December 4-7, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/The Flock/Humble Pie (x-Altamont)

A Bill Graham Presents flyer with the poster for the December 4-7, 1969 concert at Fillmore West, headlined by the Grateful Dead. On the back was a list of upcoming concerts, including Jefferson Airplane on New Year's Eve at Winterland

Here's a Grateful Dead trivia question: when did Sam Cutler first speak on stage prior to a Grateful Dead concert? I'm pretty sure that it was Thursday, December 4, 1969 at Fillmore West. At the time, he was the road manager of the Rolling Stones. Cutler was in town with the Stones because they were planning a gigantic free concert in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cutler had apparently arrived the day before (December 3), and by Thursday it appeared that the concert would be held at the recently-opened Sears Point Raceway, at Highway 37 and 121 in the Sonoma hills. On the existing tape from December 4, an unknown announcer says "Sam Cutler told you what was going on." Presumably Cutler had come on stage earlier to talk to the crowd. It was ironic that it would shortly become part of his job description, but neither Cutler nor anyone else could have foretold that.

The Grateful Dead's four-night stand at the Fillmore West, from December 4 through 7, was their fourth weekend booking at Fillmore West in 1969. Even though Fillmore West was the Dead's home court, so to speak, any reflections on the weekend are usually swallowed up by contemplation of the ensuing debacle of a concert at Altamont Speedway on Saturday, December 6. Indeed, the Dead’s Saturday night performance at Fillmore West was canceled, since the Dead were at the racetrack and most of the fans were too. It was a strange footnote that as things fell apart, the helicopters returned the band to Fillmore West, but the Dead didn't play that Saturday night.

For all the monumental importance of Altamont, however, the December Fillmore West shows remain a cipher. We only hear about Saturday night, when the Dead helicoptered back to San Francisco and didn't perform. We hear nothing at all about Thursday, Friday or Sunday. Sure, we have the tapes. Yet the tapes tell us the music that was played--always welcome--with no other context. Were the shows well attended?  How many people went to Fillmore West one of those nights, and also went to Altamont? I cannot find any trace of eyewitnesses.

This post will illuminate what we can about the actual events at the Fillmore West on the weekend of December 4-7, 1969. At the very least, the limited known facts are still indicators of trends and portents in the arc of Grateful Dead concert history. This post will look at what the how the weekend at Fillmore West shows us about how Grateful Dead concerts were evolving, without addressing the hapax legomenon of the Altamont event.

The Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead had played May 2 and 3, 1969 (Friday and Saturday) at Winterland, supported by Mongo Santamaria. Mongo, Cold Blood and Elvin Bishop were at Fillmore Thursday and Sunday

The Grateful Dead/Bill Graham Presents 1969
The Grateful Dead had been headlining concerts for Bill Graham Presents since October 1966 at the Fillmore. This status had continued when Graham moved to the Fillmore West in July 1968. These December 1969 shows were the fourth weekend in 1969 at which the Dead had headlined the Fillmore West. Grateful Dead performances for Bill Graham Presents were an evolving process, as always, but since both the Dead and Bill Graham established the future of the rock concert industry, any evolution in their arrangements had implications for the profession as a whole. Up until this December weekend, Grateful Dead shows at Fillmore West had followed the same pattern as the Fillmore Auditorium shows that had preceded them. 

At Fillmore and Fillmore West, there had always been three bands advertised ("On The Poster"), and they would both play two sets. In contrast to future years, however, the bands rotated throughout the night, so the headline band played the third and sixth set of the night. This allowed audiences to come and go. Suburban teenagers could come early, and city denizens who worked at restaurants and the like could come late, and all patrons could see all three bands. Some hardcore fans could stay throughout, but that was initially uncommon. Particularly in 1966-67, people went to the Fillmore (or the Avalon) because it was "The Fillmore," to see whoever happened to be booked. In many cases, the bands didn't even have records, or if they did, no radio station was playing them. Fans were just checking out the scene. If they were lucky, they caught the Grateful Dead or Quicksilver Messenger Service (or numerous other bands)  before they were known, laying down the future of rock music.

There were times that another act would be added to the bill, usually on Friday or Saturday night. Often they were bands who had played the Fillmore West Tuesday "audition nights," and recently discovered by the Bill Graham organization. These bands were rarely advertised, neither on "The Poster" nor even in daily newspaper listings. This peculiar practice explains bands who recall opening for famous groups at Fillmore West even though they were not "On The Poster." Such bands only played one set, so the headline act would play the 4th and 7th sets of the night.

The significance of the Grateful Dead's December, 1969 Fillmore West shows was that the venue evolved to a more conventional single set, evening-ending performance to conclude the show. The taped evidence suggests rather strongly that the Dead ended each night with a single extended set, rather than playing two shorter (45 minutes>one hour) sets at different points in the evening. Though unnoticed, this evolution brought the Grateful Dead into the mainstream of rock concert performers at the time. Due to the paucity of information about Fillmore West concerts in late 1969, I don't know whether the Dead were among the last or the first of performers who moved from two separated sets to one longer one.

Now, for every other promoter in 1969, whenever the Grateful Dead headlined a show, they came onstage and ended the show. In most cases, they played a single long set, plus an encore. It may be that in a few instances, the Grateful Dead played two sets--if they did that in 1969, the reason was likely equipment related--but the band still ended the show. The only times the Grateful Dead would turn the stage over was when they had two performances in the same evening. At Bill Graham's Fillmore East, for example, almost all shows (save for a few weeknight benefits) had an early and a late show, and the headliner and the opener played both shows. When the Grateful Dead had played Fillmore East with Country Joe and The Fish (and opener Sha-Na-Na), for example, on September 26-27, 1969 (Friday and Saturday), the Dead had played two sets separated by the other acts. From the point of view of the crowd, however, the bands would play single sets for each audience.

So when the Grateful Dead played single long sets at Fillmore West in December, 1969, they were stepping away from one of the factors that made the Fillmore West a unique rock performance venue. The configuration went from a nightclub-like booking, with multiple acts repeating their performances, to a concert setting, where each performer presented a single time.

The Grateful Dead at Fillmore West, 1969
January 2-5, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Blood, Sweat & Tears/Spirit (Thursday-Sunday)
The Grateful Dead had co-headlined New Year's Eve with Quicksilver Messenger Service, with an all-night (9pm-9am) extravaganza that included It's A Beautiful Day and Santana, then both rising bands. They followed New Year's Eve with another weekend, supported by Blood, Sweat & Tears, who would go on to become one of the biggest bands of the year (their album would sell 4 million copies). Little is known about the Dead's performances this weekend.

February 19, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Golden Toad (Wednesday) "Celestial Synapse"
The Dead played a private event on February 19, 1969, but that was a Wednesday night for an invited crowd.

February 27-March 2, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Pentangle/Sir Douglas Quintet (Thursday-Sunday)
This four night stand at Fillmore West was perhaps the most seminal live weekend in Grateful Dead history. The band recorded most of what would become Live/Dead, on state-of-the-art 16-track Ampex recorders. The band would release a memorable 10-cd set of the entire weekend in 2005. Grateful Dead music really doesn't get any better than this.

