The original idea for the Wall of Sound was probably Owsley’s, though it stemmed from hours and hours of conversations with sound and electronics experts like Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, John Curl, Bob Matthews, John Meyer, Dan Healy and others. Owsley believed that they could “build an integrated system where every instrument has its own amplification, all set up behind the band without any separate onstage monitors,” he said in 1991. “It’s a single, big system, like a band playing in a club only larger, and the musicians can all adjust everything, including their vocal level, by having a single source; by using this point-source thing.”
The system debuted on March 23, 1974, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco—a concert formally dubbed the Sound Test. It was the Dead’s first arena show in the Bay Area, where they normally played at the 5,000-seat Winterland, and more than a few local Deadheads didn’t like this development at all—they saw the Wall of Sound as a sellout by the Dead—an excuse to play larger venues, rather than a response to the necessity of doing so. Still, nearly everyone agreed that the system delivered incredibly clear sound to almost every nook and cranny in the notoriously bad-sounding arena, and fears that the Dead would now play only giant shows proved unfounded—their next Bay Area shows were back at Winterland.
Rising more than 30 feet at the rear of the Cow Palace stage, the Wall of Sound incorporated 480 loudpeakers stacked in columns behind the band. By July, there would be 640 speakers powered by 48 amplifiers in the setup. It required a crew of 16 to transport and maintain it, adding tremendous overhead to an already expensive road operation—and this at a time when the Grateful Dead were trying hard to keep their ticket prices low.
“It was highly impractical to try to move it around—set it up, tear it down and move to the next city,” Dan Healy recalled. “We had two complete stages and they were extremely complicated; it cost close to $200,000 for the two stages. So when we went out on tour, the stages would leapfrog. We’d set one up in this city, while the other one went to the next city. You talk about out of hand . . .” (The practice of having two identical setups became common with stadium acts like the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd in the late ’80s.)
“But the bottom line was it sounded great,” Healy added. “I think it raised the consciousness of the [touring sound] industry and set new standards and exemplified the direction it really should be going in. I think it changed the whole face of the audio world. I know for a fact that a lot of major sound companies changed their designs and changed their array theories after we did that. It was an experiment. But it was magnificent in its glory, and I loved every second of it.”
By this time, too, Garcia had changed his guitar sound again, moving away from Fender Stratocasters to a custom guitar made by a Northern California luthier named Doug Irwin. Garcia said he liked Irwin’s axes because they combined some of the best sonic elements of Gibson and Fender electrics while also having their own character. “His guitars have great hands,” Garcia noted. “My hand falls upon one of them and it says, ‘Play me,’ and it’s one of those things not all guitars do.” Garcia played Irwin guitars from 1973 on, with just a couple of short periods trying other models.
As usual, the Dead introduced several new songs at the beginning of their touring year. In late February at Winterland, Garcia rolled out three songs he’d written with Hunter, who was now splitting his time between Marin County and England.
“U.S. Blues” represented a serious reworking of “Wave That Flag,” which had quietly slipped out of the repertoire in June of 1973. It retained the original song’s quick rhyming scheme: “Back to back / Chicken shack / Son of a gun / Better change your act . . .” But it added an opaque commentary about the Dead’s place in an America that was being ripped apart by the Watergate scandal, which was escalating almost daily, steaming inexorably toward Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974:
I’m Uncle Sam / That’s who I am
Been hiding out / in a rock ’n’ roll band
Shake the hand / that shook the hand
Of P. T. Barnum / and Charlie Chan . . .
Wave that flag
Wave it wide and high
Summertime done
Come and gone
My oh my
Though there was a cynical edge to “U.S. Blues,” the music was exuberant and the song quickly became an anthem of sorts for the Dead—a declaration that their traveling circus was as American as apple pie.
The ballad “Ship of Fools” also worked well as oblique reflection on the U.S. political situation or the confusing state of affairs in the Grateful Dead or any other organization, for that matter.
