October 1, 1967 Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Charles Lloyd/Grateful Dead/Bola Sete

 

October 1, 1967 Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Charles Lloyd/Grateful Dead/Bola Sete (Sunday) "Potpourri"  Presented by Associated Students of University of California 1:00pm
One of the unseen drivers of the rise of rock music in the '60s was the entertainment budgets of colleges and universities. Schools generally believed that one of their functions was to serve not only the students but to the surrounding community. Large schools in relatively isolated areas were often focused on simply entertaining the students, which was one reason that college sports were so central. Schools in larger areas had a smaller burden of entertainment, per se, but Universities felt it was important to bring                 culture to the community outside of mainstream entertainment. Thus a school like the University of California at Berkeley had a substantial budget for performing arts, and the assumption was that ticket sales alone were not required to finance music, dance or theater presentations. 

Back in 1967, UC Berkeley presented many musical events that would not make back their costs from ticket sales. Since the school would provide facilities at a reduced cost, or sometimes free, and often provide a subvention for performers fees, performers could get booked at a price competitive with for-profit performances. While schools generally worked with professional booking agents, those agents took advice from students on a school's "Entertainment Committee" or a similarly construed group. The October 1, 1967 booking at the Greek Theatre of Charles Lloyd, the Grateful Dead and Bola Sete appears to be just such an event. A University show with some discernible input from students led to the Dead's first of 29 performances at the venue. 

This post will look at the October 1, 1967 show at the Greek Theatre, with an emphasis on how such an odd booking came to pass. Despite our paucity of information about the show itself--we have a few photos and one brief review--we can tell a lot from the circumstances surrounding it. If anyone has additional insights, corrections or useful speculation, please include them in the Comments. Flashbacks encouraged.

 

The September 29, 1967 (Friday) Daily Cal ran a picture to promote the Sunday show. The caption said "BLOWIN' COOL....Charles Lloyd as well as The Grateful Dead and Bola Sete will appear Sunday, October 1, 1:30 pm in the Greek Theatre."

It is generally accepted that an any snapshot in time, American college students are on the front lines of whatever is cool and hip in the States at that moment. Young and impressionable, mostly free from parental constraints and mostly with enough implicit capital to make some of their own choices, college students are the most able to figure out the Next Big Thing. Decades later, they may be proud of their early choices in music, fashion or politics, or, conversely, perhaps anxious to destroy any digital records of the time they got an eyebrow piercing. College students are essential for determining what is cool at any given moment.

It is a paradox, however, that the same schools these students attend are always about five years behind the curve. This is part of the dance of cool--when an institution figures out what is happening, any true hepcat knows that it is time to move on. So it was that in mid-60s colleges and universities, it was accepted that modern jazz was what students liked. Rock and roll was fun to dance to, but it was kid stuff--serious young men (and their future wives) saw jazz as the proper province for hip music. Intellectual but grounded in dance, middle-class but arising from black culture, learned but requiring an ineffable ability to swing, hated by parents, just possibly iniquitous, modern jazz was the ideal music for the with-it college student. So Colleges and Universities regularly booked modern jazz performers.

Now, undergraduate young men in 1967 at a place like UC Berkeley liked jazz well enough, no question. They knew about Coltrane, or Dizzy Gillespie, sure, even if they might not actually recognize any of their records if they heard them. But what was happening by '66 was rock, starting with the Beatles, supercharged by the Rolling Stones, and made serious by Bob Dylan. In the 1970s, a few years later, UC Berkeley would accept that undergraduates were serious about rock, but that was still years away. Back in 1967. the school was going to support jazz, but not yet rock. Any students who wanted some rock were going to have to find a way to sneak it in. 

The William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, known in town as simply the Greek Theatre, is a large outdoor venue at 2001 Gayley Road, just above the campus. Built in 1903 and modeled on the ancient Greek theater of Epidaurus, it held up to 8,500 people. Huge rows of stone seats extended upwards in a giant bowl. The University used it for graduation and high profile speeches. UC Berkeley, being UC Berkeley, explicitly spelled it English-style as "Theatre" rather than the Americanized "Theater." In the '60s, the Greek Theatre was actually too large for popular music, since no groups (save the Beatles) could draw that many fans. It was such a lovely setting, however, that it was regularly used for events like the final day of the Berkeley Folk Festival, since it could accommodate all who wanted to attend. 

The metadata of this booking suggests that UC Berkeley was subsidizing a multi-act jazz show at the Greek. In those days, Universities had a substantial budget for student entertainment, but the performers had to broadly fit a category that the institution considered "art." Sometime in the previous decade, modern jazz had been elevated to serious music, like the symphony, so school funds could bring in jazz acts without concern about whether ticket sales would cover the price. 

Notice on the poster above that the Grateful Dead are only represented by a picture,  just like Charles Lloyd and Bola Sete. Their photo makes them look hipsters rather than hippies, and unlike the other two acts they are not holding their instruments. A performance picture of the Dead with their guitars and banks of amplifiers would clearly tip that they were a rock band. Everyone knew this, of course. But it's clear to me that some hippies on some student committee had pitched the Dead as serious improvisers, like a jazz group. This wasn't untrue, actually, it's just that they didn't play jazz. The audience for this posing would have been whatever university administrators approved funding, since all the students actually knew what was what.

Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd's current album was Love-In, released on Atlantic Records in July 1967. It had been recorded at the Fillmore on January 27, 1967, and the cover featured a photo of Lloyd's quartet framed in the psychedelic wash of the Fillmore light show. Corny as the album title and photo seem now, it was no small thing. First of all, Jim Marshall's cover shot gives a surprisingly rare color view of the Fillmore stage as it actually looked in early '67. The performers are visible, but they are part of a broader palette created by the  light show. Within a year or so, even the Fillmore lighting emphasized a clear view of the performers, with the lights more in the background. In early '67, however, the lights still subsumed the musicians.

Secondly, Lloyd was an established New York jazz player when that was the pinnacle of the jazz world, and his willingness to not only perform at the Fillmore but title his new album Love-In was a significant diplomatic visit from the jazz universe to the hippie rock world. Lloyd was from Memphis, but he had moved to Los Angeles to study music at USC in 1956. He had replaced Eric Dolphy in the Chico Hamilton Quintet as 1960, playing with the likes of Gabor Szabo and Albert Stinson. By 1964 he was established in New York, playing with Cannonball Adderley. Lloyd had released the great album Of Course, Of Course in 1965 with the Miles Davis rhythm section.

In 1968, Keith Jarrett made a folk-rock album, overdubbing all the instruments, particularly guitar, and vocals on a single-day (March 12). Restoration Ruin isn't good, by all accounts, but it shows that Jarrett was listening to what was around him. He lived in the Haight Ashbury during that period.

Lloyd's quartet included the phenomenal Keith Jarrett on piano and Jack DeJohnette on drums, both of whom went on to stellar jazz careers. Earlier in 1967, Cecil McBee had been on bass, although Ron McClure may have replaced him by the time of the Greek Theatre show. Keith Jarrett actually ended up living in the Haight-Ashbury during some of his time with the Lloyd group. In 1968, Jarrett would even release the album Restoration Ruin, recorded in one day (March 12 '68) at Atlantic studios, with him overdubbing guitar, bass, drums and "sub-Dylan" vocals. It's a folk-rock album, and apparently quite bad, but it's a sign that he wasn't detached. So while Lloyd's quartet was playing modern jazz with no compromise, they weren't isolated in some bubble.

The Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead were rock stars in San Francisco before they had even released their first album. In the latter half of 1966, the Chronicle regularly published pictures of Jerry Garcia and the Dead when they had upcoming events. Since the band had no recordings, few people would have heard them, particularly outside the city itself, but they had been identified as stars already. The band's debut album had been released in March, 1967. In April, KMPX (106.9) had debuted as the first "free-form" FM rock station, playing rock album cuts 24/7. While I don't actually think the Dead got as much airplay as groups like Cream or Traffic, the band were favorites of station manager Tom Donahue. In a famously-circulated aircheck, Donahoue spent an hour with Garcia and Phil Lesh, discussing their favorite records. Since KMPX was literally the only such station, any FM rock listeners had to have heard of and heard the Grateful Dead by the Fall.

Bola Sete at the Monterey Jazz Festival, recorded on September 17, 1966. Released by Verve Records in 1967, produced by Creed Taylor. It would reach #20 on the Billboard Jazz chart.

Bola Sete
Bola Sete (1923-87, born Djalma De Andrade) was a Brazilian guitarist. His nickname means "Seven Ball." Born in Rio de Janiero, he had formal training in music and had played in South America and Europe in the 1950s. His manager had brought him to America, and he was playing at the Sheraton Palace in San Francisco in 1962 when he impressed Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy brought his piano player (Lalo Schifrin, later famous for the immortal "Mission Impossible" theme) to hear him, and it turned out that they had played together in Argentina. Dizzy brought Bola Sete to the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival, and took him on tour.

After touring with Gillespie, Bola Sete had played with pianist Vince Guaraldi in San Francisco (who was later famous for  soundtrack to the TV Peanuts cartoons, among many other works). Besides popular recordings with Guaraldi, Bola Sete had success with his own music. Bola Sete was a unique crossover of jazz and Brazilian music when both were popular. His regular trio included Sebastiao Neto on bass and Paulinho De Costa on drums. Bola Sete's most recent album at the time of the Greek Theatre show was Bola Sete at The Monterey Jazz Festival, recorded on September 17, 1966, produced by Creed Taylor and released on Verve Records in 1967.

San Francisco jazz trombonist Turk Murphy (L) and SF Examiner music writer Phil Elwood (R), probably some time in the 1950s

Potpourri at The Greek, October 1, 1967
San Francisco had two daily papers, the morning Chronicle and the afternoon Examiner. Each had substantial music writers who covered jazz as well rock, blues and soul music. The Chronicle's Ralph Gleason has been appropriately acknowledged as a crucial promoter of the careers of many artists, not least the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Gleason was also a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and had a long and distinguished career.