And yet there was more. The opening act was the English group Pentangle, a unique English ensemble, with two (mostly) acoustic guitarists, a jazzy rhyhm section and a female singer. Jerry Garcia explicitly stated a decade later that hearing Pentangle made him consider the possibility of two amplified acoustic guitars over a rock rhythm section as a sonic possibility. It would take almost another year before the Dead broke out their acoustic format, but hearing Pentangle was the catalyst.

The Dead were playing the 3rd and 6th sets of the night (and on at least one night, when Shades Of Joy opened, the 4th and 7th set). One of the byproducts of this arrangement was that the headline act had to be "in the house" when the other bands where going through their second round, so musicians had little choice but to hear each other play. Thus Garcia heard Pentangle, and it had a profound influence on future Grateful Dead acoustic configurations.

May 2-3, 1969 Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Mongo Santamaria (Friday-Saturday)
In 1969, the Grateful Dead had also played two weekends for Bill Graham Presents at Winterland, twice the size of Fillmore West (officially 5400 vs 2500), both times in conjunction with the hugely popular Jefferson Airplane. These concert weekend were configured differently than the Fillmore West shows. After any opening acts, the Dead and then Jefferson Airplane would play a single extended set. None of the bands returned for a second set.  

Jefferson Airplane were hugely popular, but the rock scene had not expanded enough that they could sell out Winterland on their own. So the Airplane and the Dead played Friday and Saturday night at Winterland, with as many tickets on sale as if they had played four nights at Fillmore West. Latin jazzer Mongo Santamaria opened the show. He would have been great, but this was more a case of Graham showcasing music he wanted to be heard, as he was a Latin jazz fan.

May 28, 1969 Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Creedence Clearwater Revival/Santana/Elvin Bishop Group/Aum/Bangor Flying Circus (Wednesday) People's Park Bail Benefit
The Dead had also played a Benefit at Winterland on May 28, 1969, with many other acts. They had only played a brief set, however, and Rolling Stone's Michael Lydon complained that the Dead "didn't get it going.

June 5-8, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Junior Walker and The All-Stars/Glass Family (Thursday-Sunday)
The Grateful Dead headlined over Junior Walker and The All-Stars, a popular group but not a huge draw. This weekend stands out because Garcia was late one night (early set June 6) and Bill Graham insisted that Wayne Ceballos of AUM stand in for him. As if that weren't enough, for the last set of Sunday night (June 8) some experimentation by Owsley left Garcia--shall we say--"unavailable,"--so Ceballos returned with Elvin Bishop to lead a 48-minute "Turn On Your Lovelight."

October 24-26, 1969 Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Sons Of Champlin/Doug Kershaw (Friday-Sunday)
Jefferson Airplane were bigger than ever. They would release their sixth album on RCA, Volunteers, in early November. The album was probably already getting heavy airplay on KSAN and other FM stations by the time of the concert, and copies may have even been available in record stores. The Grateful Dead would also be releasing the classic album Live/Dead in early November. The Jefferson Airplane closed the shows on Friday and Sunday, but the Grateful Dead were the last act on Saturday night (October 25). Also on Sayturday, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash played a guest acoustic set, and Stills jammed with the Dead on "Lovelight."

The SF Examiner listing for Fillmore West on December 4, 1969

December 4-7, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/The Flock/Humble Pie (Thursday-Sunday)
Although the Grateful Dead's December Fillmore West shows conformed with rock concert orthodoxy by concluding with a single long set, there was still some elements that were distinctive to Graham and the venue. In the 60s, every rock concert was expected to have multiple acts. In most cases, the headline act was preceded by a local band. At the Fillmore West, the openers were bands on major labels with albums to their names. Now, it's true that San Francisco bands often opened Fillmore West shows, but they too were bands with albums on major labels.

By December, the Grateful Dead had released Live/Dead and had become established enough in the Bay Area that they did not need a major support act to sell tickets. There was still an assumption, however, that a proper rock concert at Fillmore West had three bands, and that the two openers were substantial bands, even if they were not yet popular. Many, many Bay Area rock fans were proud of having gone to the Fillmore or Fillmore West and heard bands on the way up, if only so they could brag a year later "yeah I saw Santana and Chicago open for Big Brother when no one knew who they were (e.g. September 12-14 '68)." The two opening acts in December hadn't sold a lot of records, but the musicians in the band had futures on tap. 

The Flock were a unique horn band from Chicago, and they had released their debut album on Columbia back in July. Now, rock bands with a horn section were hardly unique, particularly on Columbia. Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago Transit Authority had both signed with the label back in '68, and by late '69 both bands had sold a lot of records. Other labels were signing rock bands with embedded horn sections, too, like San Francisco's own Sons Of Champlin (Capitol), The Serfs (out of Kansas, also on Capitol) and the Keef Hartley Band (on Decca, out of London).

The Flock played jazzy rock with a touch of soul and a lot of solos, pretty much the same model as for Chicago or The Sons. The special aspect of The Flock was that the principal soloist was electric violinist Jerry Goodman. Goodman was also one of the lead singers, and the band didn't have a keyboard player. Goodman was a great player, and The Flock had a very distinctive sound. Still, the Flock didn't really have many memorable songs, whereas bands like Chicago or BS&T had endlessly hummable material, whether you liked it or not.

A little bit of live material from the Flock floats around, and they were at the very least an interesting opening act (for a live example from German TV in 1970, see here). Electric violin was still pretty exotic in 1969, particularly in the context of a horn section rather than countrified music. Jerry Goodman would go on to be well-recognized as a virtuoso when he would join the original Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1971 (Deadheads may recognize Goodman from the 90s jam-band Dixie Dregs). So The Flock would have made an impression as the Dead's opening act, even if in the end they didn't really make it big. At least alert fans could say a few years later that they had seen Goodman before Mahavishnu, and that is what a certain kind of mostly male rock fan lived for (I was exhibit A). 

Humble Pie, meanwhile, was a newly-formed band touted by the English rock press as a "supergroup." At the time, the Pie were all but completely unknown. Within a few years, however, Humble Pie would be Winterland (and National) headliners in their own right. Lead guitarist Peter Frampton would leave Humble Pie in late 1971 to go solo, leading to his legendary double-live album Frampton Comes Alive. After it was released in Summer '76, Frampton Comes Alive became the best-selling live album of all time (over 3 million copies sold). While its sales record has since been eclipsed (Eric Clapton's Unplugged shipped an astonishing 10 million units), Frampton Comes Alive triggered every touring rock band to release a live "Greatest Hits" style double album sometime during the 1970s. So Humble Pie turned out to be an important band, even though they were still struggling to get heard in the States back in December '69.

Humble Pie's anchors were guitarists Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton. Both were excellent singers, and handsome lads who had been "Teen Idols" in England, a frustrating experience they had both shared. Marriott had led the Small Faces, a hugely successful "Mod" band in the UK who had never made much of a splash in the States (their only US hit had been "Itchykoo Park"). Frampton had been in The Herd, not as monumental as Small Faces, but still with some hits to their name. When The Herd had broken up in late 1968, Marriott had wanted Frampton to join the Small Faces as lead guitarist. Bandmates Ian McLagan and Ronnie Lane rejected this suggestion, however. So Marriott and Frampton went off and formed Humble Pie (McLagan, Lane and drummer Kenny Jones, meanwhile, teamed up with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood to form Faces).

