Grateful Dead

by Jesse Jarnow

The Deadcast’s season finale unpacks the closing song of From the Mars Hotel, “Ship of Fools,” the just-exactly-perfect springboard to discuss the Grateful Dead in late 1974. That October, the band began an 18-month break from touring, filming what became The Grateful Dead Movie during their five action-packed “retirement” shows at Winterland in San Francisco. It would be a multi-year process that we’ll hopefully revisit, focusing this episode on the shows themselves.

Sometime earlier that summer, none other than Bob Dylan hired David Grisman to give him a series of mandolin lessons, visiting Grisman at home in Stinson Beach. One evening, Grisman took Dylan up the hill to jam with Jerry Garcia, which we discussed when I interviewed Grisman last year for Aquarium Drunkard.

When the Dead decommissioned the Wall of Sound, pieces went to a number of smaller bands, including Osiris, led by Kevin McKernan, Pigpen’s little brother. You can hear one of their demos here, thanks to our buddy Sully. Journalist Brian Anderson is tracking the whereabouts of other pieces of the Wall in his forthcoming Loud and Clear, a book about the Wall of Sound to be published next year by St. Martin’s Press.

Thanks as always to David Gans for use of audio sourcing from his book Conversations With the Dead, available along with other crucial Dead books from his site.