So Many Roads (38 page)

Given the burnout and stress that preceded their sabbatical from performing, the road back to the road had been measured. They'd only played a few times publicly in 1975—including the SNACK benefit at Kezar, previewing some of the more abstract new material they'd worked up—and released
Blues for Allah
, the album cut at Weir's studio, in September. Compared to
From the Mars Hotel
,
Blues for Allah
felt underproduced, almost drab at times. But starting with “Help on the Way/Slipknot!” the album had a cohesive, organic flow. With its cozy harmonies and languid chords, that song alone announced a more lissome version of the band, as did the instrumental second half, “Slipknot!,” which incorporated jazz chording on guitars, bass, and electric piano. Written hurriedly by Weir and Barlow, “The Music Never Stopped” amounted to their first foray into rhythms that hinted at low-key disco, but the call-and-response vocals between Weir and Donna Godchaux never sounded more charged.

Blues for Allah
presented the Dead at their most sociable, in “Franklin's Tower,” and most eccentric, in “King Solomon's Marbles,” a rubbery instrumental that gave Garcia and Keith Godchaux plenty of room to roam with their instruments. The latter felt less like a studio piece than an actual live performance, which was the key to
Blues for Allah
. For a band that notoriously had trouble translating its concert sound onto studio tape, the album felt especially alive. The experiment at Weir's studio, making something from virtually nothing, also resulted in the album-ending trilogy of “Blues for Allah,” “Sand Castles and Glass Camels,” and “Unusual Occurrences in the Desert,” three pieces that collectively sounded like Marin County monks on an acid trip.

To launch the album, the Dead played a sparkling performance of
Blues for Allah
in its entirety at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Because he'd used actual live crickets in “Sand Castles and Glass Camels,” the ever-sonically adventurous Hart bought a box of crickets from a pet store in Novato and carted them to the theater. He wound up leaving them there, and a week later the owners angrily called the Dead office, complaining that the crickets had taken over, especially backstage; the Dead just shrugged and declined to help out.

The Great American Music Hall show (and a free show in Golden Gate Park that September with Santana and Jefferson Starship) became a warm-up for further reunions and reparations. The allure of playing together and earning a sizable living from it couldn't be denied, and they were reminded that time on the road could be preferable to time at home. Just a few months later, in early 1976, they'd congregated at Weir's house with Scher, who'd first worked with the band in 1972 at Roosevelt Stadium in New Jersey. The following year he began forming a tight connection with the band—Garcia in particular—when Garcia and Hunter were busted for pot (along with LSD and coke) in New Jersey while driving from Baltimore to Manhattan. “Go bail out Jerry Garcia? Come
on
!” was Scher's delighted reaction when the call
arrived from management. In the middle of the night Scher drove over to his Capitol Theater in Passaic, opened the safe, and pulled out the few thousand dollars needed for bail; after Garcia and Hunter were freed they all drove back to Manhattan and stayed up talking until dawn.

At Weir's home the band talked about touring again, but under far more curtailed circumstances than in 1974. In a mailing to Deadheads that would announce the eventual release of
Blues for Allah
, they hinted at the stress of the road, announcing that they were considering “hit and run” shows “consisting of unannounced concerts . . . This will keep the size down and we will not feel obligated to play a place before announcing it if something else comes up.” Those words were the germ of an idea that would be nailed down at Weir's home.

It was clear to Scher that the Dead still enjoyed playing together but that aspects of their touring business had to change. The Wall of Sound would have to go, along with some of the extra hired hands; rented gear and a small crew would now be the norm—to “make everything more compact,” says Candelario, who survived that round of cuts. Over the course of hours of conversation Scher heard what the band wanted: multiple days at venues instead of arenas. “Bill Graham made the mistake [of thinking] they were a bunch of drugged-up hippies,” says Scher. “But by the middle of the seventies, not suggesting they were straight arrow, they were sophisticated musicians and business people who agreed they wanted to participate in the business.”

With that they began playing shows again in 1976, starting in Oregon in June. The performances sometimes felt tentative, as if they were still getting reacquainted. Hart had to learn material he hadn't played before, and he himself was easing his way back in personally. This time there would be no new album to promote other than
Steal Your Face
, a largely uninspired two-record live set culled from the Winterland shows in 1974 that helped fulfill the United Artists contract.

The Dead were working out their new life on the road, but the situation with their own company wasn't proving to be sustainable. In early 1976 the First National Bank of Boston wanted its debt repaid, and tension between Rakow and the band was mounting. Everyone other than Garcia was beginning to question the running of the business, and Hart had an outright confrontation with Rakow when Hart was recording
Diga
, the first album by his percussion ensemble Diga Rhythm Band, at Wally Heider's studio in San Francisco. Soon after, Rakow was fired. Hearing what had happened, Rakow, according to published reports, cashed a low-six-figure advance check from United Artists and paid off those owed for production of movie projects and other costs. He also kept some for himself that, he argued, would have been owed to him from an earlier contract with the band. As legitimate as it appeared, the news was still staggering to the Dead. As soon as he heard what Rakow had done, band lawyer Hal Kant called Hellman: “What the hell is going on here?” Everyone was as surprised as Kant.

Garcia, ever eager to avoid confrontation, didn't want to press the matter and draw attention to the band's financial chaos. (According to McNally's account, “They negotiated a settlement in which [Rakow] kept the money but retained no interest in the record company.”) Within a few months Grateful Dead Records (and its sister label, Round) were history. Garcia's salary, which had been about $540 a week, according to Andy Leonard, was cut down to a little over $50 to penalize him and compensate for the depletion in funds. Garcia had been the one pushing for Rakow from the start and now had to pay the price for his decision. The fallout would have enormous implications for Garcia, his personal life, and the Dead.