Marriott and Frampton added drummer Jerry Shirley and bassist Greg Ridley. Ridley had been in the underrated band Spooky Tooth, and he, too, was an excellent, soulful vocalist. With 3 strong singers and two striking guitarists, Humble Pie didn't lack for talent. In the fashion of the times, their July '69 debut album As Safe As Yesterday Is featured music that was in a rustic style that intentionally evoked Music From Big Pink. Humble Pie did not emphasize hard rock until the early 70s. The Pie were signed to Immediate Records, run by former Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham. 

At the time of the first American Humble Pie tour, Immediate was nearly bankrupt. Humble Pie's second album, the laid back Town And Country had been released in the UK, but not in the States. A few FM stations had the import, however, so Humble Pie was probably getting a little play on KSAN. Now, the Small Faces had not been big in the US, and no one would have known who The Herd were, and thus Humble Pie wouldn't have been seen as a "Supergroup." They were still a "New Thing" from England, however, and that was never nothing.

Humble Pie Live At The Whisky A-Go-Go '69, released by Castle in 2002

We actually have a pretty good idea of what Humble Pie must have sounded like in December '69, since in 2002 a Pie show was released from the Whisky A-Go-Go, recorded the very next week (on December 13-16, opening for Grand Funk Railroad). Whatever your subsequent view of hard-rocking Humble Pie, the 1969 variation had more of an R&B orientation and more pronounced movement from quiet to loud and back. They would open with a mostly-acoustic cover of the Yardbirds hit "For Your Love," followed by a mix of covers and originals. The album only has 5 tracks, but it's a good look at what the band likely sounded like at Fillmore West (for a great sample, see this 1970 German TV version of "The Sad Bag Of Shakey Jake" with all three vocalists in their prime). 

Humble Pie Live At Fillmore West December 1969
For many years, decades really, we didn't have any first-hand accounts of this weekend Fillmore West. Rather unexpectedly, a detailed description turned up in the memoir of Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley. Best Seat In The House: Drumming In The 70s with Marriott, Frampton and Humble Pie (2011; Rebeat Books) is a loving memoir of the Good Old Days when they were Bad. Of course, you have to like 60s and 70s rock in grimy detail, but that is pretty much what I live for, so I recommend it highly.

One interesting thing about Shirley's description of the Fillmore West was that he was no fan of the Grateful Dead. He has no grudge against them--he just dismisses them as being self-indulgent for playing too long. Shirley reports that Humble Pie came on in between The Flock and the Grateful Dead. I suspect this was a sign that Humble Pie was getting at least some airplay on KSAN. Shirley (chapter 8): 

The Fillmore West audiences were notoriously difficult to satisfy, and we soon found out why--they were so stoned that you could easily mistake the real culprit, barbiturates mixed with cheap red wine, for total lack of interest. The Ripples-and-reds crowd, as they were affectionately known, became our latest challenge. We were determined to leave our mark, and in this case the goal was simple: if we woke 'em up, we had scored. With this lot, the last thing in the world you wanted to do was knock 'em out!

Bill Graham ran this Fillmore with same military efficiency he was famous for at the Fillmore East...at the beginning of December, 1969, a lot was happening in America, both musically and socially. The Charles Manson murders had occurred only months earlier, and the Stones were getting ready to play a huge free concert at Altamont, that now-famous racetrack just outside San Francisco. There was talk that the size of the crowd would outdo Woodstock (although "only" about 300,000 attended, far fewer than Woodstock's "half a million strong"), and one of the main acts on the bill was to be the Grateful Dead. Nothing wrong there, except that they were also supposed to be headliners for our third show at the Fillmore West. We were set to play the middle spot after an American band called The Flock, who had started to make some headway in the charts and featured an electric violinist who was a show all of his own. Not my cup of tea, but interesting, I suppose.

The Dead ended up not playing at Altamont because of the violence there. The problem was that the security force they had hired for the show, the Hell's Angels, who saw fit to use stabbing as a form of crowd control. The Angels killed an innocent bystander while the Stones were playing, which caused more than a little set of problems...

The Grateful Dead couldn't get out of Altamont to be at the Fillmore West. So we ended up playing our third show at Fillmore West shows as headliners, as we were the only band that could get there. The same applied to the crowd: only a very few people actually made it from Altamont, and they were so exhausted that they got in, sat down in front of the stage, and went to sleep. We must have been really impressive that night, because we managed to wake them up.  

So there you have it, such as it is: no eyewitness accounts of the Dead performances on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, although we have some tape, but a detailed memory of the night that the Dead didn't play. 

Aftermath
After December 1969, the Grateful Dead did not cede the stage once they got on it. They would take breaks, or play all night, as the case might have been, but there was no more rotating around the bill. The Dead would co-headline on occasion for another few months, but once Workingman's Dead got out there, the Dead were headliners in their own right. There were occasional exceptions, like giant outdoor shows or benefits, but the Grateful Dead made themselves a hard act to follow.

The Flock put out one more album (Dinosaur Swamps) and faded away. The Flock opened for the Dead again in New Orleans, when they were busted down on Bourbon Street (January 31-February 1). Jerry Goodman went on to success with Mahavishnu Orchetra, Dixie Dregs and numerous other recordings. 

Humble Pie toured successfully until 1975, even after Peter Frampton left. They had moved to A&M Records in 1970, toured hard and made themselves into a great concert attraction. Frampton left in late '71, to great success, but the Pie continued to rise in popularity. It all ground to a halt, however, and there were many financial issues with management. Steve Marriott, hugely talented and much beloved by his peers, nearly had a reunion with Peter Frampton and a reformed Humble Pie in 1991. The project was put on hold, however, and Marriott died in a fire in 1991, deeply mourned by the public and his friends.

January 2-5, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Blood Sweat & Tears/Spirit

The Randy Tuten poster for the Bill Graham Presents show at Fillmore West on January 2-3-4, 1969, with the Grateful Dead, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Spirit (a Sunday January 5 show was added)

The Grateful Dead and their fans, in a collective enterprise, have attempted to preserve all the music they ever made. The Dead's archive of live tapes is unprecedented in the 20th century rock industry for its vastness. Dead fans themselves have taped shows, going back to the 60s, with audience tapes often filling in gaps left in the archive of board tapes. Grateful Dead fans have also made an extraordinary effort to determine every show and catalog the setlist for all of them.  For the 2,400 or so live shows by the Grateful Dead, surprisingly little is unknown.

There are gaps, of course, here and there, usually back in the 60s. Inevitably, if the band played an unscheduled show in Ohio or a Wednesday night in Baltimore, it's not totally surprising that we don't have any record. Indeed, the remarkable thing is the number of out-of-the-way 60s shows where we at least have some kind of tape or good eyewitness account, so we at least have a feel for what happened. The near-completeness of the historical record adds to the depth and color of the Grateful Dead's long journey.

On the weekend of January 2-4, 1969, the Grateful Dead were booked to headline the Fillmore West from Thursday to Saturday. Although neither of the Dead's two albums had been successful, really, the Dead were genuine rock stars in San Francisco, and had been since 1966. The Dead had co-headlined an epic party at Fillmore West on New Year's Eve, and they were back for more a few days later. We know the weekend was a success, because Graham appears to have added a Sunday afternoon show. In general, Graham only did this when the rest of the weekend's ticket sales had been robust. So it had to have been a pretty good weekend.

