Grateful Dead

Wow! I didn't realise the stage was so close to the stands (not expecting a big audience then??) Cool photo - got any of the band at the show itself?

They opened with Truckin. Only a handful of audience dancing.First Suguree. Then Pig Pen kicks in with "Hard to Handle" and the crowd rushes down into the empty open pit in front of the stage. I had been in the 10th row center, but it was more than my 17 year old angst ridden soul could take so I joined the crowd in front of the stage. And yes a fog drifted through the air. Not the tear gas the cops used outside, but up in the air with the moon showing through now and then. Next day Jerry's birthday. A few days later I travel to Bay Area for my first time to visit my sister. Two nights at the B.C.T..Then hitch-hike up to Oregon to visit my brother and his wife (still married) who were living in a tipi nine miles past Lowell. "I was 17 in 71"

Its funny.. I JUST HEARD ALL ABOUT THIS SHOW the other day.. And now its posted up here.. LOL.. Anyhow, The reason the stage is so close I heard was they ONLY sold something like 7000-10,000 tickets for the show.. And the place HOLDS OVER 80,000 people!!! SO, OUTSIDE there where TONS of people who crashed the fence and rushed inside (Or Tried to) and A HUGE RIOT Happened outside of the Yale Bowl here in New haven,CT-I live here... SADLY , After all the Pigs in RIOT GEAR and retarded people who crashed the fences, they RUINED CONCERTS at the YALE BOWL FOREVER!!! In FACT the WHO was SUPPOSED to play there like a month or so later.. THEY CANCELED THE SHOW!!! PISSED OFF A TON OF FOLKS!!! (I am STILL pissed, because there is a 100,000 seat ARENA about ten minutes from my house and it has NOT HAD A CONCERT SINCE THIS DEAD CONCERT IN 1971!!!!!)" SAD... I JUST HEARD THAT STORY TWO OR THREE DAYS AGO!! IT IS TRUE.... SADLY.. EVERYTIME I drive by the Yale Bowl I think "What a damn WASTE!" Too bad New haven SUCKS.... They JUST KNOCKED DOWN THE NEW HAVEN COLISEUM :-( (I KNOW IT WAS A CRAPPY VENUE BUT, IT WAS WHERE I SAW SO MANY SHOWS, SO MANY HOCKEY GAMES< AND EVEN THE DAMN CIRCUS WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID!!! AND THEY ARE NOT RE_BUILDING ANY ARENA FOR US!!! THAT SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Noit That I mind going to Hartford (40 min drive) BUT, to THINK of seeing GRERAT shows ten minutes from me and to have it ALL LOST makes me SO SAD... and EVERY TRUE NEW HAVEN PERSON AGREES WITH ME!!! DAMN NEW HAVEN-All they care about is YALE COLLEGE(OVERRATED!!!!!) and there DUMB ASS STUDENTS WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT A CROSSWALK IS......... LOL.... A little history from a LIFELONG New Haven RESIDENT!!! PEACE! Cosmic Travelers - Gypsy Blue GLASS @ BEST PRICES!!! JUST ASK!!!! -PEACE- "If Your not A HEAD - You are BEHIND!"

What a wonderful photo. So much to look at. One must wonder about the painted stage backdrop. A loaner for the day from the Yale Art Dept? Doesn't look like it would have been part of the gear the band lugged around from place to place back then. I suppose it might have been cosmic by '71 standards, who knows? Doesn't seem very Dead tho.' I've never seen a photo of the band onstage from 7/31 /71 either but in Gan's book PITB there's a spectacular photo of Bob gassing up the band's limo on the way to the venue this day. Self Serve Baby!

