September 21, 1968 Pacific Recording, San Mateo, CA ("Jam with Vic and David")

Eric Burdon And The Animals on stage at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival on August 11, 1967. (L-R), John Weider (guitar), Vic Briggs (guitar ) and Burdon.

Grateful Dead history is a sprawling beast, and the internet contributes to that sprawl. Mining message boards and Comment threads often turns up all sorts of fascinating information, but the fragmentary nature of the communication makes it hard to gather that knowledge coherently. Patience is a virtue, however, particularly in archaeology, because digging slowly and carefully reveals sights unseen.

Back in 2007, David Lemieux posted a fragment of tape on Dead.net of a jam at Pacific Recording in San Mateo on September 21, 1968. in Fall '68, the Grateful Dead were just beginning the recording of what would become Aoxomoxoa, and Bob Weir and Pigpen were possibly not going on with the band. In 2012, a scant five years later, on a Deadlists post, I found out that there were two other guitar players on one of the tracks. David Lemieux said that they were listed as "David and Vic." We all assumed that the "David" was David Nelson, who had recently admitted that he had been invited to jam with the Dead-minus-Bob Weir around that time. But who was "Vic?" David Gans asked Nelson, who had no idea. There was another problem, too: Gans played the tape for Nelson, who said it wasn't his playing. Never mind who was Vic--who was David?

It's better to be lucky than good. I was pretty sure I knew who Vic was, and I was right. The 'Vic" on the tape was Vic Briggs, who at the time had just left his post as lead guitarist for Eric Burdon And The Animals. Thanks to our extensive history of the second, psychedelic Eric Burdon And The Animals from 1966 to 1968, I was in touch with Briggs, who has an extraordinary memory. Briggs not only confirmed the event, he remembered the other guitarist. This post will discuss the context of the September 21, 1968 jam at Pacific Recording with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Vic Briggs and David Crosby.

The Grateful Dead, Fall 1968
Somewhere around September of 1968, the Grateful Dead had the infamous meeting in which Bob Weir and Pigpen were either threatened with being fired or actually fired, depending on what version you believe. Garcia and Lesh, apparently, felt that Weir and Pigpen's musical abilities had not grown as quickly as the other four band members, and that maybe the band would be better off without them. Pigpen's opinion was never directly known, but according to McNally, by October Weir basically considered himself fired.

However, the perpetually broke state of the Grateful Dead meant that the band continued to play shows with Weir and Pigpen, since they had no other meaningful source of income. Supposedly, the Dead had signed some contracts that required six musicians to be present, but in any case, Weir and Pigpen still played the late 1968 shows. By the end of the year, Weir seemed to have stepped up his game, and Tom Constanten had mustered out of the Air Force, allowing him to take permanent command of the keyboards. No meeting ever memorialized the changed status--Weir and Pigpen seemed to have simply figured out that they weren't going anywhere. The fact that Garcia, Lesh, Hart and Kreutzmann played occasional gigs at The Matrix as Mickey Hart And The Hartbeats also seemed to have fulfilled their own need to play certain kinds of unstructured music.

However, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that during the Fall '68 period, Garcia and Lesh were at least thinking about other musicians to replace Weir and/or Pigpen, and indeed Tom Constanten did take over the organ slot. Elvin Bishop was not aligned to a group in 1968, and he jammed some with the Hartbeats, and Jerry and Phil must have at least thought about him. David Gans confirmed with David Nelson that Nelson was invited to jam at Pacific Recording without Weir, probably in December, a pretty clear sign that the band hadn't made up it's mind. According to Nelson, the first song they played was "The Eleven," another sign to me that the "jam" was an audition, not just a goof.

Bob Matthews had started working at Pacific Recording in San Mateo in the Summer of '68, assisted by Betty Cantor. Mostly they recorded demos of unsigned song writers, including one session by John Dawson. By Fall, the Dead were ready to start recording their next album. On Friday, September 20, the Dead played Berkeley Community Theater, and on Sunday September 22, 1968, they played the Del Mar Fairgrounds near San Diego. The fact that the Dead not only went to the studio on the intervening Saturday night, but brought in two unaffiliated guitar player friends from out of town seems to be a pretty clear sign that Bob Weir was right to think his status in the band was shaky indeed.


Vic Briggs (in the hat) letting it rip on "Monterey" as Eric Burdon and The Animals play a Berlin television show in 1968

Eric Burdon And The Animals, 1966-1968
Vic Briggs had been one of two lead guitarists in the psychedelic configuration of Eric Burdon And The Animals, which ran from November 1966 through the end of 1968. The Animals had been a hugely popular "British Invasion" band from 1963 through 1966, but on one of their last tours, lead singer Eric Burdon had taken a day off in San Francisco (around August 9, 1966). Burdon experienced that rarest of events, a "warm San Franciscan night," and visited the Fillmore and Avalon, and it changed his music and life. Burdon, still a big star, reconstituted the Animals as a jamming psychedelic blues band.

I will refrain from telling the entire story of the second Animals (though you can read it all here), but guitarist Vic Briggs joined the group in November of 1966. The band's first American tour began in February of 1967. Although fans knew about Burdon from the "old" Animals, the new group's live sound was closer to Quicksilver Messenger Service, but with a dynamic lead singer. Briggs' jazzy approach to the guitar contrasted nicely with the bluesier approach of fellow guitarist John Weider (bassist Danny McCulloch and drummer Barry Jenkins filled out the group). Although live tapes are scarce, all the evidence suggests they were  a tremendous band. To the extent that the Animals sounded like Quicksilver, it was somewhat coincidental, since only Burdon had been to San Franciscos, and the Animals had ended up with their sound by their own path.

Needless to say, Eric Burdon and The Animals were a big hit in San Francisco. On March 26, 1967, the Dead were playing the Avalon, and The Animals--who at the time were much bigger stars--dropped by the show and played some songs as a guest act. This was where Vic Briggs first met the Dead. The Animals also played the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967. The band was very popular, and hugely popular in San Francisco. Although Burdon's lyrics sound dated now, the group had big hits, with "When I Was Young," "San Franciscan Nights, " "Monterey" and "Sky Pilot." Briggs took the swinging electric sitar solo on "Monterey," which he played on guitar when the band played live.

The second Animals had a great run, but they were beset by management and financial issues, and Eric Burdon could be a difficult bandleader. Briggs left the group in July 1968, on fairly amicable terms. Even though the entire band had relocated to Los Angeles, the Animals' guitar post was turned over to another old English pal, Andy Somers, today better known as Andy Summers, and famous as one-third of The Police. Eric Burdon And The Animals soldiered on until the end of 1968, while Briggs chose to become an independent producer in Los Angeles. When the Grateful Dead invited Briggs up to the Bay Area to jam in September 1968, Briggs was unaffiliated with any group.

