by David Browne
The newfound and striking aura of professionalism around the Dead extended to the conference room at their San Rafael headquarters. By then the phrase “there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert” was part of fans’ vocabulary, but there was little like a Dead board meeting as well. During band meetings in the seventies the floor would be thrown open to anyone who wanted to express an idea or speak out. “People would sit around smoking joints and saying, ‘We should play Cleveland after Chicago,’” recalls Sam Cutler of a typical early get-together. “And someone would say, ‘No, I like St. Louis, that’s the best place to play.’ Amateur shit.” Now that they were one of the highest-earning corporations in California, their business gatherings took on a more orderly air—as much as possible, anyway. They would begin at least two weeks in advance, when office employee Sue Stephens, the assistant to whomever was managing at the time and eventually also a video producer, would begin calling the band members individually to remind them of the upcoming gathering. After Garcia’s coma, meetings were restricted to band and crew, which didn’t always mean they were streamlined. Enthusiastic as always, Hart would throw out creative but sometimes impractical ideas; Weir would have a suggestion that would result in wisecracks from the other band members. Allan Arkush, who had by then known the Dead nearly twenty years and sat in on a few of these sessions, was struck by how unconventional they were despite the Dead’s best efforts. “It was fascinating how there was absolutely no forward momentum in these meetings, no matter what the agenda,” Arkush says, recalling one particular ideas meeting. “Mickey, Jerry, and Phil came in for a while. Bob came in for a few seconds and left. It was whoever was around. Whoever was there had a different idea. The roadies had ideas. You didn’t know if you should pursue one person’s idea or put them all together. It was hard to know how to deal with those situations.”
One of the few who could grasp and work with the dynamic of the band was Jon McIntire, who had returned to the management fold after a ten-year absence. (In the interim he’d managed Weir separately, among other pursuits.) “In the Grateful Dead the term ‘manager’ doesn’t mean what everyone outside thinks it means,” McIntire told writer David Hajdu. “It’s actually a lot more daunting than people would know, because of the lack of definition. Am I going to listen to the band? Yes. Is there a bottom line here? Yes, the bottom line is the band. But the band rarely would take a stand, first of all, that was unified, because they were just different individuals. But the individuals in the band would rarely have opinions so definite that they would preclude my making choices in what I was going to do. The one exception there would be Garcia, who occasionally would feel very strongly about something—like, ‘hey, man, I’m not playing the game—stop that shit!’ if I would be trying to make points that were a little bit too strongly in favor of business as usual out in the world, rather than creating our own game. Sometimes, I would go around to every individual in the band and take them aside, and I would explain what it was that I was trying to get them to see.” With techniques like those, McIntire was able to get a few things accomplished and move the group’s business forward.
Weeks after the “Touch of Grey” video had been filmed the meetings grew more focused and business-like. One concerned the marketing of long-form videos—So Far, a collection of performance clips and effects directed by Len Dell’Amico, and Justin Kreutzmann’s documentary, Dead Ringers, about the making of the “Touch of Grey” video. Would the two products compete for fans’ dollars? Bill Kreutzmann, who had been in charge of band finances very early in the Dead’s life and still kept a watchful eye on the money (and the managers who oversaw it), could be laconic in meetings, but he also knew when to make sure his point was made. According to notes from the meeting, he “suggested working out the timing and price structuring to be able to market both items. The board agreed that they want to be able to market both, but wise strategy and communication are important.”
Meanwhile Arista, sensing it might have an in-demand piece of music to market, began gearing up. The label prepared an initial shipment of 467,000 copies of In the Dark (“well beyond our most optimistic projections,” wrote John Scher, still working closely with the band, to McIntire on July 9). Soon after came a memo from Arista marketing executive Sean Coakley to Scher recapping radio play for select songs on the album: “Week #3 on ‘Touch of Grey’ . . . can be described in no other terms than awesome. Album radio is dominated by DEAD air. If this were a hype it would be nauseating; since it’s true it’s enthralling.” The label began planning a day-long celebration with MTV, to be called “Day of the Dead,” to introduce the band to viewers who’d been born around the time American Beauty had been made.
