GOOD OL' GRATEFUL DEADCAST
Season 4, Episode 4
Archival interviews:
- Bob Weir, Keith Godchaux, Donna Godchaux & Jon McIntire, WAER, 9/17/73.
- Jerry Garcia & Ray White, WLIR, 1/11/79.
JESSE: In October of 1973, the Grateful Dead returned to St. Louis for two shows at the Kiel Auditorium. The shows now comprise the last discs and narrative conclusion to the new Listen To The River box set. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
DAVID LEMIEUX: The thing that I love about the box, amongst all the great things in it, is the story it tells… Mickey's just left, Pigpen is back, Skull and Roses. That is one band. That has one version of the band. It's all very distinctly Grateful Dead music, but it's very distinctly one style. October ‘72: very different than it was in December ‘71. And then October ‘73 is a very different band once again, and that's what I love about the Dead. Really, I mean amongst everything, the one thing I can always come back to is how different Grateful Dead music is, if not tour to tour then year to year. But it's still very distinctly Grateful Dead music, and that's why I have no trouble, at any time, putting on a 1994 tape, or a 1984, or a 1977 or a ‘72. To me, I get such great joy in all eras of Grateful Dead, because they're so distinctly Grateful Dead and not like anything else in my entire music collection.
JESSE: Backstage at the Kiel Auditorium before the second show, a college student named Dani Rubi interviewed Jerry Garcia and asked about the future. Garcia told him, “We roll like a river. We just ride out the course, and if we are headed in a particular direction, then it's irreversible anyway." Today, we point the Deadcast back down the big river of the mind to the Kiel Auditorium, fall 1973.
RADIO ANNOUNCER [1973]: The Grateful Dead — in St. Louis. Kiel Auditorium. October 29th and 30th. Kiel Auditorium.1400 Market Street. In St. Louis. At 7:00 PM. The Grateful Dead. All seats $5. All seats reserved. Kiel Auditorium. In St. Louis. The Grateful Dead.
JESSE: Got it? After eight shows in three years at the Fox Theatre—capacity 4,500—and one at the similarly sized Kiel Opera House, it was time to move up. Once again, our story begins with Tony Dwyer of Sky High Associates, who—with Sepp Donahower and Pacific Presentations —co-promoted the shows in St. Louis in 1972 and 1973, working with Sam Cutler and Out of Town Tours. Thanks to Tony for these great radio ads, and thanks to David Gans for transferring them.
RADIO ANNOUNCER [1973]: Don’t forget! See ‘em here — The Grateful Dead, October 29th and 30th, in St. Louis. Produced by Pacific Presentations and Sky High Associates.
TONY DWYER: Going back to this buddy of mine, Jim Maxwell, who had made the guitar straps for Garcia and Weir and me. And he was doing front work for Barry Fey for various shows. The summer of 1973, I get a phone call from Maxwell: I'm in St. Louis, and he’s in upstate New York. And he says, “Get your ass over here.” And I said to where? He said, “To Watkins Glen.” And so I hop in the car with my girlfriend at the time, and we drove to Watkins Glen. And we get there. And it's The Band, The Grateful Dead, and the Allmans.
AUDIO: “Too Wet To Work” [The Band, Live at Watkins Glen] (0:44-1:14) - [Spotify]
JESSE: That was Garth Hudson of The Band, jamming his way out of a rainstorm at the Watkins Glen Summer Jam in July 1973, attended by an estimated half-million people, the biggest music festival of the ‘60s and ‘70s. If the Dead’s gig at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972 was a breakthrough, as Sepp Donahower told us last episode, Watkins Glen was another leveling up.
TONY DWYER: I get there and I've got my briefcase, I got a fucking Lacoste shirt on, a pair of jeans. My girlfriend's got frizzy hair at four feet out on either side. And when we get up to the stage, and Sam's up there, and he sees me and he throws us two backstage buttons, we go back. Every promoter in the world was there. I mean, everybody: Graham was there. Sepp Donahower was there. One of the Belkin Brothers was there. Shelly Finkel and Jim Koplik obviously were there. So, anyhow, we get there, and Sepp says, “Tony, come on over, let's talk about what we're going to do in October.” And that's where the whole thing for the ‘73 shows was hatched. I wanted to do Halloween and we couldn't get it because they were going to do Chicago.
JESSE: Sepp Donahower of Pacific Presentations.
SEPP DONAHOWER: I don't know whether it was a date issue — might have been an availability issue, or they just wanted to make some more money. It could have been financial reasons, because the cost of touring and everything. It's a business — acts like to work their way up to larger rooms. It also might have been, like, after you've done one thing a couple of times, maybe it's time to try something new.
JESSE: By email, Tony added that he and Sky High Associates proposed a five-night Fox Theatre run for October 1973, which would add up to slightly more than two nights at the Kiel. The band’s schedule was tight — and, they promised, their new sound system would be able to tame the arena.
TONY DWYER: I was concerned about the sound. And I was promised that there wouldn't be an issue, that we would be using the same sound system used at Watkins Glen, sans speakers in the back. I go to Long Island and hang out on the beach for a week and then go back to St. Louis to get to work on the show. I realized that this is a monumental tour. We’ve got to sell 20,000 tickets, 21,000 tickets. We've got to get to work.
JESSE: 1973 was a monumental year for the Grateful Dead. That year, the band took nearly all of their business into their own hands, launching Grateful Dead Records and releasing Wake of the Flood. They had their very own press department for the first time and they mobilized their forces. They were also a huge band, playing stadiums and arenas. In the months surrounding the band’s fall tour, Rolling Stone, popular music’s magazine of record at the time, devoted multiple stories to the band and their world, including a feature on Alembic, the band’s sound offshoot, and culminating in a cover feature a few weeks after the trip to St. Louis.
Helping to run the radio promotions for Grateful Dead Records in the fall of 1973 was Steve Brown. A while back, Rich and I visited Steve in California. Steve went way back with the Dead, before they were the Dead — to Palo Alto, circa 1963. Please welcome to the Deadcast, the most excellent Steve Brown.
STEVE BROWN: We went to the Tangent and there was this guy playing guitar with this gal. We didn't know who they were. And then later on, when I went back down there later, a year or two — this was ‘63. I think so, about ‘64, was it? Yeah, there was this bluegrass band that he was also in, this guy Jerry. And some other people. He was the same guy. But he was playing banjo and doing stuff. They had about four guys, I think it was. After that, I didn't really see them until he appeared as the Warlocks all of a sudden at a couple clubs.
At this point, I'd been out of local San Francisco Radio—KSFO, where I'd worked, when I started I was 15 years old, working there—and I got into the record distribution business and promotion business by ‘65. And so I was, my route was the Peninsula. So all of a sudden, everybody's talking about this band The Warlocks — “you gotta go see ‘em,” “they're playing down here,” playing over here, you go see ‘em” and stuff. And I checked ‘em out at one point, at this pizza place.
And then another time, they were playing a run at the In Room in Belmont, and I went to all those gigs. Those were great. And we'd go out in the back where the cars were parked, sit in the cars with him and smoke. What’s cool about the In Room is you go in and it's this long bar. And it's like stewardesses and guys that work in insurance and stuff, all along, sitting at the bar. And then it makes an L down at the end and that's where the stage was. And that's a bunch of hippies that are new seminal, new hippies that had transferred from Beatniks or whatever, or their parents were Beatniks and now they're hippies, whatever, and college kids. And here's this guy that looks like he's in a biker gang, doing the lead singing on this thing, and these guys are playing behind him, basically. And he's, like, the show — he's the one you're watching. But I'm noticing the guitarist is kind of cool too, he's playing okay. And there’s this young guy playing rhythm with ‘em and stuff. So it was really kind of seeing this Pigpen band when I was seeing… but I recognize Jerry, of course.
