Friend of the Devils: Atlanta, 4/78

Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast

Season 10, Episode 2

Friend of the Devils: Atlanta, 4/78

 

Archival interviews:

- Gene Brown, The Fabulous Fox, Georgia Public Broadcasting, 2004.

- Jerry Garcia, WHMR, 11/27/78.

- Jerry Garcia, by Greg Harrington, 7/10/81.

- Jerry Garcia, by Jon Sievert, Guitar Player, 12/77.

- Jerry Garcia (and Lawrence “Ram Rod” Shurtliff), by Jon Sievert, Guitar Player, 6/78.

- Jerry Garcia, by Jon Sievert, Guitar Player, 7/78.

- Jerry Garcia, by Ray White, WLIR, 1/11/79.

- Bob Weir, by David Gans, Conversations with the Dead, 8/9/77.

 

AUDIO: “Promised Land” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (0:20-0:40) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: After opening their spring ‘78 tour with three shows in Florida, the Grateful Dead rolled into Atlanta for two nights at the Fox Theatre, now the fourth and fifth shows on the new Friend of the Devils box. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: I love both these shows. These were shows I got early in my tape trading, when the Betty Boards started showing up from this tour. The Fox shows were the first two I got.

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (2:25-2:50) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: It's a long tour — it's the 6th through the 24th and then a 10-day break before another two weeks. So, they're busy, they’ve got a lot going on. They’re recording a new album, Shakedown Street, on the go. But these shows at the Fox really show that the tour is really building momentum. And that's what I find: this tour builds more than any other tour. I find that a lot of tours start strong, if not a little mellow and strong. They've got a vibe. This one keeps growing as the shows go on.

 

AUDIO: “Passenger” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (1:22-1:44) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: It was later in 1978 that Bill Graham had one of his famous lines about the Dead painted on the outside of Winterland.

 

BILL GRAHAM [10/22/78]: They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones who do what they do. The Grateful Dead.

 

JESSE: We’re going to use Betty Cantor Jackson’s beautifully recorded tapes from the two Fox gigs, listen to some never-heard interviews with Jerry Garcia, and talk about some other popular and underground music of the era to really get inside what Bill Graham’s famous phrase meant in April 1978.

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (2:06-2:19) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: At the most surface level, the Grateful Dead changed their setlists around. Of their rock and roll peers in 1978 like the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan, the Dead were among the few to be predictably unpredictable. Even Bruce Springsteen and Frank Zappa were playing basically the same setlists night after night in 1978 with only a few changes. Hot Tuna had been keeping things pretty loose, but they broke up at the end of ‘77. If you wanted to follow an artist with truly variable setlists, and weren’t a jazz fan, you had to look a little deeper to the rock underground to artists like NRBQ or the Patti Smith Group, who’d started playing some of the same theaters the Dead and their side projects could still cram into. But setlists were only one level of what was variable about the Dead’s music. 

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: To see this in the Fox Theatre — again, I always encourage people to look at the venue before they listen to a show, because this is a great-looking venue. The Dead had a bit of a history there: ‘77, ‘78, ‘85. Played some good shows there. 

 

AUDIO: “Dire Wolf” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (0:55-1:10) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: And I kind of wonder: did that inspire the band to play differently, when they get into a nice, beautiful theater vs. playing a dumpy arena? Does that translate to the vibe of the show? I don't know. Certainly, they’re two very different venues and this is, what, five days apart. So you've played three kind of weird venues in Florida, and now you're in this beautiful theater in Atlanta, where they clearly love playing.

 

JESSE: It certainly made a difference to the vocalists in the band. Please welcome back Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay.

 

DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: Oh… singing in a theater? Oh my gosh. A theater that was built for music, instead of a hockey rink or something else. Just to sing in a theater was just like: oh my gosh, this is what this building was made for, was music. So I loved that, I loved that. And coming from a studio mentality, it was more controlled. You had more of a controlled sonic atmosphere in a theater than elsewhere.

 

AUDIO: “Sunrise” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (1:10-1:34) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: When the Grateful Dead returned to the road in 1976, part of the intent was to keep things at a more manageable level for both the band and audience, with the hopes that they could spend more time playing in the theaters that the band considered their natural home. But by 1978, that was getting to be a losing battle — because of the demand for the band, because sometimes the band needed the paydays, and because sometimes there just wasn’t a nice theater to play. In Atlanta, circumstances combined to put them in a beautiful venue during their late ‘70s appearances.

 

AUDIO: “Deal” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (2:06-2:38) - [dead.net]

 

The Dead in Atlanta

 

JESSE: The Dead’s first two shows in Atlanta, in 1969 and 1970, were both with Atlanta’s hometown underground heroes who—like the Dead had done in San Francisco—pioneered the local practice of playing free in the Park and became one of the most legendary and incredible groups in the city’s history. I’m speaking of course of the Hampton Grease Band.

 

AUDIO: “Six” [Hampton Grease Band, Music to Eat] (0:22-0:42) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: We are absolutely delighted to welcome, from the Hampton Grease Band, guitarist Glenn Phillips.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: When the Grease Band first started, we couldn't find any place to play. I had read about the Grateful Dead doing shows in the park, and so I went down to Piedmont Park in Atlanta, which is a really big park, with a clock radio, because I had seen that there was an outlet in the pavilion. I plugged it into the pavilion and I realized it was live. And I just said to the band, “We need to start going down to the park and playing.”

 

AUDIO: “Hey Old Lady and Bert’s Song” [Hampton Grease Band, Music to Eat] (0:07-0:22) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: The Hampton Grease Band were fronted by young Bruce Hampton, not yet militarized — he would only promote himself to Colonel in the ‘80s, and wasn’t the leader of the Grease Band, despite being its namesake. 

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: We started going down there every week, and by the following summer, later that summer, other bands were joining us. And then the following [summer] we got a call from the Allman Brothers, from Phil Walden: “Can the Allman Brothers come play with you?” Then we played there with the Grateful Dead, and it just exploded into this whole scene. It was the influence of reading a line about them playing in the Park for free that led to this scene exploding in Atlanta — from me plugging a clock radio in, even to the point where the Grateful Dead were playing there.

 

AUDIO: “St. Stephen” [7/7/69] (1:22-1:46)

 

JESSE: The Dead’s show in Piedmont Park in July 1969 was their first appearance in Atlanta, including a superjam that was also their first time playing with members of the Allman Brothers. Sadly, neither Glenn Phillips nor Harold Kelling from the Grease Band played in the superjam. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the Hampton Grease Band anchored a thriving local scene, and—in part because Glenn saw the at the Fox in ‘78, too, in part because I’m enormous fan of both the Grease Band and Glenn’s solo work—we’re going to use them as a way to tell the story of how the Grateful Dead’s music evolved and what it meant in 1978. Not that other towns had bands exactly like the Hampton Grease Band, but lots of towns had their own underground rock acts that started in the ‘60s, who didn’t quite break through nationally but whose members stayed active as members of the longer musical continuum, blurring the lines between eras and subcultures. The Dead and the Grease Band only crossed paths a few times, but it made an impact.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: I remember talking to Jerry Garcia at one point about comic books. He was very into comic books, and I was very into comic books when I was growing up. Just the open-ended expression of imagination is what it's about. That's the button that it pressed, in him and in myself and in many others. And just finding that wherever you did, whether it was a novel, a comic book, a movie, another band… just seeing, sort of being taken aback by the openness and the freedom of it, it allows you to feel like you have a license to do the same thing.