Phil Elwood (1926-2006) of the San Francisco Examiner, while working at the less popular afternoon paper, nonetheless retains a high standing as a music critic. Elwood genuinely enjoyed going out at night to see music, and he would see performers in the largest arenas or in a tiny neighborhood restaurant. His ears were golden, too, whether he was out seeing jazz, rock, folk or some guy playing bouzouki in a Greek joint. Elwood's premier claim these days was that he gave Bruce Springsteen his first good review--in 1970!--on a night when he went out to cover Boz Scaggs at the tiny Matrix club. So Elwood's review of any show is just as valuable as Gleason's, even if he doesn't have the big profile. Elwood went to the Greek Theatre show on October 1, 1967, and wrote about it in in the Saturday Examiner, along with another show he had checked out earlier in the day:

A BIG DAY FOR JAZZ FROM UC TO THE BAY-Phil Elwood, San Francisco Examiner October 2, 1967 (excerpt)
It was a big day, yesterday, for the sophisticated jazz fan.

Eleven hours of mainstream swing and traditional Dixieland flowed from the Club Pier 23 on the Embarcadero during the Bill Napier benefit, and nearly four hours of the University of California's musical potpourri absorbed the afternoon at the Hearst Greek Theatre on the Berkeley campus.

About 5000 attended the Cal "Centennial Jazz" matinee and the Napier benefit drew over 500 to the waterfront festivities.

I would wish the two events could have been shuffled occasionally: the informal enthusiasm at the Pier 23 was missing at the Berkeley show, and the modern musical experimentation was lacking on the waterfront.

In Berkeley the Grateful Dead, rock-blues group, a generally interesting and popular electronic band, was boring. In an outdoor environment with brilliant sound projection (and the Greek's naturally superlative acoustics) the Dead's presentation never grabbed the audience and took them aloft.

No one danced, nor indicated any desire to, and other than Jerry Garcia's wonderful guitar variations there wasn't anything very interesting in the Dead's hour of ordinary chord changes, occasional vocals, and undistinguished rhythms.

The Charles Lloyd quartet, in contrast, displayed superlative individual musicianship, fascinating complexities in their ensemble performance, and a wide ranging series of themes on which to improvise.

Pianist Keith Jarrett constantly taunted leader Lloyd into esoteric flute or saxophone expressions, and when Jarrett devoted his whole introductory solo space to variations on strummed-piano strings and microphonic percussion, the Greek Theatre audience roared with delight.

I have never heard Lloyd's quartet in a more exuberant mood and their artistic good humor and good taste might well have been noted by the dour Dead.

The Bola Sete trio introduced the afternoon with a typical cross section of Sete's appealing guitar. His Bach, Villa Lobos, and Haydn mixed with flamenco and Brazilian themes is one of the most attractive blends of musical expression on the American scene.

 

An ad for the Grateful Dead and the Charles Lloyd Quartet at The Rock Garden, March 28-April 2, 1967, way out in the Excelsior at 4742 Mission

Charles Lloyd and The Grateful Dead
Just to touch briefly on a slice of Grateful Dead scholarship, even the most casual google searches will lead anyone to live Dead tapes that indicate Charles Lloyd as a guest, usually on flute. All of them, without exception, are wrong. Lloyd did jam with the Dead, possibly on multiple occasions, but every single tape where a flute (or saxophone) is attributed to him is inaccurate. For this blog, I will not go fully down the rabbit hole, but those who care may look at a discussion here (from the Summer of 1969, where Gary Larkey was the guest) or here (about the Family Dog during the same month, where Lloyd canceled and wasn't present, even though the actual guest remains unknown).

Lloyd and his quartet regularly performed in San Francisco, so they surely knew who the Grateful Dead were. For several shows in March and April 1967, Lloyd's band shared the bill with the Dead at a San Francisco place called The Rock Garden. The Rock Garden was way out on Ocean Avenue, in the Excelsior District. A little later, Ralph Gleason reported that Lloyd sat in with the Dead. I'm sure he did--but there aren't any tapes, and in any case almost no one attended those shows (except Jerry's Mom, really). Yet because of Gleason's high profile and the paucity of actual research on the Dead for the next couple of decades, any time there was a flute on a Grateful Dead tape it was attributed to Lloyd. It's worth noting here that the knowledgeable Elwood would not have failed to notice Lloyd sitting in with the Dead at the Greek. 

 

 

Photo of the Grateful Dead at the Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley on October 1, 1967. Note that there is only one drummer (Mickey Hart had jammed with the Dead the night before and had been invited to join the band). Also, sound reinforcement is only provided by two paired amps each on stage left and right.

The Grateful Dead At The Greek Theatre
The Grateful Dead played at the Greek Theatre 29 times, and Jerry Garcia played 4 more, and the venue looms large in the history of the Grateful Dead. I myself saw the band there 16 times, and all the JGB shows, too, and they are among my fondest concert memories. I accept that there may be venues for the Dead that were as good as the Greek, but not that there was one any better. The Dead's performance in 1967 was their very first show at the venue. So a few words are in order.

I am not certain of the source of the photo above of the October 1 show. Nonetheless, long-time fans of the Dead, or indeed anyone who has attended a rock show at the Greek in the last 45 years or so, will be startled to note the tiny amount of amplification. In the photo, I count six amplifiers in the back-line. One amp, to stage right of Pigpen, seems pointed at the band, but I think that was the rotating Leslie amp for Pig's organ. There are two pairs of amplifiers on either side of the stage. I don't know if those amps were just for the vocals and drums, or were part of sound reinforcement for the backline. I don't see any microphones facing the backline amps, however, so I don't know how they could have transmitted the guitars.

So the sound of the Grateful Dead would have just come from each band member's own amp, or amp pair, presumably. Somehow they were blended with the vocals and drums, but from amplifiers quite distant from the performers. If you were seated near the stage, the sound you heard must have varied dramatically depending on your location. Owsley was still engaged in other activities, and would not join as soundman for 10 more months (San Diego, August 2 1968), so he can take no blame here. Now, we all have our own internal imagination for what the 1967 Grateful Dead sounded like in concert, mostly based on the few circulating board tapes. I have to think, however, that the actual sound would have been quite different than any in-line board tape from that era, and they would all vary by location. 

As a further note, it is an article of faith in Grateful Dead mythology that Mickey Hart jammed with the Grateful Dead at the Straight Theater in San Francisco during the second set of September 30, 1967, and was immediately asked to join the band at the end of the show. That is surely true, too, but it's worth noting that this is the day after the Straight and there is only one drummer. Mickey was invited to join, yes, but he didn't actually join the band on stage until later, probably at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on November 10.

The Grateful Dead at the Greek Theatre on June 21, 1987. They brought more amplifiers.

 

For the previous post in the '67 Berkeley series (Berkeley and East Bay Concerts, July-December 1967), see here

For the Berkeley, Oakland and East Bay Rock History Navigation Tracker, see here

Chicken On A Unicycle

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (SEVA Sing Out For Sight Benefit)

The Berkeley Community Theater as it looked in 2009. just across Allston Way from Provo Park

At first glance, the benefit concert at the Berkeley Community Theater featuring an acoustic performance by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and John Kahn on April 25, 1981 does not seem like a good candidate for this blog. There are some fine tapes circulating, people remember the show, and much of it seems pretty par for the course. When placing the show in its original context, however, the acoustic benefit turns out to have been a template for things to come. The show seems "typical" to us because so much of it was replicated throughout the rest of the '80s. Yet there were other aspects of that night at the Berkeley Community Theater that were not duplicated. This post will look at the acoustic benefit concert on April 25, 1981, and we will see how it was a tryout of a variety of new approaches for the members of the Grateful Dead, some of which became permanent and others that were rarely or never seen again.

April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir/Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann/Odetta/Country Joe McDonald/Rosalie Sorrells/Kate Wolf SEVA Sing Out For Sight Benefit

My notes from the April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater SEVA Benefit

In September and October of 1980, the Grateful Dead had thrilled their fans with acoustic sets at the Fox-Warfield Theater, the Sanger Theater (in New Orleans) and Radio City Music Hall. While most fans, myself included, did not expect acoustic sets to be part of every Grateful Dead show going forward, many of us felt that such sets would be a recurring feature when the Dead played the appropriate venues. However, after the Fall '80 run of shows which provided the basis for the Dead Reckoning album, the Grateful Dead all but stopped playing acoustic. Yes, there were touching stories about the Dead performing at the Ronald McDonald Children's Hospital in San Rafael, and they did play an acoustic set on New Year's Eve at the Oakland Auditorium, but those were the only two such shows. As 1981 dawned, it was hard to get over the idea that maybe acoustic shows would be gone for another ten years.

So it was a pleasant surprise indeed when a show was advertised at the Berkeley Community Theater for April 25, 1981, featuring an acoustic appearance by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. The show was a benefit for Wavy Gravy's SEVA Foundation, for whom the Dead had played benefit concerts the previous two Decembers (Dec 26 '79 and Dec 26 '80, both at Oakland Auditorium). There were four other acts listed on the bill, so whatever the show was going to be, it definitely wasn't going to be a typical Dead show.

When we arrived at the Berkeley Community Theater, a 3500-seat civic theater that also served as the Berkeley High School auditorium, we were all given a little folded program that listed the acts in order of appearance (I have never seen one since--maybe one will turn up on the Grateful Dead Archive). Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann were listed as playing third, right before intermission. I assumed that this was because the Jerry Garcia Band had another show that night at The Stone, where they usually went on stage at about 11:00pm.