The Dead finished their part of filming and lip-synching, a short break was taken, and at 11 p.m. the time came for the ghoulish marionettes. The attention to detail was impressive: each skeleton was the exact height as its corresponding band member. With the help of Parish, Gutierrez secured one of Garcia’s actual guitars, and together they figured out a way to protect the front of the instrument from being scratched by the skeleton hand. Gutierrez’s company also suggested Weir and Lesh wear shorts “so that we can expose the skeleton’s knobby knees!” read an internal memo.
Before the skeletons were wheeled out onstage, the musicians popped in backstage to inspect them and were suitably amused. They’d seen them in the early production stages, but now they faced their own macabre apparitions in their own clothes. Kreutzmann leaned into Garcia’s skeleton and joked, “Keep on your diet and you’ll be fine!” (For once they could laugh about Garcia’s health scare.) Trixie Garcia recalls amusedly “the fake boobs on Jerry’s skeleton to make him look beefy,” and Garcia and Mountain Girl’s daughter Annabelle helped assemble the skeletons by inserting wooden planks down the spine. On a large metal truss platform twenty feet above the stage, the puppeteers took their positions and began manipulating the skeletons, who were placed in the same spots as the band. To Gutierrez’s surprise, the Dead stayed to watch the filming—not the entirety of the night but enough to prove they didn’t have complete disdain toward the process. “The fog was coming in, and the lights were on the fog—it was just perfect,” Hart recalls. “We couldn’t have wanted a better setting. The skeletons were creative. The other videos were stupid, but that one was fun.” When the marionettes started, the crowd roared as if they were watching the actual band. “They had all the same enthusiasm,” Gutierrez marvels. “We had the real Grateful Dead reaction to the marionettes.”
In the early hours of the morning the filming began to wrap up. Gutierrez and his crew would be there until just before dawn, although the Dead themselves were able to leave earlier—and, to some of them, not soon enough. Vans carried everyone back to their hotel, with some residual grumbling about all the hours they’d spent in the cold, lip-synching their song. “It was a long night, and it went on and on, and it was, ‘We’re dying here!’” recalls Mountain Girl, who was out in the crowd with Annabelle for most of the shoot. “Everybody was completely burnt out. It was a long drive down there, and then we do all this crazy shit. Everyone was beside themselves.” She noticed that Garcia seemed to be “very pissy” at that point, although she couldn’t always tell whether it was about their relationship or the work.
Gutierrez and his company would have just over a month to turn the video in to Arista—the deadline was June 8—so editing began almost immediately. When a rough cut was finished the director took the clip to Front Street, where by now the band was rehearsing for an upcoming tour with Bob Dylan. Gutierrez and his crew brought along a tape deck and monitor and set it up in the front office space, and the musicians took a break from rehearsing and gathered around to watch themselves in a music video. Culminating in the charming moment when the skeletons transformed into the live Dead, the resulting clip was clever and self-aware, and it captured the Dead’s sense of humor. The macabre aspect of it—the sight of a Garcia skeleton in an imitation of his clothes, just about a
year after he almost died—wasn’t lost on anyone. When it came to his documentary, Justin Kreutzmann thought all the outsiders who wandered onstage actually enhanced his project: “With all those people up there,” he says, “it made for an interesting shot.”
When the “Touch of Grey” screening was done, applause and approving comments followed; as was often the case, Garcia loving it was good enough for everyone. In the back Dylan said nothing, but he nodded and smiled at Gutierrez, in what seemed to be tacit approval.