JESSE: A few years later, Steve Brown actually got the Grateful Dead some of their first airplay, in the most unlikely place. Steve was in the Navy.
STEVE BROWN: In the fleet in Vietnam, because that was my job for the Navy was to run the recording studio for WESTPAC fleet, which was the entertainment system on all the ships, where they had speakers in all the different compartments of the ship, and they had four different channels that they could tune into. So I had a whole slave of tape machines that I would put the masters on, and then make copies from albums or from tapes I made, reel-to-reel in those days, right. And those tapes then were on a menu that went out to all the ships in the fleet, and they would order what they wanted to have for their ship.
So I'd be sending out all these different kinds of music: country western, comedy, blues, rock and roll, lotta rock. I mean, god, the timing was perfect for the good stuff, and San Francisco music of course. But the other stuff that went out is, uh — hey wait a second, I'm on the radio every night for like five, six hours, depending how long I can keep it on. So I started air-checking those and making tapes, and sending those out to the fleet. This was wild stuff, ‘cause I had people come in and play live on the air. So it became like this thing.
And then I'd go up and take the tape recorder that the Navy had given me to go around and do these interviews for hometown radio stations. I'd go on PSA for 13 bucks with my military, and get on a plane and fly up on the weekend to San Francisco, my wife's apartment there where we were living, and go to Winterland and record Cream, live, with the Navy’s tape and the Navy’s recorder. And then as I'm leaving, like, that Cream concert, somebody says: “The Dead are playing on Haight Street tomorrow?” And I said, “Wow! Haight Street, tomorrow! How much battery and how much tape do I have left?” Sure enough, noon, I'm standing there with my Uher Navy recorder and Navy tape, Navy camera with Navy film. And that's a picture of Jerry walking up Haight Street.
JESSE: You probably know the photo of Jerry carrying his guitar case down Haight Street, walking under the marquee of the Straight Theater, taken by Steve Brown on March 3rd, 1968. It’s hanging in the Fillmore. Steve’s recording made with Navy equipment is one of the very first Grateful Dead audience tapes.
STEVE BROWN: What's funny is when I made this government-made concert tape of Cream live and the Grateful Dead on Haight Street, all in one weekend, I came down at midnight on Sunday night. I played both of ‘em. I only had five songs on the Dead, and the last song is like Pigpen getting the voice, getting higher, higher and higher, cause the tape’s getting slower, slower, slower. “It Hurts Me Too” or something is getting — high voice! Very weird. But, in any case, yeah, I played both of them. So it was kind of a delayed simulcast. That’s our tax dollars at work.
JESSE: Needless to say, Steve was more than qualified to do radio promotion for Grateful Dead Records, who were gearing up to full speed in the summer of 1973, trying to make it clear that they would be genuinely running things independently, and this wasn’t merely a vanity imprint belonging to a major label.
STEVE BROWN: Me and another partner there at the Grateful Dead Records were both involved with that, getting it to the radio people, especially the ones at the universities where they had radio stations playing that kind of music, a lot, especially Grateful Dead. We were going around, I even traveled around for a while going to these stations before the record was even completed. We were trying to set them up, to let them know we'd be doing these albums on our own now as Grateful Dead Records, and that they would be the ones getting early copies as soon as we had them. And that we would be able to get them into the shows and all that. So it was kind of just milking the whole record company radio scene out there, because we went to the record store distributors and all those people as well. Mainly, I did a lot of Northeast travel, where we had a real good backing already with the Grateful Dead, East Coast. So most of my stuff was done there. And it was done in many cases with locals who knew who the people were there and I’d connect with them. And we’d drive around and go to all these places. And talk to the people at the universities as well.
JESSE: When the band themselves were on the road, they too were dispatched to radio stations.
STEVE BROWN: We’d do the interviews and the interviews counted as promo. I could get Bobby in easier than I could get Jerry oftentimes.
JESSE: So it was that a month before the St. Louis show, during the run up to Wake of the Flood, Bob Weir, Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux, and manager Jon McIntire stopped by WAER in Syracuse when the band was playing in the Northeast. We’ll be hearing bits and pieces from this interview today. It’s pretty much the only audio I’ve ever found of Keith Godchaux speaking, so it’s cool to get his perspectives, too. When’s the album coming out, Bob?
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: October 15 I believe is the release date. We took the entire month of August off and went in there every day.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: Started the day we got back from Watkins Glen.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: Started during the day we got back from Watkins Glen, including finishing recording the day before we left.
JESSE: So what songs are on it, Bob?
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: The first side starts off with “Half Step,” “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo.” And then the second song is Keith’s new song, “[Let Me] Sing Your Blues Away,” and the third song is “Row Jimmy Row” and the fourth song is “Stella Blue.” And song one, side two is “Here Comes Sunshine,” “Eyes of the World,” and then my suite, the “Weather Report Suite” — the Prelude and Parts I and II.
JESSE: It was actually the second new Grateful Dead release in a few months. Over the summer, the band’s now former label, Warner Bros., released the last record from the Dead’s old contract — their third live album in three years. This one featured tracks recorded at the Fillmore East in February 1970. It was called History of the Grateful Dead, Volume 1 (Bear’s Choice).
AUDIO: “Wake Up Little Susie” [Bear’s Choice, 2/13/70] (0:00-0:23) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: We had a commitment to Warner Brothers. And for the sake of expediency, I guess what we did was give them some old tapes that our soundman we had for a while named Bear had collected.
JESSE: It represented the first release of some of Owsley Stanley’s Sonic Journals, which we’ve talked about on two bonus Bear Drops episodes (part 1, part 2). Bear’s Choice included the first appearance of the now-infamous marching bears, appearing on the back cover art by Bob Thomas.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: We tried to at least initiate a sort of a History of the Grateful Dead program with them, by labeling that History of the Grateful Dead, Volume 1 so that hopefully they'll follow suit and say History of the Grateful Dead, Volume 2, Volume 3, and that’s what they can name their best-of albums. But it’s all altogether up to them.
JESSE: You can tell the interviewers are heads. They even ask if the band is cool with the taping scene that was self-organizing at full force by 1973. Keith is cool with the taping scene.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: I think it's far out.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: I think it's okay as long as long as they don’t try to make a lot of bread off it, and try to promote it in a big way, because most of those performances and the recordings are just not up to any sort of quality.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: As far as I can tell, the people that are into that like the music. That’s the reason they do it.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: Right. I mean, if they want to tape it, tape it. And take it home and listen to it and roll in or whatever. It’s perfectly fine by me.
JESSE: A few weeks after this interview, Rolling Stone would publish an article titled “Mr. Tapes of Brooklyn” about Les Kippel of the Dead Relics Tape Club, soon to be the founder of Relix Magazine. Les and the Relics crew, which included all-timer hero concert recordist Jerry Moore, were the vanguard of the Deadheads’ live taping revolution. The band didn’t officially sanction concert recording until 1984, more than a decade later. But by 1973, there were free Dead tape exchanges in a half-dozen cities. Clearly the demand was there.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: Maybe someday, we’ll release another sort of Bear’s Choice album, pick some of our tape archives. Our tape archive grows with every performance, so that… I mean, it'll be a good long time before we get around to doing anything like that again, but we might do it again.
