Most of the research forthis post was done by John Ellis.
Photo Restorations bySteve Deibel.
Thispost will cover the Grateful Dead’s first three years in St. Louis:
May24-25, 1968 National Guard Armory
Feb6, 1969 Kiel Auditorium (opening for Iron Butterfly)
Apr17, 1969 Washington University's Quadrangle
Feb2, 1970 Fox Theatre
May13, 1970 NRPS, impromptu performance at Washington University's Quadrangle
May14, 1970 Meramec Community College
July8, 1970 Mississippi River Festival, SIU campus, Edwardsville, IL (within a half-hour's drive from St. Louis)
October24, 1970 Kiel Opera House
March17-18, 1971 Fox Theatre
*
Introduction by John Ellis
Mostof the early Deadheads that attended the shows between 1968-1970 still speakabout that era and those albums with a lot of reverence. My first Dead show was 2/2/70 at the Fox, butI already owned and loved everything they'd put out. I was INSANE over Aoxomoxoa (except forWhat's Become...). I love Anthem. (Even today, I still listen to all of theconcerts that were recorded to create Anthem.)
I'mfrom the high school class of 1971. Mostpeople that attended the earliest Dead shows were from the classes of1969-1971...so my friends that are my exact age would have been the youngestattendees. The folks who were from theclass of 1969/1970 were already doing LSD when they went. Both of the early 1969 shows (2/69 and 4/69)were HUGE tripping events.
By1968, young hippies (including me) were totally sold on the new era of San Franciscomusic, and the drugs were getting stronger and more available. But LSD was ascary thing. Only the craziest of peoplewere doing LSD at the time. Some of them(truly) paid with their lives because the doses were incredibly strong. I know of at least 2-3 people that never recoveredfrom those shows... So a certain amount of people (including me) loved theirmusic but we were scared to death of LSD.There was a national pushback against it.
Iintentionally did NOT attend the early Dead shows because every person I knewthat went to see the Dead said:"Meet over at my house.We'll all drop acid and go to the show." Even at 16, I was tooyoung for that – I just wasn’t ready in 1968 to try LSD. Eventually I relented in late 1969, and lovedLSD, but unfortunately I missed out on those early shows. Most all of my friends that attended weretripping though...
Iwas a bit miffed that I didn't ever get to see a real Live/Dead show. Eventhough 2/2/70 was my first show, I always asked friends about the earlyshows. The friends of mine who were 1-3years older than me generally said: "TheBEST shows were 2/6/69 and 4/17/69."I imagine there were a couple of factors. The 5/68 shows could have seemed a bitdifferent to their ears...as in "brand new"...because Anthem hadn'tbeen released yet. The Dark Star / BornCross Eyed single had been released, and was getting some airplay...so they mayhave been prepared for how different the Dead’s sound was since their first album(which was a trippy garage-band album).
Afterthe 2/2/70 show, I remember quite a few friends saying: "That was good, BUT..." My impression of the Fox show was that it wasvery dreamy and "tentative" and was missing the wonderful bombast ofLive/Dead. When I listen to thatcomplete show now, I have a different opinion...but I still get a vibe thatalthough the show was very good, it didn't have the intensity of 2/13-14/1970(Dick's Picks #4).
Afterthat, in the Dead’s shows by mid-1970, especially by their 10/24/70 Opera Houseshow here, they moved to a "song-oriented" band versus thegonzo-crazed Live/Dead sound. So thatwas when a lot of people were both relieved and pissed that "we'd lost theDead."
TheDead changed from a super inside cult band (through 1969) to a band where allof a sudden there was a big uptick in the frenzy around getting tickets. 7/8/70 was the first time when the crowdstarted including a brand new audience.Workingman's Dead had just come out, and I think that was like the"icing on the cake" of their growing grassroots popularity. (But in fact, there was some pushback againstthat album. It was NOT for tripping, andthere was very little jamming....which kind of shows how there were growingdifferences in what people wanted from the band.)
Asfar as how good/great the shows were: 7/8/70 and 10/24/70 were somewhat"okay." Very routine. The new crowd was bugging veterans. We were already MOCKING the lyrics to CaseyJones because people who had NEVER even heard of the band were now singing thatsong. Those July and October showsbrought on board a ton of new fans.
By1971 we were already worrying if the Dead were going to be good when they camefor two nights in March 1971. Thankfully,they were very good and they were playing tons of new songs...which was verycool and a major drawing card for the Dead.Unknown songs at a concert.Fantastic idea. But the flip sideis you didn't get to hear The Eleven, and Pigpen's splashy Farfisa was in thedistant past...so...no Alligator, etc.
TheDead were generally 6 months "ahead" of us…they practically morphedat least twice a year until 1972. Eachyear the audience got to hear lots of new material. (I remember hearing Jack Straw one night atthe Fox, and raving to someone who missed that show.) New, unreleased music was really important todevoted concert-goers back then. Theattitude was: "I can listen to thealbum at home...I want to hear new stuff tonight."
Butwhen the Dead came in March of 1971, it was very hard to get tickets...muchless great seats. And those shows weregreat. Even "Live/Dead" fanswere realizing that they were morphing really quickly...but in an acceptableway. And the 1972 shows were rapturouslyreceived. 3 nights of perfection. Obviously very much like Europe '72. It was almost impossible to believe theycould sing that good....and Donna was accepted.It was hard for early Dead fans to believe that they could up their gameafter the loss of Pigpen, who was so loved by early Deadheads.
Mostpeople WORSHIPPED the 1971 and 1972 shows. I think the fans of the Live/Dead periodobviously loved the 1969 shows the most.And then with the influx of a new, widening audience (and GIRLS), the1971/1972 shows were favorites for them.Girls generally weren't on board with the Dead until Workingman'sDead. Now, the problem was that girls LIKEDTHEM...which meant even fewer tickets were available.
Isaw the Dead for all of the rest of their St Louis area performances through1973. The October 1972 run of shows atthe Fox were the last Dead shows that I really liked, although they were notthe same band anymore. When I saw themin 1973, by then...THEY HAD GOTTEN TOO DAMNED POPULAR... The Dead were at theirbest when they were an underground band in ‘67-70. After American Beauty, their fan baseexploded. Cute girls that used to HATELive/Dead were now huge fans of American Beauty...and were seeking out the bandto party!!! I pretty much saw all of theshows through 1973, but it was the Wake Of The Flood tour when I just decidedseeing them wasn't going to be a NECESSITY any more.
TheDead were held in such high regard among hipster musicians back in1968-1970. Not necessarily for theirmusicianship, but more for their ability to get weird and do something veryNEW. I get comments from other bandsthat opened for the Dead in 1968/1969, and their opinions of the Dead varywildly. Some (who are blues purists)felt the Dead were okay (when they were playing Pig Pen's songs), butdisinterested in the "unknown" music the Dead were playing inmid-1968. Other members of the openingbands absolutely loved them. Some peopleonly liked the Dead’s first albums and lost interest by 1970; they had nointerest in becoming part of the Dead Heads club.
Meand my friends were all huge stereo guys.Every one of us had great hi-fi systems.We were among the first hippies that started assembling componentsystems. No one had component stereosystems in 1966. Your parents may havehad a console system that may or may not have been any good. By 1967 albums like Sgt. Pepper’s kick-startedthe steroids system boom. By 1968,stereo geeks were buying McIntosh amps, etc.
So,we would spend most nights listening to Live/Dead, Quicksilver's Happy Trailsand other tripping records like Anthem Of The Sun, etc. It was really exciting, but rigorous... Tripping(even mildly) took its toll...so of course we all started drinking to softenthe buzz, and move away from LSD. By1970, the quality of LSD had gotten ragged and buzzy. Laced with sh*t. So when the Dead put out Workingman's Dead,it was a bit of a relief:
ThankGod we don't have to trip balls listening to this.
Myfriends did the most amount of LSD between 1969-1970. By 1971, most of my friends were moving onfrom LSD...and the softer music coming out from the Dead was actually looked onas something like Chicken Soup For The Soul.It was tough listening to ramped-up loud rock and roll on a full-timebasis.
Ourhardcore group eventually welcomed country rock, current good country,singer-songwriters, etc. We hated softrockers...but softer rock from the Dead (especially American Beauty) worked wondersand had a calming effect. It wasn'tnecessarily what we WANTED, but their softer music was the best thing for us tohelp move away from LSD.
Myfriend group in high school (67-71) were all early hippies...or they were teenswho didn't want to publicly commit to being a hippie because by 1968, hippieswere aligned with drugs, sex, anti-war, etc.Most of the guys all loved the Dead, and every night we could we'd gettogether, get high and listen to music through a great stereo...lots of timesin a big house built 100 years ago.Great sound. Lots of outsideparties with multiple stereo systems (McIntosh amps) wired together. We'd have summer parties in the country witha generator for power....
Everyonestuck with the Dead until The Allman Brothers Live At The Fillmore East cameout, and that record seemed more satisfying than Skullf*ck. Since our scene was all about listening tomusic, over time we had a wider choice of albums, but Live/Dead was always heldin the highest regard.
Wewould stop partying when we ran out of records to play...or were temporarilybored with the albums in heavy rotation.I don't remember seeing a bootleg Dead album until 1971…they just didn’texist before then. We had everythingofficially released, and you can only play the same few records over andover. There is a burnout factor. Live/Dead would be saved for special times.
Butby 1971, most of my friends were now 18-21 or more...so we had other challengesrather than just partying. Peoplestarted working, getting married, etc.But for the most part, the hardcore fans still went to every show, andat least half of them remained lifelong fans, and many made a point of seeingthe Dead if they were anywhere near St. Louis.
Butby the mid-‘70s people were already hanging on to the notion that the Dead werestill great in concert. For the mostpart, these were younger fans (by 2-5 years) that didn't even see them until1972. They became the mostfeverish. They were creating a falsenarrative of thinking the Dead were as great in 1973 as they were in 1969.
Andthe loss of Pig Pen was a huge blow. Ina sense, the dream was over for my age group.The younger ones never saw what we saw, just as I didn't see showsprevious to 2/2/70. Younger fans werejust not trusted. Their love of the bandwas dismissed as folly by my age group.
By1971, our motto was "The Dead Died."
*
ST LOUIS BACKGROUND
http://www.stlmusicyesterdays.com/Index.htm
http://www.stlmusicyesterdays.com/Bands.htm
St.Louis is a big Catholic town based on the Italian and Irish immigrants. Much of the "social structure" wasbased on church functions. There weredozens and dozens of Catholic churches that had dances every weekend. There were dances at non-Catholicenvironments, but events at non-Catholic environments were more"individual" and "one-off" events....whereas the Catholiccommunity was very organized (and EVERYWHERE!!!). Live music was at parks, auto shows, parades,etc. Prior to my time, country music wasthroughout St. Louis and its surrounding areas.St. Louis is generally regarded as a very big "small town." Lots of country folk who loved their countryradio, country concerts, etc.
Therewere lots and lots of local bands. St.Louis had a huge teen dance/social scene. Prior to The Beatles, most acts werevery professional. In 1964, virtually allteen dances had music provided by professional bands that could play Top 40soul music. They were all pro bands forthe most part. Teen bands started rightafter The Beatles. 1965 was the adventof garage rock: the young teens that probably first got their guitars afterseeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan had their own bands and started learning howto play "garage rock"…simple music with an aggressive r&b edge. 1966 was probably the BIGGEST year for garagerock…but by 1968, garage rock had pretty much gone away as music became morepsych. Also, by 1969, most local bandshad bigger amps (and played LOUD) and the whole "teen scene" wasfalling apart.
Theofficial concert scene in St. Louis prior to the rock era (which kicked intohigh gear in late 1968) was usually at Kiel Opera House and the larger KielAuditorium. Lots of package tours forpop acts, soul and R&B, and country.When rock came on really strong, it stole the thunder from the above,and the era of the "package tour" was officially over. Even Cream, The Who, etc, were still doingawful package tours when they first came over here. Dick Clark did packagetours in 1966 with Dave Clark 5, The Yardbirds, etc. So, package tours was THE model untilsometime in late 1967 (I think). By1968, I don't think package tours existed anymore. Rock music had arrived and dictated a wholenew model.
Alot of rock artists passed over St Louis because we didn't have any smalltheaters (that seated 750 to 2,000). So,consequently we got a lot of big names, but not as many of the bands that wouldhave been playing clubs and small theaters.There were only a few rock clubs (like the Castaway and Rainy Daze). I think St Louis was such an old schoolR&B town, we didn't have rock clubs in place when rock tours were starting.
TheSt. Louis rock concert scene was still in its infancy in early 1968. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Herman'sHermits, Dave Clark 5, and others had come by 1966. In 1967, The Who came after their MontereyPop performance, but as part of a package tour with The Blues Magoos andHerman's Hermits (the headliners). TheLovin’ Spoonful and The Yardbirds also played shows in 1967 for Wash U students.
ThenCream came in April 1968. This concert kick-started the rock era because withinthree months, first Steppenwolf, then the Dead, Canned Heat, and JeffersonAirplane came to town. Those shows wereproduced under the banner of “Velvet Plastic Productions” by a local guy, JorgeMartinez (who went by the name "Umberto Orsini"). Later in the summer and fall, things gotrolling and rock shows started happening with some regularity: Big Brother, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge,Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors…
QuicksilverMessenger Service played here outside for free at the Forest Park Pavilion inOctober 1968. Forest Park is our BostonCommons, Central Park, etc. The jewel ofthe city. Starting in 1967/1968, bandsstarted playing there on weekends. Thecounter-culture gatherings were in full bloom.Fantastic times: lots of hippies, girls, pot, bikers, rock & roll,etc. The QMS show was one of the bestshows I ever saw. (When they came back ayear later with f*cking Dino Valenti leading the band, we were booing him andthrowing sh*t at him. He ruined theband!)
BigBrother & the Holding Company played at the Pavilion for free in August1968 with The Hour Glass as their opener (with Gregg and Duane). The day before, Iron Butterfly had opened forBig Brother at Kiel – Big Brother’s show was cut short because of union rulesand an overly long set by Iron Butterfly (among the other openers). I was really pissed off at Iron Butterfly forplaying so long that Big Brother only got to play 15 minutes! But Janis did a free show in Forest Park tomake up for it.
TheHour Glass were tremendous. They lived hereoff and on during 1967-1968. Duane metthe mother of his daughter in St. Louis (coincidentally at the JeffersonAirplane concert, where Duane was attending).I got to see them two or three times when they were in St. Louis in‘67/68. They were, BY A MILE, easily thebest hippie band to play in St. Louis in that era. They were professionals.
VENUES
Fromwhat I can tell, almost all of the headlining concerts prior to around 1970were held at Kiel (Opera House or Auditorium), or older vaudeville-styled movietheaters (like the American, St. Louis, etc.).(Keep in mind: Up until themid-1950s, St. Louis was not only the 10th biggest city in the country......ithad BEEN in the Top Ten Biggest Cities since around 1850.)
Allof the concert locations (Kiel, Fox, etc.) were located within a 3-5 miledistance of each other. These locationswere "downtown", which is where most people still lived until around1955 (when the exodus to the suburbs started).St. Louis ALWAYS had a large Black population, and there were plenty ofconcerts targeted directly to Blacks (whites rarely went to those shows until1967).
Priorto the rock era (1968), virtually all shows were union shows following STRICTunion rules. Tickets were ONLY sold atauthorized ticket outlets. Virtually allshows were controlled by national agencies (like Regal Sports).
Around1968/1969, local independents were doing shows, but those were at smaller clubsand theaters. Starting around 1970,other promoters started doing shows, but they were still doing the big shows atKiel (either venue). Eventually in theearly ‘70s, a local promoter aligned himself with the Ambassador Theatre (in adifferent area of downtown), and that became a main venue for at least a fewyears until the promoter's nefarious methods caught up with him. Contemporary Productions (Steve Schankman)was up and running as competition, and their booking rivalry led to some greatshows. Eventually Schankman'sContemporary Productions became one of the biggest booking agencies in thecountry.
Here'swhere most of the rock concerts were held:
http://www.stlmusicyesterdays.com/Concerts.htm
KielOpera House is a gem, and thankfully is back in business. It holds roughly 3,000. It has comfortable seats, etc. It is definitely a classy place. Kiel Auditorium was built for huge conventions,and was the home of a local college's basketball team...along with our NBA team(which left town around 1965). It certainlyheld over 9,000, although it was mainly used when the event would hold morethan the Opera House could hold.
Thesound in the Opera House is very, very good.That's where I saw all of the BEST sounding concerts (The Who in 1969,the Dead in 1970, etc.). Conversely, thesound in the Auditorium (the "Barn") was awful. You had to roam around and find a "sweetspot." Up through around 1970, loudrock bands used VERY LOUD amps. Vox,Marshall, HiWatt, etc. The vocals and drumscame through the "mains," and guitars relied on the sheer volume ofthe amps. For certain bands, the soundof a monstrously loud amp was BLISS.Many bands struggled with the limitations surrounding loud amps, poorPA, no monitors, etc.
In1968 and 1969, since concerts were mostly attended by hippies, concertgoerswere very friendly and shared their seats, etc.So it wasn’t an issue to move around and not have to worry about "assignedseats." When the Dead played beforeIron Butterfly at the Kiel Auditorium on Feb 6, 1969, it was Phil who invitedthe very spread out crowd to "come down here and cluster at thefront." If the Auditorium holdswell over 9,000, I assume at the Dead/Butterfly gig, the upstairs was mostly empty,and there were probably less than 2,000 attendees.
Whenyou were at Kiel Auditorium, you had to walk around and find a sweet spot. BUT, by 1973, the Dead were so popular, youwere somewhat stuck in your own seat, and "security" didn't allow youto get anywhere near the best sounding seats (unless you had a stub, or hadyour stealth game on.)
Inthe early rock era, security at concerts was done by "Andy Frain." Non-policemen with faux-badges. But they were "authority." At the same time Nixon demonized hippies, andBlacks, and drugs, and anti-War protesters – "emboldened"concertgoers paid less attention to "faux security"...and since we"behaved," we could roam around and sit wherever we wanted.
Thatfreedom ended around Kent State (May 1970).By then, local promoters (and new out of town promoters) were bringingalong their OWN security. The newsecurity was almost entirely made up of bullies, who LOVED to make sure peoplewere in their seats and NEVER EVER crossed the "threshold" of the15th row.
Concertswere never the same after security was "improved." Therefore mid-1967 through mid-1970 was aboutthe time when the young hippies could enjoy freedom at concerts. (Fortunately the Mississippi River Festivalstarted up in 1969, and the security there was lax until around 1971.)
Asrock got bigger and bigger, the younger rock crowd became more and moreobnoxious. Mini-riots happened severaltimes at the Kiel Auditorium. Concerts weregetting a bad name...BUT...the MONEY was so good...promoters started putting onmore and more big shows at Kiel Auditorium or the (dreaded) St. Louis Arena...ahockey arena. Circuses, etc. Bad behavior by angry teens caused thesuspension of rock concerts at Kiel Opera House. Eventually, Kiel Auditorium closed down, asdid the Kiel Opera House.
