The foundation’s Web site also notes that the collection includes “rare recordings” of live performances by Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, Santana, Taj Mahal, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Thelonious Monk, the Electric Flag, the Youngbloods, Chuck Berry, and Big Brother and the Holding Company among others.
Although Bear initially began taping Grateful Dead shows so that he and the band could then listen to them to improve what they were all doing onstage, he always took great pains to record the band just as they sounded during each performance. Because Bear never altered or manipulated what had been played onstage during a show, his tapes represent a sonically accurate picture of what it was like to have heard all this music as it was being made.
Because all of the tapes are now nearing the end of their shelf life and will probably degrade within the next five years, the Owsley Stanley Foundation has launched an online fund-raising drive to preserve them “for the public benefit, to be appreciated by generations of musicians, fans, historians, ethnomusicologists, sound engineers, and others.”
The foundation hopes to raise $300,000 to $400,000 to pay for the two to four years of studio time that sound engineers will need to digitize all of Bear’s sonic journals. Donations can be made to the Owsley Stanley Foundation via PayPal.
Following is a list of all the recordings Bear made that were released while he was still alive, as well as one that came out after his death. They are listed here in the same order in which they appear on Bear’s Web site along with some of his comments as well as what others had to say about them.
1. Bear’s Choice (Warner Bros., 1973)—The first album made from his live recordings, Bear’s Choice consists of excerpts from two shows by the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East in New York City on February 13 and 14, 1970, as well as three tracks they had recorded about a week earlier at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. With the Allman Brothers as the opening act and Love playing second on the bill at the Fillmore East shows, Bear remembered those performances as “extra nice as the mixing board and the hall were sweet-sounding.”
2. Allman Brothers Band Live at the Fillmore East, 1970 (Grateful Dead Records, 1997)—Recorded by Bear thirteen months before the Allman Brothers cut Live at the Fillmore, which is still considered one of the greatest live albums ever made in the history of rock, this release is a compilation of tracks by the Allman Brothers from shows featuring the Dead as headliners on February 11, 13, and 14, 1970.
In his liner notes for the album, Bear wrote that since his taping efforts were “always secondary to the task of running the house system,” he could not give his full attention to his tape mix. “The demands of the hall frequently led to the tape running out in the middle of songs and stuff like that, but there was little I could do, since I didn’t have an assistant.”
3. Dick’s Picks, Volume 4 (Grateful Dead Records, 1996)—This album consists of more tracks culled from the same shows that had formed the basis of Bear’s Choice. With both the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead jamming endlessly as Love did a forty-five-minute set between the two bands, Bear noted that the Saturday-night show at Fillmore East did not end until 5:58 A.M. on Sunday.
While Bear always had great respect for the Allman Brothers, he was far less impressed by Love. Because he “had no real interest in keeping them in my diary—so with the vain hope they would improve, I used the same reel of tape over—thus I only have the last show.”
Although there was always an early show at the Fillmore East and then a late show that began at 11:30 P.M., Bear took great pains to explain that by this time the Grateful Dead had told Bill Graham that they would only do one show a night there.
In his liner notes for the album, Bear wrote, “The performance was always more important than getting the tape right. The first few songs usually weren’t as well mixed on the tape as those which came after I had the house up and running smoothly.”
4. Steal Your Face (Grateful Dead Records, 1976)—Recorded by five different sound engineers on October 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20, 1974, at Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco during what was then called the Dead’s “farewell run” of shows before they went on hiatus for the next two years, Bear considered this album “one I would just as soon forget.
“The master tapes were a disaster of major proportions, requiring a complete over dubbing of all the vocals and many of the instrumental tracks. I had absolutely nothing to do with the recording of the master tapes, and was called in to try to ‘fix it.’ Phil Lesh and I were given only 18 days to rebuild this ‘Titanic.’ Fact is, of course, no-one could make a silk purse out of this pig’s ear.”
Or, as Jerry Garcia noted, “None of us liked it. I’m sure even Phil and Owsley didn’t like it that much. I think part of it was that we were not working, and we didn’t have anything else to deliver.”