...actually, there have been other shows at Yale bowl since, Gypsy Blue- Co, including my first concert ever in 1973 or'74-The Beach Boys, who used the same endzone stage configuration-Tales of the riot that accompanied the GD's '71 show were widely told throughout the area for years, damned rowdy hippies! This should have been a great venue, but the university didn't know how to "do" shows, security, crowd management, etc.My first GD show was an outdoor show at Colt Park, in '76, and the scene was kaotic, violent, crazy, magical-it was a wild period, and we concert goers weren't treated very well by the producers, security, cops, and the outdoor shows from this period seemed to have the most problems-gate crashing, brutal security thugs,...What do you want for, what, $4-6 a ticket, or the like! Times have certainly changed, some changes for the better, some not! NFA!

I loved that evening of music. In the summer in Yale Bowl. Had a great time. I recall the clouds of smoke outside the bowl and did not realize until later what had taken place. I can't wait to order this live set and revisit that day. Peace, Edje

I guess they did have a few more shows there. but NOT MANY.. And I know as a fact that New haven canceled ALL CONCERTS at the bowl for that year.... I guess they DID try again (I am young) and hold shows there but ultimately ( I looked into this whole issue a bit more-Living in new haven that is pretty easy..) They DID have a FEW shows there after 72 including the Beach boys show you saw BUT, due to OTHER riots outside and bad security/police control, and a few idiots here and there (its always those FEW!) And the Neighbors around the Yale bowl ALL started complaining about NOISE, GARBAGE/DUMPING, RIOTS, PEOPLE ION THEIR YARDS/ HOUSES (HOME INVASIONS, ETC...... And I don't know what date was the TRUE end, but this show SADLY DID BEGIN the whole DOWNHILL spiral that ended with NO CONCERTS there EVER AGAIN! All they hold their now is YALE football games (BORING!) and ONCE IN A BLUE MOON a USA VS BRASIL SOCCER GAME (Or Something) NO CONCERTS NOW ANYMORE! I have heard the year 76 and 77 or around there they killed the shows forever... But this really was the one show that got people's THE LOCAL (MAYORS/GOVENORS/POLITICIANS AND RESIDENTS) attention on the matter sadly.... EVEN though they DID have a FEW more (WAY SPACED OUT - TIME WISE) concerts there.. RARE though....Must have been cool to see the Beach boys! I wish i got to see even ONE show there! Cosmic Travelers - Gypsy Blue GLASS @ BEST PRICES!!! JUST ASK!!!! -PEACE- "If Your not A HEAD - You are BEHIND!"

My mind is blown. The quintessential quintet. 50 times in 71.

There were a couple of firsts for me at this concert, the first being the search lights and cops in riot gear upon leaving the concert very stoned and tripping. The second was that I could have sworn that I heard Jerry sing Okie from Muskogee where he said "we don't take no trips on LSD". But from all my bootleg copies of this concert it just never took place. Damn weird that I must have been tripping a song. Never the less was quite an experience, especially since I had left my lights on during the show and had to push it to start. Thank God for manual transmissions!

I may have been pretty wasted, that evening,but, I distinctly remember a quite a few things that happened at the beginning of that show, that are not on the CD [which makes me believe that the show just released is surely from that time period, but from a different venue. I definately remember, that they played El Paso, in the beginning and something "crazy" happened with the whole vibe during that song. The "Intensity" rose,so fast, that after that song, Phil, Bobby and Jerry just stopped and went into kind of a circular huddle on the stage, that lasted quite a few minutes. Then I remember that they proceeded into an excellent version of Dark Star. Then, something else. very "wierd" happened during that song,[that's not apparent on the CD]. During the latter part of that song, Jerry, went into one of his "signature", intense "repetitive riffs" that, I could only recall from the 1969 original Live-Dead recording. At that point, the vibrations got so "heavy", that EVERYONE in the stands, jumped the wall and rushed the stage. Next thing I recall is all of us were packed together like sardines and literally " falling" on each other, but nobody hit the ground because we were so closely grouped and wasted to the max and then, Dark Star ended. Bobby then, did something new, with Ron-"Pigpen" {they started doing around that time}, which was "intoducing" each other to the audience at the beginning of the show, kind of like a mutual admiration intro like; "here he is, the baddest guy in show business...Pigpen" or let's hear it for the prettiest guy in show business...Bobby, and then they flew into Hard-to Handle, which I remember, was as good as the version you can listen to on on of the CD's {Hollywood Palladium}, also available on the Phil Zone CD. My big Question; why didn't I hear that Bobby "intro" of Ron on the Road Trips CD!? After Hard to Handle I don't remember all that much, about the rest of that set, except for two things; 1[ I hallucinated that the Dead were in Spacesuits {like on the back cover of Mars Hotel} and 2] that It was just a little too intense being that high and staying on that crowded football field, colsely packed in with all those crazy "tripping" people, so I somehow got back to my seat, in the stands for the 2nd part of the show. Another thing, I'm 99.9% certain about, is that Jerry reprised his ultimate original, 11-minute phenominal "jam" tune, from their 1st Warner Bros. Album; Viola Lee Blues. I remember finding and reuniting with then friend/neighbor; Al Pine,{ whom I helped get a ticket to the show} and telling him at the start of Viola; "now, you're going to see how Jerry can play, when he's really into it". Finally,all I have left to say about Yale Bowl-1971, it probably one of the last times, I remember them playing TWO phenominal early tunes great and the audience, being about as WASTED as I have ever witnessed, going back to 2/13/70, at Fillmore East.