David Crosby, Fall 1968
David Crosby's story is known to most rock fans, so I won't detail it. The famous party at Joni Mitchell's house where Graham Nash sang a third harmony part for Crosby and Stephen Stills (on the song "You Don't Have To Cry") took place in July 1968. By August 1968, Nash had left The Hollies and soon relocated to Los Angeles. By September 1968, Crosby, Stills and Nash were working together and plotting world domination. However, from the point of view of the Grateful Dead, who were long-standing friends, Crosby was another guy without a band. He had left The Byrds at the end of 1967, and had hardly recorded or performed since. Even if the Dead knew about Crosby's collaborators, it would hardly have seemed set in stone yet.

It's hard not to draw the conclusion that the Dead, or at least Garcia and Lesh, were shopping for new bandmembers. There had been a meeting where Weir and Pigpen were at least threatened with being fired, even if it was financially unviable, and the Dead were about to record their third album. Why invite two guitarists from Los Angeles up to the Bay Area, if the Dead weren't at least considering their options?

The 1969 Capitol/EMI album Wings Of A Man, by former Animals bassist Danny McCulloch, produced by Vic Briggs

Antion Meredith (Vic Briggs)
Fortunately, as a result of having worked extensively on the history of Eric Burdon And The Animals, I had been in touch with Vic Briggs. In this century, Briggs uses the name Antion Meredith and lives in New Zealand. The Vic Briggs story of being a musician in the 60s is a great one, but his life is, if anything, even more interesting after that, but you'll have to read about it yourself (and it's well worth the time).

Fortunately, Antion's memory is spectacularly good and his stories are always engaging, making him an ideal contact for a rock prosopographer. Thanks to the miracle of email, I found out quickly that I was right--Vic Briggs was the guest jammer.

(personal email from me to Antion Meredith)

It seems there is a tape in the Grateful Dead vault dated September 21, 1968 (a Saturday), and the tape is marked "jam with David and Vic." At the time, the Dead were thinking of firing Bob Weir and Pigpen (band politics) and fooling around with others. The 'David' was future NRPS guitarist and old Garcia pal David Nelson. However, other people, including the Dead's archivist [David Lemieux] said "I have no idea who the 'Vic' might be." Well, hey, I've got an idea who the Vic might have been...

Any chance you skipped out to Pacific Recording in San Mateo (near SF) in September '68 to jam with Garcia and the boys (not Weir) on "The Eleven" and other difficult stuff? Any chance they offered you the gig?

(personal email from Antion Meredith to me)

Lot of energy around this week.  On Tuesday I did an interview on
national TV here in NZ:
http://www.3news.co.nz/A-story-of-love-yoga-and-vampires/tabid/372/articleID/251728/Default.aspx

And today this print interview hit the internet:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/north-shore-times/6808993/Singing-to-a-new-tune

And now you write to me about that jam session.  I’m going to to tell you as much as I can remember about it.  For some reason I have barely talked to anyone about it in the last 45 years; probably because no one ever asked me.

We first met the Dead at that one off gig we did at the Avalon Ballroom in April of 1967 [sic-March 26, 1967].    I really hit it off with Bill Kruetzman and Phil Lesh who were sharing an apartment with their ladies in Haight-Ashbury a few blocks from the Dead House. (This meant that they never got busted along with the rest of the Dead when the cops raided the Dead House, but that’s another story).

After the Monterey Festival I went to stay with them when we played the Fillmore [June 27-July 2, 1967].  I flew back to LA for us to play the Whiskey [July 6-8] and then John Weider and I flew back to SFO to spend two weeks just hanging in the land of Hippiedom.  This was all in 1967.

Later, in the fall [October 19-21], we were back in the Bay Area.  I stayed with Bill and Phil again.  I also met Mickey for the first time.  He had joined the band since I had last been there.

I cannot remember how it came about but yes, I did find myself down at the San Mateo studios with Jerry and we played together.  I cannot remember who else played except for one person and this may surprise you.  If indeed this was the same tape (there may be a problem with dates, as I’ll explain in a minute), the David referred to is none other than David Crosby.

That’s right, one and the same, of the Byrds and later Crosby, Stills and Nash.  I have no idea what David was doing there but I am 100% certain he was there.  He didn’t play any lead, he left that to Jerry and me.  I do not remember who played bass, drums or anything else.

This was the only time that Jerry and I played together.  In retrospect I don’t remember why I never jammed with the Dead. I was around for some of their rehearsals at the Marin Heliport during the summer of 67 but I do not recall ever jamming with them except on this one occasion.  And, as I said, I can’t even remember if any more of them were there playing with Jerry, David and I.

A friend of mine who was also close to Jerry once asked him about me and my playing.  Jerry said to him “You know, I’ll tell you one thing about Vic.  When we played together, everywhere I went, there he was, right there with me.”

I certainly took this as a compliment because, in those days, there were not many guitarists’ who could keep up with Jerry.

That’s as much as I remember.  Now, here’s the problem.  Looking at your site and the dates on it, I would say that this event happened on Saturday October 21st 1967.

I remember a couple of days after we finished our Fillmore gig [October 19-21, 1967], flying to LA with Mickey Hart.  The Dead were heading for LA, I think to record.  That was when they rented that big mansion house which later became notorious.  It is shown in Lisa Law’s Flashing on the Sixties book [note: Pacific Recording was not open in 1967, so the date has to be September 1968, not October 1967].

I’m not 100% certain and my mind was starting to get pretty addled at the time, so it is quite possible that I confused this with 1968.  In October of 68 I was by then an independent producer/arranger in LA and it is certainly possible that I was up in the Bay Area for a visit.

Anyway, here’s what I know for sure.

• I jammed with Jerry at the San Mateo studio.
• David Crosby was there, also playing.
• It was a Saturday (I have this funny talent for remembering the energy
  of different days of the week and associating them with events that
  happened on that day). So it may be that my memory is off and this actually happened in 1968.
• However, no one ever said anything to me about maybe joining the Dead.

One day I’ll tell you how Jerry and I met up again at Bill Walton’s house in San Diego in 1989 and how I was inspired to buy the first guitar I had owned since 1970.

September 21, 1968
Although Vic Briggs was our only eyewitness to the September 21, 1968 jam, there was nothing casual about the event. The Grateful Dead had gigs on a Friday and a Sunday, and the Sunday gig was out of town, and yet they invited two friends over for a jam, with two other players missing. Both of the players were Los Angeles musicians, too. Now, it's possible that both of them had reasons to be in town, which Vic alludes to, but it still had to be planned and organized.

Pacific Recording is in San Mateo, on the South Bay Peninsula, between Palo Alto and San Francisco. It's not near anything, and LA rock musicians do not "hang out" in San Mateo. The Dead themselves were based in Novato at this time, an hour to the North, so it wasn't really convenient for them, either. I would note, however, that San Mateo was only a few minutes from San Francisco Airport, so if either of their guests were flying into or out of SFO, Pacific Recording would have been extremely convenient.