COLLEGES
St.Louis really only has two national colleges:Washington University (Quadrangle) and St. Louis University. Washington University has always been WAYmore hip than St. Louis University.Wash. U is considered an "Ivy League school that's located in theMid-West." Therefore, Wash U. has along history of having concerts. Theyhave an outdoor venue (the Quadrangle), and an indoor venue (the FieldHouse). The list of people that haveplayed there is incredible:
https://source.wustl.edu/2013/10/live-at-wash-u
St.Louis University obviously had concerts, but they are not documented as well asWash U's. Also...St. Louis University isspread out over a several mile wide "campus" (several campuses) ANDis just not as "rich" as Wash U.Wash U. had real entertainment budgets.I don't know of hardly any concerts that were held on the SLUcampus. (However The Byrds did playthere in early 1966 in the facility that was a gym.)
THEFOX
GrandAvenue, the street that the Fox is located on, was the heart of the "theatredistrict." There were at least 2major venues (the Fox, and Powell Symphony Hall), and another 3-4 smallertheaters. But the Fox was already goingdownhill by around 1964. "Whiteflight" to the suburbs, etc. Theglory years of the Fox were over by the mid-to-late 1960s.
Ifyou look at the movie bookings at the Fox from 1966-1968, you'll see thematerial went from PG to some edgier material like Valley Of The Dolls. By 1967, they were showing spy flicks. Then in 1968, it was biker flicks. In 1969, they started showing horror flicks,and trying some live shows (Wayne Cochran in May 1969, Lou Rawls & RichardPryor in August). In 1970, it was stillmainly Horror and Action, but by 1972/1973, it was Blaxploitation and Kung Fufor a couple of years. They weredesperate to try and turn around their business!
Concertswere almost never held (to my knowledge) at the Fox, and at that point, the Foxhad been left to somewhat decay, but at its core was a majestic theatre thatwas visually amazing, and had very good sound.When the Dead played there in Feb 1970, that was its FIRST rockconcert. Traffic played there as a trio(Winwood/Capaldi/Wood) in June of 1970, but then the only other rock concertsat the Fox were the Dead in 1971-1972.
1964was probably the last peak for the neighborhood. Slow decline into 1970, but it was stillmostly safe during the daytime because there were still businesses andSLU. But there was no"quality" nightlife. It wasturning into a ghost town at night. Butgoing down to the Fox in 1970, and even thru 1972 was not an issue at all. The Fox was never really a seedyneighborhood...it was just in decline for decades. Business closed...shopping stores,restaurants, pool clubs, etc. Allgone. That used to be a serious theatredistrict. The most amount of theaters inONE area.
Iwent there starting around 1964 or so. Iwitnessed the initial decline in the late 1960s until the late 1970s. That area on Grand used to have DOZENS oftheaters in the 1920s/1930s. It reallybecame the victim of white flight to the suburbs. Areas like that in St Louis went intodecline. Only the Fox, Powell Hall, andthe Kiel Opera House are still in use.
1970-1973was a time when I don't remember anyone ever complaining about car break-ins,or on-the-street shakedowns, etc. It wasperfect for us high schoolers who thought it was cool to go downtown. So...as a balance to the fact that theneighborhood was in decline, it was also the perfect neighborhood to see theDead. We always felt "gifted"about those shows. Even while it washappening at the Fox, we couldn't believe we were seeing them in THATtheatre. It was the most trippy, ornatepalace...perfect for getting high and listening to loud music in an atmospherethat was not full of awful security assholes.I don't even remember the "bomb scare" issue. I guess we didn't care. It was a wild era.
Newowners bought the Fox in 1977, and then slowly it became a premiere concertvenue to this day. The Fox survives andthrives today because of the massive resurgence in that area as the center forthe arts.
THE RADIO
TheONLY "underground" FM rock station in St. Louis was KSHE. Rock radio on FM didn't start in St. Louisuntil KSHE started playing a “West Coast” format in November of 1967. By late ‘69/early ‘70, there was another rockstation (KADI), and even though they did the late ‘71 Dead broadcast, KADI wasnever "cool." KSHE was atleast cool from 1967-1970, then they started playing a wider variety of sh*t,but they also continued to play a lot of great music, and they were (and stillare) the most historic and viable rock station in town.
Istarted listening to KSHE when it first started when they played some cool Top40, but also played a lot of new music:Buffalo Springfield, Dead, Airplane, Moby Grape, Electric Flag, etc. From 1967 until Workingman's Dead, only KSHEplayed the Dead. I distinctly rememberMorning Dew being played. Anything fromAnthem was prohibitive in that each side represented a whole "commitment". The Born Cross-Eyed single got someairplay. China Cat Sunflower and St.Stephen absolutely got a lot of airplay, but only on KSHE. Both Anthem and Live/Dead were so big (inour little world) that by 1969, we "didn't need the f*ckingradio"...we had stereo systems. Andparties with big stereo systems. So,there were certain really big party albums: Quicksilver's Happy Trails, earlyAllman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, etc.
1967/1968were the years when people in high school suddenly had to make a choice: "Am I gonna listen to AM radio?...or amI gonna start listening to ALBUMS?"If you listened to KSHE in 1967/1968...you were a hippie. Straight people listened to AM radio.
Iremember very little advertising for the Dead.We didn't have a good "street paper." The only place to throw money at would havebeen KSHE..but already "advertising" was sometimes considered a badthing. Word of mouth was"better." Of course everythingchanged upon Workingman's Dead…
DANCES
St.Louis was always a big town for local bands.Prior to the Beatles' arrival in 1964, virtually all the bands thatplayed in St. Louis (on a regular basis) were high-quality soul bands thatplayed the most current hits. Virtuallyevery band had 6-10 people in it. Fullhorn section, and generally Black singers fronting the band.
Priorto the era of rock music, teens went to mixers, social dances, church dances,record spins, etc. Dancing was stillvery important as a social thing through the dawn of the hippie era. Through 1967, dances were a weekend thing inSt Louis at dozens of churches every weekend.Learning to dance, or faking it, was essential. Even if you weren't any good, you at leastwere used to the feeling of being on a dance floor.
Ibring this up because if you were interested in socializing with other teens(14-17 years old), you could find DOZENS of dances to go to. These "teen town" dances drew tonsof kids who wanted to dance...but also (like me), a handful of kids who LIKEDthe music, and wanted to watch the bands.The same people that loved the bands were among the very firstconcert-goers when the era of the rock concert started happening in 1967/1968. The attendance at all of the early rock showswas by music freaks...who, generally, were also the first hippies in town.
Thebigger the act, the more potential for crossover. Girls who weren’t music freaks also went torock shows; groups of kids would have gone to these shows together. I think a lot of people were so young, theygot their parents to take a car-full of teens down to the show. I think as much as 15-25% (or more!) of the attendanceat early rock shows was normal people on dates.I think we sometimes think: "only music fans attendconcerts"....and back then, that wasn't true. Going to the concert was like going to thefair or the carnival. It was "partof a date." And many times, it was just something to do.
Ata Dead show, if you were tripping, most of the crowd wanted to hear the jams sothey could dance. By "dance,"I mean just shake it wildly. Way beforethe "twirlers," we were all very well aware of the skills of dancingby watching the crowds dance the latest dances at the teen town. The guys who danced the best were dancingwith the cutest girls, etc. So, dancingwas a skill, and you had to at least minimally function on the dancefloor. The Dead "freed us up"in that we didn't have to do a "proper" dance (like the boogaloo, theAfrican Twist, the Hitchhike, the Swim, etc.)...you could FINALLY justMOVE...and be free. Up until 1968, youNEEDED to know how to dance to meet girls, etc.By late 1968, you didn't because the dance scene came to a crashing endwith the advent of AM radio playing huge hits by the new rock bands. The "teen town" dance scene quicklybecame a thing of the past. Music tasteshad shifted, and "formal" dancing had died, but the need to shake itwas very much an important thing.
Ibring up all of the above backstory because by 1970, the old guard was fadingaway. By 1970 (when I was 17), peoplewho were 1-2 years younger than me had NO memories of ever attending "teentowns." When that era ended in1968, it came to a crashing end. Peoplewho were born after 1955 had no need to EVER learn how to dance.
Priorto the advent of SF music, bands focused on playing dance material. But once the concerts became more rock, themore people just sat in their seats...or tried to move toward the stage. Iremember a lot of people sitting down at rock concerts, but also a lot ofpeople "shaking it...moving to the music."
JohnCrouch was in the band Hugging Pillow at the time, and comments: “At the placesmy band played – teen clubs and bars, dancing was the thing, so we always hadto do danceable songs. We were doing mostly top 40 type stuff but trying tofind danceable songs from the new generation coming out of FM radio. Sittingdown and just watching started with the S. F. concert scene. Seats wereassigned in the big venues (Kiel, Powell Symphony Hall, etc.) and standing orsitting became the thing pretty much when the S. F. groups started coming in,but usually at less formal venues. I saw Canned Heat at Kiel Auditorium andseats were assigned. But when I saw them a second time at a union hall, it wasstanding or sitting only, no chairs even provided. (But that was great for meas I always made my way to the band up close to try and learn stuff by watchingthe lead guitar player…) [A venue like] Kiel Opera House was all assignedseating. But at the Avalon Ballroom in S.F., or the Grande Ballroom in Detroit,or the Electric Theater in Chicago, it was all sitting or milling about.”
TheArmory show was promoted as a dance concert.In 1968, there were no "hippie dance moves" (twirling, etc.)that I was aware of. By 1968, I had beengoing to Catholic dances with live soul bands for 2-3 years. The pressure "to dance" wasintense. Especially if you wanted tomeet girls, and be considered cool.Anyone who went to see soul bands play understood that dancing was"why we were there"...whether you danced or not. I usually hung back and watched the bands, sothere were plenty of us who were there to "see the band" versus goingto meet girls and dance. However, theidea of people "moving" and shaking it to a live band was solidly inteens' "training."
Tohave attended the May 1968 Dead show at the Armory, you would have had to be ahipster...of sorts. It definitely meansyou weren't "looking to dance and meet chicks." Everyone I talked to about"dancing" has said they just stood there in amazement. I've talked to people who said they"moved" to the music...
*
THE DEAD IN ST. LOUIS
TheDead came to St. Louis so often between 1968-1971 – more than many other smallMidwestern markets (Memphis, Kansas City, Omaha, etc.).
1968: 2 concerts
1969:2 concerts
1970:4 concerts (and an NRPS informal show)
1971:4 concerts
Mostother acts only came every once in a while: the Airplane in 7/68 & 6/70, Quicksilverin 10/68 & 8/70, etc… Sothe Dead were regulars. We really gotused to that as a normal thing. 5 moreshows in 1972 and 1973, and then came the drought. I don't think they returned until 1977. Youngerfans, especially those who got on board by the late 1970s, had no awarenessthat the Dead had previously come so many times. Simply because they came here so often, theword spread very fast. The buzz on everyshow of theirs was so incredible that people became Dead Heads based on thebuzz...and then Live/Dead sealed the deal.
TheDead had a close relationship with Scotty’s Music (see the Appendix). Scotty's was one of the only shops in townthat had used instruments. The smallermusic shops only carried a few guitars. (Musicstores at the time primarily made their money off of teaching, rentinginstruments, sheet music, etc.) EdSeelig was the first guy in town who was selling guitars to rock bands,starting in 1970 when he was 17. Heopened Silver Strings, the first vintage guitar shop in St. Louis, in fall 1972.
Themarket for vintage used instruments didn't exist until around roughly 1967. Musicians gradually learned that"current" guitars being built around 1964-1968 (or so) weren’t asgood as older instruments. So in 1968,it was known that a new Strat wasn't as good as an older pre-CBS Strat. But in 1968, you could easily buy any ofJerry's Les Pauls, Strats, etc. for under $500.The "market" for vintage used instruments didn't"explode" until around 1971-1973 (or so). Up until 1971, there were very few guitarsalesmen in that game, and almost none of them had a shop of their own. So it was a cottage "industry"started by music fans, who were generally guitarists.
Asidefrom shopping at Scotty’s Music, the Dead & NRPS also bought guitars fromindividual dealers. Garcia bought a refinished 1957 black Strat, David Nelsonbought a 1960 Gibson ES-355TDC-SV, and John Dawson bought a mid-'60s sunburstGibson Firebird V. One guitar seller sold Weir his sunburst Gibson 1960 ES-335before the soundcheck at Kiel Opera House. Quoted $475 for the mint guitar,Weir offered $425; when the seller agreed, Weir tossed him a set of guitarstrings from the road case and walked off, saying, “Soundcheck’s in 20 minutes,have it restrung and ready!” (This would become one of Weir’s favoriteguitars.)
Avariety of people helped out the Dead when they were in town. The local "support system" for theDead was really: whoever made themselves available. The Dead regularly usedlocals as temporary roadies…they always had a supply of willing cheap labor onhand. The Dead's equipment crew was still very small at the time, just a fewpeople before '71 when they started expanding the crew. They probably learnedearly on that wherever they went, there would be kids eager to help drive orlug amps or whatnot, for free! So you’ll find plenty of stories here of peoplevolunteering to drive the Dead and their gear, or unloading their truck forfree passes…basically becoming “weekend roadies” when available.
Asone (perhaps apocryphal) example, Buzz Wall tells the story of a couple offriends of his who went to a Fox show: “They went down in the early afternoon…A semi truck is parked in the alley next to the Fox. They walk over and ask, if they help off-loadcould they get in free? (Hard to imaginenow, but those kinds of things happened back then.) Ramrod said OK. Tickets were 3.50 for a balcony seat, so itwas a good deal for the GD. After acouple hours, they were just about done and Mickey calls them over. He’s at his drums. He reaches down and has a peanut butter glassjar. Opens it, takes his drum stick,dips it in, and tells them to open their mouths and taps a drop into both theirmouths… They got in free and dosed… I tried the same thing next day. They told me to get lost.”
Oftenpeople seemed to function "on the inside," but at the same timedidn't know who other local "insiders" were. It's like the Dead had numerous support groups,in a way, as they spent time with many people in their visits. There are stories of members of the Deadcoming over to people’s homes for dinner, or going horseback riding withfriends…
Ladueis the richest area in St Louis. Theirhigh school (Ladue Horton Watkins High School) is where the MOST amount ofpeople attending the early concerts (1968-70) came from. (A lot of the class of 1969/1970 were kidsfrom wealth...and had plenty of money for concert tickets, etc.) I’ve come across a group of students fromLadue High who befriended the Dead by the time of the Wash U show (4/17/69),and would hang out with them.
Forinstance, one guy took the Dead to dinner at Villa’s and Balaban’s restaurants,took them to the Gypsy Cowboy (a head shop/hipster clothing store), and tookthem horseback riding out on a farm in Chesterfield (10 miles west of St.Louis). He couldn't remember any dates, butit’s obvious that by the time of Wash U, they had a serious support system ofRICH kids.
Bandmanager Jon McIntire (who had grown up in the area) must have been involvedwith putting St. Louis people in touch with the Dead, but so far we haven’ttracked down his connections. My guess isthat McIntire (born in 1941) knew “society people,” restaurant owners, etc.,and probably wasn't concerned with the teens hanging around the Dead.
Localyoung fans would track down the Dead at their hotel, and at times the Deadwould hang out with the kids lucky enough to find them. Garcia was probably the one that young guyswould want to meet most. When I met himon the stage at the NRPS show, he seemed relaxed and engaged, and was availableto talk to. He was obviously nice tofans.
I’veheard a crazy number of "I got high with Jerry Garcia" stories.People would visit him at the shows and hotel rooms bearing gifts, and Garciawas not one to turn them away. Two examples:
Afterthe Armory show: “They went to the hotel and waited for Garcia, talked to him alittle, and asked if he wanted to get high. He said no, went down to his roomdoor, then turned around and gave them the "come on" arm wave, andthey did.”
Atthe Fox: “About this time Jerry comes walking up and said hi. One of my friends had some blow and asks, ‘Doesanybody want a bump?’ Jerry says sureand does a couple of spoons. After aminute or two, Garcia says ‘not bad, but seems a little speedy.’”
Suchwas life on the road…
BEFORE & AFTER ST.LOUIS
Imade a list of the Dead’s travel dates around St. Louis, indicating how longthey could have spent time in the city. In 1969-70, they generally did not havemuch time to spare, flying in & out on tour with perhaps an extra day atmost to visit. The pattern changes in 1971 though, as they start spendingseveral days at a time in St. Louis.
5/21/68San Francisco (Carousel Rock Jam) –- 5/24-25/68STL –- 5/30/68 San Francisco
2/5/69Kansas City, KS –- 2/6/69 STL –- 2/7/69 Pittsburgh. PA
4/15/69Omaha, NE –- 4/17/69 STL –- 4/18/69 West Lafayette, IN
2/1/70New Orleans, LA –- 2/2/70 STL –- 2/3/70 San Francisco (Family Dog TV rehearsal)
5/10/70Atlanta, GA –- 5/13-14/70 STL –- 5/15/70 New York City
7/7/70San Francisco (NRPS) –- 7/8/70 MRF –- 7/9/70 New York City
10/23/70Washington DC –- 10/24/70 STL –- 10/26/70 San Anselmo, CA (Joplin wake)
3/14/71Madison, WI –- 3/17-18/71 STL –- 3/20/71 Iowa City, IA
12/7/71New York City –- 12/9-10/71 STL –- 12/14/71 Ann Arbor, MI
TICKET PRICES
Hereis a list of ticket prices & known attendance for these shows. (As a rulethe Kiel shows had reserved seating while the other venues were mostlygeneral-admission.) The Fox shows in 1972 were $4.50 and the Kiel shows in 1973were $5, so ticket prices at the major venues barely went up in these years.But attendance went way up!
5/68ARMORY
PRICE:$2.50 in advance / $3.00 at the door
CAPACITY:3600+
ATTENDANCE:340 (for both nights)
2/69KIEL AUDITORIUM (opening for IronButterfly)
PRICES:$3 - $4 - $5
CAPACITY:9300
ATTENDANCE:??
4/69WASHINGTON U QUADRANGLE
PRICES:$1.00 Wash U students / $1.50 in advance / $2 at the door
CAPACITY:~3000+
ATTENDANCE:300+
2/70FOX THEATRE
PRICES:$3 - $4 - $5
CAPACITY:4500
ATTENDANCE:2000
5/70MERAMEC COLLEGE GYM
PRICES:$2 in advance for MCC students / $4 at the door / $4 non-students
CAPACITY:2200
ATTENDANCE:1500
8/70MISSISSIPPI RIVER FESTIVAL
PRICES:$2.50-$5.50 reserved tent seats / $2.00 lawn seating / $1.00 children
CAPACITY:1900 under tents + 25,000 on the lawn
ATTENDANCE:8500
10/70KIEL OPERA HOUSE
PRICES:$4 - $5 - $6
CAPACITY:3100
ATTENDANCE:~3000
3/71FOX THEATRE
PRICES:$3.50 balcony / $4.00 main floor
CAPACITY:4500
ATTENDANCE:3500-4000 (each night)
12/71FOX THEATRE
PRICES:$4 in advance / $5 at the door
CAPACITY:4500
ATTENDANCE:4000 1st show, 4500 2nd show
* * * * *
THE CONCERTS
MAY 24-25, 1968
ARMORY
No tape known.
