Your Grateful Dead Stories

I havn't found a thread on this yet so please shut it down if it already exists.

I am fascinated listening to dead stories of people who went to there shows. Wether you sold grilled cheese sandwiches on the side, took a VW bus, following the band around, meetong with em., run in with the law... There are so many bizzare out of this world fun stories I have heard, it never ends. Post your memories here if you wish to share.

I don't have any strories to offer, I wish. This story is pretty funny though. This person sued the band after running into some trouble with Bill Graham. Do keep it to your own stories though.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...ssor_recalls_his_first_lawsuit_against.2.html

 

I'll throw this one in from a guy I was in the military with, if it isn't true, it ought to be. Terry was in a somewhat desolate bar in 1970s, I think Connecticut or maybe California. A guy goes on stage and plays guitar. Crowd doesn't like him and boos. Bartender grabs the mike and says "For your information, you are booing the guitar player from the Grateful Dead". Audience immediately races to phone booths and in an hour the place is packed.

 

OK, so it's 1980 or so and I'm in college, walking to some late afternoon class in Richmond and a friend shouts to me out of a car window. He and some of his friends are headed up to a Dead show in DC and one of their group flaked, and there's this unused ticket, and do I want to go? I must confess to not being the most ardent Dead fan, but it's either sleep through some econ class or see the Dead, for free no less. Talk about a no-brainer!

Not only was the ticket free, the seats were unbelievable -- fourth or fifth row, center. Now the old Capital Centre was built for basketball and hockey games, not music. The acoustics were terrible, especially if you're up in the nosebleed section (as I often was, being a broke college student). But here I was close enough to see every hair in Jerry Garcia's nose. Never, before or since, have I had such amazing seats.

Now for the really bizarre part. My memory's a bit fuzzy if you know what I mean but I believe the band took a break during the show, maybe Deadheads can confirm, otherwise it was after the warmup band left and before the Dead took the stage. In any case a security guard tapped me on the shoulder, which I never find to have a pleasant outcome. He says somebody wants to see me and points to the mezzanine section, where my eye finally caught the earnest waving of an ex-girlfriend. I don't actually mind seeing her again, as we'd split up on fairly civil terms, so I figured what the hell. Up I went to the mezzanine, where it seemed folks were even more wasted than those on the floor, and found this girl, who quickly introduces me to her date. Talk about awkward. Still dunno if she did that on purpose.

The show, what I remember of it anyway, was very good. Beat the hell out of econ class!

 

I've been to over a hundred dead shows. The best one ever was the one that my nine year old daughter went with me.
June 18, 1994.

jerol

 

Watkins Glen, with the Dead, The Band, and the Allman Bros. Memorable not so much for the music, which was average, but for the good times we all had. There were about 20 of us. We took a bunch of beer over to our friend The Fart's house (so named for his obsession with Capt Beefheart), and stole several queen sized sheets from the linen closet, which we got away with because Phyllis was out of town. Played bridge all night and painted Mr Natural on each one, then headed to the concert the next day (from CT).

Despite the huge crowds and ending up fairly well dispersed from one another (1973, no mobile phones!), we all managed to find each other, Mr Natch pointing the way. We drove my VW around the race track with like 10-15 people hanging on to the car, worried it would tip over sideways from the banked curves.

My Mr Natural ended up on my dorm room ceiling the next school year, where I left it (by mistake!!!) when leaving at the end of the semester. I remembered it about two weeks into the summer. Alas.

​

 

This isn't a story from a show. It's just the disparate reactions of my 2 daughters to Jerry Garcia's death. My older daughter was devastated. She went into mourning, drug out all of my old Dead albums and had a marathon, playing them back to back. My younger daughter was waiting tables in a restaurant. Some of her co-workers were like, "Bummer,man,what a sad day for music. Jerry died." My daughter said, "Oh no, that's terrible." Someone said, "The Grateful Dead will never be the same without Jerry." My daughter said, "Oh,you mean Jerry Garcia? Thank goodness, I thought you meant Jerry Lee Lewis."

