Fillmore West, January 12, 1969: Country Joe And The Fish And Their Friends (Plus Opening Acts)

In 1994, Vanguard Records released a double-cd of Country Joe And The Fish Live At Fillmore West. The album included both sets from Sunday, January 12, 1969. Jack Casady played on both sets, and for the second set the band was joined by Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, Steve Miller and Mickey Hart

Myths and legends often become myths and legends because tales of things that happened get told and retold, until the telling exceeds the reality. The Fillmore and Fillmore West and San Francisco in the 1960s have an element of that. Wonderful times, wonderful music, for certain, but many nights were just another gig at the local ballroom, however glamorous it may seem today. People would go and see a few bands play some music, dance and hang out, and it was really fun, and then they would go home. Once in a while, however, the myths and legends were not just tales--there were things happened in San Francisco in the 60s that won't be repeated in the rock and roll firmament. In the case of the Fillmore West show of January 12, 1969, however, a remarkable evening of music by Country Joe and The Fish and their friends has been largely forgotten and is rarely recalled, even though a double-live cd of their entire show was released in 1994.

The Sunday SF Chronicle "Pink Section" from January 5, 1969 had a photo of Country Joe and The Fish to highlight their upcoming weekend shows, along with Taj Mahal and Led Zeppelin

What Happened?
The original, psychedelic Country Joe And The Fish played their last stand at the Fillmore West on the weekend of January 9-12, 1969. Originally just the folk duo of Berkleyites Joe McDonald and Barry Melton, the band had expanded into an electric ensemble after the Butterfield Blues Band came to town in early 1966. By the end of '66, the band had been signed to Vanguard Records, and the first two Country Joe And The Fish albums were true San Francisco classics. To much of the world, Electric Music For The Mind And Body and Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die were just as important to San Francisco music history as Surrealistic Pillow or Anthem Of The Sun. By the end of 1968, however, Joe and Barry wanted to reconfigure the band. So while the group Country Joe And The Fish would continue on successfully for some more years, the January '69 Fillmore shows were going to be the last go-round for the original lineup that had arisen out of the Jabberwock coffee house in Berkeley.

If you're going to have a party, have a party. January 12 was a Sunday, and most musicians aren't working, so the last number of the final set of the original Country Joe And The Fish at Fillmore West was a 38-minute version of their song "Donovan's Reef," where the band was joined by their friends Steve Miller, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Mickey Hart and Jerry Garcia. Yet no one seemed to recall it, and the event remained unknown until a 1994 cd release. How could such an event pass unnoticed? Could it be that the opening act, a new band from England with a guy who used to be in the Yardbirds, whose album hadn't even come out yet, overshadowed them?

Probably, yes. The mighty Led Zeppelin, young and strong, had only played 8 North American shows prior to arriving at Fillmore West.  Their first album was not officially released, but it was probably already available in a few stores--things worked differently then--and KSAN-fm was already playing numerous tracks from it. The buzz was on, and curious fans came to check it out, and were steamrolled by the Shape Of Things To Come. Some guys from the Dead and the Airplane jamming with that Berkeley band? Yeah, whatever.

Zeppelin's Fillmore West debut was mentioned in Rolling Stone and the like, but Country Joe and The Fish were dismissed as last year's news. Who knows how many people actually stuck around for the final Sunday night set, and the event seemed lost to history. This post will reconstruct what we can put together from what turns out to be a fair amount of information.

The exterior of the Fillmore West, at 1545 Market Street as it appeared in 1970. It was the former Carousel Ballroom, and that sign remained intact throughout it's life as the Fillmore West. Note the ad for Workingman's Dead above.

Fillmore West, 1969
Bill Graham's Fillmore West and Fillmore East were the twin pillars of the growing rock concert industry in the 60s. However, although Graham had moved from the intimate Fillmore to the Fillmore West, about a mile away, the industry was starting to get even bigger, and some of the biggest acts could play much larger places. The Fillmores still had very high profiles, however, so most bands began or ended tours at one or the other place, often beginning at one and ending at the other. Fillmore East had an early and a late show, but Fillmore West let its audiences stay for every set. Throughout 1969, Fillmore West had the now-unheard of setup where they went twice around the bill, so the headline act played both the 3rd and 6th set of the nights. This allowed suburbanites or teenagers to go home early, and night owls to come late, as well as allowing the most committed fans to stay for 6 or 7 hours of music.

The bill at Fillmore West for January 9-12, 1969 was Country Joe and The Fish/Led Zeppelin/Taj Mahal. On Thursday and Sunday night (Jan 9 and 12), CJF would have played the 3rd and 6th sets, while Led Zeppelin would have played the 2nd and 5th sets. On Friday (10) and Saturday (11), there was typically an unbilled act that opened the show, but did not repeat. This band was usually drawn from acts who had played the Tuesday "audition nights," another forgotten practice. On those nights, Zep would have played 3rd and 6th, and CJF 4th and 7th. Weekend shows at Fillmore West often ended very late, past bar-closing of 2:00am.

Friday night tended to be the big night for reviewers. Writers could watch the early sets and make a midnight deadline, which was important in the newspaper business. So killing it in the early Friday sets at Fillmore West or East could really make a band's careers. This was particularly true for tours that started at Fillmore East, as the Friday night early show was always reviewed in Billboard and other trade magazines, and it could affect bookings for the rest of the tour, if not a career. So any formal or informal coverage of Led Zeppelin's debut at Fillmore West was probably on Friday, January 10, and probably did not include the late set. And probably a good thing, since Zep members had caught the flu in LA the week before, and were apparently a little flat on Thursday night. No matter--by the weekend they were rocking the house, and mowing down everything in their path.

Led Zeppelin's immortal cover for their January 1969 debut album on Atlantic. The cover art was by former Yardbird guitarist Chris Dreja

Led Zeppelin, 1969
Led Zeppelin had formed in the Fall of 1968. Jimmy Page had led the Yardbirds for 1967 and '68, and he had played the Fillmore a number of times, so he knew all about West Coast psychedelic ballrooms. The Yardbirds had been a terrific band who were bottled up by their management and record company, and Page was determined not to repeat the mistakes. Along with veteran road manager Peter Grant, Page assembled some crack cohorts and set out to conquer the rock music world that was to come, not the one that had passed. Zeppelin would only release albums, not singles, and their albums were geared for FM airplay. Zeppelin was loud, really loud, and they could bring it in a way that would make every concert memorable. This was the new English rock world, not the old one of catchy singles and brief television appearances on Top Of The Pops.

