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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1978)
Grateful Dead quite alive in a new direction By GLEN OZONEWOOD The San Francisco experience of the mid and late '60s found ex pression in many ways. It created a culture that spread east and challenged the constipated life styles there. It fostered an atmos phere that allowed Bay Area schools to erupt in student viol ence. And, it gave the world acid rock. Sunday at 8 p.m., The Grate ful Dead bring a portion of that experience, albeit matured by 10 years, to Mac Court. The Airplane, Quicksilver, Big Brother and The Sons each spent time carrying the torch. But, since the early 70s, it’s been The Grate ful Dead who has embodied San Francisco, both its music and its counter-culture society. Financed by the money behind the add tests (one of which hap pened in Portland) and dosely as sociated with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the band soon became connected in many people’s minds with drugs, espe cially LSD. The add tests gave the band a musical freedom they haven’t experienced since. “It was music seriously in tended to get you high," bassist Phil Lesh told Hank Harrison in 1971. “In a sense it was both high farce, just like the acid tests, and it was music that actually changed people’s personalities. It was warping." Unfortunately, spacey music doesn’t pay the rent and the Dead were forced to strike a balance be tween artistic freedom and what would sell. One of the first groups to form in the Bay Area, the band was among the last to sign a re cording contract. But the dough was in records, and the Dead fi nally signed with Warner Bros, because the company gave them the freedom to run their own show. As the acid trips slipped into the past (LSD became illegal in California Oct. 6, 1966) the band began to expand beyond San Francisco. They first came to Eugene 10 years ago, almost to the day; as late as 71 they were playing Eugene and Corvallis two NOW AT THC PLflC C MONDAY “2 for 1” 9- 10 TUESDAY Ladies Night y2 Price WEDNESDAY 250 Beer 9 - 11 ,<2? chapgE TtO SPECIALS - /tt 4-8 Enjoy the Finest in Dining from our Continental Menu Steak Seafood Monday - Friday 11AM to 2AM 160 S. Park Saturday 4PM to 2AM 343-1896 or three times a year. The rambl ing, wait-till-it-comes-together style of their early music made their concerts an amazing experi ence, but their albums only came alive for people who had seen them perform. Then, in the early ’70s, the Dead started to hit the big time. A cut from American Beauty bass is 32 feet high. That’s its real size. Clearly nothing that’s any smaller than that can produce a sound wave that’s that big in the air.” So the Dead had a bank of bass speakers 32 feet high. But the cumbersomeness of the sound system began showing up in all aspects of the Dead’s playing. jams of early releases with the polished style of Wake of the Flood to produce a sort of vector music: energy with a direction. Blues for Allah resurrected the Dead for many who felt the band had peaked and was on a downhill slide. Wake of the Flood was popular only with dedicated Dead fans, and aside from “Eyes of the Photo by Greg Wasson The Grateful Dead, shown here at their June concert last year in Portland, will make their first Eugene appearance since 1972 this Sunday at Mac Court. Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia is at left, with rhythm guitarist Bob Weir and singer Donna Godchaux. (“Truckin’”) got a lot of AM airplay and “Europe 72” became gold. The band began filling up caverns like the Memorial Coliseum and as the size of the auditoriums in creased, the band developed an awesome sound system. So large it required two 40-foot trailers to haul it, the system was the logical extension of the love for technology shown by Kesey and the Pranksters. Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia described the system as the physical embodiment of sound. “In other words,” Garcia told BAM, a California music magazine, “the lowest note on a The crowds grew and grew and the money the monster was con suming increased with them. Fi nally, in '73-’74, concerts quit being fun. “It had turned into a thing that was out of control,” says Garcia, “and nobody was really doing it because they liked it. We were doing it because we had to.” So in October ’74 the band took a vacation, indicating that it might be a permanent one. But, an era shouldn’t end with out proper notice and the Dead scheduled five retirement shows at Winterland. All captured on film (the finished movie is now making the rounds), the five concerts sent the Dead out with a bang. Members of the band began touring with different groups and dedicated Dead heads had to be satisfied with the music of Jerry Garcia and friends, the Keith and Donna Band and Kingfish. But, in the spring of ’75, Blues for Allah was released. The Dead was not gone. On that album (the Dead have been recording since ’68, having released dose to 15 albums) the band combined the spontaneous World” had little of the kind of music that left an audience strain ing to remember where the music had begun and how the hell it ended up where it did. In June, '76, the Dead burst back into the concert reality. Two performances in Portland kicked off a tour of the other side of the country, Micky Hart in tow. Hart, a percussionist, played with the band earlier, but left after American Beauty. With Hart back on percussion, a lost balance is returned to the band. The ex changes between Hart and drummer Bill Kreutzmann add var iety and life to the group’s sound. Not that the drums dominate the band. The mellow tones of Lesh’s bass, which he claims has the widest range of any bass in his tory, thread their way through to work with Garcia and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir. Playing his bass like a lead guitar, Lesh shows an understanding of music few possess. Schooled in classi cal music and jazz, Lesh learned to play bass because that's what the Dead needed. Finally, the Godchauxs round out the band. Donna sings and her husband Keith plays piano and organ. At times, Keith has really stood out. His piano has an icy sound, like fragments skidding ac ross a frozen puddie. “Either you're alive or you’re not,” says Keith, “and there’s only one side of that that matters.’’ While the stage has been a major part of the band’s develop ment, it’s only been a part. Early releases like Anthem of the Sun and Live Dead were composed of rambling pieces that sounded much like the Dead in Concert. But with the release of Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, the group began making studio albums with a different aim than live perfor mances. According to Weir, the group had not utilized the special sounds available in the studio. With Ugly Rumors from the Mars Hotel, that utilization was there. Mars Hotel represented more than a new direction musically; it was also the first album released by the Dead’s new record com pany. Despite the artistic control of owning their own record com pany, the marketing and distribu tion of releases became too much and the newest record, Terrapin Station, is on the Arista label. Terrapin Station represents a first for the Dead — it is the first time the band has used an outside pro ducer. Keith Olsen has produced for Fleetwood Mac and is currently working on Weir’s solo release. Garcia says that CHsen can make a Grateful Dead record that works but the band didn’t turn it com pletely over to him. “It was definitely cooperative,” says Garcia. “But the band had ultimate control. Olsen got vetoed frequently and he’s not a pushy guy” According to Garcia, the addi tion of Olsen worked. “I think the band is in a real good place. This is our best buzz in a long time. It’s like new begin nings.” Sunday, the Dead bring their new beginnings to Mac Court. Tickets are still available at the Sun Shop, Everybody’s and the EMU Main Desk for reserved seat ing and behind the stage. Strict smoking regulations will be in ef fect throughout the concert. Prices go up one dollar the day of the show. The Dead haven’t played in Eugene since 1972, when they played at the Renaissance fair grounds. 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