 

Went to the Festival Express in Toronto in June of 1970.
It is documented in the DVD release from a few years ago fairly accurately.
Lots of gate crashes.
Spent a lot of time watching people climbing over the brick wall and jumping into the grounds only to be met by police on horseback clubbing them over the head.
It was a pretty crazy scene.
Some of the musicians, including Jerry decided to set up a make shift stage in a nearby park to play for free to keep
the gate crashes happy.
My one and only time seeing The Grateful Dead live.
Glen

 

Friday afternoon while in undergrad in so cal. 1994. My buddy told me the Dead were playing in Nor Cal that weekend (Oakland). Did I want to go? Hells yeah. We drove all the way up to NorCal and saw them play on Saturday. I think we might have had GA seats ? I don't remember much other than lots of "stuff" for sale in the parking lot and it rained a bit. I need to find that show and give it a listen. I believe it was 2/26/1994. Looks like the next night (Sunday) had a much better setlist

 

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/share-your-grateful-dead-concert-experiences.317235/

Doesn't mean we can't do another round, though!

 

I saw the Dead in Charlottesville in 1982. Some older cops came up the line telling people to stash/hide their dope because some younger cops were close behind, and looking to bust people. Sure enough, 5 minutes later, Jethro and Jughead Jr. came strutting up. Cheers to those older cops!

 

4 quick stories.

1st) Heading across the Bay Bridge to the Warfield after picking up some friends we were passed by a non descript Dodge van with tinted windows. I don't know why I noticed but the wheel cover on the back of the van said "The Family Wagon." We were very early as we had to pick up some will call tickets(weirdly just small raffle-type tickets in those days) so I pulled up next to the Warfields' side entrance and my buddy bolted toward the entrance to pick em up and I stayed behind so we didn't have to feed the meter. The Family Wagon had pulled up to the loading zone in front of us and as I sat there, the side door opened and out pops Jerry, brief case in tow. He stood there and lit a cigarette so I got out and went over and had a small chat, even getting him to sign something for me. He was gracious as heck and when I walked away, I sheepishly asked him to play Mission in the Rain. He laughed and said, something like "Sounds good!" or the like.. He headed inside and I went back to my VW to wait for my buddy who came back a few minutes later. He wouldn't believe my story, and when I showed him the signature he just muttered "You signed that" and wouldn't talk about it again that night! Wouldn't you know he played Mission, second song of the night... It was a good night and the signature is a highlight of my music collection.

2nd) I was wandering around after an Albany show in 1990 looking for my friends and carrying a ice cold beer that didn't have a twist off cap. I asked someone for a lighter to pop off the cap and the guy asked why. I think maybe he thought I had some pot or something. I told him I just wanted to open my beer and he said "Ohhh, Ill open that for you" so like a fool, I handed it to him. Wouldn't you know he bit the entire top of the bottle off and spit out the glass pieces onto the ground? He smiled and handed the broken bottle back to me. I said "Thanks... I guess" and started to look for a trash can and another beer...lol

3rd) we were running late to the hotel to check in before a show in Hamilton. we had been held up at the border and were barely able to get to the show before lights went down. I was standing in the lobby and thought to ask this fellow standing at a limo how to get to the arena the fastest. He said " we are heading to the arena, just follow us". Not really thinking about who it could be, I just said OK and got the car and pulled up to the circle to wait. Sure enough, Brent comes out and hops in the limo and the driver shuts his door and got in on his side. The car sits there for a minute before the driver gets out and comes back to our car and hands us 2 passes backstage. We didn't really have an awesome experience backstage, it was kind of uneventful but we were on top of the world and sure looked cool as hell walking around with our passes in the crowd.

4) Landover, Md. Guy walking around selling chocolate bars gets accosted by a police officer who takes his chocolate and throws it all on the ground in front of the crowd saying "Free candy bars" The heads all start scooping up the chocolate bars and the guy just stands there dumbfounded as the cop smiles and walks away. It wasn't even a minute later when every head who had picked up a chocolate bar walked up and handed em back to the guy.