 

JESSE: Before we get too much further, I’ll note we’ve posted links to both Glenn’s music as well as his excellent and soulful memoir, Echoes: The Hampton Grease Band, My Life, My Music and How I Stopped Having Panic Attacks

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: You'll frequently find very common stories among bands about them being a collective of somewhat dysfunctional individuals. This would certainly include myself. The form of therapy is just letting out what's inside and getting in front of yourself, and that's what moves you forward through life. I don't want it to sound negative when I talk about dysfunction or problems growing up that people have. But it's kind of a healing process, a collective healing process, that's taking place.

 

JESSE: Without knowing it, Glenn is describing the set-up for Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, the classic sci-fi novel that the Dead read collectively when they were getting their chops together in 1966, about a group of supernaturally dysfunctional people who create a combined energy force greater than themselves, called a blesh. To outside observers, even if they didn’t know the term, the Grateful Dead were obviously that. Another term that circulates around the Grateful Dead, sometimes attributed to Bob Weir, is “misfit power,” and Glenn Phillips and the Hampton Grease Band drew on that, too.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: It's like, you think you're sort of picking up little pieces, little crumbs. But they're a trail, and they lead someplace. Obviously the Hampton Grease Band, I have to say, was inspired by the Grateful Dead, and influenced by it. But it doesn't sound like the Grateful Dead. The reason the Grateful Dead are great is because they sound like themselves, and it's the same for other bands who find the truth inside themselves, and find a way to get it out in front of them. That's what's important about music. 

 

JESSE: Sadly, owing to Owsley’s bust in February, there are no tapes of the Sports Arena gig in May 1970, where the Hampton Grease Band opened and the Dead borrowed the Allmans Brothers amps and jammed with brother Duane. But after their first two trips to Atlanta, vibes got a little bit harsher when they returned in November 1971.

 

PHIL LESH [11/11/71]: Hey that’s not really necessary, man. That’s not really necessary.

 

JESSE: Okay, a lot harsher.

 

PHIL LESH [11/11/71]: Okay, there ain’t gonna be no music as long as there’s cops on this stage.

 

JESSE: For the next few years, the Dead were confined to the cavernous Omni. 

 

JERRY GARCIA [12/12/73]: We’d like to wish Dickey Betts a happy birthday. Today’s his birthday.

 

JESSE: It was only when the Jerry Garcia Band started touring in 1976 that they landed on the Fox. Originally opened in 1929, it was a contemporary of the St. Louis Fox Theatre, another favorite Dead zone opened by William Henry Fox that same year, though they were hardly clones of one another. The Atlanta Fox was part of a Shriner Temple, though the Shriners were gone by 1930. We’ve posted a link to a documentary about the venue’s history.

 

AUDIO: “The Fabulous Fox” (26:07-26:27) - [YouTube]

 

GENE BROWN [The Fabulous Fox]: I came here for the Metropolitan Opera, when we would have a red carpet placed across Peachtree Street, between the Georgian Terrace Hotel and the Fox Theatre. And in between the acts, we would go across the street and have champagne and then come back by. It was just a very glamorous time in Atlanta.

 

JESSE: In the spring of 1978, there was still world-changing underground music to be found in Georgia, but the scene had shifted somewhat. The Allman Brothers had broken up in 1976, though they’d reunite later in the summer of ‘78. In 1975, Glenn Phillips had self-financed and self-released his solo debut Lost At Sea. This is “Lenore.”

 

AUDIO: “Lenore” [Glenn Phillips Band, Lost At Sea] (0:00-0:30) - [Spotify

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: After the Grease Band broke up, I put out a solo album that I recorded on my own, and Richard Branson flew over from England and signed me to Virgin. We went over there and toured.

 

JESSE: Glenn and his music turn out to be a perfect way to evoke the changing times. Virgin Records had started from the original Virgin record store in London. Its early releases are all what we lovingly call progressive.

 

AUDIO: “Tubular Bells” (Pt. II) [Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells] (8:46-9:01) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: That was the titantically selling “Tubular Bells” by Mike Oldfield. There was a pretty big vibe shift going on, as Glenn discovered when he got to England.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: I went over there, I stayed with Mike Oldfield while I was there. [He wrote], you know, “Tubular Bells,” and he was a big Virgin artist. And I was hanging around a lot at the Virgin offices. The Sex Pistols, I would cross paths with them at the Virgin offices, plus I remember parties at Richard Branson's house boat. I'd run into people from different bands that were connected with Virgin. The Sex Pistols were around then.

 

AUDIO: “God Save the Queen” [Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols] (0:30-0:44) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: After EMI signed and dropped the Sex Pistols, Virgin Records scooped them up, and the Sex Pistols’ version of punk detonated across the brains of the world. In rock history, there’s a before and after the Sex Pistols, just like there is for Elvis or the Beatles or Nirvana. But while your history books might frame punk in opposition to lots of other music, we here at the Deadcast are here to celebrate the whole spectrum. 

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: Magazines were very much wanting to jump on whatever they thought was new in the breaking story and coverage. So they sort of presented this as a that-was-then-this-is-now sort of moment: ‘This is what's new, this is what matters.’ But within the world itself—and this is what the Grateful Dead very much were about, and their audience were very much about—that was not really reality. That was marketing. For musicians and, as well, for I think a lot of people in the audience, it was an evolving, growing thing. But that didn't mean that it discarded the past. For some people, it did — like, ‘Oh, that all sucks.’ But even if you go back and listen to music that was coming out at the beginning of the new wave era — you think of a band like Television. If you go back and listen to that first Television album, it's very clear that they were very much influenced by the Grateful Dead.

 

AUDIO: “Marquee Moon” [Television, Marquee Moon] (1:05-1:36) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: Television’s Marquee Moon was released in February 1977 and remains a regular jam in this household. While we’re throwing down mile markers for the Friend of the Devils box though, April 1978 was also the month of Television’s second album, Adventure.

 

AUDIO: “Careful” [Television, Adventure] (1:10-1:44) - [Spotify]

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: When I came back to Atlanta, the new wave / punk movement was exploding. I wasn't really part of that, except for the do-it-yourself ethos, where you just make your own record.

 

JESSE: Not only was punk exploding in Atlanta, punk was exploding on Atlanta. The Sex Pistols virtually followed Glenn Phillips home.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: Ironically, they did their first show in the U.S. here in Atlanta, and they ended up hanging out with one of my neighbors that lived around the corner from me while they were in town.

 

JESSE: The Sex Pistols’ tour of the United States was pretty short, opening at the Great Southeastern Music Hall in Atlanta on January 5th. In Grateful Dead terms, it coincided almost exactly with the mini-tour of California where Jerry Garcia lost his voice, which we talked about in the first episode of the season. The Pistols run ended two weeks later at Winterland on January 14th, while the Dead were in Bakersfield, what turned out to be the Sex Pistols final show of their original run.

 

JOHNNY ROTTEN [1/14/78]: Ha, ha, ha! Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Good night.

 

JESSE: The next night, January 15th, back in Atlanta, was another turning of an era, where the Glenn Phillips Band headlined the Capri Theater, with an opening set by Bruce Hampton, then during his stint as a stand-up comedian. 