Led Zeppelin's first album was not due until mid-January, so their tour was set to begin on the West Coast with a week at LA's Whisky-Au-Go-Go and then Fillmore West, both hip palaces good for creating buzz. However, the Jeff Beck Group canceled some American dates, so Led Zeppelin began their American tour, filling in for Beck while opening for the Vanilla Fudge in Denver (Dec 26), Seattle (Dec 27),Vancouver (Dec 28), Portland  (Dec 29) and Spokane, WA (Dec 30). After a few dates at The Whisky with local band Alice Cooper, some  Zep band members got sick and they were replaced by Buddy Miles for the balance of the Whisky dates.

The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin met only once, during this weekend. It was at a Herb Greene photo shoot--the Dead needed a promotional photo with their new organist, Tom Constanten, and Led Zeppelin had just finished their session. Herb Greene has written about the incident (via another scholar's research)

“The session was rolling along when I got a phone call. It was Rock Scully, telling me, "we got a new band member [Tom Constanten], so we need a picture right now – we're downstairs!"... I told him that I was kinda in the middle of something, but they came up anyway... Pigpen was wearing a little .22 revolver, in a holster, and he pulled it out and started firing it off into the theater seats. I guess I was almost done with the session when all this happened, because it was pretty disruptive, ha ha! Actually, it freaked Zeppelin out. They exclaimed, "these westerners and their guns!" In fact, Led Zeppelin got so distracted, that they quickly left and didn't pay me…
In retrospect, when the Dead called, I maybe thought OK, this is great, hands across the seas, we'll have a party, but that didn't happen. The Dead didn't want to hang out, they were just there to get a photograph. There was no interaction at all between them, no curiosity. Garcia didn't want to talk to Page, and I don't think Led Zeppelin even knew whom the Grateful Dead were.”

Hip record stores like Tower Records in Berkeley often had new albums before their "official" release date

The Record Industry, 1969
In those days, new albums did not have precise release dates. The supposed "date" of a release was just the time that promotion was planned. Long before FedEx, distributors would have had to have truck out their cardboard boxes weeks in advance. There was nothing preventing a hip record store from asking the local "rack jobber" if he had any copies of that new album by the so-and-sos. Accordingly, hip FM stations were also sent advance copies of new albums, in the hopes that they would play it before the promotional ads started.

The "official" release date of the first Led Zeppelin album is usually cited as January 17, 1969, but not surprisingly the biggest station in town, KSAN-fm, was already playing it. Thus listeners would come into the record store and ask for it, and distributors would let the stores have boxes. So plenty of people in SF (or any other hip town with an FM station) had the Zeppelin debut before it was "officially" released. Many people at the Fillmore West that night, even those looking to see Country Joe and The Fish, would have had some idea about how Led Zeppelin sounded, even if they didn't realize quite what they were going to see.

Taj Mahal, from Cambridge, MA but via Los Angeles, also had a new album. It was his second album on Columbia, The Natch'l Blues. Taj's first album, with Ry Cooder smoking on slide guitar, had been a sort of underground hit, even if he hadn't sold many records, so he would have gotten some airplay on FM as well. Ry wasn't touring with Taj, but it mattered little, since the great guitarist Jesse Ed Davis anchored his live band. Taj sang and played some harp and guitar, and Jesse Ed wailed over the rhythm section. Taj Mahal wasn't a big act, but he was worth getting to the show on time for.

Meanwhile, Country Joe and The Fish were an established act locally and nationally. The group had come out of the Berkeley folk underground in 1966 and "gone electric," establishing themselves as one of the classic Fillmore bands.  When Country Joe and The Fish toured nationally, they headlined over many groups that have since surpassed them in fame, not the least the Grateful Dead, with whom they had shared bills all over the country.

It didn't hurt that Country Joe And The Fish were a great live act, with great songs and a loony edge, but an R&B-inspired discipline that kept them from going off the rails. The band was a well-established headline act at both Fillmore West and East, with many fans all over the psychedelic world. They had released their third Vanguard album, Together, in August 1968. While it wasn't as big as the first two, it was still a popular record.

However, all was not well in Berkeley. The membership of the group had frayed when bassist Bruce Barthol, a dedicated pacifist, moved to England in September 1968 to avoid the draft. Replacement bassist Mark Ryan was arrested on tour soon after (for the devil weed, of course), and then got ill right before a European tour. In the short range, this had been OK, since former bassist Barthol was already in Europe and took over his old gig for the Fall 68 European tour. However, when the band returned to America, Country Joe McDonald and Barry "The Fish" Melton wanted to reconstitute the group entirely. Thus, although Country Joe and The Fish would continue on for two more years after the January 1969 Fillmore West shows, and numerous reunions, these shows were a farewell to the configuration of the Country Joe And The Fish band that made the group legends. Lacking a bass player, old buddy Jack Casady stepped in for most of the remaining dates (Mark Andes of Spirit filled in for two SoCal dates). Appropriately, a farewell party was planned. In retrospect, it should have been a legendary event, but today all that anyone recalls is that an unknown English band called Led Zeppelin blew the place out twice a night.

In January 1969, Country Joe And The Fish's current album was Together, released on Vanguard in July 1968

Party Number One, Friday or Saturday Night
The first whiff that something interesting had happened on that weekend came in the Summer of 1977. KSAN-fm had a radio special on the 10th anniversary of the Summer Of Love in 1967, called "What Was That" and at night they had three hours of concert tapes from the Fillmore and Avalon. At the time, the taper world was in its infancy--I myself did not yet have a cassette deck--and hearing tapes from the source was like time travel. All three nights of the radio special ended with a 3-hour "concert," featuring 15 or 20 minutes from different bands. All the tapes weren't from 1967, but they were close enough.

The KSAN special put 60s tapes from numerous bands into circulation. I believe it was the original source of a fragment of Grateful Dead Oct 68 Avalon tapes, although of course we have them in their entirety now (it was also the source for a mislabeled Feb 12 '67 tape, but I have written about that elsewhere). The dating of the tapes wasn't very good, however--the dj would just say "here's the Jefferson Airplane from the Fillmore in 1967," or something vague like that.