JESSE: Weir was right on both counts. The archive certainly did continue to grow, and it certainly was a good long time before the band put out anything else that resembled Bear’s Choice, culled from a two-track live recording — 20 years in fact, the very first Dick’s Pick, released in 1993, and recorded at the very tail end of the full fall 1973 tour, which manager Jon McIntire announced on that radio broadcast in Syracuse.
JON McINTIRE [9/17/73]: The whole country will be covered starting the 15th of October and going through the middle of December.
JESSE: The band’s machinery was both growing and constantly changing.
JON McINTIRE [9/17/73]: Sam Cutler, Out of Town Tours, is our booking agent. He was the road manager. And then he was road manager and booking agent, and his booking agency… he handles more than just the Grateful Dead. So that was consuming more and more of his time. So, right now, Rock Scully’s being the road manager, Sam is being the booking agent. We switch around a lot.
JESSE: Back to co-promoters Tony Dwyer and Sepp Donahower.
TONY DWYER: And I realize we did 13,500 seats last year. And now we're talking about 20, 21,000 — 21,000. I said, “That's a big jump.”
SEPP DONAHOWER: Tony and I collaborated on these dates. We'd sit down, figure out a marketing plan: where to put what dollars, agree on a marketing plan. He'd executed part of it, and I’d do some of it. Then put the show on. And he was a delight to work with. We still talk, like, every week, 50 years later. They weren't a shoe-in act, back in the day. You had to promote ‘em. You just didn't, like, whisper it on the sidewalk and it would sell out. Two markets were like that. But most of the markets, you had to work the dates to fill the house. A lot of promoters didn't know how to reach their audience because the Grateful Dead's audience was a specific segment, the demographic, the age demographic, for concerts. And you had to know how to go get the word to them within a wide geographic range. You have to have some marketing expertise to their customer, which goes along with what style of graphics you do, how you do your radio spots, what radio station you’re on, which counterculture tabloid are you in. A lot of stuff goes into getting the word out and getting everybody there.
TONY DWYER: I write a letter to [Ron] Rakow — I get on the phone to Sam, get on the phone to Jon McIntire. I said, “Guys, I need some help. I mean, I know it's on me, but I need some help.” Wake of the Flood had just been pressed. I said to Rakow, I said, “Put Steve on a plane and bring a copy of the fucking record.” So he did that. Steve stayed at my house, and we went out to KSHE Radio.
BOB BURCH [KSHE, 1974]: Providing a wide spectrum of progressive music from all over our planet. 95 FM, rocking stereo constantly. KSHE Radio. K-S-H-E.
JESSE: Steve remembers it being closer to the day of the show.
STEVE BROWN: I wound up being flown there, I guess it was the day before. And I remember, it was either… I don't remember the person that worked in the staff for the auditorium, or for the show promotion, that picked me up and took me through a little tour of St. Louis, which was really interesting, because I'd never been there before. I mean, travel in some parts of the country was new to me. So he was going through a lot of what the, I guess, kind of the racial thing that was going on at that time, during those days. And it was kind of an interesting way to wind up going to the auditorium when we went through all these different little parts of town. And he described what was going on between people there.
TONY DWYER: One afternoon, early evening, and Bob Burch was there. And we walked in and he said: “What do you got?” “Well, we got a new Grateful Dead recording. We got a show in two weeks. So, we need some help.” And Burch says, “Eh, okay.” So he puts “In A Gadda Da Vida” on, or something that’s 20 minutes long. And puts some headsets on and starts listening to it. He hears “Weather Report Suite,” and he hears a couple other things. And he goes, “Holy shit.”
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: My suite, that’s more or less the “Weather Report Suite.” We have yet another song about the weather.
AUDIO: “Weather Report Suite” [Wake of the Flood] (7:59-8:29) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
TONY DWYER: The album was debuted, premiered there at KSHE that night, two weeks before the show. And they played the shit out of the album — just played it constantly.
AUDIO: “Here Comes Sunshine” [Wake of the Flood] (2:22-2:47) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
STEVE BROWN: It was a treat to be able to hear it on the radio, because it came out on the 15th of October, and this was a show on the 29th and 30th.
TONY DWYER: It was a big help. It was a big help. New music, completely different than what they had last heard. And it worked well.
JESSE: It had been a somewhat bonkers fall in the offices of Grateful Dead Records.
STEVE BROWN: We were setting up a lot of the stuff from our office, at Fifth and Lincoln in San Rafael, taking care of all this stuff on phone calls, and getting in contact with people all around the country, as the album came out. We also ran into a thing, almost immediately, which was really weird, that we started finding out there was bootlegs coming out of the New Jersey area there. And we wound up having to talk to people from the FBI on our phones in the office, which was very weird to get a call at the Grateful Dead office from the FBI. So there was that kind of thing happening, just right after it came out, they were starting to bootleg it which was, finally looked at and broken down. And we came up with our own way of printing these things. So they could be different-looking than the bootleg ones and change a few things on our production of the albums.
JESSE: The piracy of Wake of the Flood would plague the young record company. Though the Dead were one of the biggest bands in the United States, they suddenly found themselves with a whole range of new challenges while also continuing to grow, as Sepp Donahower remembers.
SEPP DONAHOWER: They were still in a building stage and that's why Sam liked working with us, because we knew how to go out there and really promote dates. Back in those days, you had to go print tickets and you had to take them out to make sure — you had to constantly be shuffling the ticket inventories between ticket outlets, make sure nobody runs out. No, it's laborious — a lot of work goes into it to maximize the gate.
RADIO ANNOUNCER [1973]: The Grateful Dead. October 29th and 30th at 7:00 PM, in Kiel Auditorium — 1400 Market Street, St. Louis. Reserved seats are $5. Tickets are available on-campus at the Records Service, 704 South 6th.
SEPP DONAHOWER: Back in those days, maybe a third of the audience was hardcore Deadheads, and the rest was the general concert audience. And that, over time, the quantity of Deadheads built of course. But in this initial exposition of the band, enjoying them in the early 70s, they were building that base. The shows had to pull in the ones that are curious too, and the general concert audience — to see what they're all about.
RADIO ANNOUNCER [1973]: The incomparable Grateful Dead is coming to St. Louis. All seats for both nights are on a reserved basis at $5 each. Tickets are available at Discount Records, 611 South Illinois in Carbondale. The Grateful Dead — October 29th and 30th in Kiel Auditorium, St Louis. Produced by Pacific Presentations and Sky High Productions.
SEPP DONAHOWER: They weren't everybody's cup of tea and that's why there was a limited number of promoters that worked with them. Because they wanted to do things their way, not your way. So you either were somebody that could work with the Grateful Dead or you weren't, because they wanted to play extended-length sets, play all night, and they had all of this equipment demands, and setup costs and so on.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: Well, we got into a sort of a spiral, seeing where we have a lot of employees, and then a huge overhead in this PA that we've been building. And in order to pay for it all, we had to play bigger places: in order to play bigger places and get decent sound, we have to buy a bigger PA. And in order to buy a bigger PA, we have to make more money.
TONY DWYER: That was a fucking nightmare. Because Pacific Presentations, Danny Kreski of Pacific Presentations, would get configurations, get blueprints for the towers, and he would send them to me. And I would order the scaffolding, and do the timing and whatnot. And then, three days later they’d say “revision!” And I’d call the scaffolding company and say: “We need 14 more four by 3/4-inch plywood, and we need to go another frame higher, we gotta do this, we gotta do that.” And then three days later, I’d get another fuckin’ revision. Danny would write, “Guess fuckin what?”
