GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST
Season 5, Episode 1
Archival interviews:
- Robert Hunter, by Denis McNamera, WLIR, 3/1978.
- Phil Lesh & Bob Weir, by David Gans & Marty Martinez, Grateful Dead Hour #369, 9/1995.
AUDIO: “Cumberland Blues” [Europe ‘72] (3:05-3:35) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: For the third time in four years, the Grateful Dead found themselves making a live album, as Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir reminded the crowd on 29 April, 1972 in Hamburg, Germany.
JERRY GARCIA [4/29/72]: Don't worry, everything's gonna be alright.
BOB WEIR [4/29/72]: You betcha.
JERRY GARCIA [4/29/72]: You see, we're making a record. This is a record. This is all going to be a record someday. So we're doing songs that a lot of people haven't ever heard before. You know how it is. You can’t do the same stuff forever. Not even us.
BOB WEIR [4/29/72]: You end up going colorblind.
AUDIO: “Cumberland Blues” [Europe ‘72] (3:52-4:22) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: There is perhaps no better example of the Grateful Dead preventing colorblindness and doing it their way than Europe ‘72 — the monumental tour and resultant live album released in the fall of that year. As the music industry was embracing the double-live LP as a souvenir of rock & roll glory, the Dead upped the stakes — a triple live set featuring not only big jams and some of their most popular songs, but mixed alongside nearly a full disc’s worth of fantastic new material, played through their highly customized gear and recorded by their dedicated sound team, handmade at every stage until manufacture. The songs became not only Dead Head favorites, but some of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s most enduring work. One fan who saw them for the first time on the Europe ‘72 tour was none other than Elvis Costello.
ELVIS COSTELLO: I don't know whether that was ever Jerry or Robert Hunter's ambition to be sort of brought into the Great American Songbook. But if you only took the songs from ‘70… well, maybe from the record before American Beauty, there's a few there, but particularly from Workingman’s Dead to Mars Hotel. If you only took those songs, they belong in the Great American Songbook — if you only took those. There's a lot more obviously. And there's all the multiple kinds of transformations of these songs, which is what so many Dead Heads are fascinated with, the little nuances of the songs and the different explorations. That, as a songwriter, was always less fascinating to me, although I enjoyed it while I was there in its company.
AUDIO: “Tennessee Jed” [Europe ‘72] (1:19-1:40) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia’s songwriting partner, thought of Europe ‘72 as a continuation of the band’s previous two studio albums of original material: Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, both from 1970, and the subjects of the first two seasons of this podcast. Here’s Hunter speaking with WLIR’s Denis McNamera in 1978.
ROBERT HUNTER [3/78]: There is a third album in what I consider a series — of Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, and Grateful Dead album, the live one. Europe ‘72. There was an album of songs, which wasn't contained to those, which had “He’s Gone,” “Jack Straw,” “Brown-Eyed Women,” “Ramble On Rose,” “Mr. Charlie,” “Tennessee Jed.” This is a fine, fat album of songs. I think in those three albums I hit kind of the peak of my songwriting.
ELVIS COSTELLO: Those ‘72 songs have a strange thing. They refer to ragtime, and they refer to a lot of things that seem to come out of the ‘20s. And even though the music is still played by an electric rock and roll band, I feel that those songs from ‘72 have something in common with the songs of The Band, from around the first two albums particularly, in that it sounds like music that was recorded in the 1880s. Except it's all electric: it’s like weird time travel music. To me, that's more extraordinary: that ability to summon another time, in relatively simple chords—they're not actually that complex—without really sounding like a pastiche. But it's a mixture of the phrasing, the humility of the singing, the lyrical idiom, the lyrical references, and just how unusual those songs are. As a rhythm, the shuffle is strange. The pulsing rhythm that a lot of them have, like “Tennessee Jed” and “Ramble On Rose,” both have this strange kind of rhythm that really isn’t heard in very much other music.
AUDIO: “Ramble On Rose” [Europe ‘72] (0:55-1:19) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
ELVIS COSTELLO: It's like something that's been slowed down enormously from another [source], and that in itself has a psychedelic effect. Because it sounds like a faster rhythm that's been slowed down, until it reached this other groove.
JESSE: Europe ‘72 wasn’t just an album of songs. The liner notes were a literal photo album of the band’s European adventures filled with exquisite images by Mary Ann Mayer, a member of the Dead’s family and co-founder of the Heavy Water Light Show. We’ll be digging deep into the photo archives and posting them as part of a Daily Dose across the Dead’s social media for the duration of this tour’s anniversary. If your ears are currently in the spring of 2022, check it out. Of course, it wasn’t just the musicians on the road. In 1995, Deadcast heroes David Gans and Marty Martinez interviewed Phil Lesh and Bob Weir on the release of Hundred Year Hall, the first individual show from the tour to be issued. We’ll be hearing from this great interview throughout the series. Immense thanks as always to David for the audio. Here’s Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.
PHIL LESH [9/95]: We took 43 people with us. So, I mean, we just didn't feel right about going over there, just abandon[ing] the crew. And everybody wanted to bring their families—
BOB WEIR [9/95]: The office crew and everybody.
PHIL LESH [9/95]: So that, unfortunately, set the precedent. Now, wherever, whenever we go anywhere, that's how we go. So we got there with 43 people, and we, pretty much, everybody stayed on throughout the whole thing. But it was quite a show.
We hoped that we’d play to enough people every night to make it worth our while. It turned out to be fairly successful as I remember correctly. I mean, the halls weren’t sold out. But it wasn't like some places we played in the States, where we’d play in a basketball-sized arena and there'd be 300 people.
JESSE: Vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux joined the band on the road for the first time that spring. Welcome back to the Deadcast, Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: At the time of Europe ‘72, that's what I would call really the good old days. There was such an innocence, a quality, a purpose, passion, that was so pure really, that it was endearing and absolutely irresistible. Even during what people would call this sinful time, amidst the drug culture, sexual revolution and all that, there was something that was so pure about that time. And being in the Grateful Dead and the Grateful Dead family and the Grateful Dead scene at that time was just… it was amazing. It was a comedy routine, constantly.