A Country Joe And The Fish tape was played on the special with little introduction. With a band vamping the blues, the tape had Bill Graham telling the crowd [I am paraphrasing here] "I just talked to the man, and he agreed to walk around the block. We can go on here, but this is now a private party. Please remain seated and we can keep going." He then introduced the band: Chicken Hirsh, Mickey Hart and Dave Getz (of Big Brother) on drums, Jack Casady on bass, and David Cohen (organ), Barry Melton (guitar) and Country Joe McDonald. The band launched into an extended version of the Country Joe And The Fish classic "Flying High."

It took me many years to figure out what this tape fragment actually was. The tape shows up on various lists under various incorrect dates. In fact, this tape was one of the final numbers of either Friday (Jan 10) or Saturday (Jan 11) night. Casady was already on stage, of course, but we didn't realize that at the time (the KSAN dj in 1977 would have had no idea either). Dave Getz was a pal of Joe and Barry, and in fact would join Country Joe and The Fish on tour starting in February. Hart was a friend of Melton's, too, so obviously they all came for the party and stayed to play.

Almost all Country Joe And The Fish fans consider the band's April 1967 debut album, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, to be a time-tested psychedelic classic. The cover photo insets were from a little-known venue called The Barn in Scotts Valley, CA, near Santa Cruz. 

Sunday Night, January 12, 1969
The final party remained a mystery until the 1994 release of the cd Country Joe And The Fish/Live! Fillmore West 1969 on Vanguard Records. There was no general awareness of the all-star San Francisco jam, much less the idea that it was professionally recorded. Yet with the rise of the archival cd market, here was a complete document of a remarkable event, previously unknown. Vanguard and CJF producer Sam Charters described the event itself in the liner notes:

When I look back in the last few months that Country Joe & The Fish were still trying to keep the band together and go on touring, I remember all the confusion and all the arguments and all the exasperation--but I also remember so many nights when they played with all their old magic and uniqueness. Since I'd been working with them for four years as their producer for Vanguard Records, I wanted to try to capture some of those last moments on tape, so with engineer Ed Friedner--who had worked with me on the album they did in New York [Together from 1968]--I stalked them for a number of nights on their last gigs. 

We did the first recordings of them live at Fillmore East, but we couldn't catch them at their best. They were headlining, a bill that opened with Procol Harum, continued with Ten Years After and then finished with Country Joe & The Fish [September 27-28, 1968]. By the time the first two bands had finished it was the middle of the night, and Joe both the audience and Joe and The Fish were too wiped out to make their music happen. 

We decided to make another try, so...we flew out to San Francisco to record what was to be their last gig together. Ed rented a moving large moving van and and set everything up outside the Fillmore [West] Auditorium on Market Street. The opening act was a new English band called Led Zeppelin, so we thought that there was a chance that the audience wouldn't be as limp for Joe and The Fish as they'd been in New York.
Since it was going to be the final night on stage together, the band decided to invite all their friends to join them and backstage there was a long party before they went out to play... 

Back stage the party went on for so long that the band and their friends finally came out to play in a blaze of excitement and a heavy accumulation of controlled substances. But on stage all of them immediately became the stars that they were, and after I'd made sure that everybody was playing and the sound in the van was working, I went out front and looked up at the stage. Here was one of the greatest line-ups of San Francisco musicians I had ever seen--and each of them was his own stage personality. Jorma was bent over his guitar, Steve was swaying up and down, Jerry was studying his strings, Joe was half-smiling Barry was striding around his stage...It was one of those moments in the 60s that would never come again--and listening to it after all these years, brings back that moment and so much of the mood of those chaotic years.

The double-cd set captures the final set in its apparent entirety, complete with pictures. The core band (Joe on guitar and harmonica, Barry on lead guitar, David Cohen on keyboards and Chicken Hirsh on drums) along with Jack Casady on bass, performs a 77-minute set of classic CJF songs. They are joined on one song ("It's So Nice") by David Getz on a second drum kit. For the finale, Mickey Hart takes over the second kit, and the band plays a 38-minute version of the song "Donovan's Reef," mixed in with jams based on "Flying High." Jorma Kaukonen, Jerry Garcia (playing a Gibson) and Steve Miller all get substantial turns on lead guitar, and Miller adds some bluesy harmonica as well.

On November 27, 1994, the original Country Joe And The Fish band (Joe, Barry, Cohen, Barthol and Chicken) were scheduled to play at the Berkeley Veterans Memorial Building at 1931 Center Street. They were also scheduled to play Fillmore the night before, to promote the newly released Vanguard cd from 1969. Due to some unknown dispute, Barry Melton made a brief solo appearance at Fillmore and did not appear in Berkeley. The balance of the group played a fine set, as did Joy Of Cooking and Lazarus (the photo is ca. 1940).

Coda
No one recalled the final night jam. The participants were--shall we say--distracted, but observers only remembered Led Zeppelin's first trip to San Francisco (although John Paul Jones recalls watching Country Joe And The Fish) Recollections are only about the the coming of the Zeppelin. An attendee recalls (from January 10)

I remember zep coming on after taj and the fish. Had heard zep records on kkzx, wanted more. Got it. They blew up the ballroom. Carousel/fillmore west was never same. Page, plant, bonham, jones were rock gods that night. Saw them 2 more times but nothing compared to that night in January 69.

Led Zeppelin had likely opened their first set with their only familiar song of the evening, a turbocharged version of the Yardbirds' "Train Kept A Rollin,'" and I assure you that the train indeed kept rolling. The last stand of Country Joe And The Fish was already history when it began, as the 1970s were underway in San Francisco by January 1969.

The jam finally came to light when Vanguard released the cd in 1994. Country Joe And The Fish were going to reform and play the Fillmore and Berkeley Veterans Hall, but some ancient dispute intervened, and Barry Melton did not perform with them. Melton actually performed solo at the Fillmore, but did not stay for the band, in order to fulfill his contract, perhaps afraid that the specter of the late Bill Graham would haunt him. In any case, the un-reunion dampened enthusiasm for the album, and it passed somewhat unnoticed. But as Sam Charters said, there was hardly anything like it. This one wasn't even legend--there's a professionally recorded tape, officially released, with great photos by Jim Marshall, and yet it passes us by hardly without recall. Sic Transit Gloria Psychedelia.

