September 5, 1982 Glen Helen Regional Park, Devore, CA: The US Festival Fleetwood Mac/Jackson Browne/Jimmy Buffet and The Coral Reefer Band/Jerry Jeff Walker/Grateful Dead (Sunday) The US Festival
In the 60s, the Grateful Dead had a knack for acting as a fulcrum,
playing a starring role in events that helped shape the culture. The most famous such events were rock festivals, of course: Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Altamont all had star-turns for the Dead, for good and for ill. But the Dead managed to insert themselves into all sorts things, like free concerts in the park, like LSD manufacture and even noise-reducing headphones for NASA.
By the early 1980s, however, the Grateful Dead were considered something of a dinosaur. Many ‘60s Fillmore acts were still touring and often more popular than ever, but generally not without substantial changes. Some bands hardly had their original members, like Santana, and others had smoothed out the edges of their sound to something more radio friendly, like the Steve Miller Band or Jefferson Starship. Bands who had been devoted to the blues were now singing songs of love and hope in three-part harmony, like Fleetwood Mac.
Yet the Dead not only had 4/5 of their original starting lineup intact, they had conceded very little to modern radio. Sure, they had tried to "go mainstream" with Terrapin Station, but fortunately they had failed. Constant improvisation and long jams were still the order of the day. Their albums barely made a ripple on the charts, and never got played on the radio. Still, the live rock concert business was bigger than ever, and promoters knew that the Grateful Dead were a reliable draw. Unlike many of their by-then-high-profile peers from Fillmore West, the Dead's concert receipts were never affected by record sales, or the popularity of their latest release.
In the late 70s and early 80s, the Grateful Dead toured in isolation from the rest of the music industry. It was common to read newspaper reviews of Dead concerts where baffled critics said some variation of "who knew that there were still hippies that liked the Grateful Dead?" People who went to Dead concerts didn't often go see mainstream, popular bands in arenas, and vice versa. Concert promoters all loved the Grateful Dead, of course, but their guaranteed drawing power wasn't known so widely.
The US Festival, an important but now largely forgotten event held in 1982 and '83, played a big role in changing the national perception of the Grateful Dead, even if it didn't bring the band any more respect. The US Festival, however foggy our memories may be, had a persistent influence on rock culture in the 20th century, and the Grateful Dead once again played a starring role. This post will look at the Grateful Dead's role in the 1982 US Festival, and touch on the wider influence of the Festival.
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| An aerial view of the crowd of approximately 600,000 fans at Watkins Glen Grand Prix Race Course, July 28, 1973, seeing the Grateful Dead, the Band and the Allman Brothers Band |
Rock Festivals
Rock festivals had been an essential part of the history of rock concert business, but they had been a brief phenomenon. The Monterey Pop Festival had sparked the explosion, with a three-day event (June 16-18, 1967) at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, modeled on the long-running Monterey Jazz Festival. But shows in existing facilities were not large enough to make multi-day events profitable, and overwhelmed the facilities, so from late 1968 onwards rock festivals moved to muddy fields well outside any city limits. What began at the Sky River Rock Festival (Tenino, WA Aug 31-Sep 2 '68) would peak at Woodstock (Aug 15-17 '69), only to crash and burn at Altamont Speedway (Dec 6 '69). There were some rock festivals in 1970, and some were even successful, but communities didn't want them, promoters couldn't profit and fans who had attended one three-day event in a muddy field never wanted to go to another one.
In the early 1970s, there had been a movement towards "festivals" in sports facilities, first in football stadiums and sometimes at auto racing tracks, and only lasting a single day. The most high profile was the "Summer Jam" at Watkins Glen Grand Prix Racecourse (July 28 1973) with the Grateful Dead, The Band and The Allman Brothers Band. It had drawn 600,000 people to the track, and everything had happened in safety. The "California Jam" at Ontario Motor Speedway had drawn at least 168,000 paid (April 6 '74) to see eight bands, headlined by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Deep Purple.
By the mid-70s, however, rock had gotten so big that a single band could headline and sell out a football stadium by themselves. Groups like Led Zeppelin or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young might have a few opening acts to fill time, but they didn't need a "festival" to pack the house. Multi-act, multi-day events had become a relic of the 1960s, even as the rock concert industry had expanded massively.