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: When I came back from England the first time, there was a lot of buzz because I put Lost At Sea out and just put it out myself, recorded it at home. And the fact that this label was picking it up overseas, and the record had become big there. The first thing I did was I did a show at this theater in Atlanta, but I had Harold and Bruce come down to do some shows, to do some songs with the band. So there was still this connection between the past, the present and the future, but that was the kickoff of Bruce's solo career.

 

JESSE: It would be the last time the three former Hampton Grease Bandmates played together.

 

AUDIO: “Sunshine Makes Eye Contact” [Hampton B. Coles, One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist] (0:48-1:04) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: That spring, Bruce Hampton was recording his first album outside the Hampton Grease Band, One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist. He wasn’t yet a Colonel, though, but went under the name — Mr. Hampton B. Coles (Ret.). 

 

AUDIO: “Cocoa Beach” [Hampton B. Coles, One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist] (0:25-0:54) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: But the epicenter of radical Georgian music had shifted to nearby Athens, where in April of 1978, the same month the Dead played the Fox, a new young band released their debut 7-inch single, which John Lennon later credited with reviving his own interest in making music. Ladies, gentlemen, non-binary heads, the B-52s.

 

AUDIO: “Rock Lobster” (single version) [The B-52s, 7-inch single] (0:00-0:28) - [Spotify]

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: There was a thriving musical scene that had a foot in the past and a foot in the present in the future — bands like the [Swimming] Pool Q’s, the B-52s, Pylon, the Fans, the Brains. These were all bands that were perceived as being new wave. A lot of them grew up coming to hear the Grease Band, telling me that that had an impact on them and influenced them. I identified very much with the bands that were playing. The Swimming Pool Q’s, at the time, were considered a new wave band. I was really close friends with Jeff [Calder], who I still play with today. Bob Elsey, their guitarist, I gave guitar lessons to [him]. I felt connected with these people: I'd sit in with them, they'd sit in with us, we’d do shows together.

 

AUDIO: “The A-Bomb Woke Me Up” [Swimming Pool Qs, The Deep End] (0:19-0:46)

 

The Tapes

 

JESSE: That was the Swimming Pool Q’s with “The A-Bomb Woke Me Up.” Despite how the story is sometimes told, there was, and is, a pretty blurry line between the hippie underground and the punk underground, and I like imagining that there were probably a few very cool weirdos who caught some of the B-52s earliest gigs in Athens and also saw the Dead at the Fox in those years. The Grateful Dead could still be considered underground music in their own way in 1978, but they were their own kind of long-developing independent entity. They’d moved onto a parallel track around the time they started their own record company in 1973, and stayed there when they reintegrated with the mainstream a few years later. One aspect of Bill Graham’s maxim about the Dead being the only ones who did what they did is that it didn’t apply only to the musicians onstage, but their whole traveling crew. Nothing came fabricated. There was no one they could hire to come make recordings of their shows; we have the great recordist Betty Cantor Jackson to thank for taking that task on herself. We wouldn’t be here talking about these shows today if not for her tapes. David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: These are all 7-inch reels, running at seven-and-a-half inches per second. So pretty much the standard, ‘76 through ‘79.

 

JESSE: And they sound amazing.

 

AUDIO: “Jack Straw” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (1:14-1:27) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMEIUX: If we'd had the tapes 25 years ago, or when Dick [Latvala] was working on the tapes, I'm sure some of it, if not more than some of it, would have come out. The reason is these tapes weren't in the Vault.

 

AUDIO: “Jack Straw” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (1:27-1:45) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Betty Cantor started making live recordings of the Grateful Dead in the early 1970s. Along with her then-partner Bob Matthews, she oversaw the recording and engineering of the band’s first three live albums, 1969’s Live/Dead, 1971’s Grateful Dead, and 1972’s Europe ‘72, as well as the scrapped live album from the Capitol Theatre from February 1971, which we discussed back in season 3 of the Deadcast. Along with Owsley Stanley and crew members [Bill] “Kidd” Candelario and Rex Jackson, who became Betty’s husband, she also took responsibility for engineering work tapes for the band. Here’s how Jerry Garcia described it to Ray White on WLIR in January 1979.

 

JERRY GARCIA [1/11/79]: More often, I listen to tapes of our most recent concerts, because it's like homework. We usually pull tape out at the sound booth. And sometimes we have people who are recording really nicely mixed 2-track Nagra tapes of the shows, as a matter of routine. 

 

JESSE: From the band’s return to the road in 1976 through 1980, Betty Cantor-Jackson recorded more shows than she erased.

 

AUDIO: “Ship of Fools” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (1:12-1:35) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Now known as the Betty Boards, they are not pure recordings off the PA at the band’s concert, but special sub-mixes, putting everything in balance. In the mid-1980s, after languishing in a storage locker, the tapes were auctioned for delinquent fees. 

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: I think it was like ‘87 into early ‘88. At least in my tape trading world, that's when the Betty Boards started showing up. The shows that came to my mailbox, padded envelopes with my Maxells — Beacon Theater in ‘76, the May shows in ‘77.

 

AUDIO: “Ramble On Rose” [Dick’s Picks 29, 5/19/77] (2:37-3:00) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: And then the next batch that came in of the Betty Boards for me was some of the April shows, and quite a few of the ones that are in this box.

 

AUDIO: “Franklin’s Tower” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (13:21-13:39) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: Anything that was a Betty Board back in our tape trading days, were, by definition, just not in the Vault. They were the tapes outside that people got their hands on and made copies of, that all of us tape traders have benefited from. After Dick passed and I started listening to a lot more tapes for possible release—Dick’s Picks; Road Trips, now Dave’s Picks; other box sets—I kind of stopped listening to the shows that we didn't have a chance to release, because I was so busy listening for work.

 

AUDIO: “Franklin’s Tower” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (13:39-13:57) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: But then Cornell came back to the Vault — it came out, I'm extremely happy it did. And with those tapes around 2018, 2017 and 2018, along with Cornell and Beacon Theatre and all those great shows, came these first shows on the spring tour, of the April run of the spring tour — I’ve got to define it as the April run. That first [run], April 6 to the 16th, came back in their entirety, complete shows. We'd always had the 18th in Pittsburgh through the 24th in Illinois. We did get a little antsy a couple of years ago — April 15 has already come out as part of the Dave’s Picks. There were 25,000 of those. So hopefully everybody who gets this box has that Dave's Picks and can kind of complete the run of shows.

 

JESSE: The April 15th, 1978 show in Williamsburg, Virginia became Dave’s Picks 37, but we’ll be including it in our storytelling during this series, for sure. Today’s episode covers the two shows from Atlanta, but if you caught the Dead that month in the Virginias or North Carolina: seriously, please hit pause and go record your memories at stories.dead.net. Glenn Phillips.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: I think it was the second night that I went. I just went one of the two nights, and I really enjoyed it.

 

JESSE: Though Glenn only caught the April 11th show, we’re going to frame some of his comments around the April 10th gig, too, because they’re pretty universal and strike a keynote for what was powerful about the Dead and their world in 1978.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: When I went to that Dead show, this was like 1978, 10 years from when the Grease Band first formed, and the world culturally had changed a great deal. When I went to that show, I was really struck by the culture that had evolved around the Dead. It was like stepping into… it’s like a science fiction movie, where you're an explorer and you step into the jungle and you discover all these beasts from the past, but they're living and breathing and alive. It's like King Kong, beating his chest and letting out a glorious yell. And that was the Grateful Dead.