The Natch[l Blues, Taj Mahal's second album on Columbia, featuring the great Jesse Ed Davis on guitar, was released in December 1968

Setlists (As Known)
Taj Mahal
A tape circulates for Taj Mahal from Friday, January 10, 1969
Taj Mahal , Fillmore West,SF
January 10,1969

1-//Checkin' Up On My Baby
2-Easy Rider
3-Aint That Alot Of Love
4-The Cuckoo
5-Everybody Got To Change Sometime
6-Leavin' Trunk

Taj Mahal-vocals, harmonica
Jesse Ed Davis-lead and slide guitar
Gary Gilmore-bass
Chuck Blackwell-drums

Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin's general setlists from the Fillmore West are known, but not precisely which songs were played in which order, so there may be some variation. There is a partial tape of one of the nights, although it is not clear which night it is (the entire story is explained here).

Setlist:

1st set: Train Kept a Rollin', I Can't Quit You Baby, As Long As I Have You (incl. Fresh Garbage), Dazed and Confused, How Many More Times

2nd set: White Summer / Black Mountainside, Killing Floor, You Shook Me, Pat's Delight (drum solo), Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, Communication Breakdown, For Your Love.

Album Economics: Bear's Choice-The History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Why?)

The album cover of the final Grateful Dead Warner Brothers lp, The History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice), released in July 1973

While the Grateful Dead were legends almost from their inception, in their first several years, the albums they released on Warner Brothers played a huge part in spreading that legend. Of course, it was attending live Dead concerts that put people On The Bus, but for most fans in the early 70s, hearing some of their albums sparked the interest or willingness to attend a Grateful Dead concert in the first place. Most of the albums from the band's time on Warner Brothers are revered today, even if they weren't upon release, except one: the band's last release on Warners, in July 1973, with the provocative title of History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1, but usually referred to by its parenthetical add-on (Bear's Choice).

I can recall the anticipation when Bear's Choice was released, and the mystification and dismay when I actually listened to it. Time has not really improved the album's reception. Only the most thorough of Deadheads even recalls it, and the record is almost never mentioned in blogs, tweets or posts, much less with any fondness. As most Deadheads became more knowledgeable about the breadth of the band's music, we became aware that Bear's Choice consisted of tracks recorded from some of the finest Grateful Dead concerts of 1970, and I for one became convinced that the least attractive songs were chosen. The release of a bad, dated live album from a great set of tapes was a strange decision for a band to make, but it was actuallly consistent with the long-gone practices of the 1970s record industry. This post will review the History Of The Grateful Dead Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice) album in its proper context, and make some case for how such a peculiar release came to exist.

The rear cover of Bear's Choice (actually from the cd re-release)

The Bear's Choice Album

Most Deadheads today forget about Bear's Choice, if they ever even knew about it in the first place. Back in '73, however, there were only 10 Grateful Dead albums in existence (including the two dubious ones on MGM/Sunflower, Vintage Dead and Historic Dead). For all but the hippest of the hip in San Francisco or Brooklyn, there were no Dead tapes in circulation. In New York City, at least, there were Grateful Dead bootleg lps circulating, but they too were a rare commodity unknown in the outside world. The Grateful Dead were no different than Ten Years After or The Byrds: if the music wasn't available on LP at your local record dealer, that music didn't exist. 

So when the Grateful Dead left Warner Brothers for their own self-financed label after the release of the Europe '72 triple-live album, it was not surprising to find out that they owed the label one more album. It was pretty exciting for a suburban 15-year old like me to read that they would release an album from three-year-old tapes. For me, 1970 was before I started listening to the Dead, so as far as I was concerned the forthcoming album would pretty much be a time machine, transporting me to the fabled, long-gone days of the Fillmores. But come July, and this strange album came out (details from Deaddisc, of course):

History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice)

Grateful Dead

Initial release : July 1973
Warner Bros. BS-2721
The Dead's last album for Warner Brothers. A single LP of acoustic and electric material from the shows on February 13 and 14, 1970 at the Fillmore East
Tracks

• Katie Mae (Hopkins)
• Dark Hollow (Browning)
• I've Been All Around This World (Traditional, arr. Grateful Dead)
• Wake Up Little Susie (Bryant/Bryant)
• Black Peter (Garcia/Hunter)
• Smokestack Lightnin' (Burnett)
• Hard To Handle (Redding/Isabell/Jones)

Musicians

• Jerry Garcia - acoustic guitar, lead guitar, vocals
• Bob Weir - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, vocals
• Ron "Pig Pen" McKernan- acoustic guitar, organ, percussion, harmonica, vocals
• Phil Lesh - bass
• Mickey Hart - drums
• Bill Kreutzmann - drums

Credits

• Recorded Live by Bear: February 13-14, 1970 at the Fillmore East, New York, NY
• Produced by: Owsley Stanley

Notes
The songs on Bear's Choice are taken from the following shows;

• Katie Mae, Wake Up Little Susie, Black Peter and Smokestack Lightnin' - February 13, 1970
• Dark Hollow, I've Been All Around This World and Hard To Handle - February 14, 1970

At the time Bear's Choice came out, I was probably a relatively typical Deadhead. I was a teenager in the suburbs, I had all but two of the Warners albums (I didn't have Anthem Of The Sun or Aoxomoxoa yet), and I had heard the Vintage Dead lp, but I didn't yet have any of the tapes or bootlegs. I had been fortunate enough to see the Grateful Dead twice already (Winterland Dec 12 '72 and Maples Feb 9 '73), but it all had been pretty overwhelming. Sure, there were crusty 24-year olds in San Rafael, the East Village or Montague Street who had seen the Dead a bunch of times over the years and had at least heard some tapes or bootlegs, but nationally, most Deadheads were more like me than those veterans. 

Of the seven songs on Bear's Choice, three were acoustic, three were by Pigpen, six were covers, and they only electric Jerry song was the mournful "Black Peter" (I think Pigpen played organ on it). While I recognized that the record was a sort of tribute to the recently diseased Pigpen, it was a strange tribute: the "anchor song" was a seemingly interminable blues song ("Smokestack Lightning") that I knew as a Yardbirds cover. The Otis Redding cover ("Hard To Handle") was intriguing, but it had a strange, clunky arrangement. The Everly Brothers song ("Wake Up Little Susie") was cute, but trivial, and it was difficult to process. As for "Katie Mae" and "Dark Hollow" I knew nothing about the Dead's 1970 acoustic sets, nor did most fans--were these typical, or random?

And who was "Bear", and why did he get to choose?