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| The logo for KFAT-fm, Gilroy, CA (94.5), early 1970s |
Steve Wozniak and KFAT
Steve Wozniak was one of the founders of Apple Computers, and one of the first of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to become fabulously wealthy at a young age. By 1980, Wozniak had stepped away from Apple and was finishing his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley (using the name Rocky Clark). The Woz had been busy with computers throughout much of the 70s, but he had grown up in the San Jose/Palo Alto area, so he had long hair and liked rock music, even if it hadn't been a big part of his life. By the early 1980s, he had more time to reflect.
In particular, Wozniak missed the feeling of community in the 1960s, and he wanted to sponsor a Woodstock Festival for the 1980s. He wasn't alone in that desire, but he was the only person with that kind of money. Wozniak's favorite radio station was KFAT-fm, based in Gilroy, CA. KFAT was the original "alt-country" station, audible in Santa Cruz, Palo Alto and San Jose but not San Francisco. KFAT was country, but truly free-form: you could hear Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger and the Allman Brothers all in a row. So Wozniak wanted to support a big rock festival, but with a comparatively broad base of music.
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| Gina Arnold's excellent Half A Million Strong (2018: U of Iowa Press) looks closely at rock festival crowds from the 1960s onwards |
American Festival Crowds
Rock festivals are embedded in rock music history, not just for any music produced, but for the symbolic power of a huge crowd of people joined together to share the experience. The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair was immortalized, thanks to the movie, as much for its large, peaceful audience as for the music. The evil doppleganger of Woodstock was the Rolling Stones concert at tiny Altamont Speedway outside of San Francisco, also--not coincidentally---immortalized in the Gimme Shelter movie. Today, huge crowds gather regularly for music festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo. The music could be heard in other settings, but it's the giant shared experience that sets them apart.
The US Festival, despite being largely excised from the consciousness of rock history, played a critical role in the continuum from Woodstock to Coachella. What began as free concerts in the Golden Gate Park Panhandle led to nationwide rock festivals in 1969 and '70. Most of these festival events were in some farmer's muddy field or at an auto racing track. Although there were successful events at Watkins Glen Race Course (The "Summer Jam" with the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers on July 27, 1973) and the "California Jam" the next summer (at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Southern California on April 6, 1974), by the mid-70s the all-day outdoor "festival" model had pretty much died out. Promoters didn't want the risk, communities didn't want the hassle and any fans who had suffered in the sun all day didn't want to do it again, regardless of who was playing. The idea of an annual Coachella, Burning Man or Bonnaroo seemed remote. The US Festival revived the possibility of such events, despite its various shortcomings.
In her exceptional book Half A Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella (2018: University of Iowa Press), Gina Arnold makes a coherent arc that goes from free concerts in Golden Gate Park to huge paid festivals in the Southern California. The US Festival plays an essential role linking the somewhat naive 60s with the profitable 90s, and her analysis of the US Festival is not only unparalleled but provides a unique perspective on the event's importance to American culture, beyond the narrow confines of rock music history (ok, Gina is my sister, but it's a really good book and you should read it).
The US Festival was the idea of a single person. It was enacted, however, through many links between a number of other institutions, including the U.S. Army, NASA, the Esalen Institute, and rock promoter Bill Graham. The festival that these weirdly assorted groups created some unforeseen outcomes. One outcome was Macworld, an annual computer exposition, and the profusion of technology-consumer expositions like it...a less concrete but equally clear outcome that one can attribute to the US Festival is the symbolic linkage of money, music, and computer technology as a discourse that the culture largely accepts as a natural, rather than artificial, triumvirate. Essentially the US Festival was a space where these three entities were bound together in the mind of populace in ways that differed substantially from how each had previously been imagined individually.
Lastly, the US Festival conjoined free-form radio and Apple computers in the public mind. Put simply, it anticipated a company called iTunes, and all that that implies. (p60)...
The initial concept of the US Festival began, in its founder Steve Wozniak's own words, as a "Woodstock West," though later on he would disclaim that title and refer to it instead as "the Super Bowl of rock festivals" and "the world's biggest party." The festival--produced twice in a twelve-month period--drew a total of almost a million people, cost over $40 million, and it is mostly remembered today for the large amount of money it lost. However, it was successful in other ways.