5. Old and in the Way (Round Records/Sugar Hill/RykoDisc/Grateful Dead Records, 1975)—Recorded live by Bear and Vickie Babcock at the Boarding House in San Francisco on October 8, 1973, and then mixed and produced by David Grisman, this album consists of ten songs, one of which is a cover version of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses.”
Bear wrote that the show presented him with the “wonderful opportunity to try the various ideas I had about the production of a realistic stereo sound from multiple microphones.” By clipping eight omnidirectional microphones, none of which fed into the PA, onto the stands in front of the musicians, Bear was able to “capture a stereo ‘space,’ which while different from the actual onstage sound, gives the listener the impression of being in amongst the performers.… Something like a hologram is how I like to think of it.”
6. That High Lonesome Sound (Acoustic Disc, 1996)—Recorded by Bear and Vickie Babcock on October 1, 1973, at the Boarding House in San Francisco and produced by David Grisman, this album consists of fourteen Old and in the Way tracks, including a version of “Orange Blossom Special.” As Bear noted, “It was a learning experience for me, coupled with the usual sound-in-the-hall difficulties facing a band playing small venues. It is too bad that the band didn’t continue for a while longer.”
7. Breakdown (Acoustic Disc, 1998)—Yet a third album of Old and in the Way performing live at the Boarding House. “I didn’t think there were that many songs but here it is.… So much for my memory of events over 25 years ago.… No, I am NOT going to blame it on ‘the drugs.’ (I seem to remember we did do some from time to time in those days.)”
8. Fallout from the Phil Zone (Grateful Dead Records, 1995)—A double album consisting of eleven live performances by the Grateful Dead that had been selected by Phil Lesh. Bear calculated that 63 percent of them came from his sonic journals, which would somehow mean that he had recorded 6.93 of the tracks. The version of “New Speedway Boogie” comes from a rehearsal that Bear had taped.
Although he was then no longer a member of the Grateful Dead crew, Bear recorded the band’s prolonged version of “In the Midnight Hour” on September 3 or 4, 1969, at the Dance Hall in Rio Nido, a small unincorporated community on the Russian River in Sonoma County, California.
Bear taped the performance in two separate channels, one for vocals and the other for instruments, and “the two signals have a natural time difference. The ear interprets this as space. Phil resolved this difficulty by mixing to mono. I probably would have tried a digital technique in an attempt to preserve the spatiality, but unfortunately I was not consulted during the album’s preparation.”
9. Dick’s Picks, Volume 11 (Grateful Dead Records, 1998)—Recorded at the Stanley Theater in Jersey City, New Jersey, on September 27, 1972, by Bear and Bob Matthews, the three-disc set consists of twenty-five songs. “I Know You, Rider” contains a patched cut from another show. Bear had little to say about this release.
10. So Many Roads (Grateful Dead Records, 1999)—A five-disc box set containing thirty-two live performances recorded over twenty-five years, the collection was also released to the media as a one-disc sampler. Bear recorded all of the
songs on the first disc as well as one track on the second. The royalties Bear earned from his work on So Many Roads, which was certified as a gold record in April 2000, would have been yet another source of significant income for him in Australia.
11. Dick’s Picks, Volume 16 (Grateful Dead Records, 1999)—Recorded by Bear on November 8, 1969, in the Fillmore Auditorium (which was then no longer being operated by Bill Graham), the album consists of twenty-three songs and features the first live performance of “Cumberland Blues.”
Although Bear did not remember much about the show, he did recall going to the Rolling Stones’ performance at the Oakland Coliseum the following night. After the Stones had blown out their Ampeg amps during the first show, three members of the Dead’s road crew drove to San Francisco and returned “just in the nick of time for the Stones to go on after Ike and Tina’s opener. Personally, I thought they sounded a lot better on the Fenders than their somewhat wimpy amps.”
Noting that he then did the sound for the Stones’ disastrous free concert at Altamont, Bear added, “And yes, I do have a sonic journal of that gig too.”
