Grateful Dead is life - the life of the spirit, and the life of the mind, as opposed to standing in line and marking time in the twentieth century. I went through the Acid Tests with the Grateful Dead, and all I can say is, you had to be there. That was the baptismo del fuego. When you're up there and your face is falling off and you've still got to play, and you do this over and over again, spilling your guts in front of thousands of people...you develop a certain flip attitude, even toward performing. You begin to believe that you could go out there naked and nobody'd notice, as long as you played loud enough." 

Over dinner, Lesh talks about the Dead's trip to Egypt in September of 1978 for a series of concerts at the pyramids. "It sort of became my project, because I was one of the first people in the band who was on the trip of playing at places of power. You know, power that's been preserved from the ancient world. The pyramids are like the obvious number-one choice, because no matter what anyone thinks they might be, there is definitely some kind of mojo about the pyramids. And when you get there, you find out that there is power. The same kind of power you get from the audience, only there's more of it, because it's older and because of what was built into it. 

"Ever since the Acid Tests, we've been into that power. That's what powered the Acid Tests, behind the acid, and it later became apparent that you didn't need drugs if you had the enthusiasm. It was a rawer order of energy, less information riding on that raw carrier wave of power, but the power was always there. It was a matter of awareness...feeling...intuition...anything but rational thinking. I wonder sometimes if the audience is as aware of that as we are. Obviously, if it's not there, you stroke it and get it up. In that sense it's a traditional show-biz trip: Stroke the audience and get 'em up. Build it up to the point where it's self-sustaining. This is true of all performers, yes? But for some reason especially true of the Grateful Dead. There's a special lock-in with the audience that can occur - it's totally random in a lot of ways, but I do know that we've never been able to really do it two nights in a row, including Egypt. I don't know if we really did it in Egypt or not, musically, but to be there was so deep and so dense and so thick and so impressive that it was almost... I don't know, it changed my life, it was the high point of my life to date. But it still wasn't good enough." [ . . . ] 

And the Egyptian Booking of the Dead relieved some of the boredom...? 

"It was handy as hell. I'd have been real bored if I had to stay at home during that period..." 

"But you still have musical ideas and impulses that aren't satisfied by the Grateful Dead?" 

"Yeah," he says quietly and a little wanly. "There's just things in heaven and earth, Horatio, that are undreamt of by the Grateful Dead. And things that are impossible for the Grateful Dead as a unit, or as a Gestalt..." 

"Like what?" 

"Anything with more than four chords! Ha ha ha ha ha! Just had to slip that in. Ha. No, there's no way to make it all come out even. When I started with the Dead in 1966, I said, 'Look, guys, I don't want to be doing this when I'm 30.' Well, I'm 38 now, and I'm gonna be doing it when I'm 40. It may turn out that I'll just go gentle into that good night, you know? I may just become a country squire and forget my musical ambition...because I've seen what musical ambition can lead to for people who are incapable of handling success, or failure, or frustration, or whatever. Loneliness. I would love to be able to contribute something to the culture. I don't know whether I can at this point. It remains to be seen. Let's not get too serious..."

(excerpt from "Still Grateful After All These Years," by Charlie Haas, New West, Dec 17, 1979)

* * * 

1979

Lesh rarely gives interviews, but Relix's Karen Kohberger, with the assistance of Sunburst Studios in Chicago and a pack of Heinekens, managed to spend some time with Lesh and Dead manager Rock Scully while the band was in the Windy City for a set of shows at the Uptown Theater. Their conversation took place late last year and began with a discussion of the then-unfinished new Grateful Dead album. [ . . . ] 

PL: [Alabama Getaway] is a typical Hunter lyric; there's just enough obscurity in it so you're not really sure what it means. 

Scully: But it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. That's sort of neat, like "Box of Rain." 

PL: That's a great one, even if I did write the music myself. 

Scully: Notice the longevity that song has. It's still a popular song on the radio. It's something that means a lot to different people. 

PL: Yeah, it meant a lot to me. My dad was dying when I co-wrote that song. When I used to visit him, I would sing the words and it would really get to me. 

Relix: What's the reason you don't sing any more? 

PL: Because I lost my voice and I refuse to have an operation. Bob thinks acupuncture might work. 

Relix: Will the Dead ever play at the Pyramids in Egypt again? 

PL: Thing about Egypt that made it cool for us, morally, was that we didn't go in there and take any money out of the country. They're poor; they're fucking starving. But the other thing is that playing the Pyramids ended up costing us half a million dollars. That was worth it, but we can't afford to do it again. The way it was set up, the tickets went to two different Egyptian charities. Even if we had made a record...well, we won't unfortunately, because the performances weren't that good. The chance of a lifetime and we blew it. You can never push a button and say it's going to come out right. 

Relix: There's a rumor that starting in 1980, the Dead are going to play shows that are only one set.

PL: Lies! It's possible that we might change our format, though. We've been locked into this damn format for quite a while now. I think we're the only band that plays as long as we do; correct me if I'm wrong. But that's what the Dead Heads want. One thing is that we haven't even touched on half our material. Since Brent joined the band, we've only had a certain amount of time to rehearse. And what we needed to do was rehearse the most frequently played stuff, the stuff in our standard repertoire. We try never to repeat. We almost never do a song two nights in a row.

Relix: Will the Dead ever play acoustic sets again? 

PL: It would be better to ask Jerry that question. I understand that he was asked that question and he said probably not, because of the differences in touch between the acoustic guitar and the electric guitar. One makes you useless on the other. And Jerry has to play electric all the time. I wonder if he ever picks up an acoustic guitar, except for just fucking around. 

Relix: Do you ever play trumpet anymore? 

PL: Not since 1968. I played eight bars in the middle of "Born Cross Eyed." 

Relix: Do you listen to other music besides rock and roll? 

PL: Oh yeah, I was brought up on classical music. 

Relix: Have you ever composed symphonies? 

PL: Sort of. I have a few projects that I have on hold, waiting for the Grateful Dead to die down a little. The only time I have to myself, I'm not much interested in doing work. Sometimes I like to sit around and read science fiction, and watch TV. 

Relix: If you could sum up your feelings about music, what it all means to you, how would you? 

PL: I don't know how to sum up fifteen years of what it all means. Jerry is better at that than I am. He could give it all to you in three sentences. Music is life enhancing. It makes your life worth living a little more, even if you're doing alright, even if you're feeling good. And if you're not, it makes you feel a little better. Music itself is a question.

(excerpt from "The Relix Interview: Phil Lesh," by Karen Kohberger, Relix 7.2, 1980)

* * * 

1990

COLD DEAD HANDS

The following is the transcript of an interview with Phil Lesh conducted in Berlin 27.10.90 by Andrew Brown of the Independant. Thanks are extended to Andrew and to Elspeth Cusack who made the interview available to us. 

It starts with me telling him a story, about how he was riding with a friend of mine through New York in 1967 or thereabouts, after the band had played their first concert there, and Matt asked him what he made of the city. He replied: "They're really weird people here. It could take as long as a week to turn this town on!" So we laughed at this, and then went on: 

PL: Actually, it took rather more than that, but we do have a big following in NY now.

AB: But is that what you're still trying to do? 

