Grateful Dead

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Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast

Season 5, Episode 3

Archival interviews:

-  Jerry Garcia, by Edmondt Jensen, Uncle John’s Children, 1972/1974.

-  Dennis “Wiz” Leonard, by Blair Jackson, This Is All a Dream We Dreamed, 2011.

-  Phil Lesh & Bob Weir, by David Gans & Marty Martinez, Grateful Dead Hour #369, 9/1995.

Copenhagen

JESSE: The Grateful Dead arrived on the Continent on 13 April 1972, making landfall at Esbjerg, Denmark after taking an overnight boat across the North Sea from Harwich. Tour manager Sam Cutler.

SAM CUTLER: We went famously from England to Denmark with two buses. One was an English bus, and one was a Danish bus. 52 people, split between these two buses. We arrived at the port of the ferry in Denmark and the Danish police, at customs or whatever, said, “Okay, everyone's got to get off the buses.” So there's a famous picture, actually, of everyone standing kind of somewhat forlornly on the dockside whilst they searched the buses. And Sven, our Danish bus driver, very straight, he came over to see me, looking very worried. We’d been there for an hour or so — people were getting all fed up, it was cold and wet. And he goes [speaks in a fake Danish accent]: “The customs man says the bus smells of hashish.” So I, of course, went, “Nah, nah, nah, no — ridiculous! Of course not. How could that possibly be?” We’d have this thing that we used in hotels, it was called Ozium. It was in a little kind of bottle, a spray — you sprayed it, and it was actually designed for people who had been sick, vomiting. It was designed to cover the smell of vomit. So I had several of these, needless to say. So I told Sven the bus driver, “Oh, I’ll go and check, I’ll sort this out.” So I went on the bus, and there’s all the customs guys, searching under seats and all that shit. So I walked around going, “Everything alright? All looks good?”—squirt, squirt—“Ah, looks good?”—squirt, squirt. Squirting Ozium as much as I could everywhere. Anyway… that was all good in the end. We were all let back, they checked all the passports and all that shit, and they let us all back on the buses. And off we went. That was that. I wonder where did they put the fucking hash? Where was it hidden? It was hidden in the curtains: all the buses had their curtains. So they used to gather the curtains like that, and they’d have a strap around them that kept them together. And that’s where everyone put the hash, and the stupid customs guys never found it. So that was one-nil — one for the Grateful Dead, zero for Danish customs.

JESSE: There were at least two Americans following the band on the entirety of the Europe tour — a pair of young filmmakers, John Norris and Sam Field. Later that summer, they would be two of the primary forces behind the Dead concert film Sunshine Daydream. Both are sadly no longer with us, but I interviewed Sam in 2014 for my book Heads.

SAM FIELD [2014]: It was John Norris and I, and it was John who was the instigator of the whole idea to film a concert.

JESSE: And they decided they needed to study the band in action, so they headed off to Europe.

SAM FIELD [2014]: They knew we were there and why we were there and welcomed us. There were ferry rides that we all took together, from England to Denmark, for example. Sometimes we were on the bus, sometimes we were off the bus. We didn’t stay at the same hotels, I’ll put it that way. We hit ‘em all, except there was one show in Bremen, Germany, which I think was at a place called the Beat Club, which was sort of a for-television only. It was done in a studio, and there was no audience. So we were doing something else that day, or felt it was okay to miss that. Even though the Radio Luxembourg one was also done in a studio, there [were] at least a few other people there. But no, we hit them all, with the intent of doing that. Actually [we] did miss one, but it turned out to be okay.

I don't think Europeans were hip to being on the tour, following a tour, and I really don't think there were any other Americans that were really doing that either. There was nobody that I remember seeing more than once, more than one town. There were some people who did go two nights in a row, in Paris or wherever that we saw. But not from town to town that I can recall.

JESSE: If you’re an exception to this rule, or even if you just saw one or two shows, get in touch with us at stories.dead.net. We’ve heard rumors about a pair of German brothers, Hartmut and Volker Koletzo, who did all the shows on the Continent, and later became friends with Dick Latvala, but we’ve been unable to find them. Volker, Hartmut, are you out there? I wish I’d asked Sam Field more questions about the Europe shows and many other topics. The band hit the Continent in a cloud of expectations, both theirs and the Continent’s. Gijsbert Hanekroot was a Dutch photographer with the Amsterdam-based publication Oor. He met up with the band in Copenhagen, and would photograph them in a most unexpected location.

GIJSBERT HANEKROOT: I used to be a freelance photographer, working for a bi-weekly music newspaper called, in Dutch, Musiekkrant Oor. I had assignments for doing ABBA’s first photography, their first photographer. Everything that happened, it was a lot. In the beginning, it was 50 years ago — ‘71 — and after a couple of months, when American or English groups came to Holland, there were two main [publications], the daily newspaper and Oor magazine. Those were the two interviews, and I was happy to be one of the two that were able to do this, interviews and shows.

We did not cover much of the Dutch groups, like Focus or Golden Earring. That was not big enough for us. We were concentrating on the English and American groups. They were very well accepted here and very appreciated, yes. I agreed to train to Copenhagen to cover the show. Quite often, a couple of weeks before, [bands] would play in Holland, so that they could publish the story, the review and the photos of the show. We also did an interview with Bob Weir. I don't think we did an interview with Jerry.

JESSE: It wasn’t the first time he’d met a band at the edge of the North Sea. Gijsbert made beautiful photographs of many of the era’s biggest musicians.

GIJSBERT HANEKROOT: It was important to cover Europe. This happens a lot with all the American [bands]. The Byrds, one year before, they did the same. They started in England or they started in the Netherlands and they went to England and tried to conquer Europe. That was also, for them, very important. That's the reason I was happy to be a photographer in that period of time.

JESSE: And there were heads in Denmark ready to meet them. In particular, there was one head who was more ready than most—a head who is now a household name in Denmark, for pretty much all the right reasons, for once, though virtually unknown to American freakdom— the late Danish writer Dan Turèll. Please welcome Danish historian and Dan Turèll biographer Lars Movin.

LARS MOVIN: Dan Turèll was a very special character in a Danish context. He was very, very well-known in Denmark for a number of years, especially in the ‘70s and the ‘80s. I was born in ‘59, and he was born in ‘46, so he was sort of a generation older than me. And for my generation, he was sort of the guy that introduced my generation to a lot of cool stuff like the Beat writers, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs; a lot of music, jazz music, free jazz; and also Beat music, rock music, like the Grateful Dead or Velvet Underground and all that stuff. For a long period—especially in the ‘70s, where information was not as easily available as it is today with the Internet and all that—to get to know something about American underground culture in Denmark, you had to go to guys like Dan Turèll, who sort of was finding all this information and writing about it, channeling it into writing, into radio, into television, he was all over the place. He was a very prolific guy. He lived only to be 47, like Jack Kerouac, but he published almost 100 books in his lifetime. At the same time, he was sort of traveling around in Denmark and doing stand-up, poetry and lectures and talks. He was on radio, he was on television, he was in every cool magazine; he was in the newspapers, he was writing poetry; he was performing with poetry and music; he was writing prose and essays and articles, and even crime novels. I mean, to understand that he was sort of all over the place in a very special way — I can't think of any other avant-garde poets that are sort of known by everybody in Denmark. Everybody knew what he looked like. He was the only poet also with a real image: he had a shaved head and painted his fingernails, dark or black, and looked in a very special way, sort of iconic. So he was basically just very well-known.

JESSE: Remember how I said he was a head?

LARS MOVIN: It was clear that he had two sort of heroes or two acts that he followed especially. One was Velvet Underground from the East Coast. The other was the Grateful Dead on the West Coast. So these two were sort of his big thing. In various writings, he has talked about how the Grateful Dead was sort of the soundtrack to his life. In the late ‘60s, he moved into a commune here in Copenhagen, and he… [in] one place he states that “Dark Star,” the long track from the Grateful Dead, the Live/Dead album was sort of their favorite tune. They were constantly listening to “Dark Star” and taking acid in this commune where he lived around 1970. He went from being a jazz writer to a rock reviewer or writer. He started following the Grateful Dead and writing about every new album that came out from about ‘70 and on. I think his first real favorite was Workingman’s Dead. He tells a funny story in one place about how, when it came out, he was totally blown away by this album. He made a cassette tape of the album, and when he was traveling around in Denmark, he carried it everywhere and played it for everyone who wanted to listen. He was sort of pushing that album. He even carried it on a trip down to northern Africa, where he was hitchhiking in the desert in northern Africa. And he lost the tape there, and the tape recorder, and he writes about how he imagines that some Arab guy found this tape and tape recorder, and was now sitting somewhere in the desert listening to Workingman’s Dead.

JESSE: So when the Dead came to Denmark in 1972, Dan Turèll scored an assignment to interview Jerry Garcia.

LARS MOVIN: It's for a music magazine, a Danish music magazine called MM — just the letter M, twice. M - M. They were staying in Nyhavn, which is a place close to the harborfront in Denmark, in Copenhagen. Nyhavn basically means “new harbor.” Today, it’s a very touristy place; back then, it was a little more rough, you could say, a place with sort of seedy bars and sailors. Not too safe [of an] environment, but a very colorful environment. It’s not very big, like one block on St. Marks [Place] in New York or something like that. Quite a small area.