 

AUDIO: “Samson & Delilah” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (3:05-3:20) - [dead.net]

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: The fact that this scene had managed to stay alive and current and thriving—and the band had as well—was, at that point in time, an inspirational and sort of jaw-dropping moment. That this was still going on, and this culture was still there in the midst of a world, the rest of the world. We felt like, Oh, it’s time to move on, this isn't valid anymore. And it was still valid and still alive, and obviously remains that way throughout to this day. There were aspects of that that still came to our shows, which I was very appreciative of and still felt connected to. But obviously nothing like on the level of the Grateful Dead. They were breathing life into this culture, day in and day out. And other bands from that era… growing up, all the music that came from the West Coast, especially the Grateful Dead, had a big influence on me and other musicians that I was around. But, culturally, you didn't see that impact on the day-to-day level. But when the Dead came in town, all those people came out, and you realized how alive that culture still really was.

 

JESSE: One part of the Dead scene that was alive and thriving were the tapers. When we left Dr. Bob Wagner at the end of our last episode, he was dropping off his taping crew in Atlanta while he went back to Chapel Hill for class. We’re delighted to welcome today one of Dr. Bob’s passengers, and one of his taping mentors, Steve Maizner. Steve got into Dead taping in a pretty funny way.

 

STEVE MAIZNER: I started listening to the Grateful Dead basically on the radio, and then probably bought Workingman’s Dead at my local record store. And they also had all these bootleg records. After hearing a few shows on WNEW, I said, “Well, I want more than just the album,” and I bought a few of the bootlegs.

 

JESSE: In the early 1970s, when reel-to-reels were expensive and cassettes hadn’t fully caught on, bootleg LPs were one of the prime ways to consume live Grateful Dead music outside of going to see them.

 

STEVE MAIZNER: We're up in Boston and 73 seeing the Dead. The first night they played the Music Hall for three nights, and we didn't get in. We couldn't get tickets the first night. We kind of went to their hotel room and, me and my buddy, we knocked on Garcia's door. It was really late by the time they came back, and he wasn't into the partying. But he was very nice about it. We just, you could just ask for Garcia's room. So the next morning, we went there and hung out with them. He rolled up a couple of joints for us. And I couldn't believe [it]… I'm used to Colombian with seeds and stems, or whatever, and he just rolls them so fast. They were great and delicious. And I guess it was the first time in my life I ever smoked sinsemilla. He was just very nice. Other people came into the room, other fans, and we just talked about his favorite guitar players, Dead songs. He was very modest as far as… he didn't think he was a good singer. We talked about different songs and how they touched us. We started talking, and we're just talking about his music, and songs how they’ve changed. Let's say “Cold Rain and Snow.”

 

AUDIO: “Cold Rain and Snow” [Grateful Dead] (1:36-2:01) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

STEVE MAIZNER: When it was recorded on the album, it was very fast, and now they had slowed it down.

 

AUDIO: “Cold Rain and Snow” [Dick’s Picks 14, 12/2/73] (1:04-1:23) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

STEVE MAIZNER: And I wouldn't have known that unless for these bootlegs. And he just went off, going: “Wait a second, these guys are stealing the music from us. You should go in there and steal the albums, because you can't get arrested for stolen material!” I thought it was quite clever. But anyway, he basically says, “If you want the music, go record it!” And I'm like, “Why, are you gonna let me record your shows?” So really, Garcia gave me some tacit permission to record. 

 

JESSE: Steve started taping soon thereafter, and by the mid-1970s was a regular at Dead shows. 

 

STEVE MAIZNER: We went to the Rochester shows in ‘76 and next night in Syracuse. I got there a little late, and I set up right next to him at the soundboard. I go, Oh, I'm going to find out if Healy minds or not. It was a great first set. And next thing you know, he's coming down and he’s like: “How’d it come out? How’d it come out?” I go, “What are you talking about?” He goes, “The tapes!” I go, “I don’t know… somebody spilled beer in the speaker yesterday in Rochester. It's shot.” And he goes, “Give me the tape.” And he's listening to the tape and very excited. And he goes, “Yeah, yesterday you were wearing an orange shirt. You were too close.” I go, “You're telling me you saw me in the audience yesterday, and I was too close?” He goes, “Yeah, you’ve got to be back a little bit farther for sound quality.”

 

JESSE: Though the Grateful Dead didn’t officially allow taping until 1984, it was hard to get more direct than Garcia’s permission to record and engineer Dan Healy’s tips on how to do it righteously. 

 

STEVE MAIZNER: I was pretty, pretty blown away by that. My faith in this whole idea of a family, of this Grateful Dead family—which started, actually, probably my first show—existed: they care about the audience, that they're aware of the audience.

 

JESSE: In 1976 and 1977, if the Dead were playing on the East Coast, and probably the West, Steve was there. He made it to the Atlanta ‘77 shows at the Fox. The second night is now Dick’s Picks 29.

 

AUDIO: “Sugaree” [Dick’s Picks 29, 5/19/77] (4:58-5:33) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

STEVE MAIZNER: I had gone there the year before, and that was spectacular. And what a beautiful theater that is, and what a great show.

 

JESSE: With that, let’s turn our ears towards April 10th, 1978.

 

April 10th - Atlanta

 

AUDIO: “Salt Lake City” (soundcheck) [4/10/78] (0:48-1:09)

 

JESSE: That’s a little bit of the Dead soundchecking Bob Weir’s “Salt Lake City” in Atlanta, from his then-new solo album Heaven Help the Fool. Ask your local tape collector for the rest.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: They rarely recorded the soundchecks — which is too bad, because I'd always… I always wonder. I mean, they soundcheck at most shows, especially when it was a one-night run or the opening night of in this case, a two-night run. Sometimes they make it through a whole song. The “Salt Lake City” in the soundcheck, it's a bonafide full version of the song.

 

AUDIO: “Salt Lake City” (soundcheck) [4/10/78] (1:57-2:20)

 

JESSE: “Salt Lake City” wouldn’t make its Dead debut until 1995, when the Dead returned to the Salt Palace for the first time in a decade-and-a-half.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: They didn't rehearse the way they used to. They didn't live together like they did in ‘66, [when they would] rehearse eight hours a day. It wasn't quite like that in the later days. So soundcheck is about as much rehearsal as you get. Unless they were introducing new songs, then they would have rehearsal sessions generally at Club Front.

 

JESSE: Glenn Phillips.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: When I saw that show, I enjoyed it and it was great, but it was very different. It was a very different chemistry. For some people, that's their favorite era of the band. For me—because of emotional reasons, I'm sure, and when I encountered stuff—it's the year ‘69. But hearing them… and don't get me wrong, I was glad that they were staying together. And if you stay together that long, it's going to evolve, and people are going to come and go. But it was a very different band with Keith and Donna than it was in ‘69.

 

JESSE: This is Jerry Garcia speaking with WHMR in November 1978.

 

JERRY GARCIA [11/27/78]: What we do is very much, very close to it in spirit, in the sense that the material is… for example, a song, by our definition, is really lyrics, melody line and changes. Apart from that, arrangement considerations are things that we don't rehearse or put together or evolve in quite that way.

