"They're The Only Ones Who Do What They Do" (Or Were They?)

 

"There Is Nothing Like A Grateful Dead" concert, or so the saying went, and those who saw one would generally agree to that. Bill Graham added "They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones who do what they do." That was probably true, too. In most cases, comparing to the Dead to other bands was about comparing the music they made in concert to that made by other bands, and they were pretty singular. Sure, you can point to a few bands in our current century who might compare, maybe, but those were largely built on the Dead's model. In the 20th century, the Grateful Dead were pretty much sui generis. 

I have a peculiarly narrow academic perspective, however, far less oriented on the music that drove the Grateful Dead than on the financial edifice that allowed that music to thrive. In this century, Deadheads are far more aware of the unique financial arrangements of the Grateful Dead. Most classic rock bands in the 1970s and '80s were deficit-financed by their record company in the hopes of gigantic record sales. The Dead, in contrast, were largely designed to make money by performing live for the same core audience, over and over, and made their working living on ticket sales and merchandise. Recording income was just for dessert. The Grateful Dead had to keep their audience coming back, to an increasingly better live concert experience, and had to do it over decades. Amazingly, they did it. Were the Grateful Dead unique in re-organizing the hierarchy of commercial rock music in the far-gone days of the 20th century? Without a doubt, yes. 

Did the Grateful Dead have no peers in their economic construction? That's a different question. No band from their era had a full commercial history that equated to the Grateful Dead. But a number of major bands were very much in tune commercially with the Grateful Dead's working playbook, however far from the Dead their music may have been, even if they only executed the plan in certain parts. This post will look at the Grateful Dead's unique commercial approach in the 1970s, which lead to perpetual success that has remained in force to this day. I will look at it by considering contemporary bands who played the same cards as the Dead did, and reaped similar benefits. It's a different way of looking at the Dead's career, by not confining ourselves to bands who "sound like the Dead."

Many may have other views. Share them in the Comments. Make sure you know your '70s, though. 
 

David Davis' 2025 book The Economic History of The Grateful Dead provides a unique and thorough analysis of the band's financial success

1970s Rock Economics: The Grateful Dead vs "Other Groups"
In general, the formula for a rock band to have a huge amount of success in the 1970s was to sell a huge amount of records. The rock audience was young, and liked to buy records, and bands and their albums were also cultural markers. When you moved into the dorm, you looked for people who had albums that were similar to yours, or albums that might be cooler than yours. Even successful bands were largely deficit-financed by their record companies. The artist would get a huge advance, and the record company would recoup the advance out of future royalties. Bands only received money for their records after their advance had been paid back. The key to success was getting played on the radio, so fans would buy the album. 

Touring was another source of income, but live performance was still generally seen as a method to sell records. Popular bands could tour profitably, but they were often fronted money by their record company--for rented equipment, plane flights and hotel reservations, for example (which in industry parlance was "tour support")--which was also taken out of their future royalties. So bands would get some "walking around money" from a tour, but they were deeper in the hole with their label. On top of that, promotional costs for the album, like radio and magazine ads and promotional representatives, were also taken out of royalties. An album needed to be a big hit to make a band any money. 

The thing about the record industry in the '70s, and even into the '80s, is that hit records could be so profitable that they easily made back the advance, the recording costs, the tour support and the promotion, with a pile of money left over. Once an album had been recorded, produced and packaged, it just had to be manufactured and distributed. The actual physical album did not cost much to make and ship out, even in quantity, so when a hit album reached Platinum status and beyond, it just printed money. So the goal of touring was to create new fans to buy your albums. Out on the road, bands played their best songs, over and over, in more places or in larger places or both. It was unheard of for a band to skip their best-known song in concert, or change the arrangement of a familiar hit. 

The Grateful Dead flew in the opposite direction of the industry. While they had a few hit albums in the early '70s (Workingman's Dead, American Beauty, Skull & Roses and Europe '72 all went Gold), the Dead weren't huge sellers like Elton John or even Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The band got a little FM radio play, but that shrank over time. In 1973, the Dead went independent. Instead of taking advances from Warner Brothers and hoping to make back their nut, they self-financed. Their touring operation was in-house, the sound was in-house, and they were also the first band with their own merchandising (t-shirt) arm. When the record company folded in 1976, the Dead returned to making albums financed by a record label, but their main money was from touring, playing for the same devoted fans over and over. Skipping "Truckin'" was no big deal, as fans would see them again and again. Meanwhile, other bands still played the same songs every concert, trying to find new fans (for a more thorough and nuanced look at Grateful Dead finances, see David Davis' excellent 2025 book The Economic History of The Grateful Dead). 

