#247 - The Grateful Dead - Live/Dead (1969)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – THE GRATEFUL DEAD
The Grateful Dead were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, country, jazz, bluegrass, blues, rock and roll, reggae, and psychedelia. Their live performances are legendary and lengthy, compiling long instrumental jams. These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead "the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world" The band came to be amid the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. The founding members were Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums).
The Grateful Dead began their career as the Warlocks, a group formed in early 1965 from the remnants of another band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. After finding out there was another band called the Warlocks, they changed to the Grateful Dead, and performed under that name for the first time in San Jose in December 1965. They formed during the era when bands such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones were dominating the airwaves. "The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band", said Bob Weir. "What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing." Former folk-scene star Bob Dylan had recently put out a couple of records featuring electric instrumentation. Grateful Dead members have said that it was after attending a concert by the Lovin' Spoonful that they decided to "go electric" and look for a "dirtier" sound. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir (both of whom had been immersed in the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s), were open-minded about the use of electric guitars. The Grateful Dead's early music (in the mid-1960s) was part of the process of establishing what "psychedelic music" was. They developed their "psychedelic" playing as a result of meeting Ken Kesey, and subsequently becoming the house band for the Acid Tests he staged.
The 1969 live album Live/Dead did capture the band in-form, but commercial success did not come until their follow up album released later in the year, American Beauty, continued the folk and country music style of today's album. Their 5th album peaked at #30. After that, Mickey Hart took time off from the Grateful Dead beginning in February 1971, but rejoined the Grateful Dead for good in October 1974. Following the Grateful Dead's "Europe '72" tour, Pigpen's health had deteriorated to the point that he could no longer tour with the band. His final concert appearance was in 1972, at the Hollywood Bowl, and died a few months later due to complications from liver damage. The death of Pigpen did not slow the band down, and it continued with its new members. They soon formed their own record label, Grateful Dead Records. Later that year, they released their next studio album, the jazz-influenced Wake of the Flood. In 1974, they released From the Mars Hotel, but took a hiatus from touring not long after that album's release. Before taking a break from the road, the band performed a series of five concerts that were filmed, and Garcia compiled the footage into The Grateful Dead Movie, a feature-length concert film that would be released in 1977. In September 1975, the Dead released their eighth studio album, Blues for Allah, and resumed touring in June 1976. The tour supporting their next release, Terrapin Station is held in high regard by their fans, and their concert at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York tis often considered to be one of the best performances of their career. In the early 1980s, Garcia's health began to decline. His drug habits caused him to lose his liveliness on stage. After beginning to curtail his opiate usage in 1985 gradually, Garcia slipped into a diabetic coma for several days in July 1986. After he recovered, the band released In the Dark in July 1987, which became their best selling studio album and produced their only top-40 single, "Touch of Grey". Also that year, the group toured with Bob Dylan, as heard on the album Dylan & the Dead.
Jerry Garcia passed away about a month after their final show with him in the Summer of 1995. Since that year, the former members of the Grateful Dead have also pursued solo music careers. Both Bob Weir & RatDog, and Phil Lesh and Friends have performed many concerts and released several albums. Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have also each released a few albums. In 2015, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann, and Hart reunited for five concerts called "Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead". The shows were performed on June 27 and 28 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, and on July 3, 4 and 5 at Soldier Field in Chicago. The band stated that this would be the final time that Weir, Lesh, Hart, and Kreutzmann would perform together. They were joined by Trey Anastasio of Phish on guitar, Jeff Chimenti on keyboards, and Bruce Hornsby on piano. Demand for tickets was very high. The Chicago shows have been released as a box set of CDs and DVDs.
The Grateful Dead have sold over 16 million albums in their career. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the Grateful Dead No. 57 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2007, they received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2011, a recording of the Grateful Dead's May 8, 1977 concert at Cornell University's Barton Hall was selected for induction into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Twelve members of the Grateful Dead (the eleven official performing members plus Robert Hunter) were inducted into the RnR HOF in 1994, and Bruce Hornsby was their presenter.
Bands associated with the expansion of the "jam scene" include Phish, The String Cheese Incident, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and the Disco Biscuits. Many of these groups began to look past the American roots music that the Grateful Dead drew inspiration from, and incorporated elements of progressive rock, hard rock, and electronica.
Bill Graham said of the Grateful Dead, "They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones that do what they do." Often (both in performance and on recording) the Dead left room for exploratory, spacey soundscapes. Their live shows, fed by an improvisational approach to music, were different from most touring bands. Garcia stated in a 1966 interview, "We don't make up our sets beforehand. We'd rather work off the tops of our heads than off a piece of paper." They maintained this approach throughout their career. For each performance, the band drew material from an active list of a hundred or so songs. They appeared at many legendary shows: the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Festival Express train tour across Canada in 1970.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – LIVE/DEAD
Live/Dead is the first official live album released by the Grateful Dead. Recorded over a series of concerts in early 1969 and released later the same year, it was the first live rock album to use 16-track recording. Bill Kreutzmann explained, "We got our hands on the latest in recording technology — a sixteen-track recorder — and we hauled it up the steps of the Avalon, and later the Fillmore West, and we became the first band ever to make a live sixteen-track recording. We weren’t trying to make history; we were just trying to record a live album. ... Studio versions could never do those songs justice, but advances in live recording meant that we could bring the live Dead experience to vinyl...It remains one of our best-loved albums. Its appeal was that it took great 'you-had-to-be-there' live versions of songs like 'Dark Star' and 'The Eleven' and put them right in people’s living rooms."
To relieve debt accrued with their record label from their recent album Aoxomoxoa, as well as fulfill their record contract, the band decided to record a live album. They were also interested in releasing an album more representative of their live performances and actual musicianship, as opposed to the in-studio experimentation of previous albums.
Unlike in later years, in early 1969 the contents of the Dead's set lists varied little. They improvised the medley of "Dark Star"/"St. Stephen"/"The Eleven" several times a week, which enabled them to explore widely within the songs' simple frameworks. The "Dark Star / St. Stephen" pairing was taken from the February 27, 1969 show at the Fillmore West; "The Eleven" and "Turn On Your Love Light" were from the January 26, 1969 show at the Avalon Ballroom; "Death Don't Have No Mercy," "Feedback," and "And We Bid You Goodnight" were recorded March 2, 1969, at the Fillmore West
The title has a double meaning. It refers both to the band (the "Dead") playing live, and is an oxymoron, contrasting the two words in apparent contradiction. The artwork, created also illustrated this juxtaposition. The word "Live" is seen on the front cover, and the word "Dead" fills the back cover of the gatefold.
This album peaked at It peaked at #62 on the charts. It was met with very positive reviews, with Village Voice critic Robert Christgau writing that it "contains the finest rock improvisation ever recorded"[ and Rolling Stone magazine's Lenny Kaye saying it foreshadows "where rock is likely to be in about five years"