Grateful Dead

Fatalattraction: the Dead live at Fillmore East, April 27, 1971

HECapitolTheatreinPort Chester,some30milesnorth ofNYC,beganlifeasaprewarcinemaandvaudeville venue.By1970,however, rockpromoterHowardStein hadtransformeditintoa psychedelicpleasurepalace. Traffic,Santana,Frank ZappaandJanisJoplinwere amongthosewhoperformed therethatyear–Joplinevenpremiered“MercedezBenz”, writtenjusthoursearlierinaPortChesterbar–butits mostregularattractionwastheGratefulDead.

TheDeadfoundtheCapitolcrowdalittlemoreattentive thanattheFillmoreEast,theirotherregularhaunton theEastCoast.Itwasaplacetostretchout,trydifferent things,introducenewsongs.Theperfectvenue,then,for arunofshowsinFebruary1971thatheraldedthenext phaseintheirevolution.

“Itwasanincrediblycreativetimefortheband,”recalls singerandrhythmguitaristBobWeir.“Wehadthe feelingthatwe’dbasicallyopenedupthebagand therewasalotmoreinthere.Wespentsomuchtime withoneanotherinthosedays,eitherontheroadorat home,thatwereallylearnedhowtoplaytogether.Itall merged,atthatpoint.”

Onopeningnight–February18–theDeadchoseto unpackabatchofremarkablenewtunes:“Bertha”, “WharfRat”,“Loser”,“PlayingInTheBand”and “GreatestStoryEverTold”.Songsthatbecame embeddedintheirlivecanonforyearstocome, shiningillustrationsoftheband’stelepathicinterplay, poisedbetweenlimbermelodyandfreeimprov.

“ITWASAN INCREDIBLY CREATIVE TIMEFOR THEBAND”

Drummer Bill Kreutzmann remembers it as an exceptional period. “We were just really starting to become a band and those were really high moments,” he says. “We were just coming alive. All I could think about in those days was playing and getting to the show.”

In what turned out to be a profoundly transitional year that saw the temporary exit of founder member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Kreutzmann’s fellow drummer Mickey Hart, the band underwent a metamorphosis that involved landmark shows, bizarre ESP experiments, French Acid Tests, new faces and teary goodbyes. This shift was captured on double LP Grateful Dead (aka ‘Skull & Roses’ owing to its distinctive cover art by Alton Kelly and Stanley Mouse), the extraordinary live document of ’71, released that October. It’s the sound of a band pushing beyond themselves. Aside from its unique pyretic energy, the album illustrates the sheer diversity of the Dead: blues, country, psych, rock’n’roll, experimental jams.

“The band were better suited to the live environment than the studio,” says their trusted engineer Betty CantorJackson, who co-produced ‘Skull & Roses’ with longtime cohort Bob Matthews. “Everything stretched out, it expanded. The music grew and grooved. It was amazing to be inside of that when it was happening.” Crucially, too, the album expanded their reach.

Until then viewed as a cult band who’d enjoyed a modest degree of success with their last two studio albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty,

‘Skull & Roses’ was their first gold-seller in American.

The fan club callout on the album sleeve – “DEAD

FREAKS UNITE: Who are you? Where are you? How are you?” – further galvanised a growing community of Deadheads that swelled to five figures over the next few years.

“In ’71 you’re looking at a hippie family turning into something else,” suggests pianist/organist Ned Lagin, a touring member of the Dead who also played on American Beauty. “They became far tougher and more lucrative.

‘Skull & Roses’ came out within that context of them being an entertainment/ touring band rather than a counterculture art band.

When I first saw the Dead in

Boston two years earlier, they came out on stage an hour late, sat on their amps and tried to figure out what to do.

By the fall of 1971 they’d filteredallofthatout.”

HE Grateful Dead had hardly stopped. From 1969–1970 they’d begun to harden into faithful road warriors, racking up nearly 300 shows across the States and Canada, establishing strongholds in New York and, naturally, their San Francisco hometown. The band themselves had long since left Haight-Ashbury behind, setting up home at various spots in rural Marin County in the summer of 1968. The countercultural spirit was still in the air, though, come the early ’70s.