The show began with an introduction by Wavy Gravy, who repeated his SEVA bit word for word from the previous years' benefit concerts. After an opening set by local resident and resident legend Country Joe McDonald, and then a fine set by Sonoma folk singer Kate Wolf, accompanied by guitarist Nina Gerber, the members of the Grateful Dead came on stage, probably at about 9:00 pm. Garcia, Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann were announced by Wavy, but we were quite surprised to see John Kahn on stand up acoustic bass. There was no Phil Lesh, and no piano player.

No one had seen John Kahn play acoustic bass in public since the days of Old And In The Way, and the idea of a Grateful Dead set without Phil Lesh was thoroughly unprecedented. Almost immediately, people started to contemplate whether this actually "counted" as a Grateful Dead show. In any case, although the Berkeley Community Theater doesn't have great acoustics, to my ears, the group sounded terrific and did lively versions of nine songs. Unlike the Fox-Warfield, Garcia and Weir were on their feet rather than seated at stools, and it seemed to make the tempos more energetic. Weir said "we started out something like this. Then we went on to become the Rocky And Bullwinkle of Rock and Roll." There were even some surprises--an acoustic version of "El Paso," not seen at the Fox-Warfield, and a truly unexpected encore of Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy."

After 40 fun minutes, the band was offstage. A big segment of the audience left. For one thing, the program had said that Garcia and Weir were up third, and they were done. For another, many people wanted to follow Jerry's black BMW down University Avenue and across the Bay Bridge to The Stone, rather than sit through some folk acts. I did, too, but I didn't have a way to get to The Stone, so my friends and I stayed to see the balance of the show instead.

Hart and Kreutzmann came on after intermission and did a duet on tar and hand drum, respectively, OK, I guess, if you like that sort of thing. They were followed by Rosalie Sorrells, a more traditional folk singer (there's a chance that I have inverted Kate Wolf and Rosalie Sorrells' spots in the running order, but I don't think so), and finally Odetta. Odetta was a folk legend from the 1950s, who also fell into the category of "OK if that's what you like." The promised finale was just the evening's performers singing "Amazing Grace." Weir and Country Joe joined in on the chorus with everyone else, and Hart and Kreutzmann banged out a beat. Jerry was probably tuning up backstage at The Stone by that time.

Where Was Phil?
After the Berkeley show, the Grateful Dead set out on an Eastern tour, playing fairly large venues in many of their strongholds, like the Philadelphia Spectrum and Nassau Coliseum. Shortly after the Dead returned, most of them played another Wavy Gravy event, an Anti-Nuclear Benefit at the Fox-Warfield on May 22. Along with some of the same acts at Berkeley (support included Country Joe McDonald backed by what would become High Noon, and Kate Wolf), they were billed as Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, and the ads made it clear that they would play acoustic. When Wavy introduced the band, he called them "Captain JerryBobKreutzHart," not the Grateful Dead. Once again, John Kahn was on standup bass, but this time Brent Mydland had joined in on grand piano. Where was Phil?

People like me had all sorts of theories. Perhaps since Phil had no background in folk music, unlike Bob and Jerry, then maybe he wasn't interested in playing acoustic music. Maybe he didn't like Wavy Gravy. Maybe he hated the sound of his bass amp. In any case, Phil was still on tour with the electric Grateful Dead, so it didn't seem that it represented a crisis. About 5 years later, I met Dennis McNally, who took the time to answer some of my questions, and he told me why Phil didn't play the two benefits: because no on had asked him.

Jerry Garcia, Benefits and The Grateful Dead
In retrospect, the April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater show was an interesting experiment for Jerry Garcia, and by extension the Grateful Dead. The Berkeley event and the Warfield event that followed the next month have no precise parallels, so it's easy to simply treat them just as exceptions. Yet a closer look shows how the ever-restless Garcia was looking for a way to meet his various obligations in a way that still make them reasonably fun. The clue to this is the funny detail that Phil Lesh was not asked to play at the two benefits.

Why would Phil Lesh not have been asked to play the two shows? The plausible explanation is that Wavy Gravy arranged the benefits, and asked Jerry Garcia to play acoustic. Garcia agreed, and asked John Kahn to join him, which of course he did. With Garcia on board, Wavy could safely book Berkeley Community and The Fox-Warfield, without having to worry much about ticket sales. I believe the primary reason for the acoustic benefit was twofold: firstly, acoustic performers need far less equipment, thus cutting down on expenses, and the simplicity allows for multiple performers. Secondly, from Wavy's point of view, asking Jerry to play 45 minutes or so as the highlight of a multi-act show was asking far less than requiring him to put on a mult-set show as the sole headliner.

Nonetheless, Wavy knows everybody, and once he started asking around I assume other members of the Dead wanted to be involved. However, once Garcia and Kahn had Weir and the drummers, they knew they had a band. Given what we know now about Garcia penchant for not rehearsing, Phil wasn't likely to have been excluded from any practices, since there probably weren't any. Garcia and Weir probably just talked a few minutes before they went on stage and told the others what they were going to play. Ultimately, Phil's feelings may have been hurt, and he was probably a little bit suspicious of Kahn's closeness to Garcia, but it was just for two relatively minor shows.

Prior to 1981, the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia had done many benefits for a wide variety of causes, almost always due to a personal connection to the organizers, rather than a passion for a specific cause. Yet from 1981 onwards, both Garcia and the Dead had a completely different approach to benefits. Garcia seems to have figured out that playing acoustic was a far better arrangement for him when he agreed to a benefit. Everyone would expect a shorter show, he didn't need to worry about sound and lights, and his "entourage" was probably just Kahn and Steve Parish. Over the next dozen years or so, Garcia and Kahn played numerous benefits, sometimes with Bob Weir or other guests, and sometimes just as a duo. But the acoustic setup allowed Garcia to agree to help whom he wanted without having to involve the rest of the band, and address touring schedules, arranging a PA, and numerous other distractions.

As for the Grateful Dead, after 1981 they largely stopped playing any benefits save for their Rex Foundation concerts. The Rex Foundation benefits debuted on February 16-17, 1982 at the Fox-Warfield. For the Dead, the advantage to the Rex Foundation approach was obvious. As Grateful Dead concerts required planning for lights and sound, the shows had to be part of a regular tour. At the same time, as Grateful Dead concerts were increasingly lucrative, it may have become a sensitive issue as to what causes the Grateful Dead might support. By funneling their charity through the Rex Foundation, the Dead and their associates could support a broad range of endeavors, rather than tying a single concert to a single charity.

Jerry Garcia had always had many requests to perform at benefits, and by playing acoustic he could fulfill them without complicating his own busy schedule. Bay Area Deadheads rapidly adjusted to the idea that a local benefit with Garcia generally meant an acoustic appearance by Garcia and Kahn, and everyone made their plans accordingly to attend or not  There were occasional exceptions, of course, (notably the January 23, 1988 show at the Kaiser Convention Center, featuring Garcia jamming away on stage for hours with Tower Of Power, Santana, NRBQ, Wayne Shorter and others), but no one in the Bay Area in the 80s generally expected Garcia to plug in at a benefit.

The April '81 Berkeley show was also one of the first in the Bay Area that featured an all-acoustic format, with well-known "electric" musicians like the Dead and Country Joe returning to their folk roots and playing shorter acoustic sets. I'm not saying that the Berkeley show was "the first," (the real predecessors were the "Bread And Roses" benefits, but that is a tangent here), but it was an early example of the sort of shows that were made a staple not only by Wavy Gravy in the next several years, but also by Neil Young at his Bridge Concerts. One reason that the Berkeley and Fox-Warfield shows in 1981 do not stand out so much in our minds was that they now seem very typical of 80s benefit concerts. However, when they were actually put on, they were fairly unprecedented.

Arinell's Pizza, on 2119 Shattuck, where I would have gone had Jerry Garcia played Berkeley Community Theater and Keystone Berkeley on the same night.

Roads Not Taken
Nonetheless, while the 1981 Berkeley show seems to have shown the way for events to come, in certain other ways, it had some experiments that were never seen again. Garcia would try all sorts of things, but if they didn't work he simply didn't repeat them. It seems clear to me that Garcia was asked to play the benefit acoustically, and by some process Weir and the drummers got invited. They played the Warfield as well, with Brent along. Yet a full group configuration was never repeated. Garcia didn't like to rehearse, so paradoxically it meant he could bring along anyone he liked to a benefit. However, in the future, Garcia pretty much limited himself to playing with Kahn and Weir (there was one show for Neil Young's Bridge on December 4, 1988, with Weir and Rob Wasserman). Once Garcia discovered the virtues of simplicity, he seems to have preferred to keep it as simple as possible.

The other memorable experiment that was not repeated was an electric Garcia Band show on the same night as an acoustic benefit. I knew a bunch of people who went to both shows, and they considered it a great adventure. Staid, pleasant Berkeley Community Theater for a folkie benefit, then hopping in the car for the half-hour run across the Bay Bridge to The Stone, and knocking back a few beers while the Garcia Band did their thing.

If Garcia had liked this experiment, he could have tried playing Berkeley Community and then the Keystone Berkeley. The two places were only three blocks apart, and that would have been an evening: catch the early Jerry set at a BCT Benefit, walk over to Keystone Berkeley by way of  Arinell's Pizza on Shattuck, and then drop into the Keystone Berkeley for watery beer and "Tangled Up In Blue" until the bar shut down. But that, too, was not to be, as for whatever reason Garcia eschewed two gigs in one night ever again, as far as I know.

