Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast
Season 12, Episode 8
Blues for Allah 50: Sage and Spirit
Donna Jean
JESSE: It’s with incredible sadness that we say goodbye to Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay. In her remarkable first career, Donna Thatcher was a backup vocalist on sessions for Elvis Presley, Percy Sledge, Cher, and others. Officially joining the Grateful Dead as 1971 turned into 1972, Bobby Weir was the first person to call her “Donna Jean.” And she was no backup singer, but a member of the band’s frontline, becoming fully salaried in 1973. After starting to write songs on her Wurlitzer for 1975’s Keith & Donna album while raising their son, Zion, it was Jerry Garcia who encouraged her to bring original material to the Dead. A member of the Jerry Garcia Band from 1976 through 1978, she remained a fully vested part of the Dead’s music and mayhem until 1979, and a family member for the rest of her life. It’s been the privilege of privileges to include Donna Jean and her laugh as a regular feature of the Deadcast over the past few years, and both can be heard in today’s episode. Fare thee well, Deej.
AUDIO: “The Music Never Stopped” [Blues for Allah] (2:29-2:50) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
Sage and Spirit
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Blues for Allah] (0:00-0:12) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Blues for Allah is the permanent home to some of the most unusual pieces of music the Grateful Dead created. Several of the tracks on the album became staples of the Dead’s live repertoire, but several didn’t. “King Solomon’s Marbles” was played four times, all in 1975, and “Stronger Than Dirt” only appeared in only half of those.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt” [Blues For Allah] (1:50-1:56)
JESSE: Blues for Allah’s title track, which will be the subject of our final episode this season, appeared three times in some form, also only that year.
AUDIO: “Blues for Allah” [Blues for Allah] (0:16-0:28) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: And Bobby Weir’s instrumental “Sage and Spirit,” which we’re talking about today, would only appear twice on a Grateful Dead stage, and once kind of accident. We say this all the time, but it’s unlike anything else the Dead recorded. You’ll notice, for example, no drums.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Blues for Allah] (0:13-0:30) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: Because they didn't play it that much live, I never really think of “Sage and Spirit.” It's just such a beautiful piece. And putting a flute in there? I just love it.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Blues for Allah] (0:32-0:46) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
DAVID LEMIEUX: “Sage and Spirit.” It's a freaking great, great little etude. It’s the sort of thing where I don't play guitar, but I wish I did so I could play this song. That's the thing I would want to play.
JESSE: On the tracking sheet for the studio take, “Sage and Spirit” is titled simply “Etude,” and the definition of “etude” is simultaneously a piece of music designed to either practice or showcase instrumental technique, or both. Its live debut and only fully rehearsed performance took place on August 13th, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall, a show we’ll be talking about at length today.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:58-1:18) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
Weir’s Etude
JESSE: Like a few songs on Blues for Allah, “Sage and Spirit” had its roots in material that existed before the sessions at Bobby Weir’s Ace’s studio began in February 1975. And, like a few songs on Blues for Allah, it was shaped by the unfolding events of the year as the sessions progressed.
DAVID LEMIEUX: I think the first time we all heard it was in The Grateful Dead Movie in October ‘74, where he is playing it as just a way to warm up his fingers.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” (warm-up) [The Grateful Dead Movie, 10/74] (24:59-25:19)
JESSE: That’s Bobby Weir onstage at Winterland, from the soundcheck sequence in The Grateful Dead Movie while the piano gets tuned in the background. Which doesn’t mean it was remotely finished, just a seed ready to go.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” (warm-up) [The Grateful Dead Movie, 10/74] (25:20-25:30)
DAVID LEMIEUX: Part of why Weir is able to do such unique phrasings is he's got unusually large hands, and Jerry said that in an interview. When you see him doing it, he's really covering a lot of space in there.
JESSE: As we’ve heard in our “The Music Never Stopped” episode, and especially our episode for the 50th anniversary of Weir’s Ace album, he could take a long time to develop his ideas into performable songs. Our correspondent Gary Lambert was working on a story about Weir for Guitar Player magazine during this window.
GARY LAMBERT: I got to visit with Bobby not that long after the final Winterland show. As part of some interviews I was doing with him, I went to his home. I'm thinking this must have been November or early December of ‘74.
JESSE: And he got a preview of the album the band hadn’t yet started recording.
GARY LAMBERT: While I was in Bobby's home, he picked up his acoustic guitar from the couch and played a very rudimentary fragment of what turned out to be “Sage and Spirit.” Just jaw-droppingly beautiful. And he said, “Eh, it’s something I'm working on. I can't play it, of course.”
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir acoustic guitar, Blues for Allah] (0:04-0:17)
JESSE: That was a bit of isolated acoustic guitar from the recorded version. Naturally, as an etude, it was designed to expand the player’s technique. It also stretched Weir’s brain as a composer. There are only really a few fragments of “Sage and Spirit” on the circulating Blues for Allah sessions. Here it is in etude form on what’s probably March 6th, as the coffee brews and the band gets ready to start their work day.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [3/6/75] (3:34-4:04)
JESSE: But there’s a bit from the day before that really grounds the piece in the Blues for Allah process.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [3/5/75] (1:25-1:55)
JESSE: That might sound like a different Bob Weir song, “Lost Sailor,” and that’s an accurate thing to hear there, too, but it’s also a section of “Sage and Spirit.” From the sound of things on the tape, it wasn’t yet connected to the intro figure that we’ve highlighted so far. Which suggests, at least to my ears, that another way “Sage and Spirit” connected to its peers on Blues for Allah is that it grew from several instrumental modules that they were individually and collectively trying to sew together, sometimes not always successfully. That sketch of Weir’s etude would fall into a not-always-organized jam that in turn ended in the “Blues for Allah” theme, what might be called the only known jammed-out “Sage and Spirit.”
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [3/5/75] (5:50-6:20)
JESSE: In 1975, Weir was attempting to shape several pieces for the ongoing album sessions. “The Music Never Stopped” took a lot of work to get it from a live improv theme to “E-A-C” to “Hollywood Cantata” and into its final form. We don’t have nearly as much recorded evidence of “Sage and Spirit.” In fact, those fragments are literally it, though I assume there’s more to be heard on the currently MIA workshop tapes. In between those sketches from March and the final album version in July, there was lots going on in the Grateful Dead’s world. As we’ve heard over the past few episodes, in June, United Artists acquired manufacturing rights for both Grateful Dead and Round Records. Their new contract specified a deadline of July 10th for the project. Al Teller was president of United Artists in 1975.
5th of July
AL TELLER: Having been around artists long enough, I would never tell an artist, “Look, we have to release this album on March 1, so you better get the damn thing done.” No — the creative process is something that has to unfold in its own timeline, and I've always left that to the artist.
JESSE: Rolling Stone reported, “Whether the traditionally deadline-unconscious Dead are going to be under the gun at UA, Dead Records president Ron Rakow said, ‘Listen, we’re so deadline conscious now, they couldn’t possibly be more strict.’” The session tapes bear this out, mostly ending after a feverish few recordings from early June, because by the end of the month, they were almost desperately trying to tie up all the loose ends they’d opened up over the previous four. By then, they’d mostly moved on to overdubs. Mostly.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles” [7/5/75] (0:00-0:17)
JESSE: That’s a session for “King Solomon’s Marbles” from early July, where Mickey Hart is definitely in the room.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles” [7/5/75] (2:50-3:10)
JESSE: After the second pass, this happens. I think this might be Rex Jackson talking.
REX JACKSON (maybe) [7/5/75]: Mill Valley PD is in the driveway. Were they here earlier?
PHIL LESH: Are we too loud? Is that what you’re trying to say?
JESSE: That is, the Mill Valley Police Department has just shown up in the driveway at Ace’s. The next few seconds provide us with a few pieces of color — first, how the different Grateful Deads react when the heat arrives.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER [7/5/75]: I’ll be in the booth back here.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER [7/5/75]: Tell them it’s 4th of July.
BILL KREUTZMANN [7/5/75]: Tell them it’s the 5th of July and we’re celebrating.
PHIL LESH [7/5/75]: It’s perfectly fuckin’ legal!
JERRY GARCIA [7/5/75]: We’ll tell ‘em that, in our own way, we’re celebrating the Bicentennial. Early.
BILL KREUTZMANN [7/5/75]: I’ll go to tell them.
MICKEY HART [7/5/75]: Sacrifice Kreutzmann.
JERRY GARCIA [7/5/75]: It’s the last year under 200 years old.
JESSE: There’s a lot going on during those 20 seconds of audio. Alongside the stashes that are presumably being sequestered off-camera, we get a hint at what’s perhaps the proper date of this tape. I’m pretty sure this is a correct description of the action: Someone announces they’re going to hide in the booth. Phil Lesh is pissed. Bill Kretuzmann suggests they tell them it’s the 5th of July and they’re celebrating. Jerry Garcia says to tell the cops that they’re honoring the Bicentennial in their own way, and Kreutzmann volunteers to go talk to them. Always a reasonable idea. Even further off-mic, Mickey Hart suggests sacrificing Bill Kreutzmann. Let’s listen to that again.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER [7/5/75]: I’ll be in the booth back here.
PHIL LESH [7/5/75]: Tell them it’s the 4th of July.
BILL KREUTZMANN [7/5/75]: Tell them it’s the 5th of July and we’re celebrating.
PHIL LESH [7/5/75]: Well, this is perfectly fuckin’ legal!
JERRY GARCIA [7/5/75]: We’ll tell ‘em that, in our own way, we’re celebrating the Bicentennial. Early.
BILL KREUTZMANN [7/5/75]: I’ll go to tell them.
MICKEY HART [7/5/75]: Sacrifice Kreutzmann.
JERRY GARCIA [7/5/75]: It’s the last year under 200 years old.
JESSE: Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia confer.
PHIL LESH [7/5/75]: There’s still nothing illegal about what we’re doing as long we don’t do it–
JERRY GARCIA [7/5/75]: There’s nothing illegal about playing music.
PHIL LESH [7/5/75]: The rest of it…
JESSE: This is a place where I definitely wish the off-mic levels were higher. After that, there’s a slight pause in the tape, and then you can hear Bobby Weir wondering if the cops liked the music.
BOB WEIR [7/5/75]: I wonder if they liked the music.
JESSE: And then it’s back to work, ironing out the finer details of “Stronger Than Dirt.”
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles” [7/5/75] (1:38-1:53)
JESSE: Also some very serious conversation about insects.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles” [7/5/75] (3:28-3:47)
JERRY GARCIA [7/5/75]: The thing about mosquitos is that they have a terrible sense of judgment.
BOB WEIR [7/5/75]: Right, right, right. And they’re very very sensitive to vibrations.