“The interesting thing about ’71 is that it’s actually the summary year of what happened in the ’60s,” observes Lagin. “You had this community of musicians who had their own identities, but were also cross-pollinating with one another, jamming with one another, hanging out, sharing music. There was a scene around Mickey Hart’s ranch that involved people from Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Grateful Dead.”

This fraternal tenor heightened the Dead’s creativity. Fresh from his involvement with newly formed country rockers New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Jerry Garcia had enough songs to start planning a solo album. Weir, Hart, Kreutzmann and Pigpen also hatched ideas for separate projects. “Crosby, Stills & Nash had moved up to the Bay Area and settled up here, so we were hanging out,” explains Weir. “At that particular time we settled into the craft of songwriting, gleaned from them, I guess. We got more focused on how you go about that. Jerry was writing a lot and I started writing for real.”

Eager to return to a live setting, the Dead set about booking the Port Chester gigs. After the relatively straight cut of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, interrogating structure and form was very much back on the agenda. Pigpen led the band through an epic version of Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle”; “Dark Star” segued into “Wharf Rat”, mutating into the impromptu wonder of “Beautiful Jam”. The traditional “Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad” was bookended by driving runs at Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away”.

The Dead sounded inspired. “I was in one of the rooms off the balcony, with my 16-track machine,” remembers Cantor-Jackson. “When they played ‘Sugar Magnolia’, that balcony rocked so much, with so many people dancing, that it threw me up in the air like a top. The machine actually left the floor, too. It was like, ‘Holy crap!’ I’d never in my life experienced anything like that before.”

The investigative nature of those six shows at the Capitol Theatre wasn’t confined to the music alone. The Dead had organised nightly ESP experiments with Dr Stanley Krippner of the Maimonides

INSIDETHE DEADVAULT

NO other group has been collated quite like the Dead, largely thanks to the efforts of a fiercely devoted community of Deadheads who’ve been trading live tapes and bootlegs since the late ’60s. The band’s decision to record most of their shows, employing influential fans as curators, has been a smart move too, resulting in live recordings series like Dick’s Picks, Road Trips and Dave’s Picks.

The ‘Dave’ in question is the Dead’s legacy manager and audiovisualarchivist, DavidLemieux.He hastheenviablejob ofoverseeingtheband’s entiretapestash,housedin aclimate-controlledfacility withinalargerWarnerMusic GroupbuildingingreaterLA. “TheDeaddidalittleover 2,300concerts,and75per centormoreofthosewere recorded,”heexplains. “Therearecertaingaps intheearlyyears,but from1971-’95virtually everysingleGrateful Deadperformance wasrecorded,witha fewexceptions.Close to1,800shows,invery goodquality,residein theDeadvault.”

Thismeansthatthe chancesoffindingany newstuffareslight.The lastsignificantbatch ofunheardmaterial appearedon2019’s

David Lemieux and Mark Pinkus

Cornell5/8/77).

Asforthe fewholesinthe archive,Lemieux isparticularlykeen togathertapes fromthesecond halfof1970and

January/February 79,iftheyexistat all.“We’vegone throughthetapes prettydiligently,but therearestillsome sessionsfromMars

HotelandBluesFor

ReadyOrNot,alive compilationofsongs thatthebandhadbeen workingupforanew studioalbumbetween 1992and1995.Jerry Garcia’sdeathin August’95meant thatitwasnever completed.Lemieux revealshe’ssitting onthreeunreleased PhilLeshsongsfrom thesameera,though “Philhasrequested weholdoffonthose forabit”.Themain taskforarchivists, therefore,isensuringtheDead’s catalogueisimpeccablymaintained.

“OurphilosophyinreleasingGrateful Deadmusichasalwaysbeentoput outtheshowsthatrepresenttheir bestperformancesandenhancethe legacy,”saysLemieux,who’sbeen workingfortheDeadfor22years.“Our mandateisn’ttoputoutmediocre thingstofillpeople’scollections;it’sto getthebestDeadmusicoutthere.”