 

GLENN PHILLIPS: It is really interesting to see the impact that just one person adding to the band—or two people, in the case of Keith and Donna—how much that influences the chemistry. The Grateful Dead were a big enough band and a big enough ongoing thing where they could keep it going and keep going through these evolving things, and keeping the core of these members. Now, it's at the point where you have this Dead & Company at the Sphere, and it's, like, two guys from the band. And, obviously, the chemistry is wildly different. 

 

JESSE: This is another part of Bill Graham’s equation about the Dead being the only ones to do what they do. Not only did the Dead have a wide repertoire, they had a wide repertoire that they didn’t necessarily rehearse, which might sound obvious, but it means they very rarely brushed up on the early intentions of the arrangements and, instead, let the songs develop without fixed parts. Here’s how “Brown-Eyed Women” sounds in Atlanta, a song that Mickey Hart didn’t play until he returned to the road in 1976, a case of the one definitely being where it thinks it is — or where it isn’t.

 

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (2:04-2:24) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: This is Bobby Weir speaking with David Gans in 1977, an interview that’s now in Conversations with the Dead, a cornerstone in any Dead library. 

 

BOB WEIR [8/9/77]: We've had to do a lot of conscious work on dynamics, simply because, once again, with the reintroduction of Mickey, he missed out on on like four or five years of just tacit understandings and agreements with regards to dynamics that we came upon. And so we finally had to start talking about it again when Mickey came back, because otherwise he'd go banging and crashing through the quiet parts, or he wouldn't know when that sudden sucker punch is coming or whatever. And so we had to tell him, which means we had to be thinking about it, which means — well, while we're thinking about it, we might as well be thinking about it. 

 

JESSE: The tides of the drummers were fascinating. As we discussed last time, they tightened up at the behest of producer Keith Olsen for Shakedown Street and then kept right on changing. Sometimes it really worked. Instead of returning to their ‘60s dynamic, they found a new one. It helped that it fit very closely with Bob Weir’s new rock and roll moves.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: Weir was rocking out on this tour. He's always been a rock star but… Heaven Help the Fool, he was on his way to Bobby and the Midnites, all his theatrics and stuff. Just amazing stuff. So you get Bob doing a lot of really good rock and roll at this show. “It's All Over Now.”

 

AUDIO: “It’s All Over Now” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (0:45-1:15) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: I remember putting it on and it was probably only a second or third Dead version of the song I’d heard — “It’s All Over Now,” the [Rolling] Stones tune. There’s a really good version of that on here.

 

AUDIO: “It’s All Over Now” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (4:43-5:05) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Over the course of late 1977 and into 1978, the late Jon Sievert conducted an amazing multipart interview with Jerry Garcia for Guitar Player magazine. We heard some of it last time, and we’re going to hear more today and in future episodes. Immense thanks once again to the Retro Photo Archive for access to this material. None of the interviews were conducted in April precisely, but they reflect on Garcia’s musical philosophies in that era. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in hearing a continuity in Jerry Garcia’s guitar playing and his singing.

 

AUDIO: “Peggy-O” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (2:56-3:30) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Garcia told Jon Sievert pretty much the same thing.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: My voice and my guitar are almost interchangeable. When I'm in my best space, when I really know the song, I can sing it really well, and I know the chords perfectly. I know where I am at all times on the guitar. And I'm totally comfortable with those two things. There's a certain thing that happens, which I like a lot: there's the thing of feeling very continuous as the person who's a guitar player, and the person who's a singer. Which is a nice feeling — I can't describe it any other way. It's a feeling, really. And, like I say, when I'm on, when the band’s on, when everything is on, that thing starts to become almost magical. I really like it.

 

AUDIO: “Peggy-O” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (3:52-4:22) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: The way I start is by learning the literal melody of a tune, if there is one. Learning the literal melody. And then I construct solos as though that were happening. I'm either playing with it or against it. This is a very loose description, because everything else works in there, too. Then, later, I start to see other kinds of connections. But one of my first processes in learning a new tune is to learn the literal melody — how to play the literal melody, in any position.

 

AUDIO: “Peggy-O” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (4:27-4:58) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: If they don't have a real great melody tying the changes together in some sense, then the changes themselves don't mean anything to me. My ear draws me to melodies, so that's usually the thing I learn. I just, I start from there classically, playing the melody as though I were singing it. And then I start to build off of that.

 

AUDIO: “Peggy-O” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (5:00-5:34) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: I think it’s safe to say that “Peggy-O” has the kind of melody Garcia is referring to. Or, for that matter, “Candyman.” I love this version, where Garcia finds some really cool phrasings for his vocals.

 

AUDIO: “Candyman” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (0:38-1:09) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: I’ve never really tracked how often Garcia put in the extra “s” in womens; maybe there should be a tag for that in JerryBase. There are lots of different classes of arrangement changes in the Dead’s songbook. “Candyman” possesses at least one of those. Here’s how it sounded at Winterland in early 1974, now on Dave’s Picks 13, and then we’ll flip to the ‘78 version.

 

AUDIO: “Candyman” [Dave’s Picks 13, 2/22/74] (1:25-1:38)

 

AUDIO: “Candyman” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (1:57-2:13) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Here’s Garcia speaking on WHMR in 1978.

 

JERRY GARCIA [11/27/78]: Phil isn't singing anymore. So all the songs that we used to do that he sang an important part on, we've had to drop [them], until we were able to work out the parts with Donna. Some songs we haven't done simply because we haven't worked them out. And other ones, like “Uncle John's Band” and “St. Stephen,” are ones that we had to rework so that Donna would learn the top parts.

 

JESSE: And Bob Weir speaking with David Gans in 1977, from Conversations with the Dead.

 

BOB WEIR [8/77]: Yeah, he blew his voice. Improper singing technique, essentially. There, but for fortune... He just wasn't singing properly and he abused his throat. You can only do that so long before you just have no range left. He could get it back with an operation, but, hell, it’s an expensive operation. And then after that, you can't talk, you can't whisper or anything for six weeks. And then you come back very slowly. You can get your range back. Boy, I just don't want to lose my voice. Singing is the most fun I know. Playing is a great get-off, but the only one thing that I know that tops it is singing.

 

AUDIO: “Jack Straw” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (0:34-0:50) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: Here, they open the second set with “Jack Straw,” a traditional first set opening song. So, again, it's the Dead now falling into this rhythm of the format that would be around for 17 years, but they're still constantly messing with it every night.

 

AUDIO: “Jack Straw” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (5:40-6:11) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: The core of the second set is built around the first of the Dead’s two singles from 1977.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (0:47-1:03) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: The Dead debuted their original arrangement of “Dancing in the Street,” the 1964 Motown civil rights anthem, in mid-1966. This one’s from the Fillmore Auditorium on July 3rd, 1966, now on the 30 Trips Around the Sun box. They played it like this through the end of 1971.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [30 Trips Around the Sun, 7/3/66] (0:03-0:36)

 

JESSE: A copyediting note — when it was released by Martha and the Vandellas in 1964, it was titled “Dancing in the Street,” singular, no apostrophe on Dancing. When the Dead revived it in their so-called disco arrangement in 1976 and put it on Terrapin Station, it became “Dancin’ in the Streets,” pluralized with an apostrophe. The late ‘70s arrangement was largely built on this guitar sound.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (1:28-1:45) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: And that guitar sound is Jerry Garcia running his Mu-Tron auto-wah. We’re going to dip into Jon Sievert’s amazing interview to hear Garcia talk a little bit about his effects rig in 1978, which can be heard largely during the second set jam sequences. 