If you listen to the April 25, 1981 tape on the Archive, though, it sounds pretty alive. Garcia is on the edge of a new thing, playing acoustic rock with John Kahn and a couple of members of the Dead, and finding out that doing a favor for a friend can still be fun if you keep it simple. The inexorable gravitational pull of Garcia meant that having fun at benefits rapidly became institutionalized as well, but for a night, before it got assimilated, Garcia was reminded of why he might have got into it in the first place.

update: fellow scholar @GratefulSeconds sends along the ad for the show

The flyer for Berkeley Community Theater on April 25, 1981. A benefit on behalf of Wavy Gravy's chosen charity, the first acoustic Garcia benefit, and--one last time--Owsley on the board mixing the sound (thanks @gratefulseconds)

Jerry Garcia Band Opening Acts, Greek Theater, UC Berkeley: 1987-1990

Jerry Garcia and Bonnie Raitt onstage at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, on August 30, 1987 (photo from The Jerry Site)

From 1971 to early 1987, the Jerry Garcia's principal performing venue was at a club in Freddie Herrera's Keystone family. Jerry Garcia performed over 400 times at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, the Keystone Berkeley, Keystone Palo Alto and The Stone in San Francisco. Although Bill Graham Presents was the Grateful Dead's only promoter in the Bay Area, the Jerry Garcia Band had a long-standing relationship with the Keystone clubs, and Garcia was loyal above all else. However, by 1987, the Keystone clubs were closing and the Jerry Garcia Band had become bigger than ever. From mid-1987 onwards, Bill Graham Presents became the promoter for Jerry Garcia Band shows in the Bay Area.

Most Jerry Garcia Band shows for BGP were at The Warfield, where the casual environment and open bar could make the refurbished theater seem like a larger, cleaner version of the Keystones. However, Graham had the promotional heft to present the Garcia Band in regular concert settings as well. From 1987 through 1990, BGP presented the Jerry Garcia Band in a number of outdoor summer concerts in the Bay Area and Northern California. While the shows were complete sellouts, as far as I know, compared to the high profile events of Grateful Dead concert runs in the same venues, the Garcia Band summer shows seemed like a relaxed reminder of how the Grateful Dead used to be--just fun in the sun and no one onstage or off looking at the clock.

In the 1980s, the best Grateful Dead shows to see were the runs of shows at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater and Frost Amphitheater at Stanford. Since I lived in the East Bay then, that was particularly true for me. The Grateful Dead outgrew both venues, and the respective Universities became increasingly unhappy with the giant crowds that congregated outside the venues. However, when the Jerry Garcia Band played the Greek Theater, it was less of a destination and more of an afternoon, and way more fun for tired old me. One unique aspect of the Greek Theater shows featuring the Jerry Garcia Band from 1987 through 1990 was that they all featured opening acts, all approved if not hand-picked by Garcia himself.

East Coast shows in the late 1970s and early 1980s had featured opening acts. However, other than the Spring 1978 tour with Robert Hunter and Comfort on board, the openers were mostly acoustic solo acts. While some of those acts were good--I believe Peter Rowan and Rick Danko opened on occasion--they were just there to keep early arrivers entertained and sell some extra popcorn. The Greek Theater acts were different. These were performers you actually wanted to see, and Jerry wanted to see them also. We didn't imagine this--on three occasions, the opening performer actually came onstage to play with the Jerry Garcia Band, itself an all but unprecedented event before or since.

This post will consider the history and context of the opening acts at the Greek Theater shows from 1987 through 1990. While Garcia played some similar shows during this period, at Eel River and Squaw Valley, they did not include opening acts, so I have left them aside from this discussion. As a coda, I comment on the curious Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band show at Frost Amphitheater in 1988.

August 30, 1987: Greek Theater, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Bonnie Raitt
The Keystone Berkeley had closed in 1984, and the Keystone Palo Alto in 1986. The Stone in San Francisco would remain open for a few more years under Herrera ownership, but Garcia had simply outgrown the venue, and his last show there was May 31, 1987. The migration by Garcia to the BGP empire can now be seen as significant, but at the time it just seemed practical. On Halloween 1986, the Jerry Garcia Band and Kingfish with Bob Weir had played the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, the first JGB concert in Keystone territory (San Francisco, Alameda County or Palo Alto) in a while. Now, of course, we can see it as the shape of things to come.

The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band had played a benefit at the Fillmore on March 18, 1987. According to legend, this led to the conversation between Graham and Garcia where Jerry told Bill "take us to Broadway", and The Jerry Garcia Band ended up playing two weeks at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in October 1987. The Garcia Band debuted at The Warfield in November of that year, and from then on all Bay Area Garcia shows were BGP events. In August of 1987, the Jerry Garcia Band headlined the Greek Theater at UC Berkeley. Now, we can see it as part of a pattern of Bill Graham taking over the promotion of Garcia Band California shows. At the time, however, it just seemed like a welcome and cool event, and it certainly was that.

The Grateful Dead had been playing a three day weekend run at the Greek Theater since 1981, and the shows were one of the highlights of the Grateful Dead year. The Greek Theater and Frost Amphitheater are the two best venues in the Bay Area of any appreciable size, and by the late 1980s people would come from all over the country and the world for the Greek shows. Tickets were impossible, and the crowds outside the Greek were so large, that they would broadcast the shows on the local radio (KPFA-fm) in order to discourage people from coming to the venue. The Dead had played June 19-21, 1987 to the usual rapturous reception, but by that time I had given up on the whole ruckus and passed on going. Like many people, when I found out that there would be a single Garcia Band show, without all the out-of-towners, it seemed like an early Christmas gift.

Intriguingly, the 1987 Greek Theater show was going to be opened by Bonnie Raitt. I had many of her albums and had always wanted to see her, and here she was opening a show I was going to see anyway. It's interesting to consider the implications of Bonnie Raitt sharing the bill with Jerry Garcia. In Summer 1987, the 7500-capacity Greek Theater was a big step up for Garcia in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia had played so regularly, that there was no excitement associated with a JGB concert. I don't think that Bonnie Raitt's presence was necessarily selling more tickets to a Garcia show, per se, but her presence made a lot of people think "I should go to this Garcia show, even if I just saw the Dead or Jerry earlier this year." It worked, as the show was sold out as far as I know, and we were blessed with beautiful Sunday afternoon weather as well.

By 1987, Bonnie Raitt was in a down cycle in her career. She had been dropped by Warner Brothers Records a few years earlier, for whom she had been recording since 1971. Bonnie had sold some albums, had a following and got played on FM radio, but she hadn't crossed over into the promised land like Stevie Nicks, so Warners had simply dropped her. Without label support, Bonnie was making her money by touring, but she was only traveling with her bass player Johnnie Schell instead of with an entire band. Although one rarely associates Bonnie Raitt with the Grateful Dead, here she was in a comparable economic position to where the Dead had been on many occasions, with just touring revenues keeping them going.

Whatever her professional travails, Bonnie was absolutely terrific onstage at the Greek. Befitting her status, she played a full set of over an hour. Although she was just playing with a bass player (Schell), Bonnie's singing and smoking electric slide guitar filled up the pseudo-classical bowl very well. The crowd was extremely enthusiastic as Bonnie played many of her best known songs and a variety of other tunes. Of course, she was an experienced performer. At one point, Bonnie pointed at her yellow and purple clothes, striking in counterpoint to her truly spectacular red hair, and engagingly asked "hey, do you like my outfit?" The crowd roared its approval, and she drily commented "I heard you guys liked looking at different colors." We all ate it up.

The Jerry Garcia Band eventually came on and played a relaxed but excellent first set. After the requisite break, Jerry and the band returned with Bonnie, still resplendent in yellow and purple. There was a fair amount of knowledge circulating about the Garcia Band by this time, and the fact was that guests with the JGB were quite rare. The few guest appearances with the JGB that were known generally involved well-connected compadres like Bob Weir or Lee Oskar. The JGB wasn't designed as a jamming vehicle like the Garcia/Saunders band. Yet here was Garcia's opening act, not socially connected to Garcia at all, plugging in onstage. The Greek Theater show had now gone from a fun show to an actual event.

Jerry and Bonnie opened with a powerful version of Jimmy McCracklin's "Think" ("What would we do later on/Just in case we both were wrong"). It was a cool, obscure song, relatively, perfect for Bonnie but absolutely hip. Bonnie sang along on the choruses and played some nice slide counterpoint to Jerry's lead. This wasn't token. Even if they hadn't rehearsed--I'd be stunned if they actually had--they had at least discussed what to play and come up with something cool. Bonnie and Jerry followed with a version of Bob Dylan's "Knocking On Heaven's Door," certainly a classic, but not a song whose arrangement I liked, since even I found the tempo just too slow. Still, it was a good choice for Bonnie and Jerry to sing and trade licks, and both of them were clearly enjoying themselves. Bonnie left the stage after that, but it really made the concert special, setting it apart from all those nights at the Keystone Berkeley.

July 10, 1988: Greek Theater, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Bob Weir/Brent Mydland
The Jerry Garcia Band returned to the Greek Theatre the next year. This year the opening acts would be solo performances by Bob Weir and Brent Mydland. This wasn't totally unprecedented, as Bob and Brent had played solo sets prior to a Garcia and Kahn set at a benefit in Marin earlier in the year (April 26 '88). I was aware that Bob Weir had at in with the Garcia Band a number of times--probably, in retrospect, more than any other musician--so it seemed likely that he would do so at the Greek. To me, it was more interesting to see whether Brent would join the JGB on keyboards for any songs.

On a personal level, I was happy to be seeing Bob and Brent solo. The truth was, it was unlikely I would ever make the effort to see either of them perform solo, even in a smaller place. Since I was looking forward to seeing the Garcia Band at the Greek anyway, however, it was a chance to check out the other two on their own. In retrospect, Brent's performance was the most interesting, since solo performances by him were so rare. He performed 8 songs on the electric piano. Per my notes, they were

Far From Me
I Will Take You Home
Maybe You Know
Musician
Gentlemen, Start Your Engines
(song unknown to me)
Devil With The Blue Dress>
 Good Golly Miss Molly

Brent was talented, and the songs were fine ("Musician" was from the Silver album). However, what struck me was how, despite his skills, Brent just wasn't a solo performer. Brent was self-effacing on stage, and he needed a band or at least a partner. I enjoyed his set, but he was no Bruce Hornsby.