Aoxomoxoa, released in June 1969, and recorded on the Grateful Dead's original contract with Warners

Grateful Dead Record Contracts 1966-1973

The strange, counterproductive tale of Bear's Choice can only be understood in the context of the Grateful Dead's record contracts with Warners, which in turn only makes sense because of industry practices at the time. Despite the Dead's best efforts to break that mold, efforts that largely succeeded, the band fell prey to the least forward looking approach typical of bands at the time, and they did not help their own cause. 

The Grateful Dead's first record contract was signed with Warner Brothers executive Joe Smith around December 1966, although they had agreed in principle a few months earlier and had just spent time negotiating the details. The general outline of the deal was that the Grateful Dead agreed to deliver three albums to Warners, although Warners probably had an option for another album or two, per typical contracts of the time. However, the Dead had made somewhat better decisions than some of their contemporaries. 

For one thing, the Dead's Warner Brothers contract gave them complete artistic control of their albums. For another, while typical album contracts of the era required that a band deliver a certain number of songs (tracks) to qualify as an album (usually 10 in the US), the Dead had a jazz-inspired deal. Thanks to Rock Scully, who had conferred with some jazz musicians, the Dead were only required to deliver a certain number of recorded minutes, like a jazz artist, rather than a specific number of tracks. There were still economic reasons for them to make up song titles on Anthem Of The Sun, but that had to with mechanical publishing royalties (a dense subject I have addressed elsewhere) rather than a record company obligation. The Dead also retained the music publishing rights to their own songs (through IceNine publishing), largely because Joe Smith and Warners did not realize that popular rock songs would have such a long shelf life and did not care (per Smith's own admission). 

By mid-1969, the Dead had produced Aoxomoxoa, their third album, and were in a position to renegotiate their contract with Warners. The band themselves did not know that, however, and manager Lenny Hart negotiated an extension with Warner Brothers without the band members' knowledge. Both Columbia and MGM had interest in the Dead, but Lenny had his reasons for negotiating directly, mainly to get his hands on the advance money more easily. Thus the Dead ended 1969 with an extension from  Warner Brothers. 

I believe that Live/Dead was released (in November '69) as an option on the original contract, and that the Dead subsequently had a five-album deal with an option for two more, but it doesn't really matter. By the end of the year, the Dead had a substantial commitment to deliver more material to Warner Brothers. One of the confusing aspect of old record contracts was that double or triple albums could be construed as single or double albums as part of the contract, subject to negotiation between the artist and the record company. The negotiation was inevitably over how much the record company would charge for the album and what rate the band would get paid at. A band could deliver two albums worth of material to a record company, but the company could release each album separately or simply charge double for the album, wrecking sales. 

Both Skull and Roses and Europe 72 were sold for far less than double or triple retail price, so I think in the case of something like those records, Warners counted the other LPs as part of one album so that left the Dead owing one more record to Warners to fulfill their contract. After the Dead had told Warners they weren't renewing, Warners wasn't going to do the group any favors (see the Appendix below for some coherent speculation about the Dead's obligations to Warners, which likely included the Garcia and Ace albums).

The remnants of the band Blues Project released an album's worth of blues jams on Verve in 1968, so that most of the members would be free to record as Sea Train on Capitol in 1969. Verve released it anyway, with the ironic title of Planned Obsolescence. I like both Blues Project and Seatrain, yet this was still a waste of tape.

The Early 70s Rock And Roll Record Business
The Grateful Dead have a reputation for having been true mavericks of the music business, blazing a trail for others to follow decades later. In many ways this reputation is justified. However, in many other ways, the Dead fell prey to much of the false logic of the record business of the time, and much to their own detriment. The strange song choices of Bear's Choice betray the Grateful Dead's acceptance of certain 1970s assumptions about the record business and the rock audience, assumptions that were proven fundamentally incorrect less than 20 years later. While the Dead had their own peculiar twist on these assumptions, the assumptions were still wrong.

Consider the Dead's position in early 1973. After being a sort of infamous cult band in the '60s, that had never sold many records, the group had climbed into the middle tier of touring rock bands. They had released four successful albums in a row (Workingman's, American Beauty, Skull And Roses, Europe '72), all of which had garnered good FM airplay, and their concert receipts had continued to increase. Rather than just being popular in a few strongholds like Northern California and New York Metro, the band could play profitable shows in Wembley or Wichita. If a band was ever going to go it alone, the Grateful Dead had picked a great time--on a roll with their releases, and playing great live shows in a booming rock concert industry.

Yet in order to go it alone, the Dead still owed an album release to Warner Brothers. Obviously they weren't going into the studio, and obviously they weren't going to give Warners any new, original material if they could help it. The effort and hopeful rewards of writing and recording new material would accrue to Grateful Dead Records. So it wasn't surprising to read in Rolling Stone (or possibly Joel Selvin's column in the SF Chronicle) that the Dead would fulfill their obligation with an LP of older live material. At the time, I was still 14 years old, and very few Dead fans would have been twice my age. Tapes and bootlegs were largely unknown in the suburbs, so a live album from the past was enticing indeed, since I had no other means of getting that music.

Successful groups changing record labels wasn't unheard of in the early 1970s. The Rolling Stones had moved from Decca Records (London Records in the US) to Atlantic in early 1970. Decca had punished them by releasing a terrible album of outtakes called Stone Age in 1971, which no one remembers. This was a typical record company maneuver. The reasoning was that rock fans were kids, fickle and with limited resources. If they bought the "next" album by a group and it was crummy, the kids would figure "this band's no longer hip" and move on, because they didn't have money to waste. Another variation of this was for a record company to release some sort of "Best Of" album when a group left the label (MGM released MotherMania when Zappa went to Warners in '68), with the idea that it would cut into sales of any newly released album by the artist.

On the other side, rock bands often had an equally hostile attitude towards their record company. When a group left a label, there was often a lot of hostility and frustration, usually over money. On one hand, record contracts were structured to overwhelmingly favor the label. New artists usually had no leverage, and particularly in the 60s, no one knew how much money was really going to be made. So artists with a quick hit often felt taken advantage of, with some justification. Of course, the same artists had no idea how much of their own money they were wasting on new gear and first class airline tickets, fronted by the label out of future royalties.