By the 21st century, the business model had reversed. Pretty much all the 20th century rock bands that were still touring followed the Dead's model. Bands like the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, the Doobie Brothers and so on, all made their 21st century money on the road. The fans who saw them had seen them many times before. Each tour was designed to ensure that there was something new for fans who had seen them so often. T-shirts and other merchandise was a big part of their touring income. If there were any new records by such bands in the 21st century, they were an afterthought with little economic impact. The Grateful Dead had foretold the future, even if the rest of their peers had to take 20 more years to figure it out. 

This post will look at some other rock bands that toured back in the 1970s, contemporaries of the Grateful Dead, and show how they succeeded with some pieces of the Dead's business model during the same period. Any similarities between these band's music and Grateful Dead music is incidental.  This post will look at the touring economics of the following bands: 

• The Byrds
• Ten Years After
• Journey 
• J. Geils Band 
• Black Sabbath 

The Byrds ninth album, Untitled, was a double album recorded live and in the studio. Columbia Records released it in September 1970.

 

The Byrds/A College Education

After Elvis, the modern age of American rock history can be carbon-dated to February 9, 1964, when the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. The effect on American kids and teenagers was cataclysmic. The Beatles dominated the AM radio airwaves in an unprecedented manner. On top of that, their hit singles were clearly superior to everything else on the radio, and the four lads were charming and funny, too.  

The live rock explosion blossomed in San Francisco in 1966, and the whole country was aware of it by the Summer of 1967. By 1968, most big cities had their own version of the Fillmore in some seedy city ballroom, and the Dead and the Airplane and a few other psychedelic pioneers played legendary shows for the downtown hipsters in each place. Much as we mythologize the Fillmores and the Avalon, and their progeny (like Boston Tea Party, Kinetic Playground or Thee Image)--and rightly so--the truth was that relatively few people actually saw the shows in such places. That was doubly true if you were a high school student in the suburbs. If you were, say, twelve years old when the Beatles played Ed Sullivan, you would have been 16 in 1968, around when the likes of the Jeff Beck Group were playing the Fillmore circuit. The chances that your parents would let you take the family station wagon to the dubious part of town were close to zero. If you were a girl, it was probably actually zero. 

But once you got to college, that was different. If you were in college, even if you were still 17, what could your parents say? The Junior High kids who saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan started hitting college in Fall '68 or so. Alien as it may seem today, back then colleges and universities had entertainment budgets. The idea was to bring film, dance, theater and music to both students and the surrounding community for education and entertainment. In the mid-'60s, colleges mostly booked folk and jazz acts, since that was what undergraduate men (and "coeds") were seen to like. Once Bob Dylan and The Beatles came along, however, rock music got some respect, and colleges and universities started to book rock bands. 

Rock gigs at colleges were not high profile. They only got reviewed in the student paper, if at all. While the schools would subsidize the fees, so ticket sales didn't have to cover everything, those shows weren't huge moneymakers for bands. On the other hand, schools never went out of business, and always paid. Even when the venues were small, young people were exactly who bands were trying to reach. There were colleges everywhere, particularly in the Northeast, so it was smart business to book college shows in between higher profile or more lucrative bookings in big cities. '60s bands were like sharks--they had to keep moving to stay alive. Tuesday night at some college gym in New England was a great gig between, say, Boston and New York. Starting around 1969, rock gigs became standard in colleges and universities, particularly in the Northeast. 

The other unique thing about the college audience was that they had--broadly speaking--just escaped their parents' clutches. Now they could see all the concerts they had to miss in High School. Bands who had made their mark after the Beatles had largely been unseen by 1969 college students, as most of those had broken up. One of the few exceptions was The Byrds.  

Columbia Records had released the "Mr Tambourine Man" single by The Byrds in April 1965. It was the biggest selling single in the history of Columbia. The hit album followed in June.

The Byrds had been one of the foundational groups of Folk-Rock. They had released their first hit single in 1965, and they were a best-selling band on mighty Columbia Records. The Byrds were Columbia's answer to the Beatles--that's why their name was spelled with a "y." When Gene Clark and later David Crosby left the Byrds, journalists debated whether the ensuing albums counted as products of the "real" Byrds. Every band would have to face that question, but the Byrds faced it first.