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: We make sure that we stay broke. We make sure that we spend anything that comes in.
SEPP DONAHOWER: The whole Wall of Sound thing was interesting, because you're sitting there with the speakers behind you — which everybody says: “you can't do that! It’ll all get feedback.” The technical element that makes that work was the twin microphones, out of phase. They cancel each other, so you eliminate the feedback.
JESSE: A month after the Kiel shows, at the Boston Music Hall, the Dead’s crew would stack the speakers vertically, and the Wall of Sound would rise from there. But at the Kiel, it was already an imposing skyline of speaker cabinets. Most of the tie-dye sound system was replaced with the newest utilitarian speaker cabinets from Alembic with no speaker grills at all. By early 1973, the phase-canceling double-microphone system to eliminate feedback was already in effect.
TONY DWYER: The night before the first show, so it's October 28th. I go to the Hilton, and everybody's there, and everybody and their friends. And McIntire is sitting there. And he goes, “Hey, Tony, what's up?” He said, “Is the scaffolding up?” And I'm not going to tell him that it's not up yet because I wasn't going to pay rent for the fucking theater, for Kiel overnight, when I can get the guys there at seven o'clock in the morning. So I just said, “Oh, yeah, don't worry about it Jon, the towers will be up.” And sure enough, they got there. And we got the scaffolding up. And it was a fucking trip. Then we had to go out and get a motorized fucking lift to get the speakers up because guys were too tired. I mean, it was fucking unbelievable.
JESSE: Tony had watched the Dead’s equipment grow since he first met the band in 1970.
TONY DWYER: That equipment that was used at the Fox in the 1970 show, came in a Ryder box truck. Yeah, and then in ‘72, it was four 40-foot semis. The ‘73 shows — I mean, I would say there was at least twice the equipment, if not three times the equipment that went into the ‘72 shows. Easily. The amount of equipment was massive when it came to the ‘73 shows. I mean, it was shit everywhere.
JESSE: According to the Rolling Stone feature by Charles Perry that ran the next month, called “A New Life For The Dead,” there were some 459 speakers in the new system, spread between the musicians, the scaffolding, and the monitor systems. In 1970, the only non-musicians that arrived with the band were Owsley and Ram Rod. By 1973, alongside the band, was a support crew of 17 — one road manager, two truck drivers, a four-person lighting crew led by Candace Brightman, nine quippies, and someone selling merch. But, like the Dead, it could change on any given night. They were in big rooms now. The Kiel Auditorium definitely wasn’t the Fox Theatre, as St. Louis head Thom Pallazola remembered.
THOM PALLAZOLA: I mean, I saw more shows at Kiel than I did practically any place else I think. I saw a lot there. It didn't have the sound that the Fox did, and it wasn’t intimate. You could get — if you had the full floor filled, and all of the seating, I think you could get around 15,000 people in there. So it just wasn’t as intimate.
JESSE: Drea Stein, host of KDHX’s The Other One, was there. She’d seen the Dead for the first time at the Fox in ‘72, but the Kiel Auditorium was a more regular spot for rock shows.
DREA STEIN: We went to a lot of the shows at Kiel, which was I think around a 12,000 seat venue or maybe even more. It was huge. It was a very sterile environment, in terms of… it was a building. It was square. There was none of this Art Deco insanity that filled the place like the Fox. Or even the Kiel Opera House was, once again, much more Art Deco-ish. It had a lot of environment that was conducive to creativity to me. Kiel, depending on where you sat, sound was… could be good, could be bad. I found, at Kiel, the further away from the stage you were, if you got back by the balcony, sound got much better. It boomed a lot, if you were in the middle. If you weren't up front… and then when you were up front, you were outside of the cone, so you lost some of the sound that way too. So if you get back, you got like the perfect spot where the V cone was.
JESSE: But it did have the new sound system.
SEPP DONAHOWER: But it was an interesting experiment, no question about it. Visually, of course, it's like, had a big wow factor. When people walk in, they look at this stage and go: wow!
THOM PALLAZOLA: It was unbelievable seeing that wall of speakers there. I think the ‘73 show, if I remember right, was the first time that they, at least in the St. Louis area, they had part of the Wall with them, they can only get so much of it in there.
JESSE: And while the Dead certainly drew an unusual audience of returning Deadheads who hung on the band’s every move, the St. Louis ‘73 shows are a good reminder that the Grateful Dead were also playing to new, curious listeners at every stop, who’d never seen the band before. On the first night at the Kiel, that included the parents of my co-host Rich. Please welcome to the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, Bill and Janne Mahan!
JANNE MAHAN: We were from Southern California. And when we moved to St. Louis, the people then ended up being our friends thought we were probably the wildest couple, initially, that they would ever know — being from Southern California, the den of iniquity. And it turns out, we were the babes in the woods. We hadn't ever been to a concert like that. When somebody said concert, I was thinking of dressing up, maybe dinner first. I can't say that the Dead wasn’t remarkable. But at any rate, it was something entirely different.
BILL MAHAN: We knew the Beatles and Elvis Presley and stuff like that. But we never knew any of the groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and the Dead and the other groups like that until we moved to St. Louis. And a friend of ours, Don Logie, was a rock and roll enthusiast, and he introduced us to all of these groups that we had no knowledge of, or at least weren't aware of before. We enjoyed doing things with Don and Susan, so anything they suggested that they wanted to do, we were willing to try. I mean, that's how we got started with skiing, because they all went skiing and it sounded like a lot of fun. The same thing with the music. So going to the Dead concert really led us to a lot of other concerts.
RICH: So who was babysitting?
BILL MAHAN: Probably one of the Martinough kids.
JESSE: So while young Rich was at home with one of the Martinough kids, off Bill and Janne went to see the Grateful Dead at the Kiel.
BILL MAHAN: As we were walking in, I do remember one young man, walking along the street and: “Spare chicks, spare change? Spare chicks, spare change?” And that’s, we kind of carried that forward over the years.
JANNE MAHAN: Oh yeah, we have. John dropped us off — I remember it dark, and he dropped us off on the east side of Kiel. And I think he went to go park. But it was a complete melee inside. Even — like when you even go to the movies, or you go to any symphony or anything, it's a quiet, hushed lobby and so forth. Not at all. It was bright lights when we went in, and gave them the tickets at the door. And it was just this scene of complete buzz. I mean, it was just fun, loud, noisy. Not small groups, just packed people in the foyer. I remember that.
BILL MAHAN: And smoke-filled.
JANNE MAHAN: And… well, already.
JESSE: Another person whose parents were at the Kiel was Grateful Dead manager Jon McIntire.
TONY DWYER: Jon McIntire's parents lived in, I think, in Belleville, Illinois — some place across the river. And they were elderly, and they wanted to go to the show. So Jon had called me and asked me to reserve two seats for ‘em. And I reserve them Row 1, Seat A and B. We get there, the tickets are at the box office for ‘em. And Jon comes over, he said, “Tony, where are my parents’ tickets?” I said, “I don’t know, where are your parents?” He said, “they're coming shortly.” And I said, “Tell them to pick them up at will call.” He said, “Let's walk over there.” So we walk over there, and we meet his parents. And I hand them the tick, I get the tickets, and I hand them to him. And Jon looks at him and goes: “Tony, what the fuck are you thinking? You think you put my parents in the front row?” So we take the tickets. He says, “Let's walk back.” And we find these two people that are sitting on the first level above the floor, front row, and we switch tickets with them. And we saw two kids just fucking ecstatic that all of a sudden they're sitting front row, nearly on stage. And Jon’s parents were not going to be blasted.