OPENER: Public Service
DennisMcNally writes: “Late in May [1968], they flew to St. Louis for two nights,traveling 2000 miles to sell fewer than 400 tickets. The promoter, of course,lost his shirt.” (p.264)
Thepromoter was Jorge Martinez, an artist who promoted a number of St. Louis rockshows in 1968-69. Martinez died in 2020. From his obituary: “In the early1960‘s, because of his love of modern jazz and the lack of a local venue forit, Jorge opened “Jorgie‘s” on Gaslight Square [where many jazz artistsappeared]… Later in that decade, on a visit to San Francisco, he met JerryGarcia and Grace Slick who were appearing that night at the Fillmore, resultingin his productions of the first St. Louis appearances of The Grateful Dead,Jefferson Airplane and many others.”
https://stlouiscremation.com/obituaries/jorge-martinez/
In1968 Martinez (through his production company Velvet Plastic Productions)booked a series of concerts called NO BUMMER SUMMER - A SERIES OF SUMMER DANCECONCERTS.
Includedin this series was:
Steppenwolfon May 18, 1968 at the National Guard Armory
GratefulDead on May 24/25, 1968 at the National Guard Armory
CannedHeat on June 14/15, 1968 at the Winterland Skating Rink
AsUmberto Orsini, he also brought the Jefferson Airplane on July 23, 1968 to theKiel Auditorium.
(Laterin 1969 he also brought Dr. John, Mother Earth, and The Byrds.)
Theinitial concerts in the series were held at the National Guard Armory on MarketStreet. It was close to the St. Louis University campus and later on it wasoften used for frat parties and concerts (as well as sports events).
Some Armory history is here - and here’sa site with some good photos of the building:
https://www.builtstlouis.net/national-guard-armory.html
Johnwrites, “Booking the Dead for two nights was a mistake. It was very poorlyattended, less than 200 people each night. Although the National Guard Armorywas a low-cost venue to put on a concert, it was a horrible-sounding “room” (abig open space actually). Pictures (not from the concert, but from historicalonline sites) show that it was a gym.
“Thevenue had never been used for rock shows. Even though it was only 3 miles awayfrom Kiel Auditorium/Kiel Opera (where most of the concerts were held), AND itwas slightly closer for the suburban teens that attended, it was only thesecond time a rock concert was held there. (Steppenwolf played there on May 18,1968….one week before the Dead.) So one reason why the attendance at the Armorywas so low was because the "rock concert scene" was just starting.Also, people were totally unfamiliar with the Armory as a venue.
“Thelocal “underground” radio station was playing tracks from their first album andwas actually playing their new single (Dark Star/Born Cross-Eyed)….they playedBorn Cross-Eyed more often. It was NEVERin heavy rotation, but it was played.Still, the Dead were almost completely a word of mouth experience. And “standing out as a hippie freak” in 1968was a new thing.
“Mostpeople don’t remember hardly any song titles…they just remember the EXPERIENCEof seeing a band JAM. Songs from the first album weren't played much at thattime. Most people seeing the Dead then would have recognized very little sincethe Anthem album hadn't come out yet. If anyone even heard the Dark Starsingle, that would have been no preparation at all!”
Theads seem to list different light show companies: Visuals by Lights For The Blind (handbill)and The Optic Nerve Light Show (“Fillmore” styled ad). It may be the same groupunder two different names; in any case, we could not find any trace of themoutside of Martinez’s productions.
JorgeMartinez hired the local band Public Service to open for the No Bummer Summerseries. (At first they were called Public Service, then later the PublicService Blues Band; both names appear on the ads.) Tom Kemper, the band’sdrummer, later wrote a memoir More Than A Garage Band which had a chapter onthese shows (the Dead are on p.128-130).
http://www.stlmusicyesterdays.com/Public%20Service.htm
PublicService Blues Band FB page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1022050478151237
TimLawder writes: “Two members of Public Service had to drive to the airport in St.Louis to pick up all the equipment for the Grateful Dead and deliver it to theArmory. Also, members of Public Service were given boxes of the handbill tohand out and inform the public of this upcoming concert.”
BobSchnieders was the lead singer for Public Service. At the time he worked in arecord store and was a serious collector of blues records. Bob was into"real" blues...not the new psychedelia. His band did covers by The Yardbirds, TheRolling Stones, etc. So when he wasasked what he thought of the Dead several days after the Armory show, he said:"Oh, they were all right. Pig Pendid a couple of good songs."
(Hecan be seen in some photos of the show peeking down at the Dead from behind thestage curtain.)
Herecalls:
“Wewere still being called "Public Service" for those shows. Actually,we never changed the band card to "Public Service Blues Band," and itwas basically a musical transition more than anything - I had this burningdesire to be a pure blues band, but I knew the other guys wouldn't go for acomplete change in material, so it kind of "morphed."
TheDead's first album came out prior to that show (it came out in early 1967), soI had heard it, and since they covered some blues stuff on the album, I wasinterested in seeing them, although I didn't care for the original tracks ontheir record. Frankly, myself and the other guys in the band were probably theonly non-fans in attendance at those Armory shows!
TomKemper and I drove the Dead's equipment truck (a rental) from the airport tothe venue for $50, if I recall correctly.
Italked quite a bit with Jerry Garcia that weekend, as he had a keen interest inthe blues guys who were from St. Louis or nearby - Albert King, Little Milton,and Ike Turner in particular, as I recall. He was somewhat of a recordcollector, and I gave him some 78's that I had duplicates of. I liked him -seemed like a good guy.
Forthe Dead shows, Garcia asked us if we wouldn't mind playing just one set, sothat they could play their usual single extended set. I was fine with that, aslong as we would be paid the same as the contract called for, even though ourone set would be far shorter than the standard two sets. Martinez was fine withthat, so we played one set each night - probably 45 - 60 minutes. We used ourown equipment, and tore down after the set both nights.”
TomKemper relates the same agreement in his book, with Garcia asking a favor:“When we get into the groove, we don’t like stopping. If you don’t mind, wouldyou do one set and we’ll take over from there?” Normally each act would do twosets (Public Service – Dead – Public Service – Dead), but the opening band hadno problem dropping an extra set since the pay was the same.
Kemperremembers that “backstage, the guys in the Dead treated us graciously” andPigpen was like their host, “making sure that we feel welcome and comfortable.”Pigpen looked “tough as nails…but what a nice guy.” Garcia sat in a chaironstage before the soundcheck, warming up on guitar, but as a drummer Kemperfelt more threatened by the Dead drummers “warming up, doing paradiddles,flamadiddles, and double and single rolls in perfect synchronization.” Of theshow itself, he remembers the bright lights and what was for him a large crowd:“With no chairs, people wandered around, danced, and sat in circles on thefloor.”
Despitethe small audience, there are a number of memories from concertgoers. CraigPetty went on the first night at the Armory on May 24, and remembers thatPublic Service opened and then the Dead played one long set.
MarkBumiller recalls: “Owsley and Pig came out before the show with a bag of powder,threw it on the first few rows of people sitting on the floor in front of thestage. What a trip! No chairs and like300 people, no one knew who they were."
Onecomment on dead.net: “I was 17 at the time, the crowdwas small... I was able to walk in the dressing room, Jerry and Pigpen werewalking around and I talked with Phil and he let my friend play his bass for aminute. They were all just regular guys and that impressed me. While playing,Mickey's cymbal fell and hit someone in the small crowd. After repairs the showwent on.”
Atthe Armory on the first night (Friday), a drummer’s cymbal went off the stageinto a girl’s forehead. (One person heard it was Billy's cymbal.) Her name was Karen Burkheimer, and the story goes that members of the Deadwent by her parents’ house the next day to check on her.
PeteSullivan: “I heard about the incident from Jerry talking to someone beside meabout her condition during Saturday night’s break. When asked about the incident,I heard Jerry tell the guy, “Oh she's groovy, she's cool, she's here.” I evensaw her briefly later during their second set with a forehead bandage.”
StuartJohnson (of the band Alvin Pivil) attended the first night, the 24th.He doesn’t remember seeing the opening act (although he was aware of PublicService), but he was certain that once the Dead played, the opening act did notplay again. He thought the concert ended around 30 mins prior to midnight. (Soany fanciful recollections by people who said they played until 3am is just nottrue.)
Stuartsaid that most of the songs they played were unknown to him aside from thesongs he was familiar with from their first album. He was positive that theyplayed In The Midnight Hour, and Good Morning Little School Girl.
ThomMeininger (also of the band Alvin Pivil) said: “The head roadie from our groupwas at the Armory and some people knocked down the American flag which caused aruckus and I believe got the Dead banned from playing the Armory again.”
Thatmight not be true, but another witness also remembers the flag incident. JohnCrouch writes on setlists.net: “I was at the 1st nite May 24, 1968 of this 2nite show. It was the 1st time the Dead played St. Louis. I sat on the floordirectly in front of Garcia right in front of the stage.
Contrary to other websites, they opened with "Morning Dew" which theydid at all the shows I saw of them both in St. Louis & Chicago in '68 &'69. They took a break in playing about halfway thru the show and instead ofgoing backstage, they just stepped off the stage into the audience. I got totalk to Phil Lesh for a short time.
Up to that time only their 1st album was out. But that nite they played lots ofstuff from "Anthem of the Sun" which nobody had yet heard and it wastruly mind blowing. There was nothing else out like it, mainly consisting oflong jam songs.
Somebody took the American flag that nite, and a National Guard officer came onstage and demanded it back or the show would be ended. It was returned.”
ShowgoerBix was there on the 25th and says he remembers Morning Dew and GoodMorning Little School Girl. Everything else was new!
Anothercommenter on the Archive wrote about the “awesome show” he can’t forget: “Iknew who these guys were but I had no idea that this concert would change mylife permanently.”
“Mymemory is that they closed with Morning Dew on the 25th but I could bewrong...I do have a clear recollection of Morning Dew ending with a band membergrabbing a mic off of the mic stand and crashing it into the six foot tallgong, repeatedly and rotating the mic which still worked, around and around theface of the gong and the most incredible sounds coming out from this along withthe guitars... At that point, right then and there, I decided that I needed toleave St. Louis ASAP and move to the Bay Area to be able to see these guysperform, over and over again, on their home turf...which I did.”
Another witness recalls being there on the "secondnight. They played in the big main room on a makeshift stage about a foot high,sparsely attended with no chairs. I was sitting on the floor 10 feet from Garcia,amazed at the double drummers and the two equally-fine guitarists, with theaudience sitting - dancing - freaking freely, including someone in a big cardboardbox... Alocal group, Public Service Blues Band, opened up each night. I seem to recalla lot of fluid music, a lot of Garcia in-flight, standing at the edge of thestage, and a few "songs" we recognized, including Schoolgirl, ViolaLee, Morning Dew - I think that's the one where he broke a string and changedit, standing up, in like a minute or so, pretty impressive. And what was likelyAlligator with everyone getting onto percussion - guiro ("scraper"),vibraslap, etc. We were only familiar with the first album, so there was a lot ofnew music to digest."
BillKeithler attended the 25th, sitting on the floor in front of thestage. He’s written a few online reviews but gave us more details:
"Iwas just 16 when I saw my first Dead show at the Armory and had only heardtheir first album up until then. I remember that they started with Morning Dewwhich was followed by Good Morning Little School Girl. I remember that theystarted Dew with a Chinese gong that built up to a crescendo from which theylaunched the power chord crashing into the song. Mickey came out and did the gong although atthe time I thought it was Pigpen as they kind of looked similar at that time,and I didn’t know of Mickey yet.
AfterSchoolgirl, they went into a long piece which went to the end of the first set,so it probably lasted for about 40 minutes. It was nothing that was on thefirst album, so I am guessing that it was likely Cryptical > New PotatoCaboose possibly ending with Born Cross Eyed. I do remember that Pig did notsing other than Schoolgirl so it was unlikely to have been Alligator or Caution… One unusual event that occurred during thislong jammy piece was that Phil broke a string and it whacked him in the face.The band did not stop playing and he got a new string on and rejoined the song.
PublicService opened with an hour set, then the Dead played for about an hour. PublicService came back and then unfortunately my father showed up to bring me and myfriend home, so I missed the second set.”
(Billhad heard that the Dead had played late into the night at the previous show, sothis was very disappointing. Although each band had done one set the firstnight, he says, “I am certain about the second night having 2 sets by each bandas my Dad found us during the set break after the Dead’s first set.” This differs with Bob Schnieders' memory.)
Accordingto Bill, stories of the Dead’s first show were already growing by the nextnight:
“Wewere talking to so people who had attended the night before and they related astory which may or may not be entirely true. We were told that the second seton 5/24/68 went very late—if that show followed the same pattern as the one Isaw, the second set would have started sometime around 11:30-12:00. They werestill playing at around 2:30 am and the police tried to get them to quit.Naturally they did not comply. The cops supposedly had someone turn off thepower to the band which only had the effect of creating a drum duet with Billyand Mickey, with Pig on the vibraslap. Again, the story goes, the cops thenfired a shot into the ceiling to impress upon the band that they were seriousabout stopping the show and they did quit after that. Not sure I believe it butthat is what we were told."
TheDead had a strong effect on many people in the Armory, who became fans andwould return to the Dead’s shows repeatedly. John comments, “The people who firstlatched on to the Dead liked them because of how different they were. And theseearly Dead fans liked them on the strength of their first album, which had a‘new’ vibe to it, as did other SF bands.” But the first album would have beenlittle preparation for these ’68 shows.
JohnCrouch was in the band Hugging Pillow, and would later see the Dead again on4/17/69 and many other shows:
“Wetotally loved the Dead. I met Phil at the Armory show, and at the Quad we allgot up on stage and talked to all the band members.
“Myband loved the new Anthem of the Sun music. It wasn't the typical 3 minutesongs we'd been used to. The jam factor of Anthem was phenomenal and it drew mein to experience the ins & outs, the ups & down, the bobbing &weaving of it.
“Wewere already playing some of the Dead songs from the 1st album, Morning Dew,Good Morning Little School Girl & Cold Rain and Snow. We also picked up onLovelight right away even though we'd only witnessed Pig Pen doing it, as itdidn't appear on an album til Live Dead.”
StuartJohnson was in the band Alvin Pivil; as a musician he was interested in theDead’s new, fresh approach to older R&B tunes, and also their approach toimprovising. His band would open for the Dead on 4/17/69, and he kept seeingthem after that. He liked the Dead partly because they were new and exciting,and they stretched out their songs. But also, like many early GD fans, Pig Penwas a big draw. As with many fans of Pig Pen, Stuart seemed to like Pig Penmore for the style Pig brought to the band – aggressively played rhythm andblues tunes – versus Pig Pen’s lack of singing prowess. (John remarks, “I think this was common amongearly Dead fans. We knew we weren’t seeing Otis Redding, but still…it wasalways very clear that Pig Pen BROUGHT THE PARTY whenever he sang...except forthe occasional slow Pig song.”)
Evenon this first trip to St. Louis, Jerry Garcia met some familiar faces. PatrickHarvey writes, “My brother Brian went with his friend John. Jerry had knownJohn's brother and some of our other friends from back in Haight-Ashbury. Johnand Brian struck up a conversation, and they all decided that Jerry would comeback over to Belleville with them after the show to look for some of thosepeople, and grab some after-hours food. Middle of the night John's VW bug pullsup in our driveway, and Brian comes running in and says that they had JerryGarcia out in the car and were going for something to eat, and he needed somemoney. He ran back out; the story is that the three of them wound up at a Mr.Donut on the west end of Belleville, where one of the lightshow guys worked theovernight shift, and they wound up getting some of those hamburgers that camewrapped in plastic, which Garcia christened "Ratburgers."”
*
There’sa tape online with this date:
https://archive.org/details/1968-05-24St.LouisMo-NationalGuardArmory
Thisis an undated tape fragment falsely attributed to this date, but it does comefrom the same time period. (The old Deadbase setlist for 5/24 actually camefrom 2/5/69.)
Anumber of the tape fragments in this collection are from May/June 1968 and givean idea of how the St. Louis shows might have sounded:
https://archive.org/details/gd68-xx-xx.sbd.vernon.9426.sbeok.shnf
PHOTOS:
5/25/68, photo by Tom Tussey:
Bill Melick photos from 5/24:
Photos by Craig Petty, 5/24:
** *
FEBRUARY 6, 1969
KIEL AUDITORIUM
OPENING FOR: IronButterfly
https://archive.org/details/gd1969-02-06.137394.sbd.wise.sirmick.sbeok.flac16
SETLIST:
MorningDew
DarkStar >
St.Stephen >
TheEleven >
TurnOn Your Lovelight
Cryptical > TheOther One > Cryptical >
Feedback >
WeBid You Goodnight
Johnwrites: “This concert was the first time that fans were prepared and were veryfamiliar with Anthem Of The Sun, which was an extremely popularpartying/tripping album. This is the show that many “old-timers” regard astheir best show in St. Louis from the “Live/Dead” period. Several people Italked to remembered how strong the LSD was. The LSD consumed by concertgoersthat night was VERY VERY strong stuff. I know one guy ended up in the hospital.
“I'vetalked to numerous people who were at the Armory, this show, and the Wash Ushow. This Kiel show is usually regarded as the most explosive and exciting,followed by the Wash U show. These two shows are right in the Live/Dead timeframe. I think that the Armory shocked everyone because most of the materialwas unheard. My guess is that the appreciation of 2/69 is partially based onthe fact that it was the first time they saw a performance of well-knownmaterial…totally jammed out.”
Alongwith the previous show in Kansas City, the Dead opened for the more popularband Iron Butterfly. Most of the crowd were there to see Iron Butterfly, so theDead may have won some new fans in this audience. The show was put on by MissionPromotions, an obscure St. Louis agency that promoted a few concerts in 1969 – includingBlue Cheer at the Opera House on Jan. 25 and Country Joe & the Fish at theOpera House on April 25. (All of these shows have “KSHE Radio Presents” on theads, the station likely publicizing the shows on the air.)
Thelarge 9300-seat Kiel Auditorium was far from filled. After the opening songMorning Dew, Phil says, "Since there's so few of you, why don't you comedown here and cluster at the front." (In 1969, you were still very free toroam around and find a better seat. It’s very likely that many people lefttheir assigned seats to move up front.)
AfterLovelight ends an hour-long set, Phil says "The Iron Butterfly will be onin a few minutes," but then after only 30 seconds Jerry says, "OK, wehave some more time, we're gonna play a little more." (A bit later Philsays "That's right, wrap yourselves around each other.") Then theyplay another 25-minute suite.
Afterthe Dead finishes, the crowd still calls for more. The announcer says, “Did youlike them? We’re going to have a very brief intermission because I know you’reall waiting to see the Iron Butterfly.” (Crowd: “No! No!”) “They’re gonna callout the heat and close up this place in about an hour and a half, so we’regonna have to get on with the show.”