Back in August, 1964 The Beatles had starred in their film A Hard Day's Night. Singers starring in a movie was a throwback to an earlier entertainment era, but not when the Beatles did it. The brilliant, groundbreaking film followed the band around with a hip, modern commentary on popularity and celebrity. Along the way the movie invented the music video. The music was also better than anything else on the radio. Any musicians who saw A Hard Day's Night suddenly knew what they wanted to do, and it wasn't playing folk music. Then-folkie and future Byrd David Crosby said that when he saw A Hard Day's Night "I could feel my hair growing longer in the theater." 

The only cultural competition for the Beatles was Bob Dylan, and The Byrds took care of that by electrifying a Dylan song. When The Byrds released "Mr. Tambourine Man" in April, 1965 it became Columbia Records' best selling single ever. By 1970, however, working on their ninth album, and with only one original member, the Byrds were the "oldest" American rock act. Yet in 1970, FM radio was playing their still-excellent music, and college students all over the country had never seen The Byrds. 

The Byrds played a lot of colleges from 1969 until their demise in early '73. Even if the Byrds were no longer a top draw in hip circles, the college students had missed them in the mid-'60s, because they had been kids. Now was their chance. So The Byrds became the first major '60s "legacy" touring act, getting booked for their name, rather than their current record. The irony was that the early '70s Byrds were far better live than their earlier incarnation, and fans wound up loving them. Roger McGuinn was joined by the great Clarence White on lead guitar (an old Garcia pal), and they played Byrds hits, new songs and folk classics in both electric and acoustic settings. 

The Grateful Dead started getting booked in colleges in 1969, and in 1970 they started playing schools in earnest. Initially, the Grateful Dead had simply been underground legends, the kind of band that suburban parents would have blocked their kids from seeing at some disreputable city joint. When they came to their college, however, with the promise of dope and depravity, what college kid wouldn't check them out?The irony, of course, was that the 1970 and '71 Grateful Dead were not only really good but more accessible than their '60s incarnation. Whatever fans may have expected, the Dead had become something else. But if the Dead hadn't had the reputation that made college freshmen feel they had to see it to be a grown up, those fans might have missed the bus. 
 

Ten Years After's classic second album was Undead, recorded live on May 14 '68, and released in July '68 on Deram Records (London Records in the US)

Ten Years After/On The Road
One of the seismic changes in rock music that began in San Francisco was the rise of FM rock radio. In the 1950s and '60s, rock music was only available on AM radio, with tight formats and low fidelity. The same "Top 40" songs were played over and over. Big hits were big hits all over the country. Those artists who hit it big, like Elvis Presley or The Beatles, were omnipresent in a way that is unthinkable today, but the total amount of music circulating on the airwaves was quite small. While it it is true that local stations in the '60s played local or regional hits, that was typically only a slice of songs in the Top 40 in any region. For the most part, the same songs blasted out of every bedroom and automobile all over the country.

In February 1967, that changed. Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue had been the top disc jockey on San Francisco's KYA (1260-am) radio station in the mid-60s. Donahue figured out that something else was going on at the Fillmore and the Avalon. He had the foresight to look to high-fidelity FM radio, which up until this time had been just the lonely province of Assistant Professors and Tech geeks who liked jazz and classical music. Donahue bought time in the evening to broadcast rock records on a station called KMPX (106.9-fm). These weren't hits--Donahue's jocks were playing Jefferson Airplane, Cream and Blues Project. By April 7, Donahue and his crew were broadcasting 24/7 on KMPX. They were selling ads, too--to companies selling jeans, records and incense, and other hip necessities. The djs spoke in laid-back "hip" jargon and played what they liked to listen to themselves, whether rock, jazz, blues of folk. It was a new world. 

A 1967 promotional poster for KMPX-San Francisco, the first FM free-form rock station, at 106.9

The broadening of the airwaves opened new vistas for rock bands. In particular, bands could headline in San Francisco that had no prayer of an AM hit. Traffic, for example, was a headline act at Fillmore and Winterland in Spring '68, far ahead of any other region, because KMPX djs liked Traffic. In the early days of KMPX, and the few other FM stations that cropped up in places like Los Angeles, San Diego and Boston, the djs simply played what they felt like. Airplay wasn't limited to under-3-minutes-you-can-dance-to-it numbers. The door opened for other kinds of bands. All sorts of artists got airplay, particularly late at night. Once these bands got FM airplay, they could tour the States. One early beneficiary was Ten Years After.  

The English quartet Ten Years After had released their first album in 1967. Their records weren't bad, but they were a sure thing in concert, with their relentless boogie and Alvin Lee's turbocharged lead guitar runs. Ten Years After had a lot of long songs, and they could play very fast shuffles--a lot harder than it sounds--and just let Alvin Lee cook. While Ten Years After played blues, they didn't do them Chicago-style, like most English bands, but instead with a jazzy approach, like a psychedelic big band. In an era when fast licks turned heads, Alvin Lee got to shred loud and hard on most songs. It didn't go unnoticed. 