JESSE: It was only a few days after Steve Brown’s birthday.
STEVE BROWN: On the 26th, I was twenty-nine years old. And on the 29th, there I was on the stage, and someone took a picture of me hanging on the stage with the amps, and I keep that in my album here. Anyway, that was a good time for me because I was just really ripe. I'd been in the record business and radio and I had a band out of the Haight Ashbury that played in and jammed a bunch with other people and stuff. There was a world that just ripened at that particular time when I wound up there and Kiel, had this whole new world blossoming, even further out for myself. It was really a real special, special time.
JANNE MAHAN: They blink the lights, just the perfunctory blinks. And then in we went. And there were already a lot of people in there. And I don't remember the whole seating area being even lit up. I think it was dark when we went in, and the stage was all lit.
JESSE: It was showtime. The Dead took to the stage in front of a backdrop featuring the Wake of the Flood album art.
AUDIO: “Cold Rain and Snow” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (0:02-0:20) - [dead.net]
JANNE MAHAN: The crowd was so enthusiastic. And they did sing along, and they were on their feet. And there was a lot of dancing up in front of all the seated area, just like there was at any Dead concert.
JESSE: Besides alternating songs between Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, the Dead didn’t plan their setlists at all, as Keith and Donna and Weir told WAER.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: It's kind of a natural pattern that’s evolved.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: Like, we never discuss what we're gonna play.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: We’ve got a few starter tunes. And we’ve got a few ending tunes. And in-between, it's just whatever happens.
JESSE: Dani Rubi of the Daily Illini asked Jerry Garcia about this backstage the next night. "We hope that the audience will like what happens naturally, but it all starts on stage. Sure a lot of people come only to hear 'Casey Jones,' but there are others that come only for 'Dark Star.' We play what seems right at the moment. All the decisions are made on stage."
AUDIO: “Brokedown Palace” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (4:10-4:43) - [dead.net]
JESSE: Dani Rubi also made another astute observation, writing: “Rivers are another significant Dead image. Possibly the reason lies in the nature of the waterways. Perhaps it's because they lead somewhere.”
DAVID LEMIEUX: When we get to ‘73, which is a totally different band by this point than it was even in ‘72, we've got all of the Wake of the Flood material that had been introduced in February of ‘73. Plus, they’d now recorded Wake of the Flood in August of ‘73. It had come out two weeks earlier, October 15. So this was again a new band, with a whole new business outlook as well — maybe that had something to do with why they played the Kiel. They had Grateful Dead Records that had just begun, they needed to make some money.
JESSE: At least in the balcony of the Kiel Auditorium, though, the prototype for the Wall of Sound wasn’t working for John Ellis.
JOHN ELLIS: Man, that's the one that I kind of walked out on. That's true. But I have to back up a little bit. That’s the first time ever I didn’t have incredible seats. It became much harder to get tickets. By the time they played Kiel Auditorium, it was easier to get a ticket, but it was easy to get a really crappy ticket. As great as they say the Wall of Sound is, that thing came off best in certain venues. My seats were not only on the side, they were up. So, for me, it was kind of a slap in the face, like: “Hey, who are these new fans? I'm used to going to see these guys when there's only 1,000, 2,000 people there.” Or the later Fox shows, it was still manageable, because it was… I think the Fox holds 4,000 people or so. It still seemed like a private party if you had good seats at the Fox.
JESSE: Thankfully, Kidd Candelario’s recordings of the Kiel Auditorium are warm and full.
DAVID LEMIEUX: The Kiel shows, Dick had given me DAT tapes, I still have the DAT tapes in my cabinet behind me. Dick gave me DAT tapes in 1999 of the Kiel shows — it was the first time I'd heard them. And again, they are very, very good shows, and one is an “Other One,” and one is a “Dark Star.” In addition to that, you get “Weather Report Suite,” the whole suite. You get “Eyes of the World,” you get the songs that they weren’t playing yet in 1972.
JESSE: Near the end of the first set on the first night, they get to material new to the repertoire since their last pass through town at the Fox Theatre, the previous October. There’s an electrified version of the George Jones hit, “The Race Is On,” written by Don Rollins, previously sung in 1969 and 1970 by Bob Weir with Bobby Ace and His Cards From the Bottom of the Deck, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the acoustic Dead. In the spring of ‘73, not long after sitting in with the New Riders, they revived it with the updated Bakersfield Dead sound.
AUDIO: “The Race Is On” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (0:23-0:53) - [dead.net]
JESSE: And then it was on to three of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s most beautiful new songs.
AUDIO: “Row Jimmy” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (5:45-6:15) - [dead.net]
JESSE: “Row Jimmy” was among the new songs written with parts for Donna Jean Godchaux.
AUDIO: “Row Jimmy” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (7:33-8:01) - [dead.net]
JESSE: Thom Pallazola.
THOM PALLAZOLA: Song-wise, they were kind of working on some of the things that were coming out on Wake of the Flood. So there was some of that that I wasn't familiar with. But getting to hear some new music from them was pretty, pretty fabulous.
JESSE: And there was, of course, “Eyes of the World,” written with swing to spare, and a big gang singalong with entwined guitar parts by Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (1:41-2:12) - [dead.net]
JESSE: The Dead freaks at WAER made Weir speak out Robert Hunter’s lyrics for them.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: “Wake up and find out that you are in the eyes of the world.”
INTERVIEWER [9/17/73]: What's the line after that? Out of curiosity.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: “The heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own… wake now, discover that you are the song that morning brings; the heart has its seasons, its evenings, and songs of its own.”
INTERVIEWER [9/17/73]: Who wrote that?
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: The words are Hunter and the melody is Garcia.
JESSE: At the Kiel, as with most of its performances in 1973, “Eyes of the World” is performed as it was debuted early in the year — seemingly conceived as the first half of a two-part suite in which it was followed by a delicate Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter song, “China Doll.” I love the way everybody in the band is playing little delicate bits of lead parts.
AUDIO: “China Doll” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (1:01-1:31) - [dead.net]
JESSE: The song would become an outtake from Wake of the Flood, but would return on From the Mars Hotel in 1974.
AUDIO: “China Doll” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (3:33-4:03) - [dead.net]
JESSE: Played live, the “Eyes of the World” / “China Doll” suite is everything the studio Dead couldn’t contain. The album version of “Eyes of the World” was truncated.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: It's edited down to just the head of the song, a couple of bars in between each verse of riffing. And then at the end a sort of an extended bass solo.
JESSE: The Dead freaks grilling Weir were obviously fans of the tune and have a pertinent question.
INTERVIEWER [9/17/73]: Does it get into the 7/4 jam?
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: No, it does not.
JESSE: You know, the part in 7/4.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (11:44-12:14) - [dead.net]
JESSE: That was the version from the first night at the Kiel. Thankfully, that piece of music survived in “Eyes of the World” up through the end of 1974, when the band took an extended break from the road, recorded nearly every single night by the band’s crew. Though “Eyes of the World” is credited to Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, that piece of music developed organically over the course of several performances in early 1973, beginning from a bass riff by Phil Lesh.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: If you like 7/4, we got more material coming.