1969. San Francisco. The Fillmore West. Four Grateful Dead shows.

• I know of no tape of any of the four nights
• I know of no setlists for any night
• I don't even know of an eyewitness accounts of any of the shows.

Why? Four nights, likely good crowds, probably eight sets, on their home court, and we know nothing about what the Grateful Dead performed? This isn't Athens, OH or Baltimore, on some weeknight on the road, it's San Francisco, Fillmore West and a weekend. I don't know the reasons--maybe my post will resurrect some long buried sources or memories--but I think I can figure it out.

Update 28 December 2022! Correspondent Alex Golden reported that his father, the late Stephen L Golden, a music fan from way back, attended the Grateful Dead show on Sunday, January 5 at Fillmore West. And--!!!!--he took some great color slides. Thus we have a great photo of Jerry and one of Phil and Bob. Garcia in a poncho, everyone in long sleeves--must have been a cold night. Thank you Alex, and thank you and Rest in Power Stephen L Golden.

Jerry Garcia on stage at Fillmore West, Sunday, January 5, 1969 (photo Stephen L Golden, courtesy Alex Golden)

Phil Lesh and Bob Weir (and probably Mickey Hart) on stage at Fillmore West, Sunday, January 5, 1969 (photo Stephen L Golden, courtesy Alex Golden)

For the Blood, Sweat & Tears photos, see below.

The Grateful Dead's immortal Live/Dead album was recorded in San Francisco in January, February and March 1969, at the Avalon and Fillmore West

Why No Tapes?
The absence of any Grateful Dead tapes from the January run at Fillmore West is easier to explain, although I can't be definitive. Paradoxically, I think the absence of any tapes has to do directly with attempts to record Live/Dead. As you will recall, the Dead were attempting to record a live album using a brand-new Ampex 16-track tape recorder. Since the Dead were playing New Year's Eve at Winterland, Ampex engineer Ron Wickersham helped the band lug the recorder they were using at Pacific Recorders in San Mateo to the Fillmore West in order to record the show.

Apparently the attempt to record the New Year's Eve show was a disaster. One track remains, a messy version of "Midnight Hour." The rest of the tape was recorded over a few weeks later, since 16-track tape was expensive. I do not know what the technical problems might have been on New Year's Eve, nor would I likely understand if they were spelled out. It does appear, however, that Wickersham and the band lugged the Ampex 16-track back to San Mateo, probably mid-day on January 1. A review of the tape showed dismal results, and apparently modifications were in order.

It does make sense, however, to consider that the Dead had set up their sound board and sound system to record on December 31, and returned without their gear on January 2, since Wickersham was resolving the problems. Now, of course, with hindsight, we say "didn't Owsley have his regular deck--what happened?" Honestly, who knows? But it does make a certain sort of sense that the Dead had a certain plan, to record New Year's Eve and the subsequent shows, and it all went South. The Dead did not return to 16-track recording until January 24 at the Avalon, and in between Owsley taped a show the old way (January 17 in Santa Barbara). Still, the band had a plan for Fillmore West, and it went wrong. So the lack of tapes, while still mysterious, is at least somewhat explicable to me.

Why No Reviews?
We think of the Grateful Dead as big rock stars, and that was true in San Francisco in 1969. Nonetheless, the Grateful Dead were also a hometown band who played quite regularly. So while there was plenty of coverage of the Dead in the local newspapers, there were rarely actual reviews of them. A touring band who might show up once a year was worthy of some column inches, but the Dead were a constant, like the cycles of the moon. So they weren't reviewed, not the way that Cream or even The Doors got reviewed.

Also, the regular beat writers for the local papers were a lot less likely to go out and about on the weekend after New Year's Eve. This was just human nature. Chronicle writer Ralph Gleason, as well as Examiner music writer Phil Elwood, often went to Grateful Dead shows, and commented on the goings on. But since neither of them appear to have gone out that weekend, we have no reports. To my knowledge, no other Bay Area paper, nor the Berkeley Barb or any other underground paper commented on these Dead shows, either. So we have no information at all from the press.

A printed ticket for Thursday, January 2, 1969 at Fillmore West. The same run of printed tickets was used for Sunday January 5 (the tickets had a printed reproduction of the poster to prevent counterfeits).

Who Went To The Show?
The weekend of shows was originally announced as Thursday through Saturday, January 2-3-4. From some surviving ticket stubs, it appears that a Sunday night show was added. This was common practice for Bill Graham Presents. It made sense to sell tickets for three shows, and if the demand was there, to add an additional show. This was particularly true for the kind of acts which might cause people to see a show and say, "wow, that was great, I'd love to go again." Of course, the Sunday night scheduling was agreed to in advance by the bands, their agents and managements.

The Grateful Dead had just co-headlined four nights at Fillmore West on November 7-10 with Quicksilver Messenger Service. The Dead and Quicksilver had also hosted New Year's Eve, along with the rising groups Santana and It's A Beautiful Day. Quicksilver's debut album, released in May of 1968, was hugely popular on FM radio. It was also far more accessible than Anthem Of The Sun. So while the Dead were local legends, they were more likely to draw people who had already seen them. The Dead were rock stars, sure, but they couldn't really sell out a weekend at Fillmore West on their own dime.

The two other bands booked with the Dead on this January weekend, as it happened, were perfect examples of bands who were hot. Blood Sweat & Tears and Spirit had both had successful debut albums, and now they were following them up. It appears to have been Blood Sweat & Tears and Spirit who drew the crowds, more than the Dead. Now, to be clear, the Dead were popular, and many of the people drawn to the shows would have looked forward to seeing the Grateful Dead as well. But another reason we know so little about the January shows may be that the Dead were overshadowed by their openers.

I don't mean to suggest that the Dead were "blown off the stage," or anything so dramatic. I just think the what hardcore Deadheads there were in those days were wiped out by New Year's Eve, and other local rock fans were the ones attending on the weekend. Neither Blood, Sweat & Tears nor Spirit have the kinds of fans who document everything they saw 50 years later, which is a shame, because I think that is who were really excited about this show.

Blood, Sweat & Tears debut album Child Is Father To The Man was released by Columbia in April 1968. Al Kooper was the principal writer, arranger and lead singer.

Blood, Sweat & Tears
If we set the Wayback Machine to January 1969, the top group playing this weekend wasn't the Grateful Dead, it was Blood, Sweat & Tears. Blood, Sweat & Tears had been formed by Al Kooper and Steve Katz in Fall, 1967, out of the remains of the Blues Project. Kooper's idea was to have a rock band modeled on the big band sound of Maynard Ferguson. B,S&T's debut album Child Is The Father To The Man, released in April, 1968 was a sophisticated homage to the likes of Ferguson while still retaining a rock beat and a soulful groove. The album sold pretty well, and it got good reviews. B,S&T was an eight-piece band, with the horns actually part of the group, instead of added on later. With players like Randy Brecker (trumpet) and Fred Lipsius (alto sax), the horns were big-band quality too.