Ten Years After got a little FM airplay on stations like KMPX, and they hit the road in the States. Ultimately they would make 17 US tours between 1968 and '75. The first time out, they were usually at the bottom of the bill (except at Fillmore, where thanks to KMPX they were known, and co-headlined with Canned Heat on June 28-30 '68). But TYA always killed it, and the next time through a town, anyone who saw them before would bring their roommate, their brother and their girlfriend, and the cycle would continue. Ten Years After gigged hard, too. They played the big rooms, sure, but they would play a junior college in East Orange, NJ on a Tuesday night if that was the available booking. Besides Lee on guitar and vocals, Ten Years After had Chick Churchill on keyboards, Leo Lyons on bass and Ric Lee (no relation) on drums. 

By mid-1969, Ten Years After was established enough to get invited to Woodstock. Most of the acts at Woodstock were the groups touring around the country, with just a few stars at the top of the bill. Thanks to the hit album and the movie, some of those touring acts had their careers made by the movie. You can argue that Sly & The Family Stone and The Who were already making it on their own, and Santana and CSNY probably would have anyway, but for acts like Richie Havens, Joe Cocker and Ten Years After, the Woodstock movie absolutely made them. In the movie, TYA did a scorching version of their set-ending "I'm Going Home," complete with the rock'n'roll oldies medley in the middle, at lightning speed, with the full supersonic Alvin Lee guitar. Every teenager who rocked out in the movie theater after the March 1970 movie release wanted to see Ten Years After live, and thus Ten Years After played everywhere and delivered the goods each time. 

The Grateful Dead built their audience and their legend by touring endlessly throughout the '70s, East and West, in basketball arenas and civic auditoriums, on weekends and school nights. But they couldn't have done this if there wasn't a network of venues and promoters booking shows. While the always-reliable Dead were beloved of promoters, since they could draw a crowd on Friday night in Wichita or Monday night in Nebraska, they weren't alone. Ten Years After was another band that promoters could count on, since everyone had seen the Woodstock movie, and the band had always been great the last time through town. 

A Space In Time was Ten Years After's first album for Columbia, released in August 1971. It would reach #17 on the album charts, and it included the band's only real radio hit, "I'd Love To Change The World."

In 1971, Ten Years After changed record labels, and they had their only hit for Columbia Records. "I'd Love To Change The World" only hit #40 in the singles chart, but the August 1971 album (A Space In Time) reached #17 on Billboard and went Platinum. The song itself was a sort of ballad that alternated between a slow, dreamy chorus and a hard driving center section, very atypical for a Ten Years After song. The band almost never played it in concert, but their fans did not appear to be dismayed. TYA didn't play their sets note for note, and jammed a little bit in a sort of extended boogie fashion, but they didn't get outside their basic parameters. Shows were pretty similar, with perhaps a few new songs added and dropped each tour. 

Although Ten Years After was an immensely popular and profitable touring machine, they stuck to a formula that eventually got stale. Their last original album was Positive Vibrations, released in April 1974, and it only reached #81. Their subsequent American tour, their 16th, was more popular than ever, but the band knew they had hit a brick wall and broke up. Although Ten Years After were far less creative than the Grateful Dead, it's hard not to draw professional parallels. Ironically, Ten Years After got offered so much money to return in 1975, that they did one final tour, without releasing an album, but then they really did break up. Alvin Lee (1944-2013) went on to release a number of R&B-focused solo albums. Ultimately Ten Years After would reform off and on throughout the 20th and 21st century, with and without Alvin Lee, although they never recaptured their peak.  

The logo for the band Journey, designed by Alton Kelly and Stanley Mouse, based on their unused proposal for a Jimi Hendrix album. The logo was used with different colors and different contexts on various albums. Journey manager Herbie Herbert was a huge Deadhead, and it's no coincidence that he chose Kelly & Mouse to make his band's signature logo. 

Journey/Wheel In The Sky
The San Francisco rock band Journey formed in 1974, built around some already-veteran musicians and an experienced manager. They didn't go into the business as wide-eyed teenagers but as experienced professionals. What's particularly interesting about Journey, in this context, was that their manager's business model was the Grateful Dead. It took a few years and a couple of albums for Journey to hit it big, but when they did, manager Walter "Herbie" Herbert explicitly modeled the band's finances on the Grateful Dead. Herbert was not only a Deadhead himself, he was familiar with the Dead's operation from working for Bill Graham and acting as Santana's production manager in the early 1970s. I'm going to make the argument that Herbert actually succeeded with the Dead's self-financing business model before the Dead themselves did. 