12. Dick’s Picks, Volume 23 (Grateful Dead Records, 2001)—Recorded by Bear on September 17, 1972, at the Baltimore Civic Center in Baltimore, Maryland, this three-disc set consisting of twenty-three songs, among them a nearly forty-minute version of “The Other One,” was most definitely not one of his favorites.
“This concert was not chosen by me. In fact I was not told it was in preparation until after it was finished. I had no input and I don’t have any liner notes on it.” None too pleased that due to lack of space, the band’s encore “One More Saturday Night” was not included on the second disc, Bear also noted, “I have been told that whenever one of my tapes is to be made into an album in the future, it will be with my full participation, so this sort of thing should end here.”
13. The Golden Road (Grateful Dead Records, 2001)—A massive twelve-CD box set consisting of 163 tracks that include remastered versions of all the albums that the Dead had recorded while under contract to Warner Bros. Records, The Golden Road cost more than $100 when it was released.
Although the twelfth CD was a reissue of Bear’s Choice, Bear wrote on his Web site that “about 40% of the bonus tracks are taken from my sonic journals. I was awarded my second gold record for participating in this compilation.”
14. Dick’s Picks, Volume 25 (Grateful Dead Records, 2001)—This four-CD set consisting of thirty-five songs was recorded by Bear and Betty Cantor-Jackson on May 10, 1978, at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut, and at the Springfield Civic Center Arena in Springfield, Massachusetts, on May 11, 1978. Among the tracks is a rare version of the Dead covering Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.”
Bear taped the show in New Haven on a day off while he was on the road with Robert Hunter and Comfort. After having arrived at the show with his Nagra and a couple of reels of blank tape, Bear “was able to convince Betty Cantor, who was at that time the Dead’s recordist, to allow me the use of a pair of unused busses on her recording board.… In this package you will have the unique opportunity to directly compare my technique with that of Betty on consecutive shows, using identical resources to mix from. It is a perfect representation of our distinctly different mixing philosophies.”
15. Dick’s Picks, Volume 26 (Grateful Dead Records, 2001)—Recorded by Bear on April 26, 1969, at the Electric Theater in Chicago, Illinois, and on April 27, 1969, at the Labor Temple in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the twenty-seven songs on this release include a rare Grateful Dead cover of Jimmy Reed’s “I Know It’s a Sin.”
As Bear pointed out in his liner notes, “1969 was a year of contrasts, including Woodstock and Altamont for example. We were still pretty new at the R&R touring game and we played in all sorts of halls. On tour, we rarely could afford separate hotel rooms for everyone, so we shared, something which seems very odd, looking back, but I think it was one of the nicer things limited money did, because we got to know each other pretty well that way.”
16. Grateful Dead Rare Cuts and Oddities, 1966 (Grateful Dead Records, 2005)—Recorded by Bear at a variety of shows during that year, the eighteen tracks include the Dead doing Rufus Thomas’s “Walking the Dog,” Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land,” Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Gangster of Love,” Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee,” the Rolling Stones’ “Empty Heart,” as well as “Good Lovin’,” a number-one hit for the Young Rascals in 1966.
“For me it was very much a unique and strange year. I met the Grateful Dead that year and became their sound man. Of all the interesting and wonderful things that I have had an opportunity to do in my life so far, it ranks at the very top of the list. The Dead were young and raw, full of a special kind of energy. They had been a band for only about six months and most of their repertoire was covers—but what an eclectic and odd bunch of covers they were. I don’t think there has ever been anything quite like them, before or since.”
17. Dick’s Picks, Volume 36 (Grateful Dead Records, 2005)—The final installment in the series, this four-CD set contains the complete show by the Dead that Bear recorded at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 21, 1972, as well as three bonus tracks from the band’s show at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado, on September 3, 1972. The thirty songs include a cover version of Marty Robbins’s “El Paso” as well as a thirty-seven-minute-long “Dark Star.”