First, Wozniak's deep pockets showed subsequent promoters how to create large rock festivals on "outside lands" and established them as safe, hygienic fun "parties." By showcasing popular, apolitical acts, to blue-collar and conservative young people, while to adding to the sense that such festivals were destinations worth attending. (p62)
In the late 1970s, concerts at football stadiums were standard fare in every major market. Just about all of those stadium shows had a single major headliner, like the Rolling Stones, supported by a few acts in a similar vein. In some cases, there were two headliners that were considered to be an appropriate pair, like Chicago-plus-The-Beach-Boys. Led Zeppelin, in fact, would typically fill stadiums with no opening act whatsoever. The Grateful Dead had headlined a huge concert at Giants Stadium in New Jersey (September 2, 1978), supported by Willie Nelson and the New Riders of The Purple Sage. But the US Festival was bigger than any stadium concert, and different, too.
The characteristic of late 70s's stadium concerts was the assumption that rock music tastes were fairly siloed. Fans of Aerosmith were presumed to enjoy the J Geils Band, but they wouldn't be booked with the B-52s. The B-52s might share a concert with The Police, but Foghat wouldn't be on that bill. The Marshal Tucker Band could open for the Grateful Dead, but they wouldn't open for Pink Floyd. Now, of course, we see all of these as 70s bands who are played on the same radio channel. Gina Arnold sums it up:
The US Festival is not well remembered by the culture at large, and one reason might be because of the very odd mix of acts that performed there in both years. To a young person used to hearing them all on Sirius XM's 80s station, they may just seem like a bunch of oldies acts, but at the time they were a hot mishmash of acts whose audiences didn't jibe. (p75)
The Friday night bill (headlined by The Police, supported by Talking Heads and B-52s) has a certain amount of coherence, as all those groups were in their prime at the time. Yet the Saturday night show was unthinkable for the 70s: The "modern rock" of The Cars was not seen to fit with the The Kinks, say, or the more conventional rock of Tom Petty and Santana. Now, we see them all as "Classic Rock," but that term was not yet in use.
Initially the Grateful Dead were not booked on the Sunday afternoon bill. Fleetwood Mac was perhaps the most popular band in the land, and had a new album (Mirage), and Jackson Browne had scored a #1 album in 1980 as well (Hold Out, featuring "That Girl Could Sing"). The concert organizers had expected 200,000 fans each day, with many people camping out, and had prepared accordingly. The pre-sale was disappointing, however, and it was clear that the crowds would be underwhelming, though large.
I lived in the Bay Area at the time. There was tremendous press coverage of the event, since Apple was an important Bay Area company. I can remember exactly nobody, however, who considered actually going to Southern California to see the Festival. Obviously, in Southern California, where it was a same-day-drive, things were a little different, but it was a big event without being seminal.
Bill Graham had been bought in to manage the concert, and it was through Graham that the Grateful Dead were added to the Sunday afternoon show. This was widely discussed in Bay Area newspapers in the run-up to the concert. To the rock market at large, much less to the culture, the Dead were just a left-over 60s band who had never had a hit. Yet they were brought in to save the day at a concert where the headliners were the biggest act in the country (Mac) and a singer with a #1 album (Browne). The presence of the Grateful Dead sold a huge rush of tickets, with Deadheads traveling from all over, as was their usual practice. The rock world, and even the regular world, suddenly found out that not only were the Grateful Dead still together, their fans could out-draw Fleetwood Mac. Up until then, most people had no idea.
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| A photo of the crowd at the US Festival, September 5, 1982 (from Rolling Stone) |
Breakfast With The Grateful Dead
Graham's crafty innovation was to have the Grateful Dead open Sunday's show at 9:30am. The Sunday concert had been scheduled to start at noon, but that left the whole morning open. Much was made of the fact that the Dead had graciously agreed to open, rather than insisting on being first or second on the bill. At the time (and no doubt still), the order of the concert was a critical part of contract negotiation. Fleetwood Mac surely had it in their contract that they had to headline and close the show. The fact that the Dead were willing to save the day and forego the headline was a true outlier. According to David Davis, the Dead were paid $100,000 to open the show, an enormous sum at the time, and the band's first six-figure payday since headlining a drag strip in Englishtown, NJ on September 3, 1977.