PHIL LESH [7/5/75]: They were triggered by carbon dioxide contact, and moisture and heat. The only thing that triggers ‘em.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles” [7/5/75] (0:00-0:11)
JESSE: Et cetera. If they don’t get the final take during that session, they come very close.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles” [7/5/75] (4:53-5:06)
JESSE: So assuming we can date that session as July 5th, we can also say that the sessions continued into wee hours, though there was some attrition by the end of the night, it might’ve just been Bobby Weir and engineer Robbie Taylor, and they recorded what I believe would become the final basic tracks for the whole album.
“Sage and Spirit”
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir acoustic guitar, Studer cardioid microphone, Blues for Allah] (0:04-0:16)
JESSE: The tracking sheet for the piece called “Etude” is dated July 5th, 1975. There are four different microphones on Weir’s acoustic guitar. We just heard the Studer cardioid; this is the Studer Omni.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir acoustic guitar, Studer omni microphone, Blues for Allah] (0:04-0:16)
JESSE: The Linn cardioid.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir acoustic Guitar, Linn cardioid microphone, Blues for Allah] (0:04-0:16)
JESSE: The Linn omni.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir Acoustic Guitar, Linn omni microphone, Blues for Allah] (0:04-0:16)
JESSE: And assembled, which is how we’re going to hear it for the rest of this segment.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir acoustic guitar, submix of all four microphones, Blues for Allah] (0:04-0:16)
JESSE: From the City College of New York, musicologist Shaugn O’Donnell, to explain “Sage and Spirit,” sort of, and answer the question — what even is an etude?
SHAUGN O’DONNELL: It would be a work that's composed usually to focus on a particular technique. There are ones that work on, say, right hand arpeggiation. So: start a pattern, and you repeat that pattern over and over as the harmonies change.
JESSE: And “Sage and Spirit”?
SHAUGN O’DONNELL: It's looser than a composed etude. If you're writing an etude for someone else, you're going to work on this particular technique, and you would focus on some component. It's sort of a Bob Etude. These are Bob-isms and [it’s like]: ‘I'm going to do them all in a row so my hands are comfortable with my language.’
JESSE: Where “The Music Never Stopped” pointed towards some of the rhythmic language Weir would develop in his songs, “Sage and Spirit” pointed at something else.
SHAUGN O’DONNELL: It's a bit of a different harmonic language and, in a way, to me, pointing forward. The same way that a little bit of his electric sound seems to be pointing to his next phase. It's a more ambiguous harmonic language.
AUDIO: Pee-wee’s Playhouse Secret Word Scream
SHAUGN O’DONNELL: Again, the sort of “Lost Sailor” realm, where it's like: ‘We're going to have these loose sonarities, and we'll do things over a pedal, and we'll make things float so that then we can land somewhere.’ In a lot of ways, it sounds more like a compositional technical exercise than, say, a guitar warm-up. Although you have to have the facility to play this at all.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir acoustic guitar, submix of all four microphones, Blues for Allah] (0:26-0:42)
SHAUGN O’DONNELL: There's something about it that comes out of the “Prelude” to “Weather Report Suite,” in terms of Bob's language on the instrument. But it's much more freewheeling than that. That feels like a composition there, the “Prelude,” and then this rhymes with “King Solomon's Marbles,” where it's an idea — a freeflow on a couple of ideas.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir acoustic guitar, submix of all four microphones, Blues for Allah] (0:43-1:10)
JESSE: I think Shaugn is picking up on one of “Sage and Spirit”’s secrets. Though it sounds like perhaps the album’s most classical composition, its actual presentation is an example of the studio as a compositional tool. It might be the first time a Grateful Dead studio track was overdubbed around a solo performance, and is definitely the first time since the Anthem of the Sun/Aoxomoxoa era. There’s a lot going under the hood of “Sage and Spirit,” and of the many overdubs, I don’t think all of them made it to the final mix. So let’s adjust our ears to a bit of the full picture before diving under.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Blues for Allah] (0:32-0:47) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: In Dennis McNally’s official Dead bio, A Long Strange Trip, he writes that around midnight one night, Weir was frustrated with “Sage and Spirit” and sax and flute player Steve Schuster was summoned to Ace’s, and by dawn they had a complete take. I’m not sure if this was the same night as the basic tracks and the appearance of the cops, but it could be. We spoke with Steve Schuster about his saxophone appearance on “The Music Never Stopped,” and of course asked about “Sage and Spirit,” too.
STEVE SCHUSTER: Was that flute? I don't remember anything about it, except that I think I remember that it was flute.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [flute (2nd part), Blues for Allah] (0:23-0:42)
JESSE: But Steve Schuster also worked as an arranger and transcriptionist, creating lead sheets for the Dead and other clients, which we spoke about previously, and he apparently helped Weir organize the different compositional sub-units of the piece. There are two pretty different flute parts entwined with one another. Here’s a bit of the first.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [flute (1st part), Blues for Allah] (0:11-0:22)
JESSE: And the second.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [flute (2nd part), Blues for Allah] (0:11-0:22)
JESSE: And combined.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [flute, submix of both parts, Blues for Allah] (0:11-0:22)
JESSE: It’s a really cool effect, and the parts diverge a bit later in the track and then come back together. Here it is from the ending.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [flute, submix of both parts, Blues for Allah] (2:39-3:07)
JESSE: There’s an additional Weir part, too, playing stereo electric guitar through a Leslie rotating cabinet, the album’s sonic signature. Instead of “left” and “right” on the tracking sheet, the stereo tracks are labeled “comin’” and “goin’”. It’s in the mix ambiently.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Weir electric guitar with Leslie speaker, Blues for Allah] (0:06-0:36)
JESSE: Listening to Phil Lesh’s stereo part is both a great example of his never-the-same-way once style of playing, as well as the idea that “Sage and Spirit” was just as much free flow as it was composition. He’s in there, for sure. Here’s Phil from the beginning.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [electric bass, Blues for Allah] (0:08-0:24)
JESSE: In the middle is a beautiful passage of volume swells.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [electric bass, Blues for Allah] (0:56-1:10)
JESSE: During the final segment, as Steve Schuster’s flute goes free, the bass nearly gets funky.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [electric bass, Blues for Allah] (2:39-2:52)
JESSE: I definitely hear Keith Godchaux’s grand piano in the final picture, but he got two tracks to play with as well, and plays similar ideas on both. Here’s one pass at the intro.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [acoustic piano (1st part), Blues for Allah] (0:05-0:27)
JESSE: And the other.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [acoustic piano (2nd part), Blues for Allah] (0:05-0:27)
JESSE: The piano is pretty far back in the mix, and I assume they chose one of these performances over the other, or maybe took parts from each take, but it also sounds pretty cool if you play them together.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [acoustic piano, submix of both parts, Blues for Allah] (2:38-3:09)
JESSE: And like everybody but Phil, Garcia gets two different guitar parts. The first, and the one that’s in the final mix, I think, is a long beautiful take of quiet volume swells, sounding very much like a bowed string instrument.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Garcia guitar (1st part), Blues for Allah] (0:08-0:20)
JESSE: Here it is layered with Lesh’s volume swell part.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [submix: electric Bass and Garcia guitar (1st part), Blues for Allah] (0:56-1:10)
JESSE: Garcia’s other part is more upper register.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Garcia guitar (2nd part), Blues for Allah] (0:56-1:10)
JESSE: Combined with his other part during the quiet ending weirdness.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Garcia guitar, submix of both parts, Blues for Allah] (2:38-3:09)
JESSE: It would’ve given the final song a different flavor had it been used.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [submix with more prominent electric guitar]
The Real Sage and Spirit
JESSE: One thing the song didn’t have was a name. So, sometime in July, as the final album was being assembled, Weir came up with a title that, in a way, connected it to one of his earlier songs.
AUDIO: “Cassidy” [Ace] (1:46-1:58) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: “Cassidy” was named in honor of both Neal Cassady, but also Cassidy Law, daughter of Eileen Law, born at the Rukka Rukka Ranch in the summer of 1970, as Weir worked on the changes to what became “Cassidy.” “Sage and Spirit” on the other hand was named after Sage and Spirit Scully, daughters of Nicki Scully and Rock Scully, one of the Dead’s first managers, housemates at 710 Ashbury, and who still worked for the Dead in various managerial and freelance capacities as both organizer and disorganizer. Please welcome to the Deadcast, from Sage and Spirit, Sage Scully.
SAGE SCULLY: Around that time, we lived in Mill Valley, which is where Bobby lived. I think we lived pretty close. I'm not sure exactly when he wrote the song, but I would have been three when it was released. My dad always told the story of my sister and I jumping on a bed, like, in a hotel somewhere — which we often did. Whenever we would be in a hotel, I would say we were mostly jumping around on the furniture at that stage in life. Rock is really good at telling stories, and a lot of times they're true. And, a lot of times, they just take you on a cool trip, and they may or may not have happened. So, I'm not totally sure — I like to believe that that's what happened because I think it's really sweet, and it was likely something like that.
JESSE: In Rock’s colorful book, Living With the Dead, he writes, “Bobby wrote ‘Sage and Spirit’ while my daughters, named Sage and Spirit, were jumping on his bed and generally trashing his hotel room. He was trying to play his guitar and came up with the rhythm for this from their jumping. The flute mimics their laughter.”
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [flute, submix of both parts, Blues for Allah] (2:39-3:07)
JESSE: Whether or not that’s a literal description, it’s pretty easy to imagine Bobby Weir, sitting still on a couch with an acoustic guitar, and putting together the piece called “Sage and Spirit” while all hell breaks loose around him. On the spectrum of loosened hell that existed in the Grateful Dead world, this fell pretty high on the wholesome end.
SAGE SCULLY: We were definitely little rascals running around the hotels, jumping on the beds. We used to play Don't Touch the Ground, or something, where you’d have to just jump from one thing to the next. Or super cheeky moments — we're putting ice cubes out the window, that kind of thing.
JESSE: In 1975, with the Dead off the road, the family vibes ran high around Marin County.
SAGE SCULLY: Bobby was certainly a nice presence in my life at that time, when I was that age. He was really kind; he was really good with kids. In that scene especially, he was almost one of the more straight people, for lack of a better word. I think he kind of was a bit of an anchor for me, when I was really little. I actually thought about it the other day — I think he's more of a hippie now than he was in the ‘70s. Rock, too — Rock especially had kind of an erudite feeling to him. And Bobby also — in his tweed suits, a little bit of a cowboy, a little bit of a professional athlete or something. And he was also just really open to having us around when we were little. He was really gracious.
JESSE: Sage Scully can be seen in The Grateful Dead Movie both on and backstage, around the time Weir was writing “Sage and Spirit.”
SAGE SCULLY: That little girl in that flower dress on the stage is me, I'm pretty sure. My mom used to make my dresses, so we have a lot of photographs of those dresses with the flowers.