Maybe it was just for fun. Maybe the players were in town, and Garcia and the Hartbeats were having a jam without Weir and Pig, and invited them over. No one asked Vic to join the band, so at the most any plans were somewhat unspoken. Still, it happened. Members of the Grateful Dead invited some guitar player friends to the studio and the thought of another version of the Grateful Dead had to at least have crossed Jerry's mind, if not Phil's. We are fortunate to have the very slightest trace as to what they might have been thinking, just for the evening of September 21, 1968.

March 18, 1973 Felt Forum, New York, NY: New Riders Of The Purple Sage & Special Friends (FM VI and 1/2)

The Village Voice ad from February 15, 1973 for the March 18 NRPS show at the Felt Forum

(this is a modified version of an earlier post)

On March 18, 1973, the New Riders Of The Purple Sage played The Felt Forum, the auditorium in the basement of Madison Square Garden. The show was broadcast in its entirety on WNEW-fm, New York City's leading rock station. Besides being a fine broadcast of the New Riders in their prime, the show featured numerous special guests. Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Donna Godchaux helped out on vocals on different songs, Jerry Garcia played electric guitar and banjo on a few numbers, Bob Weir sang a couple, and Keith Godchaux played grand piano for much of the show. The most memorable part of the performance, however, was when Garcia, Weir and Godchaux joined the New Riders and began the second set with a trio of gospel numbers: "Cold Jordan", "I Hear A Voice Calling" and "Swing Low". Garcia played banjo and Weir played acoustic guitar, the only instance of the two playing acoustic together on the East Coast between 1970 and 1980.

The Grateful Dead were playing three nights at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale in Long Island, but for whatever reasons (probably the New York Islanders) they were booked for March 15, 16 and 19 (Thursday, Friday and Monday), so they had the Sunday night off to hang out with the New Riders. It's remarkable enough that the Dead guested on a radio broadcast, but thanks to the great Its All The Streets You Crossed blog, we can now see that the Grateful Dead were all but advertised in the Village Voice. The ad above is from the February 22, 1973 edition of the Voice, a full month before the show, and the ad says "New Riders Of The Purple Sage & Special Friends." The message would be unmistakable: in 70s rock talk, "Special Guests" would have meant 'opening act who hasn't been booked yet', but "Special Friends" would imply extra people on stage. It wouldn't take a genius to note the Dead's performance dates on Long Island and see that they had the night off.

There were plenty of live FM performances in the 1970s, but relatively few of them featured guests, as the record company was paying for the band to be on the air. The economics of 70s FM broadcasts depended on some entity, usually a record company, buying up the ad time that was "lost" during the time the band was playing live on the air without commercials. Generally speaking, if a record company paid for their band to be broadcast live on FM radio, they did not want their sponsored act upstaged by friends, however talented, when the purpose of the financial subvention was to promote the company's act. Columbia Records, the New Riders label, would have paid good money to make sure that the New Riders were broadcast live for some hours on the biggest New York rock station. As a practical matter, I suspect that Columbia agreed to purchase a substantial number of ads through the month of March, rather than laid out cash per se, but the net effect would have been the same.

In the case of the Dead, however, since they were bigger than the New Riders and had a unique relationship to them, Columbia would have been ecstatic to have the Dead join the New Riders on the FM broadcast throughout the entire Tri-State area. For the Dead, the significant factor here was that by Spring 1973 they had left Warner Brothers and were working for themselves, so they didn't have to concern themselves with whether their own record company "approved" of them appearing with their friends. In early 1973, Grateful Dead co-manager Jon McIntire (reputedly "Uncle John" himself) was the manager for the New Riders Of The Purple Sage. Both the Dead and the New Riders were booked by Out Of Town Tours, Sam Cutler's agency, so coordination would have been easy.

In fact, as an indication of the clout of the Dead in this context, not only were the New Riders broadcast in their entirety, but the set of opening act Ramblin' Jack Elliott was broadcast as well. At the time, Elliott, though a legend, did not have a label and had not released an album in three years (his last album had been released in 1970 on Reprise). However, Elliott was also booked by Sam Cutler, and clearly the presence of Jerry Garcia was enough to induce Columbia to subsidize the broadcast of Ramblin' Jack's set as well as that of the Riders.

However, since the Dead were performing elsewhere, their contract with the Nassau promoter, whom I believe was Bill Graham, would have prevented them from being mentioned by name. Also, since the name "Grateful Dead" was not formally invoked, the band members could show up and perform on whichever or whatever songs they felt like. Knowing what we know today, Garcia must have had his banjo with him because he was probably practicing constantly, trying to get up to speed for Old And In The Way, which had just begun to play in the Bay Area. It's a great touch that he used it to perform with the Riders--I think March 18, 1973 was almost the only time he played banjo on stage with them (Garcia did play banjo briefly at a unique show at The Matrix on July 7, 1970). Besides the mini-acoustic set, Garcia played banjo on "Henry" as well as electric guitar on "Glendale Train," obviously just having the kind of fun he couldn't have if the marquee had said "tonight: NRPS with Jerry Garcia."

The Village Voice ad from February 15, 1973 for upcoming Capitol Theater shows

Pity poor John Scher. In New York at the time, Ron Delsener promoted shows North of the Hudson River (New York City proper) and John Scher generally promoted shows South of it (in New Jersey). Scher's principal venue was the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ. Scher had booked the New Riders at the Capitol for Friday, March 23, 1973, five days after the Felt Forum show. The New York City (Tri-State) metro area is so large that the Passaic show would have drawn a different crowd than the Felt Forum show, even though they were only 20 miles away from each other.

The Grateful Dead had been booked for March 15, 16 and 19 at the Nassau Coliseum. Their scheduled opening act was their Marin County compatriots The Sons Of Champlin, who had recently released an album on Columbia as well (the great Welcome To The Dance). However, after the first night, the Sons found out that the entire family of bassist David Schallock had been murdered, in a terrible tragedy. The Sons all rushed home. Who filled in as the Dead's opening act? Well, apparently the New Riders played with the Dead the other two nights (there's even a tape of March 19).

However, with the Dead having made a surprise guest appearance at the Felt Forum show, and the Riders opening for the Dead, the buzz would have been in the air, so everybody in New Jersey must have assumed that the Dead were going to drop in at Passaic, too. Never mind if that's a rational judgment: I guarantee you everybody standing in line for the show that night had heard about New York (probably in a greatly exaggerated fashion) and was fully expecting Jerry and the boys to make an appearance. Anyone on the Deadheads mailing list could have seen that the Dead were booked for Utica on March 22 and the Spectrum March 24, so it would have seemed perfectly plausible.

The 1973 New Riders were a great live band, and I'm sure they put on a terrific show at the Capitol, but the audience was probably still let down. It must have been tough for the Riders to rock through their best songs while a crowd of Jersey Deadheads (plus some Philadelphia lunatics, of course) shouted "Jerrrry!"

April 17, 1971, Dillon Gym, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

The ad for the Dillon Gym show, in The Princetonian student newspaper of February 22, 1971. This appears to have been the only publicity for the show, which seems to have sold out instantly.