PL: Yeah, yeah, essentially that's the motivation: to try and open a new eye, to open another mind here, a new mind there.

AB: Do you think you're succeeding? 

PL: Yes and no. On the basic level of comradeship and membership in a group, and gaining an identity by being a Deadhead, yes we're succeeding. But on a higher level, not always, because we don't always perform as well as I'd like. I'm sure the other guys in the band would agree. From time to time we do get it on to communicate on a level when we can all say "Yeah, we did something." But maybe because of the way we approach music, or the way we approach our performances, it's built in that we can't always do it that well. 

AB: Listening to a lot of your tapes, preparing for this, it does seem...clearly the band has got a lot more competent over the last 20 years. Is it possible that by losing a lot of the lows, you've lost some of the highs? 

PL: Yes it is possible. But we like to think more in a realm of...that we've just raised our floor, so the ceiling is correspondingly higher than it was before. There's different kinds of energy that you can draw upon in different stages of your life, I think. And when we were all in our twenties, we had enough energy to ride roughshod over the inadequacies and limitations of our musical or our instrumental technique, and so on. Again. that was not always as successful...or not always successful. But I think we, just because of our youthful enthusiasm, we didn't know it couldn't be done every night, so we did it more often than not. And of course, the mind-set of people in those days was in fact, I believe, more open than it is now. It hasn't been the sa...it hasn't been like that since about 1970, 1969. It hasn't been the way I remember it being when we started. The fine tuning of it, if you will, has been lost. 

As time goes on, your energy...it decreases, perhaps, but it also changes. In the sixties, there was a sense, perhaps of the fine detail getting across to people, because they were so open, and so in tune together that it was like playing to one person. And some time in that period, in the early "seventies" that sort of faded. It was like hearing loss. The high frequencies went away, and you were left with more like ????

AB: What did it? 

PL: I've no idea. Everyone grew older, or...I can't put my finger on it. But perhaps we weren't taking as many, ahem, psychedelics as we had been during the provisional, early period; but in contrast to that, I feel now that it's possible that on a good night we're actually getting across some of that which was lost. That's why I say that we've raised our floor.

AB: It looked at the time...you were there at the time...in the psychedelic thing: there would be a great release or expansion of energy and at the end, things would be really...there was a genuine gain, but it seemed a once-for-all discharge of energy, and at the end of it, people seemed to have used an awful lot of their originality up and never got it back.

PL: I think that's the way it is in nature, or in human endeavour generally. It's like the cycle of growth, decline, and fall. The classic situation. It's...I don't know...it seems common enough that that does happen. Perhaps the further you are from the centre of the original impulse, the weaker the message is. But at the same time, many many people in the original scene ended up in business. In fact we're in business now. We employ 50 people at the moment. We're responsible for those people. If anything happened to us, they'd all be out of a job. In a way, it's an inescapable consequence of staying together and continuing to develop. For us, it's been a series of cycles. 

AB: Why do you keep going? Why does the band keep going? You might want to go on playing music and all that.

PL: Well, there's the real gut-level down in the dirt reason of we don't want to have to go out and get jobs. 

AB: Would you ever need to work again if you didn't get a job? 

PL: Oh yeah, yeah. We never made any amount of money that goes beyond, that was anything more than survival, just paying the rent, until 1987, 1988 actually, if you want to think of the year the money started coming in. So it's not like we've been making big money that long, and have got enough dough in the bank to buy a couple of small countries. It's not like the Rolling Stones who get, what is it, 15 million each in their pocket before they even start. Not like that at all. So there's that level. I don't particularly want to go out to work, get another job, and the other guys in the band feel pretty much that way. 

But then there's the...the main sense of it is that we're not finished yet. We're not finished yet; we haven't done it: we haven't played everything we could play, we haven't explored the material that we have, deeply enough; we haven't created the material that's going to take us over the top. We know that we can do that if we just keep at it long enough. Or we hope that we can do it if we keep at it long enough. We're not going to quit until they take the guitars from our cold dead hands. 

AB: Why does the band as a whole write so few songs? 

PL: Writing songs is hard. Songs are a particular area of music which is one of the most difficult to deal with, mostly because of words. 

AB: But you have two full-time lyricists? 

PL: This is true. This is true. And not everything they write is suitable to be sung. My particular problem is that I have a lot of trouble with singing anything that doesn't mean something to me, although I will sing certain Rock 'n' Roll songs or something like that for fun. I sing Tom Thumb's Blues because I've always loved that song. But if I'm going to write a song, if I have to sing a song that's by me, that's not somebody else's song, then I really have to be...it has to be in my bones, and there's very little that gets there. I'm just that difficult. I'm a difficult man. As for the other guys...I know that songwriting is not something that anyone just tosses off. Nobody does that. I can only conclude that everyone feels the same as I do: that it's bloody hard, and you've really got to mean it. The ones that we do have we're still working on trying to break them open: to tear them down and put them together in another way, so...that's one of the things we do.

AB: You really feel you can still do that with a song like the Scarlet Begonias-Fire On The Mountain thing that you did last night? 

PL: Well, if we're performing well, we can break it open right in the middle of it, and we do that. But it has to start right, and it has to go right up until that point. And even then it might not happen. But then it might, if somebody has the right idea; if someone is, dare I say it, inspired.

AB: There are out there, those people taping it: you could probably put together, out of the tapes in free circulation, about 5 or 6 stupefyingly good Grateful Dead records. 

PL: Yeah. We're going to do that, as a matter of fact. We've got all those tapes at home as well. It's not just the people out there who have them. So we are planning to do something of that nature in the very near future.

AB: Why haven't you done it? Is it a deliberate decision? Is it part of the aesthetic of splintering things up? 

PL: Yes and no. Because, as long as we let the people tape it, it's out there anyway. It's the matter of an editorial decision on our part, to decide what's good and what isn't, and no one's been willing to take the time, until now, to sit back and listen to all that shit. 

Because we, essentially, feel that once we've played it, it's out there. If we're like recording multi-track for a live album, that's a different situation. But we're planning to go through our archives, either in collaboration with our record company or through our own merchandising arm. We aim to release some of that material. 

AB: I seem to have run out of sensible questions. (laughter) As you know better than me, interviews are a complete waste of time, unless there's some degree of spontaneity. They sell records, but that's not really the business that I'm in, or you're in.

PL: I know that's not why you're here, either.

AB: The question that I've always wanted to get an answer to...do you really think that there's a different aesthetic that you're operating to. (This sounds desperately pretentious.) Are you doing something genuinely new, or do you see yourselves as about the same sort of business as musicians before you? 

PL: Music has a certain continuity to it, throughout the history of western music, anyway. It started out as church music; and I believe, in the sense that we...one of our original sayings was "every place we play is church." And in that sense, we feel a kind of continuity with that tradition: music is raising consciousness, as well, of course, as being entertainment. That, to me, is the core of the timeless tradition. That's what makes it the good stuff. In terms of the way we're approaching that, the way we're trying to do it, yes, we feel that we're always trying to do something new. 

AB: Yes, but is it the same thing you think you're trying to do? 

PL: Yes, as musicians for the millenia. 

AB: Well, not all: there are people who would draw a line and say: With Bach, he was doing it for the glory of God, and with Wagner, for self-expression. 