JESSE: In fact, Sage is at the center of one of the movie’s most subtly hilarious, extremely cute, and kind of psychedelic moments.
SAGE SCULLY: My biggest scene, and the one that I was the most proud of — and I can even remember when the premiere happened, I was like, “I'm in this movie!” And I'm like, what, six or five or something, and I got all dressed up. I remember putting lots of beads on. And it was the scene where I'm walking into the catering room, and I go up and I've got this plate, and I take, like, one thing—like, either a grape or cherry tomato or something—and I just put it on my plate and it makes like a boink.
AUDIO: boink [The Grateful Dead Movie] (1:41:52-1:41:57)
SAGE SCULLY: Rock and Jerry, they loved to boink. Any kind of comic noise, or like something to kind of infuse a moment. So that was my big scene, and I actually can remember them talking about the boink and just having a good laugh. I think there were a lot of those moments in that movie that Jerry did.
JESSE: Sage and Spirit are both very cool names, together, separately, and as a song title.
SAGE SCULLY: I was thinking about the song, and I know that obviously there's no words. But the names originate from the I Ching. So when my mom was pregnant, I know she did it with me, and I'm pretty certain she did it with my sister's name. She threw the coins for the I Ching, and then she would read the passage, and that's where she found the names Spirit and Sage. And they really suited us, starting with our fathers. Like Rock — he was really special. He was a really special man. He was a little bit softer. He had a rough road; it was kind of self-induced. But he was graceful. Spirit’s dad, Ken Goldfinger Connell — Ken's like six [feet] three [inches], big, imposing guy, red hair, blotchy skin. Scary-looking guy. Missing a hand. Right out of the gate, you're like, What is that?
JESSE: Ken Goldfinger Connell was a notorious smuggler, and has come up previously on the Deadcast as the person responsible for overdosing the apple juice at the Fillmore West in June 1969, pretty far into the chaotic red on that loosened hell spectrum we mentioned. We refer you back to our “Black Peter” episode. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t around much.
SAGE SCULLY: There are just these differences, the sage and spirit, just both very… there's a duality there that's really interesting, and it has played out throughout our entire life. Even so much as little things — when my mom remarried, I wore this cream dress, and she wore a black, black dress. That kind of signifies our whole life — this yin and yang kind of a thing.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [Blues for Allah] (1:58-2:16) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
SAGE SCULLY: I never really felt like the song was written for us. I just kind of felt like it was the name was bestowed on [the song].
August 13 - Great American Music Hall
JESSE: “Sage and Spirit” was the last of the album’s basic tracks, I think. They spent the next week-and-a-half working on the album’s overdubs, possibly more, but not everything was dated. It was off into the land of mastering and album art and other details, which we’ll get into our next episode. But one of the projects was a party to celebrate it. This would become one of the Dead’s all-time legendary shows, August 13th, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall, now One From the Vault.
AUDIO: “Help on the Way” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:00-0:07) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
BILL GRAHAM [8/13/75]: Will you welcome please, the Grateful Dead.
JESSE: And wowie zowie, are we excited to bring you this next segment. Ron Rakow.
RON RAKOW: I put that together. I'm hands on on that one. A lot was going on; we were doing a lot of things together. We were making two movies and supporting ourselves as best we could. And we just had a new deal with United Artists.
JESSE: Also a new album.
RON RAKOW: I said to Jerry, “The entire radio industry is coming to San Francisco for a convention. I'd love to put on a show at that time.” So he said, “Do it. I'll get everybody together.” And he called around and bingo, before you know it, he was off doing it. So I went and made the deal for the Great American Music Hall, and figured out what it would cost and I got a budget.
JESSE: The Radio Programming Forum presented by Billboard magazine wasn’t the Dead’s usual scene, but as we’ve heard time and time again, 1975 wasn’t the usual year for the Dead. Wake of the Flood had made it to #18 on the Billboard Top 100, and From the Mars Hotel up to a robust #16. With a new deal with a big record label, there was no reason not to aim higher, and having every major radio programmer in the country come to your doorstep was fairly easy lifting compared to, say, going on the road. The Great American Music Hall show in August 1975 became an involved production on multiple levels.
RON RAKOW: There were two parts to it. There's backstage, and what the audience got. And what the audience got was a party, produced by the consummate party producer I've ever met in my entire life. And I would call him my best friend, but he's way more than that — he's my closest brother. His name is Roger Lewis. He was a former partner of Bear Stearns & Co., which is a New York City brokerage firm that was very large.
The Pleasure Crew
JESSE: We’re going to detour into a semi-forgotten wing of the Grateful Dead family in this next segment.
RON RAKOW: Roger Lewis is the most articulate member of what he calls the Pleasure Crew. The Pleasure Crew are the guys that went along, that were always around, that were ready to even do stuff and be helpful. But they essentially were there because it was a good time.
JESSE: Please welcome to the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, Roger Lewis.
ROGER LEWIS: I got invited to a Dead performance. It was probably at the [theater] down on 3rd Street.
JESSE: That’d be the Fillmore East.
ROGER LEWIS: I started going down there to those gigs, and I met Rakow out early on.
JESSE: His New York apartment became the site of some wild Dead-centric parties.
ROGER LEWIS: I was very fond of the guys in the band, too. Jerry was an amazing human being. I wasn't tight with Bill Kreutzmann, but I was fairly tight with the rhythm guitar player, Bob Weir, and I stayed at Mickey Hart's ranch for a while. I always liked those guys. They were an amazing bunch of guys — worked very hard, and were very good at what they did. But I doubt if any of them ever remember my name. I was not on the level of their music. I was more on a level of… party giver.
RON RAKOW: The great conservative pundit William Buckley lived in the apartment right below Roger Lewis on Park Avenue in New York City.
JESSE: Hope y’all remembered to towel the door.
RON RAKOW: He was a partner in Bear Stearns and, and his father was the senior partner of Bear Stearns. And I met Roger before I even left New York. I knew him from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I didn't know his name or who he was, but I remember him being there.
ROGER LEWIS: That ended in 1969. It ended because I was beginning a new process in my life, which involved the use of psychedelic drugs. I had discovered LSD. I was part of that crew and that didn't work out for Wall Street.
RON RAKOW: Rogers sold his seat on the New York Stock Exchange and came to my house to give the money away as a social experiment.
ROGER LEWIS: I moved out to California and stayed in his home for quite a while.
RON RAKOW: He was friendly with everybody. He was very friendly with the Airplane. He was friendly with us. He was a great guy.
ROGER LEWIS: I was just a guy with some assets, and always liked to get to know people. I was friendly; I had no ax to grind; I had no game to play. I ended up being part of a family that was producing and distributing LSD, and I went to prison for it. But that had nothing to do with the Grateful Dead.
JESSE: In this perspective, “nothing” is purely a legal fiction, because the story does, in fact, connect to the Grateful Dead, if only by virtue of the fact that Roger Lewis was a member of the Grateful Dead family.
AUDIO: “Tape Rewind” [3/11/75] (0:00-0:06)
ROGER LEWIS: My first LSD experience was at Billy Hitchcock’s place in Millbrook, which is currently being offered at $65,000,000 — it’s a 2500-acre place. There were several domiciles on that property. One of them, they called [it] the bungalow, which was a stone 40-room house. That's where I first took LSD.
JESSE: The 40-room “bungalow” in Millbrook was the headquarters for Timothy Leary and arguably the center of the East Coast psychedelic scene from 1963 to 1968. The Dead played there in the summer of ‘67, a story for another day.
ROGER LEWS: I was a big fan of that shit. I took large quantities of it — LSD, I mean. It was like that in those days. I was 30; I wasn't 80, as I am now.
JESSE: Out west, Roger became acquainted with some LSD distributors who’d decided to market a new upscale LSD to compete with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Orange Sunshine.
ROGER LEWIS: We called ourselves the Clear Light Family. It became known as windowpane. There were three partners in the Clear Light Family.
JESSE: I wrote a bit about the Clear Light Family in my book Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, and you can read more about the remarkable life of one of the Clear Light partners in Keith Martin Smith’s book, A Heart Blown Open: The Life and Practice of Zen Master Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi, where the Dead come up a few times. I bring this up because it makes Roger Lewis the connection point between the Dead and one of the other major early LSD families.
ROGER LEWIS: I was not a partner, but I was in second, right at the next level out from the three. Two of the three were close to me. I didn't know the third; I met him, but I don't remember him. He was, in fact, the chemist, but he was kept at a distance from everybody, for safety I guess, and security.
JESSE: Probably a good thing. Roger did, indeed, get busted. And he was able to pick up some pro tips from elsewhere in the Dead family.
ROGER LEWIS: I was at Weir's house one night for a party. Bear was there, and I had not met him before. He walked up and introduced himself, and he said, “I understand you're going to go to Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institute.” I knew that I was going; it was a matter of, you know, turning myself over. And I said, “Yeah, that's right.” And he said, “Well, I just got out. And let me tell you about it and tell you who to talk to.” So he filled in the blanks for me, very kindly, and then I went and spent half a year there. I ended up smuggling in 100 pieces of Clear Light and formed a group. We called ourselves the Lahaina Yacht Club Racing Society and, every Saturday, we would take acid.
JESSE: We’re not gonna delve really much here, but Roger Lewis ended up in jail as the doubles tennis partner of a member of a certain crime family — non-psychedelic division.
ROGER LEWIS: It was Monday, Labor Day, of ‘73 I think. I had, at that time, about 15 pieces of windowpane left, and I couldn't give it to someone because, if they turn me over, I'm doing five more years. And I didn't want to do that. And I couldn't throw it out, because it was not part of my religion — I thought of this stuff as a sacrament. So I ended up taking the 15 pieces, not remembering that it's also finals day of the tennis tournament! So I'm lying in the yard, and these guys come over: “Hey, you.” And I go, “What?” “Mr. B's waiting for you on the tennis court?” I said, “Oh, shit. You’ve got to be kidding.” “No, we're not kidding.” So I have to go upstairs and put on my tennis shoes, and… I don't know if you know, but when you first start with LSD, you're often not really physically able and I couldn't tie my own tennis shoes.
JESSE: Roger and Mr. B did not win the tennis tournament. But Roger did make it out of jail in late 1973. Briefly.
ROGER LEWIS: I decided that I was going to take windowpane to London and introduce it to London, because they didn't have anything like that. So I took 8,000 pieces—two grams—to London with me. I was busy marketing it in London when Scotland Yard intervened, and arrested me.
JESSE: Back in California the next year, he got to know Bill Graham a little bit better at Winterland.
ROGER LEWIS: I did video at Winterland for a while. All I was doing was working: you're choosing which camera to record and where to move the camera. There were some cameras that were movable, and some that were not. I was like the director of video.