JESSE: Big Steve Parish had joined the crew a few years before, and earlier in 1972 had begun helping on Jerry Garcia’s side gigs. We’re so pleased to have with us this season, Steve Parish.
STEVE PARISH: We were conquering that continent, there's no question about it — in our own way, in our own time. When we went there, we were a little apprehensive, because we were going through a phase of Americana, all the way. The music was really about American music. The way we dressed, in jeans and boots and t-shirts, all that was very iconic to the cowboys of the West. And our attitude was a lot like that, as big as all outdoors, because we've been fighting since day one with police everywhere. Stagehands weren’t so sure about us, until they got to love us beyond belief. All those people. But at that time, we still had that attitude of: hey, nothing's gonna stop us. Everybody was young, and at their peak. The music was so strong and before the heavy drugs hit. It was still the end of the enlightenment period of a lot of psychedelics and great marijuana, and great hash over there too… lots of good hash. What a great trip. It's one of the highlights of the 70s for us. We had so much fun and we laughed the whole time. We just laughed and laughed. Everybody was healthy and happy.
JESSE: And it wasn’t just an adventure — it was the Grateful Dead coming in hot with one of their tightest lineups, ready to storm the continent. Piano player Keith Godchaux joined the band in the fall of 1971, adding an incredibly instinctive voice to the band’s improvisation, which we talked about at length in our episode titled “Enter Keith Godchaux.” That fall—mostly working with lyricist Robert Hunter—Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Pigpen collectively debuted far more than an album’s worth of new songs, a powerful continuation of the songwriting they’d begun on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, and road-sharpened by the time they packed their bags. We’ll be delving into most of those songs individually over the course of this series. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: This was the Dead really taking it to Europe. No fatigue, no burnout, no staleness to the repertoire. It was fresh every night.
JESSE: Listen to David’s brain short-circuit slightly as he begins to discuss the tour’s many peaks.
DAVID LEMIEUX: The Dead meant business. To me, the tour peaked several times. It peaked in Wembley; it peaked at the Lyceum, beginning and end; and throughout it peaked several times as well. But I do think that little German run, particularly Dusseldorf and Frankfurt, is one peak…
JESSE: What we’re getting at is that pretty much every show of the tour featured the Grateful Dead playing at the absolute top of their game, which is why we’re doing this podcast.
DAVID LEMIEUX: We're talking apples and apples. Before I know it, I'm going to name 22 shows as peaks.
JESSE: This is our thesis, dude. Now, if you will, we ask you to rise and extend a hearty Deadcast salute as we welcome back the architect of the Europe ‘72 tour, Sam Cutler.
SAM CUTLER: For me, personally, what was the major significance of the tour was that that was probably the highlight—the highest point—of the Grateful Dead’s music. I don't think they ever played any better than they played on the Europe ‘72 tour. But it was also, in a historical sense, the whole old kind of San Francisco ‘60s thing morphed into this really, really, really tight jazz band that plays rock and roll, as Miles Davis called them. And it reached its kind of most, if you like, musically sophisticated apogee.
AUDIO: “The Other One” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 9, 4/26/72] (0:00-0:30) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
PHIL LESH [9/95]: I had a really great time on this tour. I didn't bring any family with me or anything, and I was free as a bird and we played great. I remember we played well on this tour, and I enjoyed every bit of it. In that period, Keith was just coming into his own really. And playing with Billy — Billy played like a young god on this tour. I mean, he was everywhere on the drums, and just kicking our butts every which way, which is what drummers live to do.
AUDIO: “The Other One” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 9, 4/26/72] (continued from above) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: That was “The Other One,” recorded 26 April at Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt, released not just on Hundred Year Hall in 1995, but Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, the mammoth 73-CD box set released in 2011 — a story unto itself. It was a golden age for the Grateful Dead, captured beautifully. It took a long time and a lot of work before Phil Lesh could drop bass bombs on Frankfurt. Europe ‘72 didn’t happen in a day.
AUDIO: “The Other One” [Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 9, 4/26/72] (13:57-14:27) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
SAM CUTLER: For American bands, just like for English bands, it’s very kind of standard dreams, really. English bands have always dreamed of going to America, and American bands have always dreamed of the grand European tour, really. It's like two sides of the same coin. So the Grateful Dead… yeah, they wanted to play in Europe and do a proper European tour. The main thing for the Grateful Dead was that it would be weird, fun, interesting, strange. And just the general challenge, which the Grateful Dead always loved when I was with them at least, was playing to an audience who didn't really know who they were. If the Grateful Dead could have gone and done a gig on Mars, they would have done, you know? It was: let's do something that's fucking different, and let’s play to the Germans, or the Danish, the French, the Italians, whatever. Just different to California or New York or Texas.
JESSE: Until Sam Cutler arrived, the prospect of an actual Grateful Dead tour of Europe was what we now call vaporware. The Dead first announced plans to go to Europe in fall of 1968. Billboard printed an initial itinerary of a UK tour that included stops in Leicester, Birmingham, and Liverpool, before hitting the Continent for shows in Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark, ending around Halloween. In 1969, just weeks after Woodstock, it was announced they were going to play for free in Hyde Park in London with the Jefferson Airplane, Joni Mitchell, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. In 1970, there was a scheduled week at the Roundhouse with the Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. They did successfully make it to the Hollywood Festival in Newcastle Under Lyme in 1970, a story you may know from Amir Bar Lev’s crucial Long Strange Trip documentary, and which we’ll let Sam tell.
SAM CUTLER: The BBC were going to film it, memorably. But none of the cameramen seemed to be able to focus after a certain length of time. So the footage comprised of weird things like closeups of Phil's feet. Completely out of it, man… totally gonzo. So it never materialized as a film. There’s some footage of it, finally it was rescued — some footage from long ago. Garcia kind of peering over his eyeglasses, looking at the camera like that… closeups on Phil’s feet. Bits like that. The cameramen were all completely out of it. Nobody I think in Europe really knew what it would be. People weren't used to being dosed in Europe. That was an American kind of form of psychedelic sabotage.