In one piece of more autobiographical writing, where he tells a little anecdote about the meeting… I mentioned before how this place, Nyhavn, where the interview took place, is not very big. In one place, he writes about how amazing it was when the Grateful Dead arrived with their entourage of 40 or 50 people that were traveling with the Dead at the time. They sort of arrived to this place, Nyhavn, and they were all over the place. They completely changed this little part of Copenhagen into a small Haight-Ashbury-type place.

It was a big deal for Dan Turèll to meet Jerry. I think he was one of the first of his big American heroes that he met in real life. I have a feeling that they hit it off quite well, which was not actually the case in all of the meetings he had with American musicians or writers. But with Jerry, I think it went quite good, and maybe because Jerry was—as I can read from things he wrote about it—such a relaxed guy. They could smoke some joints together and just hang out. It all seemed to happen in a more relaxed atmosphere, which suited Dan Turèll well. So I think that also reflects on the content of the interview, that they actually hit sort of the same wavelength there.

JESSE: It’s a fascinating conversation, and with Lars’s help, we’ve posted a re-translation back into English. The original tape seems to be long since gone, so the conversation went from English to Danish and back to English. They speak about the power of music as a form of communication all on its own. “The language [is] getting so weird,” Garcia observed. “English being wiped out by television politicians, all these words and statements, ‘generation gap’ and ‘alternative culture,’ media expressions and all that shit. The language finally becomes meaningless.”

LARS MOVIN: It was published very soon after, a couple of weeks after or something like that. Quite [a] nice layout in the magazine also. The cover of the magazine was also referring to that interview, so Grateful Dead sort of had the full cover, the front and the back cover of the magazine. It was definitely something that meant a lot to him, because he mentions it in later articles also when he writes about the Grateful Dead, or Robert Hunter, or whatever he writes about. He goes back to that meeting in ‘72.

After the interview, they went over to Tivoli with Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, the bass player, and were hanging out there while they were doing soundchecks and setting up the equipment and so on. At that point, they were still smoking joints together. He tells about how, at some point at Tivoli while they were waiting for the day to pass, so it could be evening and the concert could begin, they were smoking a joint with Phil Lesh. Dan Turèll was sort of just throwing [the joint] when it was half-smoked — he was throwing it on the ground very casually, and Phil Lesh got completely paranoid and sort of went down on all on the floor and looked for it, picked it up and destroyed it, and put it in in a small matchbox that he had in his pocket. “Oh, you can't do that, you will get… we will all have to go to jail, and it’s very dangerous, and people will find out…” And Dan Turèll and his friend Peder Bundgaard, who he was doing the interview together with, they were just laughing, saying, “Come on, this is Denmark! Nothing will happen. Just relax.” And Phil Lesh said, “Paranoia strikes deep,” and he left with it and sort of put it away somewhere.

JESSE: Bjørn Lindstrøm saw the Dead for the first time on the 1972 tour.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: I lived north of Copenhagen. In a small town. We went to Copenhagen and bought American comic books: Zap Comix and B.C. We sort of studied it that closely. We were somewhat into that culture. We were reading them in English — so that's a great education, really. We learned all the dirty words from the underground comics, that's for sure.

JESSE: Bjørn’s friend Hans Franck was another burgeoning music head who saw the band at Tivoli.

HANS FRANCKE: There were Danish bands. We had Burnin Red Ivanhoe and we had Culpepper’s Orchard, stuff like Young Flowers, playing Cream-like music — blues, hippie music. The band that I was most into at the time in Denmark was called [The] Savage Rose.

AUDIO: “Dear Little Mother” [The Savage Rose, Dødens Triumf] (0:45-1:15) - [Spotify]

JESSE: That was The Savage Rose with “Dear Little Mother” from their 1971 album Dødens Triumf, a big hit in Denmark.

HANS FRANCKE: You would sit on the floor with your legs folded, hash clouds would be overhead… it was amazing. We had Icelandic sweaters and [we’d] smoke pipes — very intellectual, lots of hair. We were also very much into British music, because they were more frequent visitors to Denmark, being so close.

JESSE: The Dead were following a new trail through Europe, which we talked about in the first episode of this season. A few other acts were ping-ponging through the same venues as the Dead that spring — Leonard Cohen, about a month earlier; and Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, often within days of the Dead, as well as Uriah Heep and the post-Jim Morrison Doors. Across the street from Copenhagen Central Station was Tivoli Gardens, an amusement park built in 1843. And in the middle of Tivoli Gardens, Tivoli Concert Hall.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: It was a regular destination when we were kids, the grandparents and so on. The amusement park, and the concert hall is in the middle of the amusement park. Built for classical concerts originally.

JESSE: Bjorn was ready for the show.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: I copied the Skull and Roses logo onto a piece of cardboard in a circle, and stapled it on the back of an old military jacket. That’s what I was wearing.

JESSE: And Hans was definitely ready.

HANS FRANCKE: I was celebrating spring with some friends in the park, and then had a few large beers before I came. Suddenly remember, I had to be in Copenhagen at 8:00. I managed to get there in time. So we met just outside the hall and stroll in. It was a beautiful hall, Tivoli. Eventually, the band came on and burst into “Bertha” — and we were rolling.

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (0:07-0:33) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

HANS FRANCKE: It was just amazing. I've never heard anything like it. Everybody played an integral part of it — they played off each other. It was so different from any other band I’d heard.

JESSE: The band that took the stage on 14 April was a hungry band.

SAM CUTLER: What it's really down to is a kind of shared vision thing — that everybody's really on the same page, and getting high in the same way, which we did before every gig. We’d get high together, and microdose and go out there and do it.

JESSE: One of Gijsbert’s great shots of the Dead was of just such a moment, the band sitting around in a circle backstage with Sam Cutler, Jon McIntire, Steve Parish, and—somewhere hidden from the lens—most likely a joint. We’ve posted it as part of our Daily Dose on the Dead’s social media. Where’s the joint? It looks to me like Sam has just passed it to Phil. Sam’s coughing, Phil is smiling perhaps a little guiltily.

GIJSBERT HANEKROOT: They wanted to do a good show, and, as you know, also here they play four hours, which is extraordinary. It was hard for them, hard working, and they tried to do as best as they could. And they did.

JESSE: Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

DAVID LEMIEUX: The Copenhagen show — to me, it’s one of the brightest shows on the tour. Sometimes I see concerts, Dead shows, in colors. Newcastle, I think of a crimson, dark red. Whereas I look at the Tivoli, the 4/14 show in particular, as a rainbow. It’s such a beautiful show, start to finish. I think the brightest—again, I use the word bright—I feel like it’s the brightest show on the tour. From the opener… it’s so pleasing, and uplifting and positive.

JESSE: In 2011, to celebrate the impending 40th anniversary of the tour, David assembled Europe ‘72 part 2, which includes a quartet of songs from this show.

DAVID LEMIEUX: Europe ‘72 Volume 2, for instance, opens with a terrific version of “Bertha.” It’s a really wonderful “Bertha.” That had already opened up Skull and Roses, so I don’t even think a song like that was given consideration because of that.

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (4:05-4:34) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: The stage was quite low. So if too many people had been dancing, they would have obstructed the view from for the rest. But in the aisles, there may have been people dancing. We were in seats about 1/3 back from the stage. It's quite intimate so it felt really close.

HANS FRANCKE: They weren't going to play in Sweden, so I believe there [were] a great deal of Swedes, a great number of Swedes there, because we have only… we didn’t have the bridge then, so it was just an hour-and-40-minute ferry ride from the south of Sweden to Copenhagen center. There were quite a lot of Swedes, probably. There usually are.

JESSE: The Dead were on new turf, and they had some discoveries to make. This is from Blair Jackson’s 2011 interview with Dennis “Wiz” Leonard, working for Alembic that tour.

DENNIS “WIZ” LEONARD [2011]: Copenhagen was very early. That was one of the first mind-blowers, everybody openly smoking hash in the venue.

JESSE: Lighting crew member Ben Haller.

BEN HALLER: The other thing you’ve got to get used to at European concerts: there is fire. But they don’t have a lot of pot at that point — they have a lot of hashish, because it’s smaller, easier to take. You’d be standing there and all of a sudden, the three-foot tall thing of a flame would come up — the thing that you show off in Europe is your cigarette lighter, and you have this three-foot thing of flame that you then burn some stuff of the hash, and you scrape the hash into a bowl, or make it into a cigarette. So there were flames jumping everywhere, all the time. It was unnerving to begin with, and then I realized what it was — it was quite spectacular. I’m sure it was great from the stage, because you just [makes fire sound]—whoosh, whoosh— in the audience.

JESSE: It was the Dead’s first real show in a non-English speaking country besides their spontaneous pool party in France the summer before, and pretty early into the evening, the band reached their first communication barrier. Hans Francke reports.

HANS FRANCKE: People started clapping after the first numbers.

AUDIO: “Mr. Charlie” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (3:46-3:52) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: The band interpreted it as a sign of displeasure.

PHIL LESH [4/14/72]: Say, you know what? We’re gonna keep on playing — you don’t have to clap like that.

BOB WEIR [4/14/72] But you can if you want to. If you want to clap, go ahead.

[audience hollers]

PHIL LESH [4/14/72]: Go ahead, get it on. But we won’t do one in that tempo, you know, necessarily.

[audience claps more loosely, this time not in sync]

JERRY GARCIA [4/14/72]: You can if you want to, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can do whatever you want.