PL: But that has nothing to do with the way it's received by the listener. 

AB: Doesn't it? 

PL: Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. I can listen to Bach, and feel part of his, part of that spirit, to the glory of God. I also feel the same thing in Wagner, because even though it's a well-known fact that Wagner was the biggest ego that ever lived, the nature of music itself allows that to be transcended. 

AB: Oh yes...he may have got to the right place by the wrong route!

PL: But who are we to care? Why should we care? The result is what counts.

AB: As listeners, I don't think we should care. As practitioners, you ought to know what the right route is.

PL: Well, the right route for us is not the same as...if Wagner hadn't been such an egoist, I don't think he could have created, almost single-handedly, modern music.

(by Andrew Brown, from Spiral Light 25, Feb 1992)

More interviews - on the site: 

Grateful Dead Sources: May 1970: Phil Lesh Interview ("Dead On Arrival," Melody Maker) 

Grateful Dead Sources: Spring 1971: Phil Lesh Interview (from Hank Harrison, The Dead Book) 

Grateful Dead Sources: September 1974: Phil Lesh Interview ("Conversation with Phil Lesh," ZigZag) 

Grateful Dead Sources: March 1981: Phil Lesh Interview ("Reddy Kilowatt Speaks!", Comstock Lode)

- & in print: 

David Gans, "Phil Lesh: Still Searching For 'It'" & "The Pre-Dead Days In Phil's Own Words," Golden Road 2, Spring 1984 - drawn from 1981-82 interviews, reprinted in different form in Conversations with the Dead (along with 1983 followups) *

Blair Jackson, "We Want Phil!", Golden Road 23, Summer 1990 - reprinted in Goin' Down the Road

Blair Jackson, "In Phil We Trust," Dupree's Diamond News 28, Spring 1994 - reprinted in The Grateful Dead Reader

* APPENDIX

The '81/82 interviews with Gans were printed in a different order in Golden Road & Conversations with the Dead. Some bits were only used in Golden Road and were left out of the book, so I'll post the "outtakes" here.

Gans: "Our talk had to do with...Phil's interests in 20th century classical music, jazz, and Beethoven. This conversation was punctuated with remarks like, 'To hear concrete examples of this music we're talking about, you really ought to come up to the house some time.' I did...and Lesh played selections by Varese, Schoenberg, Beethoven, Coltrane - and the Grateful Dead... Aside from an occasional audition of a Grateful Dead live tape - usually to resolve an argument or illustrate a point - there's only one recording of rock music I've ever heard among the Miles Davis, Wagner and Berio in my visits to Phil's: Layla... 

"Lesh is a strong-willed, opinionated sumbitch, but on the whole good-natured and outgoing. His enthusiasm for music - and for the Grateful Dead - is catching, and he's proved to be a good teacher."

On Phil's peak experiences:

"The only two things I've found that are like the Grateful Dead were Formula I Grand Prix racing...watching it as a spectator. The other one was the launch of a spaceship. I went to the last Apollo launch, in Florida. I bugged out on a Blues for Allah mix and went to the launch. Those are the three things that have impressed me the most in my entire life, with the possible exception of the Brahms First when I was four years old."

[This was probably the Apollo launch on 7/15/75.]

On playing in the '60s: 

"It's even a testament to Bill Graham. He gave us the gigs, an awful lot of gigs. For a while we played one weekend for Chet Helms and one weekend for Bill [back and forth]... If you look at the programs for some of those gigs...how would you feel having to follow Miles Davis? And that was one of Miles' hottest bands, too. There were some amazing bills, man, and the good shit did come to town: Count Basie played the Fillmore Auditorium, Bill Graham Presents. Anyway, that was then."

On not playing well:  

"It depends on the context, and the context can include everything from the astrological lineup to what I ate before the gig, or what so-and-so ate before the gig, or whether Mickey, for instance, over-exercised that day. There are so many variables." 

Gans: I don't think I've ever seen it where you were totally into it and the band wasn't, but there have been times when you were not riding on it but the rest of the band would be - 

"Would have been if I'd been there?" 

Gans: Well, if you had been, it would have kicked it up to the next level. 

"What can I say?"

Gans: Garcia has said, 'When Phil's happening, the band's happening.' 

"He's always said that. He's never deviated from that... I've felt for a long time that there is a particular link between me and Jerry, and that sort of was borne out when I played with the Garcia Band." 

Gans: How did you like that? 

"I had a great time. I couldn't believe how much fun I had, because I got a chance to see Jerry in a context that was completely different.

"But in terms of that responsibility...I feel that I've come back a long way from where I was at the worst. I was only capable of knowing that I wasn't playing well, and that it was my own problems that were causing that. For me, it's a long, slow, and painful process. I don't know about that for anybody else. But I don't think that I've abdicated my responsibility in the slightest... I don't feel that I've slacked off - since that point, let's say..."

[Lesh played with the Garcia Band a few times in summer 1981. 1982 is often judged to be Phil's lowpoint with the Dead, so I wonder what earlier worst point he was thinking of.]

On trying to make 'it' happen when nothing's working onstage: 

"It's like a test pilot when his aircraft is out of control and screaming toward the desert floor at 1000 MPH: 'I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! What do I do now?'"

But: "When 'it' is happening, I don't have to think about what I'm playing. I can't put a finger in the wrong place - can't do it. Of course, I could try, but I won't."

On playing small local theaters: 

"I love it! My dream is never to have to tour again. My dream is to play in a small hall in a situation where you can play quietly and not have somebody whistle a piercing whistle in the most tender and intimate part of the music. The bottom line is how loud the crowd is."

On out-of-control audiences: 

"What can I say? That's part of the Acid Test heritage. We carry that as baggage, or should I say a handicap like in Vonnegut. (Laughs) So many people are turned off by the audience, people who would ordinarily be able to dig the music if they could. They're turned off - some guy's puking over the seat next to him..."

On "time-warp" comments about the fans from critics: 

"The surface of things is always going to be real obvious to anybody who's looking only at the surface. So it's okay - I understand why people say 'time warp.' I also understand why the young kids who come to our shows, the younger siblings or children of the original Deadheads, feel like...this is one way to get into it, probably the way to get into it without feeling weird. It's a normal thing, when you're going to get into the mode of whatever consciousness everybody is into. And I'll bet that the kids, when they first come to a Grateful Dead show - like they get dragged in and somebody shoves some acid down their throat - they don't come in their tie-dyed t-shirts, necessarily. I see a lot of kids in the audience with button-down shirts. I don't think it matters, really... I think that some people will come to the Grateful Dead show and if they dig it, they'll be high enough to understand that they don't necessarily have to wear tie-dyed t-shirts and act like hippies."

March 24, 1968: Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids, MI

Adults Relent

CHURCH HOSTS GRATEFUL DEAD

When the Tower Club, the young peoples' organization at Fountain Street Church, suggested a concert by The Grateful Dead, adult members of the congregation balked. The "psychedelic" rock group had been involved in a drug arrest and the five members of the group looked like hippies. 

Which they are and which prompted the adult Education Committee at Fountain Street to take another look. The Grateful Dead, after all, represented what their current series of programs was all about - an attempt at understanding the way-out philosophy of some of the younger generation. 