Thisinitselfthrowsupaconundrum: howtosiftandchoosewhenthe qualitylevelissohigh.“Thebiggest problemwiththeGratefulDeadis the sheer vastness,” agrees Rhino Entertainment president Mark Pinkus, the man in charge of the band’s catalogue. “Almost all of the recordings are extraordinary. Part of it is catering to the seven or eight unique eras the Dead had over their career.” Lemieux cites the recovery f four distinct collections of ve tapes into the vault over he years. Two stashes dated om the spring, summer and arly autumn of 1971 – the kull & Roses’ era. Another ame from the family of a rateful Dead crew member, ho’d left a box of tapes from 969-’70inthegarage,while 400reelsoftapefrom helatterhalfofthe’70s urneduparoundfour earsago.Theholygrail wasapristinerecording famuch-bootlegged nfavouritefromNew ork’sCornellUniversity n1977(officially eleasedin2017as

Allahthatwehaven’t lookedatyet.Ithink therearethingsto putoutthatpeople willbesurprisedat.” Afterthe releaseofa contemporaneous liveshowfrom1971 togowiththelatest reissueof‘Skull&Roses’, what’snext?Both LemieuxandPinkusare understandablytightipped,butthelatter revealsthat“it’ssafeto assumethere’saboxset announcementfor2021 comingsoon”.Andwith the50thanniversaryofEurope’72 comingup,they’rediscussingnew waystomarktheoccasion.Nomean feat,consideringthelabelhasalready releasedall22showsofthatDeadtour on2011’smammothboxsetEurope ’72:TheCompleteRecordings.

“Therearestillnewandexcitingways topresentthatmusic,”insistsLemieux. “It’ssuchamomentousoccasioninthe GratefulDeadworld,sowe’vebeen lookingatcreativewaystogetpeople engagedwiththattouragain,tomake itmoreaccessibleinaformatwethink peoplearereallygoingtowant.”

MedicalCentreinBrooklyn.As head of dream research,Krippnerwantedtotest whether a crowd of2,000fans,manyofwhomwere psychedelically enhanced,couldtransmitspecific thoughts to a chosenrecipient.Deadheadswere thus shown images projectedontoalargescreenabove the stage, then askedto“send”apicturetothe sleeping psychic back atthelab.

“Itactuallyworkedprettywell,” attests Kreutzmann, who,alongwithotherbandmates, continued the relationshipwithKrippner.“Later on, he hypnotised MickeyHartandmyselfsowe’d be able to play in ways hesuggested.Ireallygotintothat stuff. Krippner wouldsaysomethinglike‘fire’, and we’d play like that.Irememberlookingoverwhen he was talking to usonetimeandtherewasthiscolony of ants crawling outofhisshirtpocket.Hewasa very far-out man.”

WeirseestheKrippnertrialsasemblematicofthe Dead’ssynchronousmusicalrelationship.“There’s atelepathiclinkthathappensbetweenanygroupof musiciansthatareplayingtogether,”hesays.“Wefirstbecame awareofthatinthe’60s,duringtheAcidTests.Wewereableto plumbeachother’sminds.By’71wewereplayingprettymuch everydayandlisteningtothesamestuff,communally–JosephSpence,RobertJohnson,gospelgroupsliketheSwan Silvertones,allkindsofjazzandblues.We’dborrowheavily fromanynumberofdifferentsources.JohnColtranenever wentaway,wewerealwaysdippingbackintothatstuff.” HEPortChestershowsdidn’tpasswithout incident.InwhatbecametheDead’sfirstmajor dramaof1971,MickeyHartquitafterthefirst night.Stillburdenedbythebehaviourofhisfather Lenny–theDead’sex-managerwho’ddisappeared withahugechunkoftheirprofitsthepreviousyear–Hart’splayinghadsufferedasaresult,exacerbatedby heavydrugabuse.Thedecisiontoleavewasmutual.

WithKreutzmannassolepercussionist,theDeadwere backtohowthey’dstartedinthemid-’60s:asafivepiece.Ifanything,theirplayingimproved.“Mickeyis onehellofadrummer,butBillyhadawayofplaying wherethemostimportantstatementswerethebeatsthat hedidn’tplay,”saysBobMatthews.“Thatwashisreal secret.Soeventhoughthebandwentfromsixtofivefor awhile,theygotbetteragain.Theygottighter.”