It also went without saying that Deadheads who only wanted to see the Dead would arrive the night before and camp out, or simply arrive early in the morning, and not have to wait through some opening acts. From a Deadhead perspective, this made the US Festival gig an attractive concert. Also, as showtime got nearer, it was plain that it was going to be a scorching hot day, so seeing the Dead in the morning, and then beating the traffic out of the facility was going to be an appealing proposition. Ticket sales for Sunday, per Graham, boomed. Bill introduced the band by saying "Breakfast With The Grateful Dead" and the band played two full sets. Jerry Jeff Walker had the unlikely role of following the Dead at a concert.
One little-noticed fact about the Grateful Dead's appearance at the US Festival was that it may be one of the last times that the Grateful Dead performed a full concert without using their own sound system. While I'm sure they brought their own stage gear, as did every other band, they would have been playing through the festival's system. Now, the band trusted Graham, and he must have given appropriate assurances that the house system would be up to the task, but it's still a very rare occurrence after 1971 or so. The last "Festival" I can think of the Dead playing was in Kingston, Jamaica a few months later (November 25, 1982), and I assume they did not ship their entire system overseas. If anyone can shed light on the Dead's last performance not on their own system, please note them in the Comments.
I have to assume that one of the attractions to the Grateful Dead to opening the show, rather than, say, second-to-last, was relatively unlimited time before the show to get the sound right. I don't doubt that Dan Healy and the crew left nothing to chance, and having all night to do it would have been far more appealing than a 30-minute set change after Jackson Browne. In Jesse Jarnow's excellent Deadcast episode about Watkins Glen (July 28 '73), he recounts the story about how the sensitive issue of who would close the show was resolved when Garcia unexpectedly insisted on opening the show, so the Dead would have time to "figure out the sound". As it happened, the Dead had provided the sound system for Watkins Glen, but the fact that they wanted to open saved some sort of summit with Allman Brothers management. Graham probably recalled that meeting (he was there), and would have had the foresight to make the same pitch.
How Did The US Festival Fail?
The US Festival is generally seen as a failure, though you can evaluate it by any standard you like. Gina Arnold's detailed assessment is the best analysis that I know of, but she has a much broader focus than this blog post. A few points of failure are notable:
The US Festival lost $12 million, even including the more focused four-day festival in May 1983. It cost around $40 million to stage, so that's a whopping loss. Of course, by his own accounting, Steve Wozniak had more money than he could ever spend, so he didn't really care. Importantly, however, his massive loss discouraged any other entrepreneurs from trying a giant festival for another decade or so.
- Attendance for all three days in 1982 was around 400,000. A ticket for all three days was $37.50, the equivalent of $113 in 2022. Keep in mind, however, that while it may seem that tickets were underpriced by our standards, all fans had the alternative to see the US Festival bands throughout the year at 1982 prices, so charging up wasn't going to increase attendance. This too would have been an disincentive to promote another such festival, since ticket prices couldn't have been doubled in this era.
- The 1983 edition of the US Festival (May 28-30 and June 4 '83) was a four-day event with musical "themes" for the bookings. There was an implicit assumption that fewer people were coming for the whole thing. There was a New Wave day (May 28, headlined by The Clash), a Heavy Metal day (May 29, headlined by Van Halen), a Rock day (May 31, headlined by David Bowie and Stevie Nicks) and finally a Country day (Saturday, June 4, headlined by Willie Nelson). Attendance for the 4 days was 670,000. It is not clear to me if the total losses for the two festivals was $12 million, or if both lost $12 million apiece, but I think it was the former.
- In 1969, the most devoted of rock fans were about 15 to 23 years old, as they would have been 10 to 18 when the Beatles performed on Ed Sullivan in 1964. By 1982, those same people were 28 to 36. Sure, there were a lot of younger rock fans, but they didn't necessarily have $37.50. Thirty-somethings with jobs just weren't that likely to spend 3 days camping next to the desert. In any case, many of them had probably been to California Jam I (April 6, 1974) or II (March 18, 1978) and probably had no desire to re-live the experience, regardless of who was booked.