So, The Grateful Dead will appear at Fountain Street after all. 

The date is Sunday, March 24. The time is 7:30 p.m. 

"We have been attempting to understand this hippie culture," a spokesman for the Adult Education Committee explained. "Unless we experience some of the reactions of the young, we can't very well understand or, at least, try to understand it." 

First of the three-part "understanding process" was a lecture by Sue Carlson of San Francisco, who works with San Francisco groups. Following the Grateful Dead will be William Zinsswer, author and social observer, who will discuss the impact of the philosophies of the unusual groups cropping up in society. 

As to the wild-looking bunch of musicians with the strange name, the Fountain Street committee reports that a program of "blues-oriented" music is expected, complete with a light show. That's an arrangement of different-colored, movable lights that are "played" with the music and swung around among the audience to get everyone completely involved in the goings on. 

"In dealing with these boys (the musicians) in arranging for their appearance, we've found them rather nice," said the Adult Committee spokesman. "They do concerts for nothing, just for the good feeling of bringing joy to people, I guess. They even offered to come here for nothing." 

They won't have to, however. The church group will pay them whatever is part of what is collected from the $2 admission fees. Tickets are available at the church, Dodds Record Shop, Sinfornia Record Shop, Posteria, and Grand Rapids Junior College. 

The adults at the church also have been placated a bit by the group's recent public denouncement of the use of drugs, which the musicians have decided "is not the answer." 

(from the Grand Rapids Press, March 10, 1968, p.34)

Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com 

The Dead did not play. Per McNally: 

"The Dead went off on a logistically ridiculous and not entirely atypical road trip, flying all the way to Detroit for two shows with Eric Burdon and the Animals at the State Fair Coliseum. Their schedule then called for them to play a benefit in Grand Rapids, where the organizer was Rock [Scully]'s brother Dicken's girlfriend's mother, and then go home. In Detroit it snowed fourteen inches, and the benefit was canceled. The lovely poster, which was a drawing of Pigpen with angel's wings, was the only evidence of the dream." (p.257)

On March 24, the Dead were back in sunny San Francisco, Jerry Garcia jammed with Traffic, and the snows of Michigan were left behind.

March 1967: Gleason Introduces the Dead

DEAD LIKE LIVE THUNDER

San Francisco has become the Liverpool of America in recent months, a giant pool of talent for the new music world of rock.

The number of recording company executives casing the scene at the Fillmore and the Avalon is equalled only by the number of anthropologists and sociologists studying the Haight-Ashbury hippy culture. 

Nowhere else in the country has a whole community of rock music developed to the degree it has here. 

At dances at the Fillmore and the Avalon and the other, more occasional affairs, thousands upon thousands of people support several dozen rock 'n roll bands that play all over the area for dancing each week. Nothing like it has occurred since the heyday of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. It is a new dancing age.

The local band with the greatest underground reputation (now that the Jefferson Airplane has gone national via two LPs and several single records) is a group of young minstrels with the vivid name, The Grateful Dead. 

Their lead guitar player, a former folk musician from Palo Alto named Jerry Garcia (see This World's cover) and their organist, harmonica player and blues singer, Pig Pen (Ron McKernan) have been pictured in national magazines and TV documentaries. Richard Goldstein in the Village Voice has referred to the band as the most exciting group in the Bay Area and comments, "Together, the Grateful Dead sound like live thunder." 

Tomorrow the Grateful Dead celebrate the release of their first album, on the Warner Brothers label. It's called simply "The Grateful Dead" and the group is throwing a record promotion party for press and radio at Fugazi Hall. 

The Dead's album release comes on the same day as their first single release, two sides from the album - "Golden Road" and "Cream Puff War." 

The Dead, as their fans call them, got their exotic name when guitarist Garcia, a learned and highly articulate man, was browsing through a dictionary. "It just popped out at me. The phrase - 'The Grateful Dead.' We were looking for a name at the time and I knew that was it." 

The Grateful Dead later discovered the name was from an Egyptian prayer: "We grateful dead praise you, Osiris..." 

Garcia, who is a self-taught guitarist ("my first instrument was an electrical guitar; then I went into folk music and played a flat top guitar, a regular guitar. But Chuck Berry was my influence!"), is at a loss to describe the band's music, despite his expressiveness. 

The Grateful Dead draws from at least five idioms, Garcia said, including Negro blues, country & western, popular music, even classical. (Phil Lesh, the bass player, is a composer who has spent several years working with serial and electronic music.) 

"He doesn't play bass like anybody else; he doesn't listen to other bass players, he listens to his head," Garcia said. 

Pig Pen, the blues vocalist, "has a style that is the sum of several styles," Garcia pointed out, including that of country blues singers such as Lightnin' Hopkins, as well as the more modern, urban blues men.

"When we give him a song to sing, it doesn't sound like someone else, it comes out Pig Pen's way." Pig Pen's father, by the way, is Phil McKernan, who for years had the rhythm & blues show on KRE, the predecessor of KPAT in Berkeley. 

Bill Sommers, the drummer, is a former jazz and rhythm & blues drummer. "He worked at the same music store I did in Palo Alto; I was teaching guitar and he was teaching drums," Garcia said. He is especially good at laying rhythms under a solo line played by the guitars. Bob Weir, the rhythm guitarist, "doesn't play that much straight rhythm," Garcia said, "he thinks up all those lovely pretty things to do."

The Dead (they were originally the Warlocks) have been playing together for over two years now. They spend at least five or six hours a day rehearsing or playing or "just fooling around," Garcia continued. 

"We're working with dynamics now. We've spent two years with loud, and we've spent six months with deafening! I think that we're moving out of our loud stage. We've learned, after these past two years, that what's really important is that the music be groovy, and if it's groovy enough and it's well played enough, it doesn't have to be too loud." 

The Dead's material comes from all the strains in American music. "We'll take an idea and develop it; we're interested in form. We still feel that our function is as a dance band and that's what we like to do; we like to play for dancers. We're trying to do new things, of course, but not arrange our material to death. I'd say we've stolen freely from everywhere, and we have no qualms about mixing our idioms. You might hear some traditional style classical counterpoint cropping up in the middle of some rowdy thing, you know!" 

The eclectic electric music has won the Dead its Warner Brothers contract, offers of work in films, a dedicated group of fans who follow them faithfully, and the prospect of national tours, engagements in New York and elsewhere. But Garcia, who is universally loved by the rock musicians and fans, is characteristically calm about it all. "I'm just a student guitar player," he concluded, "I'm trying to get better and learn how to play. We're all novices."

(by Ralph Gleason, from the San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 1967)

See also Richard Goldstein's Village Voice article and Gleason's interview on The Maze.

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead - Digital Collections - Northwestern University Libraries

July 1967: Rock Scully Interview

. . . Before Rock had been in the Haight, he'd had to go to many other places. He had to go to Earlham College, spend two years with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (Snick), had to study philosophy in Switzerland, and get arrested for taking part in the civil rights demonstration against the Sheraton Palace Hotel and the franchise holders on auto row along Van Ness Avenue. "I served no real purpose in those demonstrations," he has decided. "I spent a good part of the summer of 1966 in jail, and I didn't serve any real purpose there, either, except I could listen to the colored prisoners talk about Malcolm X. I was in jail with one very militant young cat who's opened the Black Man's Free Store. I can remember the judge telling him he was a black son of a bitch." 