Thus when a band needed to turn in a final album to escape a record contract, they often had no desire to let their former employer have a good record. In one particularly emblematic case, there had been a groundbreaking group from 1965-67 called The Blues Project, who had been very hip and popular in the early days of the Fillmore, and had released two memorable albums on MGM-Verve. Although they were a Greenwich Village band, some members ended up reforming the group in Marin County in 1968. Rapidly they evolved into the interesting group Seatrain, and were signed by A&M. However, in order to escape their obligation to Verve and sign as Seatrain, they had to produce one more Blues Project album. They released an album of formless jams called Planned Obsolescence, a meaningless exercise. Verve released it anyway.

The Grateful Dead had released five successful albums in a row on Warners, going back to Live/Dead, and seven if you count Garcia and Ace. Yet they had been persuaded by Ron Rakow, with some justification, that Warners was taking too big a share of their receipts from those albums. Now, Warners had distribution and radio promotion with a lot of overhead, but according to Rakow at least, the Dead were getting only 31 cents from every album sale (albums sold for around 3 or 4 dollars at the time). Most Grateful Dead fans were like me--suburban or college kids, unconnected to any underground network, getting all their music from new lps. Yet the Dead had no plans to give Warners an album that would keep up the string of exciting albums they had released in the preceding four years. 

The image from the 1967 Pigpen t-shirt, promoted by Warners

Owsley And Pigpen
I do not think the Grateful Dead actively planned to put out a strange album for their final Warners release. However, they did the next closest thing: they assigned the project to Owsley. The Dead had made the decision by the end of 1972 to go independent, and Warners must have made it clear that another album was required to escape the contract. I'm sure there would have been no other concessions on Warners part, either, like a good advance, so the band would have wanted to do it cheaply.

Owsley "Bear" Stanley had been in Federal Prison from July 1970 until about July 1972 on charges of illicit LSD distribution. The Dead's touring operation was on a solid financial footing by the time Owsley returned, and their sound system was handled by Alembic Engineering, a company that Owsley had helped found. However, for all his legendary status, Owsley didn't have a financial stake in Alembic itself, and he didn't really have an official job with the crew either. Owsley wanted to be in charge, of course, but it wasn't the sixties and he didn't have a role. Conversely, that would have meant Owsley could be spared to work on the record. Thus the album was indeed "Bear's Choice," and I think there was only general approval from the band, with no direct input, so it really was Owsley's album.

Pipgen had died in March 1973. He had not performed with the band since June of 1972, but until the end of the year there may have been some residual hope that Pig could have gotten healthy and at least continued on as an occasional guest star. It was not to be, and Pigpen died while the Dead were on tour in the East. So it seemed appropriate that Bear's Choice became a tribute to their fallen comrade. Owsley had been their since the beginning, so he was an appropriate steward, even if it was strange to have the Acid King construct a tribute to the only family member who didn't like his product.

Owsley liked the blues and he liked folk music. Thus he took the tapes from the Fillmore East shows from February 13 and 14, 1970, and tried to give listeners a taste of what they missed with from those days, with a big focus on Pigpen. However, to a normal suburban listener like me, the album was completely devoid of context. There were four acoustic songs, one by Pigpen, a mournful "Black Peter" for the only original, an 18-minute "Smokestack Lightning," and a rocking but clunky version of Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle." Regular Dead material from those great concerts was entirely absent.

The acoustic material was fascinating, but mysterious, since there was only the faintest knowledge of Garcia's old-timey folk roots. And Weir singing an Everly Brothers song--had that been typical? The answer was "no," but how would I have known that? The slow, grinding "Smokestack" made sense in terms of a three hour show, but it made up most of side two and was kind of a drag to a teenager. Two years later I would get the Hollywood Palladium bootleg (August 6, 1971), and I could hear how "Hard To Handle" should really sound, but back in 1970 the Dead hadn't really figured out the arrangement yet.

Thus it appears that Owsley, given a free hand, and always his own man in any case, made his own tribute to Pigpen. With the knowledge of the Dead's music that we have today, it sort of makes sense: it featured some of the left-out corners of the Grateful Dead's music up until that time. Now we know that old-timey acoustic music, slow blues and psychedelic R&B covers were part of the Dead's broad pallette, but to my 15-year-old self it just seemed strange. I was enormously disappointed when Bear's Choice came out. So was everyone else, I think, because almost no one ever mentioned it again.

Dick's Picks Vol. 4, recorded Feb 13-14, 1970, released 1996

"The History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol 1"
The most tantalizing aspect of Bear's Choice was the actual title: "The History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol 1." It suggested that the album would be the first of many. In a way, it was, although the next installment was eighteen years later, with 1991's One From The Vault. Yet Bear's Choice shows us that the Dead had the idea to use their vault as a way to disseminate their music and provide some income far into the future, as long ago as the early 1970s. Granted, at the time, the Dead were competing with the presence of two almost-bootleg albums, Vintage Dead and Historic Dead, in MGM-Sunflower, both recorded in 1966, but Vintage in particular was a far catchier album than Bear's Choice.

I got excellent quality cassette recordings of the February 13-14, 1970 shows at the end of 1980. The music stunned me, of course, as I couldn't believe there was that much uninterrupted goodness out there to listen to. But it only made Bear's Choice more peculiar. With all that great music to choose from, why did Owsley pick the strange tracks that he did? If the Dead had ended their Warner Brothers run in '73 with an lp that featured Fillmore East performances of, say, "Dancing In The Streets" and "Alligator" (both from Feb 14 '70), it would have been another great seller. "Dancing" would have been all over FM radio, and the Dead's audience would be even bigger. But the Dead fell into the trap of sticking it to the record company, and turned in a purposely strange album that was bound to confuse all but a then-tiny number of old heads. 

The Golden Road Boxed Set, released 2003

Final Coda
Bear's Choice was rightly forgotten, soon after it was released, and it has remained an orphan ever since. The one real effect of the album was limiting the scope of Dick's Pick's Vol 4. Volume 4, released in 1996, featured the relatively widely circulated Feb 13-14 '70 show at its finest. Yet the Bear's Choice tracks needed to be excluded, for contractual reasons. Now, granted, DP4 was already a three-cd set and anyone could make their own custom mix tape of the complete show, but the acoustic songs might have made a good addition and they had to be left off.

When Bear's Choice was released as part of the 12-cd Golden Road boxed set, a few additional tracks were included.