BillKeithler writes: “The Dead opened for Iron Butterfly who were still riding highon In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida and most of the audience was there to see them rather thanthe Dead. The prior August, Iron Butterfly opened for Janis Joplin/Big Brotherand played so long that Janis could only do a few songs before being stoppedbecause of the curfew in place at that time. To make it up to her fans, Janisdid a free concert in Forest Park the following day (which sadly I only heardabout after it happened). The urban legend about the show in February was thatthe Dead were giving the Butterfly a little payback. They had played a prettylong show (for an opener) and ended with Lovelight. We all thought they hadfinished, then they launched into the full version of Cryptical > Feedback >We Bid you Goodnight adding another 45 minutes or so to an already lengthyearly 69 show (Dew, Dark Star St Stephen The Eleven Lovelight). I suspect thestory is apocryphal as this was a fairly typical show length for this period.With an opener like the ’69 GD I would not have wanted to follow that act.”
The‘payback’ was just a rumor since the Dead may not even have heard of BigBrother’s shortened show. John writes, “There were absolutely fans who were atthe Feb. 1969 Kiel show who were die-hard fans.They had to be real fans specifically because they attended. I remember there was already some pushbackagainst Iron Butterfly.....because they had gotten popular via In-A-Gadda. Music fans who considered themselves "inthe know" and "insiders" pushed back against IB. I remember this in high school. Liking Iron Butterfly was like admitting youwere a fan of Grand Funk. My friend Bix claimsthat Kiel emptied out after the Dead finished, but that [may just be] hisfriends left after the Dead were finished. Also....lots of people were taking strong LSDthat night. My guess is that numerousDead Heads left because they didn't wanna get bummed out by listening to a bandthat was "beneath them."Also....the pushback against IB started intensely after IB played solong at the Kiel gig with Big Brother/Janis in August 1968. We blamed IB for playing "toolong"...but who knows if the Dead even knew about the midnight curfew thatclosed that concert down after 4-5 songs by Big Brother.”
StephenTurley went to see Iron Butterfly....not the Dead. He remembers that both bandshad their fans and detractors. Heremembers some booing during the Dead’s set. John says, “Iron Butterfly werehugely commercial, and aside from their first album, the critics trashed them. Their young fans were looked down on by manymusic hipsters. Even though KSHE played 2-3tracks from their first album, people were sick of In-A-Gadda. So, it was very likely that many Dead fansshowed up for the Dead's set and were only mildly interested in seeing IronButterfly. It may be accurate to saythat many Dead fans left after the Dead's set, and that there was scatteredbooing and grumbling from Iron Butterfly fans seeing this opening band playlonger and longer.”
The way one attendee remembered it later, "A flipof a coin determined they would open for Iron Butterfly, dashingany hopes they would be able to extend their performance and play all night forus. (As if anything like that would’ve even happened with a union stage.)" Most likely the Dead were always going to open though, just as they had in Kansas City the day before.
One Archive reviewer writes: “They opened for IronButterfly at this gig, and the set was supposed to end with Lovelight. But (andI have this information from a person who was backstage at the show), afterlistening to the Dead burn the house down, Iron Butterfly didn't want to comeout. So, the Dead came back on to play a "few more minutes" andproceeded to add insult to IB's injury with the Cryptical sandwich, Feedback,and AWBYG.”
Bixrecalls, “They finished their set and Iron Butterfly refused to follow them andasked them to play some more, is the story I heard…so they did and we were justf*cking wild about it!"
"Anotherthing I remember is T.C.'s organ went out and boom! the crew brought outanother organ in about 20 seconds, it seemed like. (Like a pit stop orsomething.) I was impressed. (Man, they have a backup ready like that?) Later Iread it was Iron Butterfly's organ they had to take as it was staged behindthem for the load-in.”
TomConstanten also remembered this in his memoir Between Rock and Hard Places:
“Ihad to borrow Iron Butterfly’s Vox organ for the show in St. Louis… Similar tothe one I’d used earlier with the band…this one was set up high, so you had toplay it standing up. Subtracting the foot needed to work the pedal, it quitenearly left me without a leg to stand on.” (p.74)
Johnwrites, “The Dead were on fire, and were obviously feeding off crazed fans whowere up close supporting them. The band thought they had run out of time, butGarcia got the nod to play more. MaybeIron Butterfly knew that the Dead were playing really great!”
Bixadds, “Keil was the best…they were young and kicking ass. To me, that willalways be their peak…it was simply, completely balls out! Also, Pig Pen said"take your hands out of your pockets...didn't your momma tell you that'dmake you CRAZY?" And Garcia and all of us were open mouthed, WHAT??? andcracked up.” But once the Dead’s set ended, “After about half a song from IB,we moved and sat at the very back of the floor level "bleachers"mostly ‘cause we were too stoned to leave.”
*
Atthe very end of the show the announcer says "How about a hand for theElectric Rainbow?"
ElectricRainbow was a lightshow outfit from Belleville, IL that did a number of showsin St. Louis in the ‘60s-70s, including several of the Dead’s shows.
https://www.pooterland.com/lightshows_electric_rainbow.html
PatrickHarvey, a member of the group, writes about their background:
“ElectricRainbow was never really a company. Really just a group of friends who didlightshows, with [my brother] Brian's leadership, for a few years in the latesixties and early seventies. There was a fairly consistent core group, and thenwhomever happened to be around the house (my parents’ place was a majorgathering place for our folks in Belleville) on the day of a show. Thelightshow never got paid much more than a few hundred dollars for a gig. Brianpaid off the equipment loan, we bought any new supplies we needed, gas forwhoever drove, some after show munchies, and there may have been a few bucks tospread around beyond that. Mostly we were all in it for the free backstageaccess to concerts, and for the experience of being in the heart of a scene.
Westarted at a little show venue called the Palace, which was a converted oldmovie theater in Belleville. Ron Lipe (Prince Knight on KSHE) was an old friendof my dad's, and of some local musicians we all hung with, so when he openedthe Palace, he asked Brian to figure out how lightshows were done in SF. Briangot a little loan for equipment, and off we went.”
Ofthe Dead’s shows in the area, “We did 2/6/69, 4/17/69, 2/2/70, 5/14/70(although I didn't go myself), and the 7/8/70 MRF show. Five Electric Rainbowshows in all with the Dead.”
Patrick’smemories of the Kiel show:
“TheDead opened, and were phenomenal. This was my first show and it was a greatstart. They didn't really have dressing rooms or anything for us or the band,so we wound up sharing a green room backstage before the show. My biggestmemory of the before-show time was a big cloud of homegrown smoke, and standingup against a wall listening to Brian and Robert (another lightshow guy) talkingwith Garcia. At one point Robert felt the need to explain the presence of the"kid" (me), and turned to Jerry and said, "This is Patrick. He'sstill in school." Jerry grinned at me and said, "School's forsh*t."
LikeI said, the show itself was wonderful, if a little compressed by the timeallotted to an opener. I think that may have injected some urgency and densityto the music. Turns out, it wasn't necessary. The story is that IB was sointimidated by how great the set was that they didn't want to follow the Deadon. From where I was standing, I can't testify exactly to that, but it was thecase that there were a couple of hurried conversations between IB and thepromoter, and then the promoter and the Dead, and next thing we knew the Deadwent back out and played a really extended encore (really pretty much anotherset), and then Iron Butterfly went on after a lengthy reset of the equipment.
Ididn't see much of their set. They had flash pots and stuff and said theydidn't need a lightshow, so my friend Bob and I went outside the stage door forsome fresh air, and got locked out, and it took us most of the rest of theconcert to get let back in.”
PHOTOS
Photos by Jim Wiseman:
Unknown photographer:
(Unfortunately,Craig Petty attended the show but said: "Since I already had shots of the Dead, I only shot IronButterfly.”)
Pigpen at the Kiel 2/6/69, by Mike Dixon:
Hotel room photos by Mike Dixon, earlier that afternoon. The high schoolers gave some of the band a ride to the gig.
** *
APRIL 17, 1969
QUADRANGLE, WASHINGTONUNIVERSITY
OPENER: Alvin Pivil
Released on DownloadSeries vol.12.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oKpRKVkP10&list=PL4-JEg4LBZwDBJjziRkz56m2D86t8sisg
SETLIST:
HardTo Handle
Morning Dew
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
Dark Star >
St Stephen >
It's a Sin >
St Stephen >
The Eleven >
Turn On Your Lovelight
Cryptical > The Other One > Cryptical >
Caution (stopped)
Newspaper article:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2017/10/april-17-1969-quadrangle-washington.html
Johnwrites: “The word from the previous February concert was extremely high. Peoplewere becoming familiar with how the Dead sounded in concert, and how much oftheir material was NOT on albums. After listening to both, I think 4/17/69 is abetter Live/Dead-era show than 2/6/69…but they were BOTH great! I think theQuadrangle show is when it all came together. The Quadrangle is a perfectsetting for a concert. A lot of people liked to lay down on their blanket inthe lush grass. And people were doing really really strong LSD…”
JonMcIntire, one of the Dead's road managers, had grown up in Belleville (in theSt. Louis area) and graduated from Washington University sometime earlier inthe ‘60s before heading to San Francisco and attending SF State, where he metRock Scully. He was certainly at this show, back on his old campus.
https://www.dead.net/features/jon-mcintire/jon-mcintire-1941-2012
TomConstanten wrote about this visit to St. Louis in his book Between Rock andHard Places:
“Returningto St. Louis in early April, several of us in the band went to one of itsritzier restaurants… Silver-tongued thespian Jon McIntire, traveling with theband as our road manager, was from there, and arranged everything. ‘No, sir.They are a famous rock band. They don’t even own neckties.’ The decorouslydecorated staff were eyeing us nervously the whole while, but we were on ourbest behavior. Later that night found us down by the river, at the base of theGateway Arch, looking up and wondering if we could scale it if ‘they’ wereafter us.” (p.74)
DavidSeagraves was part of the student committee who booked the Dead at the Quad. “Itcame about as a result of former WU art student Mark Epstein working at theCarousel Ballroom and getting to know the band and their manager [McIntire],who was from St. Louis. I was president of the art school student government,and that spring we put on several big name concerts, so we had no trouble atour end okaying the $500 fee (we got a deal!). The band was on tour and hadthat night open.”
MarkEpstein quit school before graduating and moved out to San Francisco around 1967.David went out to visit Mark in ‘67/68, and since Mark was working at theCarousel, they got to see a lot of music together. David says he thinks it wasMark who first suggested that they bring the Dead. (David graduated in 1969 andleft St. Louis shortly after the concert.)
Theplanning for the Quad show fell together quickly and took only one to two weeks– the band offered the $500 figure. Although the tickets say “WU Student UnionPresents,” it was the School of Fine Arts that put together the concert. (BobShelli, who MC’d the show, said “the show was booked through students in theSchool of Fine Arts. David Seagraves was one of them... He knew that I'd workedthe Armory shows in ‘68, and I put him in touch with Rock Scully.”) Perhaps theApril tour was already booked and they just lucked out and found that the Deadhad open dates between Omaha, NE on 4/15 and Lafayette, IN on 4/18.
Davidremembers that there was quite a bit of apprehension and "back andforth" with officials from Wash U about the concert. They didn't want the show to go too late, butthey also didn't want it to start until all of the night school students wereout of class. (Wash U was/is famous fortheir "night school.") One teacher was adamant that the concert notstart until after his class had ended. Night classes got out around 9 pm, sothe concert was scheduled for 9:30.
Davidand Mark were the ones who made the show posters up in the art room. (Davidthinks they made between 100-200 posters, though poster-buyers think there werefar fewer.) David remembers going to the Dead's hotel the day before theconcert and meeting the band, Owsley, and their manager McIntire. Band membersvisited the hipster bookstore Burdorf’s Books and Gypsy Cowboy, which was ahippie clothing store and mecca for touring bands.
(Bythe way, one of David's buddies was Robert Quine, who later became a well-knownguitarist and was then in law school at Wash U. Quine was a music mentor forDavid and taught him a bit of guitar. Quine was also a Velvet Underground fan;David was on the student committee that brought the Velvets to play the BeauxArts Ball at Wash U on 5/11/69, which Quine recorded. (The surviving part hasbeen officially released on the Velvets’ “Bootleg Series.”) He & David wentto see the Velvet Underground & the Dead in Chicago right after St Louis,either 4/25 or 4/26. Quine, however, hated the Dead.)
BobShelli was the MC and helped get the band’s gear ready: “I was involved with theproduction, and was in the Quad most of the day, and interacted with bandmembers and crew.” You can hear him at the beginning of the tape, announcing alost dog and asking people to bring drinks up to the thirsty band: “Thebeautiful thing about working with the Dead is that they really need nointroduction.”
Oneattendee writes: "The Dead played outside in the Quad under the tinybandshell used for symphony concerts. I can never listen to Dark Star withoutthinking of sitting under the huge trees in the Quad staring up at the stars inthe night sky... Laying on the grass under the stars and listening to Dark Starand St. Stephen as The Dead jammed under the bandshell was nothing short ofmagical."
Dead.netattendees wrote about the outdoor show: “Pigpen did Turn On Your Lovelight andI was blown away. There was acid all around… It started to rain lightly… The show ended abruptly when somebody literallypulled the plug on the power in the middle of Caution at the order of the cops.”
Garciamentions the rain on the tape, saying before the Other One: “Save that hasslefor the heat. Really, who needs it, man? The rain won’t hurt you. You won’t melt,you’re not made of sugar. For god’s sakes, people!”
JohnCrouch wrote on setlists.net:
“Iwas at this show along with 3 members of a band I was in. The concert was on anoutdoor stage on the university quadrangle.
"Wewere in the orchestra pit directly in front of the Dead along with thesoundboard & their well-known soundman who had to get up on the stage severaltimes and the only way he could do it was for my band's singer to get down onall fours and the soundman to use him as a ladder up.
"Anotherexcellent concert, 3rd or 4th time I had seen them both in St. Louis andChicago.
"Afterthe show we climbed up on the stage where the Dead were still milling around. Igot some great up close pics of all the band members, including one where I gotBob Weir to hold a rose someone had given him in his mouth & one of Pigpengiving me a sly smile after I had asked him to take off his cowboy hat and he'dreplied, "don't take my hat off for nobody", and one of that famoussoundman on the stage. Still have the pics.
"Justbefore the Dead started playing I bought 2 posters of the show. I was gonna buythem after the show but the dude selling them said he only had a few and wassure they'd be gone before the show was over. [Years later] I discovered therewere only 20 of those hand silk screened posters printed by a student in theuniversity art dept.”
Here’san excerpt from a Washington Magazine article on Wash U’s concert history:
DavidBacker recalls: “I was in the library studying when a friend came looking forme, stating: ‘Quick, the Grateful Dead are going to play in the Quad!’ So Igrabbed everything, and we ran out.”
BobShelli emceed the Grateful Dead show. Shelli, who also helped band members withtheir equipment, recalls that the cowbell mounts on Mickey Hart’s drum kit hadbroken the previous day and needed repair. At first, he and Hart approached themusic department to try borrowing some additional drums (timpani) for the show— a request that could not be granted on such short notice. Then, the twowalked down to the architecture school, where Shelli asked a friend, John Reeve,if he could weld the set back together. Reeve did, and Hart was able to putdown an outstanding performance in the Quad.
Atone point in the Grateful Dead’s long show, guitarist and singer Bob Weirremarked on an ominous-looking sky, “This is what they call ’tornado weather.’”It started raining just as the band played “Morning Dew.” “A little rain camefor a while but didn’t bother anyone,” says Jan Fitzgerald. “Everyone was sorelaxed, and the show was just a big picnic.”
Theshow went well into the night. Mark Edelman adds: “It probably had to do withthe cloud cover or something, but it was so loud people were complaining abouthearing it in Webster Groves. People called the chancellor to complain.” Theconcert was abruptly cut short when the police threatened to arrest the band’sroad manager if they didn’t stop playing. After a moment of initialdisappointment as the show came to a halt, the crowd regrouped with athunderous burst of applause for the band’s exuberant performance.
https://source.wustl.edu/2013/10/live-at-wash-u
Theopener was the local band Alvin Pivil.
http://www.stlmusicyesterdays.com/Alvin%20Pivil.htm
Theywere known for great versions of songs by Quicksilver, etc. Jim Laverty says,“I saw them perform quite a few times at shows and always thought they wereextremely good for a local band.”
AlvinPivil did a great version of Quicksilver’s Gold And Silver. They had all of theimportant parts worked out with their 2-guitar lineup. Alvin Pivil’s lineupchanged later on with an additional drummer, and for a while they had twodrummers in the band, both exceptional musicians. (But they didn’t add a seconddrummer in order to copy the Dead; bandmember Stuart Johnson says theyabsolutely were not trying to be a copy/tribute band.) As a result of AlvinPivil opening at Wash U, they got opening slots for numerous other bands.
AlvinPivil’s singer, Tim Sullivan, had a girlfriend who was on a WashingtonUniversity committee comprised of four female students that organized the Deadconcert. That connection was how they got the opening slot for the Dead.(Although one person remembers them going on as early as 6, the show wasscheduled for 9:30 and they’re unlikely to have played much earlier than that;photos show it was dark.)
Stuarthas a few memories of the show: Each member of Alvin Pivil got a poster. (Stuartthinks there were less than a dozen printed up.) He said the Dead’s crew weremore like Hell’s Angels than hippies. Mickey offered him some LSD: “No thanks.”The rain during the show was not a big thing, more of a drizzle. Stuartremembers it being a long time – seemingly “almost two hours” - before the Deadstarted.
“Bear’snot here yet,” said Jerry.
JohnCrouch recalled, “Owsley was running the sound for the Dead and he was verymeticulous and took a long time getting them set up.” Thom Meininger also sawBear’s hand at work: “The Dead waited quite a while to start because they werewaiting to get the recording gear set up.”
Bixand his friends were at the Quad when Owsley needed a ride back to the hotel:“When a roadie or Owsley himself asked to get a ride to the Airport HiltonBEFORE the show, we offered my car. We held up the show for at least half anhour doing it. I didn't know who he was!
Itried to play my 8 track and he said take that crap off! Too much wow andflutter!
Hesaid cassette was the way to go ‘cause they are reel to reel! (I never saw acassette car player for months later if not a year.) I talked to him aboutMcIntosh ‘cause I saw him using a Mac pre amp down in the pit… He was talkingand rolling a joint with one hand, all at the same time.
Whenwe got there I asked if he wanted me to wait and he said no, I said who AREyou... ‘cause the vibe he gave off was indescribable.... "They call meOwsley" and BAM! away he went.
Idrove back and they all said do you know who you took and I said yea andignored them, kinda in shock.” Owsley came back later, and the show could go on.
(Bix & friends were hanging out in "the pit" - John says, "The"pit" was like an orchestra pit directly in front of the Quadrangle'sstage, below ground level. The sound was fine in the pit. If you were standing, you could see theband...and party with friends in your “private area.” The band could also lookdown at you.")
Asthe Dead’s show progressed, Stuart said that he was in a backstage area and acop came back there and wanted to know “who’s in charge here?” (Stuart wasn’tsure who the Dead’s road manager was, thought it might be Rock Scully.) The copannounced: “We are to arrest someone if the music doesn’t stop. It’s alreadyafter the 11pm curfew. We are getting complaints from miles away.”