After Brent's half-hour set ended, Bob Weir walked on stage with his acoustic guitar. I can't recall if Brent had left the stage, or if Weir simply walked on. In any case, Brent sang "Hey Jude," accompanied by Weir. It was a nice coda to Brent's set. Afterwards, Brent walked off to restrained but sincere applause. Weir continued his set, and played eight more songs. Weir had distinctly more stage presence than Brent, something that was very noticeable for a solo performer in the fairly large Greek, At the end of Weir's set, Brent returned to harmonize on The Beatles "Blackbird." All told, Weir and Brent's set had taken up about an hour.

The Jerry Garcia Band came on later and played two fine, relaxed sets, another fine memory of a great show that I saw at the Greek Theater. Much to my surprise, however, Weir never came onstage to join Garcia, much less Brent. For all I know, Weir and Brent were home watching television by the time Garcia's set ended.

Jimmy Cliff singing 'The Harder They Come"  onstage with the Jerry Garcia Band at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on August 26, 1989 (photo from The Jerry Site)

August 26, 1989: Greek Theater, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Jimmy Cliff And The Oneness Band
Come the next year at the Greek, the open question for me was which year had been the anomaly. Garcia had invited Bonnie Raitt on stage, but Bob Weir hadn't made an appearance the next year. What would happen with Jimmy Cliff opening for him?

Jimmy Cliff And The Oneness Band played a pretty good and enthusiastically well received, opening set. The tip-off for me, however, and anyone else who was paying attention, was that amidst all the numerous hits that Cliff performed, he didn't play "The Harder They Come." He did a bunch of others: "You Can Get It If You Really Want," "Rivers Of Babylon," "Many Rivers To Cross," "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" and "Johnny Too Bad" were the ones I recognized in my notes. But when Cliff didn't do his best known song, we knew what was coming.

Indeed, after five songs in the first set, Cliff came out to huge applause. The Garcia Band launched into "Harder They Come" and Cliff stepped up and sang the hell out of it. Given how often Garcia had performed that song, I was very conscious, as many others must have been, of what an historic moment this was going to be. My general understanding was that Cliff and Garcia had met out on the road various times, but had never had a chance to perform together.

However, historic as Jimmy Cliff singing "The Harder They Come" with the Jerry Garcia Band may have been, I'm pretty sure Garcia and Cliff didn't rehearse it. Cliff flowed easily with the Garcia Band, as the band swirled around his vocals. Garcia started to build his solo, ably supported by Melvin Seals, John Kahn and David Kemper. As they got to the first pass through the chorus, Garcia was starting to find his groove, and I for one was ready for Jerry to climb the mountain and play a great solo in honor of the time that Jimmy Cliff sang his own song with him.

Unfortunately, no one seems to have mentioned to Jimmy Cliff that Garcia was going to solo through the chorus. So when the chorus came around, pro that he is, Cliff stepped up to the mike and did the "oh yeah, alright" part that sets up the next chorus. I swear I saw a frustrated flinch of Jerry's shoulders, but maybe I was projecting. Still, there was no question that Garcia was planning to solo through two choruses, and Cliff was either never told or missed a signal. Either way, it turned what could have been a truly classic moment into a merely historic one. Oh well--I was still glad I saw it. After the song, Cliff left the stage and Garcia made a rare comment: "I've always wanted to do that," a sign that it meant a lot to him as well.

August 5, 1990: Greek Theater, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Bela Fleck and The Flecktones
The Grateful Dead's last performances at the Greek Theater had been in 1989. The band had simply become too large for the 7500-capacity venue. The parking situation was impossible on the best day there, and when the Grateful Dead played it was well beyond that. However, BGP managed to have one more Garcia show at the Greek, before he too sized out of the place.

When 1990's show rolled around, I just assumed that the opening act was picked for or by Jerry in order to provide an interesting guest star. Bela Fleck was a leading modern banjo player, comparable in some ways to David Grisman as a mandolinist. Fleck could play banjo in all the traditional styles, and he had been in the Grisman Quintet as well. He specialized in putting the banjo in new and imaginative settings. Fleck was one of those players that I had heard about, but had hardly heard.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones were a four-piece band. Besides Fleck on banjo, the band featured Howard Levy on electric piano and harmonica, Victor Wooten on bass and "Futureman" (so he was called) on percussion. Futureman had a body suit with percussion synthesizers somehow embedded in it. He played hand drums on himself, literally, and it sounded alternately like traps and various other percussion instruments. All of the musicians seemed to be the type of well-trained pros who could play in any key or time signature.

Unfortunately, while the Flecktones were conceived as a unique amalgamation of influences, they were boring. There was nothing wrong with the all-instrumental music they were playing, which sounded like jazz played on very non-standard instruments, but they just weren't interesting. They sounded like one of those music student bands that was all cleverness and nothing listenable. Every member of the group, particularly Fleck, could really play, but I found myself staring out at the bay rather than listening. Fleck's weakness wasn't his banjo playing; he was great, playing in a unique style that separated him from almost any banjo player who had preceded him. His weakness was as a bandleader. The group didn't have good tunes, jazz or not, and they couldn't keep my interest. They were well received, more or less, but it seemed more pleasant than enthusiastic.

Fleck's guest turn with the Garcia Band was really revealing. It is often forgotten that Garcia was a great bandleader. Even if he rarely articulated his musical vision, even to his own band members, Garcia had a clear concept of what he was trying to accomplish on stage. Once Garcia was the bandleader, then Fleck's talents were in play. Garcia invited Fleck out for "The Harder They Come," which struck me as possibly the worst choice for an amplified banjo solo. Was I wrong--I guess that's why it was Jerry's band.

Faced with the strange challenge of playing banjo on an uptempo reggae song, Fleck had to use all his skills, and he had a lot of them. While Melvin Seals organ swirled along and Jerry comped the rhythm, Fleck emphasized the rhythmic power of the banjo, playing a weird off-beat counterpoint to the usual rolling rhythm that Kemper and Kahn were laying down. I'd say it was the best electric banjo solo on an uptempo reggae song ever, but it was also probably the only one. In any case, it was great. When Jerry was leading the band, Bela was really special, which told me a lot about both of them. There was a lot more to the Jerry Garcia Band than the by now introspective Garcia usually acknowledged. The late 80s Greek Theatre shows were a rare insight into how Garcia saw his own music, and what interested him about performing.

Appendix: Frost Amphitheater
July 9, 1988: Frost Amphitheater, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA: Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band/Hot Tuna
Looking backwards, with the benefit of hindsight, since Bill Graham Presents was booking a Garcia Band show at the Greek Theater each Summer, it would have seemed logical to have a Frost Amphitheater show paired with it, to make a weekend out of it. However, this only happened once, in 1988. The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band played Frost Amphitheater on a Saturday afternoon (July 9), and the JGB proper played the Greek Theater on Sunday afternoon (July 10). Since "Acoustic Hot Tuna" opened the Frost show, it fits the context of this post. The Frost show was the only other outdoor Summer BGP Garcia Band show that had an outside opening act, so it's worthy of note.

Everybody forgets about the 1988 JGAB Frost show. I certainly forgot about it. At the time, I would only have been able to manage one show in a weekend, so I chose the electric show nearer my house. I had seen the JGAB the year before, and while I enjoyed them, I didn't have a big urgency to see them so soon. Little did we know that it was the last Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band show. The JGAB had stopped performing at the end of 1987, with shows in San Francisco (The Warfield) and Los Angeles (The Wiltern). However, they played one last show at Frost, which has largely been ignored (the Jerry Site lists the show, but doesn't mention that it was the last JGAB show). The JGAB played as the original quartet (Garcia/Nelson/Rothman/Kahn), just as they had begun at the Fillmore 16 months earlier. Kemper was presumably not in town yet, and Kenny Kosek would not have been flown in for a one-off.

Much as I and everybody would have liked to see Garcia play with Jack and Jorma in an acoustic setting, it didn't happen. In fact, I'm fairly certain it never happened, ever. Garcia, Casady and Jorma had played together many times up through about 1970, but always in an electric context, as far as I know. Thus, we'll never know whose arrangement of "I Know You Rider" they would have done. Garcia had shared a booking with Jack and Jorma many times, and as recently as April 26, 1988 in Marin, but they never sat in together. I honestly think the reason for the absence of a sit-in was the lack of novelty. By 1988, Garcia only seemed interested in playing with people with whom he had never had the opportunity, but he had jammed with Hot Tuna many times back in the day, so he probably felt no real imperative. More's the pity.

As to the odd booking of the JGAB at Frost, eight months after the band was seemingly put to bed, I think that had to do with Stanford University. Both Frost and the Greek were very desirable outdoor venues, and very hard to use due to their University affiliations. I know for a fact, for example, that UC Berkeley only allowed rock concerts at the Greek on weekends that were not finals week, Summer School included. Parking was crowded up there on a normal day, and rock concerts, particularly Grateful Dead concerts, magnified the difficulty enormously. However, despite the restrictions, UC Berkeley was ultimately a state institution, and within certain parameters had a formal obligation to allow its facilities to be used, so BGP could wedge the shows into the venue. The Dead only left the venue when not only had complaints magnified 100-fold, but the return for playing Shoreline Amphitheater was infinitely higher, so it was easier to just depart for Mountain View.

Stanford University was a private school, however, and a wealthy one at that. Although Stanford liked to claim that concerts at Frost, particularly Dead concerts, were "a hassle," that is an exaggeration. Nobody lived anywhere near Frost Amphitheater, and there was plenty of parking, in complete contrast to the Greek. Stanford had consistently resisted concerts at Frost Amphitheater since the advent of rock music, and only allowed them grudgingly. By 1988, Stanford was very unhappy with the annual Grateful Dead weekend. I have a suspicion that Graham managed to  persuade Stanford to agree to a Garcia concert in 1988, but Stanford got cold feet. I think an acoustic Garcia show was a compromise, but all parties seemed to have backed away from it by the next year. In any case, the Dead's run of Frost shows ended in 1989 as well, so there was no point in a futile struggle. Stanford has generally minimized rock concerts at Frost ever since.