JESSE: Sounds fun.
ROGER LEWIS: I don't think I was ever paid to do it. I just did it. I was not a guy who needed the money.
JESSE: As we say, good gig if you can get it. And it wasn’t very long after Roger Lewis’s return from Brixton that Ron Rakow called him about helping to organize the Dead’s gig at the Great American Music Hall.
ROGER LEWIS: I was very surprised when Ronnie asked me to do that gig, because I was pretty much, in the polite world, persona non grata. They didn't give a shit that I was an ex-con, but normal, polite people did.
JESSE: The job organizing the Great American Music Hall show was pretty much just that.
ROGER LEWIS: They were introducing an album, and they asked me to basically produce a party. I was happy to do it. I was not the driving force, and I was not the creative at any level. I was doing something that I was clever at, which is basically dealing with people. I've always been pretty good at that, and I've always been willing to do it.
JESSE: Roger’s signature is all over the Dead’s invoices file from this period, with planning starting more than a month before, contracting Madhatters’ catering.
ROGER LEWIS: They asked me to make it basically invitation only and not to include the normal crew. And when they said to do that, I did. I did what I was asked to do, and apparently did it to their satisfaction. But it wasn't to the satisfaction of the people that usually go to Grateful Dead gigs. I'm actually a pretty good party giver, but that was an unusual [rule]. My rule, if I'm giving a party, is [that] if I see you the day before, you get an invitation, and we hope that you're going to come and make it a party. I don't know how to give a party that is exclusive. To me, a party is inclusive.
Soundcheck
JESSE: In this case, it was pretty necessary. The Dead were attempting to woo the pop radio industrialists in a club that held under 600 people standing, 450 with tables on the floor, which is how the Great American was set up on August 13th, a point we’ll repeat a few times. Ron Rakow.
RON RAKOW: It was like an old-time, small town performance palace.
JESSE: It’s a gorgeous place, and very much still in action. Like many Dead Heads, I’ve gone to shows there just for the sake of going there. Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: I've been to the Great American Music Hall a couple of times and, every time I went there, I would spend my time looking around, just marveling that this is where One From the Vault happened.
JESSE: The venue now known as the Great American Music Hall was built in 1907, just after the Great Earthquake, and known as Blanco’s into the 1930s, then as the Music Box until the end of World War II. We are just delighted today to welcome Lee Brenkman, the longtime front of house engineer at the Great American Music Hall.
LEE BRENKMAN: The Great American Music Hall was opened in the fall of 1972 in what had been, prior to that, a very expensive French restaurant and a Moose Lodge — not at the same time, obviously. It was made into the Great American Music Hall by a couple of friends who had been classmates at the University of Mississippi and had always kind of fantasized about owning their own jazz club. They found themselves, by 1972, both in San Francisco. Sam Duvall was a guy who at that time owned a local chain of pizza restaurants called Front Room Pizza, but they were all furnished in old Victorian antique furniture. They were all set up to look like somebody's front room, hence the name. And as a result of that, Sam also had a side business, basically, as he said, “Going to England, buying lots of old furniture, putting it in a container, and, somewhere Mid-Atlantic, they magically transformed into Victorian antiques.” I started there in April of 1973 working for the club. 47 years and several months later, I was still on their payroll.
JESSE: Lee had started his sound career in Denver—shout out to Queen City Jamz—where he worked at the Denver Dog’s, the Family Dog’s Colorado outpost, before migrating to San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom and the Family Dog at the Great Highway, stories we hope to get to some other time.
LEE BRENKMAN: They started booking Merl [Saunders] and Jerry's band, and that is what eventually led to the August 1975 concert.
JESSE: Jerry Garcia played there first in 1973 and made it a regular stop in 1974 and 1975, playing there more than two dozen times with Merl Saunders and others. This is Legion of Mary on July 5th, 1975, just after the session at Ace’s where the cops showed up, and maybe around the same moment that Bobby Weir was recording his basic track for “Sage and Spirit,” now on The Jerry Garcia Collection, volume 1.
AUDIO: “Talkin’ ‘Bout You” [Legion of Mary, The Jerry Garcia Collection Vol. 1, 7/5/75] (0:31-1:01) - [Spotify]
LEE BRENKMAN: Jerry and Merl played places that were not much bigger than a broom closet. They were out there to play, they were not trying to build a career. They just enjoyed playing with each other. And Merl’s sons, their job was to bring in the Hammond organ, because they were strapping young teenagers.
JESSE: We spoke with Merl Jr. in our “Garcia ‘73” episode. By JerryBase’s current understanding, the Great American Music Hall was the site of the final gig by Legion of Mary on July 30th, 1975, pausing Garcia’s half-decade partnership with Merl Saunders. There’s no tape of that show, but here they are at the Great American over July 4th weekend.
AUDIO: “Talkin’ ‘Bout You” [Legion of Mary, The Jerry Garcia Collection Vol. 1, 7/5/75] (6:22-6:40) - [Spotify]
JESSE: It was a time of great change in Jerry Garcia’s world, musical and otherwise. Things were troubled in his partnership with Mountain Girl, a story pretty harrowingly told in biographies by Dennis McNally and Blair Jackson. It was also in early August that he played music with mandolinist David Grisman for what would prove to be the last time for roughly 15 years, coincidentally just a little bit earlier on the same afternoon that Grisman found the final piece for his first great quintet, the legendary guitarist Tony Rice. This is from their First Recordings collection, available from Acoustic Disc.
AUDIO: “Dawg’s Rag” [The David Grisman Quintet, First Recordings] (1:10-1:34) - [Spotify]
JESSE: For a few weeks in August 1975, Jerry Garcia once again belonged almost exclusively to the Grateful Dead. By all accounts, the band practiced their collective tuchas off for the Great American show, emphasis on collective. The Deadcast flag is once again at half-mast, but we are honored to have a few memories today about the show that would yield the following introduction from one of our most cherished Deadcast guests — on the vocals, Mrs. Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: The thing about Grateful Dead rehearsals—this was something you could take to the bank—is that we may rehearse, or we may not, once we all got there. Sometimes it would be a full-blown rehearsal, and everybody on it. And sometimes everybody would just sit around, and we would never rehearse. So it was either one or the other, and you never knew what day was going to be which — whether we would be sitting around doing nothing, or having a full-blown, really viable rehearsal.
JESSE: The Great American show definitely warranted the full-blown treatment. The band’s call sheet shows the Dead at Ace’s on August 7th, 9th, 10th, and 11th. With the album off to get mastered and a second drummer to break back in, there was surely some celebrating, but equally surely, some focused rehearsal. On August 12th, they moved the party to the Great American, taking a day for a tech rehearsal.
AUDIO: “Help on the Way” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Blues for Allah 50, 8/12/75] (0:00-0:30) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Lee Brenkman.
LEE BRENKMAN: It wasn't the club booking the Grateful Dead. It was the Grateful Dead office renting the hall, and the standard rental deal at the Great American Music Hall at that time was there was a fee for the use of the hall, plus a bar guarantee.
JESSE: We’ll come back to that bar guarantee. The Dead no longer had the Wall of Sound at their disposal, not that it would’ve fit into the Great American, but they still wanted the sound to be just exactly perfect.
LEE BRENKMAN: They brought in sound equipment from McCune Sound, because this is when the John Meyer JM-3s were still a fairly new thing. At that time, the Music Hall did not have a sound system that was flown — hanging from the rafters. They had actually built what was like a big diving platform out from the balcony above the stage, and the house speakers were up there. But for the Dead concert, they replaced that with three JM-3s in an arc, angled down as much as was safe. Then they had some smaller McCune speakers on the side of the stage, and the monitors were all from McCune. And the missing console was a McCune MM-4. This is the time when you couldn't buy a big sound reinforcement console — you had to make one. And McCune had made one. It was really an excellent console. And Dan Healy drove that, and also mixed the monitors from that, because in that era it was not uncommon to mix the monitors from the front-of-house console. So Dan was doing front-of-house. I was basically the house tech.
JESSE: David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: And that rehearsal took the way of being a soundcheck at Great American Music Hall the day before, on August 12th. So, presumably, they booked the place a day, a couple days, in advance, and they brought the recording equipment in. Thankfully, they recorded the soundcheck — virtually all of it, the music, and quite a bit of the banter.
AUDIO: “Franklin’s Tower” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Blues for Allah 50, 8/12/75] (6:11-6:44) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
BOB WEIR [8/12/75]: Shh!
JERRY GARCIA [8/12/75]: Yeah, man.
BOB WEIR [8/12/75]: I mean, for chrissakes…
JESSE: The 24-track came from Wally Heider’s San Francisco studio, located nearby, where the Dead had recorded American Beauty. Lee Brenkman.
LEE BRENKMAN: The Heider truck is parked out in the alley behind the club, and we ran all the cabling out. That was the normal setup for multitrack recording. Two-track recording was usually done by Betty or Bob; whoever was doing it would commandeer one of the dressing rooms and set up in there.
DAVID LEMIEUX: You can hear during the banter that they were really setting up. They would rehearse, and they'd do a song. It wasn't like they had an uninterrupted four hours, six hours, to do this kind of stuff. It was like, ‘Okay, nobody's doing anything on the stage for the next 15 minutes. Let's run through...’ And that's what you get: you don't get a full run-through of the show. You get the run through of bits and pieces.
AUDIO: “Slipknot!” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Blues for Allah 50, 8/12/75] (0:00-0:17) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
LEE BRENKMAN: I'm sure they were running the reels to see what's going on. I don't know how many of those would have been complete takes, because I do remember them starting and stopping a lot.
DAVID LEMIEUX: We went back and 16 tracks were mixed down by Brian Kehew. I think they sound incredible. There's some really, really good music in here, and it kind of shows, when they do finally play it for an audience—if you want to call it that—the next day, it's a good thing they rehearse, because this music is complicated.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Blues for Allah 50, 8/12/75] (0:00-0:29) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: The new Blues for Allah 50 release includes about 43 minutes of the soundcheck rehearsal, including two mostly complete passes through the “Help on the Way”/“Slipknot!”/”Franklin’s Tower” suite, the only-in-‘75 “King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt,” “Crazy Fingers” with a tasty outro jam, and the very briefly-lived live arrangement of “Sage and Spirit.”
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Blues for Allah 50, 8/12/75] (0:00-0:29) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Even more than the studio version, which I think was more or less arranged track by track as it was recorded, the live version sounds pretty fully intentional, with some gorgeous soloing by Garcia and thoughtful counterpoint by Phil Lesh. If you like “Sage and Spirit,” it’s totally worth hearing, and imagining lots more Grateful Dead in this mode.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Blues for Allah 50, 8/12/75] (1:57-2:27) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: There are some other pieces of the soundcheck floating around as well.