- "Afterward, on the US Festival site a group of carefully screened students took part in a staged "conversation" which was also broadcast live on the US Festival and the Russian screens. Incredibly, included in the front row were a Native American dressed in full war paint and feathers (in a twisted way, does this foreshadow Coachella's obsession with headdresses?) and several African American concertgoers pulled from the crowd and placed specially in the front rows of the broadcasting tent" (Arnold p.69)
- Also, there was a fake UFO dangled over the crowd by a helicopter. Everyone's forgotten it all now. I think the UFO would have gone over better the year before, when the Dead were there, but perhaps that's just me?
How Did The US Festival Succeed?
Yet for all its massive loss of money, and unrealized dreams, The US Festival was a success in several significant ways. These successes were mostly noted by the music industry and other professionals, rather than cultural historians. Thus the ultimate output of the US Festival was a variety of commercial considerations.
Though it lost money, the US Festival was a successful concert. This may seem a paradox, but although the US Festival lost an unthinkable amount of money, it was a huge outdoor event with giant crowds. Music was played, bands got paid, the sound system worked and there were no significant problems with the crowd. A promoter could see that the economics had to be resolved, but a large-scale multi-day concert was now technically viable.
- It took a couple of decades for the economics to reach scale. As near as I can tell, a concert like Bonnaroo has a capacity of just 85,000 but ticket prices ranging from $350-$900 (for 2023). People will now pay that much for an event, so a huge outdoor event can be perpetually profitable.
- Alternately, fully sponsored events can be universally free and yet accommodate enormous crowds. The best example is San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, financed by (now late) billionaire Warren Hellman, an aspiring banjo player himself. Between Hellman and numerous sponsors, the costs of the three days of concerts in Golden Gate Park are fully subsidized. Gina Arnold writes at length about how HSB was a result of an evolution from the Grateful Dead playing for free in the San Francisco Panhandle, to Woodstock, to the US Festival and ultimately to Hardly Strictly.
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, by Jesse Jarnow (2016: Da Capo Press)
- The actual economics of huge outdoor festivals is a separate matter, best covered in Jesse Jarnow's book Heads. Jarnow tracks the underground psychedelic economy from Golden Gate Park, to Woodstock and then to the likes of Bonnaroo, capturing a continuum that mirrors Arnold's reflection on crowds.
The Music Industry discovered that the Grateful Dead were a guaranteed draw. The rock concert industry exploded throughout the 1980s, but as the stakes got higher promoters were risking a lot on bands whose success depended on their next record. At the same time, some of the most popular bands hardly toured.
- The Grateful Dead, meanwhile, toured hard all year around, every year, and always drew a huge crowd. The Dead didn't even release albums for much of the 80s, so their continued success was not predicated on a new hit album. Also, unlike almost every other band, fans did not tire of them when they had seen them the year before. Groups like Pink Floyd or the Rolling Stones drew huge crowds, but only once every few years.
- The US Festival gave notice to the concert industry that Deadheads would show up anywhere, whether in the blazing sun on Sunday morning or on a rainy Tuesday in Chicago, without advertising and with no new album. Concert promoters noted that the Grateful Dead were bailing out the US Festival, even when their record sales in the previous few years had been dwarfed by most of the other acts on the bill. The Grateful Dead's inexorable rise to concert prominence was triggered in no small part by the 1982 US Festival.
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| An ad for the 1982 US Festival shows the location of the Technology Exposition, Beer Tents and other amenities. Note that the Grateful Dead are not yet billed in the this version of the ad. |
The US Festival was the literal birthplace of MacWorld, a perpetual feature celebrated in lucrative conferences from 1985-2009. Arnold's book details how the US Festival was the very first one.
- Arnold points out that the "Technology Exposition" (in the map above, the Technology Expo was #17, far behind the stage), which consisted of five tents, was the only air-conditioned location on the site. With brutal 95-degree weather, of course people found time to browse the exhibits. But it's important to note that the employed, 30-something rock fans were exactly the potential buyers for new technology, and manufacturers were eager to get in front of them. The US Festival Technology Expo was the direct inspiration for the MacWorld conference, in San Francisco. Comdex, in Las Vegas, had started in 1979, but it too boomed during the same period.
Huge outdoor concerts were easily leveraged for merchandise and food. There was a beer tent and plenty of food available at the US Festival. In fact, the Bill Graham Presents team modeled Shoreline Amphitheater on the US Festival grounds. Shoreline would open in Summer '86, and was designed to use a rock concert to extract the maximum amount of money from Silicon Valley residents at every event. If you know Shoreline, you'll see that the US Festival map looks familiar.