The bottles stand as empty
As they was filled before
Time there was a-plenty
But from that cup no more
Though I could not caution all
I still might warn a few:
Don’t lend your hand to raise no flag
Atop no ship of fools . . .
Musically, it was one of Garcia’s most conventional tunes—George Jones could easily have sung “Ship of Fools.” When Elvis Costello did cover the song in the late ’80s he played up its honky-tonk side to great effect.
“It Must Have Been the Roses,” with words and music by Hunter, also had a country feel, though the lyrics came straight from the mythic world Garcia described earlier. As in “Ship of Fools,” there’s a sense of nonspecific place and time, the past and present floating in the air like vapors, secrets revealed yet others barely hinted at remaining hidden. Hunter once described “Roses” as “my Faulknerian song.”
The third new Hunter-Garcia song was “Scarlet Begonias,” a bright and infectious polyrhythmic tune that “definitely has a little Caribbean thing to it, though nothing specific,” as Garcia noted. Hunter’s lyrics playfully tell the story of a chance encounter with a free-spirited girl in London—a giddy mix of images about fate, desire, temptation, memory and expectation. Do they or don’t they? That is the question. Hunter, ever the teasing obscurant, provides no answers.
With its irresistible rhythmic momentum, generous space for melodic guitar solos, and long, spacey instrumental coda, “Scarlet Begonias” fast became a favorite of most Deadheads, as eagerly anticipated as songs like “Uncle John’s Band,” “Sugar Magnolia” and “China Cat Sunflower,” to name three sure-fire crowd-pleasers. The fans seemed to particularly enjoy the spirit of the song’s final verse, which many took to be an affirmation of the magical bond between the Dead and Deadheads at a show:
The wind in the willows played “Tea for Two”
The sky was yellow and the sun was blue
Strangers stoppin’ strangers
Just to shake their hands
Everybody’s playing
In the Heart of Gold Band
Heart of Gold Band
Although the Dead’s sound changed noticeably from year to year during their first decade—either because of personnel changes or additions and/or subtractions to and from the repertoire—the essential musical character of the 1973 and 1974 shows was similar. In those years the band scattered plenty of short tunes in their sets, but there were probably more jamming songs those years than any since 1968. And the sheer number and variety of songs that took the band into interesting jamming spaces was unequaled in their history before or after: “Eyes of the World,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “Truckin’,” “The Other One,” “Here Comes Sunshine,” “Weather Report Suite,” “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider,” “Dark Star,” “Playing in the Band”—any one of those, each different from the other in almost every way—was a guaranteed thrill ride that was unique every time and showed the Dead at their improvisational best. There is a large contingent of Deadheads who argue fairly persuasively that 1972 to 1974 was the Dead’s most exciting and creative period. Even vaultmaster Dick Latvala, the acidhead keeper of the spirit of ’68, says, “Though in my soul I’m an Anthem-era man—‘That’s It for the Other One’ and ‘Dark Star’ and ‘Ch
ina Cat’—I think ’73 was the best year the Dead ever had. There were so many unique vehicles for jamming that year. They always kept a space where they could express that psychedelic side.”
After the Sound Test in late March, the Dead went into CBS Studios in San Francisco to record a new album, Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel (the Mars Hotel was a transients’ hotel near the studio). As with Wake of the Flood, the band recorded their basic tracks live and then added overdubs—and since they were able to synchronize two sixteen-track machines, they had plenty of room for textural elements to give the songs more depth. Garcia had five tunes on the album: “Scarlet Begonias”; “China Doll,” which was put in a mainly acoustic setting, with an exquisite harpsichord part by Keith Godchaux; “U.S. Blues,” which was the album’s radio hit; “Loose Lucy” and Ship of Fools.” The remaining three songs had never been played live before: Weir and Barlow’s “Money Money”; and two songs by Phil and Bobby Petersen, featuring Lesh’s first lead vocals since “Box of Rain”—the country tune “Pride of Cucamonga” and “Unbroken Chain,” which contained the best jamming the Dead had put on a studio record since the Ace version of “Playing in the Band.”
