A really incredible thing happened, in regards to the audience, at those three shows: Only a waist-high cement wall enclosed the outdoor venue. There were even sections where the theater was basically just roped off from the open desert. It was an arbitrary perimeter. If you didn’t feel the need to be front and center, you could easily see and hear everything just fine without having to buy a ticket. You could still take the ride. Well, sure enough, on the first night I saw these shadowy figures sitting on camels watching us play. They formed a row around the outside, all the way around. Talk about general admission on the lawn! Except, of course, the “lawn” here was genuine desert.
By the second night, these shadowy figures numbered two and three deep, and by the third, you could hardly see past them, at eye level. Given the outlaw cowboy image that we had back home in the Wild West, we automatically felt some kind of affinity for these camelback riders. They were the Bedouins. Nomadic tribesmen. The real deal. I didn’t know anything about the Bedouins, but they had an impregnable presence to them. You couldn’t penetrate these people. There was an understood feeling that you were to keep your distance. They didn’t put out anything bad or negative in any way—they didn’t brandish swords or act in any way that was threatening. As a matter of fact, they acted peacefully. But there was a sense of both silence and space, forming a line that we didn’t even think to cross. (Rolling Thunder commanded a similar sense of silence and space, but he invited us to cross it.)
The Bedouins were shadowy in the literal sense—their faces were all hidden and drawn back inside their hoodies. All you could see was a soft red glow, right around where their mouths would be—they were smoking something. They sat almost completely still, on top of their camels, and watched us play.
Nobody in our midst was able to meet them or have any kind of interaction with them whatsoever. Nobody dared. We didn’t research it further but communicating with them would’ve been very difficult—none of us spoke Ancient Arabic as a second language. They had a quiet strength about them that you just watched and respected. And they must’ve liked the Grateful Dead well enough, because they came back each night in stronger numbers. So maybe the respect was mutual. That’s kind of neat to think about.
The stage was right in front of the Sphinx, and the Great Pyramid was right at the bottom of that. It’s all built on the same outcropping of stone. There are a number of tombs off the back side of the Great Pyramid. That whole area is one big giant rock necropolis.
Everything about the Great Pyramid is far-out. It’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World and the largest known pyramid on Earth. There are three burial chambers inside—an underground one, carved into the bedrock, then the queen’s chamber and, of course, the king’s chamber is the centerpiece. The master bedroom. No corpses were ever discovered in any of the chambers, and archeologists and theorists have questioned if all three were ever intended to be burial chambers to begin with—especially the queen’s chamber, which one popular theory posits was meant to hold a sacred statue of the king.
In 1978, when we went there, they hadn’t even discovered a blocked shaft that leads to the queen’s chamber—that particular shaft was so well hidden, that archeologists didn’t locate it until 2002. And anyway, they never did find King Khufu in the king’s chamber, so as far as we know, it may never have been used for what we thought it was supposed to be used for.
We used it for something else that it wasn’t supposed to be used for. We had a group excursion to the Great Pyramid during one of our free days in the week leading up to the shows, a little entourage that included the band, wives, Bill Walton, and so on. The walkway to the king’s chamber might be four feet tall so Walton, being 6'11", had to crawl on his butt and shimmy up the pyramid backwards, pushing with his hands. Maybe that was good training for the NBA, because he didn’t seem to mind. Kesey and some of the other Pranksters were there, too, but on both feet.
As a matter of fact, in a display of Merry Pranksterdom, George Walker climbed a wooden pole at the top of the Great Pyramid and put a Grateful Dead flag on it, which stayed there, untouched, for at least a few days. Back then, they didn’t really stop you from trying to climb the outside. If you got hurt, that was on you. Thus, it was on Walker when he got splinters on his legs, sliding down that pole. He didn’t seem to mind.