JESSE: And depending if you think it’d be a good thing for the BBC to have made a documentary about the Dead in 1970, also a particularly American form of self-sabotage. Seriously, though, check out Long Strange Trip and its extra features for a glimpse at the Dead’s version of Don’t Look Back. In 1971, the band made it as far as France, only to have their show their festival slot rained out — a story we told in our episode last year, titled “Closing of the Fillmore West.” Of course, there were even grander plans foiled for that spring, including barge shows on the canals of Venice. That tour would’ve been to promote the band’s new live album, paid for by Warner Bros., but the two-LP set known as Skull and Roses hit a few snags en route— a story we told during the first episode of our Skull and Roses season—and the tour got canceled. It took Sam Cutler to get it right. In early 1970, Sam took over the band’s booking, a story we told starting with our “High Time” episode in season 1. Everybody caught up?
Jon McIntire, a close band friend, took over management of the band’s non-road life. Jon died sadly in 2012, but our pal David Gans was gracious enough to share an interview he conducted. You can read lots more from the late Jon McIntire in David and Blair Jackson’s essential book, This Is All A Dream We Dreamed. McIntire credits Sam Cutler entirely for Europe ‘72.
JON McINTIRE [2011]: Sam did a magnificent job of putting that tour together. He really, really did. It was like pulling a rabbit out of the hat. He did it better than anyone could have. Kudos to Sam for putting that together — it was really spectacular. Getting the bookings, and making it financially possible to do, along with Warner Bros.’s support and all the other things that we had.
SAM CUTLER: Jerry and I, on and off, we'd hang out and rap about it — what was possible and what was impossible. The Grateful Dead’s record sales in Europe were pathetic at that time. Which was one of the reasons for doing that tour, to introduce Europe to the Grateful Dead and the Grateful Dead to Europe, for that matter.
JESSE: They hit on a plan to record the tour and release a live album, with Warner Brothers’ advance in turn helping pay the band’s travel expenses.
SAM CUTLER: It would keep Warner Bros. happy. That wasn't particularly a consideration on the Grateful Dead’s part. Although, in return for that, Warner Bros. would support the tour, and help make it happen. We managed to do the whole tour and not have it cost the band any money, which in itself was a miracle, because we took around 52 people around Europe.
JESSE: The groundwork for Europe ‘72 began nearly a year earlier, probably almost exactly at the same moment that they abandoned the plan for a full Europe ‘71 tour. Alan Trist was a friend of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter going back to their days in the Palo Alto beatnik ooze. We’ve used this bit of audio before, but here’s Jerry Garcia introducing Alan in the great Stoned Sunday Rap interview with Charles Reich, from Garcia: A Signpost to New Space.
JERRY GARCIA [1972, part 1]: Our whole scene is… I'm really just one, you know, I'm only one component of the Grateful Dead. And I'm of equal, an equal unit, with everybody else in it, and everybody else is really far out. Alan man, fantastic. He's like some kind of cosmic diplomat.
He's a guy that there isn't anybody… there's no way you could dislike him. You know what I mean? He never disturbs any karma ever.
ALAN TRIST: I was going there a year in advance. I joined the Grateful Dead office in November of 1970. Earlier that year in the summer, the Medicine Ball Caravan came over to England, which was supposed to have the Grateful Dead as part of their great trip to the East. But the Dead couldn't go, as often happened. So Stoneground came in my flat in London, because I was already expecting to welcome the Dead. [My flat] became a headquarters for all the activity that happened around Stoneground, and the various concerts that they gave in England. That was one attempt for the band to come to England. During that time, in the summer of 1970, I made connections with one Andrew Kerr, who was the founder of the Glastonbury Festival in England — which still goes to this day, one of the most successful long-term festivals. So, [for] the Grateful Dead, the idea that he came to me with in London at that flat headquarters that I had, was that the Grateful Dead should be the star lineup for the first Glastonbury Festival, which was scheduled for 1971. We tried to make that happen — the band was really interested. The Glastonbury Festival was to be modeled on the American style of festival that the Grateful Dead was so prominent in starting. They wanted to initiate the Glastonbury Fayre with the Grateful Dead — because that was the music and the values of the ‘60s that they wanted to bring to the Glastonbury Fayre, was expressed by the Dead. So I spent a long time with them. I was down at the site several weekends, and we became friends.
In 1971, the fall tour, I had already made all these connections in England from 1970 to ‘71. So it was natural for me to be the point man for promotion and press activities in Europe, because they were now going to do the tour in ‘72. So it didn't happen in ‘70, it didn't happen in ‘71. But now, Sam Cutler was trying to set it up for 1972. So, since I had all these connections already set up, I had peeled off from the fall tour in New York, and went to England to reactivate all those connections that I already had made in the last couple of years there. And I was there for quite a long time in the fall of ‘71. Several weeks. I went all over the continent: I went to the different Warner Bros. offices in Hamburg, in London, in Denmark, and also visited many of the press. The underground press, as we called it back then, both in England and in Germany and Denmark. All the journalists were very interested that the band wanted to come over. So they wanted to get set up.
At that time, the relationship with Warner Bros. was going through those changes, which you know. They were happening in the Warner Bros. phase. But they were really all positive. Warner Bros. were intrigued by the format of music that the Grateful Dead played, even though it didn’t fit into that three-and-a-half minute idea. This was suddenly recognized by Warner Bros. in Europe. They loved the idea that the banner holders of the San Francisco sound were coming over.
JESSE: Alan attempted to line up a gig in a Dutch castle, but Sam said it wasn’t feasible. Around the time that Alan was hitting the local Warner Bros. offices, Sam Cutler returned to the Continent to scout potential venues.