Notes On The Acts: Sunday, September 5
The Grateful Dead were added to the bill for Sunday, September 5. They opened the show at 9:30am. Based on the schedule in the ad (Sunday is shown as 10am-6pm), Graham probably always intended to add another act, but probably did not expect to need to add one of the Dead's stature. As noted, it was fortunate that the Dead did not insist on rock star prerogative and were willing to open the Sunday show.
By 1982, Fleetwood Mac were one of the biggest rock acts in the world, blasted into the stratosphere by their 1975 album Fleetwood Mac and its successor, Rumors. It had been followed by Tusk and now by Mirage, which had been released in July 1982. Mirage would reach #41 on Billboard. The hit single was "Hold Me," which would reach #4.
As all sentient rock fans know, this era of Fleetwood Mac had Lindsay Buckingham on guitar and vocals, Stevie Nicks on vocals, Christine McVie on keyboards and vocals, John McVie on bass and Mick Fleetwood on drums. Guitar tech Ray Lindsey would add guitar on a few numbers. As it happened, Fleetwood Mac in its original incarnation had plenty of ties with the Grateful Dead.
When Fleetwood Mac had first come to the States in June 1968, they had been booked to play with the Dead at the Carousel, but they were delayed by visa problems (the Mac would debut in LA, at the Shrine). A few members of Fleetwood Mac did manage to hang out with the Dead when they were in San Francisco. The next time through town, in January, 1969, some members of Mac made a pilgrimage to Marin County to jam with the Grateful Dead. Thanks to a detailed account from soundman Stuart "Dinky" Dawson, the date can be triangulated to January 13, 1969. Guitarist Peter Green, McVie and Fleetwood came to Novato to jam some blues with Garcia and Pigpen. Pig, rather surprisingly, played piano.
In 1970, Fleetwood Mac were finally on the same show with the Grateful Dead, at The Warehouse, in New Orleans, LA, on the weekend of January 30-31, 1970. On Friday night (Jan 30) Mick Fleetwood recalled declining an invitation to an after-show party in the Dead's hotel rooms, which was fortunate. The Grateful Dead were busted down on Bourbon Street, but members of the Mac were not involved. The Dead and Fleetwood Mac then played an additional show on Sunday night (February 1), and Peter Green joined the Dead on stage.
A few weeks later, the Dead were booked at Fillmore East with the Allman Brothers, while Fleetwood Mac was touring the Northeast as well. The Mac had a big Friday night show at Madison Square Garden, opening for Sly and The Family Stone on February 13. But they were free on Wednesday, February 11, which is how Fleetwood Mac joined the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers for an epic jam on the Fillmore East show. Hearing Garcia, Duane Allman and Peter Green trading licks on "Turn On Your Lovelight" was rock music at its most incendiary.
By 1982, of course, Fleetwood Mac were bigger than they ever could have dreamed, Peter Green and Pigpen weren't around, the Allman Brothers Band had broken up and things weren't at all the same. Still--Fleetwood Mac and the Grateful Dead were at least on the same stage again, even if there wasn't an after show party.
Jackson Browne was another '60s character who had finally hit it big. His Asylum Records album Hold Out had been released in 1980 and reached #1. He had scuffled around as a songwriter in the 1960s, before he began his thriving solo career in 1971. Browne was an excellent performer, with a crack road band, even if maestro David Lindley had set out on his own with his band El Rayo-X. Neither Browne nor any members of his band (Rick Vito and Danny Kortchmar-guitar, Craig Doerge-keyboards, Bob Glaub-bass, Russ Kunkel-drums, Doug Haywood-vocals) had ever shared a stage with the Grateful Dead.
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| Jimmy Buffett's 1977 album Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes on ABC Records included his biggest hit, "Margaritaville." It was produced by Norbert Putnam, who had also produced The Adventures of Panama Red album for the New Riders of The Purple Sage. |
Jimmy Buffett had been more or less a country singer, but he had added a unique Florida twist. His albums and singles were successful, but he had an enthusiastically loyal audience. Buffett (1946-2023), born in Mississippi, had a typical Nashville country singer resume when he had first visited the Florida Keys in late 1971. He promptly moved to Key West, FL, merging his country songwriting with his relaxed beach-bum persona and southern music. Buffett wrote country songs, but his Coral Reefer Band played them with a Caribbean overlay on his honky-tonk sound, and it was a successful combination. Pretty much all of America now knows what it means to be wasting away in Margaritaville. Buffett's January 1982 album Somewhere Over China, his tenth (or twelfth, depending) would reach #31.