Rock was up in the morning. He and the band, The Grateful Dead, would be leaving soon, not to return till the fall. Until they went, Rock emerged on the streets in the morning during the hours of the friendly vibrations. Then he could half walk, half skip down the hill to Haight Street, walking along it without bumping into people, hailing his friends, stopping to chat with the ones who were there before the place became an international byword. 

"Actually," he said in a cheery tone that never deserts him, even when he talks about his disillusionments, "the band is a partnership, five musicians and two managers, and we've been in the neighborhood four or five years. About three years ago a bunch of us discovered LSD and the psychedelics [at least one member of the band doesn't use dope] and we learned what it was like to feel community and take care of our brothers. At that time there were about fifteen houses in the Haight with young people living without parental supervision. A lot of them were on hard drugs, but then something happened and we found what we called 'getting together.' Ding! Everybody was really excited then. San Francisco was a party town then. Everybody was going to parties in these big old three-story apartment buildings and the big band was the Charlatans. They were the originals. They played the first dances at the Longshoreman's Hall. Then we threw some dances at the California Hall with the Jefferson Airplane, and it was about then that Ken Kesey came to town with the Acid Test. Ding! Do I remember those days. Ding! Going from the Fillmore Auditorium and back to the California Hall. Ding! It was crazy. Sometimes I really thought the floor was going to fall through with two-thirds of the people high on LSD. 

"But we just can't keep up with these kids now. We were pioneers in LSD. We took it very sparingly. These kids coming in here drop it two and three times a week and go a little crazy. When we started, we read about it, talked it over, and tried to get into each other's heads. We didn't just take it anywhere but in the surroundings we were most comfortable in. Even with the Acid Test, when you had lights and drums and bells and paints, you did it so you could work and play together all night long. Right now I can't imagine taking acid and going to one of those shows. The Grateful Dead used to play high on acid, but under the present circumstances we couldn't get in contact with each other. 

"Ding! I remember. Ding, ding! The event that pulled a lot of us together was the Trips Festival [October 1966]. A thousand people were there for three days, all the rock bands, all the light shows, the San Francisco Mime Troop, the Committee Theatre. They were there to interact and grow together. It isn't true that people like Timothy Leary were listened to. They weren't...ever. We went back to the neighborhood here bound and determined to make it a better place. After that we started our friendship with the Diggers and helped them take care of people and people began to pour in. Ding! Just a few weeks ago it looked like there was going to be a riot - so many new kids, not knowing themselves or anybody else - so we quickly got a truck and put the band on top of it. Then we drove down Haight Street, right where the people and the cops were. We drove and the people followed until we led them into the park, where we had a dance. We went to New York. Ding! We played in Tompkins Square, where they'd had a riot the night before; but this time the Puerto Rican kids jumped up on the stage and started dancing instead of throwing rocks. 

"The Grateful Dead went from being an acid band to being a community band. We just refused to go the route of the Jefferson Airplane. [After the Airplane took off from San Francisco it became so successful that it's now doing singing commercials for network advertising.] We held out for a long time before we signed a contract with a recording company, a whole year we held out. Finally we signed with Warner Brothers, but only after we got artistic control, and that's something San Francisco groups don't do. They sign. Ding! Money. Ding, ding! 

"Then our band started falling apart. We'd been working all the time for free, and bands like ours that compose so much of their own music and style have to spend a lot of time alone together. Anyway, we've been driven out of our community. At the beginning of the summer we thought we could stick it out, but here it's just started to be July and the place is full of dope pushers. They have a cover charge at the Drogstore! Imagine! Fifty cents for a cup of coffee here in our community! Tourists all over. We used to be able to walk down the street and see our friends. We could be concerned about the neighborhood, help keep it clean and try and improve it, but now the sidewalks are full of these Tenderloin types. The only thing I can see to save it from its collective head is for us to withdraw for a while. 

"We have to get out of here to keep our heads. Since the summer began our doorstep has been littered - there's no other way to describe it - with every kind of freak. I can't use the word hippy. I was a hippy, but I don't have anything to do with what's going on here. We used to have one cardinal rule: Do not impose your trip on anyone else. Well, that's what these people are doing, and we don't want to go on their trip. Our neighborhood worked until the newspapers shot it up, and then the kids and the tourists came and imposed their trip on us, a sidewalk freak show. If it were a festival it would be great, but it's just another form of cruising up and down in your car, putting on a show bumper to bumper. 

"Ding!" Rock said in a voice that, for him, sounded woebegone. "We were happy and we were making other people happy, and as we saw it we were building an alternative society, a little one, here. We'll come back in the fall and start all over again. Maybe we'll have some other big powwow like the Trips Festival, but, I don't know, the city's no place to take drugs."

(from Nicholas von Hoffman, "We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About," 1968)

Thanks to Paul Hebert.

1969: The Matrix

THE MATRIX AS ANARCHIC JOY

Is it possible to enter the Matrix, San Francisco's persistent musical stronghold, without immediately knowing it to be a most unusual institution? On the wall of the engineering booth is the answer: a photograph, magnificent in its rarity, of Jorma Kaukonen smiling. Smiling. Not smirking sarcastically, but smiling a big, boyish grin of innocent happiness, his guitar in hand. 

And such, in a capsule, is the pattern of existence at this club that gave birth to Jefferson Airplane, and with them, a community of feverish musical activity. Just about everyone started, or was helped to start here. The Grateful Dead did, after transcending Palo Alto; Steve Miller, upon arrival in San Francisco from Chicago, did; The Quicksilver Messenger Service, and of course Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Charlatans, the Final Solution, the Great Society, and on and on and on... 

Why does Jorma smile in his photograph? Because the Matrix is a fine gig to play, it possesses few of the pretensions of the ballrooms, and because it has retained those elements that were once essential to the city's atmosphere. Musicians here are human beings, not stage idols to be indiscriminately pawed and patronized. 

Sitting with Dave Martin, for all practical purposes now the club's manager, in the cramped tangle of the engineering room, talking in rambles and circles and digressions about the history. Half-empty glasses of beer occasionally sipped at, Dave doing his best to salvage his electronics while speaking from his head on the story of the Matrix. 

"The club was really built for the Airplane," he began. "Ted Saunders was the primary person; he financed the Airplane." They opened the club on August 10, 1965. Saunders scraped together the money to rent the building, and to pay the band's equipment and personal expenses. "He's suing them now, because they broke a contract they had signed with him to play here 15 times a year."

There are actually two halves to the Matrix. One is the U.S. Pizza Corporation, which Saunders still owns, and which handles the beer and wine concessions (yes, there is a bar); the other is Matrix Recording, the organization responsible for both of the Great Society albums, and more recently, the "Early Steppenwolf" collection on the Dunhill label. 

Peter Abram and Ray Bregante own the recording endeavor. "Pete had been here since 66," Dave continued, recording various groups." At the beginning of the next year, roughly January, he became the manager, and as June 67 was the co-owner, with Ray. 