PHIL LESH [4/14/72]: Don’t get sucked into it now…

JESSE: But Hans says it was a sign of sheer approval and enthusiasm from the Danish crowd.

HANS FRANCKE: It was spontaneous, sort of: we are going to be part of this music. They’re playing the music to us, and we want to give something back to them.

JESSE: It led to the first of the tour’s language checks.

[audience chatter]

BOB WEIR [4/14/72]: Well, the front row can anyway…

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: The front row was completely occupied by American GIs. I don't know if you know this, a large rotating number [have] been stationed in Germany since World War II, the end of World War II. And they gave the rest of us a taste of how a typical Dead Head audience would react — whistling and cheering every opportunity. Someone told me later that they had been unable to get tickets to any of these shows in Germany. So they made the trip probably by train and ferry to Copenhagen.

JESSE: Bob Weir took it to a vote.

BOB WEIR [4/14/72]: I want a show of hands on that. How many of you out there can understand what we’re saying?

[tepid applause and cheers from the audience]

BOB WEIR [4/14/72]: Not very many…

JESSE: But Bjorn thinks the vote wasn’t quite reflective of the room.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: I think it was more than a few of us. I think it was unfair, the way he concluded. We all have English in grammar school, from the age of 11 or 12. We understand English quite well. A little slow on the uptake, and we may have felt a bit intimidated by these very loud GIs.

JESSE: And it did lead to a good transition into the next song.

PHIL LESH [4/14/72]: You win, again…

AUDIO: “You Win Again” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (0:00-0:18) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: There was no language barrier in enjoying the music.

HANS FRANCKE: I’m out of an Anglophile family, so we learned early. I was amazed by the lyrics. I was into The Band, too, at the time, who were also just very much their own and made songs that was in their style, a style of music that was just so new and very special. The Dead was something like that — the lyrics, especially the Hunter lyrics, were just amazing.

JESSE: And of course everybody loved Pigpen.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: Especially Pigpen was great. Having the chance to hear Pigpen live. Many people in the US never got to… got on the Bus too late. But it was a great performance by him.

JESSE: In Europe, though, first sets would often begin by alternating between Garcia, Weir, and Pigpen. Pigpen was an extremely present part of the tour. Europe ‘72 part 2 includes perhaps the canonical version of “Chinatown Shuffle,” an original song by Pig debuted at the end of 1971.

“Chinatown Shuffle”

AUDIO: “Chinatown Shuffle” [Europe ‘72 part 2, 4/14/72] (0:00-0:29) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Played nearly every night of the tour, “Chinatown Shuffle” was a fixture of the band’s early 1972 setlists, and surely would’ve stayed with the band had Pigpen’s health not taken a turn. In some ways, it might qualify as a lost Grateful Dead song, not officially released until the 1999 So Many Roads box set, which used the version from Rotterdam, later down the road, though plenty of tapes circulated long before that. Back in the ye olden days of the 1990s, this show from Tivoli was one of my very first Dead tapes, and where I heard “Chinatown Shuffle” for the first time.

Our friend Sully, the keeper of the Pigpen archive, shared an early draft of the song with us. Pigpen originally titled it “Shotgun Song,” giving it slight overtones of urban self-defense. The vibe survives, a subtly-honed song perfectly fit for Pigpen's menacing stage persona. He was only getting better.

AUDIO: “Chinatown Shuffle” [Europe ‘72 part 2, 4/14/72] (0:29-0:59) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

“Brown-Eyed Women”

JESSE: And by the second set, the band was sufficiently warmed up to record a keeper version of another song for Europe ‘72 — LP 2, track 1. In jazz parlance, this is take 3 of “Brown-Eyed Women.”

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Europe ‘72] (0:00-0:30) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: “Brown-Eyed Women” was the first original song written for Europe ‘72, not counting previously-recorded tunes. It was written in the summer of 1971, just after the band finished mixing Skull and Roses and Jerry Garcia recorded his solo debut — and just after Garcia and Robert Hunter finished 2 years of cohabitation in Larkspur along with their respective partners. It was the beginning of a new songwriting era for the two. The band debuted “Brown-Eyed Women” during their late August tour, very much a first musical draft, with a straighter rhythm. I’d describe it as country soul.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Dick’s Picks 35, 8/24/71] (0:10-0:43) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: That was the live debut of “Brown-Eyed Women,” August 24th, 1971, at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, now Dick’s Picks 35, from the so-called Houseboat Tapes discovered by our friend Brian Godchaux. In 2020, a draft of the lyrics turned up in the collection of the late Dick Latvala, which are fascinating to see in Hunter’s handwriting, but appear to be a slightly later draft, perhaps rewritten for clarity. And of course you can—and should—consult Alex Allan’s site Whitegum.com for close examinations of lyric histories, including “Brown-Eyed Women.”

In 1977, David Gans interviewed Robert Hunter, included in his book Conversations With the Dead. David brought up a previous interview Hunter had done, in which Hunter spoke about certain songs that contained a character that represented the band—“Bertha,” “Dire Wolf,” and “Cumberland Blues,” specifically—but it was a character he said finished writing about.

Hunter told David: “That’s true. The character was dispensed with nicely in Workingman’s Dead, then he popped up again in ‘Brown-Eyed Women.’ It’s some composite relative of mine, part of my gestalt baggage. These things have as many layers of potential meaning to me when I’ve created them as they do to the listener, and I look for that.”

Hiss Golden Messenger performed the song on the 2016 tribute album, Day of the Dead.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Hiss Golden Messenger, Day of the Dead] (3:06-3:36) - [Spotify]

JESSE: Please welcome to the Deadcast, MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger.

MC TAYLOR: That was the first time that I actually sat down and learned the song in such a way that I could play it in public. Learning that song confirmed that they were really good as narrative songwriters when they wanted to be, because there's a real story in that song. Just seeing how it's laid out and how Hunter moves the character through the song is really cool.

I think of the narrator of this song as someone maybe in their 20s, sort of out in the world, kind of footloose, reminiscing back. There’s a lot about family in there. The narrator has multiple siblings, and the father appears, kind of his specter, throughout the whole song. It’s kind of an outlaw song, but it’s even more than that. The songwriting to me feels a little bit looser than the three previous records — Workingman’s [Dead], American Beauty and I guess the live record. It feels like an even more holistic version of the sort of margin, the weirdos of America, than the previous record. I think there’s some humor to it that still really works for me, or just, maybe, some lightness to it. It’s just a compendium of vernacular American knowledge in the words. I always think of it kind of alongside Harry Smith, or Joseph Mitchell’s Up In the Old Hotel. It’s like the same sort of feeling.

JESSE: Once the song was reintroduced into the band’s repertoire in later 1971, it stayed there through 1995. Though it got slightly scarcer by the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it never disappeared for more than a few months. Like some other Dead songs, it’s got some unusual songwriting turns. Just like the song’s lyrics represent an emotional return to home, so does the chromatic lick that appears throughout the song. Let’s go back to the beginning of the song.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Europe ‘72] (0:00-0:23) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Please welcome back to the Deadcast musicologist Shaugn O’Donnell.

SHAUGN O’DONNELL: We're in E, but we're starting away from the tonic chord. It's not where you would necessarily normally start. Then, once the riff is there, taking B, B sharp, C sharp, you're right into the harmony and you can connect it in a way that is much more clear.

JESSE: Like bouncing a rubber ball, that little chromatic riff gives the song its signature sense of motion.

SHAUGN O’DONNELL: It feels like a normal song, and people play it all the time without thinking about this at all. But every single section of it has an extra two beats thrown in.

JESSE: In the chorus, the word “gettin’” in “the old man’s gettin’ on” — extend it by two extra beats.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Europe ‘72] (0:44-0:55) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

SHAUGN O’DONNELL: This happens in the verse every time, it happens in the chorus, it happens in the bridge. And even in the little echo at the end, you get these extra two beats, totally comfortable and natural-feeling, driven by the text. Strange, if you stop and think about it, like, pay attention to it.

JESSE: And while the song didn’t have a jam, it did change. Very gradually.

SHAUGN O’DONNELL: It's really interesting to see a song that you know is born fully-formed, rides the whole career and doesn't change in any musicological, structural way. So you get to follow the details of nuance in the players’ approach. There's no major changes, but you get to hear the changes in gear, the changes in feel, all the variations in tempo and mood.

JESSE: The “Brown-Eyed Women” solo on Europe ‘72 is pretty simple.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Europe ‘72] (1:39-2:09) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

SHAUGN O’DONNELL: It's the fully-formed structure, where you’re staying very close to the vocal line. So that’s where it lives at the very beginning. It’s kind of like he has to live with the conversation for a while, where he has an idea and he keeps it close, very much in the line of bluegrass playing or jazz playing, where the head is the head, and you stick to it best you can. But as he gets more and more comfortable, he’s a talker. That’s kind of how I imagine it. He just starts to embellish as it starts to become a more comfortable thing. He literally grows the number of verses he's going to talk. He makes the conversation longer and longer. They stick with one verse all the way through the hiatus. But the solos get fancier and fancier across that arc. By ‘73, they’re already decorated, in a clearly decorated way, and they’re starting to get fairly well-embellished by the hiatus. Then, when they come back, it starts off in a one-verse version. But by the time you get to May ‘77, it’s three verses already. And quite more verbose.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Dave’s Picks 1, 5/25/77] (1:40-2:02)

JESSE: That was from May 25, 1977 in Richmond, Virginia, now Dave’s Picks 1.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Dave’s Picks 1, 5/25/77] (2:25-2:55)

SHAUGN O’DONNELL: The melody still remains the anchor. So you could still hear clips of the sort of vocal rhythms in the play, but what he does is he opens up the range a ton, and it had an arc to the whole solo. So there's what would be the normal embellished version of the earlier periods the first time through; and then in the second time through, he expands the range to [be] bigger and starts to use double stops, so it's more guitar-istic. And then the third one is climactic, with high bends and a couple of chromatic riffs that then kind of stay in the vocabulary for that song the rest of the way. You'll hear snips that in the ‘80s, in the ‘90s, of the same kind of little chromatic lines.