Child Is The Father To The Man was a great album, and it still sounds pretty good today. Kooper was the primary songwriter and arranger. Really, the only weakness of the album was Kooper's lead vocals, which were only barely adequate to the power of the arrangements. Steve Katz and other members wanted to add a "real" lead singer. Notwithstanding other disputes in the band, Kooper did not take kindly to the idea of a new lead singer, and he left the group. Thanks to a recommendation from Judy Collins, Blood, Sweat & Tears signed up Canadian singer David Clayton-Thomas. After a few other personnel changes, they had returned to the studio in October 1968. 

Columbia Records was very interested in merging rock bands with horn sections. At the time, Columbia not only had B, S&T, but Chicago Transit Authority and The Flock, who also merged horns with the rhythm section. Columbia assigned producer Jim Guercio, who had been in the Buckinghams, whose hit "Kind Of A Drag" seemed to imply the kind of soul-rock mix that the company was looking for. In late 1968, Guercio was working with both Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago Transit Authority, and those two groups were perhaps the biggest ever sellers on the rock-band-plus-horns model.

Blood, Sweat & Tears self-titled second album, released in December 1968. There were three huge AM hits on the album, and the lp sold over 4 million copies.

"You've Made Me So Very Happy"-Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears second album, named just Blood, Sweat & Tears, was released in December, 1968. It was huge. Really huge. It sold 4 million copies, a staggering number for the time. There were three gigantic singles that came off the album. If you were sentient in America in 1969, you heard a Blood, Sweat & Tears single from that album all year long. The three big hits were:

• "You've Made Me So Very Happy" (single released Jan '69, remake of a '67 Brenda Holloway hit)
• "Spinning Wheel" (single released May '69)
• "And When I Die" (single released Sept '69)

Blood, Sweat & Tears was so big that they were the second highest paid band at Woodstock (Jimi Hendrix got $20,000, and BS&T got $15K). For various contractual reasons, they were not in the movie, but Blood, Sweat & Tears was one of the break-out bands of 1969. Even before the singles hit, BS&T would have been getting play on KSAN. To 60s hippies, "jazz" was sophisticated music, but parents still didn't like it, so liking jazz or "jazz-rock" meant you were sophisticated. At least initially, BS&T came into 1969 as a cool band. So I think the Fillmore West shows did really well because of Blood, Sweat & Tears, not the Grateful Dead.

Now, to be clear, unlike in later decades, there was no inherent dismissal at the time of the Dead as "an old hippie band"--hippies weren't even old yet. I think the sort of fan who wanted to see B,S&T thought, "oh yeah, the Grateful Dead are supposed to be good, it'll be fun." But I also think that a fan seeing B,S&T would sit through the first Dead set, and the second B,S&T set, but not stick around for Grateful Dead late night. So any killer "Dark Star" at 2am--there had to be at least one, right?--was probably to a pretty thin crowd.

"I've Got A Line On You"-Spirit
Spirit was a band from Los Angeles. Their situation was somewhat of the reverse of Blood, Sweat & Tears. The band had an underground following, and they got airplay on the few FM rock stations that existed. But the band did not sell many records until after they broke up. Today, many Spirit songs are recognizable from television commercials (like "Mr. Skin" and "Nature's Way"), and the group is widely revered by people who own too many records as one of the most original bands in the 1960s. In January, 1969, however, Spirit wasn't very well known. In December '68, the band had just released their second album on Ode Records, The Family That Plays Together.

Still, Spirit only had one kind-of-hit in the 60s, and it was the single "I Got A Line On You." The single was released in October 1968. It was a great song, and ultimately it got as high as #25 nationally. The Family That Plays Together was a great followup to Spirit's 1968 debut album, and it would have gotten some good airplay on KSAN. Now, to be clear, Spirit would have been a cult item, whereas Blood, Sweat & Tears would have been mass-market. But for the kind of hipster who would only go to a show if there was something super-cool to brag about, Spirit would have been it. The Grateful Dead were still reasonably cool, as these things went, but it was Spirit that would have been the draw for the hipoisie. Once again, this kind of fan would have cheerily caught two sets by Spirit, and enjoyed the Dead's first set, but they weren't hanging out for the late night "Dark Star." 

A Call For Archaeologists

• The Grateful Dead, in their prime, make no tapes of the early January weekend shows at Fillmore West, presumably because of tape equipment issues related to recording what would become Live/Dead
• Blood, Sweat & Tears has just released one of the biggest albums of the 1960s, and probably helped pack the house.
• Spirit, not well known but well regarded, seemed to be a band on the rise to stardom, a far more intriguing band to see than the Dead, who had headlined Fillmore West five times in the previous eight weeks

No tapes, no setlists, no reviews, no memories: can someone prove me wrong? Please? Find a review, a lost comment thread on a Blood, Sweat & Tears chat board? January 1969, at home, and we got nothing?

The internet is a remarkable instrument. I'm counting on the audience to find something.

Spirit released their fourth album, Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus in late 1970. The band broke up in January 1971, but the album went on to become a huge hit afterwards.

Aftermath
The Blood, Sweat & Tears album was a monster, 4 million sold and three giant hit singles. The next album, 1970's Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, was also huge. It too had a giant hit single, "Lucretia MacEvil." B,S&T, however, for all their success, was rapidly shoved down the hipness ladder, seen as a bunch of poseurs. By 1970 standards, B,S&T mostly played covers, and the band played charts and didn't improvise. Clayton-Thomas, though an excellent singer, was a trained vocalist, like a Las Vegas singer, rather than gravel-voiced like Rod Stewart. BS&T had to answer the claim that they were "inauthentic," a fatal criticism in those days. Since the band toured on behalf of the US State Department and then appeared regularly in Las Vegas, the group lost all the jazz credibility that had been established with their debut.

By about 1973, although Blood, Sweat & Tears were still very popular, no one was going around bragging about the time they saw them opening for the Dead. BS&T has toured for many decades--they may still--but they don't have the kind of fans who document every show back until the dawn of time. So any memories of the time that the band opened for the Grateful Dead at Fillmore West remain uncaptured. Indeed, some of the SF rock fans who went to check out Blood, Sweat & Tears may have been embarrassed about it after they heard "Spinning Wheel" for the millionth time, so they blocked it out.

Spirit, in contrast, has remained the height of cool since 1968, and deservedly so. Unfortunately, despite the initial success of "I've Got A Line On You," The Family That Plays Together wasn't a big hit. It's followup, 1969's Clear Spirit, another great album, went nowhere. Spirit broke up in early 1971, shortly after their album Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus was released. Twelve Dreams was a huge hit, a staple of FM radio, and much beloved by rock fans everywhere. Various versions of Spirit performed into the 1990s, and there were some spinoffs (like JoJo Gunne), but nothing could recapture the magic of the original band. Spirit's brilliant lead guitarist Randy California drowned in a tragic accident in 1997, and that ended any chance of the heroic recognition they richly deserved.

The Grateful Dead toured continuously until 1995, when lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died. Members of the band have continued to tour and record, and archival releases of the band's material continue to sell in great numbers into the present day.