DAVID LEMIEUX: We did release a song many years ago—[2004], on a bonus disc—from the soundcheck. It was a Keith and Donna song called “Showboat,” sung by Keith. Little rock and roll number, just a beautiful little shuffle.
AUDIO: “Showboat” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Beyond Description bonus disc, 8/12/75] (0:52-1:22)
DAVID LEMIEUX: If you listen to the Keith and Donna Band tapes from ‘75, they play it quite a bit, and Keith has a great voice. It's too bad he didn't sing more lead vocals, or even more background vocals.
JESSE: It’s from the Keith & Donna album, released earlier that year, and the only time the full-ish Dead seem to have attempted it, another little fork in the universe.
AUDIO: “Showboat” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [Beyond Description bonus disc, 8/12/75] (2:11-2:42)
JERRY GARCIA [8/12/75]: Ah yeah, that’s neat. Got any other ones?
JESSE: There was also a somewhat topical cover, which David Lemieux released by way of the Tapers Section on dead.net a few years back. Did somebody say Crickets?
AUDIO: “That’ll Be The Day” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [8/12/75] (0:21-0:43) [Tapers Section]
JESSE: Or maybe it was the natural slapback of an empty venue.
AUDIO: “That’ll Be The Day” (Soundcheck/Rehearsal) [8/12/75] (2:25-2:50)
JERRY GARCIA [8/12/75]: Can’t resist with that echo. So into that thing I can’t believe it. That’s amazing…
JESSE: The topicality, of course, is that “That’ll Be The Day” was by Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and that night the Dead were set to feature some crickets in their show.
AUDIO: “Blues for Allah” [Desert Zone, Blues for Allah] (4:27-4:41)
JESSE: That was an isolated track from the title track of Blues for Allah, the section called “Sand Castles and Glass Camels,” tracks 15 and 16, titled “Zone Desert” on the tracking sheet, built around the heavily manipulated sound of crickets, a story we’ll focus our ears on next episode, which probably took place in mid-July. With the overdubs fresh in their ears, Mickey Hart set out to reproduce the sound at the Great American. Ron Rakow.
RON RAKOW: Mickey was on that show, and he had been rehearsing with the band. In “Blues for Allah,” he started to use crickets. So he would gather up crickets, and mic them in a shoebox.
JESSE: From Grateful Dead Records, Steve Brown.
STEVE BROWN: In Novato, Mickey knew this pet store up there that had all this shit. He kept saying, “We use them for food!” The crickets were food for some other amphibious characters, or whatever. [After they recorded] they had an encore of the crickets to come down and perform there for us as well, and we did the same thing right behind the curtain backstage there.
JESSE: From the Great American, Lee Brenkman.
LEE BRENKMAN: My main job was running the long mic cable down to the basement to the box with the crickets in it. One of the crew had been dispatched to the scientific supply store in San Francisco, where the schools went to buy the frogs for dissection, and the crickets, all of the live thingies that got used in schools. They bought 12 dozen crickets, and they put them in a cardboard box. They brought them in the night before and, not knowing they were crickets, I think whoever took the delivery said, “Okay, put it over there by the walk-in cooler.”
JESSE: D’oh!
LEE BRENKMAN: And when they came back the next day, all the crickets were dead. Somebody was dispatched to go get more crickets, and they brought back the live crickets. They had a larger cardboard box, and the idea was to cut a hole in the box; put a microphone in the box; run the cable all the way up from the basement, up the back stairs to the mixing console. And we succeeded in that.
JESSE: Ron Rakow.
RON RAKOW: Rex [Jackson] got 100 crickets and put them in a box, and then they mic-ed them and moved them around the theater until they got it to where it sounded right. They finally put the crickets on top of a big motor that's next to a wall downstairs in the basement and Mickey said, “That sounds really good. Except… there's something going on there — there's like a 60-cycle hum in the sound.” So Rex goes down there and he sees a motor plugged in next to the box where the crickets are, and he pulls the plug out. And Mickey said, “Oh, good, you got it. No, no more problem.”
JESSE: No more hum, no more problem. Right?
LEE BRENKMAN: But the crickets were not chirping at the same tempo that the crickets on the album. Somebody remembered from high school biology that the rate at which a cricket chirps is directly related to the temperature. You can actually tell the temperature by counting how many times a cricket chirps in a minute and multiplying it or dividing it by some formula. So a second hole was cut in the box, and a 40 watt light bulb was put in the hole. Then the hole was gaff-taped shut, as was the box, and the crickets chirped at pretty close to the right speed.
AUDIO: “Blues For Allah” [Desert Zone, Blues for Allah] (4:56-5:07)
“Will you welcome, please, the Grateful Dead…”
JESSE: Officially, the Grateful Dead hadn’t performed since their October 1974 retirement shows at Winterland. Both of their earlier manifestations in 1975 had been under the banner of Jerry Garcia and Friends. The Great American Music Hall show was, in a sense, the return of the band, when Schrodinger’s box was opened and the Grateful Dead were found still alive inside. David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: They played Kezar [Stadium] in March, and they played the June thing at Winterland, which was okay. This was a full show, but it was certainly not for their audience. It was a lot of new material — it was all the Blues for Allah material, and Mickey was back. So I won't say there was a lot of pressure on, but they rehearsed.
JESSE: There was even a formal invitation. The original version was a folded over card with “The Grateful Dead” on the outside in script, and on the inside: “Al Teller, President, United Artists Records and Ron Rakow, President, Round Records cordially invite you to a rare and important musical performance at the Great American Music Hall.”
DAVID LEMIEUX: It was an industry crowd drawn from the conference that was happening.
JESSE: Billboard’s Radio Programming Forum held August 12th through 16th, 1975 at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco was a full industry blowout, which obviously received detailed coverage in Billboard, with lots of wide-open collars, tinted glasses and plaid blazers. At the Fairmont, there were performances by Glen Campbell, who’d just released his biggest single, “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
AUDIO: “Rhinestone Cowboy” [Glen Campbell, Rhinestone Cowboy] (0:46-1:05) - [Spotify]
JESSE: Waylon Jennings played for the assembled shmoozarati. The man called Hoss had just dropped his new #1 country banger, “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way.”
AUDIO: “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” [Waylon Jennings, Dreaming My Dreams] (1:25-1:46) - [Spotify]
JESSE: Not that everybody was quite as successful. The night after the Dead, there was a performance by Dr. Hook, who’d just dropped the Medicine Show and released the new album Bankrupt, including another quartet of songs by Shel Silverstein.
AUDIO: “On the Way to the Bottom” [Dr. Hook, Bankrupt] (0:26-0:43) - [Spotify]
JESSE: George Carlin was over at the Fairmont. So was Boz Scaggs. And Andy Williams.
NELSON MUNTZ [The Simpsons]: Andy Williams!
JESSE: There were a few Dead-friendly faces in the crowd. KSAN’s Bonnie Simmons picked up an award for the best progressive station and one of the event’s keynote speakers was none other than Bill Graham. Wish I could find any coverage of his speech. Billboard’s only mention of the event at the Great American was “a late secret off-site show by the Dead.” From United Artists, Al Teller.
AL TELLER: My expectation with the Dead was to continue to build on the nice base that they had built. Whether we could get them to that next level of sales success was really going to depend on the degree to which we'd be able to get a substantial uptick in radio airplay. There was nothing on the album that sounded as if we were going to have that kind of a singles breakthrough.
JESSE: But in the mid-1970s, big rock bands didn’t necessarily need hit singles. They could still break through with longer album tracks on what was then called progressive radio, an era that was beginning to near its end. United Artists got behind the event at the Great American.
AL TELLER: In general, those kinds of events are not terribly successful. I've been to plenty of them over the years. My preference, in terms of dealing with radio people, is to go one-on-one with them: look the program director or the music director right in the eyeball, play the record, and get a reaction right there on the spot, rather than everybody hanging around drinking and talking to each other and all that stuff. But it's the kind of thing you do just to basically show your support for the band. This way, the radio community knew that we were seriously behind the band — as we would be, of course.
JESSE: While the Dead played for the programmers, they kept themselves decidedly at arm’s length and as Billboard put it, off-site. Donna Jean.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: I remember the Grateful Dead playing at the Great American, we were just testing the waters with the songs that we had recorded. It was kind of seeing where it was all gonna land.
JESSE: As Billy Kreutzmann put it in his memoir, Deal, “Something about showcasing our new material for radio programmers and the like. You know, stuff I never actually paid any attention to.” From the Pleasure Crew, party organizer Roger Lewis.
ROGER LEWIS: I had been to many Dead shows by that time, and my normal [routine] was to go in the back door and get on stage. So I was familiar with a lot of faces, even if I didn't know their names. But when you're at the door telling faces that you know [that] are normally welcome that they can't come in, you know you're not the most favorite guy in the world, and you're the shithead that they all talk about.
JESSE: They also could’ve just registered for the Radio Programming Forum, only $200 for early registrants, and ferreted out an invitation. We’ve found a few hearty Dead freaks who made it inside the Great American on August 13th, 1975 and can act as third eyewitnesses for us. One of our Deadcast irregulars figured out a clever hack to get by Roger Lewis’s reluctant firewall. I’ll give you one guess. Figure it out yet? Please welcome back, Gary Lambert.
GARY LAMBERT: I was incredibly lucky in that an old family friend of mine, the late Jerry Graham, had just been hired to replace Tom Donahue, who had passed away, at KSAN. Jerry had run a radio station that my brother had worked in in western Massachusetts, a great little 1000 watt anarchic station. He was also a veteran of Metromedia Radio, the parent company of KSAN. So although he'd been on the AM side of Metromedia, where they played Frank Sinatra and stuff like that. But I think they just respected him as a competent radio guy, and respected the fact that he had started this indie station. So they picked him to replace Tom Donahue. He came out, I believe, in June or July of ‘75. I went to KSAN a few times to visit and got to know some of the staff there; Bonnie Simmons, who was the music director at the time, became a good friend. And I actually knew Blues for Allah was coming out. I was actually working in a record store in San Francisco, and I knew the rep from United Artists Records who was handling the Dead account.
JESSE: KSAN was the Dead’s hometown commercial station, having evolved out of KMPX a half-dozen years earlier.
AUDIO: “KSAN Jingle” [Old and In the Way, 1973] (3:03-3:46)
GARY LAMBERT: And Jerry said, “Well, you above all should be at this thing.” And the entire staff of KSAN had been invited to the Great American Music Hall on August 13th,1975. KSAN was making this metamorphosis from the great ‘60s San Francisco station, into trying to retain that but also move forward, musically. So DJs on KSAN were playing some of the earliest proto-punk and glam rock and all that stuff. So a wonderful DJ named Richard Gossett—who I think was one of the first people to play Elvis Costello in the States—he would go to London and bring back these records that weren't available in the States yet, and turn the KSAN audience onto them: David Bowie, the New York Dolls, all that stuff. He had no interest in the Grateful Dead whatsoever. So Jerry said, “Hey, why don't you just come to the Great American Music Hall and be Richard Gossett.”