Oneperson has an interesting dramatic memory of the show: “The Dead receivedvolume complaints from ~3-5 miles away and the police threatened to arresttheir road manager, Rock, and they replied, "We'll see ya in themorning." They played a couple more songs and then said that if theydidn't quit that the whole band was going to be run in for disturbing the peace,so they ended with an acappella rendition of Praise The Lord I Saw The Light. Isaw all this from behind Jerry's stacks of Fender Twin Reverbs with 12"JBL's which he ran his hand over the master volumes (controlled all the amps)cranking them to the max, roadies screaming, "He's doing it again."They were afraid that he'd blow the speakers. I believe he had 8 Twins…”
TheDead played for over 100 minutes: concertgoers think the Dead started around 10and played until midnight. The newspaper article says the police arrived due tonoise complaints around midnight.
JimLaverty recalls, “There was some sort of meeting with security regardingcurfew, and the Dead apologizing for cutting the show short, but “the man” saysthey have to. I don’t think it went past midnight at all… I don’t think thepowers that be at Wash U would have allowed that to happen.”
The Dead stopped playing after they started Caution and announced,"They're taking our road manager to jail if we play any more. We ain’tgonna let our road manager go to jail; we like him a lot, he’s a really goodguy, and you people are really good too.” Weir reassured the audience, “We’llbe back, you know that.”
Thearticle says only about 300 people were in the audience by the end of the show,which seems hard to believe. (A year earlier, 340 had attended the May ’68Armory shows.)
JimLaverty remembers the audience: “The crowd in front of me were all sittingdown. No twirlers, no dancers... Fromwhat I remember, most everyone was sitting “Indian style” cross legged on theground. There were no chairs, and Idon’t remember seeing any twirling, or dancing in the crowd. People seemed moreor less infatuated with the new innovative sounds of The Dead. The crowd, I am guessing was made up of amajority of Wash U students as it was held on their quadrangle. Interloperslike me were sprinkled about amongst the crowd, no doubt, but I would say itwas a more sedate, aloof Wash U student body that was there.”
Onereason for the quiet audience was that a lot of them had taken some strongdoses. One person recalls, “After the show, we all ended up in T's room flat onour backs hanging on while the walls buckled and we couldn't see three feet fora couple of hours...”
Severalpeople don’t remember any light show (which is common, most people don’tremember light shows at the other Dead concerts either). But Electric Rainbowwas there, projecting on a cloth backdrop behind the band, and the lights canbe seen in some photos. (Even the short newspaper piece mentions “the flashingof psychedelic lights.”) The camera flashes obscure the actual lighting, but theshot of Phil in the darkness may be closest to what it "really"looked like on stage.
ThomMeininger (of Alvin Pivil) says, “There was a light show, mostly oil, colors,and water and rear overhead projectors; being new at the time it was prettycool.”
PatrickHarvey of the Electric Rainbow light show remembers:
“Mybest show ever, period. No stagehands or security or big-time concert venuesh*t, so it was really anarchic and fun in a way that could only have happenedin St. Louis in that little window of time before the band got to be as huge adeal as they were soon thereafter.
Bearwas very visible running the sound and generally at the center of the scene inthe afternoon and into the show, complete with this little plastic bottle thatlooked like one of those things Murine eye drops used to come in. The crew,Bear, and the band/extended family all seemed like they were on a mission tobring a whole new culture to the Midwest. I remember somebody crouched downbehind the amps before the show with a rolling machine, rolling up joints andhook-shotting them out into the crowd. [Thishas not been confirmed by audience members.] One of the lightshow folks andhis big cup of co*ke had an "encounter" with Owsley at one point. Hegot through about 2/3 of the drink and wandered off into the paisley. I woundup inheriting the rest of the soda.
Atone point in the afternoon, Bob and I (for God only knows what reason) decidedit would be cool to weave a big spider web out of dental floss between twocolumns. Somebody (I'm pretty sure it was Bobby, but can't swear to it) cameover and told us we'd have to take it down, because Bear was always movingaround adjusting things during the show, and he was seriously paranoid abouttripping over stuff in the dark.
Themusic was sublime. Kind of a strange Hard to Handle, a really thunderousMorning Dew, a great Schoolgirl, and then into Dark Star>St.Stephen>Lovelight. They dropped out the "Ladyfinger" bridge andinserted "It's a Sin" instead.
Therewas a light rain much of the time. You can hear Jerry crack wise about it justbefore That's It for the Other One if you listen to the recording. The rain wasreally a nice touch. Not heavy at all. I remember when they did St. Stephen,and veered off into It's a Sin, when they came back down into the last part ofSS it was so much fun that I shut down my overhead and went out the window todance in the rain. (Thank you, Owsley.) Brian saw me and kind of gently herdedme back in through the window so I could go back to work.
Thestage was set up in the Quad, maybe twenty or so feet in front of a classroombuilding. We had set up the overheads for Bob and me in a ground floorclassroom itself, because it had power, and we could project through the windowout onto a makeshift screen behind the band.
AfterLovelight, I looked up from my projector and there were these two reallyobvious plain clothes cops standing there. I guess they thought we were part ofthe band, because all hippies look alike and are in it together. Anyway, one ofthe cops says something like "We've had complaints about the noise. Wehave your road manager in custody, and we're going to take him to jail if theband doesn't quit playing." (To this day, I have no idea who they had.) Imanaged to tell the guy that we weren't the band, but we could go find somebodyfor them to talk to.
Atthat point Bob…climbed out of the classroom window and ran up to the stage. Acouple of minutes later, back he comes (through the door this time) with Jerry.The cop repeats his rap about taking the "road manager" to jail, andJerry looks at him and says (in his reedy Jerry voice), "Well, man. Itlooks like you've got us by the balls. Would it be okay if we do one more songto close it out." The cop said that was okay, and Jerry went back out.They launched into a "That's It for the Other One" suite that musthave gone for about half an hour. When they headed straight into Caution, somebodypulled the plug and it all skidded to a halt.”
PHOTOS
Alvin Pivil photo by Jim Laverty:
("WhenAlvin Pivil was playing, the shots I got of them were about maybe 12 rows fromthe stage.")
Dead photos by Jim Laverty:
("Thefirst Dead pictures were taken from where I was sitting back about 6 rows. Then I moved up to the lip of the stage and got bold and jumped down into the orchestra pitright in front of the stage. So,standing there, I was at eye level with the audience sitting crosslegged behindme and with Jerry and Bob in front, right there up above me. I aimed at Garcia, and he saw meand started sticking his tongue out at my camera andmaking funny faces at me. I snapped two pictures...one he is lookingright at me, and the other he and Pig are getting down.")
(Laverty: "ThenI got this “happy accident” when I was focusing on Phil and my flash didn’t gooff. Fortunately there was enough lighton stage to make this cool shot.")
Photos by John Crouch:
(“Bestof what I have. I was right below them in the orchestra pit, little Kodak Instamatic camera aimedupwards which accounts for the angle of the pics. Neverwas able to get Bill K because he was so far back and behind his drums.")
Photos by Craig Petty:
(When it started raining, Craig (and many others) crowded up on to thecovered stage area. Craig was literallyright next to Garcia...so all of his shots are from that vantage point. Craig was on stage behind Garcia'samp, on Pig Pen's side of the stage looking across the stage.)
Photos by Steve Deibel:
Photos by unknown photographer, from Bruce Seibert:
** *
FEBRUARY 2, 1970
FOX THEATRE
OPENER: Aorta
https://archive.org/details/gd1970-02-02.sbd.miller.gans.121041.flac16
(Fragment - full show released on Dave’sPicks 6.)
SETLIST:
CaseyJones
Mama Tried
Hard To Handle
Cold Rain & Snow
Black Peter
Cumberland Blues
Dark Star >
Saint Stephen >
Mason's Children
Good Lovin'
Uncle John's Band
Turn On Your Lovelight >
Not Fade Away >
Turn On Your Lovelight
We Bid You Goodnight
Newspaper review:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/03/february-2-1970-fox-theater-st-louis.html
Thisis the first newspaper review of a Dead concert in St. Louis, and it covers thebasics. The show was part of the St. Louis University Homecoming festivities. It’ssaid “the Dead and their equipment did not arrive in St. Louis until nearly 7.”The show was scheduled to start at 8, but the Dead didn’t start playing until10:15 after a “middling” performance by the opening band Aorta. Owsley spent anhour adjusting the sound equipment, unhappy with the PA system. The crowd isestimated at 2000, which would have only half-filled the theater (with acapacity of about 4500) – the Dead were still not a huge draw yet.
This reviewer mentioned in the paper a few days later, "Several friends have commented that the Grateful Dead thing a few weeks ago at the Fox Theater was the best concert ever heard in St. Louis. It's hard to argue with them." He also wrote about the show again in 1973 ("the best rock concert I've ever been to"):
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2021/09/placeholder-ii.html
Here's a site with more Fox photos - http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/435/photos - and a little photo history of the Fox:
https://photos.riverfronttimes.com/15-gorgeous-vintage-photos-of-the-fabulous-fox-theatre/
Atthe time, the Fox Theatre “seldom had live performers.” The Fox was almostexclusively a movie house: they hadn’t booked live acts on a regular basis fordecades, and recent performances were very intermittent. In May 1969, theybooked the r&b soul shouter Wayne Cochran and His CC Riders. By oneestimate they sold "50 tickets” and it was not a success. The only other livebooking I could find for the Fox Theatre during 1969 was for Lou Rawls & RichardPryor on August 14. Few musical acts had appeared at the Fox in years, and theGrateful Dead would become the first rock band to play there.
Inlate 1969, the Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) fraternity at St. Louis Universitystarted talking about doing a concert at the Fox for their annual Homecoming.TKE needed a sponsor to cover the expenses for booking the bands and thetheater. Fraternity member Tony Dwyer recalls, "Joseph Griesedieck(President and Director of Falstaff Brewing) provided all the funding for theshow. He was a major benefactor of the University and TKE. We went to him tosecure the money."
TKEleased the Fox Theatre: "Mr. Edward Arthur was happy to accommodate us,likely because of the relationship with SLU. TKE negotiated the deal withEdward Arthur and Dion (Tony) Peluso." Arthur was president of the ArthurEnterprises (which owned the Fox and numerous other local theaters), and Pelusowas the Fox Theatre manager and an employee of Arthur Enterprises. "Pelusodidn’t want live entertainment, he saw himself as a manager of a movie house.They would only make the theatre available to us on a Monday, Tuesday orWednesday, so that they could be open to exhibit movies leading into andthrough the weekend."
Withthe Fox in hand, "We had the money, we had the venue, all we needed was anact. We tossed around any number of bands to be considered. We decided on theGrateful Dead if available. We contacted Contemporary Productions to checkavailability and book the band. Contemporary booked the band for us and webegan the production process. Aorta was booked as an opening act."
Atthe time, Contemporary was a newly-formed small local booking agency that hadn’tdone any national acts. It was run by Steve Schankman and Irv Zuckerman from anoffice next to the Fox Theatre. The recent book “Produced by Contemporary” (byDick Richmond with Steve Schankman) sets the scene with a phone call fromNovember 1969:
Thevoice on the other end identified himself as a St. Louis University student whowas charged with obtaining entertainment.
"Wewant to bring in the Grateful Dead," he said...
Hismind and pencil racing, Schankman took a deep breath and asked the caller anumber of questions, including the amount of money budgeted.
"Doyou want the band to play at the university?" he asked.
"No,"the caller replied. "We werethinking it might be better if the band played down the street at theFox."
Afteragreeing to book The Grateful Dead for a date the following February, Schankmanput down the receiver and signaled to [his partner] Irv Zuckerman, who wasstill on the phone booking a band for a local high school.
AfterZuckerman completed his call, Schankman told him about his request from the guyat St. Louis University.
"Wecan do that," Zuckerman said, as if he had been booking national acts allof his life. "You call Dick Arthurand see if we can rent the theater anytime in February, and I'll track down thegroup's agent."
"Theshow is being sponsored by Falstaff beer," Schankman said.
"Yeah!"Zuckerman said in mild exclamation. "That's really something, isn'tit?"
(Avideo with Schankman talking about the Dead show is hereand a recent interview with Schankman on hiscareer is here.Contemporary would go on to become asuccessful concert booking agency.)
Thebooking accomplished, TKE handled the poster artwork and tickets. Dwyercontinues the story: "We did the promotion (and did get some help from BudMurphy at Warner Brothers), ticket distribution, and a few of us provided somepsychedelics."
Onthe day of the concert, all of the Dead's equipment was flown from New Orleans.“I picked the band up at the airport around 2 or 3 in the afternoon and drovethem to the hotel. Ramrod and the equipment landed a few hours later. It wasstandard operating procedure for the band and their equipment to fly. Oftenthey checked the equipment as baggage. Ramrod was on his own and late, so theequipment came up on a cargo plane later. There were some Twin Reverbs, someDual Showmans and their cabinets, two sets of drums, and Owsley’s recordingequipment." To pick up the gear, a Ryder truck was rented as part of thecontract.
(Schankmanalso remembers “a few of us” picking up the equipment, though in his memory,more dramatically “the band didn’t get there until 6 o’clock, right before theconcert, because they had just gotten out of jail… Their equipment was sent outthrough cargo at the airport, and we had to go with a 24-foot truck, load allthis equipment, and…set all those amps up at the Fox Theatre.”)
Afterthe New Orleans adventure, Ramrod had a lot to deal with, arriving late to theSt. Louis show. Dwyer recalls, "Garcia suggested to me that Ramrod wouldlikely quit again that night due to his ridiculous work load.”
WhenDwyer took Garcia and Weir around the Fox, Garcia said to the little old ladyat the concession stand: "Bet you're gonna sell a LOT of popcorntonight."
BobHeil's company provided the Dead with a few of the PA speakers for the show,but Dwyer did not have any contact with him. Owsley was up in the mezzaninewith his oscilloscope tending to the sound issues. As far as the light show,Dwyer remembers “one dude who showed up in the lobby of the Fox with hisoverhead projector and asked if he could provide a light show. At first I wasapprehensive, but when his fee was entrance to the show, we set him up in thebalcony. He provided an atmosphere that was totally appropriate. It wasfantastic, given it was a single overhead projector. He definitely added towhat was a memorable evening.” This was Patrick Harvey again.
(Dwyerdrops out of our story here, but he would later be part of Sky High Associates,which promoted the Dead's St. Louis shows in 1972-73. Pacific Presentations, awest coast concert company, financed the productions while the local Sky HighAssociates handled the local work: placing ads, selling tickets at hip venues,etc. As Dwyer describes it, "The ‘72-73 shows were produced by PacificPresentations and Sky High Associates. Sepp Donahower at PP put up the money,got artwork done, and oversaw from afar. SKA did all local promotion, ticketdistribution, poster and handbill distribution, ticket reports to GDmanagement, rental of all equipment (Steinway piano, Hammond B3), and all that isneeded for a successful show.")
Inlater shows at the Fox, the Dead would beseech the audience to take care of thetheater and not damage anything (and the audience seems to have heeded therequest). It was reported that the management held the ticket money againstdamages, which may have been the case at this first Fox show as well. In anycase, theater manager Tony Peluso seems to have been somewhat alarmed by therock audience of excited teens running around the place. People who’re askedabout him say that “Tony was a tough guy…he was the guy with the big cigar wholooked like a carnival barker...always yelling at young teens to behave...”
Onedescription of him from the business angle: "Tony Peluso was a movie housemanager who took care of getting films, hiring staff and reconciling the boxoffice; he was more like a concession manager. He did know that theatre insideand out. He was a lifelong employee of Arthur Enterprises and as such had Mr.Arthur’s ear. As a movie exhibitor the Fox was failing. Mr. Peluso didn’t wantlive entertainment interfering with showing movies. Movies are leased for aspecific period of time, you’re paying whether you show them or not. Can’t showa movie when there is an act on stage."
Onenewspaper article on him is here:
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/9064971/manager-tony-peluso-leaves-st-louis-fox/
StuartJohnson (of the band Alvin Pivil) didn’t have a ticket, so on the day of theshow he went down to the Fox, and there was already a line of people waiting forthe box office to open. At some point, one of the Dead’s roadies came around tothe line and asked if anyone wanted to help unload in return for passes to getin. Stuart and others unloaded all of the guitars, drums, etc. At some point,Bob Heil must have been contacted because he showed up with his own amps.
Theopening band was Aorta, a progressive-rock group from Chicago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aorta_(band)
Johnwrites: “They were on Columbia Records, so they were getting some airplay on K-SHE.But their style was somewhat "art rock," and they had players whowere really good, but they were doing their pretentious originals. Nobody paidattention to them. They didn't do any"known" songs. They didn't have any r&b groove to them. They certainlyweren't a bad group, it's just that they didn't connect...and were immediatelyforgotten about.”
Bixremembers the wait for the show to start: “Owsley was there and there was(Sandoz again) an excruciatingly long delay with the sound with Owsley at onepoint threatening there may not BE a show if we can't get this sound right.There was a bearded guy sound-checking a mike and saying the names of all kindsof food, vegetables and what not...while Owsley was running around like a madman.”
Peopleknew the Dead had been busted, and Bix adds a rumor: “I "heard" thatfederal marshals were in the wings waiting to take him off to Cali for prison,and that's why he and the rest were so pissed off.”
Theshow itself was a memorable one for Bix:"It started in a funk... Owsley was PISSED (with good reason, it turnsout) and it started up very somber and heavy. I thought it was the Sandoz butthere was more to it than that. I almost walked out in Uncle John's Band, thenabout 20 feet up the aisle with my back to them, I heard "...come withme-eeee" and I turned around and Garcia was looking at me, up the aisle.....hegot to me with "got some things to talk about," and I came back andthey started lightening up…
Allin all, the whole "show" was a reaction to their getting busted andthe business/judicial hassles, I think, but they finished up in style. BlackPeter, in a foul mood, is not recommended for a light evening at any time. Iwill always think of it as my heaviest Dead concert experience where they revealedthis sh*t is real, and I really have never been the same with it since."
ElectricRainbow put on the light show for the Dead again. Patrick Harvey recalls:
“Areally strange show, but still one of my favorites. Famously, the band had beenbusted just before in New Orleans, so they were really late to the venue (or atleast the gear was.) The PA was pulled together from Bob Heil's shop inMarissa, IL, and they were kind of putting it all together on the fly. No timefor a sound check, as I recall. We were projecting from side-boxes in the lowerbalcony, so the lightshow pretty much covered the whole theater screen. Themusic sounded pretty rough at first. The improvised PA was being tweaked asthey went, and the sound was uneven out in the hall. (I've heard the recordingof this show, and it apparently sounded a lot better through the board.) Asthey got rolling, it was pretty amazing. I think the Dark Star was the bestI've ever heard in person. Then there was the roof-raising Lovelight. (There'sa review of it as liner notes to one of the early "From the Vault"releases.) Pig took over the building and just destroyed everybody andeverything in the place. The stage wound up crowded with people who had to getup there and dance. It was just mind-boggling.”
Johnwrites: “It was really a great show. But at the time of the show, I was a bitdisappointed, since TC wasn't there. I was totally prepared for a Live/Dead experience,and was not prepared for the speed at which they morphed. By the time they cameto The Fox on 2/2/70, they had changed. Plus, I had friends that were at 5/68,2/69 and 4/69, and those shows were considered better....simply because theywere wilder, more rocking shows.”