JESSE: And by 1991, it’s even more embellished.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Saint of Circumstance, 6/17/91] (1:53-2:11) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: This is a version from June 17th, 1991 at Giants Stadium with Bruce Hornsby on piano, now the release Saint of Circumstance. First Vince Welnick jumps in.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Saint of Circumstance, 6/17/91] (2:31-2:50) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Then Hornsby enters the chat and turns it into a jam.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Saint of Circumstance, 6/17/91] (2:51-3:09) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Before Garcia cedes to the piano player entirely.

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Saint of Circumstance, 6/17/91] (3:10-3:40) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Brown-Eyed Women everywhere.

“Looks Like Rain”

JESSE: One other song event we’ll note from the 14 April show, directly following the canonical version of “Brown Eyed Women.”

AUDIO: “Looks Like Rain” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (0:07-0:37) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: The Grateful Dead had backed Bob Weir on “Looks Like Rain” during the Ace sessions at Wally Heider’s in February with Jerry Garcia on pedal steel. And he’d play pedal steel on “Looks Like Rain” during all the earliest versions starting with the song’s debut in March. David Lemieux.

DAVID LEMIEUX: They were so on it on “Looks Like Rain.” Jerry played pedal steel guitar, and there weren't enough track assignments to give Jerry a lead guitar and a pedal steel. So I think Wiz might have been watching through a closed-circuit camera—I think that was the case—in the truck. So he could unpatch it when he’d see Jerry sit down at the pedal steel for “Looks Like Rain,” and only “Looks Like Rain.” So they’d have to patch it from that to that, because there weren’t enough track assignments. And they never missed it.

JESSE: But the Copenhagen version is not only the last version of “Looks Like Rain” with pedal steel, but the last time Garcia played pedal steel onstage with the Dead until the Dylan & the Dead tour in 1987, ending a period that started almost exactly 3 years earlier. I’m a big fan of Phil’s harmony on these early versions.

AUDIO: “Looks Like Rain” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (1:42-2:07) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: And then it was time for the main event.

AUDIO: “Dark Star” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (0:12-0:37) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Please welcome back Graeme Boone.

GRAEME BOONE: Jerry building up, a little bit repetition up to G — and then up to A, that climactic A. A little bit of a climax riff there. Bob, really affirmative on the progression, coming back down. A little bit of D minor and back down to the “Dark Star” progression. But they’re still moving: building up again, beautiful chords from Bob. Jerry up to G, and then A. That climactic A, hitting it, bending into it.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: One thing I regret to this day is that I never got to hear Live/Dead. So when they came to “Dark Star,” I didn’t recognize it. So I couldn’t appreciate how different it was from the Live/Dead version.

GRAEME BOONE: So we get into this interesting spot where things have kind of settled into B minor — very strange and interesting key. Hitting these chords… then Jerry, he plays his “Dark Star” riff as if he wants to get to the first verse. But the other guys don't want to go there. They stay in B minor. So, let's go on that. They're working around, there’s a little bit of A major. Keith doing some flourishes, and that E minor chord. And then Keith gets into these interesting flourishes, sharing a beautiful violin sound — going through different harmonies, as if inventing a song on the fly. Then he goes into chromatic notes. Everyone’s exploring those sharps and flats… like we could get into “Space” here, but we haven’t yet gotten to the first verse yet. And then a beautiful landing on A major. Is this gonna be “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,” just a little hint, maybe? With that mixture of the A and the E minor together, beautiful preparation for what…?

JESSE: The Dead’s disco ball continued to blow minds in Europe.

HANS FRANCKE: I remember a great “Dark Star.” They had this huge glass ball under the ceiling, slowly rotating and the lights going on it. Yeah, that was amazing. We were taken places.

JESSE: Jens Skovby saw the Dead a few days later in Aarhus, but reports this story.

JENS SKOVBY: At that time, I had the connection to a guy in Copenhagen. He was selling drugs, actually, and he and his friend had been in the Tivoli concert — not at the TV [taping], but at the Tivoli concert. And his friend has got to look at you know, these disco things that were going around under the ceiling and making light all over. So when he had been looking at that for five minutes, he simply had to go out. He couldn’t stand it anymore.

[4/14/72 “Dark Star” continues]

GRAEME BOONE: And then Jerry gets into this long riff that he repeats many times. Bob backs off a little bit, and then… listen for Bob — there it is. “Mind Left Body.” In the middle of this jam. But Phil doesn’t want that, totally different direction with the “Feelin’ Groovy.” Great “Feelin’ Groovy” lick, and now they’re into that great jam. Then, every once in a while, pausing, to just hang out on a D chord, and then going back to the jam. Now, this reminds me of Dylan’s “All I Really Want To Do.” [sings] “I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you/beat or cheat or mistreat you/simplify you, classify you/deny, defy, or crucify you.” [back to speaking] There we have a pause on D, back into it: super joyous, energetic. Bill, so strong, doing everything here with the drums. And listen to Bob’s comping — so much energy from everybody in the group. Keith is low in the mix, but he’s right in the middle of it. It’s great. Phil, flying way up in the range, coming back down — all over the bass. And then Bob says, no, moves on to a straight A chord. Where are they going to go? Everybody on A, super intensity. Something’s gotta give. And why not: back to “Feelin’ Groovy.” A wonderful pause on D, then the last time through. Calming down, lighter, quieter, and then holding up the beautiful suspended A chord. Again, recalling a little bit of that “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down.” But they don’t go into that.

JESSE: That’s true.

AUDIO: “Sugar Magnolia” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (0:00-0:30) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: And coming out of the ending to “Sugar Magnolia” was perhaps the first serious Pigstravaganza of the tour.

AUDIO: “Good Lovin’ (I)” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (0:28-0:45) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Pigpen had done tunes on the first 3 nights of the tour, but wasn’t quite at full strength. In Copenhagen, though, he didn’t hold back.

AUDIO: “Good Lovin’ (I)” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (4:14-4:43) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: It was a freestyle so inventive that it inspired a full transcription in the first volume of the Taping Compendium.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: He was not the big fellow he was in the early pictures. He was quite little and skinny, and just stood there and belted out those raps. That was awesome.

JESSE: The jam even shifted into Pig’s first original showstopper, “Caution,” with the band absolutely cooking.

AUDIO: “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4,

4/14/72] (0:31-1:01) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: And inside “Caution,” a surprise turn.

AUDIO: “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4,

4/14/72] (4:38-5:02) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: One of only three performances of “Who Do You Love.” That's a rarity.

JESSE: Part of the band’s repertoire in 1966, when it showed up on a studio demo, it surfaced on a few scant tapes. It’s hardly a full performance of the song, but gives this sequence an ominous core before bringing it back home.

AUDIO: “Good Lovin’ (II)” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, 4/14/72] (0:37-1:07) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Bjørn didn’t have to wait long to hear the show again.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: Most of it was on the radio a couple of weeks after — they had edited a few songs out, but most of it was, in a good-quality tape from the radio. My brother taped it for me on quarter-inch tape. I've heard that many times.

JESSE: The Grateful Dead got along with Copenhagen. Their local promoter was Knud Thorbjornsen. John Morris recruited him for the Independent Promoters Alliance that helped organize the Dead’s tour.

JOHN MORRIS: He had a partner named Anders Stefansen, who was the quiet one. But Knud was quite a character. He had a couple of restaurants in the end, he was involved with ABBA, bringing them into the world… had a bit of an affair with one of the girls. He was a great character — blonde, tall, he was your ideal Scandinavian, good-looking guy. And he once owned a Rolls-Royce on which he had to pay 200% tax. And I said, “Why?” He said, “Because it's a Rolls-Royce and I've got the only one in Copenhagen.”

JESSE: Another reason the Dead may have gotten along with Copenhagen was the hash. Steve Parish.

STEVE PARISH: The Danish people were great. Oh boy, we had a lot of fun in Denmark. It was the first country where they had no law against smoking hash or marijuana, and so we couldn't believe it. We went into a bar, me and Kreutzmann, and people were smoking. I kept asking the guy, “You sure it’s okay?” And he was saying things like, “You Americans — can’t you ever realize it’s okay?”

JESSE: The previous September, in 1971, a group of heads had begun squatting in abandoned Army barracks, establishing the community Christiania with its open air hash market known as Pusher Street. Hans Francke.

HANS FRANCKE: It used to be army barracks, just outside Copenhagen, and they actually just broke into it. It was much less controlling in the early days. So it was just anarchy: disputes between groups of settlers, some were into the environment, some were into exotic foods, and some were into politics. Some just wanted to build a house and a windmill and stuff like that.

JESSE: In fact, one of the founders of Christiania was a former resident of the commune where Dan Turèll dosed and listened to “Dark Star.” Lars Movin.