SAM CUTLER: There’ve been many a tour done of Europe, many gigs done. If you wanted to play in France, well, you played in Paris. If you’re going from France, you go into Holland — well, what’s in the way? Well, you could play in Lille in northern France; you could play in Belgium; you could play in Rotterdam. There’s only a finite number of places that you can play. It’s all a kind of bums on seats equation, really. A band like the Grateful Dead in Europe at that time wouldn’t be playing stadiums that held 50, 60, 70,000 people. They didn’t want to do that. What the Grateful Dead wanted to do was play in places that were acoustically sympathetic to the kind of music that the Grateful Dead made. To use that car analogy, you finally got the perfect car — it's all like Formula One. You got the great car, you got the great driver — he’s not going to be driving it on an unmade road. He’s gonna be driving it on a sophisticated race track environment. And the same with the Grateful Dead. You've got it all together… now, where are they going to play? Let’s have them play in places like the Munich Opera House, where Mozart played. These unbelievable places with incredible historical significance attached to it. In London, we played the Lyceum, which is in the Strand, which is a famous old London theater. And the Grateful Dead loved it — it’s just their cup of tea. 2,500, 3,000 people. Perfect-sized facility. We played in the Tivoli in Copenhagen. Again, a similar kind of place. And so at that time in the evolution of the band, the band was best suited to a 2,3,4,000 seat auditorium. They felt they could reach everyone and provide the sound that was phenomenal quality, high five-star quality, within those environments. So that basically is what I was looking for. I went and got it together with John Morris and people like that, and they were very good. They were far out.
JESSE: They had plans to open and close the tour at a London theater that had recently been refurbished almost directly to the Dead’s needs: five nights from April 5th through 9th, then three more from May 26th through 28th. In London, Sam met up with John Morris, who’d managed the Fillmore East for years. You may know John’s voice from such festivals as Woodstock.
JOHN MORRIS [1969]: We apologies for the noise of the choppity choppity, but it seems there are a few cars blocking the road — so we’re flying everybody in! I almost made the worst pun in the world about high musicians, but we’ll skip that.
JESSE: Please welcome to the Deadcast, John Morris.
JOHN MORRIS: After I left the Fillmore, I moved to London because I was married to an English lady. And I'd been interested in doing something in London, searched for about a year and a half with a guy named Jean-Claude Kaufman, who is my friend and partner. And we finally found the Rainbow. The Rainbow was an old movie theater, which is more like the Fillmore in New York.
JESSE: The ill-starred story of John Morris’s attempt to open a Bill Graham-style venue in London not only put pieces and people in place for the Dead’s Europe ‘72 adventure, it accidentally positioned the Dead as pioneers of a new Continental touring circuit. If you’re going to open a Bill Graham-style venue in London, you obviously need a light show, so bouncing around Europe in 1972 was our most excellent Deadcast pal Allan Arkush, then a member of Joe’s Lights—also known as the Fillmore East’s Joshua Light Show—minus Joshua White. Welcome back, Allan.
ALLAN ARKUSH: John Morris had bought a theater, or had gotten a theater or whatever, called the Rainbow Theatre. He was going to turn that into a premier rock and roll theater in England. It had an orchestra pit. It was a big theater — [it] was one of four theaters that existed at the time that were all designed by the same guy. They were called the Odeons. These were movie palaces. Each interior had a different architectural design based on a different country. And they had, in the top row, a village built into where the decorations met the ceiling. There was an Italian village on one, there was a French village, there was an English village. In between sets—or, well, in between movies—they had this kind of glass projector that would have clouds go by on the ceiling. I never saw it work, because by the time we got there, they had come and gone. Aside from being the mixer of the light show, I was kind of the point person who would talk to people about business a bit. We knew the Dead were coming at some point.
JESSE: They opened in November 1971 with The Who, but the venue struggled.
JOHN MORRIS: What happened in the end was getting them to come from America to England was really hard because there was no support. They couldn't do that tour. Mountain, for instance, came twice because they were personal friends, but they didn't have the tours to back it up.
JESSE: In the spring of 1972, just as the Dead were heading home, Billboard ran a two-part series on the challenges of American bands touring Europe. There wasn’t enough money in it, and European acts made better livings touring the States than on the Continent. It was under these conditions that John Morris organized an independent promoters’ alliance.
JOHN MORRIS: There was Fritz Rau in Germany, Knud Thorbjornsen in Denmark, Claude Nobs in Switzerland, Berry Visser in Holland, and Norbert Gamson in Paris. So what we did was we figured [it out] — we got together and talked to everybody, and I got them interested in the idea of booking together to bring a thing in. Because one guy, like me or, say, Barry or Fritz going to California and trying to book an act, and take it to Europe, and then sell it on to other people. So that if we went in with the idea of either we'll give you a whole tour from one end to the other. That's how it would work. Norbert Gamson — Norbert was sort of brought in because we needed somebody in France. He wasn't a strong promoter on his own. What I did with the EPA thing was I realized that I needed to work with everybody. And I talked to Knud and Fritz into doing it, and then we went out and got everybody else. Claude Nobs, god rest his soul, he was in Montreux. They didn’t do the Dead, I don’t think. He was great, mainly a jazz person. But he expanded — he was totally open to working anywhere.
JESSE: This list of promoters describes the Grateful Dead’s arc across Europe in 1972 — from the UK to Denmark to Germany to France to the Netherlands, with a few switchbacks en route. They were the first riders of a new circuit.
JOHN MORRIS: The Dead was a good example. And I did the same thing with Paul McCartney, when we did the Wings thing. I would call, or somebody would call, and say, “Let’s meet in, say, Montreux on such and such a day. I think we can talk about Ike and Tina Turner, McCartney, Santana, and put it together that way.”
JESSE: Paul McCartney’s Wings Over Europe launched in France on 7 July, and over the next 2 months hit virtually the same regions the Dead had been through two months earlier.
JOHN MORRIS: The Dead tour was pretty much Knud Thorbjornsen, his partner, and Fritz and me. We got together, I think, probably in Copenhagen, and sat down with a map, and just worked out how we could do it. The Dead were booked to come do the Rainbow, and I had arranged for that. When the Rainbow went down, we went bankrupt.
JESSE: As the Rainbow collapsed, tour preparations continued, with contracts signed in early February, including for a trio of shows at to-be-determined venues in Switzerland — a topic for another day.
SAM CUTLER: You can't go everywhere. We didn't go to Italy. We didn't go to Spain. There's only so many gigs you can put together, the travel and all that. The fact of the matter is we could have done a lot more gigs and we've had a lot less people. But it was a compromise.