RICHARD GOSSETT [KSAN aircheck, 1972]: … And anything else you want. We’re also in Oakland, Emeryville, Mars, Jupiter, and just about any place you can pick us up. Some people even up in Chico can get us, on the cable. I only hear stories about that though. I’ll have to drive up there and see what the station sounds like in Chico.
GARY LAMBERT: Security at clubs being incredibly haphazard in those days, I was able to go up to the table and say, “Hi, Richard Gossett from KSAN.” They did not ask me for ID — they just checked me off a list and said, “Welcome.” So that's how I came to be a few feet away from the stage.
JESSE: It wasn’t like other Dead shows. Or at least none since their early days in the clubs.
GARY LAMBERT: There were tables. They had large, round tables that a bunch of people could sit at communally. Along with Kezar, it remains among my most memorable and unusual Dead experiences ever. It may have been the smallest crowd I ever saw them with, the other contender maybe being The Cafe Au Go Go. The Great American capacity was, I think, 600; with the seats, it was probably reduced to 300 or less. It was a remarkably sparse crowd getting this unbelievable experience, and I was just the luckiest bastard in the world to be among them.
JESSE: Roger Lewis hadn’t succeeded at keeping everybody out. There were 100 tickets reserved for Grateful Dead Records.
GARY LAMBERT: I saw friends I knew sort of from the Dead scene as well — some people I'd known going back to Winterland and all that. So, yeah, it was really being at the coolest private party ever.
JESSE: Deb Trist was one of the Winterland regulars who made it in. You might know her as Downtown Deb, host of the long-running Dead Air on KLCC in Eugene.
DEB TRIST: Great American Music Hall? Beautiful. Exquisite, grand. I guess it had been renovated or refurbished in ‘72 and then opened for shows. And Johnny Hagen—I knew all the roadies and all this—he was like, “Oh, how did you get in here, Deb?” And I was like, “Oh, you know, friends in high places.”
JESSE: Or high friends in places. The private party was recorded on 24-track with the Wally Heider remote truck and broadcast nationally several weeks later, not live the night of the show. We’ll be using the radio tape for this next segment, where I’ll note that some Dead Heads in the crowd do seem to make themselves known. When the band assembled onstage, they were introduced by one of the conference’s keynote speakers, though he technically had nothing to do with the show itself.
GARY LAMBERT: Although Great American wasn't Bill Graham's venue, he sort of was the paterfamilias of the show. He introduced the band and all that.
BILL GRAHAM [8/13/75]: Good evening — we welcome you, on behalf of the group, which we should introduce…
JESSE: So why was Bill Graham onstage? Ron Rakow.
RON RAKOW: Roger was just a very rich guy, very smart, very affable guy, on the scene. Knew everybody for years and years and years. And he asked Bill Graham to come by and introduce the band, and told him what was happening. Bill was happy to come. So, I met Bill at the door, and we made two bets on something, and he won both of them. We bet 12-and-a-half dollars on something, so he had $25. Then we did double or nothing—$25—so he wanted 50 bucks.
BILL GRAHAM [8/13/75]: I should make it official: Mr. Rakow’s the president of Round Records, and he asked if I could be here this evening. I said, “I’d like $12.50,” which he paid me at the door, and we flipped double or nothing, and I won, and he wanted to flip again, so I’m being paid $50 for being here. I wanna thank him.
RON RAKOW: So he walked on stage, very excited to be announcing a Grateful Dead show for the record industry, but much more excited about the $50 bill he just his hand and he just won. So, he gets up on the stage and he says, “On the way in, and I made two bets with Rakow, and I won. And he paid me 50 bucks, and here it is!” And he's waving the 50 bucks on the stage.
JESSE: And now back to the part you probably know a little bit better, certainly one of the most beloved of the Bill Graham intros — unrehearsed, and a testament to how absolutely locked together the band was on August 13th, 1975. And, for the first time in a while, they were officially themselves…
BILL GRAHAM [8/13/75]: On the drums, on stage left, Mr. Mickey Hart. On bass and vocals, Mr. Phillip Lesh. On rhythm guitar and vocals, Mr. Bob Weir. On the drums on stage right, Mr. Bill Kreutzmann. On the vocals, Mrs. Donna Jean Godchaux. On lead guitar and vocals, Mr. Jerry Garcia. Will you welcome, please, the Grateful Dead.
AUDIO: “Help on the Way/Slipknot!” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:00-0:27) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
GARY LAMBERT: At the very opening, Bill intro-ing the band while they were playing the opening vamp to “Help.” It was just thrilling.
JESSE: “Help on the Way” had lyrics now.
AUDIO: “Help on the Way/Slipknot!” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:17-0:37) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
GARY LAMBERT: And then they were playing it so beautifully and with such authority, because they'd been in the studio making that album. They'd been doing their woodshedding by doing the recording. It was so sharp, and the band was in really great spirits.
AUDIO: “Help on the Way/Slipknot!” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (4:40-5:14) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Downtown Deb.
DEB TRIST: It was kind of like a magical situation. The band was sparkling and refreshed, and the venue was maybe 400 people.
JESSE: Roger Lewis’s memory of the night was focused on his hosting duties.
ROGER LEWIS: I don't think it was just standing room. I think there were some tables, but I can't really see it, so I don't remember. I know that I was working my ass off the whole time — making it right, making sure that whatever they needed to be done was done, and done well.
JESSE: David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: It must have been daunting. As much as they, at this point, played so many hundreds of shows, it really must have been daunting to be on a stage playing this stuff for people who are going to judge you — for music industry people, and radio people. So it's a good thing they rehearsed. I think the show on the 13th demonstrates that they nailed it.
JESSE: Gary Lambert.
GARY LAMBERT: My sense was the crowd was very enthusiastic, and they threw in enough red meat Grateful Dead stuff as well to keep people engaged. And they played that stuff really well, too. Enough of the stuff from the album was accessible: “Music Never Stopped” is like, ‘Oh man, this thing is great. This thing really feels great live.’ So no, there didn't seem to be a big jaded industry schmoozer factor that I was hanging around anyway.
AUDIO: “The Music Never Stopped” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:13-0:30) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
GARY LAMBERT: I remember “Music Never Stopped” being really exhilarating.
AUDIO: “The Music Never Stopped” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (3:28-3:58) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Lee Brenkman, the venue tech, doesn’t remember the show being packed.
LEE BRENKMAN: The place was not even three-quarters full. This was invitation-only, it was pre-internet… even phone trees were kind of a new thing. And then, at some point, word had gotten out, and there were some people hanging on the sidewalk hoping for a miracle.
JESSE: Based in part on a note in Relix and some of the stories we’re about to hear, I’m going to guess that this next sequence of events started during the set-closing “Eyes of the World”/“King Solomon’s Marbles” and unfolded into the setbreak. Outside the venue, Dead Heads were starting to mass. One of them was Ed Perlstein.
ED PERLSTEIN: We knew enough to go down there, and I don't remember the details of how we heard and what was going on. I know it was myself and three or four friends, and then some other groups of people came, but it wasn't a big scene. Not a lot of people knew. There were maybe 20 people standing outside the Music Hall. We went around to the back to see if the roadies were there — maybe they could talk our way in, but nothing. So we're standing outside. We knew there was a, maybe a Heider truck, or some truck outside recording it. We kind of knew that the Dead were in there, and it was a kind of a record company or suits [event]. The Dead were playing — they had opened up the doors, so we could hear it.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World/Drums” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:34-0:49) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
ED PERLSTEIN: Some guy comes out, well-dressed, and he walks directly up to me. I was one of 20, you know? I was just leaning against a car right in front. He walks up to me and he hands me an invitation — and he walks away. I can't remember if he walked back in, or if he left, gave it to somebody else to use. And the Dead wanted their fans in there. So, I was the first Dead Head in there. First thing I did—everybody was sitting at round tables, just sitting at their tables; there was no other activity—was I went straight for the middle of the floor, where all the tables were, and I started dancing.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World/Drums” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (2:36-3:03) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
ED PERLSTEIN: It was all round tables with tablecloths, and executives sitting around the tables in their suits. Very straight. It was very weird.
JESSE: Danno Henklein was living north of the city.
DAN HENKLEIN: We found out they were playing at the Great American Music Hall, so I hitchhiked on down there.
JESSE: He got in somehow, though details are a bit blurry, making him one of the few people outside the band’s immediate circle to attend both the Veneta ‘72 field trip and the Blues for Allah party in San Francisco. We doff our wigs, Danno.
DAN HENKLEIN: And in the Great American Music Hall, the acoustics were perfect. The crowd was small and they were all great lovers of the band, and the playing was pristine. Everything was perfect.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World/Drums” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (6:50-7:23) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Gary Lambert couldn’t help but notice the room starting to fill up a bit more as the night progressed.
GARY LAMBERT: There was also room to dance at the sides, and a lot of people availed themselves of that.
JESSE: Bill Graham may’ve been partly responsible for that.
GARY LAMBERT: I think he was also responsible for letting some Dead Heads in off the street when word had gotten out that this thing was happening. So they filled up the place.
JESSE: Or maybe it was Ron Rakow.
RON RAKOW: The show was very, very interestingly set up. I invited the record industry, and we got the people that were the most Grateful Dead danceaholic people.
JESSE: Or maybe it was Roger Lewis.
ROGER LEWIS: That could have been me. If it was, I was told to do it. I wouldn't have done it on my own. I was much more obedient than that.
JESSE: Whoever was responsible, Ed Perlstein was stoked.
ED PERLSTEIN: So then I see a few more of my friends. I heard that the Dead started to let the heads in, and so there were a few more people dancing. It was amazing.
JESSE: Ed Perlstein had seen the Dead with the Wall of Sound, but in a small club was something else entirely.
ED PERLSTEIN: I finally heard really good sound at the Music Hall. I think it was the Meyer setup.
JESSE: This classic “Eyes of the World” we’ve been jamming includes multiple shockingly tonal bass solos by Phil Lesh.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World/Drums” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (8:20-8:52) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: It also still features the ominous alternating chords that marked the start of the song’s original outro jam.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World/Drums” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (8:53-9:19) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
GARY LAMBERT: Although Mickey had turned up at other stuff, that was the first time we were really getting the Rhythm Devils act together in some kind of formal sense.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World/Drums” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (13:00-13:15) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: But instead of building to the big 7/8 ending, they pause for a drum break and reemerge into a different piece in 7 — “King Solomon’s Marbles.” It does sound like there are some Dead Heads in the house by this point.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:00-0:16) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
GARY LAMBERT: And hearing “Stronger Than Dirt” for the first time, which was really powerful.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (2:34-2:58) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: One artifact of the CD era is that when the show was released on One From the Vault, the setbreak was relocated from after “Stronger Than Dirt “to after “Around & Around” in order to make the show fit more evenly onto the two discs.