LARS MOVIN: One of his best friends, a guy named Jacob Ludvigsen, was actually one of the people who founded Christiania. They were living together in that commune I was talking about. So, in that sense, he was really close to the beginning of Christiania. He didn’t live there, but he was a very dedicated pot smoker or hash smoker. So he would probably go there to buy his supplies.

JESSE: Mountain Girl.

MOUNTAIN GIRL: We walked through there, and just found it. It wasn't open when we were there is all I can say. There [were] a few bulletin boards up, but everybody was somewhere else it felt like. The weather was not nice or something. We did cruise over there, but we didn't have the right connection to really explore it. I think there was a time factor there too.

JESSE: Sam Cutler.

SAM CUTLER: The Grateful Dead, of course, have always been pot smokers, forever. They’re Californian for fuck’s sake. They always had the best pot, ever, because all kinds of fans would come and go, “Hey, try some of this, man. Wow, shit… can we get some more of it?” “Sure.” So there was always wonderful pot, and everybody loved pot. But in Europe, because they’d discovered hashish — at that time, there wasn’t any real pot in Europe. Because you need California weather and altitude and all that shit for good pot. So they discovered hashish, much to their delight. They loved it.

MOUNTAIN GIRL: Denmark’s a kick, I recommend Denmark. It's a lovely country. It's just… everything is so well thought through in Denmark. In other words, it's a country of designers, and they're carpentry and boat makers. Like in Amsterdam, everybody seems to have a boat.

JESSE: Here’s Rosie McGee, from the audiobook of her excellent memoir, Dancing With the Dead.

ROSIE McGEE [Dancing With the Dead, Chapter 9]: My roommate in Europe was Sue Swanson who handled payroll for the band. While we were in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sue and I went for a long walk from the hotel ending up lost in the city's famous Red Light District, where the hookers were on display behind their crib windows. With the help of a friendly local, we were pointed back in the right direction, and on the way back to the hotel we found a great basement shop selling hand knitted Scandinavian sweaters in a dazzling array of colors.

MOUNTAIN GIRL: We got to do a bunch of sightseeing and everybody bought a sweater. We all walked around with our beautiful hand-knit Danish sweaters. That’s a lovely place, I have to say. They are… it’s smooth. Everything there is nice and smooth and laid out for easy livin’. So my hat's off to those guys.

JESSE: Much of the band and family and crew was soon outfitted with the Danish sweaters, which can be seen throughout photos of the tour.

ROSIE McGEE [Dancing With the Dead, Chapter 9]: Throughout the tour, those who had the means got into some high-end shopping. What was funny was that when one of them came back from a shopping expedition with something particularly nice, then everyone else had to go get the same thing. First it was Dunhill lighters, then Montblanc pens, then Swiss cutlery and so on. This behavior was a continuation of the group mind already in place at home with Pendleton blankets, Courtenay tie-dyed mandalas, Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry, Ukrainian flower shawls, even extending to one group of people all driving Citroens. The result was that you could go to any one of a dozen homes in Marin or Sonoma, and the decor and accouterments would be nearly identical.

JESSE: Thanks to our friend Sully, we have access to a clutch of letters Pigpen wrote to his parents over the course of the tour. His longtime girlfriend Veronica, known as V., couldn’t make the trip. She was tight with his parents, too, and Pig noted in one letter:

SULLY: “Don’t let her get down about school n’ keep her nose in them books.”

JESSE: But Pig noted in a letter home, she should be expecting some mail.

SULLY: “I bought V. a hand-knitted sweater in Købehavn & hope it fits.I got her one about my size & 100% wool. Mine has no seams, done on circular needles & took the woman who made it somewhere around 75-80 hours to make. If it don’t fit I can send it back & change sizes, colors, or styles.”

JESSE: One place the sweaters can be seen is photos of an excursion that Gijsbert Hanekroot documented the day after the first Tivoli Concert Hall show.

Kronborg Castle

GIJSBERT HANEKROOT: It was a funny thing. They had one day off, I think they did two shows in Copenhagen. I covered one and the next day, they had a kind of day off, and they asked Jerry to join us. We get in the door of his bus, and I remember him saying, “I’m a musician. I’m not a fucking tourist. I’m not joining you!” But, eventually, he did.

JESSE: Alan Trist.

ALAN TRIST: There were visits to the island in Denmark where Hamlet occurred. I do remember that. The castle… that was pretty exciting, historically.

JESSE: Kronborg Castle overlooks the Sund, a body of water at the exact border of Norway and Sweden, and became Elsinore in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

STEVE PARISH: Hamlet's Castle by Denmark and Sweden, right on the border up there. Everybody was there, but they were suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, man, and everybody was getting all gloomy and down and loopy and mopey. All of a sudden, everybody was Hamlet. “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio — he was a motherfucker worse than you, man.” And everybody… oh, it was getting kind of depressive.

JESSE: It’s also the site of a beautiful and appropriately gloomy portrait of Jerry Garcia taken by Gijsbert Hanekroot for the cover of the Dutch underground paper Oor.

GIJSBERT HANEKROOT: Kronborg Castle in Helsingør — I think that’s Sweden, and that is at the seaside. I walked with him to the area, the location with the sea and the sky, and I “pushed” the sky in the dark room. Before I was freelance, I worked for a well-known photographer, and he taught me how to print photos. Just by your hands “pushing,” which is an important technique. It's also a type of other well-known Dutch photographers use that technique as well, and I learned it from them. There are a lot of photos of him, but not so many portraits, and I think this is one of the better ones.

JESSE: You can purchase prints from Gijsbert’s website.

Aarhus

JESSE: And then it was deeper into Denmark for the Dead’s only university gig of Europe ‘72. Archivist David Lemieux.

DAVID LEMIEUX: It is truly a small university — a small college cafeteria, in this beautiful wood A-frame building with glass everywhere. The energy I get from that show is very similar to Newcastle, which is a little out of their element, but incredibly cool nonetheless. There's some great stuff in Aarhus. You get the feeling the Dead are playing… I think it held 700 people. And this is at a time when the Dead could very easily sell out 20,000 seats in the United States.

JESSE: How did the Dead end up playing in a university cafeteria in Denmark? The same reason they played most universities back home — there was a budget to bring them. But the Stakladen wasn’t just any university cafeteria. It was home to Aarhus’s Studenterjazz organization. Palle Lykke attended the Dead’s Aarhus show, and starting in the 1980s was the University’s official historian, writing the liner notes for this show in the Europe ‘72 Complete Recordings box set.

PALLE LYKKE: It was established in 1964. It was the same year that Stakladen was built, this room, which was a university cafeteria during the day and a jazz venue or a meeting room in the evening. During the first years, there were Bill Evans, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Yusuf Lateef, Lee Konitz, Oscar Peterson, Don Cherry, Stuff Smith, just to mention a few of them. It’s the biggest names in jazz of course. And then, in the late ‘60s, when the interest in jazz ceased, then the club chose some rock names like Taste, Country Joe and the Fish, Soft Machine and Colosseum for instance. And they all played in Stakladen.

JESSE: They’d produced shows by Jimi Hendrix and The Who a few years earlier at the nearby Vejlby-Risskov Hallen, but didn’t have enough advance warning from the Scandinavian Booking Agency, so Stakladen it was. Jens Skovby attended the Aarhus show, and remembers it was a journey to get there in those days.

JENS SKOVBY: You had to drive for three hours and on the route, you have to sail for one hour. At that time, we didn't have a bridge as we have today. So it's four-hour transport, in a country as small as Denmark.

PALLE LYKKE: The building manager told me when I interviewed him that they brought much more gear than any other band that has played in Stakladen ever since.

JESSE: Among that equipment was the band’s light rig. By then, the band’s new lighting team was starting to come together. Lighting technician Ben Haller.

BEN HALLER: We played Wembley. I think that was the first gig in London. When I'm out there, I'm running a follow spot in the back of the house, they don't really know me that well. Candace can at least talk to one human. It's a nightmare, even in America, talking to follow spot. You’re a New Yorker talking to a guy from Georgia… forget it.

JESSE: In Aarhus, they chalked up a solid tour story.

BEN HALLER: It was a university setting and everything. We set it up. For some reason, we got done really quickly there, so we went to the cafeteria. We got in line, and Candace is so excited: there’s a carton of milk. ‘Here’s your something American — just drink this carton of milk.’ She takes this big gulp, and then spits it sky high. Because the Danes like buttermilk, and she just wasn’t ready for a big mouth full of buttermilk. It didn’t say buttermilk on the box, it just said “mælk.”

The concert was a nice concert. It was one of those I remember. This happened a lot with the Dead: some of the stuff in Europe, in the big places, the show was alright. But I remember especially in Dijon, the show was magical, but it’s in a little farming community. There are no critics there to see it, there’s no… and as I recall, the show in that university was, again, nice. Maybe it [was] just [that] there wasn’t a lot of pressure.

JESSE: Jens Skovby.

JENS SKOVBY: It's Stakladen, it simply means a barn. If you saw the Bruce Springsteen film, you know how a barn is, and that means it was a very small cafeteria connected to the University of Aarhaus. And all the equipment from the cafeteria was there. There [were] chairs and tables and all that, just stuffed into the side of the room. We’d never seen that much equipment before. So there was not much space on the stage.

JESSE: Palle Lykke.

PALLE LYKKE: I sat near the entrance, a long way from the stage. I think there were about 700 people, full capacity. As I wrote in the liner notes, I had to sit on this cafeteria tray slide, at least until the intermission.