We were granted a private tour of the Great Pyramid, so there were no other tourists coming or going while we were in there. When we got into the king’s chamber, Kesey pulled out a harmonica and started playing, “Oh, Susannah.” It was the stupidest thing—but we all started singing. Turned out to not be so stupid—the king’s chamber is an impeccable echo chamber. The acoustics were incredible and the echo and reverb properties did an excellent job of skull fucking our minds. It was so good that we wanted to use it—somehow—as part of our live concert sound for the shows.
Our sound team, Dan Healy and John Cutler, tried to make that happen. They placed a microphone and a speaker inside the chamber, so they could use it as an echo room—kind of like the world’s biggest and baddest delay pedal. They wired it to a transmitter, running the cables to the chamber by snaking them through air holes. The FM transmitter was going to send the signal to the mixing console, giving Healy an unbelievably cool effect to use in his sandbox for the shows. But they couldn’t get it to work. We have no idea to this day why it wouldn’t work. Some theories involve the will of the pyramids: perhaps they hold a certain power and influence over the electromagnetic field within a certain radius. Perhaps they were just trying to protect their own air space. Of course, another explanation is simply that the only wires we could get over there to rig the thing up were pretty much useless.
Looking back, I wonder: Was it ballsy, on our end, to crawl into a sacred chamber and sing a campfire song, in an ancient power spot where FM signals didn’t work and where science may have spoken an ancient dialect?
We visited some of the other pyramids while we were there, too. The old pyramids. They were in Saqqara City, which is nicknamed “City of the Dead.” How appropriate. It’s a little more than eight miles from the Great Pyramid and is part of a sacred necropolis; an ancient burial ground for the rich and famous which, in those days, meant royalty. We visited one of the step pyramids that they said, on a clear day, you could see all the way from our hotel in Mena Village, and it was a really fascinating pyramid in its own right. It was really worn down; it’s a lot older than the Great Pyramid itself. One thing I remember is that it had a carving that looked like whoever carved it was trying to depict a spaceman looking out of a capsule. Parts of that assessment were undeniable. The carving had a round helmet around the head, and what might’ve even been a breathing tube. And I thought, “How did the ancient Egyptians know about modern space travel?” It’s a question that I’d still like answered. Maybe it just predicted the Grateful Dead landing in Egypt. Because the whole thing felt like some kind of outer space mission. Or something. We were definitely strangers in a strange land.
It also cost a pretty penny. Everything was on our dime. In fact, the tab came to half a million dollars. Back in 1972 we took everyone to Europe and it made for one of the greatest adventures of any of our lives. Six years later, we went to Egypt under slightly different circumstances—but we reasoned that the more people we could bring along with us, the more fun we could have. And we were right. It was priceless and perfect and, at half a million dollars, a bargain in the end. Albeit, a very expensive bargain.
Different people at different times would come visit Shelley’s and my room and smoke hash with us. It became some kind of ritual. We hosted a daily hash happy hour. At any hour. So that, too, was great fun.
* * *
Here’s a story for you: It was after the show on the second night, if I remember it right, when a local fella that had about ten horses got some of us together for a little late-night excursion. It was myself, Mickey, Sunshine Kesey—daughter of Ken Kesey—and Mountain Girl, and some others. We set out for a place call
ed Sahara City, which is a nightclub in the middle of the desert that isn’t exactly your typical nightclub, by any means. The Fillmore, it was not. We rode in a straight line, kicking up rocks and stuff, with our backs against the moon. It was a full moon rising. We were running away from it, on the way to a tent city in the desert. Not Black Rock. Before we even got there, we could hear the drums, beating their way across the dunes. It was a crazy, outrageous, belly-dancing kind of drumming. Really fast, hard-hitting, bright drumming. The kind I like.
When we finally pulled up, the only parking they had available was a railing, which was nearly filled up with horses and camels. Nobody drove here in their Mustang. Just on a mustang, perhaps. The kind with hooves. We were out in the wide open, under Egyptian skies. In the dark, the vastness of the desert was palpable as our imaginations ran side by side with the realities.