Yale Bowl was the FIRST show that I can recall, ever seeing at ANY Dead show, those neon yellow & orange colored, glow in the dark thingees that they sell nowadays, all the time in amusement parks and carnivals...anyone else remember that? Also, it rained that day close up to show time and all the speaker cabinets were beautifully "tie-dyed"!

Pretty awesome stage! I really like how it was set up on the field. People surely have a great space or I mean the place is very spacious so people can really have a good time there. 

wow, i'm the guy, my friends and i, who brought the light sticks to that show. it was indeed the first ever appearance of these things in a public venue anywhere. i swear. how do i know this? my father, (rip), worked at a company that made custom machines that assemble products... think in your head like how do 5 packs of throw away razors get assembled, heat sealed and ready for the check out counter at the store... machines do it. my father's company got the job from cyalume(sp?), to create the machine that would fill the cylinders, and assemble the parts into finished light sticks. these things were not on the market yet. soo..when you design and build machines like this, you assemble them at your shop and test them. when you test 'em, they spit out the product. our garage that spring and summer was filling with boxes, 1,000's of these things. by the way, they were all neon green at that point, no other colors. the samples in our garage and that we took to the show were not in the wrapper either, just the bare cylinders. my friends and i were bursting about this as the show got closer. we knew it would be a first, that it would get a big reaction, and it would be a dead show to boot.!! it don't get more cosmic than that for 1971..heh. As i recall, there were 7 of us, 3 guys and 4 girls. we had back packs and shoulder bags filled up with light sticks. how may is that? jeepers, would have to be like 500-700 of them anyhow. the show started when it was still light out, we could barely hold ourselves back until dark to do our ultimate prank. then we started the whole thing, grab a stick, break it, shake it, and throw it, as far as you could. not as dark as i wanted it to be..but who cares. in my memory, the entire end zone of the yale bowl, stopped, even exploded, people cheering, yelling, people around us now, grabbing handfuls of light sticks to throw, watching these green glow things fly around, tossed from area to area of the end zone... the band did not go into their next song while this went on. how long did that take? several hundred sticks..10 mins? it had to be 15 mins i bet before the band went into their next tune. sorry, i don't remember which tune before or after the show stopped. we were maybe 1/3 of the way back from the stage, off center, in line with pig pen. these sticks are flying around, all over it seems, and some..i might say as many as 10 ended up on stage. before the crowd settled down, pig pen had 1 or two standing up, several on amplifiers standing upright. in my mind..as they went into the next tune..jerry had one in his left hand..holds it up...and at the mic says something like "i don't know what these are..but they're pretty fu&&&%%$$# cool". ...our whole lives growing up our garage had stuff like that..boxes of razors...stanley screw drivers...casette tapes...and light sticks.. that's the story.