The video would be merely the first of a new list of industry chores on the horizon. The band had to put finishing touches on In the Dark and rehearse for the tour with Dylan. Forbes, the business magazine that normally couldn’t have cared less about anything Dead, was requesting an interview for a lengthy story about the industry of the Dead in 1987: the ticket office and sales, the six thousand calls a day received by the hotline. Despite a few grumbles now and again, the Dead went along with it all. They had survived, and what better time to remind everyone that they had and then sell a few records in the process? As buzz for “Touch of Grey” and the Dylan tour began building, a palpable tingle enveloped the Dead office: they’d been hearing for twenty years that they could be a huge band, but that level of success suddenly felt within reach. Talking with Rolling Stone at the time, Hunter, giving a rare interview, wondered aloud whether the incoming tidal wave would be good for them all. “By all indications, we’re going to get the record-company backing all the things that are necessary to have a hit, and it’s a little frightening. Are we going to be eaten now? . . . I’m excited by it, and I have misgivings. I would like the world to know about the Grateful Dead; it’s a phenomenal band. But I don’t think the Grateful Dead is going to be as free a thing as it was.”
Only time would tell, but for the moment a few positive omens were in the air. During the “Touch of Grey” shoot they’d had the idea of filming a dog running off with the leg of the Hart marionette. One of the producers waded into the crowd, found a group of dog candidates, and set up an audition area for the owners to show off their pets’ tricks. One canine stood out and was hired. As it turned out, his name, recalling another heyday of the band, was Tennessee Jed.
Onstage in Pittsburgh, far from the turmoil outside.
© ROBBI COHN
CHAPTER 13
PITTSBURGH, APRIL 3, 1989
They’d trundled into the place six times before, dating back to 1973. And starting with its silver dome—which could pass for a spaceship that had crashed and half-sunk into the ground—the Pittsburgh Civic Arena had looked about the same. Tonight would seem to be no different—with one minor but telling change. As soon as he stuck his head out the backstage door, Dennis McNally, now in his fifth year as the band’s publicist, immediately had a feeling something was off. He was accustomed to seeing Deadheads milling about before shows, waiting to get in or eager to score tickets, but tonight, so many of them seemed to be out there.
As the Dead began wrapping up their third decade as a road machine, their operation was as clockwork and regimented as that of any major corporation. At each venue the crew would generally arrive first, before lunch, to begin the arduous task of preparing the Dead’s flotilla of gear, ensuring everything was in the same spot every night. The onstage Persian rug had to be rolled out and set in its precise location or else someone in the band might notice and take offense that it was a few inches off. Eventually the band would arrive by van or limo and be driven into the generic cement catacombs of whatever arena or stadium they’d be playing. The crew, which included Ram Rod, Parish, Candelario, and Robbie Taylor, a longstanding, loyal employee since the seventies, would begin the process of screening anyone who wanted to get backstage, not always a pretty sight. (As Parish had predicted, there was no fallout from the incident at Laguna Seca two years before.) Allan Arkush was always able to pass muster and make it backstage to Garcia’s area, where he witnessed another part of the ritual: unfamiliar faces streaming in with homegrown pot. “They’d hand him some in a box and say stuff like, ‘I crossed it with this type you really dug,’” Arkush says. “It was like a High Times centerfold.” After the roadies tested it first, Garcia generally accepted the gift with a smile. Because the dressing rooms rarely had adequate ventilation, Arkush would sometimes tumble out higher than when he’d walked in.
About a half-hour before show time management would pop in to the Dead dressing rooms to give each man the thirty-minute warning. Tonight the person handling that chore would be Cameron Sears. In 1987 Jon McIntire had again left the Dead, replaced by Sears, his right-hand man. A bearded former river raft operator, Sears had entered the Dead world in standard head-scratching manner: after he had taken some of the Dead office staff on several river expeditions, McIntire had called Sears with a job offer—despite Sears’s lack of experience working in the music business.