“Asfar as fan stories go, I think there was a wide range of feelings about thisshow. This show had a bit of a pushback against it because the Dead were movingtowards Workingman’s Dead. Although it was a great show, it wasn’t“Live/Dead”…and it included slow songs like Black Peter. None of the songs fromAnthem were played, disappointing those who wanted to hear Alligator, etc.”
“Listeningto the show, I now realize that it was a very good show. But back then,although I had a great time and was thrilled to see them (finally), a lot ofthe concert seemed super chill...somber....quiet...reflective....although itdid explode at the end with Turn On Your Love Light. (One report said there weredozens of people on stage, but I don't remember that.) At the time, it wasn’tthat I was disappointed, but I came to the realization that I wasn’t going tosee the insane monster that the band was during the period when Live/Dead wasrecorded. For me, it was a bit depressing that the band was morphing soquickly. (It wasn’t until years later that I realized that the band was reallymorphing every 4-6 months between 1967-1972.)
“Everyonethat I know that went (at least 25-35 people) all seemed to be either tripping,or just incredibly stoned. Smoking weed could be risky in that environment. Plus,if you were tripping, you didn't want to be worried aboutsecurity......although it was minimal.People PLANNED to enjoy that night. We stockpiled our good drugs for theoccasion.
“Everyonein the theater was there to see the Dead, so it was in everyone's interest towant to have a great concert experience. Expectations were high, especiallysince everyone loved Aoxomoxoa, and of course Live/Dead. But if you wereexpecting the Live/Dead sound, you were a bit disappointed. And other thanSaint Stephen, they didn’t play any of Aoxomoxoa. They were already on to theirnext phase since they played 4 unreleased songs from the Workingman’s Deadalbum.”
“Frommy perspective, this concert was a bit "sedate". A 10-minute version of Black Peter slowed thepace. However since this whole show hasbeen officially released, I now have a brand new appreciation of it. When I was at the concert, I was disappointedthey didn't sound like Live/Dead which had been released in November 1969. The Dark Star at the Fox was"dreamy"...it didn't have the BIG moments that the Live/Dead versionhad. Years later when I heard the Dick'sPicks' release of the 2/13-14/1970 concerts, I then realized that's how theywere playing Dark Star during the winter of 1970. It had gotten much more open and dreamy. It didn't knock you over your head like theLive/Dead version. Now I like all of thevariations of the different versions of Dark Star. And the version of Lovelight was utterlyastounding. It was the most powerful PigPen I ever witnessed.”
*
FOXRUMORS
TheDead were thrilled with the Fox Theatre, and by 1971 it was already an “oldrumor” that the Dead wanted to buy it. This became something like commonknowledge among St. Louis fans…but it wasn’t so. The Dead said in 1971 they hadno intention of buying it, and they weren’t even able to play there again after1972.
Manypeople also say, "They delayed the first Fox show by one day ‘cause of thebust." It’s apparently a common memory that the Dead were held down in NewOrleans for an extra day. Not quite: the ad for the Fox show was always forFeb. 2, and the Dead played an extra benefit show in New Orleans on their freeday, Feb. 1. The St. Louis show was not rescheduled, but the Dead & theirequipment did arrive late that day, probably due to officious delays in NewOrleans.
Thestory’s often told that Owsley was not at this show: “there was no Bear to runthings, since he was still in jail.” (For instance this is how Bob Heil tellsit.) Needless to say, Owsley was very much at this Fox show and in charge ofthe sound, as evidenced by multiple people’s memories, the newspaper report,and the tape he made.
Thenthere’s Bob Heil’s story. He ran a music shop in Marissa, IL (“almost an hourfrom St. Louis in the middle of nowhere”); among other things he rented Hammondorgans to concert promoters, and also carried large speakers that could be usedfor a PA system. On Feb. 2, 1970, he got a call from the Fox Theatre…and thistale has been repeated many times, for instance here:
“TheGrateful Dead arrived in St. Louis without their sound equipment, which hadbeen confiscated in New Orleans. Heil found himself on the phone with JerryGarcia, the Dead's guitarist. "Jerry said, 'You have all this gear, man.What kind of amplifiers do you have?' I said 'They're MacIntosh.' 'You haveMacIntosh amplifiers?' I was just building a big hi-fi system… And so we tookit up there that night and it was an amazing night," Heil said. "Wewent on the rest of that tour and we hit the front page of Billboard Magazine,that this little music shop in Marissa, Illinois, got the Grateful Deadcontract." After he improved the Grateful Dead's concert sound, rockersfrom all over the world sought out Heil…”
(Thestory’s also in more detail here:
Ispeculated on Heil’s contribution in this old thread:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/03/february-2-1970-fox-theater-st-louis.html?showComment=1330670703955#c8358283445975687325
It’scertain Heil’s PA was used that night, his big amps on the side of the stage.(As Steve Deibel points out, "You can see the Ye Olde Music Shoppe logo onthe mains.") He was probably called once it became clear the Dead’sequipment was going to be late. But the tale has grown in the retelling: Owsleyand the Dead’s own amps arrived intact, Heil did not go on any known tour withthem or “get the Grateful Dead contract,” and no Billboard article said so. There’sno evidence they used his speakers elsewhere.
Theyseem to have had contact with him before: Heil’s mid-’69 ads state that theDead were one of the bands he’d serviced, and in a Jan. 1970 Billboardinterview he said, "The first group I worked was the Grateful Dead, and Ilearned more about amplifiers from them than anywhere else since then." Sothey may have rented speakers from him in early ’69 and later on when they werein St. Louis. It’s unknown whether he helped with the sound at the next three1970 shows in the area, but he was apparently seen at the October ’70 Kiel show.In a March ’71 photo at the Fox, the “Ye Olde Music Shop” sign appears to be onPigpen’s Hammond. And that’s all we know of his involvement with the Dead.
Andone last odd story – Thom Meininger recalls: “When they did the show at theFox, they hired Greg Hine’s brother Maurice to do a stunt. He dressed like anusher and was on the right side of the steps going onto the stage. When theywere doing Turn On Your Love Light, he got all crazy legged and then went upthe wall next to the stage and did a 360 and the place went nuts.” (Billy Fordalso remembers this: “The place was going wild. Piggie was requiring everybodyto turn it on…”)
Sofar we haven’t found other people who remember this and we’re not sure whetherit actually happened at this show.
PHOTOS
Photosby Craig Petty:
** *
MAY 13, 1970
QUADRANGLE, WASHINGTONUNIVERSITY
NEW RIDERS OF THE PURPLESAGE
Johnwrites: “I saw that show. The WashingtonUniversity Quadrangle is a beautiful outdoor facility. It has a permanent stage area, and no formalseating. The grassy area can hold wellover 1,000 people. At the NRPS show, therewere very few people there, maybe less than 200 scattered around the wide openQuadrangle...so it seemed very sparsely attended.
“Thiswhole concert was very informal. Noadvance notice. (It may have been mentioned on the radio station K-SHE: onefriend said he heard the news on K-SHE, but he wasn't 100% sure on that.) It was completely word of mouth. I got a phone call that afternoon from afriend who tipped me off. And when I firstheard about it, it was all hush hush. Iasked: “Who’s playing?” “I’m not sure, but members of the Dead are supposed tobe there.” I'm certain it wasn't"announced" until the day of the show, or one day beforehand.
“Lotsof us were hanging out on stage. Youcould get on stage if you wanted. Backthen Garcia was VERY approachable. Hewould talk to you. I was only 17, but Iwalked on stage and hung out before the concert. I watched Garcia talk to some people, but Iknew I didn't have anything interesting to say, so I ambled off… I just remember how OPEN the whole scene was. There was no "backstage"...he wasjust standing there talking to people... There were just not that many peoplewho were frenzied fans back then.Everything changed so quickly after the release of WD/AB.
“Theirfirst album wasn't released until August 1971, so I wouldn't have known any oftheir original songs. However, I do have a distinct memory that they played5-10 songs (less than 45 minutes). The New Riders played a mix of unknown songsand well-known covers. I knew some of the songs, a few country standards like(perhaps) Six Days On The Road, Trucking Driving Man, Lodi…maybe The Weight, orHonky Tonk Woman, or other covers that they were doing at the time…but I couldbe merging both nights’ songs. (My memory tells me that Lesh was playing bass,but I guess my memory isn't so great because friends have insisted that Torbertplayed bass.)”
MikeBarada remembers they did Cathy’s Clown: "I got there when the New Ridershad already started. I specificallyremember them playing The Everly Brothers' Cathy’s Clown."
DanMullen says, “The Dead played a few songs before the New Riders.” This hasn’tbeen verified, but if Weir & Lesh were spotted there, it’s possible theDead could have opened up with a few acoustic songs.
CraigWilliamson tried taping the show: "I took a portable reel to reel to theNRPS/Dead Quadrangle show... We were in the pit. Unknown to me the batteries slowly gave out. Consequently,the playback started at normal speed and progressed to Warp Factor 10. Most disappointing!" (John sighs, “I'msure the tape was thrown away. Iremember hearing it...and it was unintelligible.”)
Onceagain, locals helped the Dead with their gear. Steve Deibel recalls, “When theyhad a PA problem at the NRPS show before Meramec, I loaned them my Altec 1210mixer/head which was in my U-haul trailer out on the parking lot. I wanna saythey had a couple of those grey Shure columns.”
BobShelli (who had MC’d the Dead’s Quadrangle show in ’69) says, “I was anaccidental roadie from the New Riders at WU to the GD show at Meramec CC thenext day. Hauled equipment in a small school bus I had.”
PHOTO
BySteve Reed:
** *
MAY 14, 1970
MERAMEC COMMUNITYCOLLEGE
KIRKWOOD, MISSOURI
OPENERS: Aardvarks, NRPS
Acoustic/NRPS:https://archive.org/details/gd1970-05-14.sbd.warner-evans.28716.sbeok.flac16
Electric:https://archive.org/details/gd1970-05-14.136645.s2.sbd.reelmaster.dat.sirmick.flac16
SETLIST:
Acoustic – (Bill on drums)
Don'tEase Me In
Friendof the Devil
DeepElem Blues
SilverThreads & Golden Needles
Candyman
Electric –
CaseyJones
ChinaCat Sunflower >
IKnow You Rider
MamaTried
HighTime
GoodLovin'
GoodMorning School Girl
Me& My Uncle
DireWolf
ColdRain & Snow
Atticsof My Life
CumberlandBlues
NewSpeedway Boogie >
Nobody'sFault but Mine jam >
NewSpeedway Boogie
St.Stephen >
NotFade Away >
Turnon Your Lovelight
Encore –
ColdJordan
BobWeir says at the start, “Can we have the house lights down please? Turn ‘em offall the way. How’s about turning all the lights off, including the spots andthe whole light show and we’ll all go by the light of this one candle righthere and everybody’ll gave a good ol’ time… Not going for it, huh.” Then thelights go down to a big cheer and Weir mutters, “I can’t see jacksh*t in here.”The Dead admit, “We can use a little more than that.”
Onthis tour Bob Matthews was doing the sound, since Bear couldn't leaveCalifornia. But Matthews faced as many complaints from the Dead as Bear did! Deadlistsgives an idea of the sound problems the Dead faced in the early part of theshow as they struggled with the monitors:
Acousticset - “Throughout the first five tunes they are plagued by monitor soundproblems and the pauses between songs are full of efforts to fix them… SamCutler comes up on the PA and says "Can Bob Matthews come up on stage andsort out the sound system which isn't working."” (After five songs theyabandon the acoustic set.)
NRPSset - “After Whatcha Gonna Do someone asks Jerry if it's OK, then announces"Alright we're gonna open the back doors and let everybody else infree." Monitor level problems continue during this set. [After a Henryfalse start] they are yet again trying to get the monitors and PA workingright. Marmaduke wonders if the house lighting is drawing power off the PA& suggests turning it down.”
Johnwrites: “This was the show right after Kent State. At the Wash U campus just a week before, theROTC building was burned down. It was ascary time. Mickey Hart had a clenchedfist on his kick drum at Meramec.” (Pigpen ends Lovelight shouting “f*ck thepigs!”)
“Theconcert was held in the gym, and depending on where you listened, the sound wasawful. The Dead came on first and did ashort acoustic set (Garcia, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann). There were monitor problems, but everybodywas really high or just chilling out, and although there were issues with thePA, it got better, and eventually it didn’t seem like a problem anymore.
“Theshow was really slow to start: monitor issues, someone breaks a string, slowacoustic songs, etc. The idea of seeing an acoustic Dead set was (at that time)completely new. I don’t think we were informed that the show would be acoustic– NRPS – electric. It was all so informal… It was under-attended, and they werevery accessible (with the make-shift stage).However, people were very accommodating, and there were no boos… I thinkwe were all just waiting for the electric Dead.
“Theset by the New Riders was really well received.Meramec (and the Quadrangle the previous night) would’ve been the firsttime most fans would have even known that Garcia played the steel. Garcia was so popular that the crowdimmediately embraced his new instrument.Hippie bands doing country music was becoming a popular sub-genre, andso the New Riders found a responsive audience.(The first NRPS album wasn’t released until 1971, but country rock wasstarting to catch on. Country &country rock were very much a part of the St. Louis scene where WIL had beenplaying country music for decades.)
“TheDead’s set was great. The mostly medium-to-uptempopacing was only broken by 2 new slow songs (High Time and the first-ever AtticsOf My Life). After Attics, it was onegreat groove after another. Numerousincredible jams!” (At the end the crowd stomps for an encore until Cutler asksfor “two minutes to catch their breath, just hold on a second!”)
“Thecasual environment in the gym made you really close to the band. It was some type of makeshift stage that wasperhaps only a few feet off of the ground.The gym’s bleachers is where a lot of people sat at first. But more and more people came down to sit or standright in front of the band. By the timethe Dead really starting grooving, the whole floor area in front of the bandwas solidly packed, but about 10 “rows” back you could move around and dancefreely.
“Meramecwas probably one of my favorite shows by them, simply because it was the lastshow that had a "dance concert" vibe to it. They played in a gymnasium...tons of peopleon the floor...watching. And then, asthe songs picked up steam, the whole crowd went WILD on the dance floor. It transformed from a situation where youwere in "your spot" (where you were standing)....and changed so thatthe dancers and shakers started to control a section of the floor...until that"dance section" grew to become the dominant feature on the floor. Thatwas the last time in St Louis that the area in front of the band was an opendance area.
“Itwas the last show I remember when the band really went into the unknown duringthe jam. Of course, it was under-attended(maybe under 1,000?), and they had just been here 3 months earlier at the Fox(which only had average attendance). Itwas definitely the last show that featured what some of us call "Good Ol' GratefulDead." Workingman's Dead wasreleased in June 1970, so the first concert that really benefited from theirnew popularity was Miss. River Festival in July 1970.
“Forme Meramec was a HUGE turning point.Workingman's Dead hadn't been released, so the onslaught of new fanshadn't happened. Meramec was their finalconcert before they broke big. It was thelast concert where "the old guard" was still very much inattendance....prior to the new younger crowd coming on board at the Miss. RiverFestival in July. The difference betweenthe vibe (and general crowd) at Meramec versus the MRF cannot be understated. I think perhaps MOST of the MRF crowd werenewbies and general MRF attendees.
“Fromthe setlist at Meramec, you can see how they were still delving into "noman's land" in the latter part of the show. There were no mystery jams at MRF, and at theKiel Opera House October 1970 concert, they were very"organized".....too organized for my tastes (and most old-guard DeadHeads who wanted open, gonzo jamming).
“Althoughthe Meramec concert wasn't exactly how I would have wanted, it still was thelast time ever where people could go wild on the dance floor. And although the Dead waited until close tothe very end to create a jam....when they did...it was explosive...and those ofus on the dance floor responded in a way that can't be done when you are inassigned seating.
“Althoughit was a pivotal concert (with the newbies coming on board later at MRF), itprobably wouldn't be remembered by those attending as the best show. It was now the "Evening With TheGrateful Dead" approach, and that had some serious drawbacks. You were now getting a much more watered-downconcert.
“Therewas a lot of pushback against the Workingman's Dead era! At least in my crowd. We'd get together virtually every night tospin albums, and Workingman's Dead was "nice," but hardly kickedass. If we wanted to rock out, we'dlisten to Live/Dead, or Quicksilver, or the Allman Brothers, etc.
“Itwas odd for us because the Dead kept on getting more and more popular, but theyweren't rocking as much in 1970. Therewas quite a lot of grumbling that the Dead "had changed," buteventually they got so good at their new style (and their shifting lineup) thatwe eventually "gave in" to their new style.”
The background of the booking:
WhenJon McIntire attended Washington University, he was friends with Mike Kramer,who eventually became an English teacher at Meramec Community College and waspart of the Student Council group that brought the Dead there. In Nov/Dec ‘69,the Student Council started planning their annual Spring Dance: they had todecide by December who they were going to hire for the dance, and they chosethe Dead. MikeKramer put "the whole thing together" and was the guy who provided contactsfor the Dead; Greg Fullington & Don Bachman got in touch with McIntire for the booking.The price was around $3,500 for both the Dead & NRPS.
Muchof the planning for the Dead concert was done in a very guarded atmosphere. Thestudents arranging the show were well aware that “a dirty hippie rock group”like the Grateful Dead was not the type of band that the college would approveof, and they kept their plans private. The concert was to be held in the gym – JackMimlitz was the basketball coach and was very concerned about the potentialproblems of having a concert in the gym. The students told Mimlitz that theGrateful Dead “were a California band very much like Jan & Dean and theBeach Boys.” They were worried when the coach wanted to cancel the show, butthe Student Council had already paid the Dead their deposit for the gig.
RonnieRyan was a student at Meramec and a reporter for the student newspaper (theMontage), and he attended the Student Council meetings as a reporter. It wasalso Ronnie’s job to sell as many tickets for the concert as he could, and heremembers going to the Wash U Campus (among other places) to sell tickets. Theday before the show, Greg Fullington took Stuart Johnson (of Alvin Pivil) tohang out with Garcia at the Holiday Inn; and Gene Weisman took Garcia to Scotty’sMusic.
Maybearound 1,500 people attended the show. A fair amount of the students expected a“dance,” not a dance-concert, and some people were dressed for a social dance. Mostof the people who attended either sat down in front of the band on the gymfloor, or in the stands. Many of the students who were expecting a dance band left,and the crowd that was left were mostly fans of the Dead. Some speakers werebrought out in front of the gym’s entrance for people who didn’t have a ticket.A covering for the gym floor was rented from Jefferson Tent & Awning Co. Securitywas minimal, a few hired cops. Witnesses remember seeing cops drinking beer andsmoking weed with concertgoers.
Theopening band was the Aardvarks, a popular local group called "a Meramec favorite":
http://www.stlmusicyesterdays.com/Aardvarks.htm
Johnwrites, “The Aardvarks were a very good local band. They started off as an Invasion band around1964. They had a different name in 1964,but then became The Aardvarks. I used tosee them quite a bit in 1966-1968. Theywere really good, but they were definitely "song" oriented...notjammers, although they could rock out.”