Since then, the club has been gradually reasserting its financial strength. It had been so heavily in debt that on two separate occasions the gas and electricity were turned off. "We'd come in at 9:00, turn everything on, run till 2:00, and close up quick," said Dave. But nothing's been turned off since 67. 

Well, at least not for economic reasons. 

On October 31, 1967, the man raided the Matrix, convicted Peter on a charge of disturbing the peace, fined him $250.00, and hit him for a 30 day suspended sentence and a year's probation.

On October 4, 1968, once again, but this time there was no conviction. Harvey Mandel was tuning, and Pete walked into a cop's arms. The problem had been an open door, left so accidentally by the band, which had loosed the amplification to storm the neighborhood. The door is usually closed; do you think the residents could have been polite enough to phone the club and tell the owners that the door was open? Come now. 

After one added threat to bust for noise, the club shut down for a spell to soundproof the premises. But now there is a new ordinance: any sound is excessive that can be heard more than 50 feet from its source. In a commercially zoned area? 

"A new trauma every night," remarked Peter. 

In a time when musicians are charging higher and higher fees for their services, and when promoters are resorting to baseball stadiums in order to retain a good profit margin, how is a small (104 person capacity) club like this able to survive, and still present excellent talent, as it consistently does? 

Peter: "The groups realize that we're not making much money, and old people have a loyalty to the Matrix. They know that it's a relaxed place, and they feel that they can come in here and enjoy it." 

Thus you can come in on a Monday night and blow your mind over as stellar a collection of talent as you could encounter anywhere. You may see Earl or John Lee Hooker...or Jack Casady of the Airplane...or Michael Bloomfield...

The entire Airplane will occasionally play. Elvin Bishop is there quite often, Janis Joplin may drop by, or Jerry Garcia, and a lot of good black blues cats like Lightning Hopkins. 

Unfortunately, you have to be 21 to get in, because alcohol is very bad for anyone younger, and once you are inside no dancing is very feasible, as most the floor area is covered with tables and chairs. 

And you won't see the same audience you do at the ballrooms. Those who frequent the Matrix usually come, surprisingly enough, to listen to the music, not to hustle chicks or whatever. And it's not a very glamorous scene, stuck out in the Marina, with very little of the bright-light big-city feeling found at the Fillmore. 

Instead, a lot of good persons and music, with pastrami sandwiches and wine from the bar, and a lot of generally healthy vibrations. 

Finally, some few ecstatic words about Matrix Recording.

Because the club has served, as its name implies, as a fountainhead for the San Francisco rock community, it has compiled mountains of tapes, all of them cut in the club during performance, of a quite outstanding selection of musicians. Sitting casually on the shelf in the recording booth are some 20 reels of the Elvin Bishop group alone. 

This may serve as indicator of both the quality and quantity of the library. Just think what an album it would make. 

Guess what? 

A three record anthology of the San Francisco bands is now being readied for distribution. When the tapes are edited, and musicians' approval is had, the albums will be released, on a new label called Together (headed by Gary Usher, late of Columbia Records, who has produced, among others, the Byrds). Each of the three lp's will probably come out separately, though they may be packaged as a set. I think enough said.

The club itself, in the meantime, continues to present exceptional name talent, and to nurture local unknowns. It's a house of delightful colors, heavy with rich memories from the past and warm realities from the present.

(by Raymond Lang, from the Daily Californian, July 15, 1969)

* * * 

JOY, JOY: THE MARINES AT KELLY'S COVE (excerpt) 

Friday, August 8, sometime between 2 and 6 in the morning, someone ripped off the Matrix, San Francisco's oldest house of rock (this week is its fourth birthday). 

The theft was for about $4,000 worth of hardware, including some priceless tapes. The owners are in a very cramped corner and desperately need their merchandise. If anyone can supply a lead, a 10% reward waits, eager to be given. 

What's missing: two tape recorders (a TC 500 Sony - 2 and 4 track, and a 777 Sony); three mixers (one custom built, one Allied-Knight, and one Sony); ten microphones (six Electra-Voice, three Senn-Hauser, and one MB); two Dyna 70 amplifiers, and one pair of headphones. 

The tapes, though, are the big deal, fans. Precious music cut live in the club over the past two years, of Jefferson Airplane, The Steve Miller Band, The Blues Project, Elvin Bishop, Johnny Winter... 

Enough pain is enough pain. To the thief or anyone who knows him: copy the tapes if you like, but please don't record over them, and do return them to the Matrix somehow. No questions asked, no trouble needed, just the tapes, and desperately. If you have them, mail them COD, or phone anonymously and say where they can be picked up, or nail a message to the front door, but bring them back somehow. 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco, 567-0118.

Our atmosphere is increasingly feverish with negative energies. I will not be Ralph Gleason proffering bromide in the guise of explanation, but I will exhort us all to view the changes to which we have subjected our "movement."

(by Raymond Lang, from the Daily Californian, August 15, 1969)

For the outcome of Together Records, see:  

https://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2021/07/august-26-1969-family-dog-on-great.html 

https://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/1971-sunflower-records-story.html

November 1, 1969 & February 28, 1970: Family Dog, San Francisco

11/1/69

NO DOUBT: THE DOG 

This is a pitifully inadequate space, both aesthetically and dimensionally, in which to attempt this communication, but here it unfolds: 

Tomorrow night, the fourth of November, Workshop: Family Circus, Rainbow Jam, Tracy Hite, free-form ballet - "Circus of the Stars," music by the Family of Mu. 

Wednesday night, the Family of Man, the Family of God. 

Thursday night, acoustic string night, Tup Fisher, "All God's Children."

This last Saturday night I found myself at the Dog, listening to three artists. The first was the Golden Toad, a preettty strange assemblage of musicians performing on instruments like conch shells, bagpipes, Swiss mountain horns, double reed flutes, an endless array of percussion, and on and on. They're fairly difficult to comment on at all. 

Next was a man whom I've heard nothing about - ever - I still don't know how old he is, where he's from, or how he learned to sing and play. All I can say is that he is a magic being on stage and emits energies warmer and stronger than any solo performer I've ever seen. His name is Danny Cox. 

The Grateful Dead ended the night, deflated my body, and nearly orbited the ballroom with an achingly powerful, energetic set that ran through tunes new and old. Man, this band has endurance.

Stop by the Dog soon, if you're willing to be part of it instead of merely looking at it.

(from the Daily Californian, November 4, 1969) 

https://archive.org/details/gd69-11-01.sbd.cotsman.6298.sbeok.shnf

See also: 

Lost Live Dead: Halloween Weekend 1969: Loma Prieta Room, San Jose State and Family Dog on The Great Highway (Oct 31-Nov 2 '69) [FDGH V] 

(More on Danny Cox.) (More on Golden Toad.)

* * * 

2/28/70

DILBERT'S CHOICE (excerpt) 

The Grateful Dead are amazing. All I know for certain is that last Saturday, at Family Dog, they completely blew my mind with an energy explosion the likes of which I have never experienced. 

They opened with "Love Light," and everyone was jumping... But then Garcia and Weir left everybody hanging by doing three numbers on acoustic guitars. I mean it was O.K., but so what? All it did was rip off everyone's (including their own) energy. It took about a half-hour of Country & Western songs before they could get it together again. They've changed a bit from the old days, they now do individual songs in a C&W vein; I find it boring.