Journey had formed out of the ashes of the original Santana lineup. Guitarist Neal Schon and organist Greg Rolie had been in the classic lineup, and they had formed a band that included legendary English drummer Aynsley Dunbar (ex-Jeff Beck, Mayall, Zappa, Bowie among others). Also in the original Journey lineup were two former members of the obscure East Bay band Frumious Bandersnatch. Frumious had a torturously complicated history, but Herbie Herbert had been their road manager and van driver. In the late '60s, Frumious had been booked by Bill Graham's Millard agency and had opened for the Dead a number of times. Bassist Ross Valory had also played with Steve Miller, and guitarist George Tickner had even briefly played with Garcia/Saunders around Spring '73 (note: I am greatly simplifying Journey's history, to keep the post on track). 

As soon as Journey formed, they were immediately courted by major labels. As an ironic sub-plot, Grateful Dead Records CEO Ron Rakow said on the Deadcast that the label had a chance to sign Journey. This was the period when Bill Graham was also trying to get GDR to sign Bob Marley and The Wailers. It's tempting to imagine an Alt-Universe where the 1974 Wall Of Sound tour was Grateful Dead/Bob Marley/Journey, but no such thing happened. Rakow correctly divined that no matter what, Grateful Dead Records wasn't going to be a "real record company," and outside bands were better off elsewhere.

Journey's fourth album, Infinity, released in early 1978, was a huge hit. Kelly & Mouse did the cover art. 

Journey's first three Columbia albums (in 1975, '76 and '77) were kind of arena-friendly prog-rock, with Rolie on lead vocals, and Schon taking long deedle-dee type solos. They sold OK, a few hundred thousand each, but not what Columbia wanted. Herbert assented to Columbia's demand for a dynamic lead vocalist. After cycling through one insufficient choice, Journey discovered singer Steve Perry. Perry debuted at the Old Waldorf club in San Francisco in a high profile event on October 28, 1977. Infinity, Journey's first album with Perry, was released in January 1978. It included band classics like "Wheel In The Sky" and "Lights" ("When the lights go down in the city/And the sun shines on the Bay..."). Journey's fortunes soared. 

In the late '70s, successful rock bands toured like crazy in order to accelerate record sales. Journey did this, and it worked. The albums Infinity ('78), Evolution ('79), Departure ('80), Captured (Jan '81) and Escape (Jul '81) sold huge amounts of albums (Escape has sold 10 million), and that isn't even all of Journey's records. As noted above, the era's typical financial picture was that record companies financed a band's touring against record royalties. Although bands made some money from touring, even popular bands were deeply in debt to their record companies until they made back the huge forward expenses on their royalties. Once Journey hit it big in 1978, Herbie Herbert inverted this model. The basis for the inversion was the business model of the Grateful Dead, which Herbie knew well.

The late '70s heralded the rise of the Arena Rock era. Bands crisscrossed the country, playing the biggest basketball arenas and Civic Auditoriums, sometimes sharing the bill with other major bands and sometimes headlining on their own. By modern standards, even adjusted for inflation, tickets were relatively cheap. The rock audience was still pretty young, and for the most part would see any popular band that came to town, if only to go to school on Monday just to say "oh, yeah, I saw ELO and they weren't all that" (I myself did it, and can assure you that ELO was not All That). Bands who stood out, however, had a chance to sell stratospheric numbers of albums.

Most bands of the era, even major ones, outsourced the sound and lights, and hired crew for each tour. The Grateful Dead had been an exception to this rule since the late '60s, and that was ultimately essential to the Dead's successful touring history. Herbert was aware of this, as manager of opening act Frumious Bandersnatch, as a Bill Graham Presents employee, and as Santana's road and production (stage) manager. Journey toured with their own sound system, lighting crew and video team.  I personally think Journey's '80s music was cheesy, but Herbert correctly divined that a great concert experience would accelerate Journey's record sales in every market.

Journey's sound system was designed by Don Pearson and the Meyer Sound crew, who had worked on the Dead's sound. Cheesy music or not, Journey always sounded great in concert. Journey was among the first of the "arena-rock" bands to tour with their own stage video set-up, which set them apart in the early 1980s. Their state-of-the-arena production team was hired out for other tours, becoming a source of profit for the band when Journey wasn't even on tour. Ultimately, the team was spun off into a concert production outfit called Nocturne, which was hugely successful on its own. 