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I use effects with the Grateful Dead. I haven't started using them very much in my band, but I do have a whole rig, an effects rig, that I use with a Grateful Dead that has some standard stuff. It has the Mu-Tron envelope generator.

 

JESSE: The Mu-Tron III is a combination envelope filter and automatic wah-wah pedal. “Dancing in the Street” is one distinct example in this era. Also, Bob Weir’s “Estimated Prophet,” debuted in 1977. This is from April 8th in Jacksonville.

 

AUDIO: “Estimated Prophet” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/8/78] (0:03-0:22) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: And actually, Garcia doesn’t take his opening auto-wah solo on “Fire On the Mountain” on April 11th, so this is from April 8th, too.

 

AUDIO: “Fire On the Mountain” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/8/78] (0:47-1:05) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: A Distortion Plus thing, from MXR. 

 

JESSE: The MXR Distortion Plus gets deployed along with the auto-wah on the solo to “Estimated Prophet.”

 

AUDIO: “Estimated Prophet” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/8/78] (3:41-4:06) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: During the newly delineated “Space” segments, like this one from April 11th at the Fox, you can hear a lot of the pedals on display.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: A Mu-Tron octave divider.

 

AUDIO: “Space” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (1:43-1:56) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: MXR phaser, a Mu-Tron wah-wah pedal and volume pedal—which, I don’t use the volume pedal much. And an analog delay. 

 

JESSE: One reason Garcia didn’t use the volume pedal much is because of one of the new additions to his Wolf guitar when Doug Irwin returned it to him in late 1977. If you look at pictures of the guitar in this era—or any of Garcia’s guitars thereafter—you might notice two guitar cables coming out of it. 

 

JERRY GARCIA [12/77]: I have one innovation in wiring, and that is the second hole. Now, the way this works, because of the wiring of the whole Fender idea, everything comes before the final volume pot. Now, what I've done is created an interrupt stereo, in/out hole. When it's not in, it's just normal. But if I plug it in, then I have a cord where it's a send down one side of the cord, and it's a return up the other — back into the guitar, before the volume pod. Now, what I do, the reason for that is, when you come in after this switch, the pickup selector switch and the tone pods, what's coming through is the pickup’s wide open. Now, when you use outboard devices, fuzz tones and any of those gadgets whose function — the way they work, their behavior is dictated by input voltage. What this does is make it so they always see the same input voltage. They always see full-out pickup input voltage, and they return back into the guitar before the volume pot to the amplifier. So I can set my sounds up—like an envelope generator, like the Mu-Tron envelope thing, which is very voltage-sensitive—so it behaves exactly the way I want. And then I have the option of playing in any volume, based on output.

 

JESSE: That’s a pretty heady concept, and one that took me a little to get my head around. But to linger on it just slightly — somebody once sent us a very nice message asking if we had any interviews with Ram Rod, the Dead’s trusted and long-serving roadie. In the course of talking, Jon Sievert caught some of the elusive Ram Rod, known to some as Lawrence Shurtliff of Pendleton, Oregon.

 

LAWRENCE “RAM ROD” SHURTLIFF [6/78]: Lawrence Louis Shurtliff. [laughs] Erase that please! 

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Ram Rod.

 

JON SIEVERT [6/78]: You don't want to talk into the mic?

 

LAWRENCE “RAM ROD” SHURTLIFF [6/78]: I'm not opposed to talking into the microphone. 

 

JESSE: But Ram Rod relented. Here’s Garcia and Ram Rod talking through Garcia’s signal chain, Ram Rod is the voice slightly closer to the microphone.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: So, octave [divider] and envelope filter. Octave divider is first in line. 

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: Right.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: The envelope filter, the Mu-Tron.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: It’s a Mu-Tron, okay.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Is the next.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: Then it goes to the distortion?

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Distortion device.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: Then it goes to a phasing device, to a wah-wah pedal —

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: To the analog delay —

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: To an analog delay —

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Back to a network box.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: Back to this box. Then to his instrument.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Up the stereo cord —

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: Up the other side of the stereo cord.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: So, your control over dynamics is a function of the volume control. In other words, they are stable — no matter how I set them, they won’t vary.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: And if he flips the switch, there's no jump in gain or loss in gain.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Right.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: With the amplifier.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Real simple. Anybody can do it. It’s a great —

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: Yeah. Troubleshooting it, ‘Why’s all this shit gets crazy?’ He can kick it out, and it's still the same gain. There's not a big jump, or a lot.

 

JESSE: It was a long-term problem they’d spent some time thinking about.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: Some devices, when you turn them off, the device isn’t active, but the combine of its network represents a load on the circuit. We’ve endeavored to straighten that across, and we've been pretty successful at it.

 

JESSE: Though Ram Rod didn’t design any of the circuitry, he had a functional knowledge of how much of the Dead’s gear worked.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: I will say that I am responsible for the guitars in the Grateful Dead, and the things that they have to deal with, from picks to speakers.

 

JESSE: If a guitar needed to go someplace for a repair, Ram Rod was its first stop. And if Ram Rod couldn’t fix it, he’d find the person who could.

 

RAM ROD [6/78]: The repair guys are guys that I've known for years and years and years — Rick Turner, Ron Wickersham. [Glen] Quan has worked on a lot of our things. Doug Irwin. [They’re] essentially who built Jerry’s instrument, electronically as well as physically. Electronically, on Phil’s instruments, there’s Ron Wickersham and [George] Mundy, who designed the electronics and networks within Phil’s basses — which I haven’t, and I can’t, fix. So, I can’t say I’m responsible for Phil’s basses. But I am responsible to Phil for his instruments, and I know George Mundy and Rick Turner and Ron Wickersham personally. I can be a buffer, as far as that goes. That seems to be my strongest quality. 

 

JESSE: Ram Rod’s role as buffer extended past the instruments and into nearly all elements of the Dead’s creative lives, an indispensable part of the operation. When Garcia talks about keeping his equipment stable, I have to think he’s talking about Ram Rod, too.

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/78]: The more elements that I can keep stable, the more you can concentrate on your playing, and not be continually adapting your technique to your equipment. 

 

JESSE: Though the Dead’s gear constantly changed, with the rise and fall of the Wall of Sound, there were actually some unchanging elements.

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/78]: The first amplifier that I used with the Warlocks was a [Fender] Twin Reverb. I bought a Twin Reverb I guess the first year they came out. I guess it was ‘64 or ‘63, somewhere around there. My original one may still be being used by Mike Wilhelm from the Charlatans. He bought it from me. It’s a great amplifier; it really is good. But I am using the second one. And now, it's only a chassis. I only use the preamp — just the chassis and the front of it, stuff like that. But it's basically the same old Fender —

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: — preamp, Fender Twin Reverb. An old Blackface, and going through a McIntosh 2300 that drives four JBL 12-inch speakers. It's real simple.

