That was one hell of a concert. Three hours of nonstop brilliance. I hardly missed Jerry Garcia. They were exquisite!
Phil Lesh – The Grateful Dead – The Everlasting Trip Is Over!
Sad news – Phil Lesh is dead. We’re all melting away into history!
“Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead passed peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love.”
The message also included a request for privacy, stating: “We request that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time.” Lesh, who helped shape the sound of a generation with the Grateful Dead, was 84 years old and is mourned by his wife Jill amongst others.
The Grateful Dead were formed in 1965 as The Warlocks and became the house band for Ken Kessey’s Acid Tests. They were a seminal part of the San Francisco sixties scene.
In 2011 We were heading off to Australia and had booked a nostalgic trip back to San Francisco and Los Angeles to revisit our youth. We were there in 1971 and 1979 and had many experiences on the road, met lifelong friends and visited the haunts of Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller at Big Sur and Pfeiffer State Beach.
San Francisco held great memories of a fleeting burst of sanity with bands like Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service and, of course, The Grateful Dead.
We were only in San Francisco for a few days before heading off down the coastal highway to Big Sur and Los Angeles. We stayed at a little boarding house and the landlady told us we were lucky to have got a room. San Francisco was flooded with weirdos. I asked why. She told me that this druggy weirdo band was playing their annual gig at Bill Graham’s Auditorium and it attracted every stoner from the whole of the States. Well, my ears pricked up. I checked it out. That weirdo band was none other than The Grateful Dead – or the remains of them – playing under the name Furthur (The name of the Ken Kesey bus the Merry Pranksters had toured the States in). I went straight down and bought tickets.
We were only in San Francisco for 3 days but we were lucky enough to see Phil Lesh and the rest of the band play a riveting set at the Bill Graham Auditorium. They were fabulous – just like seeing the Dead at the height of their powers. At the end of the gig I stayed behind. They were burning off CDs from the set straight off the mixing board. I bought a 3 CD mix of the entire set. It was brilliant!!
That was the last time I saw Phil Lesh! But what a memory of a great gig.
Thanks Phil!
I shall play that gig today and reminisce.
Today’s Music to keep me SsSSAaaaNnnNEeE in Isolation – The Grateful Dead
They evolved through a number of incarnations. Today they’ll put a backdrop to my day. They’ll always take me back to San Francisco!
G̰r̰a̰t̰ḛf̰ṵl̰ ̰ ̰D̰ead– A̰m̰ḛrican Beauty– Full Album 1970 – YouTube
Today’s Music to keep me SAAAAnnnnEEEE in Isolation – Grateful Dead
The Dead seemed to epitomise the whole of that West Coast sixties counterculture. They came out of that San Franciscan scene with their hypnotic brand of acid rock. They were a band who had served their time learning the trade as an R&B unit called the Warlocks and then providing feedback and noise for Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests.
I saw them in San Francisco a few years back – going under the name Furthur (Ken Kesey’s truck’s name). They were still brilliant.
So today I’ll play with the Dead.
Photography – The Grateful Dead at the Bill Graham Auditorium 2013 – as Furthur.
Photography – The Grateful Dead at the Bill Graham Auditorium 2013 – as Furthur.
Rock genres – Acid Rock
Acid Rock as a genre started in the mid-sixties and flourished in the late sixties.
At that time LSD – lysergic Acid Diethylamine – was legal and thought to be safe. Marijuana was the drug of choice for the burgeoning alternative culture and was extensively used.
A Rock Scene sprang up in the two cities on the West Coast of America which had attracted in large numbers of alternative characters. In Los Angeles the scene was centred around Venice and the Sunset Strip and in San Francisco it was around Haight Asbury.
The culture was very radical. It became known a the Hippie movement typified by its long hair and bright clothes, liberalised attitudes to drugs and sex and a distrust of the establishment.
The Acid Rock culture had grown out of a coalescing from a number of sources. There was the influence of the British Bands who had inspired a number of musicians to get into bands; the politics and poetry of the Folk movement, exemplified by Bob Dylan, with its radicalising message; the influence of East Coast musicians like the Lovin’ Spoonful and then the seminal band the Byrds with their Folk-Rock and spacey sounds.
In Britain a similar thing was taking place simultaneously. It was based in London where both cannabis and :LSD were circulating and was creating a Psychedelic scene based around clubs like The UFO Club, Middle Earth and the Eel-Pie Island.
The two were to cross-fertilise and interact.
In Los Angeles the leading lights were the Doors, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Buffalo Springfield, The Mothers of Invention (Frank Zappa) and Love. They tended to have a Blues based sound. Frank was a a bit of a one-off and not really what I would call Acid Rock but …….
In San Francisco it was Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Grateful Dead. There was more of a Folk influence here.
The effects of the drugs on the music was very evident. The pieces were drawn out into long jams with the integration of soaring guitars and harmonies. It was intricate and interweaved into complex rhythms and there was the use of different instrumentation, musical forms, electronic sounds. It created a dense sound that was mesmerising and you could get lost in. It was album based, rather than singles, and was focussed on the ideology of the alternative culture with its peace, love and anti-establishment themes. The music was of and for the sixties alternative culture.
When coupled with light shows in small clubs the atmosphere was a total immersive experience that was intended to be consumed while high.
Surprisingly it was instantly commercially successful with bands like the Doors and Jefferson Airplane hitting the singles charts. This threw everyone into a dilemma. The bands were in danger of being called ‘Sell-outs’ and losing their street credibility and the establishment was shocked and did not know how to deal with the drug references and social messages.
Some of these bands went on to become among the biggest in the world – like the Doors. Others developed huge stadia followings like Grateful Dead and others fell by the wayside like Country Joe and the Fish.
My favourite was the incredible Captain Beefheart who produced the greatest body of work, pushed the boundaries, was innovative and extraordinary, was a poet of great originality, and created complex music the like of which has never been bettered. He influenced a thousand other musicians and remains a largely unsung hero.
My book – ‘In Search of Captain Beefheart’ is not actually about the Captain; it is about my quest for the lodestone of Rock Music. It’s a tale of a man’s journey and love of Rock Music.
I have a number of other books concerned with Rock Music you might enjoy – Tributes to the Top Rock acts:
My views on the greatest albums of all time:
Rock lives!!