On Saturday, April 17, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a show in Dillon Gym at Princeton University. Beyond the enjoyment of the packed house, the show has become legendary in Grateful Dead circles because, for whatever reasons, a crisp board tape circulated as far back as the early 1980s. Although the band had had some rocky moments when Mickey Hart left the band in February, by April the Dead were firing on all cylinders. For listeners a decade later, the Princeton show was an expansion of the "Skull & Roses" album, with the Dead playing a striking cross section of American music along with their own original material. Dead fans have been enjoying the Princeton tape ever since, complete with epic Pigpen raps in a 27-minute "Good Lovin'" and a 16-minute "Turn On Your Lovelight." The Princeton show was celebrated at great length in the Tapers Compendium, and it may be one of the best-known Dead tapes ever.

Yet for all of the high profile of the Princeton tape, the context of the show at Dillon Gym has become obscured. 1971 was a different universe, and the micro-universe of Princeton University itself was an even more distant land. Part of what made the Princeton show so special was the insulated nature of the show, a show financed by the University exclusively for its own students, a financial arrangement that would be unheard of today. At the same time, the students chose a happening Fillmore East headliner from the opposite side of the country, an opportunity only made possible by the fact that the rock concert market in New Jersey was not fully formed yet. This post will take a look at the Grateful Dead concert at Dillon Gym on April 17, 1971, and focus on what made the concert a unique event that could not be duplicated.

An announcement from the Friday, April 16, 1971 Princetonian, promoting the Princeton FREE Weekend. The fine print notes that the Grateful Dead show is, in fact, not free

Princeton University
Princeton University was founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, and it has been located in Princeton itself since 1756. It was just the fourth Chartered Institution of Higher Education in the American colonies. The University took the name Princeton University in 1896, and it is rightly regarded as one of America's finest undergraduate and graduate institutions. As an Ivy League school, Princeton students are always top-of-the-line. Of course, smart and accomplished as most Princeton students have always been, at least some of the undergraduates have always been at the school because of the wealth and prestige of their families, but that has always been a part of the Ivy League. Princeton, as the southernmost of the Ivies, has always had an historic connection to the South, so the school had a 20th century reputation as somewhat conservative.

The Borough of Princeton had been built up around Princeton University. Nassau Street was the main street of the Borough (now city) of Princeton as well as the front entrance to Princeton University. While in one sense Princeton is a college town, in another way it has a relaxed, wealthy feel that is quite different than your typical State University main strip. At the same time, Princeton is far more interesting than the usual moneyed enclave. Over the last few decades, and perhaps longer, former or current residents of Palo Alto have found Princeton eerily familiar, even if they have never set foot in the town before. The peculiar ways in which Palo Alto seems to be a younger, Western doppleganger for Princeton are too arcane to go into here, but suffice to say it is not a surprise to this former Palo Altan that the Grateful Dead's one show in Princeton was a stunning success.

The 1971 College Student
Undergraduates in 1971 would generally have been born between1949 and 1953. They would mostly have been in junior high when Beatlemania hit, so they mostly loved rock music. However, for the first explosion of live psychedelic rock, from 1967 onwards, they mostly would have had to wish and wonder. The original Fillmore scene, and similar scenes in places like Boston and Manhattan, were small and underground, and confined to bohemian enclaves in inner cities. Not many high school students were near enough to a Fillmore or a Boston Tea Party, and fewer still had a way to get there, with or without the permission of their parents.

However, when those 60s teenagers got to college, they were ready, ready, ready to rock and roll. They had read about all night debauchery and ear-splitting music--what was college if not a chance to experience that? In the 1960s, colleges still had entertainment budgets to provide extracurricular fun for their resident students. Sometimes this had comical results, like the time Jose Feliciano headlined the Ohio University Junior Prom, along with opener Led Zeppelin (yes, this really happened--May 19, 1969). By the time 1970 rolled around, however, the "entertainment committee" at most colleges had some serious rockers on it who tried to make sure that the best available bands came through. Booking agents caught on to this dynamic, too, and the Fillmore bands who were still together started playing more shows at colleges.

The Grateful Dead had been playing college bookings pretty steadily since 1969. To your typical college student, circa 1971, the Grateful Dead were the Real Deal. The Dead had been infamous since the Fillmore days, and were well-known to have "played all night" many a time. With two recent albums that featured hummable tunes, and getting airplay on FM stations, it wouldn't be hard for the long-hairs on the entertainment committee to to get the middle-of-the-roaders onboard. Since most colleges had entertainment budgets, a school like Princeton could afford the Grateful Dead's fee (around $10,000), because they weren't exclusively dependent on ticket sales. So for the students at Princeton, all future leaders of government and industry, a visit by one of the most infamous bands from the 1960s had to be very desirable indeed.

Princeton, conservative as it was, had been forcibly inducted into the 60s. Apparently, the first African-American students had been admitted to Princeton only in 1964. More dramatically, a court case in 1967 had forced Princeton to admit women. The very first women admitted as permanent students at Princeton were freshman in 1969, although apparently many of the first women at Princeton were actually transfers. Note that the show as advertised above was presented "in cooperation with the Classes of 1972, 1973 and 1974." Those three classes, who would have been Juniors, Sophomores and Freshmen in the Spring of 1971, were the first Princeton classes to have admitted women. Pigpen's admonitions during his legendary "Lovelight" rap may have been valuable advice for some of the more sheltered Princeton undergraduates.

The Flying Burrito Brothers (with Rick Roberts having replaced Gram Parsons) were playing Alexander Hall on April 22, the Thursday night after the Dead show.

The Northern New Jersey Rock Market, 1971 (ca. 01 BSE: Before Scher Era)
Up until the middle of 1971, the most important figure in the New Jersey rock concert market was Bill Graham, even though he had never promoted a concert in New Jersey. Once Graham introduced the Fillmore East, on March 8, 1968, he became a central figure in the East Coast rock market. Playing the Fillmore East could make or break a known or unknown band, so playing there was not only profitable but a mark of prestige, as well. The Friday night early show at Fillmore East was almost always reviewed in the Village Voice, Billboard, Cashbox and other periodicals, so a good showing had significant consequences.

Bands contracted to play the Fillmore East had a standard clause where they could not play an advertised show within 20 days and 50 miles of the Fillmore East date. Some of the details may have varied, and it may have been applied differently to opening acts, but headline acts had to fear the very-real wrath of Bill Graham. Graham, naturally, was hip to the idea that a band could play a free concert or unannounced club show in Manhattan, and create some very good buzz for a Fillmore East show, but he was not going to let another promoter take away the Fillmore East's hold on the hippest touring rock bands. Much of the teenage population of New Jersey was in the North, less than 50 miles from Fillmore East, and as a result, the most populous part of New Jersey in the late 60s and early 70s was a no-fly zone for headline rock acts. Jersey rock fans had to go to either Manhattan or Philadelphia for their rock fix.