Kelly & Mouse used the Journey "Scarab" in a different setting for Journey's 1979 album Evolution. The designs looked great on a t-shirt, and Journey sold a zillion of them.  

Merch? Herbert had been there at Winterland and the birth of the t-shirt boom, with Bill Graham manufacturing American Beauty shirts in the basement of the ice rink. It's no coincidence that Journey's first big hit album (Infinity) had a Kelly/Mouse cover, and no coincidence that Herbert used the Kelly/Mouse "Scarab" as a logo for the band. At the same concerts where Journey's sound and lights were killing the audience, Journey's t-shirt vendors were going full tilt in an era when this was still a new enterprise. Herbert was using the Grateful Dead's touring model, consciously, and executing it better than the Grateful Dead were at the time. 

I'm not speculating about Herbert's business model. In a memorable 2008 interview, Herbert said that in the mid-80s, he said Journey "could have been a polished Grateful Dead and that was my model as a Deadhead." In fact, due to band politics, Herbert was forced out of band management in 1986. After the Escape album, Herbert had bought Journey an office building in San Francisco (at 1111 Columbus Ave, near Jones St in North Beach) instead of renting. When it was sold to become the Indonesian consulate in the early '90s, the band made another huge profit. 

The Tri-Chromes 2002 cd featured Bill Kreutzmann on drums, Neal Schon on guitar and Sy Klopps (Herbie Herbert) on vocals. Robert Hunter co-wrote eight of the songs. The album was partially recorded at Club Front, and Steve Parish was an executive producer. Few can say they were a bigger Deadhead than Herbie Herbert. 

After being forced out of Journey in '86, Herbert continued a successful management career for another decade, with bands including Mr. Big and Roxette. By '98, he had given up management, and re-invented himself as blues singer Sy Klopps. He recorded an album as Sy Klopps, and later formed a group called The Tri-Chromes with Bill Kreutzmann on drums. On the Tri-Chromes 2002 album, Robert Hunter co-wrote eight of the eleven songs. Herbert died in 2021, but he made the Grateful Dead business model work before the Dead did. 

Atlantic Records released the fifth J Geils Band album Bloodshot in 1973. The album was printed on red vinyl, and it included the minor hit "Give It To Me."

J Geils Band/I Want My MTV
The Grateful Dead had an unexpected hit with "Touch Of Grey" in 1987. Even more surprising was that much of the buzz around the song arose from the video, which was played on high rotation on MTV. MTV had arrived in the Summer of 1981, coinciding with cable TV's widening spread throughout the United States. Teenagers mesmerized by the availability of dozens of channels found MTV endlessly fascinating, even if the videos were often fairly lo-fi. Rock music had always had a performative element to it, but that had hitherto been confined to the concert stage, and occasional concert movies. 

A byproduct of the first decade of MTV was that often bands would become hugely popular very quickly, far before they had much experience touring, or often before they even had many songs to play beyond their hit. A couple of clever twenty-somethings would score a big hit, and suddenly they needed to play big arenas with a 50-minute show, even though they had neither a touring band nor a live set. Many early tours by MTV bands were disappointing. A significant thing for the Dead's new MTV-rooted audience in 1987 was that a Grateful Dead concert introduced them to an entire new universe. "Touch Of Grey," even when the Dead performed it, was just another popular song of many, and whether or not the video was representative of the band, the net effect drew in a tidal wave of new fans. 

The Grateful Dead, however, weren't the first veteran touring act to come in at the top with a surprise video hit. Boston's J Geils Band had a similar experience with their hit "Centerfold" back in 1982. The J Geils Band arc was very similar to what happened with "Touch Of Grey," even though Geils' demise came only a few years later. 

The J Geils Band had formed in Boston in 1968, from the ashes of two rising local bands. The Geils band took their cues from R&B and Soul, and they had a much more dramatic presentation than the typical hippie rockers hunched over their guitars. Lead singer Peter Wolf and keyboard player Seth Justman wrote great songs, and the band gigged hard. They were soon the Kings of Boston, and in 1970 they were signed by Atlantic.  By 1980, however, recording by then with EMI, they seemed stuck in the middle, with a loyal following but a stalled career. They had released nine albums that had sold OK, and had a few songs people sort of recognized ("Give It To Me" [from '73], "Must Of Got Lost" ['74] and "Love Stinks' ['80]). They had a killer live show but were playing the mid-level arenas.