"Good Lovin" then exploded and I completely forgot my boredom... It was like an elusive acid trip...a transcendental vision. It was unbelievable. 

(by Frederick Chase, from the Daily Californian, March 4, 1970)

https://archive.org/details/gd70-02-28.sbd.cotsman.9377.sbeok.shnf 

See also: 

Rock Archaeology 101: February 27-March 1, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen [FDGH '70 VII] 

1969: Aoxomoxoa review

THE GRATEFUL DEAD, LIFE AND JOY

It is very odd that consciousness presents so many obstacles for so many human beings. Why are there so many problems and why does life appear to burden so many of the vehicles in which it is carried? Gloom and war, frustration and destruction. 

Discover a falling leaf. Feel the softness of the earth and see the sun glance through the mist to pour itself on a hillside. Hear nature's welcome in the wind. Find the joy in your being; perception is simple and beautiful. 

In the thick of our little street war here, the Grateful Dead released a third album. It has eight songs, and lasts thirty-eight minutes in time. They've titled it Aoxomoxa, and once again perception is simple and beautiful. 

This is a mildly surprising collection of music, essentially because it is so mellowed. The tunes are soft and gentle, the lyrics graciously decipherable, the vocals hesitant and wavering. There is a remarkable lack of harshly inflected rhythms and scalding guitar, for which the Dead have been so justly famed. 

Instead, Axoxomoxa is a wider application of the ideas we saw in Anthem of The Sun: long, dreamy ballads, occasionally interspersed with rock passages, but more often content to float their own ethereal way. Very different, a bit sadly, from the driving power of the first album. 

But this third one is a delight. It's filled with surreal (What's Become Of The Baby) and romantic visions (Mountains Of The Moon), rural whimsy and funk, and some great old blues (Dupree's Diamond Blues and Cosmic Charlie). 

Somehow, the Grateful Dead have done the impossible. They've kept their standards in the face of white-hot pressures to change. Not only have they remained an intact musical unit, they've improved their skills and sharpened and adjusted their technique, all of which indicates that they have retained their sanity. I find that pretty amazing. 

Heavily in debt, much of it from back taxes, seeing their community fall down around them, the Dead have willingly and happily played innumerable benefits and free concerts in the park (Golden Gate), because they love the music. 

When a human being takes this course of action, when he faces and withstands the demands to mold himself to the social main-current, concentrating only on the realization of his constructive ideas, you call him by one word: artist. 

The Dead are artists. They've ignored packaging trends, preferring to wrap their albums simply, without folding covers and other little goodies. They've made no media appearances, save for three, which I can remember: a KPIX special on the Haight, some two years ago; an Irving Penn photographic essay, titled "The Incredibles," in Look; and about 10 seconds on a CBS documentary of Bill Graham. The Grateful Dead are considered, very simply, poor commercial material and a sight from which the eyes of America's children must somehow be shielded. 

How sad. 

Listen to Jerry sing Robert Hunter's lyrics to "St. Stephen." 

"Saint Stephen, with a rose, in and out of the garden he goes.

Country garden in the wind and the rain, wherever he goes,

The people all complain. 

Stephen prospered in his time, 

Well he may, and he may be kind 

Did it matter? Does it now? 

Stephen would answer if he only knew how." 

YEEEEEHHAAAA! Enter the guitars, in high-pitched vocal outbursts, tumble the percussion. Mick's bizarre technique (far out and ecstatic) intersects Bill's, the band is delirious with harnessed fire, Phil's bass line insane and cohesive. This is a song of mountain light and city heavy contrasts, played with perfect restraint and control. 

"Cosmic Charlie" is almost the vehicle it could be for Jerry's riff playing. The cut is well-directed and the statements drive hard but easily. Still, the fever of the early Dead has gone down a bit, and one wishes for a few decibels more (one gets it live). 

It's no use trying to alter a classic statement of existence. The Good Old Grateful Dead will always be just that.

(by Raymond Lang, from the Daily Californian, May 29, 1969)

See also Lang's reviews of Anthem of the Sun and Live/Dead

More Aoxomoxoa reviews: 

https://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/02/1969-aoxomoxoa-review.html

https://deadsources.blogspot.com/2018/09/june-1969-aoxomoxoa-reviews.html

1968: Anthem of the Sun review

FLAWS FOUND IN DEAD'S NEWEST ALBUM

Despite their overwhelming array of talent, their magnificent percussion, their searing guitar riffs, and their unfailing power to excite, the Grateful Dead are flawed, specifically these three ways: 1) their attempts to construct any viable blues vocals consistently fail; 2) they have a mysterious and irritatingly unnecessary preoccupation with electronics; and 3) their scope of material is limited, sometimes severely so. 

The group's second album, Anthem of the Sun, incorporates all these shortcomings - each in a different tone. As for the first, its truth is essentially admitted outright, thus clarifying much of the late controversy over Pig Pen's voice. (Actually, many Dead freaks have for some time recognized his lackluster blues efforts. "Schoolgirl" is an old example.) But there is now a new development. Anthem makes no attempt to sing honest blues; instead, it employs a semi-comic approach that is seemingly indicative of the group's realization that they perform the art poorly. Alligator's vocal section best exemplifies this: the minimum frame of a Southern accent is present, but both the lyric itself - "creepy alligator, comin round the bend" and its musical contest - kazoos, an erratically thumping rhythm section, etc., are so humorous that the listener can do little more than laugh along. 

Because the Dead are basically a musicians' band, this flaw is trifling, but their electronics are not. They are superfluous. Electronics can be a legitimate vehicle, but not without intensely focused imagination, tedious studio labor, and an appropriate mood - this last being an admittedly nebulous concept. (A model synthesis of these elements is Lennon-McCartney's "Tomorrow Never Knows.") But the Dead are in a different vein; they work with electronics live, wielding amplification units as improvised instruments, producing droning, irrelevant passages that bore to frustration. Often, they will precede a blues classic like Bland's "Lovelight" with 10 to 15 minutes of this. The question is: why? Why give us, between the first and second cuts on Anthem's A side, a combination of SAC bombing runs and the bell tower of Notre Dame? 

The third problem - a narrow scope of material - strikes hard at the perennial fan. One tires, eventually, of hearing "Schoolgirl," "Morning Dew," and "Lovelight" each time the Dead appear; enjoyable as these songs are, some fresh ones are needed; Anthem supplies the long-awaited new works, some of them seemingly incongruous. Because they project, like the Rolling Stones, a harshly masculine image, the Dear [sic] appear rather silly singing a soft, sensual ballad like "That's It for the Other One" - in concept. In actual performance they are so exquisite that all thoughts of incongruity fade. Garcia's lovely, mournful vocal projects a mood of prayerful solemnity that is simply overpowering. 

