Grateful Dead

In the fall of 1980, the Grateful Dead celebrated their 15th anniversary with a series of 25 special shows in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Manhattan, playing acoustic sets for the first time in a decade, along with two electric sets each night. The shows would yield the live double-albums Reckoning and Dead Set, as well as a Halloween simulcast that became the concert film Dead Ahead. We went behind this massive undertaking for a special bonus episode of the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast.

Richard Loren managed Old and In the Way and other aspects of Jerry Garcia’s solo career before managing the Grateful Dead themselves in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Richard wrote a fantastic memoir about his time with the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and others called High Notes, available through his website.

Longtime promoter Bill Graham put on the Dead’s 15 shows at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater and threw his heart and soul into the effort. Recently, an extraordinary set of Graham’s production notes surfaced online. He commissioned filmmaker Erik Nelson to make a short documentary about the Warfield shows.

In New York, the action moved over to Radio City Music Hall, for 8 shows ending with a Halloween simulcast co-hosted by comedians Al Franken and Tom Davis. Check out the official program for Radio City. The late Tom Davis authored an incredible book called 39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss. And our friend David Gans most generously loaned us audio from an extended interview he conducted with Davis in 2009, which can be heard in its entirety.

To promote the upcoming Halloween simulcast to 20 movie theaters east of the Mississippi, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir appeared on Good Morning America, looking like they’d been dropped in through the magic of not-yet-invented CGI technology.