EMI Records released The J Geils Band Freeze Frame album in 1981, their tenth album, which included the huge MTV hit "Centerfold"

In October 1981, the J Geils Band released their tenth album, Freeze Frame. The first single, "Centerfold" had been released back in September. Somewhere along there, the band made a video. If you see the video now, it seems hilariously cheesy, like it was made in your dorm with an iPhone. But this was 1982. Seeing the actual band--admittedly, just miming their parts--enacting the entire song symbolically was weirdly riveting. "Centerfold" tells the story (such as it is) of a shy boy who had a crush on a pretty girl in High School, only to see her as a pin-up model in a Playboy-type magazine a decade later. Peter Wolf sings "My memories have just been sold/My angel is a centerfold" while cheerleaders dance behind him. It's dumb. But it was 1981. I was there. It worked. J Geils Band were one of the first big hits on MTV, and the single went gold by January 1982, reaching #1 on the Billboard charts.

The J Geils Band promptly hit the road, and legions of new fans saw them for the first time. The Geils Band killed it every night, and their new fans heard all their classics. J Geils Band was going from big to bigger, and their 14 years of hard road work were paying off. 

Except--the J Geils Band fired lead singer Peter Wolf. The band had released a live album in 1982 (Showtime), which had reached #23. Then they fired Wolf. The band's final 1984 album wasn't bad, apparently, with songs all written and sung by organist Seth Justman, but fans didn't care. MTV showed the power it had to supercharge a good touring band, but J Geils Band didn't really cash the check. While I doubt that the Dead thought about the demise of the J Geils Band, they didn't miss their own train when it stopped by the station.

A very young Black Sabbath, on the wrong side of the tracks, probably near where they grew up

Black Sabbath/The Strangest Of Places If You Look At It Right
Black Sabbath, as everybody knows, was a quartet formed in Birmingham, England in 1968. They released their first album in 1970. Initially they were seen as a sort of "heavy rock" band, but ultimately became one of the founding fathers of Heavy Metal ("Heavy Metal" did not exist as a defined genre until the mid-1970s). The band got very little radio play, and band members and fans were dismissed as drug-addled clods. Yet each album sold more than the last, they remained on tour in some form for fifty-plus years, and their final concert on 5 July 2025 was a giant event at a sold out stadium. 

In their first decade, pretty much everyone except their ardent fans dismissed Black Sabbath as unmusical clowns who couldn't play, and everyone thought their lead singer Ozzy Osbourne was a talentless oaf. Just so there's no misunderstanding, I was one of those people, and my opinion is unchanged to this day. I find them a terrible, unlistenable band. I have heard my share of their records, but only recognize a song or two, and their music isn't worth my time (please do not send me suggestions like "you've got to listen to this-and-such track"). Nonetheless, it is undeniable, even to me, though largely unnoticed by everyone else, that the career arc of Black Sabbath is very much parallel to that of the Grateful Dead. In many ways, Black Sabbath's career in the 1970s--not the '60s--was the one most similar to that of the Grateful Dead. Their subsequent careers were even more similar, right down to the huge Farewell concert at the end. 

In the 1960s, although the Grateful Dead sold few records, they were cool underground legends. More people had heard of the Dead than had actually heard them. Surprisingly, for underground sensations, the Dead cashed in their notoriety with some excellent, popular records in the early '70s. Since they had learned to be an excellent live band, when new fans went to see the former undergrounders they were suitably impressed. The Dead sold a bunch of albums and built a huge concert audience. As a comparison, Ten Years After had done something similar. Both were hugely profitable touring attractions who put a brake on it in 1975.

When the Grateful Dead returned to touring in 1976, they turned out to still be a prominent live attraction, much to the surprise of many industry observers. Their claim on underground cool had entirely dissipated, however. All of the trends of late '70s rock went against the Grateful Dead. Arena rock, Disco, Punk and New Wave adherents all looked down on the Grateful Dead. All the different trends in the '80s were just as unfriendly to them. Yet the Grateful Dead kept touring, kept playing their music and kept building their audience against all odds. While other Fillmore-era veterans either homogenized their music (like Fleetwood Mac or Steve Miller) or deteriorated into also-rans (like Alvin Lee or Canned Heat), the Dead were still drawing well in concert on their own terms, with their own loyal fans. When "Touch Of Grey" finally launched the Grateful Dead into the stratosphere, it was from a position of strength rather than weakness. 

Black Sabbath's Paranoid album, released September 1970 on Vertigo Records (although not until January 1971 in the US, where it was distributed by Warners). The title track was their only (minor) radio hit, and over the decades the album had sold four million copies.