February 2, 1974, Keystone Berkeley: New Riders of The Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia (Home, Home On The Road)

An ad for the 1974 NRPS album Brujo celebrates the band's popularity in NYC

I am not someone who keeps track of tapes, since there are so many people who do that so well. Recently, however, a tape surfaced on Sugarmegs that shed new light on a very obscure Jerry Garcia appearance. The Jerry Moore recording is worth hearing in its own right, but it also caused me to reflect on the little remarked fact that Jerry Garcia produced the 5th New Riders of The Purple Sage album on Columbia Records, the live album Home, Home On The Road. I can't recall any interviews or serious discussion about that fact at the time or since. Nonetheless, I think it marked the end of an era for Garcia and the Riders, and it was fitting that it took place at the Keystone Berkeley, the venue Garcia played most in his career. This post will consider both Garcia's guest appearance on six string electric guitar with the New Riders during most of their second set at the Keystone Berkeley on February 2, 1974, and attempt to frame it in the context of interlocking careers of Jerry Garcia and the New Riders.

The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, February 2, 1974
Columbia Records had signed The New Riders of The Purple Sage in 1970 on the strength of John Dawson's songs and their association with Jerry Garcia. Although Columbia label chief Clive Davis was unable to snag Garcia for his label until several years later (with Arista), his skills as a "record man" were legendary, and the New Riders were proof of that. I don't think that the Riders got a huge advance, but in the early 70s they sold a heck of a lot of albums. They weren't necessarily candidates for gold records, but a record company could make money on an album long before the artists did, so Columbia made plenty on the New Riders.

By the release of the New Riders fourth album, The Adventures Of Panama Red, in mid-1973, the New Riders seemed extraordinarily well placed in the record industry. The Grateful Dead, with whom the Riders would always be associated with, were more popular than ever. More importantly, "Country Rock" and "Outlaw Country" (essentially Country Music for longhairs) were growing in popularity. Artists like The Eagles, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson seemed to point towards a convergence of music styles, and the New Riders seemed hip enough for the outlaws while melodic enough for the radio. They also played great live shows, with lengthy and varied sets in the style of the Dead. With three singers and two writers, and a great soloist in pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage, the Riders seemed primed to break out of the middle levels and hit the big time.

The only fly in this ointment was the unexpected departure of bassist/vocalist David Torbert at the end of 1973. John Dawson had written a huge batch of songs prior to the first album, and they had made up the bulk of his contributions for the first three albums (NRPS, Powerglide and Gypsy Cowboy), so Dawson was initially the de facto lead singer. However, by mid-73 Dawson was contributing fewer songs to the band. Although Torbert seems to have been initially recruited as just a  bassist and harmony singer, it turned out that he was an excellent singer and writer, and a nice contrast to Dawson. When Dawson and Torbert's contrasting styles were mixed with the sound of David Nelson singing old and new honky tonk music, the New Riders seemed to cover the whole spectrum of country rock. Torbert's handsome, laconic surfer look was an appealing counterpoint to Dawson's Cosmic Cowboy persona.

Thus when Torbert left the rising New Riders at the end of 1973 for unstated "opportunities," it cast a quizzical note on what had so far been a steady rise on the band's fortunes. As a replacement, the New Riders signed up veteran bassist and singer Skip Battin. Battin (1934-2003) a few years older than the rest of the band, who had once had some AM hits with the duo "Skip And Flip" (along with Gary Paxton), when other members of the New Riders were just finishing High School. After various other endeavors, Battin had ended up becoming the bassist for The Byrds from 1969 through 1972.

Although the New Riders were headlining mid-size halls throughout the country, and had just headlined Winterland the prior December (Torbert's last show had been at Winterland on December 15, 1973), the band seemed to want to break in Battin with some safe club gigs. According to the NRPS site, Battin's first show would have been January 29, 1974 at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, a famous Marin musician's hangout. This show was followed by shows on February 1 and 2 at the Keystone Berkeley. The Friday and Saturday night shows were probably lightly advertised but sound packed to the gills.

The Second Set
Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA February 2, 1974
A pretty good audience tape endures of the New Riders' Saturday night show at the Keystone, thanks to the great taper Jerry Moore. According to the tape notes, Garcia joins the band for the entire second set, but I don't hear him until mid-set. I also have to add that the audience is pretty prominent between songs, and I don't hear the usual shouts of "Jerry!" and "Casey Jones" for the first few numbers. I also wonder how he got on the stage without being noticed, since the Keystone had no 'backstage' as such, and performers simply had to walk through the audience. It's a striking image in my mind to think of dancing, stoned New Riders fans grooving between the tables on the Keystone floor, while Garcia casually maneuvers between them on his way to the stage.

Garcia may join the New Riders for the instrumental "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," a Joe Zawinul tune made famous by Cannonball Adderley, the fifth song of the set. He's definitely on board for "Truck Drivin' Man," "Glendale Train," "You Should Have Seen Me Running," "Crooked Judge," "LA Lady" and "Take A Letter Maria."  Jerry lays back on some tunes, but he lets it fly on "Truck Driving Man," "Crooked Judge" and "Take A Letter Maria." It's particularly interesting to hear Garcia go at it on "Crooked Judge," the only known instance where he performed this Hunter song (amusingly, Nelson introduces the song by saying "the old crank himself wrote this," probably as much for Garcia's benefit as anyone else).

While some of the numbers may seem surprising for Garcia to have joined in on, I only recently realized that Garcia would have just finished mixing Home, Home On The Road, and would have been completely familiar with the band's entire repertoire. While I find it unlikely that Garcia actually rehearsed with the Riders, if he knew the material he would have no problem fitting in, and that's plain when you hear him rip through "Crooked Judge" with Nelson and Cage at full speed. I have always insisted that the sound of the pedal steel guitar, rather than the notes themselves, was one of the principal attractions to Garcia. When you hear him rock through New Riders material on (no doubt) his Doug Irwin Tiger, there's no doubt that Garcia could have played six string on all the New Riders songs and the music would have been just as distinctive.

The cover of the 1974 NRPS album Home, Home On The Road

Home, Home On The Road
The New Riders were slowly climbing in popularity, but had not yet consolidated their following outside of the East and West Coasts. In the 1970s, one standard record company practice for a band with a couple of good albums under their belt was to record a sort of "Greatest Hits Live" album, with a few covers or unreleased songs thrown in for the hard core fans. The most famous example of this strategy was A&M's release of Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive, recorded in 1975, but the practice had been around for years. In fact, Live/Dead would have been a signpost for many record executives of how a band could make an exciting live album to allow FM radio to "catch up" to a group.

Whether Columbia and the New Riders had made the decision to release Home, Home On The Road before Torbert gave notice isn't clear, but certainly once he left a live album allowed the band to tread water while they worked in their new bass player. When the album came out, Jerry Garcia's presence as the producer didn't seem too surprising, but following the Spring 74 release of the album the New Riders started to spin out of each other's orbit somewhat, so in that respect Garcia's production work and final live guest appearance with the band on February 2 were a sort of swan song to Garcia's close relationship to the band, even if that wasn't entirely seen at the time.

Producing a live album is less of a time commitment than producing a studio album. The producer's job would generally be to listen to all the material, select the best tracks and mix them down. In some cases, producers would also overdub additional instruments or vocals onto "live" albums--the Grateful Dead did that a few times--but I doubt that Garcia did that with the New Riders. As far as I know, Columbia professionally recorded two New Riders shows at the Academy of Music in New York City on November 23 and 24, 1973, and those were the shows that Garcia would have chosen the album from.

Producers were usually paid fairly well for their work, and my guess is that the Riders wanted a friendly comrade, but only Garcia had the clout to actually get a paycheck from Clive Davis. Put another way, Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor might have done the job just as well, but a New York label would not have trusted them as much as a big rock star. Keep in mind that in late 1973, the Grateful Dead were complete free agents, having turned down Warners and Columbia to start their own record company. It was a sign of Clive Davis long running courtship of Garcia that Garcia was hired to produce the Riders live album. As a footnote, remember also that producers usually get royalties for their work, so potentially at least if the album had been a big hit, Garcia would have had a continual stream of income.

New Riders Management
Home, Home On The Road represented a high water mark for the New Riders. A live album after a hugely successful studio album, particularly if produced by a famous friend, would have been intended as a place holder for the band's next big splash. However, the following album, Brujo, was kind of a letdown, and the last Columbia album, 1975's Oh, What A Mighty Time, seems like contractual filler, as the band was leaving Columbia after seven albums in five years. The New Riders signed a no doubt lucrative contract with MCA Records. Frank Zappa, it should be noted, always referred to MCA as "The Music Cemetery Of America" and the label's attempt to make the New Riders more Nashville-like was never successful. The band had a variety of ups and downs for several years, but they finally ground to a halt around 1982.

One factor that seems to have gotten lost in the New Riders history was that somewhere around 1973 or '74 the group changed management. The credits for Panama Red, recorded and released in mid-1973, list Jon McIntire (Uncle John himself) as the band's manager. By 1975, however, I know that the Riders were managed by one Joe Kerr, who also managed Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. I'm not sure when the transition occurred, but I think it was late '73/early '74. The Garcia produced live album appears to also be the last Riders album that was part of the Grateful Dead managed universe, whether or not they had fully made the switch to Joe Kerr.

Kerr was a college friend of George "Cody" Frayne, and Frayne regretfully says now that Kerr stole most of the Cody band's money. I have to think that the New Riders did not escape unscathed. Although I don't know why Torbert left when he did--I have never found his minimal explanations convincing--when someone quits a rising band, money is never far from the hierarchy of motives. Either Torbert was not happy with the NRPS partnership, whatever it was, or he had some doubts about the recent or impending participation of Joe Kerr,  Torbert's departure presaged the long decline of the band.

