The Grateful Dead’s Mission from Mars

Grateful Dead studio albums have been unfairly maligned from both sides. 

Deadheads would rather listen to the expansive live versions of the songs long available from intrepid tapers while critics of the band use them as evidence that it was more a cultural phenomenon than a serious musical outfit.

The Grateful Dead concert experience was vastly more satisfying — hearing something that would never be heard again — because the group trusted their audience to be open (unlike, say, The Eagles). That doesn’t mean that every minute of every show is gold but the opportunity for something special was always there. 

But the albums serve their own purpose and provide insight into the band’s development in a way that even seeing an entire tour’s worth of gigs could not. It could be argued that without the studio experience, which the members did find somewhat stifling, their live contributions could have been less unfettered, a lesson they learned from absorbing the duality of jazz musicians. 

The 1967 self-titled debut, raw and bluesy, set a template for including unusual covers alongside original compositions and having multiple singers, emphasizing a non-hierarchical band structure. 

Anthem of the Sun from later the same year began to hint at the exploratory quality the band was developing in concert (by layering various live recordings into the mix) and growth as songwriters as they moved away from simple forms. 

One year later, Aoxomoxoa’s set of Jerry Garcia tunes solidified an aesthetic of deep but still playful thinkers and was as much a bookend to the ‘60s as the tragic Altamont festival held a few months later.

Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, both from 1970, are what laypeople think of when the Grateful Dead are mentioned: storytelling in the finest tradition of what would come to be called Americana, a loping bounce as quickly identifiable as Iron Maiden’s gallop and Garcia out front as a leader/mascot/lunatic running the asylum even if the band was far more of a collective enterprise artistically.

A nearly three-year hiatus from studio recording was snapped with 1973’s Wake of the Flood, and those only casually aware of the band may have thought they were listening to an entirely different group. That wasn’t completely wrong. Founding member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan had died in the interim and taken much of the band’s grit and bluesiness with him. Beforehand, second drummer Mickey Hart had departed after the fiduciary scandal involving his father, leaving Bill Kreutzmann to provide an open rhythmic canvas. Then, a new jazz-adjacent facet emerged via pianist Keith Godchaux and songs like “Eyes of the World” and “Let It Grow” jostled alongside some of Garcia’s most plangent ballads.

This brings the timeline towards the close of the Grateful Dead’s first act (the second began in June 1976 and ran until Garcia’s coma in July 1986, necessitating the cancellation of the fall tour, the third running from December 15th, 1986 until Garcia death at 53 in the summer of 1995). Their last studio album of the period (taking 1975’s Blues for Allah as an outlier) was From The Mars Hotel, which celebrates its golden anniversary this month and has been remastered/speed corrected and reissued in fancy vinyl editions with stickers or a three-CD set with a period concert included.

It brings the band back more towards the sensibility of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty with Garcia’s “U.S. Blues” (first born as “Wave That Flag”) and “Scarlet Begonias” while continuing his talent for heartbreak with “China Doll” and “Ship of Fools.” The sound and camaraderie on certain tunes, like the aforementioned “U.S. Blues”, also are closest to what one would have heard live during this period, Godchaux’s contributions especially evident. 

It came at a fraught time in the band’s history. Earlier that year the Wall of Sound was debuted in all its aural power and financial burden. They played only 40 shows in 1974 due to the logistical requirements of hundreds of speakers and trucks, scaffolding and crew they required; by comparison the band had played 140 shows in 1970 and even 47 in the Garcia-death-truncated 1995. After October 20th, 1974 (the show which saw the return of Hart), the band would not return to regular touring until June 3rd, 1976 (four one-off San Francisco shows throughout 1975 of Blues for Allah notwithstanding). And when they did, they were a different band once again, two drummers somewhat lessening their ability for wide-open improvisation and Weir becoming more of a frontman alongside Garcia.

What makes this album so unusual in the Grateful Dead’s catalogue is that bassist Phil Lesh is featured as a composer and singer on two tunes: “Unbroken Chain” and “Pride of Cucamonga.” Yes, he had been part of the band’s harmonies since the beginning and debuted as a leader singer on his “Box of Rain” from American Beauty but years of singing without proper technique had destroyed his vocal cords and he had ceded harmony duties to Godchaux’s wife Donna and stopped singing lead after June 28th, 1973—several months before From The Mars Hotel was recorded—until March 20th, 1986. 

Even more unusual about those two songs is that, up until that point in the Grateful Dead’s studio catalogue, with the exception of Garcia’s “What’s Become of the Baby” from Aoxomoxoa, every other song on their albums had been played live prior to the studio sessions. “Pride of Cucamonga” was the second of only three songs never to be played live (the last was “France” from 1978’s Shakedown Street and thank god for that) while “Unbroken Chain” took over 20 years after From The Mars Hotel was released finally to break into a setlist.

This author was there. It was the 1995 spring East Coast tour after six West Coast dates. Philadelphia’s Spectrum was the first stop. The first night, March 17th, was actually the highlight: the second set’s “Truckin’” led into a musical tussle as Garcia moved things into “He’s Gone” until Weir riposted with opening chords of “Smokestack Lightning” before Garcia got the last word by speeding up into the melody of “New Speedway Boogie”. Maybe it was that tension that led to—for possibly the only time—Garcia not ceding the stage with the rest of the band to Kreutzmann and Hart’s “Drums” but instead staying for a mystical trio segment for several minutes. 

The day was also highly significant as the parking lot was soon abuzz with the information that some Deadheads had intercepted audio from the band’s rehearsal earlier that day, where they were going over the complexities of “Unbroken Chain,” with Lesh insisting he wanted to play it in the city that shared his name. At the third show, March 19th, I told a friend I saw before the first set that they were going to bust out “Unbroken Chain” before the night was over and he laughed at me. Then, at the end of Set 1, lighting in the shape of chains was projected onto the floor section. The opening chord sequence began. A couple of people screamed. Then as more people realized what was happening, a roar only matched in this author’s experience by the end of Game 5 of the 2001 ALDS between the Yankees and Red Sox (the series with the Jeter flip) shook the arena. It lasted for several seconds before quieting to a hush so that everyone could hear every detail, erupting once more at the beginning of the instrumental interlude and lasting for what seemed like forever after the band had departed for set break.

Garcia died less than five months later after an uneven and distressing summer tour. But on that night back in March, even after 30 years on the road, Garcia and the Grateful Dead showed they could still be transcendent.

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Andrey Henkin

Andrey Henkin is a writer based in Queens, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, Stereophile, WeJazz and accompanying numerous albums. He maintains the obituary website JazzPassings.com.

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