JESSE: At a band meeting, Garcia declared, “fuck it, everyone goes.” There are different accountings of how many heads were in the touring party, and let’s say they’re all correct, but the band’s official pre-tour itinerary lists 43. Mid-tour, a Rolling Stone reporter counted 48, breaking it down to seven musicians, five managers, a five-person office staff, 10 roadies, four drivers, and 17 miscellaneous family members.
SAM CUTLER: Everyone wanted to go to Europe on the European tour. So that was the family, as it were. Where does the family begin, and where does it end? Well, we could have taken 200 people to Europe, if we’d had the financial wherewithal to support that number of people. But we managed to get around Europe with 52 people. And we didn't lose one of them.
It's easy to not remember that music is a collaborative trip — on every level, throughout our whole scene. So it's a band, it's sound people, it's lights people, it's all the production crew. It's the crew itself. We're working like slaves. God knows how much equipment all about. There's a lot of people involved. So everybody has to be on the same page, everyone has to have the same feeling.
JESSE: Europe ‘72 was a family affair, with many old friends and new wandering through frame. On the Bus was Rosie McGee, who we spoke with extensively in our Skull & Roses: Side B and Bear Drops: LA ‘66 episodes about her associations with the band as tie dyer, photographer, translator, office manager, and more. This is from one of David Gans’s interviews for This Is All A Dream We Dreamed. Thanks, David.
ROSIE McGEE: I was brought along as part of a promise that was made to all of us in 1967, that whoever was around from this original group of ‘67, we made a list of everybody who would get to go if we all got to go to Europe. There was 25 people on it, and I was on that list, because I was right in the heart of it in ‘67. And when, five years later, they went, they kept their promise. But of course by then, the list had grown to 50, because of the crew and, you know. But I was still on the list, partly because I spoke fluent French. And I had already demonstrated how important it was to have an interpreter.
When I went to Europe, at first, I wanted to be of help more than just when we were in a French-speaking country, because I didn't have any other duties. At the time, I was working for Alembic, so I was listed on the recording crew. Which really got some people kind of ticked. In the program book, it says: Recording Crew, Rose. And on the album. Well, the fact was that I was working for Alembic, and I helped them a lot. I did stuff for them. That's all, that does matter.
I had a wonderful, wonderful time. It was a lot of fun. And we got high at all the gigs, in these wonderful concert halls in Europe.
JESSE: At the band’s bustling office at 5th and Lincoln in San Rafael, the band and family prepared for departure. Pigpen wasn’t feeling his best, but was determined to go on the tour, helping out at the office, stapling the itineraries filled with hotel addresses, exchange rates, record company contacts, and other useful info.
SAM CUTLER: Tours, man, are like military battles. The famous aphorism: no plan survives a battle. No plan, really, goes perfectly on a tour.
JESSE: On the Europe ‘72 campaign, the sound reinforcement, recording, instrument design company Alembic were the band’s first line of defense. Spun off by former Ampex engineer Ron Wickersham with his wife Susan, with the encouragement of Owsley, the Europe ‘72 tour was perhaps the peak for all 3 of Alembic’s original functions—live sound, recording, and instrument design—working together in literal concert. One Alembic employee in the recording truck on the tour was Janet Furman, founder of Furman Sound in the late ‘70s, building preamps for the Dead and many others. Welcome to the Deadcast, Janet.
JANET FURMAN: I began by building prototypes for my boss, Ron Wickersham, who was a really smart guy and a great mentor to me. And then I started doing maintenance on the Dead’s equipment, beginning with guitar amps. I did a lot of not only repairs, but modifications — not only the Dead’s equipment, although that was the biggest part of it, but also other bands in the area. The Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills Nash, and Young, lots of others. And I kind of eventually got to be an expert in modifying guitar amps.
We had a program, we called it “Alembicization.” That was a kind of way of beefing up guitar amps: making them more rugged, more roadworthy. They took a lot of rough handling. Those roadies are big, strong guys who could heave stuff around. Things wound up being shipped upside down, and we didn't want the tubes to fall out. One of the kinds of things we did was putting clamps on the tube sockets, to keep the tubes from falling out. We replaced any kind of part that was known to have a weakness. We had a lot of experience in what could go wrong. So we replaced a lot of coupling capacitors with ones that were better able to withstand the rigors of the road. And we added some other features to make the noise lower.
It was probably about two months after I'd been hired at Alembic, when I was still mainly guitar amp tech. The way I kind of got to know everybody was after the Dead had been out on the road for a while, they’d come back into San Francisco. One day, a truck would roll up and eight of the roadie guys—I could rattle off all their names—it would arrive and bring in a bunch of amps that failed on the road. [They would] bring them over to my workbench and that would be my work for the next week. Once they unloaded all that stuff, then they'd start drinking beer and smoking pot. It would usually be the afternoon. I get involved in a little bit of that. I guess they thought it was time for my initiation ritual, because I had a beer and somebody put a couple of drops of… well, it was disguised as Murine eye drops. I'm sure you've heard that Murine bottle story. Had a couple drops in it, and so took a while for the effect to come on. I was already in my car driving home. Hit me while I was in rush hour traffic on the Bay Bridge, heading to Berkeley. That rush hour traffic was really fascinating…
After I'd been at Alembic for a year or so, I kind of learned the ropes. I was asked to go on the road with the Dead, and I was more than happy to accept that offer. I was thrilled to have the opportunity. My role was sort of dual: I was the equipment tech, the person who could be called on to repair stuff if necessary at the last minute; and if a live recording was to be done, I was part of the recording crew, along with Betty Cantor and Wizard. So yeah, Europe ‘72, that was one of the great trips.
JESSE: Whenever we hear the beautifully recorded music from the Europe ‘72 tour, it’s because of the incredible work of the Alembic team led by Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor. David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: The entire tour was recorded to 2-inch tape, which is 16-track tape — same stuff as Skull and Roses and Live/Dead.
JESSE: The same machine used to record Skull and Roses and Live/Dead, in fact, the Ampex MM-1000: the heart of Alembic, sometimes known as Prototype #2. But it had mutated some.
