Grateful Dead

by Jesse Jarnow

The first two times the Grateful Dead performed in Atlanta, in 1969 and 1970, they shared bills with the Hampton Grease Band, the local underground heroes who pioneered the practice of playing for free in Piedmont Park. Though the Grease Band themselves didn’t survive past 1973, its members continued (and continue) to remain vital members of the local music scene. Guitarist Glenn Phillips, then experiencing his first success as a solo artist, attended one of the Dead’s Atlanta ‘78 shows and had an especially powerful experience. Glenn is the author of a soulful memoir, Echoes: The Hampton Grease Band, My Life, My Music and How I Stopped Having Panic Attacks. (I’m an enormous fan of both the Hampton Grease Band and Glenn’s solo work, and wrote a long history of the group, and created GreaseBase.)

Nick Paumgarten wrote about the history of the Betty Boards for the New Yorker, before they were returned to the Dead’s vault. Enormous thanks to David Gans for use of interviews, originally published in Conversations With the Dead, as well as the Retro Photo Archive, for access to some way cool and never-heard audio of Jerry Garcia talking about his guitar and gear with journalist Jon Sievert, recorded during this period.

A documentary about Atlanta’s Fabulous Fox Theatre.