 

My story is a bit different. I only saw the Grateful Dead once at the Monterey Pop festival. Sunday June 18, 1967. They played between The Who and Jimi Hendrix. I never wanted to see them again after that performance. It took me years to appreciate the Dead and that happened through love of Jerry Garcia's later day solo projects. My wife is also an old Dead Dead that I brainwashed into loving all the unknown and some known UK artists. (It was a trade off) Don't know why most US groups didn't have the same appeal that The Beatles, Stones or The Who gave me. I was born in SF and lived there near 30 years. I just appreciated the british sound more as they were more polished in various areas. But I love the Dead today for their place in music's past.

 

Many many many but the first one that comes to mind: On the day that Jerry died (I was a CFO at the time) the VP of the bank we did business with visited my office to tell me he was "sorry for my loss." I did not hide my freak flag.

 

Not exactly the Grateful Dead per se, but I finally got to see what's left of the band at the final Fare Thee Well show in Chicago on 7/5. I wore a Frank Zappa shirt (black T-shirt with a large yellow print of his face) and walked through the "lot" at one point with at least five people a minute shouting "Killer shirt!", "Zappaaa!!" or something similar. Upon picking up my ticket, a lady who couldn't have been a day under 75 stopped me to take a burst of pictures of me in my Zappa shirt with a rather dated looking camera, exclaiming "That's my baby, you know!". Later I saw a sunburned, shirtless fellow holding a ziploc bag full of water advertising his ability to "clean all scumbags for $5".

Never seen so many people in one place; I almost got dizzy once I got to my nosebleed seat in the back of the stadium and looked out at the enormous sellout crowd. One of the two guys we were with ended up nearly passed out drunk by the third or fourth tune, only coming to halfway through the second set. Shamefully, the night ended a bit sour with a pretty heated argument between me/my lady and the two we attended the show with that ended in us being separated the rest of the trip. Despite that, the show was incredible (particularly the China/Rider opener and Estimated Prophet), and I'll never forget the energy in that stadium.

 

My cousin's boyfriend/ later husband blew 200k of a settlement carrying his friends all over the country following the Dead in the Early 90's. He kept everyone supplied with drink and drugs and hotel rooms. He never was very smart, and the drugs did him no favors mentally. That my cousin later briefly married him says more about her than him! Lol

 

Met Hart, Lesh Keutzmann and Garcia on the NYS thruway in 1983. They were driving in a caddy limo. We tried to pass them a joint, the (3) were smoking their own in the back. Jerry seated in front, wearing sunglasses rolled down the power window and gave us a glance. The limo sped off, we were quite thrilled.

 

I grew up in Alaska during my teen years, and no one comes to Alaska -- except the Dead one year, playing two shows at a high-school auditorium in 1980. My best friend bought front-row center tix for the first night (this was back in the day where being first in line gave you the best seats). We were gonna go -- and then his girlfriend insisted on taking the second ticket. I was pissed (I'm not a deadhead, but like I said, NO ONE came there so any concert was great). He took some amazing pictures at the show -- great closeups of everyone in the band. And a couple of great pix of his girlfriend, fast asleep/passed out in her front-row center seat. So I didn't get to see the concert, but neither did she.

 

You need better friends.

 

Heh, no kiddin', I learned a few good lessons on that trip.

 

No real worthwhile during-a-show stories standout, but I am surprised at the number of shows I can remember where I was in the venue, the feeling of anticipation for the show to start, catching glances of those around you deep into a second set everyone of us in the moment. Speaking of glances I saw about seventy shows and maybe a good half dozen to ten were in primo seats, first ten rows kind of stuff— I suppose I accomplished this by luck of the draw, but I certainly remember heading out in the middle of the night to wait in lines around area department stores for that better seating—anyway on one or two occasions when you caught Jerry looking at you man it was pretty deep, you would catch yourself asking did that just happen.