JANET FURMAN: That was Ron Wickersham’s project of repackaging our 16-track recorder, the Ampex MM-1000 into a video chassis, which was made for recording on videotape which was also 2-inch tape, like the tape that you need to use for 16-track audio. The reason for doing that was that the standard chassis for an MM-1000 could only accommodate 11-inch tape reels. We needed 14-inch reels, because we were recording 15 inches per second — which is really fast, but gives you the highest quality recording. It really eats up tape, and we wanted to be able to record a 90-minute set — which is what you need for a band like the Grateful Dead, that just does long sets and doesn't work with a setlist, just plays whatever they want in a completely unpredictable way. We didn't want to have to change reels of tape in the middle of a song. We wanted to have as few reel changes as possible. So big reels, had to remap the whole recorder on a video chassis, which is much more open.
Another one of my jobs was to calibrate the 16-track to accommodate the kind of tape that we had to use, which was sort of not this standard tape. We used thinner tape than would normally be used for 16-track recording, in order to get more tape on the reels. So [they] needed special bias, and I was the one who tweaked it before each show.
JESSE: The new tapes required new boxes.
DAVID LEMIEUX: Really big cans, the big blue ones. They weigh… I'm not exaggerating, they must weigh 15 or 20 pounds each. it's a massive amount of weight on these things. If you've ever picked these things up, they've got these handles. If you try to grab two at the same time, they can really break your knuckles. I believe they were from 2-inch Quad video, because that's what the machine ultimately started out as. The 2-inch Quad video, which were the giant reels for television use.
JANET FURMAN: It was sent over in a shipping container. Within that container were flight cases, some of which were Army surplus that we modified. Those were really strong, rugged cases, and we modified them to work with the equipment we had. Some of them were kind of standard anvil cases, but the MM-1000 needed a special cas. That came with the video chassis that we repackaged it into. We also had a special case for the tape library, because there were all of these reels of 14-inch tape. Each one of those reels had to be spliced out of two 11-inch reels. So that was something that the recording crew did before we left for Europe, and now was the result of a couple of nights of work.
JESSE: The Alembic crew worked up right to the last minute, meeting up with the band in New York before they hopped to London. Dennis Leonard, known as Wizard, was a recent addition to Alembic. This is via our dear buddy David Gans!
DENNIS “WIZ” LEONARD [2011]: I basically was with the guys for around 10 years. I started in November of 1971. I was a friend since ‘68, ‘69, and then started working for them in November of ‘71. I think ‘69 was the first time I had carte blanche to go backstage.
The arrangements for my girlfriend and Jim's wife were that we had to pay for their airfare. It was not a lot, and it included San Francisco and the two hops in Europe and back. And I paid it gladly. They said everything else is going to be fine. There’ll be food, you're having a hotel, etc, etc, etc. We were fairly new to the organization. The week before, they went to do the Academy of Music, and we stayed behind. We were literally—this is a story for some last-minute shit—but we were called to a meeting up at Lincoln, I have no idea why. I was living in the city at the time, Furman was living in Berkeley. And get up there, and there’s nothing on the agenda that seems like it's for me. And then, at the 11th hour — you know who Sonny Heard was, right? Well, Sonny had been back up in Oregon, just hanging out. And he wasn't a part of the crew, just previous to this. He really wanted to go and he showed up at this meeting. The meeting is almost done, and Sam Cutler reaches into his briefcase and says, “Holy fuck, look what I have here. It's a fucking extra airplane ticket to the tour. What the fuck am I gonna — oh, my God, Sonny Heard’s here! Hey, Sonny, you want to go on the tour?” Like that. And after Cutler gives Heard the ticket, he says, “Now, Furman and Wiz, listen. We feel rather bad about making you guys pay for your old ladies to go on the tour. So what we've worked out, since you've already paid for the ticket, is we're gonna give Mary and Kathy some per diem. And by the end of the tour, you'll be a few $100 ahead. Is that okay?” It truly was one for all and all for one. I think the music was born out of the sociology — because I don't think that they could have possibly had the emotional, spiritual and mental freedom if they didn't have the support structure of a family.
JESSE: When Garcia said “fuck it, everybody goes,” he meant it. There were multiple strategies for bringing other supplies, but the band’s gear modifiers had some of their own innovations.
JANET FURMAN: I know there was some pretty elaborate preparations to bring it with us, involving, as I recall, a hollowed out power transformer. Whatever it was, it managed to make the trip across the ocean intact. It wasn't just pot — those guys loved their LSD too. That was not something that I would want to take and then have to do a job that involves some responsibility.
SAM CUTLER: There was enough pot that Jerry got to smoke I think one joint a day. California grass. Then he had the hashish in Europe. I think he finally learned to like it, maybe. But, um, no, we got high, man.
JESSE: When a member of the old school Grateful Dead family uses the phrase “we got high,” it doesn’t always refer to smoking grass. Some of their substances came in micrograms, too.
SAM CUTLER: We got high, of course. But that's not a function of not vast volumes of material. If you want to keep 50 people high for a couple of months, probably a volume, like, that would get in that cup. So that’s not that hard to hide. Then you have this — this is a recent model. But I have very bad eyes, so I have to have eyedrops in my eyes.
JESSE: In case it wasn’t clear, on our Zoom conversation, Sam just held up an eyedropper to demonstrate.
SAM CUTLER: Everyone stayed high. Everyone stayed high, man. Of course. That was a given. It was a great pleasure I think, on the Grateful Dead’s part, to realize that there was a lot of high people in Europe. The whole ‘60s thing happened all over the world. Isn’t just happening in San Francisco. LSD was being made in maybe 30 different university laboratories throughout Europe. There were young people who were studying to be biochemists, and chemists, who had access to university laboratories. And who had professors who didn't have a fucking clue about what was going on. So in England, for example, you had London University — they made acid there. You had the University of Sussex at Brighton. They made it there. They had the University of Manchester, they made it there. Cambridge and Oxford, of course. So there's all kinds of acid being made. And nobody really knew what it was, in the broader community. And the same in Europe: it’s being made in Holland, it’s being made in Belgium, it’s being made in France. It was legal, for a while there! Sandoz was making it. And certainly anybody that was interested in chemistry knew about the discovery of LSD.