JENS SKOVBY: There [were] these rafters under the ceiling. So people were crawling up there and sitting there. I think most were students from the university. I don’t think rather many of them knew what they were going to hear. We have all heard some Grateful Dead records or something like that. But I think none of us had never heard a concert like this, where the band was connecting to the crowd as they did. It was simply a quite new experience to all of us.

PALLE LYKKE: The critic that I interviewed, he told me that there was this very tight connection between the band and the audience. He said also that there was no security at all. When he was sitting up front, he noticed that there was this tighter connection between band and audience than he had ever experienced before, and he told me that it was like an invitation to the audience.

JENS SKOVBY: I think most Dead concerts start on a little scrambling way and then, suddenly, inside the band, the machine starts and then it goes. I think it started already in “Sugaree” — when they started up “Sugaree,” and it kept rolling. I think people were on it.

AUDIO: “Sugaree” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 5, 4/16/72] (2:06-2:36) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JENS SKOVBY: I think at that time, people normally came and took up the amplifier of the guitar; they played a number and that was that — “Hello, people,” and all of that. Here, they simply mingled with the crowd in a way we’d never heard before: people dancing, and you couldn’t walk around to the music, but you could slip and slide a bit to it. It was like they simply put out their arms and [held] us. It was so intimate.

AUDIO: “Sugaree” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 5, 4/16/72] (2:56-3:20) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Like everything from Europe ‘72, it’s an excellent show. Donna Jean is absent, perhaps hanging back in Copenhagen. The band play the first “Dire Wolf” in nearly a year, and thus the first of Keith Godchaux’s tenure with the band. “Playing in the Band” is starting to turn some corners in its jams. I love the amount of movement in this little segment.

AUDIO: “Playing in the Band” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 5, 4/16/72] (7:27-7:57) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

PALLE LYKKE: I remember that I was a bit disappointed during some of the first songs in the first set, but later that night I became very enthusiastic about the music, especially of course the jam parts in the second set. I have been a fan ever since. Not a fanatic fan — I counted my records last night, I have about 180 compact discs and 25 LPs of the Grateful Dead, that’s all. In the intermission at the concert in 1972, I think that about a third of the audience left, simply. I think that they did not know the Grateful Dead, and they thought, well, we’ve had two hours now, it’s time to go home. I think that that was what happened at that time.

JENS SKOVBY: Of course the second set, which is one long set — it was fantastic. There was a tremendous sound, and one of the things I remember very clearly was, of course, Jerry playing his Stratocaster. But that was Phil’s bass, I think he was using Big Brown that evening. It was so distinct, and so clear, so sweet and soft, and everywhere. So, that was fantastic. We’d never heard anything like that before.

JESSE: In the second set, there’s a long transition between “Truckin’” and “The Other One” with lots of little episodes like this.

AUDIO: “Jam” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 5, 4/16/72] (6:30-7:00) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

PALLE LYKKE I remember that during the last couple of songs—”Not Fade Away” and “Goin’ Down the Road [Feeling Bad]”—it was possible to walk around in the room. That had been quite impossible during the first set.

AUDIO: “Not Fade Away (I)” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 5, 4/16/72] (2:47-3:17) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JENS SKOVBY: I think it was without comparison [to] anything else we've seen or heard before. It is quite another way to listen to a concert, and to be with a band. We were talking about it for weeks after that, and I think for many of the people who were there the album from the ‘72 Europe tour was their first way into the Dead.

JESSE: Thanks Jens and Palle!

Copenhagen (again)

JESSE: And then it was back to Copenhagen for another legendary show. David Lemieux.

DAVID LEMIEUX: They come back to Tivoli and play there again, this time with some TV cameras. The vibe is very similar to 4/14 for the second Tivoli show, and add to that that they're now playing to the cameras, which is fun. I love that show too. This is an important era. And to get to see that was very, very special. I think the Tivoli is wonderful — it’s a wonderfully important document, similar to Veneta, where you get to see a “China”/”Rider” transition, minus the cutaways of the dancers. But “Dark Star,” you get to see things that are important parts of the Grateful Dead sound.

JESSE: The cameras belonged to Danish National Television, and it was a landmark event. The cameras were present for the first two-thirds of the show, filming for later broadcast, and—in the middle—broadcasting live for a half-hour on Danish television. One very young fan who was at the show was Lars Bennike. Lars is now the head of catalog for Warner Bros. in Denmark. It’s the family business. His father—Olav Bennike—was the contact point for the Dead in Denmark.

LARS BENNIKE: My dad filled us up with music from when we were kids. He was the second-in-command of the local licensee of Warners in Denmark. At that time it was called a Metronome. And he, together with a guy called Bent Fabric, had a number one hit in the States with “Alley Cat,” made this Metronome company in Denmark. They made a deal with Atlantic, later on Warner and then Elektra came on board. He was kind of running the show when I was kid, and every Thursday he brought home test pressings. To me, it was like heaven. Thursdays were always heaven, because that was… me and my bigger brother, we went through all the stacks of new music, from Led Zeppelin to [The] Doors to James Taylor. Yeah, I was hooked. Quite early on. [My dad] took us to shows at the time. I remember we met—I was very early—one of them was [The] Doors, where he had to give them some kind of award, and then the Rascals in ‘69, I think it was.

JESSE: It was because of Olav Bennike and Metronome that Bjørn Lindstrøm was able to snag a recording of the 14 April show off Danish radio. And it was because of them that cameras would be at the 17 April performance back at Tivoli.

LARS BENNIKE: The producer Edmont Jensen who interviewed Jerry, he was a cool guy from Danish radio who was interested in music. He was a very good friend of my dad who promoted the records in Denmark, so they kind of hooked up and did TV shows with Randy Newman, Harry Chapin, Tom Waits, stuff like that. That also included Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, and the Doors. I've remembered the producer coming in privately in our home. We as kids were banished to bed, but I know they’d stayed up very, very late. Maybe had some scotch or whatever they had. But they’d play records all night. Many of those nights, I'm dead sure that's where the ideas of doing recordings, or my father's knowledge of who was touring and who was doing this and that, and then trying to see if something could be [worked] out.

JESSE: Edmondt Jensen interviewed Jerry Garcia following the band’s soundcheck. later included in a Danish National Television documentary titled “Uncle John’s Children” about the Bay Area music scene. I like this exchange.

EDMONDT JENSEN [4/17/72]: You played a favorite of mine just a moment ago, “Uncle John's Band.”

JERRY GARCIA [4/17/72]: Right.

EDMONDT JENSEN [4/17/72]: What does it tell about?

JERRY GARCIA [4/17/72]: [pauses, and chuckles] Well, what is it telling you about?

EDMONDT JENSEN [4/17/72]: Oh — you've got me there. [nervously chuckles]

JERRY GARCIA [4/17/72]: Right, but you like it anyway? Right?

EDMONDT JENSEN [4/17/72]: Yeah.

JERRY GARCIA [4/17/72]: Okay, well, that's the way it is with me. I don't know what it tells about; all I know is I like it. I like it. I like that place, wherever it is. I like Uncle John and his band, whoever they are.

JESSE: Garcia explains why the band’s performances stretch over 3 hours.

JERRY GARCIA [4/17/72]: Basically, the experience we relate to is playing music and really getting off and really, you know, getting high from it, you know, the audience getting high, and everybody getting high. On a really super night, that's what happens, and that's the thing that we basically try to do every performance. So we have long performances to allow ourselves the possibility, because we’d never be able to do it if we were doing like 45-minute sets, that sort of thing. We would just… we’d never do it.

LARS BENNIKE: When we arrived at the hall, we went straight to [the] backstage area — both for my dad to to discuss with the TV people and so forth, and we had to meet the band and say hello. My dad had to, so we tagged along. We went backstage and there was a lot of people back there, as I recall. A lot of people, very colorful people. It was very cheerful. I was standing there some of the time alone, because my dad was mediating or talking to the TV production and the band of course. But over comes this big guy — grinning, having fun, big smile, and saying “Who are you? What’s your name?” and stuff like that. 11 years, I tried to explain who I was, and English is the second language in Denmark. From the first grade, you learn English, so there was no problem speaking to him. But he was so happy and cheerful, as I remember. There was this grin, and this huge face — a hairy face, I remember. Most of all, I remember seeing… that he was missing part of his finger. [I] didn’t say anything about it, or didn’t think about it at the time, but later on when my dad was there, he said, “What have you been up to?” “Speaking to this guy called Jerry.” “Oh, you met Jerry! Yeah, he’s the guitar player.” I was [thinking]: guitar player… but he’s missing one finger. But anyway, I didn’t say anything. Later on, when we were in the hall and they were on stage, I went: Oh, there’s the guy! He’s on the left, and he was playing the guitar, for real. So… [those] were some of the non-music impressions of an 11-year old kid.

JESSE: And tonight, the band do it again: playing the first 3-set show of the tour, with over three hours of music. Though none of the music would make it to Europe ‘72, some pictures certainly would. It was an eventful night. Out in the equipment truck, the crew gave 3 stars to a number of performances, including “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider.”

AUDIO: “I Know You Rider” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (0:36-1:06) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Lars Bennike and his father went to their seats.