AUDIO: “Around and Around” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (5:50-5:57)
BOB WEIR [8/13/75]: We’re gonna take a short break, we’ll be back in just a few minutes. Everybody hang loose.
JESSE: In practice, what this meant was that the show’s first set was side A of the album, slightly rearranged, with “It Must Have Been the Roses” in the middle. This is my personal keeper Dead take of the song, so I feel obligated to highlight it as well, partially because of Keith Godchaux’s “Crazy Fingers”-like Rhodes tone.
AUDIO: “It Must Have Been the Roses” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (1:57-2:27) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: And after a few warmup songs, the second set focused on the album’s second side. It includes the only “Crazy Fingers” that I think approaches the delicacy of the album version, thanks to Keith Godchaux’s watery Rhodes.
AUDIO: “Crazy Fingers” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:00-0:31) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: And off into a jam, a drums segment, and a compact instrumental version of “The Other One” that nevertheless gets pretty far out for its 5-and-a-half minute running time.
AUDIO: “The Other One” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (4:32-5:02) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: On this evening, “The Other One” was a prelude to one of the show’s centerpieces, and I love how they build the set towards this moment, instead of an explosion, a moment of really quiet—and drum-less—grace.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:53-1:19) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Deb Trist.
DEB TRIST: It was great and sublime, that “Sage and Spirit.” I mean, I know those kids — Rock and Nicki’s kids, Sage and Acacia.
JESSE: It was the only complete live version of the song, so let’s linger slightly longer.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (1:20-1:50) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: There was some traditional choogle to close the set.
AUDIO: “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (3:50-4:19) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: But the evening built in a sense to another piece that they only played in its fully-realized form on this night: “Blues for Allah.” Dig the crickets.
AUDIO: “Blues for Allah” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:00-0:30) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
GARY LAMBERT: And then, of course, “Blues for Allah” brought back the weirdness factor, and Mickey with his crickets.
JESSE: Deb Trist.
DEB TRIST: It was a wonderful night — beautiful music, strange on some of it, with this “Blues for Allah.” Kind of experimental improv, trust and intuition, and crickets…
AUDIO: “Blues for Allah” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (6:47-7:17) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
GARY LAMBERT: You could hear the crickets. I assumed it was on a tape loop or something, but — way too easy.
JESSE: Besides the crickets, at least Mickey is on hand percussion, too. It’s definitely a new place for the Dead, and would shape plenty of Drumz and Space segments to come.
AUDIO: “Blues for Allah” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (9:45-10:15) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: It was one of the only realizations of the “Sand Castles and Glass Camels” theme, perhaps the strangest and most next-level musical place the Dead had found at Ace’s.
AUDIO: “Blues for Allah” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (12:59-13:20) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: So why play this utter weirdness for a room full of radio programmers? We don’t have time to delve into the sordid history of radio in the ‘70s, but by 1975 the formats known as progressive and freeform were reaching their peaks, and there was still an audible class of DJs who would drop the needle on side-long tracks. I clench my fist in solidarity.
AUDIO: “Blues for Allah” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (16:26-16:57) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: It might be the only time after the Anthem of the Sun era that the Dead played every song from their newest studio album in a single performance. After the show, maybe there was a limited amount of meeting and greeting.
GARY LAMBERT: Yeah, there was a little bit of mingling. I don't remember who all was out there, but I did see enough of Bobby to catch his eye. Bobby said, “How the hell did you get in here?” I said, “Nefarious means, my friend. Nefarious means.”
JESSE: The band had fond memories of this night, and the crowd had fond memories of this night. We have fond memories of this night, even though we weren’t there. Only a very few people don’t. Only a very few people don’t. One of the few is Roger Lewis. It’s hard for him to shake the memory of having to turn people away at the door.
ROGER LEWIS: I think that pretty much everyone associated with the Dead and the family despised me after having done it. But, you know, I did it. I'm guilty.
JESSE: But even still, he was one of the contributors to the vibe, one more layer helping the Dead manifest a temporary autonomous zone in a room full of mostly corporate company.
ROGER LEWIS: They didn't, as I recall, pay me for that, for the Great American Music Hall. I was happy to do it for nothing, because I was good at it and I loved putting on a party. I was a functionary — I was like a butler.
JESSE: And, of course, there’s the pretty infamous story of what happened to the crickets that Mickey brought in. Steve Brown.
STEVE BROWN: They got loose there, too. We heard from Tom—that was the manager at the time—calling us out at the office saying: “You’ve got to come down and get these crickets out of here!” Because they're in the Great American Music Hall, in the back.
AUDIO: “Blues For Allah” [Desert Zone, Blues for Allah] (4:56-5:07)
JESSE: Lee Brenkman.
LEE BRENKMAN: The problem was there was no oxygen getting into the box because everything had been taped up shut. So during the show, when the crickets were no longer in the PA, the crickets were either dying or desperately trying to get out of the box. Somehow, they managed to open one of the seams of the box, and dozens of crickets escaped. We were picking up cricket corpses in the basement of the Great American Music Hall for weeks afterward.
JESSE: Ron Rakow remembers it slightly differently.
RON RAKOW: That's folklore. That's not true. The crickets didn't have to escape. They already fucked up the whole show for me anyway. The funny thing is, everybody worked for nothing except the crickets. The crickets cost almost seven grand to get in there.
JESSE: Wait, why did the crickets cost almost seven grand?
RON RAKOW: The next day, I get a call from the guy that owns the Great American Music Hall. He says, “You had a successful show last night.” I said, “Yeah, we sure did.” He said, “Yeah, I have one bit of news for you.” “What's that?” He said, “You owe me $6,750.” And I said, “I beg your pardon?” He said, “One of you guys pulled the plug on the freezer motor, and forgot to plug it back in, and I had to throw away a room full of meat.” So I had to pay the guy $6,750. That's a lot of meat...
LEE BRENKMAN: That is quite possible, except for one thing: the refrigerator in the basement was never used for food storage. It was only for beer. The steaks would have been in the walk-in cooler upstairs in the kitchen, which is on the same level as the stage. However, it is very possible that that same refrigerator was in the corner where the first box of crickets had died.
AUDIO: “Blues For Allah” [Desert Zone, Blues for Allah] (4:56-5:07)
LEE BRENKMAN: The real VIPs got drink tabs, but everyone else, it was a paid bar. They did not make the bar guarantee. I don't remember the figure — just arbitrarily, say it was $2,000, and the paid bar had only done maybe $1,600 worth of business. They said, “Well, we gave you a $2,000 deposit, and your bar only did $1,600. We paid you $2,000, so we're going to send a couple of our crew over with a van to pick up $400 worth of beer.” To which the answer was not in the affirmative.
Aftermath
JESSE: There’s no receipt for that one in the band archive, nor any record of the band’s crew getting $400 worth of warm beer from the fridge they hadn’t plugged back in. In his memoir, Deal, Billy Kreutzmann writes about a pretty wild road race over the Golden Gate Bridge after the show. “In my mind, that show was a crucial turning point. I wasn’t high on smack that night – I dabbled with opiates throughout the hiatus… but I stayed away from all that junk for the gig. It was a very bright, clear, expressive night for the whole band. It was also just a really big moment for me, personally. It was the first time that I thought we could be a band again. And the first time I thought having two drummers again could work.”
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World/Drums” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (13:20-13:35) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: The members of the band got back to work immediately. The next night, August 14th, Bobby Weir and Kingfish were in southern California, at the Fox Theater in Venice. I think this was the first “Monkey and the Engineer” since 1970.
AUDIO: “Monkey and the Engineer” [Kingfish, 8/14/75] (1:09-1:39)
JESSE: The Keith and Donna Band remained busy, which included Billy Kreutzmann on drums. They were scheduled to make their Great American debut in August, a story we’ll use as an aftermath here, because it also points towards several parts of the Grateful Dead’s collective future. Lee Brenkman.
LEE BRENKMAN: Sometime in 1975 I think, the San Francisco Police Department went on strike, and the Music Hall had a Keith and Donna show. Because the police were on strike, all the venues were hiring any private security they could get. And we had the bottom of the barrel.
JESSE: Good memory, Lee. The 1975 San Francisco cop strike aligns exactly with the Keith and Donna Band’s debut at the Great American, August 20th and 21st, exactly a week after the Dead’s show.
LEE BRENKMAN: Possibly because the Dead had played the August gig, rumor got out that it was really a secret surprise Grateful Dead concert.
JESSE: There was another factor: the Great American’s newspaper ad listed the show as the Jerry Garcia Band, a group that wouldn’t actually form for another month.
LEE BRENKMAN: I think the initial advertising was Keith and Donna, and then it was changed to the Jerry Garcia Band, because he had agreed to play with them.
JESSE: There was no Jerry Garcia Band yet, and in August 1975, Garcia joined the Keith and Donna Band for a handful of gigs, meaning they were fielding four members of the Dead. There’s a tape of the first night at the Great American, August 20th, with a really cool version of Freddie Hubbard’s “Straight Life,” which we’ll use for the next segment.
AUDIO: “Straight Life” [Keith and Donna with Jerry Garcia, 8/20/75] (8:13-8:31) - [YouTube]
LEE BRENKMAN: And of course, the place is sold out, they can't let any more people in. And people on the street: ‘Oh yeah, we know it's really the Dead, man.’ People were… literally, one guy got on the roof and came into one of the skylights to the back stairway. And that meant he dropped about 22 feet onto a narrow, curving stairway, and broke the skylight in the process. Because they had their own sound people working, I was in the office, and there's a fire escape that came up the back of the club to the office. There were people banging on the door at the top of the fire escape, begging me to let them in. One guy was shoving $20 bills under the door.
JESSE: Michael Parrish.
MICHAEL PARRISH: We were on our honeymoon up in the Sierras and came back down for that show when it was originally booked as a Garcia Band show. Of course, the Dead had played there a couple of weeks before, and it's like: ‘Oh, Jerry Garcia Band. That's interesting.’ But of course, it really was the Keith and Donna Band.
AUDIO: “Straight Life” [Keith and Donna with Jerry Garcia, 8/20/75] (8:46-9:00) - [YouTube]
MICHAEL PARRISH: I really could have sworn that Mickey was there at that Keith and Donna show, and there was an extended drum duet.
JESSE: Michael’s memory is correct — Mickey joined the Keith and Donna Band on the second night, according to a detailed review of both shows in Relix, putting five members of the Grateful Dead onstage eight days after the Blues for Allah party, everybody but Weir and Lesh. No tape of that one, though, at least that we know about.