JESSE: Early 1972 was likely the global peak of LSD production and consumption, a history I detail in my book Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, now available as an audiobook from Hachette, wherever you get your audiobooks. In Cambridge, powered by the chemist Richard Kemp, the LSD tabs known as microdots began to flood the global underground marketplaces. Europe was as ready as it would ever be for the Grateful Dead.
AUDIO: “Truckin’” [Dave’s Picks 15 bonus disc, 3/21/72] (1:12-1:32)
JESSE: That was the sound of the Grateful Dead landing in New York, March 21st, 1972 at the Academy of Music, released on the bonus disc to Dave’s Picks 15. The band settled into the Hotel Navarro on Central Park South as the extended family began to assemble. Along for the Europe ‘72 tour was Merry Prankster and righteous human being Mountain Girl, Jerry Garcia’s longtime partner, and likewise along for the ride on this season of the Deadcast. We couldn’t be more honored and happy to welcome Mountain Girl.
MOUNTAIN GIRL: We were all in New York together. The whole crew kind of came out to the East to do our launch, you know? We played some really funky place way downtown [in] Manhattan. It was like back in the old days. The venues open to the Grateful Dead were sometimes quite limited.
JESSE: After Bill Graham closed the Fillmore East in spring ‘71, Howard Stein had begun to promote shows in New York, establishing himself at the Academy of Music on 14th Street, just off Union Square, where the Dead moved in for 7 shows. Also known in the late ‘70s as the Palladium, it became a fan and band favorite: rundown and comfortable, still showing Kung Fu movies on off-days in 1972.
AUDIO: “Truckin’” [Dave’s Picks 15 bonus disc, 3/21/72] (5:06-5:30)
JESSE: One head who saw the Dead at the Academy was Bill Weber, who you may remember from our St. Louis ‘72 episode from last season.
BILL WEBER: The only time[s] I got to see Pigpen were like three shows at the Academy of Music as they were going to Europe in ‘72. Oh my God, those shows were off the charts. It was spring break. It was a trip we happened to see the Dead.
JESSE: The shows were sold out. But Dead Head magic worked for Bill and his friends.
BILL WEBER: You could find a ticket. It was six or seven nights, if I remember right or something. It was a long run up to heading to Europe. The Academy of Music wasn’t a huge place — 5,000, 6,000. Wasn't huge. It wasn't difficult to get tickets. I mean, you had to work at it. But you weren't like scalping outrageous prices or anything. I had been to the Fillmore before, and it reminded me a little bit of the Fillmore if I remember. But nothing like the Fox [Theatre].
One show I really remember was they opened for Bo Diddley. They were the backup band for Bo Diddley.
AUDIO: “Hey Bo Diddley” [Dick’s Picks 30, 3/25/72] (0:16-0:53) - [Spotify]
BILL WEBER: That was the Hells Angels night, right?
JESSE: Yup, March 25th, 1972, now released in part on Dick’s Picks, Volume 30. Mountain Girl remembers that night, too.
MOUNTAIN GIRL: I remember that one. That was kind of a scene. There was a lot of us and not that many of them.
JESSE: It was Grateful Dead brand chaos.
BILL WEBER: I was 19 at the time and one of the shows was hosted by the New York Hells Angels. And they were the concessionaires and the ticket takers and the ushers and stuff. I was so intimidated by these big… I had never seen guys this big before! [laughs] I’m going out and buying a soda from them or something…
JESSE: The March 25th, 1972 show was also the introduction of the Grateful Dead’s newest member, just in time for the band’s European tour.
BOB WEIR [3/25/72]: This here’s Donna —
PHIL LESH [3/25/72]: And that’s Keith, playing the piano.
[audience applauds]
JESSE: Donna Godchaux sang briefly with the Dead on New Year’s Eve at Winterland, recorded vocals on several songs for Bob Weir’s solo album, Ace, in February 1972, where Weir began calling her Donna Jean for the first time in her life. But Donna Jean Godchaux really only joined the band at the Academy in March 1972.
AUDIO: “Are You Lonely For Me” [Dick’s Picks 30, 3/25/72] (2:50-3:16) - [Spotify]
JESSE: That was the only known Grateful Dead version of “Are You Lonely For Me,” written by Bert Berns, popularized by Freddie Scott, and covered by Jerry Garcia in his side band with Merl Saunders in those years. We talked extensively with Donna Jean during our special episode last year titled “Donna Jean,” which you should definitely check out if you haven’t. We’ll have lots of new stories from Donna this season, but—for now—here’s what she told us about the Academy shows. Ladies, gentlemen, incredible nonbinary pal friends of the Deadcast, please welcome Mrs. Donna Godchaux-MacKay.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: We started that tour in New York, and I remember the second time I was on stage with the Grateful Dead was at… I believe it was the Academy of Music in New York? Was it with the Hells Angels, the benefit?
JESSE: It was only Donna’s second time ever performing on stage, and her New York debut, in a party filled with Hells Angels. Sounds scary to me.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: You know, it should have been if I had a lick of sense in my head, but I didn't, and I was not afraid. One of the reasons I was not afraid is that the Angels were very respectful of the band. And, really, especially, of me. They were told by the president: “Don't mess with her.” And they respected that. So I never did have any fear. I always felt protected. And they were always very kind to me.
So here I am. This little girl from Muscle Shoals, Alabama. All of a sudden, I'm in New York, with the Grateful Dead, on this stage, going to Europe. And it was just… can you tell I'm at a loss for words? It was unbelievable — to be in that place, at that time, with that band. And just getting my feet wet, in that kind of a situation, to where I'm in front of people: no earphones, no cloistering, no controlled environments, and everything is out of control. And so rather than having all of my comfort zones, I had no comfort zone. It was just like being in another world. And I'm not exaggerating there. It was like being in another world.
You could have cut the energy with a knife. It was just thick. You can talk about energy all day long, but when you experience it, from one place to the next or one moment to the next, it was heightened not only because it was New York, but the Hells Angels were there. I think New York probably prepared me for the next nine years of my life.