One day in late 1976 Keith Olsen, an LA-based record producer who'd overseen Fleetwood Mac's 1975 makeover
Fleetwood Mac
, found
himself in the New York office of Arista Records head Clive Davis. Davis played Olsen a song by one of his acts, the Alan Parsons Project, then announced the real reason for the meeting: he'd signed the Dead and wanted Olsen to produce their first record for the label. “He said, ‘I need an album that could be played on radio,'” says Olsen, who was admittedly ignorant of the band's music and immediately flashed on the one song he knew well, “Casey Jones.” “I thought, it's the Grateful Dead—‘high on cocaine'?'” Olsen recalls. “I didn't know their records. I was as far away from what they did as possible.” After the meeting Olsen listened to a Dead album and focused on the sound of the dual drummers, which he thought was, in his words, “just slush—it wasn't a tight backbeat. It was just undefined. The guitar parts weren't together either, and I just thought, “How am I going to fix this?'”

Olsen wasn't alone in scratching his head over translating the Dead onto tape in a studio; even the band's management realized how difficult it was. “I don't think the Dead ever made albums that were anywhere near the excitement and what was going on in a gig,” McIntire told writer David Hajdu. “Slightly off-key vocals are really going to stand out, whereas they don't when you're in the hall. And the lack of necessity of one note following another is lost when it's being recorded.” Thanks to the largely freeform way in which it was made,
Blues for Allah
had been an artistic success, but the collapse of Grateful Dead Records had squandered that opportunity; the band now had to dig itself out of a considerable hole. They finally turned to Davis and Arista, the company he'd started after an acrimonious split with Columbia Records a few years before. At the time Arista was only three years old and best known for hits by Barry Manilow. But the label was also home to a small group of respected rockers and songwriters including Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Loudon Wainwright III, making it a compatible potential home for the Dead. The band was also aware that Davis had been interested in signing them at least once before.
“We went and talked to Arista first,” says Scher, who helped negotiate the deal. “They were the only people we negotiated with in any real way. Clive had signed the New Riders, and Jerry was very happy with the way that happened. So that was their first choice, and at the time Clive had an amazing staff. They felt if there was anybody they could work with in the industry, it would be Clive.” With few alternatives, the Dead had almost no choice but to sign up.

Not wanting to alienate a powerful industry figure like Davis, Olsen agreed to give the Dead a fresh coat of sonic paint. “I had to do it,” says Olsen. “It was an edict.” With that command, he flew to the Bay Area and met with the Dead over dinner at his hotel. When he mentioned that Davis wanted a radio-friendly record, most of the band laughed, to Olsen's discomfort.

“No,” he shot back, “the president of your record company really wants to have something in your album that's accessible to the marketplace and accessible on radio.”

The band simply stared back quietly, except for Garcia, who said, “Hmmm—radio's good!” It was settled; Olsen would lead the charge.

By the fall of 1976 mainstream rock 'n' roll had never sounded glossier; tellingly, the biggest album of the year was Peter Frampton's
Frampton Comes Alive!
, a concert album by a journeyman British rocker who represented rock at its cuddliest and most family friendly. Punk was right around the corner; Smith had released her Arista debut the previous year, and the Ramones had launched in the spring with their own first missive, the low-selling but influential
Ramones
. But radio hadn't yet taken to punk rock—in some ways it wouldn't for decades—and only seemed amenable to records that had a studio-sheen glaze over them. In signing with Arista and then agreeing to work with Olsen, the Dead were conceding to the artistic and economic times around them. Weir, the band member most comfortable with mingling with record executives, had at least one meeting with Davis at the Beverly
Hills Hotel. “Bobby would do the networking for the band,” says Janice Godshalk-Olsen, who was close to Weir during this period. “Clive was explaining that he wanted the band to go a little more Southern California—or, the word the band hates, ‘commercial.' And he wanted them to work with his man Keith. Bobby was up for it more so than the rest of the guys.”

Gathering in a circle soon after at Front Street, the band began playing as Olsen paced around, observing them at work. He couldn't tell whether they could hear each other, especially Kreutzmann and Hart, and he quickly realized their musicianship matched their personalities. “Mickey is pushing, pushing, pushing and on top of the beat,” Olsen recalls, “and Billy was laid back; his backbeat was way behind.” The way Lesh's bass jutted out to the forefront—rather than playing a reserved, supportive role in the way of most rock bass playing—was an indication of the leading role Lesh saw for himself in the Dead.

Olsen left the rehearsal depressed; he wondered how he was going to make a record with such ingredients, especially because the Dead didn't seem open to change. A subsequent visit to Front Street wasn't any better. The band played him “Estimated Prophet,” a new Weir and Barlow song inspired by the sight of unhinged hangers-on at their shows; the narrator hears voices in his head and is awaiting his own personal apocalypse. The song would eventually settle into a groove that hinted at reggae, but at that early stage it still felt unformed. Olsen was praying Garcia had a few good songs to offer. Taking a seat, Garcia played snippets of different in-progress melodies—delightful pieces of music, but not finished works. After each one Garcia would pause and say, “Maybe I should finish one of these songs.” At one point one of the crew leaned over to Olsen and joked, “You know those will
never
get done!” Olsen's heart sank until he suggested they fuse all of them into a suite. “Oh, like a symphonette?” Garcia said brightening. As Olsen recalls, “It was kind of brutal until I convinced them they needed more songs.”