No matter the city or venue, other aspects of the Dead road experience always remained in place. There was the matter of figuring out something approaching a set list, or at least an opening song. With that began another part of the ceremony: the ribbing of Weir. As Arkush watched one night, Weir might suggest a song to start the second set, only to be greeted with mocking retorts. Someone else might then yell out the name of an incredibly obscure track from their back catalog, at which everyone would agree—before circling their way back to Weir’s original choice. Even though Mydland was younger, Weir remained the little brother who needed to be given a hard time. The crew would relentlessly tease him for the way he’d show up early for soundchecks and spend an inordinately long amount of time working on achieving the correct tone for his guitar. “It could be brutal,” says one. “It seemed like he would play the same note forever just to get the tone right.” (Luckily, the results generally paid off: the guitars would sound good.) The increasing brevity of Weir’s onstage shorts also egged them on. Weir took the mocking in stride, rarely if ever losing his cool. Like friends who’d met in high school and were frozen in time, they clung to their own interpersonal rituals.
During Drums everyone but the percussionists would retreat to his own space, and during Space anything offstage would be possible. (During one New York–area show Hart left his percussion area, walked over to guest Al Franken, seated by the side of the stage, and offered him a drink—all in the middle of the show.) The rituals would continue outside, where campers and vendors set up in the psychedelically festooned area that came to be known as “Shakedown Street.” Inside, tapers would gather in their now-established area and begin installing their recording gear. The security and safety guidelines were so ingrained that Ken Viola, promoter John Scher’s head of security, wrote up a pamphlet distributed to local promoters about how to deal with the crowds in and around the venues.
Following each show, once the Dead had left in their limos or vans, the promoters and band reps would gather for the inevitable backstage settlements, factoring in overtime costs, catering bills, and whatever other expenses were incurred. Alex Cooley, who promoted a number of Dead shows in Atlanta, recalls that the band would always walk out with 70 percent of the gate, anywhere between $250,000 and $700,000 per show, depending on the year. (The Omni had 17,000 seats but only sold 14,000 because the sound system took up the rest of the space.) After the show, assuming they had to move onto another town right away, the crew would begin the task of tearing everything down and loading it back into the trucks.
When McNally opened the stage door in Pittsburgh he was tending to one of his own regular jobs: escorting in local TV crews or photographers who wanted to shoot footage of the show. Although he noticed the gathering mob, he didn’t have time to ponder what was taking place. Like everyone else in the organization, he had an assigned task that had to be taken care of. Even if something went wrong, everyone involved assumed that, as always, the Dead would find a way to resolve it and carry on. That too had been de rigueur for decades.
Nearly two years earlier, in September 1987, McNally had been confron
ted with a wholly different and far more onerous task. To celebrate the success of In the Dark, executives from Arista, along with Scher, had gathered backstage at New York’s Madison Square Garden to have their photos taken with the Dead. Here was a standard industry ritual of its own: pose with the suits, hold up your gold records, smile, and watch as the photo of the victory lap was reprinted in the music trade magazines. But as McNally was learning, sometimes in the most excruciating way there was only one hitch: the band couldn’t be remotely bothered with those sorts of customs.
As many on the Arista business side had anticipated, In the Dark had become that rarity, a million-selling Grateful Dead album. The label’s promotional muscle—and the urge to ensure the record’s commercial success so that the Dead wouldn’t flee for another company—had worked in ways it never had before. It was almost impossible to turn on MTV and not see the “Touch of Grey” video, and the single climbed to number nine. In the Dark itself sneaked into the Top Ten, smirking alongside albums by Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, U2, and Mötley Crüe. Even when the album began slipping down the charts after peaking at number six, an issue of the Deadhead fan newsletter Terrapin Flyer, distributed free at shows, urged Deadheads to “call MTV to tell them how much you love the video” in order to “give the Dead’s new album a needed sales push because it has slipped slightly on the charts.” The fans could be as organized as the office itself.
A few months before, McNally had entered a backstage room where the Dead had all gathered shortly before going on stage—Garcia in his trademark black T-shirt and, as always, practicing scales—and broke the news that “Touch of Grey” was now a Top Ten hit. Glancing up from his guitar, Garcia cracked, “I am appalled” and went back to playing. The rest of the band exchanged quizzical looks, a collective hmmmm—the sound of men deciding how to respond to news about entering foreign territory. Not the worst feeling in the world, and yet so alien they couldn’t quite grasp it.