AUDIO: “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” [Dick’s Picks 30, 3/25/72] (1:50-2:16) - [Spotify]
JESSE: One new crew member they picked up when the tour came through the Academy was the New Yorker Candace Brightman, the band’s very first lighting director, who would work with them through 1995, and even beyond. They’d first made her acquaintance during Candace’s years at the Fillmore East and then working for Howard Stein at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester and elsewhere. We talked to Candace about those years during the first episode of our Skull and Roses season. During her years at the Capitol, she’d become friends with many acts that she worked with. In early 1972, one of them was going on tour and Candace wanted to do their lights. But it wasn’t the Dead.
AUDIO: “Awakening” [Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Inner Mounting Flame] (0:56-1:16) - [Spotify]
CANDACE BRIGHTMAN: It was the Mahavishnu Orchestra shows somewhere in upstate New York. The name of the promoters [was] a guy named Phil Hack. I come in and said, “If you'll pay my expenses, I'll do the show for free.” Because I wanted to see the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I loved that band at the time. I hadn't noticed Garcia and [Howard] Wales [on the bill] – oh, God. So I went there and did that gig, and Garcia was watching the Mahavishnu lighting. And he came around and asked if I would do the European tour. I said, “What would it pay?” I wasn’t like, ooh, gosh, really? He said, “Well, sometimes we don't pay people anything.” Well, you can forget that.
JESSE: But the gig was great, and she reconnected with Jerry Garcia.
CANDACE BRIGHTMAN: It was just heaven. I went to this guy, Chip Monck, who hired me first to do lights at the Anderson.
JESSE: Remember Chip Monck?
CHIP MONCK [1969]: The brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. It's suggested that you do stay away from that.
CANDACE BRIGHTMAN: And I asked him to recommend somebody to be my crew chief. And he recommended Ben Haller. Ben Haller is one of those people that can do anything. If you want something stunning carpentry done, he can do it. If he's working on a film shoot, and they need a circular stairway for the camera to come down, he'll build a stairway. If you need lights to have color changers—they didn't used to have that—Ben built them for me. He could do anything. And he was a large, forceful person who never was violent or anything. But nobody messed with him. He was on that tour, and then we got together on that tour and became boyfriend and girlfriend.
JESSE: Like Candace, Ben Haller was a veteran of the Fillmore East. Ever seen that giant sign that read “Grateful Dead” in lightbulbs that would descend from the ceiling near the end of the show? That was Ben.
BEN HALLER: I built the sign. Arthur Max and I. Arthur went on to become the production designer for Ridley Scott. We went on the streets in New York, stole the sheet of plywood, stole some lights from the San Gennaro Feast. And Arthur and I built that. And then Bill got it and did the light show at the Fillmore. But that’s pretty much the setup that was happening when they went through Europe.
I was with the light show, and all this stuff. I did stage crew. We even, for a while, would sneak in and replace seats in the theater, so they had more seats. We actually expanded the capacity of the place to make more money. It was an old vaudeville theater. And so it closed and we get hired to go to the Rainbow Theatre in London. So we were in Finsbury Park at the Rainbow Theatre, where they’d shot parts of Tommy. The Beatles had played there. Beautiful old theater. Then that started to close and the Dead were coming through. Candace had taken over the lighting, or just started the lighting. We were good friends and she knew I had some experience in Europe. I ended up building a couple of follow spots. They really didn't have portable follow spots in Europe. So I built a couple.
JESSE: Just like their guitars, their amps, their PA system, and their recording setup, the Grateful Dead would set off for Europe with some seriously modified gear. And just like all that other technology, the Dead’s crew would continue to innovate for the next decades.
BEN HALLER: They didn't have follow spots that traveled in Europe. So I had to make some.
And I had to come up with some transformers. Because it's 110 in America and 220 over there. There is a lot of that stuff sort of available because of the American military over there.
JESSE: It wasn’t all sunshine and roses as Candace prepared for departure though, having her first encounter with the band’s notorious crew.
CANDACE BRIGHTMAN: They took a certain kind of serious drug and put it in my gear. My gear. This is the way the roadies were. And the guy that they had bought the drugs from said, “You know, all their stuff is in your gear.” Me and Ben though… was Ben there at that point? Anyway, I thought, “Oh, I don't think that I could take it. What are they gonna do, complain if they can’t find it?” But I decided to stay out of it. And then I had this dealer guy go talk to him about it and tell him that if they didn't get rid of it, I would. But so, it was kind of dog eat dog.
JESSE: Living With the Dead, by the late Grateful Dead comrade and sometimes manager Rock Scully, is one of the more factually blurry but incredibly enthusiastic and infectious books in the Dead canon. If you’re looking to find an accurate Grateful Dead chronology, check JerryBase. If you’re looking for a vivid description of going to JFK Airport in New York to deal with customs, check out Rock’s book. He was there. Probably.
He wrote, “I have to go down to customs at Kennedy Airport to pre-clear and sign for the gear. Seeing it all stacked up in one place is a chilling sight. A mountain of gear in this huge bonded warehouse — like the last scene of Citizen Kane. The customs guy has a giant book with all our stuff inventoried in it. He says, “I want to see box four-hundred-and-whatever-it-was.“ Ay, Carumba! The problem is I don’t know where the fuck that particular crate is. “Look, the best thing you can do, man, uh, sir, is pick a box from the boxes here, and then look at the inventory and check it out.” In the end they inspect one box and one speaker cabinet, get fed up, and say screw it.”
Rock was also the narrator of his own abridged audiobook, available from Time Warner, and we’ll let Rock help sign us off today.
ROCK SCULLY [Living With the Dead audiobook]: Look out, ye ancient fingernails, the barbarians are comin’. Open the gates. Saracens with 5000 watt amps will soon be storming the Bastille. Not that the Dead are just another band of uncouth rowdies, motel-demolishing loons or shark-copulating deviants on the road, boorish Schweinerei like Grand Funk or satanic deviants like Led Zeppelin. Our crusade is basically, uh… molecular!
JESSE: And so the molecular crusaders boarded a jet at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on April Fools Day 1972, bound for London.
AUDIO: “Sugar Magnolia” [Europe ‘72] (5:10-5:40) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]