The actual members of the bands may have only been vaguely aware of the restrictions of their contracts, if at all. However, their management, booking agents and record companies were acutely aware of it. The band members of the Grateful Dead might have thought it was funny to poke Bill Graham in the eye, but it would not have been funny to Warner Brothers or their booking agent. Graham's ability to enforce his contract did not rest on his legal standing--although I'm sure Bill had a sharp attorney--but on the very real threat that anyone who crossed him would find that their other bands were not booked at the Fillmore East.

An effective exception to the Fillmore East rule (which was probably shared by every other major promoter in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere) were student concerts at colleges. Even community colleges had entertainment budgets in those days, so bands like the Grateful Dead could play paying gigs at what were effectively student dances without violating any contracts. For example, I have confirmed that they played a Sunday night dance at the Edison County Community College in Edison, NJ, on Sunday November 22, 1970. The only "advertising" was a few mimeographed flyers (none yet recovered) posted around the school. So the Grateful Dead and other bands played a fair number of shows at New Jersey colleges, but those events were hardly known outside their schools. When the Fillmore East closed, the door in New Jersey opened for John Scher and others to promote shows, but up until the middle of 1971, live rock bands in New Jersey seemed largely to have been confined to colleges.

Rock At Princeton, 1970-71
Princeton was no junior college, so there was plenty of student entertainment. There was a professional theater company housed on campus, called McCarter Theater. McCarter Theater also acted as promoter for rock concerts on campus, whether or not the events were presented at the McCarter Theater itself. Reviewing The Princetonian newspaper for the 70-71 Academic year, I found quite a few campus rock shows:

October 3, 1970, McCarter Theater: Van Morrison
October 17, 1970, Dillon Gym: James Taylor (moved from Alexander Hall)
November 14, 1970, Alexander Hall: Miles Davis
November 21, 1970, Alexander Hall: Delaney & Bonnie & Friends
February 20, 1971, McCarter Theater: Tom Rush
March 12, 1971, Alexander Hall: Delaney & Bonnie & Friends (rescheduled from Nov 21 '70)
April 16-18, 1971: Princeton FREE Weekend
April 16: Palmer [Football] Stadium: Free Admission, Free Beer, Free Music
April 17: Dillon Gym: Grateful Dead/New Riders Of The Purple Sage
April 18: The Old New Quad: Mini Motherball Festival, Free Music
April 22, 1971 Alexander Hall: Flying Burrito Brothers
April 26, 1971 Alexander Hall: Cat Stevens
May 1, 1971 Alexander Hall: Kate Taylor
May 15, 1971 McCarter Theater: Incredible String Band

The McCarter Theater seated several hundred, and Alexander Hall seated about 1,100. Dillon Gym was the old gym, built in 1949, with a concert capacity of about 3,200. Bill Bradley, Princeton's best player ever, had played in Dillon, but in 1969 the University had opened the 5,000-capacity Jadwin Gym, so Dillon was relegated to campus uses. Dillon was used for bigger acts, like James Taylor, and particularly for acts that were perhaps too robust for venerable Alexander, built in 1892. However, Dillon  Gym still used folding chairs on the floor, rather than open seating.

There had been a surprisingly robust tradition of cool music at Princeton (as documented in the Princeton Alumni Weekly).  Generally, folk acts usually played McCarter Theater, and rock acts or larger folk acts played Alexander, but bands like the Dead played Dillon Gym. Relatively few acts played Dillon: James Taylor was so popular in 1971 that he was uprgraded to Dillon, and Poco played there in 1972. There was an apparently unique two night stand by Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention on April 27-28, 1973 (what nights those must have been--RIP, George Duke), which somewhat confirms my suspicion that Dillon Gym was considered a more suitable venue for bands with members named things like "Pigpen" and "Motorhead." According to the Alumni Weekly, acts like Bruce Springsteen, The Yes and Genesis also played Princeton in the early 70s.

Life in Princeton, ca '71. Want ads from the April 16 Princetonian have everything you need: stable your horse, buy an MGB-GT, get Dead tickets from Bob, a water bed, give Kevin a ride to Bennington, a tuxedo and a turntable. Which of these would you remember today?

April 17. 1971, Dillon Gym, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ: The Grateful Dead
Let's set the scene. It's Saturday night, April 17, 1971, at Princeton University. It's Spring, now, and about 20% of the student body are real, live women. There's a weekend event with free beer--my college never had free beer--and local bands, and a Fillmore East headline act is playing on campus. No need to take the Dinky train to Penn Station, because the real deal is coming to the little gym next to your dorm.

The old Tapers Compendium has a detailed description of the event from the campus point of view, thoroughly researched by Nicholas Meriwether. Princeton undergraduates have a strange tradition of "eating clubs," kind of like fraternities, only, apparently, not, but suffice to say every Eating Club was revved up for this Saturday night. Somewhat buttoned down Princeton was jumping on to a rocket ship to the end of the 20th century, and all the future leaders of industry and government were hopping on board. Everyone whose parents wouldn't let them to go to Fillmore East, or who couldn't sneak out of Prep School? No matter--the Grateful Dead were coming to Princeton.

Some Deadheads don't find the 1971 Grateful Dead to be as memorable as either the primal 69-70 music that preceded it, or the ethereal 72-74 configuration that followed, and generally I am inclined to agree. However, for converting 1971 college students, the 1971 model of the Grateful Dead couldn't have been better. With some known songs from Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, and some crispy soul, rock and country covers, the Dead were accessible to the average rock fan. With only four real players--Pigpen's organ only joined in occasionally--even the serious space was somewhat more comprehensible to the uninitiated. With a dose of professionalism and some Pigpen charisma, the 1971 college tour made Deadheads for life. People went to college to discover the wide world, and when the Grateful Dead brought the wide world to them--at Franklin and Marshall, or Bucknell, or Allegheny College, or Princeton or SUNY Cortland--people jumped on the bus with both feet.

The Princeton Alumni Weekly has a special memory of the Dead's show

The Grateful Dead’s invasion of Dillon on April 17, 1971 — Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang in tow — is famous among devotees for a quintessential performance of “Good Lovin’ ” by band member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, then suffering from what would be fatal cirrhosis. “The concert was expensive, $10,000,” says [McCarter Director Bill] Lockwood, a faithful Deadhead who treasures a cassette recording he made that night.

The band played until “well past midnight,” Lock­wood recalls, and “a substantial part of the audience, which was all students, was stoned out of their minds.” Concertgoers passed ­marijuana joints down the rows of seats, he says. According to legend, when a Princeton proctor demanded that ­shaggy singer Jerry Garcia extinguish his joint, Garcia snarled, “I’ll never play here again.” He never did.

The story about Garcia and the Proctor (essentially a campus cop) always gets repeated. The truth of the matter is that the Grateful Dead would never again be small enough to play a 3200 seat gym  in Northern New Jersey. Ironically, once the Fillmore East closed, New Jersey became open territory. John Scher started promoting very successful Grateful Dead concerts at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, and the Dead played no more campus concerts in the state, for the very reason that New Jersey became one of the largest and most fervent Deadhead strongholds in the country, and any campus gym would have been overrun.