Certainly,theband’sreturntotheEastCoastinApril –afteraswingaroundSanFranciscoanddatesinthe Midwest–foundtheminscintillatingform.Thatspring wascrownedbysixconsecutivenightsattheFillmoreEast, wheretheirstageguestsincludedDuaneAllmanand, somewhatimprobably,TheBeachBoys.“Everyshowwas

Weir live, August 1971

unique because the band would go off in different directions each night,” says Matthews. “The people responded to it. That was the key to a Grateful Dead performance. Even on the worst ight they were the best band in the world.” Making use of a hole in the schedule in late June, at the equest of French fashion designer Jean Bouquin, the band flew o Paris for a festival. The event was ultimately rained off, DrStanley Krippner, 2008 eaving them and the extended Dead family kicking their heels in the grand surrounds of their base, the Château Hérouville. The only sensible thing was to throw a party. The Dead set up their gear on the vast back lawn, near the ool, inviting along the locals (including the police chief, ayor and fire department) for the evening. Candles were t, acid passed around. The band played for three hours. It as, as bassist Phil Lesh put it, “a piece of San Francisco ransplanted into the heart of France”. “We had our Alembic PA system out there at the hâteau,” recalls Cantor-Jackson. “It was a beautiful etting and so much fun. I may have done a small amount f acid – nothing super psychedelic – but I think some of he French people wanted to do it.” The night ended with almost everyone in the pool. Says eir: “Some of the guys in the crew brought LSD and a lot of the folks partook. I guess they might have spiked the punch as well. A lot of townspeople came to that little athering, maybe out of curiosity, but they really got into it. e had a high old evening.” Back home, the Dead continued to break symbolic ties with eir past. San Francisco’s Fillmore West, the band’s primary eat of operations in their early days, when it was known as he Carousel Ballroom, closed its doors on July 4. The Dead layed for the final time there two days earlier. “The Carousel ad been a great little clubhouse for us,” Weir says. “It was ght there, so we’d come and play what we’d just worked in rehearsal.” A good portion of their final set at the Fillmore West fills the bonus disc for the 50th-anniversary reissue of ‘Skull & Roses’. A highlight is a 17-minute trip through The Young Rascals’ “Good Lovin’”, a customary vehicle for Pigpen’s spontaneous interactions with the crowd. “Pigpen gave the most incredible performance that night,” says Kreutzmann. “I remember him getting wild, talking to the audience and getting all this shit back from them. They loved it. Pigpen was the leader of the band when we first started, the head guy. He held the whole group together.” By 1971, Pigpen’s chronic alcoholism, allied to an unrelated autoimmune disease of the liver, had gradually diminished his role in the band. He left the band a month after the Fillmore show. “Pigpen was smart and intuitive,” notes Lagin. “But in ’71 his activities were waning and he was hospitalised. The death of Janis Joplin was weighing on him, too. She’d been another part of the early Dead entourage, with Big Brother & The Holding Company.” The Dead decided against pressing on as a four-piece. After

Janis Joplin, 1969

Former “head guy” Pigpen in 1971 Mickey Hart, 1972

taking a short break from the road, they auditioned pianist Keith Godchaux in late September. He and his wife, singer Donna Jean Godchaux, regulars around Bay Area clubland, had introduced themselves after a recent show. “Garcia called me and said: ‘Get over to the studio right now. You’ve gotta hear this guy!’” says Kreutzmann. “So I go down and get behind my drums. No matter what we played – we never told him the keys – Keith was all over it. Jerry asked my opinion after and I said, ‘God, he’s wonderful. He’s hired!’”

With his intuitive feel and predisposition for rock’n’roll, Godchaux brought another dimension to the Dead. He made his live bow at the Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis that October, where the band chose to unveil another fresh round of enduring tunes, among them “Mexicali Blues”, “Ramble On Rose”, “Jack Straw” and “Tennessee Jed”. As Lagin says: “By the time Keith entered in the fall of ’71, they were a different band than they had been in February.”

Pigpen returned to the stage in December, but only temporarily. By the following summer he was out of the band completely – he died in March ’73 – with both Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux now established as full-timemembers.