What about good old Grateful Dead hard rock? Anthem gives us some, but rather grumpily, as if it doesn't deserve much exposure. "The Faster We Go the Rounder We Get" is an example: the cut is unwaveringly strong, thrashing out in the fashion we've come to expect from the Dead, but is disappointingly short. Garcia's guitar is taped at a nearly inaudible level, while the rhythm section steals the scene. This is both tragic and not: it does succeed in displaying the band's new drummer, Mick Hart, schooled in Eastern technique and a former student of Ali Akbar Khan. Making heavy use of the snare, he effects a quasi-military beat that, coupled with Kreutzmann, composes a percussion unit an experience unto itself. Everyone finally merges on the live portion of Alligator to produce an amazingly truthful reproduction of what the Dead are when they peel off their facade: the most exhilarating musical event in San Francisco - and maybe anywhere. 

(by Raymond Lang, from the Daily Californian, November 1, 1968)

Lang also reviewed Live/Dead with much more enthusiasm: 

Grateful Dead Sources: 1969: Live/Dead Reviews #2 

See also: 

Grateful Dead Sources: 1968: More Anthem of the Sun Reviews 

November 7-10, 1968: Fillmore West, San Francisco

RECORD STUDIOS MAY DESTROY MUSIC SCENE

If anything destroys the San Francisco music scene, it will probably be the recording studios. While some groups benefit from techniques first used in a recording studio - enhancing their live sets - most groups with less musical direction come out suffering from over-production and a deficiency of style. 

A comparison can be made in this regard between the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Grateful Dead, who performed recently in Fillmore West. 

Quicksilver started out their two fine sets by playing some good and tough rock numbers (new to me). Duncan played through some fine guitar leads, very reminiscent of Bloomfield. The group has been criticized for being overly-influenced by the Electric Flag in their last album (in light of the fact that two Flag members co-produced it). But it would be tragic if a band which has been around as long as Quicksilver was influenced by a short-lived band that never developed any musical direction. 

Let us say that Duncan's and Cipollina's considerable skill cause them to borrow certain stylistic traits of Bloomfield, as well as Alkaunon and Garcia. 

Audiences tend to like things that are familiar, and the audience (dead as par) didn't warm up until they played a cut from their album (Gold and Silver). 

Now that the Dead have come to be comfortable in a recording studio, they can use their techniques as good tools in their sets. Their set got the warmest audience reaction. Where Quicksilver tends to be erratic because of problems in accommodating ordered songs to a live set, the Dead seems to have no problems in this regard.

Since "Anthem of the Sun," the Dead have gone into electronic music, using different types of feedback to climax their sets. But they also went through standards like "School Girl" and "Lovelight." 

Quicksilver's Gold and Silver is very carefully composed, and loses its effectiveness if it is not allowed to progress in a linear fashion so the intricately constructed climaxes can be developed. It is therefore, not a free enough cut to be effective in a live set. The best they can do for the number is to try to approach the technical perfection that the audience is familiar with from the album. They try to add interest by including a drum solo, but this only serves to stop the progression altogether. 

As their performance of "Gold and Silver" showed how bad the effects of such studio compositions can be, so their performance of the "Fool" showed a beautiful balance between the composition and the improvisation. With Frieberg's base as a catalyst, there is a very interesting reaction between the two guitars. 

There was a nice progression and use of false climaxes in almost classical style, yet it remained as a free vehicle for Cipollina's guitar leads.

Still, the best song of either set was their old standard "Who do you love?" (rough rock but it has some well-executed composition including some tinkling guitar effects). They rounded out their sets with some album cuts done pretty straight. It was appropriate that they finished off their first set with a Beau Diddley number a la Rolling Stone - "Hey, Mona."

(by Russ Stein, from the Daily Californian, November 25, 1968)

October 20, 1968: Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley

FIVE ROCK GROUPS PLAY HERE SUNDAY

Five of the greatest rock groups in the Bay Area will play at the Greek Theater this Sunday afternoon from 1 to 6 p.m. Canned Heat will head the bill with the Grateful Dead, Mad River, Linn County, and Stonehenge filling out the concert. Buddy Miles Express also will make a probable appearance for a special jam session. 

This is the largest rock "festival" ever held on the campus. Student prices for the concert have been reduced to $3 in advance and $3.50 at the door, instead of the $3.50 and $4 prices previously announced. Student tickets may be picked up at the ASUC box office.

(from the Daily Californian 10/15/68)

OUTSTANDING LOCAL ROCK BANDS PERFORM: 

GRATEFUL DEAD, MAD RIVER, CANNED HEAT

What is considered to be one of the country's finest rock bands will be playing the Greek Theatre Sunday, from 1:00-6:00, accompanied by several other fine groups; the Grateful Dead, faithful to the in life-style, promise to present an afternoon of unusual experiences and irresistible musical power. 

Canned Heat, an L.A. based group with three albums on the Mercury label, will appear, supposedly headlining the show. 

Three groups representative of San Francisco's reinvigorated musical scene will complete the program: Stonehenge, Mad River - a long time Berkeley favorite which has just released its first album on Capitol - and Linn County, originally formed in Chicago, now headquartered in S.F., and soon to begin their second album for Mercury. 

Tickets are on sale now at ASUC box office, and ticket agencies throughout the Bay Area, for $3 in advance and $3.50 at the door.

(from the Daily Californian 10/17/68)

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ROCK AT YOUR LEISURE

There were a great many people who predicted complete failure for SUPERB's rock concert last Sunday. And in at least one category, they were correct: economically, the show was best left forgotten. In tacit testimony to the intensity of Bay Area audience competition, the Greek Theatre was at no time more than half-filled.

Quantitatively, the show lost that competition; qualitatively, it won. Despite its size, the crowd was a crazily cohesive patchwork of Gypsy Jokers, students, hippies, adults, groupies, animals, street-people, children, and musicians, all happily cavorting under a warm, glass-clear sky. In contrast to the city's ballrooms, those who so chose, danced all day long. Weed, of course, flowed freely through the ampitheatre, doing its substantial share of creating a picnic atmosphere. 

Although they were making little money, the musicians obviously enjoyed working in such a climate, thereby constructing a very loose, casual audience-performer communication. The first band to play, after an exasperating delay of nearly an hour, was Stonehenge: a trio from Palo Alto, their music is much in Cream's vein, complete with a rather tiring, Clapton-based lead guitarist, who is forced to compete against his over-volumed rhythm section. They are mildly enjoyable, but essentially undistinguished, brand of hard rock. 

Linn County, formed in Chicago, now San Francisco-based, were next. Their album will be reviewed next week: it is sufficient to say here that they are one of the very best reasons why this area is still a musical stronghold. All those who admire professional ability should see them soon - they're just beginning to climb.

The process of a concert's development is always fascinating; as each successive band appears, the audience warms with increased familiarity and enthusiasm. When established Berkeley favorite Mad River stepped onto stage, they received noisy welcome from their faithful; when they introduced their first song as "just good old-fashioned Mad River rock and roll," a good throng rose to dance. The show was gaining momentum. Their music is unquestionably rock, which they play in an exciting, very speedy style that falters only when the band becomes a dime-bag too eager. Of all surprises, their math duplication happens strongest in Amphetamine Gazelle, a number so quick it seemed to set Greek on a turntable - at 78 rpm. 

In typical fashion, nearly late, generally disorganized, but clearly undaunted, the Grateful Dead managed to arrive. Once set up, they proceeded to play a stormburst of music in their hardest fashion.

(by Raymond Lang, from the Daily Californian, October 25, 1968)

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