Appendix: Lineups, January 1969
Spirit
Randy California-lead guitar, vocals
Jay Ferguson-vocals, piano
John Locke-organ, electric piano, piano
Mark Andes-bass, vocals
Ed Cassidy-drums 

Blood, Sweat & Tears
David Clayton-Thomas-lead vocals
Steve Katz-guitar, harmonica, vocals
Fred Lipsius-alto sax
Lew Soloff-trumpet
Chuck Winfield-trumpet
Jerry Hyman-trombone
Dick Halligan-organ, piano
Jim Fielder-bass
Bobby Colomby-drums 

Alex Golden was kind enough to send along photos of Blood Sweat & Tears taken by his father Stephen L Golden on Sunday, January 5, 1969

July 2, 1971: Fillmore West, San Francisco Grateful Dead KSAN-fm Broadcast (FM IV)

The entertainments listings from the Hayward Daily Review of July 1, 1971. showing the bookings for the closing of Fillmore West along with the other coming attractions

The Grateful Dead have been influential to the music industry in ways that are not always self-evident. One way in which the Dead have had a huge influence on the music industry was their enthusiasm for live FM broadcasts of their concerts. In the early 1970s, the Dead's willingness to broadcast their performances for free over the airwaves was in complete opposition to music business orthodoxy. Very rapidly, however, as the Dead started to sell records without benefit of a hit, the industry started to take notice. Live FM broadcasts became a staple of rock radio by the mid-70s, and they laid the groundwork for the explosion of music available on the internet, however distant that future might have been.

In the first installment of this series, I described the very earliest live FM broadcasts of rock shows. The first show broadcast, to my knowledge, was the HALO Benefit at Winterland on May 30, 1967. I remain alone in asserting that the Dead did not play that show, even though they were billed, but the show was unquestionably broadcast, as KMPX-fm's Tom Donahue can be heard as the host on a circulating Quicksilver tape. In any case, the Grateful Dead and Country Joe and The Fish broadcast live from the Carousel Ballroom on February 14, 1968, and the resulting copies were foundational for Grateful Dead tape collectors over the years. There were a few other early experiments, including a live broadcast on Berkeley's KPFA-fm from the Avalon Ballroom on April 6, 1969, and a set from San Diego on KPRI-fm (106.5) on May 11, 1969.

For my second installment, I analyzed how many of the Grateful Dead tapes from the 1960s that circulated in the 1970s and 80s were broadcast on San Francisco's KSAN-fm in the 1970s, although they were not in fact actually broadcast during the 60s. In my third post, I looked at all the live broadcasts by the Grateful Dead and various individual members from 1970.  None of the circumstances of any of the 1970 broadcasts were ever duplicated, but it made a good case study on how the Grateful Dead determined the best way to promote their music for their own benefit. For this post, I will look at the live broadcast of the Grateful Dead's concert at the closing of the Fillmore West on July 2, 1971.

The Fillmore West broadcast was the basic blueprint for just about all the Grateful Dead concerts that were broadcast throughout the 1970s. KSAN-fm was the best rated music station in what at the time was the hippest music city in the United States. When a band played live on the air for nearly three hours, with no commercials (except during the setbreak), it was an unprecedented event. By 1971, enough people had tape recorders hooked up to FM receivers that great sounding tapes could circulate. Thus the July 2 '71 Fillmore West Grateful Dead show was the first concert in wide underground circulation, even if that circulation was mostly by bootleg albums rather than tapes.

The front cover of a bootleg double-lp made from the FM broadcast of the Grateful Dead's performance at the Fillmore West on July 2, 1971. Upper right it says "entire 1 3/4 hour show". I purchased the album in a used record store for $4.00 or so in about 1974 (photo courtesy u.t.)

The Closing Of The Fillmore West, June 29-July 4, 1971
Bill Graham and Chet Helms had made the Trips Festival into regular musical performances at the original Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, respectively. But it was Graham who made the weekly Fillmore rock concerts into a commercially viable proposition. His empire expanded to the Fillmore East in Manhattan and then to the Fillmore West in San Francisco. The Fillmores were the first venues that stood on their own as a mark of taste and style in the 60s rock universe. If a band had played any of the Fillmores, they had status in Albuquerque or Altoona.

However, though Bill Graham had been critical in defining how to run a proper rock concert, the very success of the young industry made the Fillmores too small to complete. Graham had moved out of the original Fillmore (official capacity 1500) to the larger Fillmore West (official capacity 2500) in July 1968, but by 1971the rock market had outgrown the Fillmore West as well. The last night at the Fillmore East was June 27, 1971, and last call at the Fillmore West was a week later. At the time, Rolling Stone and other observers considered this "the end of the 60s," and so on. This was probably true, as a matter of fact, although Graham and many of the Fillmore headliners went on to become even more successful in the 70s. At the time, however, the classic San Francisco bands were in flux, and it did seem like things would never be the same again. The final week's bill at the Fillmore West was:

June 29, 1971: Sawbuck/Malo/Kwane and The Kwanditos 
June 30, 1971: Boz Scaggs/Cold Blood/Stoneground/Flamin' Groovies
July 1, 1971: It's A Beautiful Day/Elvin Bishop Group/Lamb
July 2, 1971: Grateful Dead/New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Rowan Brothers
July 3, 1971: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Hot Tuna
July 4, 1971: Santana/Creedence Clearwater Revival/Tower Of Power plus closing jam

Of the groups that could legitimately be called 'original' Fillmore performers, only the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver were really the same continuous group. Many of the bands featured players that had played the Fillmore in the day (such as Boz Scaggs with the Steve Miller Band), and the Santana Blues Band had opened for some shows as far back as 1967.  By 1971, Santana and Creedence had become the biggest rock bands to come out of San Francisco, but it was left to the Dead and Quicksilver to show the flag from days of yore.

The Grateful Dead, Summer 1971
In the middle of 1971, the Grateful Dead were in a very different position than they had ever been before. For the first few years of their existence, the Dead were underground legends, with all the baggage that entailed: three inconsistent albums, lots of peculiar gigs, some of them rumored to be great, along with a devoted clutch of diehard fans. In November, 1969, Live/Dead suggested to discerning listeners that those legends might be true. More shockingly, the arrival of Workingman's Dead in June, 1970 revealed a completely different band, accessible and reflective, yet without quite removing the stoned overtone. Soon after, American Beauty was released in November, 1970, and the Dead were no longer underground. Workingman's and American Beauty were played regularly on FM radio across the country, and rock fans all over America started getting curious about the Dead's legendary performances.

Of the classic Fillmore bands, only the Dead were on an upward trajectory in Summer '71. Jefferson Airplane kept losing members, and hadn't put out an album in a while. Quicksilver had lost their archetypal guitarist John Cipollina, and while new lead singer Dino Valenti helped them sell records, older fans of Quicksilver weren't happy with the new sound. Country Joe and The Fish had broken up, and while Big Brother And The Holding Company had four of their original members, with Janis Joplin not on board they were no longer Fillmore West material. Yet the Dead were bigger than they had ever been back in the day, and their previous two albums had been their most coherent and popular. By modern standards, however, the rock concert industry was still small. The Dead's magic was in live performance, and there was no way for them to play for enough people. The Dead, like every other 60s group, had tried the rock festival circuit, but by '71 bands, communities and promoters were fairly fed up with outdoor festivals in a muddy field.