Fortunately, however, David Nelson and Buddy Cage, with a little help from Robert Hunter, have revived the New Riders for the 21st century, honoring the band's past while upgrading them for the present. The band began touring again in 2005, just thirty-one years after Garcia got on stage with them at the Keystone Berkeley one night in 1974, ready to jam because he knew all the songs.

Appendix
New Riders Of The Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia
Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 
February 2, 1974

Second Set (57 minutes)
01 - Hi Hello How Are You
02 - Dim Lights, Thick Smoke
03 - Parson Brown
04 - Linda
05 - Mercy Mercy Mercy
06 - Truck Drivin' Man*
07 - Glendale Train *
08 - You Should've Seen My Runnin' *
09 - Crooked Judge *
10 - L.A. Lady *
11 - Take A Letter Maria *
12 - On The Amazon

The New Riders of The Purple Sage
Buddy Cage-pedal steel guitar
David Nelson-lead guitar-vocals
John Dawson-guitar, vocals
Skip Battin-bass, vocals'
Spencer Dryden-drums
plus:
  *Jerry Garcia-lead guitar (tracks 6-11)
  unknown-piano (track 12)

notes: it's not impossible that Garcia plays on "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" and "On The Amazon." The last number, a Skip Battin song, is rather hurried and Dawson quickly announces that they've run out of time and have to shut down, so it may not have been planned as the last song.

2119 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA: The Keystone Berkeley

(a photo of 2119 University Avenue [at Shattuck] in Berkeley as it looked in 2009. Only the arches hint at the structure of the Keystone Berkeley club that was located at the site 15 years earlier. If you can still see the outlines of the Jimi Hendrix mural around the entrance, you may need medical attention)

Recent discussions on the vagueness of Jerry Garcia Band history in the late 70s and early 80s has reminded me of the unique relationship between Jerry Garcia and the Keystone Berkeley. I am only able to discern parts of the story, but the facts as they can be seen are quite remarkable. People who were not attending Garcia Band shows in the 70s and early 80s may not realize what an unprecedented arrangement Garcia and his various aggregations seemed to have with the Keystone Berkeley. To outline some of the key points that I will illuminate in my post:

• Jerry Garcia played the Keystone Berkeley 206 times between 1972 and 1984, a number that dwarfs any other venue he played at in any configuration
• Garcia shows at the Keystone almost never sold tickets in advance--they were available day of show only, in a venue that officially held about 500 people
• Paradoxically, Garcia shows at the Keystone were almost never sold out, in my experience, anyway. You would see people buying tickets and getting in well after the show had started
• Garcia never came on stage until after 11:00 pm, usually well after 11:00 pm, and shows ran right up until 2:00 am (last call), making for very late weeknights

Planning to see a Keystone Berkeley show was often fruitless, as shows were often canceled, added or re-scheduled with regularity--one of the attractions to the club and Garcia of not having any advance tickets that would need refunding. The band also came on so late that the next day was a write-off, and it was rarely a weekend, so that often at 11:00pm on a cold Tuesday the idea of staying up til 3:00am just seemed like too much, or no one would go with you, or your car was out of gas, or whatever. Missing a JGB Keystone show wasn't a big deal, however, since the Garcia Band would usually be back the next month.

On the other hand, one Sunday night--May 24, 1981, as it happened-- my roommate and I were sitting around at 11:00pm, talking about the Dead, and I mentioned that Garcia was playing Keystone. My roommate said "are there tickets?" I said, there's always tickets, and off we went. 10 minutes later we found a good parking space near Shattuck and University, paid our money at the door, and there we were. Shortly after we arrived, the band made its way on stage and Jerry kicked it off with "Sugaree," which made for a lot better Sunday night than watching re-runs of "MASH."

Jerry Garcia had achieved rock star status by 1967, and by the mid-70s he was starting to achieve some of the material rewards that went along with it. Yet when Garcia played the Keystone Berkeley, he was just another local guy playing a dive--and trust me, it was a dive--and the crowd happened to be whatever yahoos were able to blow off work or school the next day. That's the reason that every Keystone tape has that laid-back, drifting feel where time seemed to have no meaning. If time had meaning to you, Deadhead or not, you weren't at Keystone Berkeley drinking beer at midnight on a Tuesday waiting for Jerry to come on stage.

The Keystone Berkeley was a sawdust covered dump in a sketchy area of town that sold overpriced, watered down beer to a crowd of doubtful lunatics who were never going to be employee of the month, if they even had jobs. God, I miss it.

Keystone History, Part 1: The Keystone Korner
Freddie Herrera opened a club called the Keystone Korner at 750 Vallejo Street in San Francisco. The club was just a few blocks off of the "entertainment" district on Broadway. It had previously been a rock club called DenoCarlo's, and various local bands had played there in  1968, including a regular Monday night residency for Berkeley's Creedence Clearwater Revival. Herrera took over the club in 1969 and tried to make it into a topless dancing place, but it was too far from Broadway to capture the tourists and sailors. Fortuitously, Nick Gravenites wandered in, and he was looking for a club that he could use for various ends.

As a result, starting in mid-1969, The Keystone Korner became a rock club, often featuring various expatriate Chicagoans who had relocated to San Francisco, including Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. Bloomfield and Gravenites played there almost every other weekend from September 1969 through March 1970, and the little venue was sort of like their clubhouse. The first call bass player for the Bloomfield/Gravenites band was John Kahn, which I believe to be an important part of the story.

The Matrix
The first "hippie nightclub" in San Francisco was The Matrix, at 3138 Fillmore. It was actually a beer and pizza joint that didn't allow dancing (by law), but it was a place for longhairs to hang out while local bands played whatever they felt like playing. A lot of cool 60s San Francisco bands played The Matrix, particularly on weeknights. Jerry Garcia took to jamming there regularly, and the basis of what became the Jerry Garcia Band started as a regular Monday night jam session at the Matrix in early 1970. Garcia, Howard Wales, Bill Vitt and John Kahn made up the regular crew, and after Wales ultimately left and was replaced by Merl Saunders, that "group" started to play out a little bit. Nonetheless, the Matrix was the original home base of the Garcia/Saunders group, just as Bloomfield and Gravenites anchored the Keystone Korner.

However, in Spring 1971, the Matrix closed. Garcia and Saunders would need another place to call home, and they seem to have chosen Keystone Korner. The first Garcia/Saunders Keystone Korner show was April 1, 1971, but their first extended run was in May 1971, after the Matrix had closed. Bloomfield and Gravenites had largely stopped playing Keystone Korner by this time. I have to think John Kahn's familiarity with the club may have been in a factor in encouraging Garcia and Saunders to play there regularly.

Keystone History, Part 2: The New Monk
In the 60s, there was an infamous beer joint in Berkeley popular with fraternity boys called The Monkey Inn, known as "The Monk," and located on 3109 Shattuck, between Prince and Woolsey (the site today seems to be the La Pena Cultural Center at 3105, just next to the Starry Plough at 3101). In 1968, the place moved closer to campus, to the corner of University and Shattuck Avenues. The new club at 2119 University was called The New Monk. It had local rock bands headlining on weekends, but most of the time it was just a beer and pizza place for college students.

In the middle of 1971, however, The New Monk started booking higher profile club bands. Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders played there on June 4 and 5, 1971, and then again on June 26 and June 27. At the end of August, Keystone owner Freddie Herrera officially announced that he would be buying the New Monk. It's my belief that Herrera had been booking the New Monk already for some months. Garcia played Keystone Korner 20 times in 1971, so clearly it was the preferred venue, but Herrera's takeover of The New Monk put it on Garcia's radar..


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Keystone History, Part 3-The Keystone Berkeley
Herrera ran both the Keystone Korner and The New Monk throughout 1971. In March, 1972, the New Monk changed it's name to Keystone Berkeley, to distinguish it from Keystone Korner in San Francisco. The first Keystone Berkeley show I have been able to find was March 2, 1972, with the Sons Of Champlin. The first Garcia/Saunders show at Keystone Berkeley was soon after that, on March 8, 1972.

Garcia/Saunders played Keystone Korner 19 times in 1972. However, in July of '72, Herrera sold the Keystone Korner to Todd Barkan (former pianist for Kwane and The Kwanditos), who turned it into a jazz club. Garcia and Saunders did play two dates for Barkan on July 7-8, 1972, that had been previously scheduled, but from the Summer of '72 onwards the Keystone Berkeley was Garcia's go-to choice for casual gigs with all his side bands, and he played a dozen shows there in 1972. Other Dead spinoff groups played there as well, particularly during the 1974-76 period.

(The March 1974 Keystone Berkeley calendar)
A Note On The Name
The New Monk was re-named the Keystone Berkeley in March 1972 to distinguish it from the Keystone Korner. At some point in the mid-70s, the name was changed to The Keystone, since Keystone Korner had no connection to it, and in any case didn't book rock acts. However, everyone called it "the Keystone, in Berkeley," or just "Keystone Berkeley" but strictly speaking it was "The Keystone."

Of course, in early 1977 Herrera and his partner Bobby Corona opened the Keystone Palo Alto (about which more below), and the official name of the Berkeley club reverted to Keystone Berkeley.

Keystone History, Part 4-Keystone Palo Alto and The Stone
The Keystone Berkeley was one of the leading rock clubs in the Bay Area. However, the sort of band who could headline the Keystone on a weekend was about at the level to be 2nd or 3rd on the bill at a Bill Graham show. There was intense competition between Bill Graham Presents and Keystone for acts, and much accusations were thrown about, usually directed at BGP for threatening not to book acts, etc. Generally speaking, however, acts that played Keystone did not play Graham shows and vice-versa, or not in the same year, anyway. The Jerry Garcia Band was a complicated exception, but in the mid-70s at least Garcia did not often play BGP shows.