A clip from the Newsday article of April 8. 1971, announcing the cancellation of the scheduled Grateful Dead show at Hofstra University in Long Island on April 19, 1971, when 4500 out of 5000 tickets had been sold

The "Lost" Hofstra Concert, Monday, April 19, 1971
The uninitiated may wonder whether my fixation on advertising restrictions from the Fillmore East affected concerts in New Jersey. However, a fellow researcher sent me an article from the Long Island paper Newsday, on April 8, 1971 (clipped above), explaining how a scheduled Grateful Dead concert at the Hofstra Gym on Monday April 19, was abruptly canceled. The article begins

Since last Thursday was April 1, nobody at the Hofstra University Student Center took it seriously when someone called to say that The Grateful Dead was cancelling out of a scheduled April 19 concert at the school. "It was April Fool's Day," David Gould, student center director said yesterday. "At first we thought it was a joke."

Some joke.

Among the less humorous aspects were about 4,500 tickets that had already been sold at $4 and $5 for the concert, which was to be held in the 5,000 seat Physical Fitness Gymnasium because the Grateful Dead is a very popular rock group. 

At Hofstra, The Grateful Dead has lost much of its popularity in a very short time. A telegram followed the call, and since it was not April Fool's Day when the telegram arrived, reality dawned. Despite confirmation of the concert date on March 3, The Grateful Dead would not show up. The inevitable hectic scene of students lining up for refunds was the immediate result at the Hempstead campus yesterday.

The rest of the article, along with some background information about the band and comments from students, has some surprisingly vague quotes from Grateful Dead representatives.

Ron Rainey, who books the Grateful Dead for the International Famous Agency in New York, didn't help settle anybody's stomach with his explanation of the cancellation. "I don't really want to go into it in great detail," he said. But he did indicate the rock group "didn't want to be overexpose itself in the New York area." As for the group, Rainey said they were en route to Boston and he did not know how to reach them.

Then again, maybe it wasn't so much overexposure as overbooking that caused the washout. So opted Rock Scully, co-manager of the rock group, who was found at Fillmore East. Said Scully, "we get our contracts from both coasts and they don't catch up to us for an okay in time, sometimes. Our agent is often overenthusiastic in making bookings." He added, "it looked like a way-too-crowded itinerary."

As the blank tone of the Newsday writer suggests, neither Rainey nor Scully had convincing explanations, and indeed I believe they were merely intended to save face. According to Google Maps, Hofstra University is 28.5 miles from the Fillmore East. Regardless of what the exact contractual restriction of the Fillmore East, there was no way that Bill Graham was letting that stand. Long Island was a big market for the Fillmore East, since the Long Island Railroad and the Subway could take teenagers straight into the Fillmore East (the N, R, 6 and L were nearest). If Hofstra had sold out immediately, that might have been one thing, but since there were available tickets, Hostra could cut into the Fillmore East's box office.

Now, Graham was no naif, and probably knew perfectly well that the same people who bought the final tickets at Hofstra were probably going to most of the nights at Fillmore East anyway. Nonetheless, even though Graham was privately already planning to close the Fillmores, he had months more of shows to get through, and he wasn't going to let other promoters think they could horn in on his territory. Shutting down a nearly sold-out Grateful Dead concert was a clear warning blast to other promoters--cross Bill at your peril. Rock Scully and the booking agent were forced to make some token explanation that no one believed, but both needed Graham as much as anyone, and certainly the Dead had signed the original contract with Fillmore East.

Really, it's too bad. The Grateful Dead were rocking hard in the Spring of '71, and they were young and strong. What else were they doing on that Monday night? The night after Princeton, the Dead had played SUNY Cortland, 216 miles to the North of Fillmore East. What do you think they did next? I think they came back to Manhattan and hung out, and Garcia probably just practiced guitar all night. They would have had way more fun in front of 5000 rockin' Long Islanders, and who knows what Pigpen would have come up with. But business was business, and the Dead's contract with Graham mandated no Hofstra show two nights before a lengthy Fillmore East run.

Coda: Princeton Rocked (In It's Day)
Dillon Gym was just about exactly 50 miles from the Fillmore East, and with only one ad in the student paper and an instant sellout, Bill Graham had no reason to interfere with the Dead concert. This geographic constraint must surely have helped Princeton throughout the 70s, because even though Graham retreated to the West Coast, every other promoter must have had similar restrictions for their headline bookings. But Princeton seems to have been safely isolated from both Manhattan and Philadelphia, so the McCarter Theater was free to book shows. A search of the Princetonian reveals a lot of good shows in the early 70s. Just look at the Spring of '72

• March 4 McCarter Theater: J Geils Band/Billy Joel (Peter Wolf must have melted the joint)
• April 1 McCarter Theater: Mahavishnu Orchestra/John Prine (there's a double bill)
• April 15 Alexander Hall: Curtis Mayfield (people, get ready)
• April 24 Alexander Hall: New Riders Of The Purple Sage (I'll bet they smoked joints)
• April 29 Alexander Hall: Mark Almond (these guys were great, if now largely forgotten)
• May 5 Dillon Gym: Poco (another great live band)
• May 14 McCarter Theater: Dave Mason (only you know and I know)

The fine shows continued throughout the first half of the early 70s. Since rock was expanding, there were a lot of touring bands, so a Princeton show was welcome on an off-night, even if the gigs were tiny. Frank Zappa did two shows at Dillon (April 27-28 '73), and Bruce Springsteen played an early and a late show at Alexander Hall (December 10, 1974).

By the late 70s, however, the rock market was just too big for tiny Princeton. For one thing, John Scher was booking a lot of shows at the Capitol Theater in relatively nearby Passaic, and he had a lot of clout, insuring that he kept the best bands. On top of that, the sort of acts that would have played McCarter or Alexander in the past were now commanding fees that required them to play Jadwin Gym. The Talking Heads and Bruce Springsteen played Jadwin Gym in the same week in 1978, and Bruce, of course, rocked the joint--whatever others may say, Mercer County is still part of New Jersey--but Jadwin paid a price. The whole crowd danced to Bruce while standing on folding chairs in the gym, and it created a $15000 repair bill. Although there were a few more concerts over the years, with The Kinks and 10,000 Maniacs and a few others, Princeton was priced out of the rock market. Bands still came to Princeton on occasion, but it was no longer a regular tour stop.

I'm sure that 70s graduates of Princeton all have their memorable rock moments, but it's hard not to see the Grateful Dead show as the day when uptight Princeton got down, whether anybody was ready for it or not. The Grateful Dead never came back, not because a Proctor made Jerry put out his joint--the Riders would not have turned up the next year if that were the case--but because the world where the Dead could play a sleepy little gym was just about to disappear, and the Princetonians who went were lucky enough to catch the bus before it got on the superhighway.

