‘Twas roughly 55 years ago when The Grateful Dead released “Live Dead.” That album changed everything for me, especially how I listen to music. No other record affected me the ways that “Live Dead” did then and, remarkably, continues to do today.
Some brief history. I did not know anyone at Mizzou after moving from NY in 1971, but a friendly soul invited me to attend a party off campus and I jumped at the chance. It was August 1971, if my memory serves me well. Once at the party, someone offered me a drink, vaguely mentioned something about some guy named Owsley Stanley, and asked if I had ever listened to The Grateful Dead? I was an 18 yr old jock at the time and I replied, “I had heard of them but no, I had never listened to them.”
After consuming my drink, this person escorted me downstairs to a dimly lit basement and led me to a reel to reel tape deck (remember those?!) where I put on headphones and took a seat alone. The next thing I remember were the initial chords of “Dark Star”. As the song progressed, I sat there in total astonishment at what I was hearing. This was not The Beatles or The Stones, bands I liked, nor the jazz of Duke Ellington & Count Basie that my Dad had taught me to love. This was … visceral …
Everything I thought about music, how I had defined it and tried to package it into neat 4/4 time that was so typical of the homogenized and sanitized popular music of the time, it all transformed into unanticipated and unimaginable auditory bliss. All previously held concepts and confines of music dissipated.
As the album progressed through “Dark Star” into “Saint Stephen” into “The Eleven” and then, wham, The Dead’s cover of Bobby Blue Bland’s “Turn on your Lovelight,” I recall standing up, headphones still secure, and dancing in place like some maniacal statue that had come to life. It was musical ecstasy beyond anything I had ever experienced. After “Lovelight”, I sat back down trying to gather my thoughts.
And then, it changed …
“Feedback” followed by “Death Don’t have no Mercy.” At that point, I believe I again stood up, screamed at the top of my lungs, tore the headphones off, ran up the stairs into the sea of strangers partying above, and bolted out the front door while I continued to exhort.
I’m not exactly sure what happened after that, but I’m kinda sure that folks at the party followed me outside onto the streets of Columbia, all of us screaming at the top of our lungs.
Now, 55 years later, it is quite possible that none of what I remember that night actually happened, other than listening to “Live Dead” in that dimly lit room. What I can say is that, to this day, when I play “Live Dead” and I hear the first few bars of “Dark Star,” and the album continues, I get a physiological reaction that does not happen with ANY other recording. I don’t understand it, I can’t make sense of it, and I don’t really care that I can’t.
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