The Grateful Dead Celebrate 50 Years of Wake of the Flood with Deluxe Edition
Two CD set, which includes demos and live cuts, comes out September 29th
The year 1973 was a bittersweet one for the Grateful Dead.
Founding member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who brought his love of the blues to the band along with his organ and harmonica skills, died on March 8 of that year. His last performance with the Dead was June 17, 1972, in Los Angeles. Pigpen’s drinking, along with primary biliary cholangitis (an autoimmune disease), made him a member of the 27 Club.
There were other personnel issues happening around this time. Drummer Mickey Hart left in early 1971 amidst his accountant father embezzling the band’s money (“He’s Gone” is the musical version of the tale), rejoining the Dead in late 1974. Meanwhile, Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux joined the Dead in late-1971 and early 1972, providing keyboards and backing vocals respectively.
Musically, the band was on something of a hot streak. The early ‘70s are seen as one of the very best periods in the band’s 30-year history (or nearly 60, if you count the various incarnations of the post-Jerry Garcia years). Their Spring 1972 tour of Europe resulted in their iconic triple-album release, Europe ’72 – quite the vinyl treat after the double-album Skull and Roses released a year earlier became the first Dead album to be certified gold.
So when the Dead stepped in front of the microphones in August 1973 to record their first studio album since 1970’s American Beauty, they did so minus two founding members and plus two newcomers.
Wake of the Flood, the first record on the band’s Grateful Dead Records label, was released October 15, 1973. It was their sixth studio album and their highest-charting one up to that point, peaking at #18 (American Beauty peaked at #19).
The Dead, fundamentally a live band, always had something of a difficult relationship with the studio. Even so, many of the songs on their two previous studio albums, American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead (also released in 1970), could be considered as the definitive versions (sorry, Phil, but don’t even try comparing live versions of the superb “Box of Rain” to the studio recording).
Not so with Wake of the Flood, with the possible exception of “Weather Report Suite,” the 12:42 album closer. It’s a gorgeous hymn to the eternal cycles of love between man and woman, farmer and soil, human and planet. Written by Bobby Weir, Eric Anderson and John Perry Barlow, it’s a showcase for Weir and the only track on the record to which Robert Hunter doesn’t contribute his formidable lyrical skills.
“Here Comes Sunshine,” the track which lends the album it’s title, is a good example of the way much of the album feels, which is to say: kinda perfunctory. At 4:40, it seems kind of absurd for a tune that averaged about twice that length in concert, and often stretched out to well over 10 minutes when it was played in ’73 shows. Hunter wrote the lyrics in reference to the Vanport, Washington flood of 1948, though took a bit of artistic license by placing the song a year later: “Wake of the flood / laughing water / ’49 / Get out the pans / don’t just stand there dreaming / get out the way / get out the way.”
That said, there is plenty of truly iconic Dead to be heard here, most notably “Eyes of the World” which would probably find a spot in most Deadheads’ lists of all-time favorite tunes. With its foot-tapping, neck-bobbing rhythm, Garcia’s effervescent guitar and Hunter’s delightful hippie lyrics (“Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world … Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings”), “Eyes” has undoubtedly turned many a music fan into a true Deadhead over the years. It’s status as a classic was acknowledged when it was included in the setlist at Dead & Company’s final show on July 16, 2023 in San Francisco.
“Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodleoo,” which opens the album, is one of this writer’s favorite Garcia-Hunter collaborations, a kick in the pants about leaving the past in the past and starting over after unfortunate circumstances. “If all you got to live for / is what you left behind / Get yourself a powder charge / and seal that silver mine.”
It’s followed up by Keith Godchaux’s one and only collaboration with Hunter, “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away,” played live five times in September 1973 and never played live again after that. Yes, it sounds like maybe it should have been left on the studio floor, and the emphasis on saxophone makes the tune feel pretty un-Deadlike. Then again, it’s not hard to imagine it being part of a twofer, maybe seguewaying into something like “West L.A. Fadeaway” or “Don’t Ease Me In.” In retrospect, it feels like a bit of a miss that ‘80s Dead didn’t reach back and put “Let Me Sing” in the setlist now and again.
Then there’s “Row Jimmy,” which is to the Dead as “The Big Sleep” is to film noir – a gorgeous piece of art with an ultimately incomprehensible storyline. But why overthink it? That chorus just feels like a mantra for, well, for almost anything: “Gonna get there? / I don’t know. / Seems a common way to go.”
“Stella Blue,” another languid slow song, is presented back-to-back with “Row Jimmy.” Maybe side one of Wake is the preferred vinyl for introspective Deadheads at a restless 2 a.m. Many interpretations say it’s a reference to the Stella guitar favored by blues players in the ‘20s and ‘30s, and the lyrics seems to support that theory: “In the end there’s just a song / comes crying like the wind / through all the broken dreams / and vanished years / Stella Blue.”
In and out of print (mostly out) since its release, Wake of the Flood is being celebrated this month with the September 29 release of a 50th anniversary edition. Bonus tracks include demo versions of “Eyes of the World” and “Here Comes Sunshine,” plus six tunes recorded live November 1, 1973, in Evanston, Illinois: “Weather Report Suite,” “Morning Dew,” “Playing in the Band,” “Uncle John’s Band,” a reprise of “Playing,” and “Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodleoo,” which you can listen to here.
It was celebrated last month, too, when the third release in the Angel’s Share series dropped on August 18. It’s comprised of 38 demos and outtakes from the Wake sessions, including four versions of “China Doll” and eight versions of “Unbroken Chain,” tunes that would appear on 1974’s From the Mars Hotel. If the idea of being a fly on the wall while the Dead work out some of their most beloved tunes, be sure to give this a listen.
Ah, the good ol’ Grateful Dead: Nearly six decades after their founding, they continue to be the musical gift that keeps on giving.
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