The answer turned out to be live FM broadcasts of Grateful Dead concerts. The Dead, along with a few other groups, had experimented with different ways to broadcast their shows. Included amongst these ideas were studio tv performances, quadrophonic fm and a variety of other configurations which we would not now recognize as typical. However, once uninterrupted Grateful Dead concerts were broadcast in every city that the Dead played, the Dead landscape changed dramatically. The rock audience was young and suburban, and new FM rock stations ruled the market. When the Dead were on the radio for hours at a time, all the hipsters had to listen. Enough of them liked what they heard, particularly some who were too young, too broke to too carless to get to wherever the Dead were playing. It didn't matter--the FM radio was a bus stop just the same, and people in every city got on.

The first broadcast that we would recognize as a "typical" Grateful Dead broadcast was the July 2, 1971 Fillmore West show. Soon afterwards, in the Fall, to support their new live album, the Dead would get Warner Brothers Records to agree to spend $100,000 in promotional money--a lot of money for those days--to broadcast 14 shows throughout the country [McNally p.410]. No rock band had ever done anything like this. Of course, no rock band would ever do anything like this again, either, except for the Dead themselves in 1976. Still, after the success of the Grateful Dead (aka Skull And Roses) album, behind the FM broadcasts, the industry took notice. Live FM broadcasts became a staple of rock marketing from 1973 onward, and it was no coincidence. Even thought the Fillmore West was closing, even in its waning moments it was still a place that influenced the rock music business.

The label from one of the bootleg lps. The album was on the Record Revolution label (not that any such label really existed)

The Broadcast

The Grateful Dead's Fillmore West performance on Friday, July 2, 1971 was broadcast on KSAN-fm, then San Francisco's leading rock station. KSAN was one of the top-rated stations in the Bay Area, against all other types of programming, not just other music stations. KSAN had grown out of the groundbreaking KMPX, and it prided itself on being innovative. KSAN had already broadcast the Dead a few times, so they were the obvious choice as the broadcaster for the Fillmore West show. With both the Rowan Brothers and the New Riders Of Purple Sage opening the show, the Dead probably came on stage at about 10:00 or 10:30, and probably played until a little before 2:00am.

It is important to emphasize that KSAN would not have been broadcasting the Grateful Dead on a Friday night just for charity. Warner Brothers Records would had to have compensated the station for the lost advertising time. There would be no ads during the performance, although there may have been ads during the set break, and KSAN would not go without ad revenue for four hours. In any case, Warners probably would not have paid cash directly to KSAN (although they might have). More likely, Warners probably committed to a certain number of ads on KSAN in the next month, or some other similar arrangement.

I have also seen indications that the Fillmore West show was broadcast on KMET in Los Angeles. I do not know if this was a full or partial broadcast, or live or tape-delayed. However, KSAN and KMET were owned by the same corporation, Metromedia--who also owned WNEW in New York--so the collaboration seems very plausible.

To tape aficionados, the performances from the closing of the Fillmore West are well-known and circulate widely. It is generally asserted that all the shows from the last week were broadcast on either KSAN or KSFX-fm (which may have been a less-hip corporate sister to KSAN). After many years of research and speculation, I for one, do not believe that the closing week of Fillmore West was broadcast. Yes, the Dead were broadcast; yes, the closing jam from the final night (in the wee hours of July 5) was broadcast; and I think Hot Tuna was broadcast, although I'm not certain of that.

As to the tapes of the rest of the week, all of which circulate (many as a sort of collection curated by the gaily-named "Hell's Honkies"), they are generally marked as "pre-FM." I'm not aware of actual FM broadcasts of any of the other bands, the sort of tapes where djs cut in and with other anomalies. Even if one or two of the other bands were broadcast, and I'm not aware of it, I'm still convinced that the bulk of the shows were not broadcast. I would be very interested in hearing from Bay Area rock fans of the era (you know who you are) who may recall how much was actually broadcast.

My reasoning for believing that most of the shows were not broadcast is worthy of a lengthy blog post on a different blog, so I will just point out some highlights:

• Bill Graham and CBS Records were recording the shows for the planned Closing Of The Fillmore West album and movie, so the existence of the tapes is not surprising
• Broadcasting a complete live performance was a radical thing for a band to do, and not something that would generally be approved by record companies. Even if bands were inclined to do it, their record companies would have to pay for it, which was another layer of difficulty. Bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival (Fantasy) and It's A Beautiful Day (CBS) had no history of management approving untried, costly new approaches to promotion.
• Although many of the bands who played the closing week of Fillmore West are well-known to us today, lots of them were quite obscure at the time. Boz Scaggs and The New Riders for example, were not big acts--the Riders didn't even have an album.
• As for July 2 itself, the New Riders Of The Purple Sage and the Rowan Brothers were both Columbia (CBS) acts who had not yet released their first album. CBS was not going to pay KSAN to broadcast groups who did not yet have albums they could sell.

My thinking is that the fact that the Dead show and the closing jam (and perhaps one or two others) were broadcast was so unprecedented that the story morphed over the years into "all of them" being broadcast. I would be very interested to know exactly which sets made it out over the air.

[update] Correspondent Rion weighs in with some memories

having lived to tell the tale, I can affirm that the whole week was broadcast, except 6/29, which I never thought of as part of the closing celebration.  Proof:  in the Fillmore movie, Graham is arguing with Santana’s manager and says that all the groups for the entire week agreed to let their music be broadcast except Santana.   The bill for the last night was not revealed before hand.  Everybody I knew thought it was the Airplane, and were disappointed because Creedence was not that interesting.  I had tapes of everything, but didn’t keep them because most of the music wasn’t that interesting.  Santana’s show was not broadcast. 

As far as I can remember, all the shows were on KSAN.   I would bet that  they were all on KSFX too, because the Hot Tuna tape I made again had Paul Krassner as the announcer.   The big tease for the final night was the last act.   That wasn’t announced until showtime, I believe.   I’m sure I didn’t make it all the way through and have no info about the jam.

As you can see from the ad above, the final night's bill was listed as Santana and Tower Of Power, so there must have been plenty of intentionally placed rumors about a "surprise guest" on July 4. I do find it fascinating that the unrecorded opening acts were broadcast as well. 

The back cover of the bootleg lp. Since the album appears to have been made in 1971, the song titles are just guesses ("Had To Move," "My Uncle" and "No Chance Of Losing" for example) (photo courstesy u.t)

The Bootleg

Bay Area rock fans had had more opportunities to hear the Grateful Dead perform live on the radio than anyone else. What few FM broadcasts there had been were mostly in the Bay Area, whereas other parts of the country had mostly only heard the May 2 '70 Pacifica broadcast (from Harper College at Binghamton, NY), if they were lucky. For the then-small-but-daily-growing coterie of Deadheads, it wasn't enough. Bay Area Deadheads at least could see the band with great regularity. However, in the Dead's other stronghold, New York City, other means were needed to disseminate live Grateful Dead music. 

The sprawling, interconnected web that links the Grateful Dead taping community is now world-renowned. It is little recalled, however, that in the early 70s the principal way that interested Dead fans heard alternative Grateful Dead music was through bootleg lps. These lps, with minimal graphics, or just white covers, and incorrect song titles and little or no information about the recording, were quietly available in hip (non-chain) record stores. Unofficial recordings of Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones had led the way, as documented in the Clinton Heylin book Bootleg. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, the truly committed amongst the Deadheads made their own live tapes and produced them as albums, often selling them outside of concerts.