AUDIO: “Straight Life” [Keith and Donna with Jerry Garcia, 8/20/75] (12:44-13:10) - [YouTube]
JESSE: It was Garcia’s last time at the Great American, and as far as I can tell, the last time it was headlined by a member of the Dead. Maybe it was the crickets. Or the refrigerator. Or the fans on the roof. The actual Jerry Garcia Band would form and debut in September, which we’ll delve into slightly next episode. Blues for Allah hit stores somewhere around August 21st, a week after the Great American show, and barely a month after the last overdub. On one hand, there were no tours to support it. On the other hand, the music never did actually stop.
AUDIO: “Straight Life” [Keith and Donna with Jerry Garcia, 8/20/75] (19:24-19:45) - [YouTube]
Make Believe Ballroom
JESSE: And on September 1st, Labor Day 1975, Metromedia radio stations around the country broadcast the Great American Music Hall show in its entirety, giving it an immediate impact beyond whatever wheels it greased among the radio programmers in the house. In fact, it was an instant classic. Please welcome back Joan Miller, a San Francisco high school Dead Head who attended the entirety of the Winterland farewell shows, but couldn’t make it into the Great American.
JOAN MILLER: In 1975, there was a rebroadcast of the Great American Music Hall concert that the Grateful Dead played, a couple weeks after the original concert. It was going to be rebroadcast on our local independent station in San Francisco, KSAN. I was 15 years old, and of course that night I had something else to do. But I asked my mother — I had a portable radio cassette player and a pink 60-minute Memorex tape. I put the tape into the recorder, I asked my mother: “When”—I can't remember what time it was, but whatever time it was— “the show [is] supposed to start, [could you] press play and record, and, after 60 minutes, could you turn the tape over?” Well, guess what? She did. I lived on the third floor; my bedroom was on the third floor. She was probably downstairs in the living room, and she really ran up those stairs after 60 minutes to turn the tape over.
AUDIO: “Help on the Way” [8/13/75 radio broadcast] (0:00-0:15)
JOAN MILLER: The pink tape, to me, was a masterpiece. In 1975, I really didn't know a lot of people that had tapes of Grateful Dead concerts, even me. Though me and my girlfriends had all their records up to that point, we really weren't tape traders. I don't even know if tape trading was really going on then. But the pink Memorex tape was what we listened to over and over again.
AUDIO: “Slipknot!” [8/13/75 radio broadcast] (0:00-0:12)
JOAN MILLER: When I was 16, I got a VW Bug convertible, with a portable cassette player. And everywhere we went on any San Francisco street, when we were riding to school, it was pretty much the only Grateful Dead live concert that I had that wasn't from a manufactured tape from the record company. I knew every note of that tape: I listened to it, I sang to it, I drummed to it on the steering wheel of my car, and my favorite Grateful Dead…. I'm not a musician, but the change from “Help on the Way” to “Franklin's Tower” was where I cranked it up. I thought it was masterful.
AUDIO: “Slipknot!” [8/13/75 radio broadcast] (4:01-4:11)
AUDIO: “Franklin’s Tower” [8/13/75 radio broadcast] (0:00-0:08)
JESSE: Corry Arnold remembers the Great American Music Hall bootleg LP on the streets as early as 1975, courtesy of the Amazing Kornyfone label under the title Make Believe Ballroom. Ironically, the title was a reference to Martin Block’s old-time radio show that was one of the first to focus on studio-recorded music. In fact, the newspaper columnist Walter Winchell coined the term “DJ” to describe Martin Block’s actions on Make Believe Ballroom. Until then, nearly all music on the radio was live. Block’s innovation was to play records, and dub in crowd noise.
AUDIO: “Make Believe Ballroom Time” [The Four Modernaires] (0:26-0:55)
JESSE: Like Joan Miller’s Pink Tape, Make Believe Ballroom was another form that the Great American show took en route to becoming part of the Dead’s canon. It was a cornerstone for our departed but always-on-time buddy Steve Silberman.
STEVE SILBERMAN]: One of the first bootleg vinyl discs I got was Make Believe Ballroom, Great American Music Hall ‘75. And I still remember that, the moment I first heard that. I was at Oberlin — Oberlin College, where I went to school. I was walking across campus one day, and I heard “Help on the Way” coming from Dascomb [Hall], the second floor. And I was like, “Oh, yeah, ‘Help on the Way.’ I love this.” And it was like: ‘Wait a minute, this isn't the same performance. What is this?’ And, in fact, that “Help on the Way”/“Slipknot!”/“Franklin's Tower” from that show at Great American ‘75 is still easily—particularly the “Slipknot!”—one of my favorite live performances of all time. I got that very early on in my bootleg collecting years.
JESSE: Make Believe Ballroom got around. Keith Eaton left us this story.
KEITH EATON: When I was a freshman in college in 1985, my second roommate—my first was evicted—had with him two bootleg cassettes. One was from my first show in Portland, Maine in 1982; one was from Red Rocks that year; and the other was a box set of LPs called Make Believe Ballroom. And having played around with my brother's records and listened to that mysterious music, it just captured my imagination. It's really difficult to describe how it touched an old memory, sort of the way olfactory senses can do that. And I really glommed on to “Sage and Spirit.”
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:00-0:15) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: More than the bootleg LP, or perhaps enhanced by the bootleg LP, the tapes of the show. David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: It would have been probably in the first 60 tapes I got, which happened fast. So it was early on, and it might have been before I heard the album. I'm pretty sure it was. Yeah, I probably got that in ‘86 or early ‘87, and got this album sometime in ‘87.
One From the Vault
JESSE: I’ve rarely met a Dead Head who doesn’t love the Great American Music Hall show. For lots of reasons, but mainly a combination of the material, the performance and the recording quality, it’s a show that I will even recommend to non-Dead Heads who might be curious about the fuss. In 1991, the Great American show found an even wider audience. Joan Miller.
JOAN MILLER: I loved “The Music Never Stopped.” I played it over and over again. It was a tape, of course, the pink tape died at some point. In 1991, I was driving in my friend's car, and lo and behold, I knew every note of that concert, of that tape. I heard it — I heard it in the middle of the song, and I knew exactly what it was.
AUDIO: “The Music Never Stopped” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (2:32-2:56) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JOAN MILLER: I said, “Is this the Great American Music Hall?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Oh my God, it's the pink tape! Where did you get this? Where did you get the pink tape?” And he said, “Joan, they just released it. It's called One From the Vault. Don't you know anything?” I was like, Oh my god. I ran out and got it. I've given it to everyone I know and love. It's my favorite—favorite—concert of the Grateful Dead.
JESSE: David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: I had the tape for years, and then the album came out in ‘90, the CD, in ‘91. I thought they made a big deal of it saying ‘we're opening the vaults,’ and that was unbelievable, as a Dead Head. But the first show that they selected was a show that was a cornerstone to most people's tape collections, but I remember putting it on and saying, “I don’t need my tape anymore.” It was one of those moments.
JESSE: One From the Vault was the first complete show release from the Dead’s tape vault, and one of the only archival releases of Jerry Garcia’s lifetime. In fact, one of the rarest things about One From the Vault is that it’s a performance that everybody in the Grateful Dead agreed was worthy of complete release, an almost singular unity among the musicians. Benny Lander left us this story about One From the Vault.
BENNY LANDER: I love the music of Blues for Allah, but specifically the release One From the Vault, that album means just so much to me as a Dead Head. I was introduced to it probably at the age of 12 or 13. It wasn't until my brother gave me One From the Vault that I finally was floored and understood the magic of the Dead. And in my years since, I've come to realize that's more of a one-of-one show — they never really played like that before, or since. This batch of songs that were introduced in ‘75 were a real turning point for the band.
AUDIO: “The Music Never Stopped” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (4:24-4:55) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
BENNY LANDER: The songs from this night on One From the Vault, they're the closest link to the modern-day—or, it's not so modern anymore—‘90s jam band explosion: that early Phish stuff, with the highly composed sections. To me, the “Help on the Way” composed parts, the “Slipknot!” jam, “King Solomon's Marbles,” “Crazy Fingers” — these are almost borderline prog rock to me, and they share a lot of the DNA of those early Phish songs and my favorite other band, God Street Wine, a lot of their early composed stuff.
JESSE: In an era before Dick’s Picks, Dave’s Picks, or anything besides tape trading and bootlegs, the 1975 Grateful Dead came alive one more time.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (6:08-6:19) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
“Lost Sailor” & beyond
JESSE: “Sage and Spirit” is absolutely one of the pieces that makes Blues for Allah and One From the Vault special. You can hear bazillions of “Dark Stars,” and they’re all unique, but “Sage and Spirit” is more like a standalone object. And it disappeared from the Dead stage immediately, too delicate for any place besides the Great American Music Hall. David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: They did one live version at Radio City Music Hall, the Halloween thing.
JESSE: Halloween 1980 was the band’s first attempt at live video simulcast and predictably the rails fell off almost immediately, with Phil Lesh’s bass failing for the first few songs. So Weir had just the thing. Shaugn O’Donnell.
SHAUGN O’DONNELL: I was at the Calderone [Concert Hall] in Hempstead for the simulcast of that show. It exactly was what it was — it sort of materialized, it started happening, because Bob kind of started it. No one else really knew what to do. Jerry tries to hang. It was a bit chaotic.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [10/31/80] (3:40-3:52)
JESSE: It’s not quite the same order of musical events as any of the 1975 versions. But that’s okay. You’ll notice the crowd cheering at one passage where Weir feels particularly confident.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” [10/31/80] (2:36-2:56)
JESSE: And that’s because, by 1980, Weir had recently repurposed that move.
SHAUGN O’DONNELL: What mostly always stands out to me is the “Lost Sailor” seed that’s in there. I feel like that's where the composition goes eventually.
AUDIO: “Lost Sailor” [Go to Nassau, 5/15/80] (0:00-0:13) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: In a 1985 interview, Blair Jackson suggested that “some of the ideas you tried in ‘Sage and Spirit,’ for example, were developed further in ‘Lost Sailor’ a few years later,” and Weir confirms, “that definitely is a case where that happened.”
AUDIO: “Lost Sailor” [Go to Nassau, 5/15/80] (0:16-0:40) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: We’ll have to answer the question about the Dog Star some other time. Sometimes, new levels aren’t what you expect them to be. But “Sage and Spirit” remains, just pull out Blues for Allah or One From the Vault, and float in the unknowingness of 1975. But of all the retired, or barely even active, Dead songs, I’d bet that “Sage and Spirit” is probably the one played the most by its writer. Weir continued to use it to warm up his fingers for decades. And maybe somewhere, he’s even playing it right now. The album version is such a singular studio-built moment, let’s float away into its elements.
AUDIO: “Sage and Spirit” supercut