LARS BENNIKE: I was only 11, so… I mean, I was more like a spectator, and the lady taking off her t-shirt with nothing beneath, three rows back, were things I remember. Another kid who's in another famous Danish act called Sort Sol — ”black sun.” He’s called Steen Jørgensen, and he is, like, three or four years older than me. He was in the audience with his dad as well.

People were so much into the music. I wouldn't say we were Japanese, in the sense of just sitting there and then clapping and sitting there. But people enjoyed it and were very much into the music. Seeing, and smelling, because there was… it was a show where there was a lot of smoke in the air, and we weren’t used to that. Or at least I wasn’t. I remembered the sweet smell in the air. The whole loose kind of thing that went with the music — it fit well with the music. It was not just another day in Copenhagen; it was a special day. I wouldn’t say it was like a church, but it felt like when you’re in a church and they’re really going for it. Everybody was into it. That’s what I remember. And I also remember it was quite difficult to see everything on stage, because everybody was standing up. I’m not sure, but at the time I was shorter than now, so it was difficult to see all of what was happening. Many a time, I had to stand on a chair in order to see the stage. That’s what I did.

JESSE: And with television cameras rolling, though not yet live, the band debuted a brand new Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter song destined for the live album — but it wasn’t yet finished.

AUDIO: “He’s Gone” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (0:23-0:49) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: “He’s Gone” was destined to be a Dead classic, of course, a singalong that lasted in the band’s repertoire all the way through 1995. They’d track the canonical version in Amsterdam a few weeks later — the newest song on Europe ‘72. We’ll dive more into it then.

AUDIO: “He’s Gone” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (2:48-3:18) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: And then it was time to go live to Denmark.

JERRY GARCIA [4/17/72]: We’re gonna take a little short break here, and then come back in a few minutes for this, uh, TV thing. We’ll do the TV thing, and then that’ll be over with.

BOB WEIR [4/17/72]: Very special, it’s very special…

[audience applauds]

JERRY GARCIA [4/17/72]: Thanks a lot.

BOB WEIR [4/17/72]: Meanwhile, you’ll find your souvenir posters in the lobby, kewpie dolls of all the band members…

JESSE: Sam Cutler.

SAM CUTLER: The Grateful Dead were going to be the first-ever band to play live on Danish television, which was a big fuckin’ thing. It was a bit of a coup that we got it together. What happened was this: Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was on a state visit to Denmark, so there was a half-hour show of wandering around in golden carriages and all that: ‘Look, the Queen of the Netherlands!’ And, you know, ‘visit Denmark.’ Then they were gonna cut from that to the Tivoli in Copenhagen, [the] very famous old theater where the Grateful Dead were going to play.

JESSE: There’d been many live rock performances on Danish television, including the first filmed appearance by Led Zeppelin in March 1969, but the Dead were the first to truly play live. Lars Bennike’s father helped organize it on the Danish end.

LARS BENNIKE: I think that was one of the only ones I know about, because I definitely would have if there were other stuff. I didn’t know any live transmissions from Danish television. We didn't have the gear for it, they weren't set up to do it. And when they did live transmissions, it was very seldom — it had to be from the royal family, or it had to be from [some] spectacular event. Rock music at the time [wasn’t] that spectacular. It was like, nah. So it was definitely history in the making.

SAM CUTLER: So everything was set up, it was all happening, the band's on stage, it's all cool. I was outside where they had the outside broadcast TV truck with the Danish director. And it's all gonna be there, everything's getting ready. We're five minutes away. [Then] we're about three minutes away from cutting from Queen Juliana’s state visit to the Grateful Dead at the Tivoli — a very, very tense moment. And the little prick that’s gonna announce the Grateful Dead and go “scobbledy, scobbledy, scobbledy, scobb: the Grateful Dead” is trying to be seen by the camera, Camera #3 or whatever, that he’s gonna talk to. He’s behind Garcia’s amplifier, this bank of amplifiers. And the amps are too high — so he can’t see over the amps, and the camera can’t see him. I’m in the control booth, and this camera’s going… trying to find him. Where the fuck is the guy that’s gonna announce the show? There’s like a minute to go.

STEVE PARISH: Here we were at Tivoli Gardens. And we[‘re] very professional — it wasn't our first rodeo, we worked with people coming in and doing, want[ing] to film something, introduce the band and film it. Always went down that way. And so we’re at the monitor board, and now it’s two minutes to showtime. The band’s out on stage, then these guys are ready. The guy down on the mic, and the guy’s got the camera on him from Danish TV, and they’re gonna broadcast the show from Tivoli, this amazing historical place. And the little guy was a little too short — the announcer. He starts yelling at the camera man, whose name was Fritz: “Fritz! I'm too short! I'm too little! Give me something to stand on, give him something to stand on!” So he didn't know what to do. He takes a garbage can that had been there all day, man. People have been throwing milk containers in it, and all kinds of lunch receptacles and stuff, dirt and sludge. And he just takes the fucking thing and spit-drop turns it over and dumps it on our cables. And all over the stage — all this garbage, man! And he puts the announcer up on it, the guy’s up on it…

SAM CUTLER: Turns it upside down and stands on it and the camera [guy’s] like, “Got it!” Finally, there’s 15 seconds to go, the guy puts his microphone up to his mouth to introduce the band, and this fist in slow motion comes through the side, and goes: bang! [laughs] And the director buries his head like this next to me: “I’m ruined! I’m ruined, I’m ruined!” Garcia, luckily, saw the whole thing, and started playing. So that was the introduction to the Grateful Dead in Copenhagen.

STEVE PARISH: Sam says I slugged the guy, but I didn't. But right as he goes, “And now ladies and gentlemen” — I tackle him, and he falls off the garbage can. I go, “You’re not doing this!” So this is what people saw, this little trash fracas going on, because of the disrespect. Now, what would you have done?

SAM CUTLER: The director finally pulled himself together, and there we are. That was the first time a live band ever appeared, and they were fabulous. It was a great gig.

JESSE: This little bit of film, in fact nearly the entire live part of the evening, doesn’t survive in the circulating copies. Lars and Olav Bennike have nothing to contradict this story though.

LARS BENNIKE: I called my dad and said, “Do you remember anything?” He was saying it could have happened, but it was not put to him. And unfortunately, the people involved in the production are not here anymore. Because otherwise I would have called I'm not here anymore because otherwise I would have called Edmondt or somebody to say, “What the hell happened, guys? So tell them.” And there’s nobody from Tivoli around

JESSE: Bjørn Lindstrøm, who’d seen them a few days previous, though, was watching at home, is positive he witnessed a more peaceful transition of power, with announcer Edmondt Jensen sitting on the lip of the stage and introducing the band from there.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: The TV transmission was just 20 minutes. The first words from the producer was: “You just missed a great song.” And then it went into the next one.

JESSE: Recently, at the behest of the Deadcast, Bjorn was nice enough to do some searching through Danish newspapers, and found a review of the broadcast published the next morning, which offers a thumbs down review to Edmondt Jansen’s introduction of the band and mentions no punch. If it’s something that Sam Cutler saw through one of the monitors in the television truck, maybe it was an incident that occurred before they were live to all of Denmark. Certainly enough members of the Dead family seem to recall a Danish fracas.

It was totally a great gig. If you’ve never seen it, it’s pretty easy to find. And if not, ask a Dead Head. For once, the band seem totally comfortable in front of the cameras, and even a few of the live tunes get three-star ratings from the crew, including “Mr. Charlie.”

AUDIO: “Mr. Charlie” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (0:21-0:40) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: And the closing number of the live segment, and the only part of the actual live broadcast to currently circulate as video, the band’s new single in Europe, “One More Saturday Night.”

AUDIO: “One More Saturday Night” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (3:34-4:04) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Even though Bob Weir said goodbye, the cameras weren’t gone yet, and the Dead hit a few more highly rated numbers for the cameras, including “It Hurts Me Too.”

AUDIO: “It Hurts Me Too” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (4:42-5:12) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: And “Ramble On Rose.”

AUDIO: “Ramble On Rose” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (4:32-5:02) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Perhaps the show’s most legendary moment didn’t warrant a rating, but it’s there on video.

AUDIO: “Big Railroad Blues” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (0:00-0:30) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: During “Big Railroad Blues,” the clown masks and Groucho Marx glasses they’d been using to weird the locals find their way to the stage, with band and crew alike donning bozo costumery for one of the band’s most visually arresting performances.

STEVE PARISH: And it was me that went in New York to a joke shop and bought all those bozo masks, and all that stuff. We brought a big bag of those with us, just for the hell of it. It ended up becoming iconic to that tour as the guys wore ‘em in a couple of places and played. We would go into towns in two buses, 50 of us. We’d have all those masks on, we had some other masks. I kept them for all these years. They were in my barn, but they all melted together this giant thing from a window here — just UV-ed them into a pile of all these mixed up alien faces and strange masks. I should have preserved them, they became such a historical thing. People loved them.

AUDIO: “Big Railroad Blues” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (2:16-2:41) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: When the shoot ended, the band took another setbreak, and came back for another piece of important business.

AUDIO: “Dark Star” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 6, 4/17/72] (0:00-0:26) [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: Please welcome back Graeme Boone.

GRAEME BOONE: Jerry, repeating that riff — pushing it in there, and everybody's getting behind this beautiful progression. Energy picking up. Listen to Bob and Keith together… interesting move. Jerry on this slow descending line: [vocalizes the guitar melody] A whole mini-episode unfolding. Beautiful, a little bit like a slower “Deal Go Down,” but not quite. Jerry up to high G, and then a high climactic A. There you have it, guys — it’s that climax riff. Beautiful “Dark Star” progression, coming down, and then returning to that Jerry riff… and we’re locked in. Now quieting down for the first verse.