Good bands played Keystone Berkeley, but they were generally on their way up or their way down. When they were hot, they played for Graham. A lot of Bay Area heavyweights played Keystone between record deals or else just as they were getting their new band together, looking to graduate. Garcia's part-time status was unique, essentially, to Garcia, but it must have frustrated Bill Graham no end.

In early 1977, Herrera and his partner Bobby Corona took over a club called Sophie's, at 260 S. California Avenue in Palo Alto, and re-named it the Keystone Palo Alto. The Jerry Garcia Band had already played Sophie's 7 times (in various incarnations) in 1975-76. Keystone Palo Alto allowed Corona and Herrera to book acts for two nights rather than one, and made them a better competitor to Graham. In 1980, Corona and Herrera opened The Stone in San Francisco, at 412 Broadway, and this allowed them to book touring bands for three nights, making them direct competitors to the Bill Graham hegemony (I have written about the rock history of 412 Broadway elsewhere).

Once Keystone Palo Alto and The Stone opened, Garcia could spread his shows out amongst the three clubs. Every few months, he typically would play one night at each club over three consecutive nights, but this would vary based on which acts were playing the three clubs. If there was a popular act playing one of the other clubs on a certain night, Garcia would sometime play an extra night at a different club (e.g., if Tower of Power was booked at Keystone Palo Alto on a weeknight, Garcia would play two nights at The Stone instead of one in Palo Alto). As far as I know, both Keystone Palo Alto and The Stone stuck to the pattern of only offering Garcia tickets on the day of the show and starting at 11:00 pm or later (I have seen a Keystone Palo Alto ticket stub from 1985, so Palo Alto--typically-may have had it's own arrangement).

An Economic Assessment of Jerry Garcia at the Keystone Berkeley
The Keystone Berkeley was an economic entity designed to sell beer. Technically, it was a restaurant, which by California law meant that it had to serve food but could then also serve beer and wine. I guess a few people bought fries or Chardonnay, but basically the Keystone sold beer on draft, by the gallon. The club was open six or seven nights a week, even when only local bands played for a dollar cover charge. There were usually two acts, and they often played two sets each, as far as I know, in order to extend the evening. Bigger acts had tickets available in advance, but the Keystone was more oriented towards getting people to wander in and hang out and listen to music, drinking beer the whole time. Once, for example (On Oct 6 '83) I saw the latterday New Riders for free at Keystone Berkeley, with the provision that you had to buy two beers (which you paid for at the door in return for drink tickets). That was a pretty clear assessment of where the money was.

The odd set up of Garcia shows at Keystone Berkeley makes perfect sense when considered from the point of view of beer sales. People would line up at Keystone Berkeley for the day's show starting in the morning. Why, I don't know, since everyone usually got in, but Berkeley was tolerant and a lot of people had come from far away. In any case, the doors would open at 7:00 pm or something, and the drinking would begin immediately. I think there were a few tables in the tiny balcony behind the soundboard, and some benches around the sides of the main floor, so perhaps these were desirable, but the point was that Jerry attracted a crowd that came early and liked to party.

Since everyone was drinking beer and not the harder stuff, and there was some food, the crowd at the Keystone was always pretty drunk, but not totally gone. Of course, for a Garcia show some other substances dominated, but in any case with no Whisky or Tequila in play, the whole thing was manageable in a rowdy sort of way. There was always an opening act, usually a solo guitarist type, keeping the patrons entertained while they drank. In the later years, they were usually local blues or folk guitarists (like Steve Hayton [sp] or Mike Henderson), but they never seemed worth getting there early for. Of course, having made this determination, the next time I showed up at 10:45 for a JGB show I discovered that I had just missed a set or more by Ramblin Jack Elliott (Jan 24 '83), so some interesting players may have opened on occasion. Nevertheless, the point was to get people there early and keep them drinking beer, and the laid back nature of the Garcia audience was custom made for the Keystone's business model.

I only became conscious of the Keystone's peculiar business arrangement with Garcia when some friends in my dorm with fake ID's attended the January '76 JGB show where Keith and Donna debuted (Jan 26 '76; they had no idea who would replace Hopkins until Keith walked on stage). However, I have no reason to believe that things were much, or any, different from 1972 to 1975. For example, have you ever noticed that no one has any ticket stubs for Garcia shows at the Keystone Berkeley? That's because there weren't any. You couldn't buy tickets in advance, and they just stamped your hand when you went in. This also meant that the entire evening was pretty much an all-cash transaction at the door and at the bar, always attractive to businesses who don't like to leave complicated paper trails.

Jerry Garcia shows at the Keystone Berkeley were advertised in the paper and the club's monthly flyer, but they were often changed. Garcia would be booked for two or three days in a row, and one would be added or dropped at the last minute. Since no tickets were sold in advance, no money had to be refunded. I have to think this was one of the key attractions to Garcia. He could book shows at Keystone Berkeley, knowing that if there were last minute complications in his schedule he could simply add or subtract dates as needed. Of course, from an historian's point of view this makes things very difficult, as there were so many changes, but the flexibility was essential to Garcia's willingness to playing the club.

Since the Keystone Berkeley was generally open every night anyway, it wasn't catastrophic if Garcia canceled or re-scheduled a date. The opening act would just play anyway, and maybe another local act would be booked, and a few beer drinkers would wander in, but that was what the Keystone would have booked anyway, so it was worth giving Garcia the opportunity to play. By the same token, if a local band was booked on a weeknight, and Garcia abruptly wanted to add a show, it seems the Keystone just kept the local band's booking and made them into the opening act.

The 1980s
By the time the 80s rolled onwards, Garcia was playing at The Stone and Keystone Palo Alto as much as Keystone Berkeley. In fact, JGB played more shows at The Stone than either of the other two, both because The Stone was nearer Marin and because it had fewer really good bookings to conflict with Garcia's dates. I also think that as the Grateful Dead became bigger, Garcia's schedule became more rigid. There were fewer dates at the Keystone Berkeley, and indeed all of the Keystones, but there were fewer last second additions and subtractions of dates either.

Changes in the rock market and the parking situation in Downtown Berkeley caused the Keystone Berkeley to close in Spring 1984. Garcia's last shows at Keystone Berkeley were March 21-22, 1984, and the club closed soon after. Between March 8, 1972 and March 22, 1984, Garcia had played an incredible 206 times at the Keystone Berkeley, in a variety of bands. I do not believe there is a single venue that the Grateful Dead played more than 50 times, and Garcia quadrupled that at Keystone Berkeley, a fact that many Dead scholars take for granted. The Garcia configurations that played Keystone Berkeley were:

• Garcia/Saunders
• Old And In The Way
• Great American String Band
• Legion Of Mary
• Jerry Garcia Band
• Reconstruction

Garcia continued to play for Bobby Corona and Freddy Herrera at Keystone Palo Alto and The Stone, but the two clubs closed as well in 1986 and 1987, respectively. Starting in 1987, the Jerry Garcia Band started to perform regularly for Bill Graham Presents. Granted, the JGB was bigger than they had ever been, but the loyal Garcia could have worked for Bill any time, but he stuck with the Corona/Herrera partnership as he had since 1971 until they went out of business. The loyalty Garcia showed to the Keystone family is remarkable in its own right, and to my mind largely unremarked upon.

"Backstage" At The Keystone Berkeley
No discussion of the unique circumstances of Garcia at the Keystone Berkeley would be complete without explaining the stage set up. The club had a conventional setup, a rectangular room with the stage at the far end, opposite from the bar. There was a little balcony for the soundboard and a few tables (members of the Dead would sometimes watch the Garcia Band from the soundboard). Backstage, such as it was, was a big room behind the bar. It can be viewed on the inside cover of the Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders Live At Keystone album. I never tried to go back there (not my style), but people have many legendary tales.

However, in retrospect, the remarkable thing about the Keystone Berkeley was that there was no backstage per se, as the stage was on the opposite end from the bar and the back room. Thus the band--including Garcia--had to walk through the audience to get to the stage.  It was actually on the East Coast where the Dead became really huge, and Garcia became larger than life. Nonetheless it was still astonishing that the Dead could headline Madison Square Garden, and a few weeks later Garcia would play this bar where he had to walk through the crowd to get to the stage.

In the 1980s, more and more people either visited the West Coast or outright moved to the Bay Area to be nearer the Dead. Seeing Garcia at the Keystone was a must-do. Typically, visitors or new arrivals would be thrilled to discover that "tickets were still available," not realizing they always were, and spend all day in line. One of my friends, a Manhattanite himself (hi Bobby), took a special pleasure in finding some newcomer near stage right (the steps to the stage were there) and getting him to look at the stage just as the lights went down. As the eager eyed Deadhead peered backstage, looking for Jerry amdist the hubbub, my friend would wait and say "hey, look behind you" and there was Jerry walking right past them (and Steve Parish and Keystone security staff, too, of course). Every time the astonished visitor would say "he couldn't do this in New York [or wherever]," and indeed he couldn't. Right up until the end, for all it's hassles, rowdiness and late hours, Jerry Garcia at Keystone Berkeley was a singular event that had no parallels in the Dead world.

Aftermath
Sometime in the late 90s, I was in Berkeley on a hot day, walking on University back towards campus. I was fading, so I ducked into a drugstore to grab a soft drink or something. As I stood in line inside the Thrifty Jr store, I had a weird moment of recognition. I looked around, and realized I was in the remodeled Keystone Berkeley. Where I was standing would have been right in front of the stage. For a moment all my memories came rushing back, about things passed, ne'er to be seen again.

I walked away in a different mood. I couldn't see the outline of the 40-foot high mural of Jimi Hendrix that had adorned the entrance in the 80s, but I knew it was there.