LeonardLedoux wrote, "Garcia went over and spoke to the fellows and commentedthat they were really good and should go out West to pursue a career." ButMike Newman of the Aardvarks said (even though they opened), they never eveninteracted with the Dead. “I think we played and then left.”
Oneguy remembers, “The gym floor was covered with heavy canvas for protection.”Another fan says, “At the first break I chatted up PigPen for an autograph, andGarcia bummed a cigarette. I sat on the corner of the stage for the rest.”
PatrickHarvey writes, “I didn't make this show... I do remember when everybody gotback they seemed kind of disoriented by the Dead's new direction into countryand acoustic stuff.” The shift to the Workingman’s/American Beauty directionwas even more apparent than it had been at the Fox, with so much of the showdevoted to new songs & country tunes.
AnArchive comment points out how some fans reacted: “I have an old timer friendthat drove 100 miles with friends from Springfield, Illinois to attend thisshow. I asked him about the show. He gave a look of disgust and said "Theyplayed acoustic instruments and it sucked. We thought we were going to see thereal Grateful Dead, not wimpy soft acoustic music, so we left." I told himthat they would have played electric later in the set. He just shook his said andsaid, "They sucked."”
TomArmbruster commented on setlists.net: “My first show. Terrible sound problemsduring the acoustic numbers, both NRPS and Dead, but the benchmark St.Stephen/Lovelight. Workingman's Dead and American Beauty had not yet beenreleased, so much of this was virgin territory for us.”
Tomwrites more details: “The guy who pulled it together to get them to Meramec wasnamed Greg Fullington if my alleged memory serves. He had a pitifully small budget, somethinglike $600. It was your basic gymnasiumsetup with the band at one end
Nodoubt you've heard the tapes of the show.The Workingman’s and other "acoustic" tunes as well as much ofthe NRPS set suffered badly since the acoustic instruments couldn't beadequately amplified without feedback.By that point, I was getting pretty bummed since all I'd heard up tothat point was drums, mumbling and feedback.
Atsome point fairly early on Bob had the house lights turned back on, explaining"we like to see who we're playing to."
Thesecond set was better and got even better as the show went on. I know it wasn't an acid inducedhallucination because I verified it with a couple of others but…at one pointeven the Andy Frain rent-a-cops were trucking around, dancing andgrinning. In the end, it was a gloriousfinish to a pretty inauspicious beginning.To this day, nothing quickens my pulse and grabs my attention fasterthan Lovelight, no matter who is doing it.”
Another showgoer has a positive memory: "Werecognized the show as pretty special at the time. The concert was in the gym,set up with a small stage and folding chairs. We got there early and sat down,and pretty soon everyone was folding their chairs, passing them out to theperimeter to be stacked and sitting on the floor in families - boy, what agreat communal moment. Butit wasn’t just that free-thinking vibe. They were always introducing/ playingnew songs ahead of their next album, and this was not the same Dead we’d seenjust 3 months earlier at the Fox. At Meramec they would bring acousticguitars, their New Riders spin-off group, and multiple sets - this was the firsttour of “An Evening with the Grateful Dead.” Localmythology has it that as folks left after the encore, Lesh came back out askingwhere everyone was going, as they wanted to play another set…"
Ronnie Ryanremembers leaving as the Dead were playing their encore (Cold Jordan) around12:45 am.
Afterthe show, some fans were hanging around outside the gym entrance with SamCutler, who was drinking whiskey from a Dixie cup. A roadie or someone asked ifanyone had a van to take the Dead’s guitars back to the hotel airport hotel.Mike Barada had a station wagon, and volunteered. David Nelson and the Dead’sguitars piled into Barada’s car and off they went, with Cutler and Garciadriving separate rental cars. Cutler flew ahead on the highway at top speed.Mike kept within the speed limit and lost him, then missed the turn for thehotel and had to circle around the airport, not sure where he was going, whileGarcia followed him. When they finally arrived at the Hilton, Mike apologizedto Garcia for the long ride, but Garcia just smiled and said, “That’s OK man, Ilike surprises.”
TomArmbruster became a temporary roadie for the Dead after this show:
“Iinsinuated myself onto the bus with a recommendation from Greg [Fullington]right after the Meramec show… My life was pretty much mountains of cable, theback of a semi, sleep when I could, speed when I couldn't. When possible, Ihung close to Dan Healy (Bear was in the joint) and learned as much as I couldabout big league sound reinforcement...Downtime was back in California crashing where I could, primarily at theclubhouse. But…at this remove, it's all pretty much a blur… At the Opera Houseshow I told Rock "thanks, see ya," and came back home.
“Itook my mom to one of the Fox shows in 1971.Being a jazz bass player, she was seriously impressed by Phil. And shetold me that jumping on the bus with no notice made a lot more sense to her.”
Thereis a rumor that the Dead returned to Washington University on 5/19/70 to play astealth show. (One person recalls, “A couple of people I knew told me that theyhad seen the Dead at Wash U that evening. I was quite skeptical in that theyhad played at Meramec less than a week earlier. I got the impression that itwas a private party... There was no advertising of the event that I was awareof and I was pretty glued to KSHE at that time and would have heard of it.”) Atape fragment even circulated in later years with this date.
Butthe tape turned out to be part of the Alfred 5/1/70 show, and the whole dateturned out to be false, since Garcia was actually playing with the New Ridersin Menlo Park that day:
PHOTO
By Steve Reed:
** *
JULY 8, 1970
MISSISSIPPI RIVERFESTIVAL
EDWARDSVILLE, IL
Not taped. No opener.
Newspaper reviews:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/06/july-8-1970-mississippi-river-festival.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2017/10/july-8-1970-mississippi-river-festival.html
Known songs -
Acoustic set: Silver Threads &Golden Needles (with technical problems), Deep Elem Blues, Candy Man
Black Peter, Cumberland Blues (most likely acoustic, but uncertain)
Electric set: Good Lovin' (first song,23 minutes long with a drum break), Casey Jones, High Time, the last song was probablyLovelight (a Pigpen song with a “fever pitch finale”)
TheMississippi River Festival held a series of outdoor concerts each summer. Johnwrites, “The MRF started in 1969.Located on the Southern Illinois University campus in Edwardsville...20minutes across the river East from St. Louis.1-2 headliners a week...basically whoever was doing summer tours. I went a lot from 1969-1973. It carried on for a long time, through the1970s.” (The Dead came back in 1980,shortly before the Festival ended.)
Peoplewould sit on blankets on the lawn and watch the performers play under a gianttent. “Although you could still "move around" at MRF, there was no areaclose to the band big enough to assemble a "dance crowd", unless youwanted to do that in the big area outside of the covered-tent stage area.”Pictures illustrate that it was a comfortable spot to see a show, but not veryintimate or close-up.
https://www.siue.edu/~skerber/MRF3.html
“TheMRF was in its second season and was starting to get very popular. This is thefirst time there was a BIG crowd for the Dead. There were way too manynewbies. The word was out. People weredrinking as opposed to earlier shows where it was more tripping/smoking thanalcohol. Since Workingman's Dead had just been released and because the MRF wasan outdoor party atmosphere, there were a lot of younger people there. I was17, but I remember seeing a lot of younger kids.”
Thebrochure says the start time was 8:30. No opening act is listed. The newspapermentions that the band was delayed and the show started late, “but the fans didnot seem disappointed.” (I wonder if NRPS travelled with them, but didn’t playbecause they were running late?) Also, they left immediately after the show andflew to NYC, just like in May.
Perone paper, “The concert, which started about half an hour late, lasted untilalmost midnight, with the audience shouting for more, more, more.” With theshow scheduled for 8:30, the Dead would have started around 9; another reportalso says the Dead played for three hours. They “didn’t stop for applause orbreaks or a breath of air once they got going. Each number flowed into thenext.”
Accordingto the paper, the Dead drew a crowd of 8,500. In comparison, these were theattendance figures for some other popular rock bands:
1969Janis Joplin 10,000
1969Iron Butterfly 12,700
1970The Guess Who 12,400
1970The Band 15,200
1971The Who 32,100
(Folk& country singers drew much less, and some acts like Smokey Robinson orDelaney & Bonnie only drew about 6,000.)
Forthe most part we don’t know what songs were played. “It’s a bit of ablur…hardly anyone can remember this stuff… Any setlist you see online isbullsh*t. I have ZERO memory of them playing Alligator, Caution, etc. I'm justnot sure about the setlist. I do remember Casey Jones, Good Lovin', perhaps NotFade Away, etc. Nothing really special...”
BillKeithler says, "I am pretty fuzzy on that. The only electric song Iremember was Lovelight, but I have no idea at what point in the show theyplayed it."
CraigWilliamson says, "I don’t remember much about the Dead MRF concert in 1970except for a lot of jams… One girl I talked to was impressed that so much of itwas ‘ad libbed.’”
BuzzWall writes, “The Mississippi River Festival was a hoot... All of the tent seats (reserved) were full ofwhat looked like a group of straight people right out of Happy Days... Pigpen starts doing Schoolgirl and screaminginto the mic about what he’s going to do to their 15 year old daughters,howling into the mic. They startedleaving in droves... Anyway I ended upback on the lawn, it was more comfortable and I had already seen them up close.”
(Johnsays he may be remembering a rap in Good Lovin’ rather than Schoolgirl. “I wasalways glued on Pig. He didn't have tobe a great singer to do a very convincing job bringing real R&B to theband. I don't ever remember him cussing,or even ever being overtly salacious.”)
Bix recalls: "PigPen before the show was walking around with a kind of a leather tote bag underhis arm... We were going, 'I wonder what the heck's in that bag that's soimportant.' I mean he never let go of it... Well,finally, he sat down at the B3 and unzipped it, pulled out a QUART (not 5th) ofJack Daniels (I think there were more in there) and cracked it open and took abig pull, then set it on the B3 by the music stand flat spot. It was empty by Lovelight, which he didn't want to do, telling Garcia 'No, no!' and Garcia just nodded athim to get going and started up. I'm surprised he could stand. Of course hepulled off Lovelight like the pro he was..."
Thenewspaper mentions the light show for the Dead, throwing patterns that lookedlike “an amoeba in ecstasy.” Patrick Harvey was there with the Electric Rainbowlight show:
“Thiswas the Rainbow's last gig with the Dead. We were the "house" lightshow for the MRF for the first couple of years, and this was the first of ourrock and roll shows there. We'd done a classical concert with the St. LouisSymphony a few days before. We didn't have access to the mechanism that wouldlower the scrim (a translucent screen) for us to rear project onto, so we setup on the ground in front of the stage. That was a non-starter, and Philpointed it out, because we'd be blocking the view of some the audience. We hadto quickly reset, so we were projecting from onstage but near the outer edges,at an angle. That put my friend Jody and me, on one of the overheads, rightnext to Mickey's gongs, which was really cool, but I don't think I recovered myhearing for a week.”
Johnrecalls the end of the show, which even at 3 hours still seemed short: “Therewas no encore, which had some people grumbling.After they finished, Lesh came out and very calmly explained that theband was beat, but they'd be back soon... (Basically he said, "We'd loveto play more, but we've got to leave town immediately." This was truebecause the road crew had to drive to NYC for a gig the very next night!) Somepeople in the crowd were assholes, and there was a handful of "shockedboo's." Someone threw a firecracker or smoke bomb on stage...Lesh saw itcoming and immediately pounced on it. He picked it up and threw it back intothe crowd where it came from...and then he crouched down a bit...and firmlyflipped the guy off, and abruptly marched off stage. Not a happy ending to anaverage concert.”
PHOTOS
** *
OCTOBER 24, 1970
KIEL OPERA HOUSE
OPENER: NRPS
https://archive.org/details/gd1970-10-24.141429.sbd.boswell.smith.sirmick.flac2496
SETLIST:
Dancingin the Street
ItHurts Me Too
Me& My Uncle
Friendof the Devil
ColdRain & Snow
Atticsof My Life
GoodLovin’
CaseyJones
St.Stephen >
NotFade Away >
Goin’Down the Road >
NotFade Away >
TurnOn Your Lovelight
TheKiel Opera House was in the same building as the Auditorium, on two sides ofthe building; the stages were back to back (so both sides could be opened forlarge events).
https://www.builtstlouis.net/opera.html
John writes, “The Kiel Opera House was very much like the Fox.3-4 miles apart from each other. It heldaround 3,000 seats (less than the Fox).The Opera House was not an ornate theatre like the Fox was, but it hadvery good sound. (The Kiel Auditoriumwas a "barn," and was reserved for concerts that would draw well over5,000 people... The Auditorium had AWFULsound, unless you were right up close...then it was pretty great.)
“At the Kiel Opera House concert, it was completely assignedseating. Although there may have beenpeople who went down to the front to be near the stage, there was no area bigenough to dance....so that dance vibe was non-existent. Same with the subsequent shows at the Fox in1971/1972. Groups of people tried tohuddle near the stage, but it wasn't DANCING or even twirling.
“Soat this show people had to “sit down and behave.” It is the second concert inthe St. Louis area (after MRF) that was affected by the release of Workingman’sDead…which caused a huge upswing in their popularity. It was the first timethey played in St. Louis where tickets were “scarce.” Tons of new, young fans. This was when older fans definitely started“turning away” from the Dead. Too manyshort songs. Not enough jamming.”
There’sno known review of this show so we don’t know the attendance, but John thinksit was almost sold out (over 3,000). This is most likely the show where DeWittScott (of Scotty’s Music) visited Garcia and watched him play with the NewRiders. (More on that below.)
Thepromoter of this show is unknown. The ad for the show says “from KADI the funcompany,” a rock radio station. This show wasn’t broadcast, but KADI didbroadcast the Dead’s 12/10/71 show a year later. Their presence in the ad herewas likely just a form of promotion for the station – Tony Dwyer talks aboutthe practice at other shows couple of years later when “KSHE Presents” was put on the Dead’sshow posters: “We would put ‘KSHE presents’ on all printed advertising and theywere allowed to say ‘KSHE presents’ on air. In return we would get discountedad buys, they would play Dead, and DJ’s would plug the shows. They had nothingto do with the production other serving as a ticket outlet.”
JackPeil has an interesting story about sneaking in early for the soundcheck:
“Myfirst Dead concert was there… I had a ticket front row left… I was there aloneand was able to stroll right in to my seat… I had taken chocolate mescaline andtried to arrive early so I would come on to it at the right time…thus peakingat the best time… I found myself right in front, no one else was there yet…
“JerryGarcia came on for a sound check as the pedal steel was right in front of me…So he played a bit of tuning up, and looked at me and asked, ‘How does it soundout there? You think it’s good?’ I said, ‘Yes sir’…I was captured by how wellhe played pedal steel... And he said, ‘Well let’s see how it goes…’
“Sowhen the lights came on and I was in the front row and my body was rushing withthat mescaline body high Jerry was bending and pedaling that pedal steel…I wasspellbound.”
Otherwisethis show does not stand out in people’s memories.
PatrickHarvey of Electric Rainbow says, “We didn't work it. I'm pretty sure I wasthere, but I don't remember there being a lightshow.”
Bix:“The performance wasn't all that great. Good but nothing special I recall. TheNew Riders with Jerry on pedal was good though.”
John:“It was just a normal show. Nothingmagical. It was magical for newbies, I'mCERTAIN of that.”
Adead.net comment: “I most remember Love Light at theend. There were big flat "gongs" in the back of the stage and Mickeygot up as the song was ending and beat the gongs and all of us into submission.What an ending.”
Anarchive comment: “At the end of this show, Phil came out to politely explain tothe crowd that they were absolutely beat from a long hard tour and were goingto forego an encore. Some dillhole up front apparently flipped him off and Philmade a stupid face, bent down and flipped him back. Right on, Phil!”
Bixrecalls the same incident: “At the Opera House concert, they announced the showwas over and some guy right next to me kept yelling keep playing, keep playing!Phil came to the mike and said words to the effect we're done good night, andthe guy yelled f*ck YOUUUU! Phil gave him the finger and yelled f*ck YOU!”
[SinceJohn has almost the same memory of the MRF show, either this happened twice orsomeone’s remembering the wrong venue.]
PHOTOS
Photos from Bruce Siebert:
** *
MARCH 17-18, 1971
FOX THEATRE
OPENER: NRPS
https://archive.org/details/gd71-03-18.sbd.yerys.1663.sbeok.shnf
(Released on 30 Trips.)
Newspaper reviews for3/17/71:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/march-17-1971-fox-theater-st-louis.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2019/07/march-17-1971-fox-theater-st-louis.html
Known songs from 3/17 –
Truckin'(opener)
Hard to Handle
Next Time You See Me
Me & Bobby McGee
The Other One suite
NFA>GDTRFB>NFA
Johnny B. Goode
Theend of the show is in dispute. A newspaper review singles out Pigpen’s vocal inLovelight, but one attendee says “Pig did not do Lovelight at this show.”
3/18SETLIST:
I
CaseyJones
Me & My Uncle
Big Boss Man
Bertha
Me & Bobby McGee
Loser
China Cat Sunflower >
I Know You Rider
The Rub
Playing In The Band
Cumberland Blues
II
Truckin'>
Drums >
The Other One >
Wharf Rat
Sugar Magnolia
Greatest Story Ever Told >
Johnny B. Goode
Not Fade Away >
Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad >
Caution >
Feedback
Uncle John's Band
Perthe newspaper reports of 3/17, between 3500-4000 attended (not quite asellout). I don’t know how many of them went both nights, but there werecertainly many regular fans catching every show. The show was scheduled tostart at 7 but one report says the Dead started “almost an hour late,” notunusual for them. (“There had been some minor quarrels backstage overarrangements for the concert.”) The New Riders played a 90-minute set and theDead came on at 9:15. A couple of smoke bombs were set off but were just aminor distraction. “The concert ended just before midnight with many in thecrowd dancing and shouting, "Play all night!"”
TheDead were attached to the Fox and preferred to keep playing there rather thanthe other venues in the area. One paper says “the group wanted to play theconcerts in the old ornate Fox Theatre.” Jon McIntire called the Fox “a bossplace” and there were hopes it would become “a Fillmore Midwest.” Although these quotes don’t come from the March Fox shows, I have to include the Dead’s requests tothe audience in December '71:
Phil, 12/9/71 - “Tryto be nice to this place – don’t stand on the seats or kick in the walls or ripout the ornaments – seeing as how this is the only place we like to play aroundhere. And if we can’t come back here to this theater, we won’t come back tothis town, which means you’ll have to go to Kiel Auditorium and listen to GrandFunk Railroad.”
Bob, 12/10/71 - "This is really a nice theater. It's one of the very few finest in the country...and it's a good place to have a rock & roll show. And the owners of the theater hope that you won't be careless and rip it up, so that we can keep coming back."
TheFox didn’t exactly become another Fillmore, since the Dead were just about theonly rock band that played there. The theater manager Tony Peluso only wantedto exhibit films and was not interested in putting on more live shows. The Foxmanagement turned down promoters’ requests to use the Fox for a series ofconcerts. The Dead, however, were able to return repeatedly (as long as it wason weekday nights).