JESSE: Though some Dead Heads complain about the repetitive organ riff Pigpen would play on early versions of “Dark Star,” by 1972, he was contributing to the jam in deeper ways. Graeme calls him out at the beginning here, but he’s right there jamming along for this whole great segment.

GRAEME BOONE: [vocalizes] Now you can hear Pigpen coming in on organ — very quiet, but very supportive of what’s going on harmonically. Now you can hear Keith, picking up the rhythm: A minor, and all of a sudden, they’re off into A minor. Phil picking up a great riff in A minor [ sings A pitch]. And there we have Bob, with a little A minor B minor diminished riff, the “Let It Grow” vamp in embryonic form. Listen to Keith really getting around that vamp, lots of energy. Bill, great rhythmic backup here. Phil, backing up the Bob riff. So here, Jerry starts playing gestural ideas that aren’t really in the meter. Bob stops playing that vamp, the band going to a D minor… interesting. Where might they go from here? Now to G, and then back to A minor. Bob returning to that “Let It Grow” vamp a little bit — notice the loose meter, keening slow notes from Jerry, and now Jerry hitting an insistent high E. And now Jerry starting to blur things with chromatic notes.

JESSE: The Dead liked their song suites, and in Europe, Dark Star was pretty solidly linked to one song in particular.

GRAEME BOONE: Things are melting and getting really timbral. Beautiful — complete opening up onto A, A major. Now we're waiting, we're waiting for it to come out. Beautiful harmonies from Jerry. Bill slips into rhythm, Bob takes over. Now we're into “Sugar Magnolia.”

JESSE: Alan Trist.

ALAN TRIST: Denmark… that was a Tivoli Gardens, wasn’t it, and there was a TV show down there. I think later on, that became problematic for copyright reasons, as to how it could be used.

JESSE: David Lemieux.

DAVID LEMIEUX: There's a copy in the vault, but there's no ownership and there's no quality to do anything with, even if there was. But there is a master somewhere in Europe that is owned by somebody, by an organization. Also, unfortunately, the third set from Tivoli 4/17, which is the “Dark Star” [into “Sugar Magnolia”] into “Caution” night, there doesn't appear to be video of it. I think there's a one camera shoot on kind of mediocre video, that's more of an in-house feed, I think it's more of like a closed caption or closed-circuit thing. Whereas the rest of the show looks amazing. That was the part that was broadcast and looks wonderful, multi-camera, great angles. The third set, unfortunately, wasn't. There's no known great quality film of it. We have talked to the owner and they've dug through and they've never found that either.

JESSE: But it was an important show.

LARS BENNIKE: It is one of those shows that you talk about. It’s not forgotten, mainly because it was recorded, and has been shown many times on Danish television. It’s something that pops up as being one of the historic shows in Denmark. People refer to it, and that’s why I said that if everybody who claims being there on that night, Madison Square Garden would be too small by having all those people.

JESSE: Pigpen made an impression, as Hans Francke recalls.

HANS FRANCKE: I'm really happy that we managed to see and hear Pigpen play and sing. That was amazing. Actually, when I was, when I went into the Air Force, a year later to do my service, and there I had heard that Pigpen had died. So Danish TV actually put up, sent some of the Pigpen stills from the show, put them on television.

JESSE: And of course, Danish fans got a triple album of the tour.

HANS FRANCKE: Then we got this marvelous triple album, and that was kind of the holy grail of music — a go-to album of the time, Europe ‘72, back when it was just three LPs. It brought back some of the sensations of that night.

JESSE: And fans who attended the first night at Tivoli can even say they contributed.

HANS FRANCKE: Yeah, I'm clapping on that.

JESSE: So was Dan Turèll, who continued to be an enormous Grateful Dead fan, reviewing their albums and writing likely the only Danish language essay on Robert Hunter, even translating some of Hunter’s lyrics into Danish. Dan Turèll would die in 1993, but would have one more powerful encounter with the Grateful Dead. Lars Movin.

LARS MOVIN: On his very last trip to California in 1989, he actually got to see [the] Grateful Dead on sort of their home turf. They played a number of shows, I think it was three days in a row in Mountain View, just south of San Francisco — something called the Shoreline Amphitheatre. He happened to be there on holiday with his family, they were traveling in California. He went to see them on the first night, Friday, September 29.

JESSE: The first night, Dan Turèll saw the Dead revive “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” for the first time since 1970, later released on the So Many Roads box set.

AUDIO: “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” [So Many Roads, 9/29/89] (0:53-1:20) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

LARS MOVIN: We have his notebooks from that trip, because they were… after he died, his notebook from that California trip was published in a sort of as a facsimile of the notebook. You can see from his note that he was slightly disappointed because Jerry Garcia, apparently was not that well that evening. It turned out not to be quite the experience that he had hoped for. But then his family convinced him to go back and see them again on the third night, because they felt sorry for him that he was so disappointed. He was allowed to go one more time, on Sunday evening. And this time, Jerry Garcia was apparently much better, and it was a perfect concert. They played “Turn On Your Lovelight,” which was one of the tracks that he really liked from the very first album that he ever reviewed by the Dead, Live/Dead, from ‘70. So he got to hear that track live, and they ended the night by playing “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan as an encore. So it was a perfect evening. In his notebooks, he writes about how beautiful it was and how much he felt like being part of that whole community of Dead Heads that were attending the concert, and that he finally experienced that feeling of being part of that whole thing. So in the next couple of days, he was just floating on a cloud. He says in his notebook his family could hardly recognize him, because he was just so happy. It was bliss. It was very beautiful that he got to have this experience because, unfortunately, he didn’t live much longer; he got cancer when he was 47, and died soon after that. That was sad, but he had this experience just before that — so, that was beautiful. Just to give you another idea about how much he valued the Grateful Dead, just before he died, he had made a Danish translation, sort of his own version, of “Black Muddy River” from In the Dark — where he sort of transformed it into a piece about Copenhagen or a Danish location. On his own request, “Black Muddy River,” the actual track from Grateful Dead’s album, was also played at his funeral. So [the] Grateful Dead followed him to the end, you could say.

AUDIO: “Black Muddy River” [In the Dark] (0:48-1:18) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

JESSE: The Danish Dead scene remains a cozy place. Bjørn Lindstrøm, who saw the band in ‘72, now runs the website dancingbear.dk, acting as an importer of cool Dead stuff to Denmark.

BJØRN LINDSTRØM: I got the idea to save a little on the postage, which was a great part of the expense. If I could buy a number of each item, the postage would be spread out of course. It started small in ‘99 and 2000, and grew very slowly. It's not a thing I'm making big money out of. I don't have many regular customers, but the ones I have are very regular — both in Denmark and many countries in Europe. Apart from the shop, I have some Dead Head friends who might meet once a year. One of them is a fantastic record collector — he has vinyls and CDs and tapes from the floor to ceiling in his little flat. So we go there and listen to great music for a long, long evening and most of the night, once a year.

JESSE: Alan Trist had a memorable run-in during the loud-out from the Tivoli Gardens, which we’ll use as a way to start our own load out from Denmark. In our last episode, we discussed the mythical figure of St. Dilbert, the mysterious vessel of hypnocracy. But he sometimes took earthly form.

ALAN TRIST: Mostly I rode the Bozo bus. I had an interesting run in with St. Dilbert. He accused me of not carrying my weight, and set me to breaking down the setup after the Tivoli Gardens gig in Copenhagen. By that time in the tour, some of the crew got a little fed up with some of the managers and officers, people saying, “Why are you guys are just dividing along? You’re not doing any work! We’re carrying you!” It was a kind of typical complaint between different parts of the Dead organization. Well, I immediately volunteered to help the crew on their load out after the show. I said, “Well, I can do something here.” My job was to wheel road cases, from the equipment and back. Almost immediately, one catapulted over a loose cable, and sundry items spilled on top of each other, clattered across the parquet floor. Eloquent silence, and devastating glares from the crew. But to be fair, the Saint was forgiving. So perhaps you can guess the identity of St. Dilbert…

JESSE: Ready to know the inspiration for St. Dilbert?

ALAN TRIST: It was Steve. [laughs] He was the saint, and is to this day. I turned around and all the crew were looking at me from the stage where they were stacking up stuff. [makes heckling sound] But then there was a lot of laughter, and I don't think anyone ever did try to help out the crew anymore.

STEVE PARISH: I was trying to tell [Robert] Hunter that he was psychic when he wrote “St. Stephen.” I said, “You wrote that about me, but you didn't know you were writing it.” So he started calling [me] St. Dilbert, [like it] was the stupidest thing you ever heard, so he was playing with that.

JESSE: And it was onward to Germany. There was another ferry ride, as Donna Jean recalls her encounter with what is now known as hygge, a Danish love of comfort.

DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: We left Denmark on a ferry, an overnight trip on a ferry. That was also something that I definitely remember — at that time, I had no thinking about what European bedding was like. It was so different than ours, and that’s where the concept of a comforter and all of that came from. When I got on that ferry, there were these comforter-like things that we slept in. I went: wow, that is really cool! That’s very different. I loved being on that ferry, and I have a photo of Keith and Jerry, just smiling, laughing together on that ferry, and it’s just a special memory.