JESSE: From the sounds of things, it was a pretty different vibe at the Kiel compared to the Fox. Janne Mahan.
JANNE MAHAN: I remember one thing that's a bit off-color, but I'll tell you anyway. It was intermission, and Susan suggested that she and I would go to the ladies’ room. And I use the term loosely. And so she knew where it was, and she took me there. And we walked in, and there was sawdust all over the floor. And I said, “Susan, what is this for?” And she said, “I'll tell you later.” And so we were in the ladies’ room, and we finished and before we had left the ladies’ room, I understood what the sawdust was for. There were a number of young women who were quite ill. And that was not a typical theater restroom experience.
JESSE: And at the end of the show, Rich’s parents and their friends got the song they wanted to hear.
JANNE MAHAN: I do know that Susan was very happy because I think they closed with “Sugar Magnolia.” The ones that Susan and Dawn introduced us to, and they played a lot. Susan's favorite was “Sugar Magnolia.” And I've always liked it, it’s so up.
AUDIO: “Sugar Magnolia” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (0:40-0:55) - [dead.net]
JESSE: Steve Brown was out and about both nights. Somehow, it was his job.
STEVE BROWN: I got to enjoy the shows. That was the good part of it. And sometimes it was backstage, just rolling joints and putting them in Jerry's guitar case. But there was a lot of being out there with the crowd and the audience, and seeing the responses and then being able to talk to people that were there, again, from radio or press — keeping them jacked up, that kind of thing. And it's really fun. It was a good job to have.
JESSE: That week, a student from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana named Dani Ruby followed the band on tour, writing a story for the Daily Illini, and offered this scene report: “Outside Keil [sic] Auditorium in a park Tuesday waiting for the final show. All around people are accumulating. Most of those that show up at noon for a seven o'clock [show] are genuine Dead Heads. A carload from Tennessee with the license plate JED share our bottle of wine, and a guy from Long Island showed up with a tape of Monday night's concert.” End quote. It was an extremely fertile period for the Dead’s music, you can understand why the tapers abounded.
DAVID LEMIEUX: Every time we've ever done a 1973 release, St. Louis shows were given consideration. I can think of several — 10/19/73 is one of them. The Winterland box set from, boy, 13 years ago, the November shows. UCLA, San Diego. The Denver shows.
JESSE: It’s a well-plumbed period, and for good reason. Like pages in an artist's sketchbook, you can see themes and variations emerging and evolving. One fun part about tracking the Dead’s music through the early ‘70s is hearing the jams and themes that evolved from show to show. For example, the band debuted “Truckin’” in 1970, played it at the Fox in ‘71 and ‘72, but it was only by ‘73 it had finally developed one of its signature moves.
AUDIO: “Truckin’” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (6:07-6:20) - [dead.net]
JESSE: From 1969 through 1972, a variation on Paul Simon’s “Feelin’ Groovy” appeared regularly in “Dark Star.” Here it is in “Dark Star” recorded at the Fox Theatre in October 1972.
AUDIO: “Dark Star” [Listen To The River, 10/18/72] (25:30-26:00) - [dead.net]
JESSE: But by 1973, the “Feelin’ Groovy” jam moved over to the transition between “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider.” Here it is from the second night at the Kiel in ‘73.
AUDIO: “China Cat Sunflower” [Listen To The River, 10/30/73] (7:40-8:04) - [dead.net]
JESSE: Perhaps obviously, there was no vehicle for these jams like the interstellar wonder called “Dark Star.” In many ways, this was why they went through all the fuss—to build a giant high fidelity sound system, to record their shows, to do these tours in giant, bulky arenas—was to find moments like these, when they were comfortable enough to play “Dark Star.” Jerry Garcia famously said of the Acid Tests they had the freedom to play or not play. That wouldn’t be true in later years, with tickets and contracts and tours and such, but the Dead always held onto that freedom about whether or not to enter into the intimate, open musical space represented by “Dark Star.” For two years in a row, the St. Louis heads got extended versions.
Please welcome back to the Deadcast, musicologist Graeme Boone of Ohio State University, our tour guide for some extended stargazing as we once again pass through the transitive nightfall of diamonds.
AUDIO: “Dark Star” [Listen To The River, 10/30/73] (0:00-0:13) - [dead.net]
GRAEME BOONE: I think that in the early Dead, you do have that idea of a little bit of mostly shorter form songs. And it's because of where they're coming from — they're coming from R&B, they're coming from the Beatles, and all this early ‘60s, short-form music. But they've been listening to jazz, so they're super interested in longform music. But how do you make longform music? And so they have to craft a sense of time where they have a way to open up. And so “Dark Star” and some other songs, they're able to start to let go of the chord progression and start to find a way to… it's a very frontier music, to make music that isn't just relying on a clear chord progression, like “Lovelight” or something, right? How do you analyze? That's a lot to think about.
For me, the “Dark Star” really hinged on that 27th of February 1969 [version] on Live/Dead. And of course, I got that album when it came out. And I just lived inside of that performance, of that whole double album, for a long time. And I think it did stimulate an awareness of the incredible emotional power of harmony, and this idea of a free counterpoint that the Dead excelled at, and that exploration of the limits — where could it lead? And, at that time, they did not yet do kind of freak-out spacey music in “Dark Star.” They did that in other places. But for me, that movement away from a secure harmonic underpinning into this exploration of really what was E minor, that other chord, was emotionally very intense. Because it was unhinged from that home chord — where was it leading? And so toward the end of that song, there's that climax where all the band comes together, and then with Jerry's climactic riffing, they center it back on the “Dark Star” progression and they center it back on A major. And on that “Dark Star” progression, there's a sense of coming home. It's extremely romantic. It's extremely existential. But, retrospectively, you can understand why Jerry could have come to hate it. Because it's just such a pat answer to the drama of “Dark Star.” Because after that, after that moment in February/March, they really start getting into space after that. They start introducing things that go beyond this idea of a romantic climax and a return-to-the-home harmony. And they eventually give up the second verse. I mean, all this I think is part of a trajectory of searching for meaning that goes far beyond that original container.
JESSE: Over the next few years, between the versions in early 1969 and autumn 1973, where we’re tuning in today, the “Dark Star” jam continued to loosen and change shape.
GRAEME BOONE: This is really a wonderful “Dark Star.” For many reasons, it doesn't go into a lot of extremes. But there's a lot of contrapuntal interplay among the musicians and the recording of this, this performance is very beautiful in the way it distributes the band — you have Jerry on the left channel, you have Bob, clearly on the right channel. And then, around the middle, you have Keith, Phil, and Bill. And it makes a really nice distribution, you can really hear things — there's a lot of wonderful definition. It's an improvement over the old tapes that were circulating, for sure. And it creates such a nice spectrum of sound.
JESSE: It’s a great way to focus on the musical personalities of the players, as we’ll hear. This is Bob Weir, describing his own musical voice about a month before this on WAER.
BOB WEIR [9/17/73]: I just like chords, I like to stretch a chordal texture as far as I can. And see if I can create a mood by making richer and richer chords — or more simple chords, if the situation calls for it. I guess a lot of my chordal ideas come from either Baroque influences or people like Gil Evans.
JESSE: A key to the Dead’s improvisation—especially in 1973—is, of course, Phil Lesh’s lead bass playing. Here’s how his bandmate Keith Godchaux described it in the same interview.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: The typical position as a bass player in a band, Phil's doesn’t really play that role — because he doesn't play solid as, like, Robbie Danko. [Keith is corrected.] Rick Danko in The Band plays really straight. If there’s four beats in a measure, he’ll play ‘plank, plank, plank, plank’ all on the major, on the tonic.