September 2, 1966, Ayn and Lyn Mattei Debutante Ball, La Dolphine Mansion, 1760 Manor Drive, Hillsborough, CA: The Grateful Dead/Al Trobe

Joan White's San Francisco Examiner Society column from Monday, September 5, 1966, celebrating a debutante ball on the previous Friday featuring the Grateful Dead at a mansion in the wealthy South Bay town of Hillsborough

People such as myself who have regularly analyzed the historic lists of Grateful Dead concert appearances have been aware of the band playing at a debutante ball in exclusive Hillsborough on Friday, September 2, 1966. Like many people, I had generally assumed this to be Bob Weir's sister's debutante ball. However, Eric of LoneStarDeadRadio recently sent me the newspaper source for the information, and it tells a somewhat different story. It's still true, though: the Grateful Dead, then known as scary long-haired, drug-addled outlaws, played a high society ball for the most eligible of young ladies, at perhaps the biggest mansion in the toniest town in the Bay Area.

Debutante Balls and High Society in the United States
Before we get down to the serious business of Grateful Dead performances, a word about debutante balls is in order. For some centuries in France and England, young women of the upper classes made their "debut" amongst their peers when they were eligible to marry (as Jane Austen put it, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife"). They were presented to eligible young men in a series of parties and dances, and formally speaking their "debut" was when they were presented to royalty. Wealthy Americans adopted similar traditions, although obviously without the presentation to Royalty. At least until the 1960s, most major metropolitan areas had a system of parties and events that led to a formal "cotillion" where eligible young women from usually wealthy families were formally presented as part of adult society.

The parents of these debutantes had usually spent significant money on parties and dances leading up to the major event, although there was no formal structure. The young women were known as "debutantes," and were often local celebrities in their own right. Such events were written up in the  local papers. The major papers in the Bay Area all had "society columnists:" the infamous Patsy Lou Montandon was the San Francisco Chronicle's society columnist (her immortal 1968 book How To Be A Party Girl is a true camp classic), and Joan White was the SF Examiner columnist. Appearing in the society column in effect made a young woman part of the upper class, whether or not that was a true representation of the family's income.

A photo from the September 5, 1966 San Francisco Examiner. The caption reads "Bob Weir of "The Grateful Dead" wails away at ball which was also attended by his deb sister, Wendy Weir."

Joan White's Column in the San Francisco Examiner, Monday, September 5, 1966
For those of you who can't expand the screen easily, here are the key parts of the article (up top) [update: the article refers to the family as "Mattel" with an L, but I am assured now that the family spelled the name "Mattei."]

Brilliant Deb Ball In A Bay Chateau
Debs Danced To Rock 'n' Roll Beat
by Joan White, Examiner Society Editor
La Dolphine, the beautiful Hillsborough mansion that has been silent and unoccupied off and on since it was built before World War 1, burst into brilliant life with a rock 'n' roll beat Friday night, for a deb ball the Albert C. Mattels gave for their granddaughters, Ayn and Lyn Mattel [sic].

The Mattels have been leasing the home, which is modeled after Le Petit Trianon at Versailles, for six months of the year from the Hugh Chisholms.

The 18th century styled chateau is set in 3 1/2 acres of terraced gardens which were floodlighted with pink and white spots for the party. Despite the evening's chill, the young set stayed outside to dance to the rhythms of the Grateful Dead, while their elders remained in the ballroom where Al Trobe played.

It was a wonderful mixture of old elegance and Carnaby Street. In fact, two young men, Bruce Webster and William Lombardo, wore their dinner jackets over mod pants and boots. And another was in acceptable black tie with the exception of the wide mod belt that circled his waist.

One of the members of the Grateful Dead is Bob Weir, the brother of Peninsula Ball deb Wendy Weir, who made her bow earlier this year at a marvelous pop party at San Francisco Airport.

The beat of the band was so infectious that the adults were eventually lured to the outdoors dance platform where credible frugs were performed by Mrs. Ernest O. McCormick and Berens Nelson, and Mrs. William Wallace Mein Jr and Bryan Hemming.

Guests were shuttled up the drive to the mansion by Volkswagen buses. Pots of yellow spider-chrysanthemum lined the divided staircase where dinner tables were covered with moss green cloths and centered with yellow and white chrysanthemums and white candles.

La Dolphine Mansion, 1760 Manor Drive, Hillsborough, CA, just south of San Francisco

Society And 60s Rock
Up until the mid-60s, becoming a debutante was an indisputably glamorous thing for a young woman to do. Debutantes could hope (truthfully or not) to be the envy of all their peers, and might even become local celebrities. Young people are young, however, and one different thing about "society" events is that they were attended by both young and old people. Where a dance was involved, the sixties solution was to have two groups: a big band to play dance music for adults, and a rock group to provide dance music for the younger set. The groups would typically alternate, giving each social set a break to relax and mingle while the opposite group played. In the Bay Area, at least, and probably in many places, playing a society dance was a common paying gig for working bands. In some cases, they had to wear suits and ties to do it, but a paid booking was a paid booking.

The La Dolphine event seems to have been on a far grander scale than a typical debutante dance. For one thing, the mansion was so big that the two bands could play simultaneously. The Grateful Dead played outdoors, while pianist Al Trobe (probably leading a Count Basie-style big band) played in the ballroom. Keep in mind also that probably about 200 people were invited to the event, at most, and only half of them would have been interested in a rock band. Thus the Grateful Dead were engaged to entertain 100 teenagers.

In September 1966, the Grateful Dead had not yet released an album, and they were more infamous than famous. Nonetheless, they were becoming San Francisco headliners. The La Dolphine ball was on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, and on that Sunday night the Dead would be headlining the Fillmore. While the Dead were far cheaper to hire in Fall '66 than they would be later, hiring a Fillmore headliner would be far more expensive than the usual teenage dance combo. Clearly, the event was on a higher order than a typical dance.

Eric of LoneStarDeadRadio, who procured the newspaper article up top, did have an interesting, if unverifiable story that he sent me in a personal email

amazingly enough after I posted it in Facebook someone commented that he is married to the sister of the 2 girls mentioned in the article the Mattei sisters Ayn and Lynn he said they were in Europe and wouldn't come home for deb ball unless grandma Mattei got the Dead to play so the old lady made it happen or so the story goes

I find this story pretty plausible. Under normal circumstances, a debutante ball would not hire an expensive city headliner, when any local combo would do. However, if the granddaughters insisted on a certain band, a family that could accord to rent La Dolphine could afford the Dead's fees, whatever they were. Given that Bob Weir's sister was part of the same society circles, it would not have been hard to approach the band, and the group surely needed the money.

So, props to the Mattei sisters, for choosing to have the Grateful Dead when they could have had anything. Certainly if I was having a party for 100 of my friends, and I wanted a band for dancing, the 1966 Grateful Dead would be a great choice. I suspect the Dead may have dusted off some favorites by the Rolling Stones and the Olympics that didn't get played as much at the Avalon and the Fillmore, but I doubt we'll find out. Many of the attendees may have only been vaguely aware, if at all, of the name of the scruffy, unsigned band who were playing the dance music. But here's to hoping that Ayn and Lynn are still out there, and maybe they can tell us the setlist highlights, at least.

