But it worked - really worked! I heard it in 1974, and have never heard anything like it. Their near-breakup and yearlong hiatus when the Wall was retired probably had as much to do with hauling it around as anything else. It was an ingenious, almost completely insane solution, took a few years, and almost broke the band, financially and otherwise.
#WALL OF SOUND GRATEFUL DEAD HOW TO#
Rick Turner remembers him saying, “You know, the solution is the PA system has to be behind the band.“ Īnd so began a process of figuring out how to do that. It was a topic Bear knew well - he had appointed himself the Dead’s chief soundman after witnessing them at an Acid Test in 1965, close to their beginnings. He called everyone to a meeting in 1969 at what was then the band’s rehearsal room in Novato, California, to brainstorm about, basically, his dissatisfaction with the band’s sound. And so, the great Wall of Sound: it was mostly the inspiration of Augustus Owsley Stanley III, otherwise just called Owsley or Bear. Success to them meant things it didn’t mean to most other people. So, you understand - the Grateful Dead did not think like any other band.
“Well, yeah, it ought to keep us insecure.” So we’re getting an institution registered to promote research in the arts, sciences and education so I can give away my money easier. And I found after a while that it cost me $1500 to give away $1000. “When I recorded Garcia, I found for a while I was rich, so I started giving the money away. Ron Rakow had mentioned it as “one of the measures we’re taking to ensure that the Dead are never financially secure.” Jerry Garcia gives the details: One other side trip needs to be mentioned: the Neal Cassady Memorial Foundation. It’s a wonderful document of the band and company at a phenomenal time in their adventure.Īn excerpt to suggest the spirit that pervaded the band:
I want to encourage anyone reading this piece to read the RS piece, too. Their utter uniqueness was commemorated in an issue of Rolling Stone dated November 22, 1973, in a cover story called “A New Life for the Dead: Grateful Dead Handle Their Business”, and a cover that proclaimed, above an airbrushed picture of an ebullient Jerry Garcia, “Welcome to the Wide Open World of the Corporate Dead”. Every aspect of their existence was independent except their records, and by 73, they issued their last WB album and they launched Grateful Dead Records and Round Records. In the last WB period, they had learned to become totally self-reliant. There was Out of Town Tours, a travel agency called Fly By Night, the Dead’s publishing company Ice Nine, as well as Alembic, the most advanced instrument builder of the day, which had its beginnings under the Dead’s wings in this same period. The band had put out a number of albums on the label, including some that were very commercial, but in plain sight of anyone interested, anything but hidden away, they grew from a group of five guys in 1965 to a pretty massive assemblage of companies and people - about 75 people in all. To the world outside of San Francisco, they may have seemed a “Warner Brothers act” –– they were signed to the label from 1967 – 1973 - but they rarely acted like it.
In the early 70s, the Grateful Dead were the most interesting organization in rock music.