“1972 saw my return to the band after an absence of two years. The year was exciting for me although I was having some problems with the crew, many of whom had come to work after I had gone, and resented my efforts to improve things on stage and with the equipment.… The various problems, particularly the one of getting those who did my job while I was away to back off and allow me to return to my work, eventually inspired me to design the Wall of Sound.… The hassles themselves did not interfere with my ability to mix, and the band played many fine shows during this period—this is a good example.”
Fittingly, the caveat emptor for this release reads, “Dick’s Picks Vol. 36 was mastered from the original 1/4” analog sonic journal tapes recorded at 7.5 ips, and were not produced with commercial intentions. However, due to the masterful skill of the recordist, these tapes sound remarkably rich and true to the live sound. Being more than thirty years old, the tapes exhibit some minor signs of the ravages of time, as we all do, but rest assured that everything possible has been done to make them sound as good as possible.”
18. Janis Joplin in Concert (CBS, 1971)—Calling this “a complete shambles made of my tapes of a very good performance,” Bear noted that three of the songs on this album, “Roadblock,” “Flower in the Sun,” and “Summertime,” were “taken from my tapes which were stored at the Alembic Studios in SF while I was in jail.” Elliot Mazer, whose last name Bear misspells as Maser, then remixed them “to ‘make them match’ the poor quality of the other recordings he was using in the album.”
After having learned what had been done to the three songs he had recorded, Bear refused to sign the contract and informed the label that “they must not release the album mixed the way it was.” Believing they had already acquired the rights from Dan Healy, CBS went right ahead and did so anyway. Bear then filed a lawsuit against the company, which he eventually agreed to drop in return for “a small royalty.”
19. Big Brother Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968 (Columbia/Legacy, 2012)—Released on the first anniversary of Bear’s death, what he believed would “be hailed as the definitive Big Brother live album of all time” was dedicated to his memory. “The sound is much better than I thought it would be, no tape hiss, and no noticeable distortion or evidence of deterioration of the recording media. This is surprising considering these tapes are 31 years old and have not always been stored under ideal conditions.”
Having worked on bringing this project to fruition right until the time of his death, Bear is credited as the producer, mastering supervisor, sound engineer, and author of the liner
notes, to which his son Starfinder, Rhoney Gissen Stanley, and Sheilah Stanley also contributed. In Sheilah Stanley’s words, “This is Bear’s vision—how he heard the band live, and how he wanted to transmit it to you.”
The final paragraph in this section of Bear’s Web site reads, “I have a lot of tapes stored in the Dead’s tape vault. Virtually every band that played on the same bill with the Grateful Dead during my years as soundman and who did not bring their own soundman was recorded. I would be very interested in working with any of the bands concerned to see if the tapes represent anything worth releasing. I will post the list once it is OCR’ed (a big job!).”
Although Bear never got around to doing this before he died, all of the amazing music that he recorded during his lifetime is still right there on those tapes, just waiting to be released.
Acknowledgments
For having gone out and sold this book, I would like to thank my old friend and colleague Paul Bresnick. My thanks go as well to Rob Kirkpatrick, who acquired it for Thomas Dunne Books at St. Martin’s Press. Expertly, Peter Wolverton then steered the book to publication. I am truly grateful for his excellent notes as well as all the help he gave me.
Joel Selvin, whose continuing affection for Bear rivals my own, was enthusiastic about this project right from the start, and he made it possible for me to contact Sheilah Stanley. Despite how difficult it still was for her to discuss this with me, I could never have reconstructed the last twenty-four hours of Bear’s life without her. For having done so, I offer her my heartfelt thanks.
Charles Perry, with whom I had the pleasure of working at Rolling Stone magazine back in the day, was an unending source of invaluable information. Without his willingness to answer all of the many questions that I posed to him, I could never have written this book. I also want to thank him for graciously allowing me to quote so extensively from “Owsley and Me,” his incisive article that remains the best firsthand account of what it was to hang out with Bear all those many years ago. I am also deeply indebted to Bear’s nephew Michael Manning, whose stunning research provided me with information I could never have found anywhere else.
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