JESSE: Phil’s bass playing had other charms.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: His tone is at the bottom, and it fills in that space. But in terms of… he plays a melody-oriented type of bass. And in terms of where he places the notes he chooses to play in the chord, they're not traditional bass notes like that. You rarely catch him playing a root.
JESSE: And it pushed his bandmates to new places.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: Phil's playing really similarly makes it impossible to play straight chord changes. He’s really brilliant in the inversions and voicings of his bass notes. And just to flow with him kind of leads you naturally to play chord changes which flow more, and have different structures than just straight ahead.
JESSE: With all that in mind, it’s time for “Dark Star.”
GRAEME BOONE: What you're going to hear if you go into this recording is that it starts out with your classic “Dark Star” rhythm, which is a swing rhythm. So: bump, bum bump, bum bump, bum bump — which you can break down into one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, if you want. And that's as opposed to a classic straight rhythm, which would be a one and two and one and two, with even beats and divisions of the beat. Now, that’s significant, because we're going to see through this recording, that they actually switch, thanks to Bill largely, from swing to straight rhythm, and then back to swing. And there's all kinds of play on that swing to straight, which is just classic “Dark Star” strategy.
AUDIO: “Dark Star” [Listen To The River, 10/30/73] - [dead.net]
GRAEME BOONE: So of course the classic “Dark Star” tag. Audience is so excited. Jerry playing his classic riff — listen to how Phil is all over it. Beautiful chords on A, the home note. And there you have a beautiful riff from Keith, which is gonna come back. Bob is playing a little bit of that “Dark Star” progression, but Phil is free. Really interestingly here, Jerry is not in the foreground. In fact, in this whole recording, he really isn’t totally emphasized. Partly because of the balance, but partly because there’s so much going on. One, two, three, one, two three, one and two. You can hear that nice swing rhythm. Now they’re back to I — there, that riff comes back from Keith. And then, they go to… V, the E minor chord. And then to I, to A again - but Bob is playing A minor, sort of flirts back and forth between A minor and A major. So, already here at the very beginning, there’s some ambiguity about what the chords are. And that’s classic Dead. Beautifully articulated — it’s like a poly-counterpoint. So here we have the feeling of being in I again — and then V… a feeling of suspended harmony in this counterpoint. And then on the I, V — and there’s that little riff from Keith coming back. And then back to A. We haven’t had the “Dark Star” progression fully played, it’s all being… they’re dividing the wafer, and passing it around among the apostles, of this progression. And everybody’s got their own take on it. Keith articulating strongly the “Dark Star” progression, and yet still moving. And so Jerry hit that high note, and then comes back down; already, Keith is off into another idea.
JESSE: In the early ‘70s, there were a number of motifs that appeared in the Dead’s jams. Putting names on what exactly they are, though, gets a little ontologically tricky.
GRAEME BOONE: So here they are in the middle of a jam. It’s the first jam still. And they’re really getting into this counterpoint. Now, you can hear them hitting this ‘dah, dah, dah, dum’ on D — Keith, imitating Phil. And then an F# — why? But they’re moving, Phil’s moving around. And what happens here… one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Bill has switched out of swing rhythm into a straight rhythm. And this sets up 10 minutes of jamming right there: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dah. Now, here it’s as if they’re playing a chord progression — A, B. And then into what sounds like E minor — keep picking up the scent of E minor. Really nice harmonic wandering, everybody contributing. And then, all of a sudden, getting into a funky rhythm — and then, in B minor. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven; one, two, three, four, five, six… it’s the “[King] Solomon’s Marbles” riffs from Blues for Allah. Beautiful. Seven-beat cycle. Not everybody’s onto it, so he kind of smooths it out into an eight-beat cycle. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Solidly on B minor. Here we get a little bit of Wes Montgomery from Bob. Interesting jazz stylings in his comping in this era. Still on B minor, and they’re exploring that “Solomon’s Marbles” idea, which is just coming together. What’s fascinating is that Jerry’s right in the middle of it, but he’s not leading the pack. He’s just part of what’s going on. It makes this really very special.
JESSE: Dead scholar Light Into Ashes made a deep dive into what he calls the proto-”King Solomon’s Marbles” jam, a genetically related musical idea. It’s a jam motif led by bassist Phil Lesh that the band played throughout late 1972 and into 1973. Here’s the jam coalescing in the February 26th, 1973 “Dark Star” from Pershing, Nebraska, released on Dick’s Picks 28.
AUDIO: “Dark Star” [Dick’s Picks 28, 2/26/73] (11:13-11:43) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: It doesn’t actually sound much like the song “King Solomon’s Marbles,” as recorded on Blues For Allah.
AUDIO: “King Solomon’s Marbles” [Blues For Allah] (0:04-0:09) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: But it’s still an identifiable mood. Another one of the Dead’s most famous improv motifs appears in the next segment of the Kiel ‘73 “Dark Star” — the descending pattern that tape collectors often labeled the Mind Left Body jam.
GRAEME BOONE: So, really nice riff from Keith here — in the key of A. And listen to the clipped notes from different players: this pointillistic style is really a key part of the Dead’s ethos at this point in time. Clipped notes from Jerry, clipped notes from Bob. Of course the drumming can sound very pointillistic. So they’re in A, but Phil is pushing B — and then Keith comes into B minor. So is it gonna be another B minor jam? All of a sudden, no, because Jerry slows everything down and plays the Mind Left Body Jam. And within ten seconds, everybody’s together on it. Now this is back in the key of A, nicely setting up the first verse and chorus later on. Now, this Mind Left Body Jam’s completely different from a lot of what came before — because it’s such a strict pattern. It’s a four-beat feel, and it’s a four-bar pattern. So — two, two, three, four; three, two, three, four; four, two, three, four; one. And it’s still in a straight — dut, dut, dut, dut — meter. So that shift from swing to straight is still happening, 10 minutes later. Beautiful. Bob has a phasing on his guitar, and Jerry still sitting back. But he’s about to start his own solo, which is where things get really interesting. Very slow, pensive solo from Jerry — rising up to the higher levels of the guitar. Really nice fill there from Keith. And then up to a yet higher level, the top octave. Jerry’s getting into the slide. So he’s taking out a slide — it sounds like a National steel guitar, sort of a rough, floating, sliding pitch, evoking that great early blues and all of those traditions that he loves so much. So they really get behind Jerry now. Now, throughout this jam, it’s the same four-beat, four-bar pattern. Listen to Bill — Bill’s gone just into simple accompaniment. He’s gonna come out of it a little bit, as this thing moves forward. So everything’s about interpreting — each four bar run-through is a little bit different. Each one, Bob is hitting different notes; Keith is exploring different riffs and accompaniments, and of course, Phil. So they bring it to conclusion. Slowing down. And there it comes: Bill on the classic “Dark Star” line, but still embroidering it. Jerry hits his own “Dark Star” riff, and the progression is off. Really slow, quiet, just beautiful, setting up that first verse. It’s the first time we’ve heard the progression like this in the whole song — it’s been fifteen minutes. Just wonderful creation of a long jam.
JESSE: The name Mind Left Body is derived from the Paul Kantner song, “Your Mind Has Left Your Body,” released on Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun in 1973, on which Jerry Garcia played pedal steel.