 

JESSE: That about covers Garcia’s tone in ‘78, but certainly not all of his playing, which we’ll return to shortly. First, more of the “Dancing in the Street” jam. By this point, Garcia has turned off the auto-wah and is playing with a pretty clean tone.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (5:32-6:02) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: The “Dancing in the Street” unfolded into the evening’s Rhythm Devils segment.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (11:42-12:04) - [dead.net]

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (0:00-0:10) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Once again, it opened up into steel drums, where Jerry Garcia and other non-drumming members of the Dead were very likely playing percussion.

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (13:40-14:00) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: There’s no “Space” segment on the first night in Atlanta. David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: The Rhythm Devils portion, we're still up in that 15-minute range. They come out of “Drums” with “Franklin's Tower.” This is the Dead at their adventurous best. About six months earlier, they dropped “Help On the Way” and “Slipknot!” — so, “Franklin’s Tower” was a bit of a free agent at this time. It could appear anywhere in the setlist. It would sometimes be joined with “[Mississippi] Half-Step [Uptown Toodeloo]” to open a show. It would just appear in strange places, and I… I love that about this.

 

AUDIO: “Franklin’s Tower” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/10/78] (10:45-11:12) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Send out a shout here to my buddy, the other Bill the Drummer, born on this particular April 10th. For the Dead, it was one more Monday night in Atlanta. But then there was Tuesday.

 

April 11th - Atlanta

 

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (1:13-1:19) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Steve Maizner hadn’t actually taped the first night at the Fox, just enjoyed himself.

 

STEVE MAIZNER: Some of these shows I record, and some I don't. It’s just, it's too much to do it every night for me. Maybe I like to get too loose, or something like that. Anyway, I did tape the Florida shows, but I did not tape the first night in the Fox Theater. But the second one, I did.

 

JESSE: He had some help from an unexpected source: front of house engineer Dan Healy.

 

STEVE MAIZNER: My ticket was right in front of the soundboard, and I think I had a problem. Maybe I didn't have any batteries. Healy and I had struck up a casual friendship, and I had asked him, “Hey, can I borrow some power from you? Can I plug in somewhere?” And that led to, “Well, what are you recording on?” I go, “Well, I got a Nak[amichi] 550, and I got three mics.” And he goes, “Oh, man, listen — you’ve got to set up the mics like this.” And he was working on, I don't know exactly what he would call it, but I'll say something like a surround sonic experience, where sound was coming from all over the hall.

 

JESSE: In 1974, the Dead had toured the world and elsewhere with what’s now known as the Wall of Sound, but opted for smaller systems when they returned to the road a few years later. In the spring of 1978, they were rocking a system from the East Coast PA crew the Clair Brothers. But the Wall was still present. For some of this period, and I’m not totally sure if spring ‘78 is included, the set-up included a monitor set-up built by Harry Popick that incorporated 12-inch and 5-inch speakers from the Wall, cut down into monitor wedges. The whole system was tweaked by Wiz Leonard and Dan Healy, who also occasionally offered taper advice to people like Steve Maizner.

 

STEVE MAIZNER: And he goes, “Look, your ears don't go forward when you’re watching. They go off to the side. They're like omnidirectional microphones. You’re using directional microphones at the PA because it sounds good, but it's not picking up what our ears actually hear.” And so he convinced me, and helped me set up these two mics, put them to the left and the right, and the third mic, centered.

 

JESSE: Unfortunately, Steve hasn’t yet digitized his three-mic recording of the Fox, so our Betty Boards will have to do. David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: When I got these two shows, I liked them both — but I like this one better.

 

JESSE: We’ll use the “Bertha” opener to mention another subtle musical change, one that I didn’t notice until recently after decades of listening to the Dead, and didn’t even notice in time for the previous season of the Deadcast. Here’s how “Bertha” sounded at the beginning of 1974. Pay attention to the groove and the way Bill Kreutzmann is playing it.

 

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Dave’s Picks 42, 2/23/74] (0:02-0:10)

 

JESSE: Now here’s what the groove sounded like a little bit later in the year, at Hartford at the end of July, now Dave’s Picks 2.

 

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Dave’s Picks 2, 7/31/74] (0:18-0:38)

 

JESSE: Between the Pacific Northwest tour in May and the shows in June 1974, drummer Billy Kreutzmann altered the “Bertha” groove, falling back into the pocket, so it feels more like half time, kind of like “They Love Each Other.” The groove stayed like this until after the band’s year off from touring and into 1977. But somewhere in mid-1977, it became a little more variable, depending on how the drummers felt it that night. Here it is again from the second night at the Fox in ‘78, where they play it with the funkier ‘74 feel.

 

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (0:24-0:34) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: And here’s how they played it the very next night in North Carolina, leaning into the more straighthead pulse.

 

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Duke ‘78, 4/12/78] (0:27-0:44) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

JESSE: One of the main subtle things to listen for in Grateful Dead shows that I know my ear will now be attuned to. I like the happening and playful space Garcia and Weir find inside the “Tennessee Jed” bounce.

 

AUDIO: “Tennessee Jed” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (6:49-7:22) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: But the real highlight comes in the second set with the 23-minute “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire On the Mountain.”

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (1:26-1:50) - [dead.net]

 

The band

 

JESSE: It’s a sweet reading of the song, sounding alive in motion from the very first beat. In accordance with them being in a small theater, Donna Jean does some improvising too, not always a given in the post-hiatus years.

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (4:48-5:20) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Let’s use this sparkling, bubbling example of a “Scarlet Begonias” jam as a soundtrack to Jerry Garcia’s thoughts about the Dead’s group improvisation from his extended 1978 interview with Jon Sievert.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Every role has been redefined in the Grateful Dead. Like, Phil doesn't play conventionally. The drummers… nobody plays conventionally! Everybody has to solve that problem of how to fit into unconventional contexts. So it feeds back into itself. Everybody is unconventional in that context, and I appreciate how difficult it is. It’s one of the things that is interesting about the Grateful Dead, that my logic is not anybody else's logic. Everybody has their own logic. So the way Weir develops, for example, always surprises me, because the Weir develops is unlike the way I develop. Same with Phil, and everybody else in the band. Everybody develops in a different way, and with a different sense to their development. And the interesting thing about that is that, all of a sudden, there's somebody who's got a whole bunch of ideas that you haven't stumbled on, and might never.

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (6:10-6:37) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: The Grateful Dead is… we've never developed as a group. I mean, we develop as a group in a certain kind of large sense, but everybody's individual development has that thing of being surprising. Interesting. Entertaining, if you will. Any of those things. So that's one of the things that keeps the Grateful Dead an interesting thing to be involved in.

 

JESSE: You can hear Garcia engage the auto-wah here. 

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (6:40-7:00) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: There was a good deal to say about his partner in guitar-ing, Bobby Weir.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: He's really a fine player, and he doesn't get the credit he deserves.

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (8:37-9:05) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I think he's the finest rhythm guitar player on wheels right now. Weir has really created a definition for his own playing, an approach to his playing that is really amazing. That's an amazing achievement. Playing with Weir, he’s like my left hand or something. He and I have a long and serious conversation going on musically. The whole thing is the complementary nature—

 

JON SIEVERT [6/78]: Incredible energy.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: — that is always fascinating to me. We have fun, that's the thing. And we've designed our playing to work against each other.