The Players
Albert C Mattel
Albert C Mattel had been President of the Honolulu Oil Company, until it was bought out by Jersey Oil in 1962, which is today better known as Exxon. The Honolulu Oil Company was associated with the 19th century steamship captain and entrepreneur William Matson, who was a pioneer of the San Francisco to Honolulu trade. However, the Honolulu Oil Company was based in San Francisco, and when it was sold in 1910 its principal fields were in Kern and Coalinga, CA. While the Mattel family was clearly quite wealthy, there was no connection to the Mattel toy company [note: I don't know why the name is googlable as Mattel, even though the family name was Mattei by this time]

Hillsborough, CA
Hillsborough is a wealthy Peninsula town halfway between San Francisco and Palo Alto. It is on the hills overlooking the Bay, just above San Mateo and Burlingame. Beginning with the formation of the Burlingame Country Club in 1893, Hillsborough society flourished around this area, with many of San Francisco’s most influential citizens commuting to country leisure via the newly minted Burlingame Train Depot. Several magnificent estates remain, including La Dolphine, orginally built for George Newhall by Lewis Hobart in 1913, then on 20 acres and known as Newmar.

The peninsula south of San Francisco had originally been a mixture of farms and "country estates" for wealthy city residents. The Southern Pacific train line extended down to Menlo Park because SP partners had huge estates there. After Leland Stanford and Timothy Hopkins purchased land in 1875 to create Palo Alto and Stanford University, the line was extended down to Palo Alto. By the mid-20th century, however, while the South Bay was prosperous, they were by and large typical middle class suburbs.

A few communities, however, were still the provinces of the rich, particularly old San Francisco money. Old San Francisco money styled themselves as very European, and flashing wealth in public was frowned upon, but debutante balls were a place where conspicuous consumption was not forbidden. In the picture above, I suspect that the necklaces the Mattei sisters are wearing were not costume jewelry. Hillsborough was by far the toniest and richest community in the South Bay, followed closely by Atherton, where Bob Weir grew up. Nonetheless, save for a few families, possibly including the Matteis, most residents of Hillsborough and Atherton were not crazy rich in the way that Silicon Valley residents are today.

The Good News perform at a debutante ball, with their strobe-light-ready clothing. The caption from  a forgotten newspaper says "Peninsula Deb Janet Laird, Steve Boyden dance to the Big Beat"--clipping courtesy Tim Abbot

Wendy Weir's Debutante Ball, Spring 1966
For many years I (and others) had assumed that the La Dolphine event was for Wendy Weir, and that was why the Grateful Dead had played it. However, while Wendy must have been instrumental in making sure the Dead played La Dolphine, according to the article, it turns out that Wendy had come out in the Spring of that year. Joan White's article says "Peninsula Ball deb Wendy Weir, who made her bow earlier this year at a marvelous pop party at San Francisco Airport." If Wendy Weir debuted at a marvelous pop party, why didn't the Grateful Dead play at it? The issue appears to have been one of scheduling.

Generally speaking, debs do not "come out" in the Summer, so Wendy's event must have been in April or May of 1966, or even earlier. A debutante dance was a carefully planned event, so all the arrangements must have been made months in advance. Back in February and March of 1966, the Grateful Dead had relocated to Los Angeles, seemingly permanently, to "make it" in the music business. Thus they would not have seemed to have been available for Wendy Weir's event. Of course, we know that the Dead had returned to the Bay Area by April, but the debutante ball would already have been booked. If there had even been a plan to have the Grateful Dead play for Wendy, and there's no certainty that there was, the band missed any opportunity to book themselves in advance.

However, the discovery of this article solves a peculiar little mystery, and as a result I know which pop band played Wendy Weir's party. Sometime ago, I published a post on the interesting history of Redwood City's first blues band, The Good News. Besides being one of the first white blues bands in the Bay Area, modeled on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Good News also seem to have been the first band around the Bay Area to tour with their own light show. The light show was mainly a strobe light, but that was pretty far out for the time. The band wore outrageously colored Day-Glo clothes that looked exotic under the strobes.

I learned about The Good News in detail from their lead guitarist Tim Abbott. Abbott went on to play with The Chocolate Watch Band (and later Shango), but he mentioned in passing that The Good News had played a debutante party for Bob Weir's sister at the SFO Airport. I had wondered about that, since I had thought her big event was at La Dolphine, but Joan White's article confirms that Wendy came out at the Airport. Strange as it may seem, SFO Airport was fairly new at the time, and there was a lounge that could be rented. I suspect that if guests were flying in, it was very convenient. In 1966, at least, it must have been a desirable place to host an event, and with the strobe lights and DayGlo clothes of The Good News, it must have indeed been a marvelous pop party.

The picture of the Good News above was sent to me courtesy of Tim Abbott, and it was taken at a South Bay deb party, even though Abbott no longer remembers which one, where it was held, or what the newspaper was. It's not impossible that the picture actually was from Wendy's deb party, but in any case it's a good representation of what her event must have been like.

Yet the world of the South Bay was still quite small in the 60s. When the Mattei sisters wanted a specific band at their event, one of the band members had a sister who was part of their social circle. The Good News were a popular South Bay blues band in Spring 1966, but since they never recorded, they are thoroughly forgotten now. However, besides lead guitarist Abbott, the other members included lead singer Dave Torbert and drummer Chris Herold. Both Torbert and Herold would leave The Good News to join The New Delhi River Band with David Nelson. Torbert and Nelson went on to join the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, and when Torbert left the Riders, he re-united with Herold. Herold and Torbert went on to form Kingfish in 1974, and of course Bob Weir joined Kingfish a few months later. I wonder if Torbert and Herold recalled that they had played Wendy Weir's debutante ball eight years earlier?

Appendix
September 4, 1968 Suzanne Bradford Debutante Ball, Burlingame Country Club, Burlingame, CA: The Sons Of Champlin/Walt Tolleson Orchestra
Bay Area Rock bands regularly played Debutante Balls in the 60s, usually on their way up the ladder. Just for comparison, here is a clip from Oakland Tribune society columnist Robin Orr, describing an event where the Sons Of Champlin alternated with a local big band. I think this event was a more typical debutante ball, while the Mattel sisters event at La Dolphine was grand even for the well-to-do.

Two members of the Sons Of Champlin, pianist Geoff Palmer and guitarist Terry Haggerty, were the sons of professional musicians. In fact, Terry's dad, Frank Haggerty, a fine jazz guitarist, even played some gigs with Al Trobe, so it's not impossible that he had played the La Dolphine show.

Robin Orr's society column from the Oakland Tribune on September 5, 1966. A debutante dance was held at the Burlingame Country Club that featured both the Sons Of Champlin and The Walt Tolleson Orchestra

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)