AUDIO: “Your Mind Has Left Your Body” [Paul Kantner/Grace Slick/David Freiberg, Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun] (3:03-3:33) - [Spotify]
JESSE: But “Your Mind Has Left Your Body” was recorded in December 1972, and the theme appeared in Dead jams starting about eight months earlier.
GRAEME BOONE: The thing about it is that that descending riff is so fundamental, and it comes up in so much music that it can come up for different reasons. I mean, Phil apparently has no interest in the idea that would have come from Paul Kantner. And he could see it from other places: “Dear Prudence,” of course, uses that riff. And there's been a number of different songs that people have talked about. It actually goes back for centuries: the falling tetrachord, as it's called, is one of the most important stock baselines in the Baroque era, and often tied to laments, but also used for other things. So I think when it comes up, it's just a great thing. It's that falling line. And it isn't always in the bass. For example, on that Marvin Gaye recording that people cite from 1968, the bass is actually playing a drone note on the tonic, and it's the high voice that descends, so you can articulate it in all kinds of ways. It's a song called “You’re All I Need To Get By,” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
AUDIO: “You’re All I Need To Get By” [Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, You’re All I Need] (0:00-0:24) - [Spotify]
JESSE: When Dick Latvala began releasing shows from the Dead’s vault in the early 1990s, he sometimes labeled it the Mud Love Buddy jam. And as he referred to it on KPFA when filling in for David Gans in 1995:
DICK LATVALA [4/18/95]: “My Armpit Left the Universe” theme, which we’ll rename soon.
GRAEME BOONE: It’s also an issue, because if you name something, that changes it. You objectify it, you make it a thing. And in a way, you control it by naming it, right. In my own analyses of “Dark Star,” I gave names to various things. But I feel mixed about it, because — should they have names? Everybody who loves this music knows this stuff through perception that is not verbalized, necessarily. And although people like to talk about it, if you start naming things in a kind of an official capacity, like: “oh, that's the Mind Left Body Jam” and Phil didn’t like that. And I think a lot of musicians balk at the idea that their feeling of serendipity and the complex emotions that they bring to playing something would then be reified into some simple name. “Oh, that's this,” as if we couldn't handle the fact that it's actually very contested at any moment and comes out of a rich store of memories and possibilities. It's a fascinating problem.
JESSE: It was hardly a fixed piece of music. For comparison, here’s a version of the theme from May 19th, 1974, coming out of “Truckin’,” released on the Pacific Northwest 1973-1974 box set.
AUDIO: “Jam” [Pacific Northwest ‘73-’74, 5/19/74] (7:19-7:49) - [dead.net] [Spotify]
GRAEME BOONE: As listeners, you tend to fixate on something, it's materialized. And so it exists as a thing. Whereas as a player, there's a lot going through your mind, and things can be very fluid — things can come out, memories can come back, and your fingers can lead you into areas that you haven't thought about or that you had gone into before. So it might be feeling very different for a player. The difference between an improvisation, a serendipitous moment, and actual strategy of playing something very specific. A lot of things come up. And in “Dark Star,” you have a lot of things that come up at different times. And you can hear echoes of all kinds of ideas, harmonic moves, melodic riffs — all kinds of things that pop up all over the place. How do you actually set them into an order? I don't know if you should really. It's this art of improv. It's this art of improvisation. Improvisation is not about just inventing something; it's also about who you are, and where you've been, and what's in your toolkit and how you feel that day.
JESSE: The theme disappeared from the Dead’s jams when they took their break from the road starting in late 1974. But the next year, a very similar progression appeared in Bob Weir’s new song, “The Music Never Stopped,” here from August 13th, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall, aka One From the Vault, the song’s debut performance.
AUDIO: “The Music Never Stopped” [One From the Vault, 8/13/75] (0:50-1:14) - [Spotify]
JESSE: Dani Rubi reporting again: “By the end of the second night in St. Louis, when the band had started to crank up their closing tunes and it was clear that everything had come off well, the people got into a partying mood that matched the sincerity, if not the frenzy, of the audience. All around the people crowded into the spots where they could get a view of the band between the piles of amplifiers and speakers. I positioned myself to watch Jerry as he played a new riff to "Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad.””
AUDIO: “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad” [Listen To The River, 10/30/73] (3:27-3:49) - [dead.net]
JESSE: In 1974, the band didn’t come to St. Louis, only getting as close as Des Moines and Louisville. Jerry Garcia played local solo shows in ‘74, ‘75, and ‘76, continuing a low-key connection with the city. But by the time the Dead made it back in ‘77, it was no longer Pacific Presentations and Sky High Associates. Things had changed, as Tony Dwyer remembers.
TONY DWYER: We had tried to engage them for shows in ‘74, I think. And they had written back and said that they would entertain offers in 1975. Sky High Associates and the Grateful Dead never did another show together. And basically, Pacific Presentations may have done one or two after that. And that was it. And they did a fuckload of them. They did a ton of them.
JESSE: Sepp Donahower of Pacific Presentations recalls the period fondly, and for good reason.
SEPP DONAHOWER: That whole time window of ‘71 through ‘74 — to me, I listen to the old stuff, I think that's my favorite time window of the Grateful Dead’s music. Because they were young and on fire, and I was young and on fire. But you listen and I look at all of the box sets and releases that have come out of the Grateful Dead, and how many of those are my shows. And I go, wow. So that's really the fertile period I think for a lot of these releases, because you can hear the energy level.
JESSE: In early 1974, Sam Cutler and Out of Town Tours were relieved of their duties as the Dead’s booking agents, for reasons far too complex to address here.
TONY DWYER: David Parker and Richard Loren pretty much took over, and the Dead went on hiatus at that point.
JESSE: And so ended that era of the Grateful Dead in St. Louis covered by the Listen to the River box set. When they came back in 1977, they tried the St. Louis Arena, which is worth mentioning as a postscript here. In early 1979, Jerry Garcia recounted that show—May 15, 1977—to WLIR DJ Ray White.
JERRY GARCIA [1/11/79]: It's really hard to tell what is going to be a good night or a bad night. Sometimes we've gone into those places. I remember one — there's one in St. Louis that we played about a year ago, I guess, maybe a little longer than that. And the place is so… totally atrocious. I mean, the sound was horrible. And it’s like everybody in the band, during our intermission, [it’s] like laughable. You couldn't even complain about it, it was so horrible.
TONY DWYER: It was a horrible fucking room. But it was cheap. It was all fucking basketball and hockey arena. I mean, it was a dome. It was the worst fucking acoustics in the world. I think I saw the Dave Clark Five there in 1965. In an afternoon show. It was worse, far worse than the Armory. There never should ever have been any shows produced there. But there were.
JESSE: But the Dead’s show at the St. Louis Arena was a good example of how even the band could continue to expect the unexpected, and perhaps doubly so in St. Louis.
JERRY GARCIA [1/11/79]: When we came back for the second half, this magical transformation sort of occurred, where we sort of gave up — we said, “aw, fuck it.” Well, I mean, we'll never… pardon me, folks. And it, those of you out there who belong to the law… we just said, “The heck with it. We'll just do as well as we possibly can. And it came together — we sort of overcame the acoustics or something like that. I don't know.
JESSE: Maybe there really was something in the water. That show can be heard on the May 1977 box set, released in 2013. Of course, there’s only one song that can soundtrack our goodbye to St. Louis in the ‘70s. But for now, we’ll just sit right here and watch the river flow.
AUDIO: “Brokedown Palace” [Listen To The River, 10/29/73] (5:19-5:47) - [dead.net]