The album was all over the map stylistically—like a Dead show—but the performances were superb, the vocals strong and it was loaded with imaginative guitar effects, nifty percussion parts and many different keyboard sounds—this was the album where Keith Godchaux really came into his own as a studio player. Guests included John McFee of the Marin-based country/ R&B band Clover on pedal steel guitar (Garcia deemed himself too rusty to handle any steel parts) and Ned Lagin on synthesizer. (Lagin also occasionally played electronic space music in duets with Phil onstage at a number of ’74 Dead concerts, usually as a miniset between the first and second Dead sets.)
From the Mars Hotel was one of three albums to come from the Dead camp in June 1974. The other two were the first releases on Round Records—Robert Hunter’s impressive debut, Tales of the Great Rum Runners, recorded at Mickey Hart’s barn studio with a slew of Marin County musicians and Garcia helping out on the mix; and Garcia’s second LP, inexplicably titled Garcia, like his first album. (It later became known as Compliments of Garcia, after a sticker that was put on radio station promotional copies; the currently available CD is simply called Compliments.) Mars Hotel sold briskly as expected, but Garcia’s record was a commercial disappointment. FM radio largely ignored it, and Deadheads gave it mixed reviews—the most common complaints were that there were no extended guitar solos (nine of the ten songs were under four minutes), and since the instrumentation on the record varied so much from track to track, it didn’t feel as if it had been made by Garcia’s group. Still, there were a few standout tracks. A funky reading of Little Milton’s “That’s What Love Will Make You Do” contained a crisp Garcia solo; Albert Washington’s “Turn On the Bright Lights” gave Garcia room to lay down a scorching guitar line that soared above the beefy horn arrangement; and “Russian Lullaby” featured Garcia’s only recorded work on classical guitar.
Deadheads hungry to hear Garcia really cut loose and jam bought copies of a double LP by the Saunders-Garcia-Kahn-Vitt club band called Live at Keystone, recorded in Berkeley in July 1973 but released in the spring of 1974 as part of Merl Saunders’s deal with Fantasy Records. The album marvelously captured the spirit of that quartet at its peak (before Vitt left to join the Sons of Champlin), as they roamed through myriad genres in their typically relaxed but still intense fashion. There was an eighteen-minute workout on “My Funny Valentine” that would have had Rodgers and Hart scratching their heads; an ultra-funky version of Lightnin’ Hopkins’s “Someday Baby”; extended takes on “The Harder They Come” and Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” (with David Grisman helping out on mandolin); and what remains one of Garcia’s most moving performances, “Like a Road,” the Dan Penn–Don Nix tune originally cut by Albert King.
The Saunders-Garcia group in the first half of 1974 found Bill Kreutzmann in the drummer’s seat and Martin Fierro playing reeds occasionally, sharing the solo spotlight with Jerry and Merl. In the spring of 1974 Garcia also played banjo and guitar with a short-lived, eclectic acoustic group called the Great American String Band, whose membership variously included David Grisman, Richard Greene, Taj Mahal on bass and vocals, Sandy Rothman on guitar and vocals, guitarist/singer David Nichtern and bassist Buell Neidlinger. Despite the presence of three Old and in the Way alumni, the band played very few bluegrass tunes. Mainly they dabbled in blues, old-timey and Djangoesque swing jazz. Garcia played only about a dozen gigs with the group—including one where they opened for the Grateful Dead in a stadium at the University of California at Santa Barbara—“and then we went into all sorts of different groups without Jerry,” says Richard Greene. “One of them was the Great American Music Band, which later evolved into the David Grisman Quintet.”
