#261 - Grateful Dead - American Beauty (1970)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – 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 was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area 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 name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, "Jerry picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial". In a Garcia biography it was not so surprisingly said that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time.
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. While rock and roll bands often rehearse a standard set, played with minor variations, the Grateful Dead did not prepare in this way. 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.
The Grateful Dead toured constantly throughout their career, playing more than 2,300 concerts. They promoted a sense of community among their fans, who became known as "Deadheads", many of whom followed their tours for months or years on end. Around concert venues, an impromptu communal marketplace known as 'Shakedown Street' was created by Deadheads to serve as centers of activity where fans could buy and sell anything from grilled cheese sandwiches to home-made t-shirts and recordings of Grateful Dead concerts.
The Grateful Dead began its 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 Workingman's Dead, which we talked about a few weeks ago, and today's album American Beauty, both released in 1970. These records largely featured the band's laid-back acoustic musicianship and more traditional song structures. With their rootsy, eclectic stylings heard on these albums, the band pioneered the hybrid Americana genre.
Mickey Hart took time off from the Grateful Dead beginning in February 1971, but rejoined the Grateful Dead for good in October 1974. In late 1971, Pigpen was joined by another keyboardist, Keith Godchaux. 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 theHollywood 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 that tour is often considered to be one of the best performances of their career. Iin 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.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – AMERICAN BEAUTY
American Beauty is the fifth studio album by the Grateful Dead, and debuted in November 1970, just 4 months after their previous release. The album continued the folk rock and country music style of their previous album Workingman's Dead, both of which were innovative at the time for their fusion of bluegrass, rock and roll, folk, and country music. Lyricist Robert Hunter commented "We went back into American folk tradition but, being experimenters, nothing would do but that we try to reinvent that." Compared to Workingman's Dead, American Beauty had even less lead guitar work from Jerry Garcia, who increasingly filled the void with pedal steel guitar.
American Beauty was the result of a prolific period of the songwriting partnership of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. Hunter frequently made use of motifs common to American folkloreto illustrate themes involving love and loss, life and death, beauty and horror, and chaos and order. Phil Lesh's father was dying during the writing and recording this album, and Jerry Garcia's mother had recently passed. In his autobiography, Lesh commented "the magnetism of the scene at Wally Heider's recording studio made it a lot easier for me to deal with [the loss of my father] and my new responsibilities. Some of the best musicians around were hanging there during that period; with Paul Kantner and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, the Dead, Santana, Crosby, Nash, and Neil Young working there, the studio became jammer heaven. Thank the Lord for music; it's a healing force beyond words to describe."