Black Sabbath never even had any underground cool. Nonetheless they were a hugely popular concert attraction, and as a result sold extraordinary numbers of records. You might note a few bands who sold more, of course, but pretty much without exception those bands (Eagles, AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, etc) had huge radio hits. Black Sabbath had none. Here is a brief summary of the success of their 1970s albums. Generally speaking, chart positions speak to popularity at time of release, but Gold (500,000 sold) or Platinum (1 million sold) speak to record sales over time. Other than "War Pigs" and "Iron Man," few non-fans know or would recognize a song from any of these albums (unlike, say, Fleetwood Mac).  

Black Sabbath Feb '70 US #23 [Billboard] Platinum [debut]
Paranoid Sep '70 US #12 4xPlatinum
Master Of Reality Aug '71 US #8 2x Platinum
Vol 4 Sep '72 US #13 Platinum
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath Nov '73 US #11 Platinum
Sabotage July '75 US #11 Gold
Technical Ecstasy Oct '76 US #51 Gold
Never Say Die Sep 78 US #69 Gold (Osbourne's last show Albuquerque, NM  Dec 11 '78. Fired Apr '79)
Heaven and Hell April 80 #28 Platinum (first album w Ronnie Dio)

In 1979, Black Sabbath fired Ozzy Osbourne, and hired singer Ronnie James Dio, from Cortland, NY, and formerly a member of Richie Blackmore's Rainbow. Osbourne, meanwhile, split from his legendarily notorious manager Don Arden, and married his daughter, the soon-to-be even more notorious Sharon Osbourne, and went solo (Sharon did not speak to her father for decades, and told their children he was dead. They were surprised when they bumped into him on the street in LA in the late 1990s).  The impending demise of Black Sabbath seemed imminent, except that it wasn't. Both Ozzy and the Sabs were more popular than ever, as Dio turned out to be as legendary as Ozzy (FYI: I can't stand Dio either). 

The Grateful Dead turned out to be even more popular after Garcia died, much to the surprise of everyone. Black Sabbath was the same, with the peculiar twist that every now and again Ozzy would rejoin Black Sabbath for a concert, a tour or an album and everyone would go crazy. Of course Ozzy became a legend with his MTV "Reality" show The Osbournes. I know who could have imagined an MTV reality show called Jerry's Kids, stage managed by Jerry's wife, but it isn't me. 

The Grateful Dead stand out in rock history for anticipating where the industry was going, long before other bands would figure it out. One indicator of this was that the Dead were the first major band to have a widely publicized "Farewell Concert" tour, which printed more money than the US Mint. You'd better believe that band managers took note. The likes of Eric Clapton, Elton John and many others have gone on worldwide farewell tours since then, but as always it was the Dead who laid the track where the other bands drove their trains.  

The original Black Sabbath, supported by all their progeny, headlined Villa Park football stadium in Birmingham on July 5, 2025. A very ill Ozzy Osbourne watched from a throne on stage, and took the mic for four songs at the end.

Certainly Black Sabbath executed their farewell with a panache that can hardly ever be topped. The same four Birmingham lads who put the band together in 1968 appeared on stage together at the city's biggest football stadium in 2025, sold out at a huge premium. A parade of acolytes opened the show, many of whom were headliners in their own right, while a fading, unwell Ozzy Osbourne watched from a giant throne on stage. Finally Ozzy sang the last few numbers with his boys, and rang down the curtain on Black Sabbath. He died a few weeks later. 

When Bobby Weir rang it out with Dead & Company at Golden Gate Park in August 2025, would that Jerry might have stepped up and plugged in for a final "Sugaree." But that isn't how it went down, and Bob met him at the Jubilee instead. 

Jerry Garcia, with his Nudie suit and the Erlewine Stratish guitar, on stage (possibly, though not certainly) at my first Grateful Dead concert at Winterland on December 12, 1972

There Was Nothing Like A Grateful Dead Concert
There was nothing like a Grateful Dead concert. Not then, not now. If you know, you know, and the rest of you will just have to imagine it. No other band or musician had the arc of musical talent, invention, risk appetite and sheer luck of being in the right place at the most opportune moment as the Grateful Dead. We shall not see their like again. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean there were no parallels, that there weren't bands that matched steps on the Dead's unique elevator to the top, even if they got off on different floors. The elevated status of the Grateful Dead was their accumulation of so many special features, more than other bands, combined with their relentless willingness to tour against all good sense until the last bell rang.

Sic Transit Gloria Psychedelia.