Sahara City was a crazy little scene. There were drumming and dancing, and the vibrancy shocked us out of the desolation of the desert. This was some kind of an oasis; our kind. Our tour guide signaled us to an area of the tent where we posted up, and I barely noticed any of that because I was so taken by the drums, which were loud and incredible. I had never heard anything that sounded quite like that before, although it wasn’t for lack of searching. This may have been the most moving music that I’ve ever witnessed. It had the center of the earth involved. It had lava. It had eruptions. It had pleasure and pain; joys and sorrows. It was fucking outrageous.
The drummers were playing on doumbeks, which are meant to incite belly dancing. There were women belly dancing all over the place, in indiscriminate places—there was no stage or anything. No spotlights. The drummers were scattered all over the floor, and the women were dancing among the drummers, and it was like, “Are you kidding me?”
This was in a large tent, and—after being at the Great Pyramid, playing our own music, then riding horses by moonlight across the desert—here we were, getting to witness this truly insane drumming. Our minds were just totally blown by the magic of Egypt. We were taken away. Mickey and I couldn’t even talk; we were literally speechless. It seemed like we’d only been there for a second, maybe a minute, and then Bam!—it all stopped. It stopped on a dime. It stopped. Our guide said, “It’s over, you guys. It’s midnight. Time to go home.” Damn. We were hoping the music would never stop.
We hadn’t been there all that long—less than a half an hour for sure—but it made a permanent impression on me and left me with a clear memory of those rhythms. It was that powerful. We went outside and we got back up on our horses. Our guide thought I was the leader of this group for some reason, and he asked if it would be all right for him to take Sunshine around and show her off to his friends before we left. His English wasn’t all that developed, but he said, “I want her to meet some people.” Sunshine was into it and I was fine with the idea, so away they went. The moon was up higher now, and it was brighter. You could see the moonlight reflecting off the tents and the horses and the camels and there was nothing else there, really. Nothing for miles around. Not even a Starbucks.
After hearing that music, your mind is really clear. You’re a part of the desert. You just had communion with it. From up on high on my horse, I had an even greater sense of the nothing that surrounded us. We didn’t come in on a road. There was no road.
As I sat there, my mind started to wander. I lost track of time. How long had it been since we last saw Sunshine? The thought started turning around in my head, and I started getting nervous. “Oh shit, what did I just do?” I let Sunshine go riding off with a guy that I only met a few hours ago. I didn’t know the local scene. Maybe the hotel was right after all, maybe it was dangerous at night. In the darkness, where the fuck was Sunshine? Did I need to go and rescue her?
I continued to work myself up about it, building in intensity as every minute passed by. I decided that I definitely needed to go find Sunshine. This was unacceptable. I was an experienced horseback rider, of course, so I pulled back the reins and kicked the horse and … nothing! I pulled the reins back even harder, kicked harder, finally started really kicking the horse hard—nothing! I couldn’t move this creature. I realized right away that these horses were trained to do that.
Egyptian horses listen to their masters. Our guide instructed these horses not to move. At the time, I didn’t understand that it was to protect us. This way, we wouldn’t be able to ride off into the desert, into uncertainty, hot-headed, all alone and out of water. At the time, I didn’t pick up on any of that. I was too busy worrying about Sunshine. “Oh my God, what I have done?” And all the while, I couldn’t get the fucking horse to move. It had a built in antitheft device. Better than any car alarm.
I was getting ready to launch a search party and take the desert by foot, when here comes Sunshine, all smiles. Our guide was smiling, too. Sunshine told us all about her fun little adventure: “It was great! I went to different families and saw how they lived.” They had never seen a blond girl like Sunshine before. They found her remarkable, and she obviously dug it, too; she was fearless in her joy and they could feel the love she brought with her, everywhere she went. Our guide nodded in appreciation as Sunshine recounted the scene.
We rode back, all of us together again, feeling incredible. We had an experience that took us higher than any drug in the world, we heard drumming that was better than any drumming in the world; we were out in the desert at the edge of the world. It was a wild night. As we rode back home, directly toward the Giza pyramids, the moon hung above our heads. We could see the Great Pyramid, all lit up by the moon. Our guide told the horses to run. Fast. Out there in that part of Egypt, the desert floor has more rocks than sand. At the speed we went, the horses kicked up the rocks, causing sparks to fly off their hooves—brilliant, bright sparks like fireworks for equestrians.