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (9:16-9:40) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: His playing, in a way, really puts my playing in the only kind of meaningful context it can enjoy. That's a hard idea to communicate. But, in the Grateful Dead, any serious analysis of the music that we're playing—the way we're playing, the way we're approaching it—you would see that things are designed really appropriately. There are some passages and some kinds of ideas that, jeez… I mean, if I had to solve the problem, how do I create a harmonic bridge between two of these things that are happening, rhythmically, with two drums, this amazing power on a rhythm level; Phil’s innovative bass style, it’s unlike anyone else. Weir’s ability to solve that particular kind of problem is really extraordinary.

 

AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (11:20-11:43) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: And he knows how to do that thing of color. He's a guy who has a really beautiful grasp of altering chords. His way of coloring things. Something that's like with a minor 7th feel, he can sneak in other flavors that really influence what I can do. All of a sudden there's this augmented voice. Weir’s got extraordinarily large hands, so he's able to voice chords… to do some of those close voicings that you can't… I mean, you have to have really big hands!

 

JON SIEVERT [6/78]: Long reach.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Yeah. And he can pull those things off. They're just part of the flow of his playing. And he does stuff that's boggling. Mind boggling, really.

 

AUDIO: “Fire On the Mountain” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (0:53-1:13) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [11/27/78]: For example, when I’m singing, it's common for Bob to be signaling dynamic changes, or accents. He's gotten real good at calling accents. He can get the whole band to accent, like, on the 2 on the end of 3, just with a signal. And it ends up sounding amazing. Of course, for years, it’d sound awful. Three people would catch it, four wouldn’t.

 

AUDIO: “Fire On the Mountain” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (7:12-7:36) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: And that’s just the start of the second set. David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: You get a very late version of “Sunrise.” Donna Jean, by this point, had started moving towards “From the Heart of Me” that would appear on Shakedown Street. So, similar to Brent having his two early songs, “Far From Me” and “Easy to Love You,” she had her two songs in ‘77 and ‘78. So, “Sunrise” — beautiful version.

 

AUDIO: “Sunrise” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (0:12-0:33) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Written about the band’s friend Rolling Thunder, “Sunrise” was Donna Jean’s first original song for the Grateful Dead, and one we’ll get into down the line.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: I remember Dick Latvala told me he went to the East Coast for a couple of the spring of ‘77 shows. He went to the Hartford show, and he was talking about “Sunrise.”And he said—I don't think he had heard it yet, it was a brand-new song—“I saw Donna, and she was doing some… I thought it was opera!” Dick, who was a Dead Head who had lived and breathed this music in ‘77, and anytime, he said: “It was like they were doing some kind of opera thing!” And she’s filling that 16,000-seat venue with her pipes.

 

AUDIO: “Sunrise” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (2:29-2:44) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: “Terrapin Station” was the big set piece that led into Rhythm Devils. Barely a year old, there wasn’t much jamming in it yet. At the very end of 1978, starting at the Capital Centre in November, they would start to develop what I call the starlight jam, between the final verse of the Lady With A Fan section and the “since the end is never told” transition into “Terrapin” proper. It would become an ineffable, and uneffable, part of the song.

 

AUDIO: “Terrapin Station” [11/27/78] (4:40-5:04)

 

JESSE: But, on this box set, that was seven months away. In the spring of ‘78, they were still sticking to the libretto mostly, though you can hear Garcia and Keith Godchaux playing with a few brief new harmonies in the outro.

 

AUDIO: “Terrapin Station” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (10:17-10:36) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Like many nights of the tour, there are scene reports of Garcia and others joining Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart for the Rhythm Devils segment, playing steel drums and other percussion. 

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (8:11-8:41) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: One musical moment I like in this version is when the steel drums and the other chaos pair up with what I think is a balafon. 

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (11:20-11:33) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: While the drummers and the other drummers were drumming, Steve Maizner flashed on what engineer Dan Healy had told him about mixing for the room.

 

STEVE MAIZNER: It seemed like everybody was involved. Roadies would come out with pots and pans, and it was just very, very exciting. And sure enough, I think probably during the Rhythm Devils, I heard sound coming behind me, and I told him after the show. He was so excited.

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (14:30-14:50) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: Another bit of a surprise coming out of the 15-minute Rhythm Devils: a little spacey jam before they kick into “Iko Iko.” “Iko” had been in the repertoire very sporadically for about a year. It had joined in St. Louis on May 15 of ‘77. And it was a song that became something different. It became a really upbeat party song when I was seeing the Dead in the later ‘80s, a shorter song and it would be really, really high-energy. These ones are not high-energy.

 

AUDIO: “Iko Iko” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (1:06-1:36) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: “Iko Iko” had come into the Dead’s repertoire during the fabled spring ‘77 tour, though they were still feeling their way through its groove, and it was pretty similar to “Not Fade Away” in some early versions. Here’s the debut from St. Louis, now on the May 1977 box.

 

AUDIO: “Iko Iko” [May 1977, 5/15/77] (2:32-2:56)

 

JESSE: To me, the Fox ‘78 version is notable because it’s the first one where they find a feel for it that has its own identity. 

 

AUDIO: “Iko Iko” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (1:50-2:14) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: They're introspective, almost like a “Not Fade Away,” without the intensity of “Not Fade Away.” Those big explosive things that “Not Fade Away” would do. And I love the groove. It's almost meditative Grateful Dead music, where they get into it and the drummers are clearly having fun. Donna sounds great. Jerry loves it. They love this song, you can really tell how much fun they have playing it.

 

JESSE: I love the way Garcia digs into the lyrics on this version.

 

AUDIO: “Iko Iko” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (2:27-2:53) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Garcia spoke a bit about “Iko Iko” in a July 1981 interview with Greg Harrington. 

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/10/81]: The original rock and roll version of “Iko Iko,” the Dixie Cups.

 

AUDIO: “Iko Iko” [The Dixie Cups, The Very Best of the Dixie Cups] (0:20-0:33) - [Spotify]

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/10/81]: “Iko Iko” is all this sort of codified bayou talk, like Creole and all that stuff, yeah. It’s full of little stuff that you can’t know about unless you know something about that whole world. 

 

AUDIO: “Iko Iko” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] [9:01-9:15] - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: All in all, it was a pretty swell Tuesday in Atlanta. The Dead played a few smaller venues than the Fox in 1978, but not many, and a lot of them were field houses or other kinds of dumps. They’d return to the Uptown in Chicago a few times and they’d make their last visit to their beloved Boston Music Hall in the fall, but the smaller rooms were increasingly the domain of the Jerry Garcia Band, the Bob Weir Band, or other side trips.

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/10/81]: I like having the range, all the way from little clubs to huge arenas, because there's definitely different scales of energy in which you address the music, and larger rooms bring out a kind of grandness and a largeness in the music that you wouldn't get in a smaller room, or that you wouldn't necessarily get in theaters and so forth. 

 

JESSE: The end result of Bill Graham’s phrase about the Dead being the only ones who do what they do, is another obvious thing that’s not necessarily true about many of the Dead’s contemporaries — there’s nowhere else, or when, the music at these shows could’ve happened. 

 

AUDIO: “Johnny B. Goode” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/11/78] (3:55-4:05) - [dead.net]

 

BOB WEIR [4/11/78]: [in a cartoonishly light, high-pitched voice] … thank you!

 

JESSE: Yes, to reiterate what Weir said: thank you!