KULL & Roses’ was compiled from shows at the Fillmore East and New York’s Manhattan Centre in April ’71, plus San Francisco’s Winterland a month earlier. Just as “Bertha” and “Wharf Rat” implied a new peak for Garcia’s collaborations with lyricist Robert Hunter, Weir excelled on the majestic “Playing In The Band”, developed from a jam (‘The Main Ten’) and a riff gifted to him by David Crosby. Another gem, “Greatest Story Ever Told”, didn’t make the final cut, although one whole side of vinyl was taken up with the exploratory Weir/Kreutzmann favourite “The Other One”.

“Weir was really developing his own strengths as a songwriter in ’71,” says Lagin. “Technically, too, he became far more proficient on his guitar. As a Garciajamming accompanist, he got a lot stronger that year. It was reciprocal, because Garcia worked on Weir to provide the context, just as he did with Phil Lesh. It was chemistry, intuition, brotherhood – all psychically and musically constructive.”

Looking back 50 years later, Weir says: “I was a kid,

BA K FRO HEDE D

BobWeirgoesclassical

ASIDE from touring America later this year with Dead & Company – the Grateful Dead offshoot that includes Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart – Bob Weir tells Uncut that he’s also readying a special, longin-the-works project. “It’s a concerto grosso in classical terms,” he says. “This will be a live performance. I’ve been working on this for the last 10 years or so. We’re booked early next spring with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC and it’s going to take four nights to play the whole thing. There’s a possibility we may record it before we even get there. Structurewise, we’ve fully orchestrated over 20 songs and there’ll be sections where we’re going to try to get the symphony orchestra to improvise. The other thing that’s new is that once we’ve played what we’ve got at the Kennedy Centre in DC, we’re never going to assemble the songs in the same order again. It’ll be pretty much like a Dead concert in that respect, as we’ve got enough songs orchestrated to make it an endless project. So each time we put them together they’ll be different, on account of the improv sections and the order. The idea is that one song will lead to a different one the next time around, and so on. We’re kind of following the rules the Grateful Dead established.”

Dream team: the Dead with Keith Godchaux (centre), 1972

wideopen,andhearingstuffthatI’mnotsureIwould hearnow.SometimesIlistentothoserecordings, whenmyyounghandswereabletodostuffthatthese ancienthandsnowfindalittlechallengingandI realisethatIhadmorereach.Butit’sagive-and-take situation.NowIhaveaprettyintuitivefeelforwhat notesworktogether,whereasbackthenIdidn’t.SoI wasmoreapttotryjustaboutanything.”

ForKreutzmann,‘Skull&Roses’is“areallyhonest statementofhowwesoundedwaybackthen”.And onethatcontinuestoexertapeculiarpullforthe drummer.“LastmonthIhadacelebrationformy75th birthday,outhereonmylittleKauaiisland,andCarlos Santanacameovertoplay,”heexplains.“Thesonghe requestedwas‘TheOtherOne’.HereIwas,sittingwith mybacktotheocean,withtonsofpeoplestretching backdirectlyinfrontofus.Itreallyremindedmeof thatclassicphotographofJerryandIplayingwiththe DeadonHaightStreet,withpeopleallthewaydown thestreetforblocksandblocks.Itwasmagical.”

Theeventsof1971stillresonatewithWeirtoo.The ESPexperience,forone,leftalastingimpression.He’s abouttogetinvolvedwithagroupofpeoplethat Phish’sMichaelGordonisassembling“topickup wherethatexperimentleftoff.IfIcanfindtimeI’m goingtogetinvolvedinthatlittleforayintothe uncharted.It’srealinteresting.”

Asidefromcapturingtheirshiftingdynamicand mindset,‘Skull&Roses’provedtobetheDead’s gatewayalbum.Itslargercommercialsuccessopened aroutethroughtherestofthedecade.Thespringof 1972wouldseethemundertaketheirfirstsubstantial tourofEurope,memorialisedonanothermajorseller, Europe’72.Withinayearthenewlysolventbandwere fillingarenasbackhomeand,inabidforgreater autonomy,breakingfreefromWarnersandsetting uptheirownlabel.

Noneofitcould’vehappenedwithout‘Skull& Roses’,”reflectsWeir.“Ourfirstrecordshadn’tdone allthatmuch,butthatonereallyletusknowwehad amarket.Werealisedwecouldmakealivingbecause enoughpeoplecouldrelatetowhatweweredoing.It wasaffirmation.”