Beginning in July 1974 the Saunders-Garcia band had a slightly altered lineup—with Kahn, Fierro and jazz/R&B drummer Paul Humphrey—and, for the first time, a name: the Legion of Mary. “The name was my idea, but it backfired on us,” Kahn said. “We played our first gig under that name at the Keystone Berkeley and these people showed up who were really part of this religious group called the Legion of Mary. I thought I’d made it up! They were a pretty obscure group. They had a brochure that had this picture of these medieval people and then some guy in a suit. I’m not sure what that was all about. Anyway, they came to listen to us and they ended up liking us so they let us use their name. At the same time, we realized we probably didn’t want to go under that name too long; it was a little weird.”
The Legion of Mary’s music was a slight departure from the past Saunders-Garcia bands in that Martin Fierro’s role was expanded and the jams sometimes took jazzier turns. Fierro also brought in a few new songs. Despite Garcia’s earlier pledge to keep his solo groups local, he took the Legion of Mary out on a Northeastern tour in the fall of 1975, but stuck to clubs and small theaters exclusively in an attempt to keep it low-key. It was at one of those shows, at a trendy New York rock club called the Bottom Line, that Garcia got to meet one of his favorite musicians, former Beatle John Lennon.
“He came backstage and Jerry introduced him to us and I couldn’t speak, man,” says Fierro. “My voice left me. He was one of my biggest heroes and I couldn’t talk. I was like a drugstore Indian. Then he came back with us to the hotel in the limo. No guards, no Yoko, just him. And he partied with us for a while.”
John Kahn’s memory of the evening was less starry-eyed, however. “My perspective was a little off-base because I’d dropped a TV set on my hand that morning and I’d gotten a pain pill from the Hell’s Angels,” he said. “So I wasn’t in the best shape. Lennon was sort of in disguise and he was with this really weird guy I didn’t know. I heard from Richard Loren, I think it was, that Lennon asked if there was a guitar there that was louder than Garcia’s. He wanted to sit in. Well, that got back to Jerry, and Jerry said, ‘No, fuck him.’ Later, Lennon came down to the dressing room and was there for a long time; a couple of hours. He was real drunk and was a little belligerent. He kept referring to Jerry as ‘J.C.,’ which I took to mean Jesus Christ, like making fun of Jerry. That night Lennon ended up with the Hell’s Angels and we had a particularly sleazy, motley group of Hell’s Angels with us. Years later I got asked to play with him by a guy in his band, Jesse Davis, but it didn’t work out. I would have liked to. I liked his music a lot. And basically I thought he was really cool, even though he was not cool when we met him. But I’m sure that sort of thing happens all the time. You meet a guy under the wrong circumstances . . .”
Meanwhile, the Grateful Dead juggernaut kept on rolling, packing stadiums and arenas from the middle of May through the beginning of August—just twenty-four shows, with plenty of breaks in the schedule. Everywhere the tour went, the Wall of Sound drew rave reviews from Deadheads for both its clarity and its impressive and imposing physical presence. But traveling with the Wall of Sou
nd turned out to be enormously expensive and the band quickly found that their coffers were being depleted almost as fast as they were filled. Off the road, expenses were rising, too. Salaries continued to escalate, as did the size of the payroll. The two record companies needed money to pay for studio time and product manufacturing, and everyone in the group seemed to have personal needs that required money, whether it was Weir building a recording studio adjoining his sylvan house on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, or a new car for Billy.
There was also another significant drain on the Dead’s resources that didn’t have anything to do with concerts, the record company or the handful of auxiliary businesses the Dead were supporting, and that was cocaine. When coke first came into the Dead’s world in the late ’60s it was viewed as an exotic delight, a perk of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle; a pick-me-up—a beneficial road tool. But through the early ’70s, more and more coke came into the Dead scene, some of it brought in by various millionaire Dead fans (a few of whom also got into heroin later). By 1974 it was a big problem. Not only was the white powder very expensive, it was so psychologically addictive that most of the people in the Dead scene who got into using it regularly used too much of it, and it made many of them irritable and paranoid. And it attracted a sleazy element to the Dead’s backstage that wasn’t eradicated for many years—most coke dealers were not cool people.
Garcia: An American Life Page 40