Besides his record sales, Buffett's fan base was extraordinarily loyal, and seeing Buffett over and over. Somewhere along the way, Buffett figured out that the Grateful Dead model made more sense for him than the Nashville model, and he focused his touring and recording on his fan base rather than for the general public. In 1985, Coral Reefer Band bassist Tim Schmidt (ex-Poco, ex-Eagles) would dub them "Parrot Heads," and the name stuck. Similar to the Dead, it was only decades later that the general music public caught on to Buffett's economic model and corresponding success. Buffett made no secret of his emulation of the Grateful Dead, often ending his ever-popular concerts with "Uncle John's Band."
At the time of the US Festival, the Coral Reefer Band was likely Michael Utley (keyboards), Barry Chance (Lead guitar), Josh Leo (guitar), Harry Dailey (bass), Matt Betton (drums), Ralph McDonald (percussion), Sam Clayton (congas, ex-Little Feat) and Greg "Fingers" Taylor (harmonica). Most of them had extensive studio credits with various artists.
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| Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 solo debut for Atco Records included "Mr Bojangles" |
Jerry Jeff Walker was the least known artist on the Sunday night bill, and probably the least known artist of the entire 1982 US Festival. Everyone associates Jerry Jeff with the Austin, TX "outlaw" country music scene. Indeed, he was one of the first to move there, around 1972, and was critical in encouraging the likes of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings to join him. Jerry Jeff Walker, however, had a rather different back-story than you might expect for an Austin country music outlaw.
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| The back cover of Circus Maximus' 1967 Vanguard lp. Ex-Greenwich Village folkie Jerry [Jeff] Walker was lead singer and principal songwriter for the psychedelic band. |
Jerry Jeff Walker (1942-2020) was born Ronald Crosby in upstate Oneonta, NY. In the 1960s he had started using the names Jeff Ferriss and Jerry Walker, and he was one of many Greenwich Village folk musicians. Like many folkies, he "went electric" in 1967, although Vanguard insisted that his band the Lost Sea Dreamers change their name to Circus Maximus. They had released two albums in '67 and '68. When they split up, Jerry Walker went solo as Jerry Jeff Walker, generally accompanied by guitarist David Bromberg, another folkie (from upstate Tarrytown, NY). Jerry Jeff wrote his classic "Mr Bojangles" song about a man he had met in 1965 inside the New Orleans drunk tank (according to Bromberg, Jerry Jeff was "doing research").
A modestly successful solo career followed. "Mr Bojangles" was covered regularly, with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's version reaching #9 in 1971. Most importantly for this day, however, Jerry Jeff was the first one to take Jimmy Buffett to the Florida Keys in 1971. Walker's style also seems to have been influential to Buffett's music, but the drive to Key West had been the turning point for Buffett. In 1982, Walker was recording on MCA, just like Buffett (probably thanks to Jimmy, too), and had released Cowjazz, his last album until 1987. Walker had been in the Coral Reefer Band at various times, and probably joined Buffett during his set.
The Grateful Dead opened the Sunday show at the 1982 US Festival. They had formed in 1965, changing their name to the Grateful Dead by 1966. They recorded several albums for Warner Brothers Records, and then their own label, but by 1982 they were on Arista Records. Their most recent record had been the double-live album Dead Set, which had been released in August 1981 and would reach #29 on the Billboard charts.
Appendix: The US Festival Site, Glen Helen Regional Park, Devore, CA
Steve Wozniak paid for the bulldozing and construction of a new open-air field venue as well as the construction of an enormous state-of-the-art temporary stage at Glen Helen Regional Park near Devore, San Bernardino, California, just south of the junction of Interstates 15 and 215. This site was later to become home to Blockbuster Pavilion, now Glen Helen Amphitheater (the largest amphitheater in the United States as of 2007). The festival stage has resided at Disneyland in Anaheim since 1985, and has operated under various names and functions as the Videopolis dance club, the Videopolis Theatre, and the Fantasyland Theater.