I was behind the group, bringing up the rear, taking in the scene and marveling over how far out it was, when I started getting hit by all the rocks. I had to pull my horse way off to the right to get out of it, but it was such a magical experience. We didn’t slow down until we got back and only then did we do a collective, “Whew!’ and “Wow!” and “Do you believe what just happened?” It was an incredible night. Hugs and high fives all around.
The Grateful Dead went a lot of places and had a lot of crazy times—and I’ve continued to feed my appetite for adventure in the years since the Dead disbanded—but I can tell you that nothing I’ve done has been as far-out as our time in Egypt. I’m glad I got to go when I did, too—1978—because I don’t think it would be quite as friendly today, with all the Middle Eastern turmoil. It couldn’t be. I was shocked when Sadat was cold-bloodedly murdered. It’s a different environment, now. Maybe they need more music.
I was so enthralled with the Egyptian adventure that I continued to wear my Egyptian apparel for weeks afterward, in the same way that kids sometimes wear admission wristbands long after the festival is over. I picked up a fine Egyptian cotton galabeya that was white with green stripes, and I’d wear it while running errands in Mendocino. That got me some really strange looks from my neighbors and the townsfolk, but I didn’t give a fuck. In my mind, I was still in Egypt.
Truth be told, the shows that we played there weren’t our best. They weren’t bad by any means … but they weren’t our best. I know that, for true Deadheads, despite all of the wonderful aspects surrounding the shows and the lot scene and the culture and the road life, it was most important that the music always came first. It was that way for us, as well. It was the heart of the whole thing. But Egypt was about a lot more than just playing music. And it was a whole lot bigger than just a bunch of hippies from California banging out some weird sounds on electric instruments. Egypt rocked but it wasn’t all in the name of rock ’n’ roll. We went there to tap into the greater spirit of things and to be just some small spec in a much larger experience.
It wasn’t any one of our faults that the shows weren’t as inspired as the situation. I think we were all just a bi
t overwhelmed and felt humbled by the weight of the history of it all.
Also: I was playing with a broken wrist. So there’s that. The Great Pyramid gigs were in the middle of September (beginning on 9/14/78). A couple weeks before then, on our way to Egypt, we played a show at Giants Stadium in New Jersey (9/2/78) and a two-night stand at Red Rocks, just outside Denver (beginning on 8/30/78). But we had most of the summer off.
About four days before leaving for this great adventure, my friend from boarding school, John Warnecke, came up to Mendocino to visit me at my Comptche ranch. Warnecke, of course, was the guy whose father had the Russian River property where we practiced back in 1967. We had come a long way since then. A few days before his visit, there was an outrageous party a couple miles inland from Mendocino, at a house in the middle of the woods. It was a really crazy-looking house, too. The host had the kind of cannons that you’d find on a pirate ship. So, naturally, we filled them with black powder—like pirates—and tons of fruit—like hippies—and just blasted the booty off into the forest. It made a horrendous noise and produced clouds of white smoke. I loved it. It brought back memories.
At the end of the party, the host gave me an ounce of cocaine. I don’t know why, exactly, but I’m not one to turn things down. So I took it home and proceeded to get into it. It was real high quality—the good stuff. Pink on the inside. Shelley gave up on me after a couple of days and was in bed just trying to pry me away from the bag of coke. But as anyone reading this who’s ever had an unfinished bag of coke knows, it just doesn’t work that way. Then, along comes Warnecke. Cocaine may be the bathroom drug at a house party, but even behind closed doors, it sure loves company. We got into it right away and kept at it until the day before I was supposed to meet the band down at Front Street in San Rafael and embark upon our trip. I was trying to get things in order at home, pack, and all of that. Cocaine can be good for that sort of thing.
Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Page 25