Thepromoter for these shows was Carl Bianco. He was the co-owner of a rock club in Chesterfield called Rainy Daze (open from 1967-71). APost-Dispatch article has a little background on these shows:
“CarlBianco, promoter...has been promoting rock concerts at lower ticket prices thanother promoters who bring rock to St. Louis. For an advanced general admissionof $3.50, a person can get into the concert. (Rock concerts at Kiel Auditoriumby out-of-town promoters usually run from $4 to $6)... Bianco, who is bringingthe Grateful Dead to town for two nights…said he was trying to get rock musicat a lower price in St. Louis... The Grateful Dead...oppose excessivecommercialism in their industry. Bianco said that several promoters were tryingto get the concert for St. Louis, but he was selected to promote it, because ofthe lower ticket prices he was willing to charge… In a traditional 'one nightcity,' The Grateful Dead is willing to try a two-night stand.”
Bianco writes, "Iwas the promoter of the two March 1971 concerts at the Fox Theater. I dealt with Jon McIntire to set up theconcerts. I don’t remember how weconnected, but I was active doing concerts in St. Louis, and the Dead werelooking for someone to promote their visit to St. Louis. The name of my company at the time was RainyDaze Productions.
"It took quite a bit of convincing of Tony Peluso, the manager of the Fox, toget his consent to have the concerts. Hehad been the manager for many years and told me he was very concerned aboutdamage to the beautiful facility. Ifinally convinced him to move forward, but he did require extra securityprimarily to protect his facility.Looking back, I don’t remember any issues at the concerts that causedany concern on his part and by the second night, he was much more relaxed.
"We had a majorscare in that there were rumors circulating that there were going to be a lotof forged tickets that would be used to enter the concerts. Being relatively unsophisticated and to savemoney, I had not used the multicolored and multilayered ticket stock that wascommonly used for tickets at the time.When the tickets were torn as you entered a facility, the colored layerswould be immediately identifiable. Ibegan to hear the reports of counterfeiting before we delivered tickets to thevendors, but it was after the tickets had been printed and there was notsufficient time to print new ones. As asolution, we stamped the back of each ticket with dayglow ink which would notshow up in ordinary light. At theentrances to the concerts, we set up dayglow lights, and put each ticket underthe lights before allowing entrance. Itturned out that no tickets had been counterfeited, but I was called to theentrance where a young couple were almost in tears as they had unstampedtickets. It was obvious that we hadmissed stamping a couple of tickets, and we immediately allowed them in. The end result was that both the couple and Iwere much relieved, but the relief came for substantially different reasons."
Onearticle mentions that to enter the Fox lobby, the audience had to file throughsecurity guards hired to stop gate-crashers. A later report of a Fox showmentioned that “people inside were constantly being herded by ushers andpolice.” Security kept people in line, confiscated forbidden items, patrolledthe crowd, and got them seated. This wasn’t universally popular.
Oneperson remembers going to a Fox show with his friends: “It was a madhouse atthe Fox. Lines around the building, etc. When you got in, you were forced tostay in a portion of the lobby area. After the first night of being stuck inthe lobby like sardines for a LONG time (over an hour?)...the next night, webolted through their minimal security, and ran up numerous flights of stairs… Ourplan was to get inside and then "hide" until they started lettingpeople in...and then grab the best seats.” The plan was successful, althoughPeluso was on the search for them. They could hear him: “Get these kids out ofthe theatre and back into the lobby!”
But audiences appreciated the Fox as a“down-at-the-heels but palatial Egyptianate ‘trip palace,’” “a beautiful, trippy ArtDeco place built in the 1920s and good sound to boot.” A description from a later concert: “The Fox was fairlyrun down back then, not bad, but they used it for midnight flicks and concerts,and you could smoke in it... When the lights went out the air soon filled witha cloud of sweet perfumed smoke.” Those in the front might get to enjoy opendrinks handed out by the roadies “to enjoy and pass on.” (One fanrecalled, “I have never since had a beverage quite like that one.”)
Theseparticular shows were fondly remembered by newer fans (although onlinereviewers tend to blur the March & December ‘71 shows together). OneArchive attendee remembers “all the unexpected new songs” and the “incredibleGarcia pedal steel solos” in the New Riders’ set – he felt that afterwards theDead “never came close to this.”
OtherArchive reviews:
“Iwas a 17 year old newbie to the Dead in '71 and had no clue what I had in storethat night. I think I paid $3.50 for my ticket which got me a general admissionticket to the Fabulous Fox. Spent the evening in the orchestra pit leaning onthe stage less than 10 feet away from the band and was totally blown away bythem. The electricity that they had that night could never be matched.”
“Iwent to this show with some people I barely knew. I had listened to the Dead onvinyl but had no idea what the concert would be like - the Fox theater with itsover-the-top velvet and gold decor, mescaline, NRPS, and hours of Dead music. Ispent the night moving from place to place including up on stage... The thing Iremember the most was a percussion solo that seemed to last for hours andBobby's beautiful long hair. I went back to the Fox every time the Dead playedthere but this concert will always stick with me as a magical night.”
GregCarmack remembered some setlist details from the 17th: “Set I openedwith Truckin’. Hard to Handle was Pig's first song, early in Set I. Set IIconcluded with NFA>GDTRFB>NFA (Jer had switched to a black Les PaulCustom) and JBG. Pig did not do Lovelight at this show.”
Thememory of Garcia switching to a Les Paul seemed suspect, but lo and behold, oneof the pictures from the 17th does show Garcia playing a Gold TopLes Paul (possibly the same one he’d played in ’68, and the only time he was seenwith it in ’71).
PHOTOS
Photosby Steve Deibel, 3/17:
** *
APPENDIXI
"GARCIA!GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR!"
Thatwas Dogman. It was the fall of 1969, my junior year of high school, and a messof us had gone to see the Grateful Dead play at Graham Chapel, a gloriousGothic structure on the campus of a local university in St. Louis.
Wewere right up front, and there were the Dead, in all their ragged glory and atan incredible volume, with their piles of drums and gongs and massive jumble ofamps and speakers with tie-dyed grill cloths in between the carved-wood choirstalls, stained-glass windows soaring overhead behind them. We were alltripping. Oh, wow.
Dogmanwas already a seasoned veteran of Dead shows. At 18 years old he was animposing figure - well over six feet, lanky and intense, with a shaved head -who "danced" standing bolt upright with his feet together, rooted tothe floor, hands at his sides, his entire body shaking with intense vibrationsas he moaned and growled along to the music through tightly clenched teeth. Peoplegave him room.
Garciawas just kind of noodling around, though, and Dogman was dissatisfied. Duringsome too-long Dead air between songs, there came one of those moments whenhundreds of people all happen to stop talking at the same time, and Dogman'svoice rang out. "Garcia!" Jerry turned, looked right at him, andsaid, "What?" "Get your ass in gear!" The rest of the bandcracked up. Jerry, with a surprised look on his face, shouted "Whoa!"and launched into the simple triad riff of "Lovelight." Pigpenstepped up to the mic, and for the next two and a half hours it just got betterand better.
-by Baker Rorick, from Guitar Shopmagazine, November 1995
Thispiece from a 1995 issue of Guitar Shop raises a few questions. First off, theGrateful Dead didn’t play a show at Graham Chapel in the fall of 1969, or anyother time. (The small chapel, which is as described, was located in WashingtonUniversity, where the Dead played at the Quadrangle on 4/17/69. One personseems to recall the Dead rehearsing in the chapel that afternoon, but multipleother people who were there that day say they didn’t hear of it and “it neverhappened.”) Rorick has heard from people saying there was no such show, andadmits that his memory was mistaken. As far as setting the scene, this can beattributed to “artistic license”!
Butthe central incident, a guy shouting “Garcia! Get your ass in gear!” didhappen. The shouter was Craig Williamson (aka Doggmann), whose appearance(tall, with a Mohawk haircut) made him a well-known character at Dead shows.John suggests, “Garcia was well aware of who Doggmann was. The Deadheadcommunity was so small at the first few concerts that the Dead knew a lot ofthe fans.”
Butwhich show did this happen at? Doggman himself remembers yelling it at the Meramec show in 1970, where he had his wrist in a cast. John says what he shouted was: “Get it in gear, Garcia! We’reSTARVING!” According to John, “This makes sense because that concert took a while toget up and running. That was what we were experiencing: a complete absence ofdance music...not to mention no jamming. He yelled ‘We’re starving!’ becausethe Dead were taking so long to get to any type of jam.” And after that, theDead got it in gear.
ButBix has a different memory. He says, “My memory is clear! I know exactly when it was ‘cause I wassitting right next to him. He had his Mohawk hairdo and his hand was in a castwith thumb sticking up. It was at the 1st Keil ‘69 (with TC) and the words were"Get your ass in gear, Garcia...we're STARVING!" (shaking thebandaged hand in the air at him)… It was right when they came out to start.Garcia gave him a mouth opened, astonished look.”
Inthis case, it was a greeting to the band at the start of the Kiel show on2/6/69, as if to say, "We've been starving for you guys since the lasttime you were here!" But Bix also says Doggmann liked the effect enough toshout it to Garcia again at a later show…which leaves unsettled where Rorickmight have heard it. (And it's worth mentioning that Doggmann, as in Rorick's account, does not recall shouting "We're starving!")
* * *
APPENDIXII
SCOTTY’SMUSIC
Scotty’sMusic was a tiny music store in St. Louis run by DeWitt Scott, who was knownfor his expertise on the pedal steel guitar, and it quickly became a gatheringplace for pedal-steel players. (From what I hear it was as much a place forplayers to share tips as to buy instruments.) At the time the Dead beganplaying in St. Louis, he was just starting to set up annual Steel GuitarConventions in local hotels (the first one in 1968), which grew in size everyyear, and Garcia would certainly have been aware of them early on.
Wedon’t know when Garcia first visited Scotty’s, but it seems to have been in April’69 when he’d just bought his own pedal steel and hadn’t yet started playingit. There’s a story that “Scotty gave Garcia his first steel guitar lesson,”but we haven’t been able to confirm any details.
StuartJohnson (of Alvin Pivil) recalls, “I was at Scotty's shortly after the Wash Ushow (a few days or a week) and Scotty told me Garcia had been in and bought aused Mary Kaye Strat he had, although at that point they were not yet referredto that way (the main features being gold plated metal parts and see-throughblonde finish). I had my eye on it but he wanted $300 for it. At that time Iwas loath to pay more than $100-$125 for a used Strat. I had the impressionthat the Dead always encouraged their crew to pick up info on good local musicstores, etc.”
Johncomments, “I don't think any more than a dozen people could fit into Scotty's. Iwould imagine Garcia chose Scotty's simply because of its low-key vibe...and itwas the only steel guitar shop in town. And of course there was no GuitarCenter (or any chain)… There just weren’t stores that carried a lot of guitars.There was NO vintage guitar shop in St Louis until Silver Strings opened inmid-1972…and Scotty's was one of the only shops in town that had usedinstruments. It wouldn't have taken Garcia long to find out about Scotty's.”
ThomMeininger also seemed to recall Garcia going out to Scotty’s during the April ’69visit – I don’t think Garcia had his pedal steel on that tour but he would likelyhave had questions! “Scotty used to jam with Jerry and helped him with somesteel problems early on when he was first getting into steel guitar… Jerry hadsome trouble with his steel so we sent him out to Scotty’s Music and Jerry andScotty became good friends, and he often jammed out there after gigs when hewas in town.”
Whoeverfirst introduced Garcia to Scotty, much of that is definitely true – Garcia didpick up some pedal-steel licks from Scotty, he did hang out at the store onfrequent visits, and they did become friends. Scotty said that Garcia “had a sincere love of the instrument andbehaved with the highest integrity.”
Dead fans wouldsometimes hang around Scotty’s when the Dead were in town, knowing Garcia wouldarrive. One person says he was there when a half-dozen guys were waiting there to meet Garcia. After Garcia arrived with Tony Dwyer and went into Scotty's office, the guys kept staring through the window. Dwyer was heard saying, "Jerry, they're looking at you like you're weird." To which Garcia replied, "I am weird." Another person tells the unlikely story that during one of the Dead's runs at the Fox, "Oneafternoon somebody heard the band would be at Scotty's pedal steel studio. We bummed a ride from campus and sat on thefloor while the guys jammed on songs from Workingman's Dead."
But there were jams at Scotty's. On12/9/71 Scotty recorded a tape of a country-music pedal-steel jam at his storewith Garcia, Weir, members of the New Riders, and others:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiTmq_Z-alA
https://jerrybase.com/events/19711209-01
http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2017/08/scottys-jam.html (info on the jam session)
Scottwrote his memories of the Dead in an email back in 2000:
“TheGrateful Dead and the New Riders were at my store. Not once but several timesover the years. Unfortunately, I do not keep very good records and do not knowthe exact dates or what I did with the photos that I took.
“Mystore is small but both bands were here and they sat on the floor and we werecrowded but everyone enjoyed it. What they liked about meeting at my store isthat I did not take advantage of their being here by letting everyone know thatthey were coming. Jerry, especially, liked that. I had contact with Jerry for along time after that. I sent him a lot of my Steel Guitar LP's and he sent meeverything that the Grateful Dead and the New Riders had on recordings up tothat date…
“Iremember I went to the Fox but do not remember much about it. I do remembermore about going to the Kiel auditorium for one of their concerts. I went downbefore the show and Jerry had his ZB steel guitar set up and he invited me tosit behind it. He sat on the floor beside the steel and when I would hit whathe liked he would say, "Far out" and I would show him the lick.
“Isat backstage that night for the concert and the backstage was full of people.Jerry invited me to set a chair on the stage close to his steel guitar which Iaccepted. About ten minutes into the concert Bob Heil tapped me on the shoulderand told me to look behind me. I did and there was no one behind stage anymore.Bob said I should feel honored because no one, absolutely no one, was allowedbehind stage when the Grateful Dead was playing, much less being on the stagewhile they were playing. I got embarrassed, I got off the stage and went outinto the audience. As I look back to that scene I really do feel honored that Ihad that privilege.
“Onone of their trips in St. Louis Jerry bought a new MSA D-10 steel guitar fromme. When it came to pay me the manager asked me, "What is our price?"Jerry put his hand on the manager’s shoulder and said to him, "You pay thisman the retail price!" They counted out about $2,800.00 in cash and gaveit to me. I really felt nervous walking to my car that night with $2,800.00 inmy pocket.
“Iwould meet with Jerry and the guys at their motel out by the airport here inSt. Louis and party with them. In fact, anytime they would get within 200 milesof St. Louis they would call me and I would take my reel to reel tape recorderand a bunch of tapes from the International Steel Guitar [Convention] and we'dsit around and listen to them.”
https://archive.org/post/329204/scottys-music-store-jam (near thebottom)
Here's another recollection of his, covering the same history - pardon the duplication:
“Iwas at my store, Scotty's Music in St. Louis and whole bunch of long hairedpeople came in and all I said to them was "Howdy." I didn't know whothey were. They got really friendly and in fact invited me to the KielAuditorium in St. Louis for their sound check. I went and there was a ZB steelguitar sitting on stage with a Sho Bud amp and a guy was playing on it. Heasked me to sit down and play some on it. I did and this guy was sitting on thefloor looking up and when I hit a lick he would say, "far out" andasked how I played that. Of course I showed him as I would any other person. Istill didn't know who the band was. I went to the concert that night and I thenfound out it was the Grateful Dead and the steel player was Jerry Garcia. Jerryset me in a chair a few feet from him ON STAGE. I was enjoying the show until aguy tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and it was Bob Heil fromMarrisa, Il. He said to me, "Scotty, turn around." I did and therewas no one behind the stage anymore. Bob said nobody is allowed behind stagewhen the Dead are playing. I got so embarrassed I got off the stage.
“Thenext time that the Dead came to St. Louis, the New Riders were with them andboth bands came to the store and we had a kind of off the wall jam session. SometimesBuddy Cage would play the steel and then I would play. I owned Lloyd Green'sold double neck Sho Bud with the yellow streak on the front and that is theguitar we played on. I took pictures and even put up a mike and recorded thatjam session.
“Theycame to the store one more time, and anytime they would get within 200 miles ofSt. Louis they would call me and I would take my reel to reel tape recorder tothe motel and take several tapes of the Steel Guitar Convention with me, andafter their concert we would listen to them the rest of the night.
“Isold Jerry a double neck MSA and when it came time to pay for it the managersaid to me, "What’s our price?" Jerry put his hand on his shoulderand said, “You pay this man full price!" Wow! Jerry and I corresponded forawhile and we exchanged LP's with each other. He sent me every LP the Dead andNew Riders had and I sent him all of my Midland steel guitar records.”
https://rukind.com/viewtopic.php?t=12621
Scotty’sson Michael recalls that he was there “at the Kiel when we delivered him a newguitar… His road manager said “what’s Jerry’s price.” Jerry jumped in and said“pay the invoice.” We were handed $2,700.00 cash. As no one was allowed backstage while the Dead played, we were offered front row seats for their concert.This was turned down as we didn’t want to be in a big crowd with that much cashin our pockets.” One source said he was “a bit out of his element surrounded byhundreds of tripping hippies, carrying a fat wad of cash, and nervously got thehell out of there quickly.”
Asfor the Kiel show where Scotty was onstage, that was most likely the 10/24/70Opera House show (the only Kiel date where Garcia played with the New Riders). Scottysaw the New Riders’ set at least – by that point he surely knew who the bandswere, but I suspect he may not have stayed around for the Dead’s show.
PHOTOS
Courtesy of Michael Scott. The first couple of photos are when Scotty visited Garcia at a Dead show - these were said to be from the Kiel but I believe they're actually the Fox Theatre, March 1971. Then there's Garcia at the office in Scotty's Music (one with Scotty & Buddy Cage), from various dates.
* * *
For more photos from these shows, see:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2021/09/placeholder-i.html
John writes:
Dozens of people have helped me withthis effort. SomeI know, and some I don't. Some havehelped an immense amount, others only a little...but maybe just ONE detail is aGOOD detail.
THANK YOU:
Tom Armbruster
Mike Barada
Amy Berger
Bob Bosch
Scott Bryan
Mark Bumiller
Tony Cabanellas
Steve Carosello
Sophie Carpenter
Billy Costello
John Crouch
Steve Deibel
Richard Dempsey
Tony Dwyer
Andy Eidelman
Ferd Frank
Billy Ford
Bob Glik
Marc Gruenenfelder
Patrick Harvey
Steve Hitsman
Jesse Jarnow
Stuart Johnson
John Jump
Bill Keithler
Tom Kemper
Jack Labarga
Jim Laverty
Rich Mahan
Joe Mason.
Thom Meininger
Dan Mullen
Johnny Murphy
Jack Peil
Craig Petty
Steve Reed
John Richardson
Baker Rorick
Ronnie Ryan
Brad Sarno
Bob Schnieders
Joe Schwab
Michael Scott
David Seagraves
Ed Seelig
Bob Shelli
Randy Shore
Mark Slosberg
Pete Sullivan
Stephen Turley
Buzz Wall
Craig Williamson
Fred Wolter
PHOTOGRAPHERS
John Crouch
Steve Deibel
Mike Dixon
Jim Laverty
Bill Melick
Craig Petty
Steve Reed
Tom Tussey
Lyle Ward
Jim Wiseman