The subject of bootleg Grateful Dead albums, and their intimate connection to the underground movement of tapes and other products from one coast to another is worthy of a book. Fortunately, one is being written. Fellow scholar Jesse Jarnow is working on Heads: A Biography Of Psychedelic America, and the bootleg lp will be resurrected and given its rightful due. It will be well worth the wait to see the rightful context. As for me, I can give a flavor of their importance by describing the bootleg lp of the Closing of The Fillmore West show that I purchased in late 1973 or so.

When I was in the 10th grade (1972-73), a friend with older siblings had loaned me the Bob Dylan Royal Albert Hall bootleg (actually Manchester, but of course we didn't know that). I was floored. The idea that there was a different, better, live version of Dylan's greatest music was staggering. Grateful Dead bootlegs started to appear in Palo Alto and Berkeley the next year (1973-74). By this time, I had the existing Grateful Dead albums and had memorized them. I purchased a double-lp of the Fillmore West show in the middle of the school year. The front and back cover (or most of it, anyway) and the label are reproduced above. I bought it as a "used" record, which I think was the dodge to get around the illegality. It was a revelation.

Now, I had gotten a couple of Dead bootlegs along with it, around the same time, and they were great. But I couldn't tell where they were from, nor anything else about them, so they were straight up mysteries. Within a few years I figured out that they were from Binghamton (May 2 '70) and Felt Forum, but I didn't know that at the time. But the Fillmore West lp seemed to be a complete concert, with a date and everything. I had even seen the Dead a couple of times, so I wasn't completely innocent. Yet here was an alternative version of Skull And Roses, complete with strange cover versions that I had never heard of.

It is a 21st century opinion to dismiss the Jul 2 '71 Fillmore West show as a weak show. From some points of view, that may be correct, although I think people are unnecessarily harsh. From my 11th grade point of view, however, it was beside the point. At the time, there were 9 Grateful Dead albums, and I perceived the band's music as having had a certain arc. Here was a 10th album, and my perception of the band's arc was completely wrong. I didn't yet know what it was, of course, but I had to throw out everything I had thought. Here was a different, Godchaux-less "China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider"; here were lengthy covers of "Good Lovin" and "Sing Me Back Home"; here they went back into "Not Fade Away" after "Going Down The Road."

It was all well and good for grizzled veterans of the Fillmores (all of about 26 years old at the time) to say, "c'mon, everybody knew that." I didn't know that, and I didn't know any grizzled heads, either. I was stuck in the suburbs, wishing I was in the mix. Bootleg Grateful Dead lps put me in that mix. I ended up with about 12 of them, and a couple of New Riders bootlegs as well, and I memorized them all. Of course, a few years later, I discovered cassettes and the tape-trading universe, and the bootleg lps didn't matter, but without them, the doors would have taken a lot longer to open.

The blue double lp that I had was regularly seen in Bay Area used record stores for the next several years--it was about as near to a "regional hit" as a bootleg could ever be considered. It's not surprising. A local show, broadcast locally, pressed somehow, and quietly distributed to sufficiently cool stores. That was, in fact, pretty common on the East Coast and less so in the Bay Area, but with respect to my listening it jump started me by about four years. I couldn't have been the only one.

After the distribution of the Rolling Stones bootleg lp Liver Than You'll Ever Be, record companies and bands were very worried about disintermediation. The Grateful Dead were no exception, and went to some lengths to stop bootleg lps from being sold. One of the reasons bands were so cautious about live broadcasts, and record companies so unwilling to support it, was the fear that once the shows were broadcast, the bootleg lps would cut into "real" record sales. The Dead, though no fans of bootlegs, were pretty much alone in thinking the rewards of live broadcasts outweighed the risks, and hewed their own path.

For major 70s rock bands, indeed for any 70s rock band, the Grateful Dead must have had more hours of concert broadcast by several magnitudes over other bands. After various experiments from1968 through 1970, the Dead had finally found the formula at Fillmore West, and that concert was the template for almost all the broadcasts that would follow. Whether or not you think July 2, 1971 was a good show--my feelings are obviously quite personal--it was a critical performance in Grateful Dead history.

The King Biscuit Flower Hour

The record industry surely noticed that after two successful studio albums, the Dead put out a comparatively indifferent double live album (Skull And Roses). It had no hits, they only included one older and sort of weird song, and there was a bunch of pretty strange cover versions, plus some new material. Yet the album was the first Grateful Dead record to go gold. The only thing different about the album was that Warners had spent $100,000 getting them broadcast live in 14 cities. Fear of bootlegging, as well as fear that some 70s bands couldn't really deliver on stage, kept any other bands from really joining in.

However, the rock industry noticed. One of the ways the industry took notice was with a syndicated radio show called The King Biscuit Flower Hour. The King Biscuit Flower Hour was started by some young rock veterans, including some Fillmore East managers, who recognized what was going on. King Biscuit was a weekly hour long syndicated radio show that featured live recordings of touring bands (in my day, it was on at 9:00pm on Sunday nights on KSAN). King Biscuit would record the bands professionally. Some larger bands had the entire show, but more typically there were two half-hour segments with different bands.

Since the show was syndicated, there were regular ads between songs, which made it a viable proposition. The bands (or their management) got to choose the songs, so any fears about what should or should not be circulated could be assuaged. Since only part of the concert was typically broadcast, any clunkers could be edited out as well. King Biscuit would let the artists mix the tape themselves, if they wanted. Record companies could time the broadcast, more or less, to get maximum effect for their promotional campaign.

The first King Biscuit Flower Hour was broadcast on February 18, 1973, with Blood, Sweat And Tears. For many years, King Biscuit shows were the only circulating FM soundboards for many touring bands. King Biscuit finally ground to a halt in 1993, but they were a critical part of rock music marketing in the 1970s. Although some tapes were lost in a fire, the remaining material is now part of Wolfgang's Vault. There's no question in my mind that the record companies saw what the Grateful Dead had done and looked at the Biscuit as a way to commodify the market channel (as they say). Without the Grateful Dead and Fillmore West, the King Biscuit experiment would not have happened the way it did.

Appendix:     Grateful Dead, Fillmore West, July 2, 1971

One Bertha [5:47] ; Me And Bobby McGee [5:38] ; Next Time You See Me [3:50] ; China Cat Sunflower [4:50] > I Know You Rider [5:47] ; Playing In The Band [4:54] ; Loser [6:33] ; The Rub [3:34] ; Me And My Uncle [3:10] ; Big Railroad Blues [3:35] ; Hard To Handle [7:19] ; Deal [6:13] ; The Promised Land [2:46] ; Good Lovin' [17:16] Two Sugar Magnolia [6:41] ; Sing Me Back Home [9:48] ; Mama Tried [2:47] ; Cryptical Envelopment [2:02] > Drums [5:16] > The Other One [15:40] ; Big Boss Man [5:18] ; Casey Jones [5:36] ; Not Fade Away [3:49] > Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad [7:22] > Jam [1:09] > Not Fade Away [3:35] Encore Johnny B. Goode [3:43]
	Johnny B. Goode [3:43]