The story I would tell would be one my younger brother and I always recall when we talk about the two city six show jaunt we went on together. It was our only time seeing shows together; he saw about fifty but this story happened to be his first. First night at the Cap Center in ’88 and we arrive separately, it takes a while to meet up, no cell phones in those days, he is selling tee shirts he made, a really cool Jerry holding up a guitar neck RS cover shot on a Wheaties box, and I remember the General Mills logo was switched to GD. Anyway it was a frantic but fun day capped off with a Ripple encore, pretty cool for one’s first show.

Well it is now well into the night and we have given zero thought to setting up the tent we were going to use— you could camp in this little grassy area next to a parking lot on the other side of a bridge on the south side of the main lots— so we stumbled around in the middle of the night setting up this tent that one of us had borrowed with zero clue how it worked. So we finally get it up, and we had unzipped the main tent cover leaving just the thin white mesh layer as I guess that was what made sense at the time. Anyway we were just unwinding from the night, we had some primitive battery operated speakers hooked up to a walkman playing some tapes at a low volume, and I had one of those maybe 40 sided lead glass prisms that were popular at the time, where you would goof around putting light through it; well with the flashlight we had, it turned out to be pretty cool little light show for ourselves on the white tent netting, so a few more tapes go by…

Well it is deep into the night now, and I have to take a leak before pulling the plug so I head out for the nearest tree and I look up from the tent and about twenty yards away, sitting on the crest of a hill slightly above our tent, was about fifteen people all lined up one next to the other there in the middle of the night for no other reason than to stare at our tent light show. I ran back inside, grabbed the flashlight and the prism and said, go outside and head up the hill and check this out; it was about 10x cooler from the outside.

I wrote this recently for a “nicest musician you met” thread, and especially since it ties in with our Brothers Fall ‘88 tour I will reprint it here:
Mickey Hart: So I am a kid fan walking along the streets of Philadelphia between shows and here comes Mickey down the street seemingly returning to the Spectrum after having bought some jeans from the Gap. I am with my little brother, it is his fourth show, his first was the Cap Center Ripple; well we cannot help ourselves so we politely say hello and how over the moon we are with everything. He is super into it, and thankful for our fandom. Well just as we wind it down, it occurs to me to offer Mickey one of my brother’s tee shirts he was selling; he had been a listening-only fan for a few years already and he worked at a higher end t-shirt printing shop, so he designed and made a pretty killer Jerry on a Wheaties box tee, I wish I still had one. Anyway we offer, and he says “no thanks guys, I wouldn’t wear anything with Jerry’s face on it”. He was not ticked off or anything; we were of course stunned for a second but yeah, of course. Great guy and I have loved him even more seeing him at Fare Thee Well and in this video here.

 

Yep that is the kind of righteous thing I remember; the lot had a very cool code of conduct the vast majority of the time.

 

These things are usually pretty insufferable, but I stumbled upon it looking to see if RFK '90 was ever out on video other than the bonus cuts on VVII, which I could not find btw, I wonder why not.

This was Landover '88 parking lot, and something made me watch it knowing I was camped out there and sure enough, 16:32 in, if you blinked you would miss it, hawking a Jerry on a Wheaties box tee.

 

i hung out in the parking lot at deer creek in '95 when the sh^t went down. i had my first nitrous balloon that night, lying on my back in the grass, watching the police helicopters fly around. good times.

 

bmoregnr, that shirt your brother sold my husband bought on the '88 tour, in or around Chicago/Wisconsin/Indiana!!!! It was his favorite shirt, and unfortunately an unruly roommate destroyed it in 1990. Any way your brother still has the template/design/whatever to recreate and sell to me? I'm a new member here, found this thread by keywords in a google search, so hoping this gets to you! Thanks for any help/advice/answers! It would be my "miracle" if I could replace it for him.

 

Holy cow what a cool thing to hear and such a one in ten thousand way to hook up via the google machine. I told him I found that video and we had a hoot remembering it all and I completely forgot to ask him if he kept any template or artwork. This was before computer files mind you!

I will go right away and let him know you are looking for a miracle; in the meantime enjoy the forum for a bit, and if you like the Grateful Dead-- we know your husband does, along with great taste in tee shirts!-- check out our running Dead discussions here: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...-you-been-listening-to-part-7.430862/page-390