Bonus tracks on 2003 expanded CD release, all live recordings from Feb 1970;

• Good Lovin' - February 13, 1970 at Fillmore East, New York, NY
• Big Boss Man - February 5, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA
• Smokestack Lightnin' - February 8, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA
• Sitting On Top Of The World - February 8, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA

While additional live material from the Dead is always welcome, these seem to be a particularly random assortment of selections. "Sitting On Top Of The World" from 1970 was a rarity, but was another "Smokestack" called for? No matter. Bear's Choice was a contractual obligation, and it was designed to be a quirky artifact that would spite the band's former record company. The final, strange bonus cuts were an appropriately head-scratching appendix to a strange release.

Appendix: Grateful Dead/Warner Brothers Record Contracts
The Grateful Dead signed a three-album deal with Joe Smith of Warner Brothers in December 1966. If it was a typical contract of that era, Warners would have had an option for an additional album or two under the same terms.
The Grateful Dead (March 1967)
Anthem Of The Sun (July 1968)
Aoxomoxoa (June 1969)
Live/Dead (November 1969) While the Dead were touring in mid-69, Lenny Hart negotiated an extension with Warners. I don't know which contract Live/Dead was assigned to, but that was probably part of the negotiation. My assumption is that Live/Dead was considered a record company option on the original deal.

The Workingman's Dead (June 1970) I'm assuming that Workingman's was the first album of a five-album deal with an option for two more.
American Beauty (December 1970)
Grateful Dead [Skull & Roses] (September 1971) This double album was presumably considered one album, a conventional arrangement that would have been negotiated between Warners and the Dead.
Garcia (January 1972) It was conventional practice in the 70s for the "main" players in any popular band to be offered a solo album, though a "Key Man" clause. From Warners' point of view, they didn't care whether Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead were the ones with a hit. Now, Garcia could not have recorded a solo album with anyone other than Warners, but he might have negotiated a separate deal. If he did, then it would follow that Live/Dead was part of the second deal, not the original one.
Ace (March 1972) I know that Ace was recorded as part of the Warners deal, and was considered a Grateful Dead album for contractual purposes. Warners probably figured that they had a good chance of making a genuine rock star out of Weir.
Europe '72 (November 1972) The Dead told Warners at the end of '72 that they had no intention of renewing their contract, and told Clive Davis and Columbia they weren't signing with them either, but rather going independent. Double live albums were pretty common, but Europe '72 was a triple album, and the band's last release had been a live album as well. One way or another, the Dead had delivered six albums on the Warners contract, so they still owed a final album.
The History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol.1 Bear's Choice (July 1973) Although the Dead had left Warners by mid-73, they could not have released an album on their own label without having fulfilled their Warners contract.

The Dead put out two albums independently (Wake Of The Flood and Mars Hotel), as well as some solo material on Round. They then signed a distribution deal with United Artists, where they owed four Dead albums and Garcia and Weir solo albums. These obligations were only partially fulfilled, with two Dead albums, one a double (Blues For Allah and Steal Your Face), Reflections and Kingfish (which would have counted as the Weir album).

I do not know the structure of the Dead's 1976 contract with Arista. However, by that time the group was established and both the Dead and Arista knew what they were getting into. The royalties and other factors with releasing the inevitable double live albums were probably written into the contract from the beginning. The deal that was not fulfilled until In The Dark was completed in 1987, which was the sixth Grateful Dead album on Arista. Possibly the two Garcia solo albums and Heaven Help The Fool were part of the obligation as well, or maybe they were contracted separately. After that time, the Dead had an agreement with Arista, but it was basically an album-to-album deal, and Garcia himself was free to record for anybody.

Update 
Appendix 2: The Dead on Bear's Choice
Fellow scholar LightIntoAshes comes up with some contemporary quotes from the band, from Cameron Crowe articles

Cameron Crowe talked to Garcia & others for a couple of illuminating articles in 1973-74: "Rather than choose the usual 'greatest hits' packaging, for their final [Warners] album commitment, The Dead dispatched production manager Owsley 'The Bear' Stanley to rummage through his collection of live tapes to find a unique performance LP with which to bow out... 'It’s a side of the group that never went on record,' says Jerry in retrospect... 'It shows a Dead you’ll never see or hear again,' Rock [Scully] picks up the story. 'The album is sixty percent Pigpen and the other forty percent is acoustic material. Needless to say, Pigpen is no longer with us and The Dead don’t do acoustic material onstage anymore. The record is very, very interesting if you know the history behind it.'" {from Circus Magazine, October 1973 issue) 

But a later article revealed that the Dead themselves were "ambivalent at best" about the album: "Weir is upset about the inclusion of a flat 'Wake Up Little Susie' duet with Jerry. Garcia could care less about the whole thing. When handed his first copy of the album, he mumbled something about it having a less-than-stellar cover and didn’t even bother taking it home. 'We had to give that record to Warner Brothers,' says Jerry... 'We weren’t contracted for it originally, but we had [to] give it to them in order to make Europe ’72 a triple-LP. We could have been cut loose if we gave them two single records, rather than one triple album. We ended up giving them four discs instead of just two just to be able to go to Europe...'As far as I’m concerned, it’s something we owe them. I’m not interested in making Warner Brothers any richer. In a way, I’m glad it’s a low-profile, non-success record. It just means there won’t be any more energy going to WB via us. The music is what it is, us in early 1970... The stuff we were doing at the time never got onto any of our records before now. I might not like it, but I played it. If they were no good, it’s too late to take those notes back.{from Creem Magazine, January 1974 issue}

September 26-27, 1969, The Pavilion, Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, NY (canceled)

An ad from the September 11, 1969 Village Voice (it's in two parts, but it's for the same venue)

I recently came across an ad for a Grateful Dead show that was canceled. In itself, the canceled show is not that big a deal. However, besides my natural desire for completism, the cancellation hints at a whiff of competition between Tri-State Area promoters, and the Grateful Dead's willingness to play them off against each other.

The ad above (in two parts, but it's the same ad) is for forthcoming concerts at The Pavilion at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. I found the ad at the indispensable blog All The Streets You Crossed, which all 60s and 70s rock historians should be reading religiously. A recent post was on Summer '69 ads for concerts at The Singer Bowl and Flushing Meadows Pavilion in Queens, on the grounds where the 1964 World's Fair had been held. I noticed the ad for the Grateful Dead on September 26 and 27, which was a Friday and Saturday. However, we know that on that weekend, the Grateful Dead co-headlined the Fillmore East with Country Joe And The Fish.

A re-scheduled show, from one Borough to another? Yes, certainly. But I think there's a hint of a lot more of a story here.

Howard Stein And Flushing Meadows
Howard Stein was an important promoter in New York in the 60s and 70s, and he booked the Grateful Dead many times. Among the many venues where he booked the Dead were the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, Gaelic Park in the Bronx and the Academy of Music in Manhattan. Stein competed first with Bill Graham and later with John Scher for bookings from touring groups, not just the Grateful Dead.

The ad for Singer Bowl and Pavilion ad from the June 5, 1969 Village Voice

In the Summer of 1969, Howard Stein was booking both the Singer Bowl and The Pavilion, in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. The park had been the site of the New York World's Fair in 1964, and subsequently became the site of Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets (and for some time, the Jets as well). The Singer Bowl was the larger venue. You can see from the ad above that concerts at the Singer Bowl and the Pavilion did not directly conflict. The Grateful Dead had headlined a July 11-12, 1969 weekend at the Pavilion for Stein, supported by Joe Cocker And The Grease Band and Tribe. I believe the Pavilion shows were where Steve Parrish met the Grateful Dead.

Thus it does not seem surprising that since the Grateful Dead played early in the Summer for Howard Stein, they were booked for a return visit at the season's end, on the weekend of September 26-27. Yet the Dead ended up playing the Fillmore East with Country Joe And The Fish. My vague recollection is that the Dead were a late addition at the Fillmore East, replacing Mountain, but I could have it backwards--perhaps Country Joe And The Fish replaced Mountain. In any case, there seems to have been a change in plans. The Dead were planning to be in New York, but they ended up at Fillmore East rather than Flushing.

While I don't doubt that no one who might know the story has any interest in recounting it, I do doubt that this was casual. For all the Grateful Dead members' friendship with Bill Graham, which I believe to have been genuine, they were always willing to play for other promoters in San Francisco. The Dead even started their own ballroom to compete directly with Bill Graham. I can't think that they treated the lucrative New York market any differently.

Howard Stein vs Bill Graham, 1969-71
BGP: February 11-12, 1969 Fillmore East
BGP: June 20-21, 1969 Fillmore East 
     HS: July 11-12, 1969 Pavilion at Flushing
    HS: September 26-27, 1969 Pavilion at Flushing (canceled)
BGP: September 26-27, 1969 Fillmore East
BGP: January 1-2. 1970 Fillmore East
BGP: February 11, 13-14, 1970 Fillmore East
     HS: March 20-21, 1970 Capitol Theater, Port Chester
BGP: May 15, 1970 Fillmore East
     HS: June 24, 1970 Capitol Theater, Port Chester
BGP: July 9-12, 1970 Fillmore East
BGP: September 17-20 Fillmore East
    HS: November 5-8, 1970 Capitol Theater, Port Chester
    HS: February 18-21, 23-24, 1971 Capitol Theater, Port Chester
BGP: April 25-29, 1971 Fillmore East

Stein and Graham were drawing from similar pools of potential fans. Flushing Meadows was just 11 miles from Fillmore East (4/5/6 to the 7, change at Grand Central). Port Chester was a little farther away, up in Westchester County, and outside of the reach of the subway (though not Metro-North). Still, the Capitol was only 30 miles away, and there was plenty of overlap between the Fillmore East and Capitol Theater audience.

There's any number of possible explanations for the Grateful Dead canceling their date with Howard Stein at the Pavilion and playing the Fillmore East instead. I have no ideas of the contracts or expectations of the band, and the entire episode may have simply been a misunderstanding. However, there's no way that the September 26-27 weekend wasn't a serious competitive matter between Bill Graham and Howard Stein. Somewhere there's a story, and I hope we can figure it out at some point.

Fillmore: The Last Days (LP and movie, 1972)

Fillmore: The Last Days lp, released June 1972

Part of the Grateful Dead legend came from their presence at many of the seminal events of the 1960s and early 70s: the Human Be-In, Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Altamont and Watkins Glen, just to name a few. There were many more festivals and special events around the country during that era, which while lacking a national profile, were often legendary or infamous events to fans in those regions. The Dead played at plenty of those, as well: the Sound Storm in Poynette, WI, a free concert in Piedmont Park in Atlanta after the Atlanta Pop Festival and so on. Along with the Jefferson Airplane, the Dead's presence was an imprimatur that an event was hip and happening, and anyone who lived to tell the tale--who could remember it--would have something to recall their youth by.

The Sixties were a very self-conscious generation, with the participants constantly testifying to the importance of events even as they were happening. Indeed, what are perceived today as the major rock events of the 1960s are largely seen that way because of documents left behind. When bands had released considerably fewer albums, and cassette decks, much less YouTube and the Internet, were just a sort of dream, movies and albums like Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Gimme Shelter went a long way towards defining the world's perception of seminal 60s music events. More people have surely seen Jimi Hendrix's performance in the Monterey Pop movie than ever saw Hendrix, and bands like Ten Years After and Joe Cocker had their careers made by the Woodstock movie and album. You can try it yourself: find a crowd of people--probably not at work--and shout "Gimme an F!" Everybody knows what comes next, even if they've never heard of Country Joe and The Fish.

The Grateful Dead were attendant at many of the largest and most important 60s musical events, and yet they left no contemporary musical or visual evidence of their presence. The 1967 Monterey Pop Festival was filmed for a projected ABC-TV special, which was never aired, but instead turned into a sort of 'Art House' movie. Most of the artists in the Monterey Pop movie (Jimi Hendrix Experience,  Jefferrson Airplane and Janis Joplin among them) were even bigger by the time the movie was released in 1969, so the movie has had a wide following over the years. The Grateful Dead, however, refused to be filmed or recorded, so they don't appear on any of the subsequent extended releases of the movie and concert album (released in the 1990s).

Similarly, the Dead refused to be filmed for the Woodstock movie. Now, we know they played terribly, but they insured that they would never benefit the way Joe Cocker or Country Joe did even if they had played well. Garcia does appear uncredited on the Woodstock album, saying "Exhibit A" (in the movie, he is holding up a joint), but that was an inside joke. Of course, the Dead didn't get to play at all at Altamont. According to my cousin, Bill Graham's plans to make a movie of the Watkins Glen festival, at that time the largest outdoor rock concert ever, were thwarted when the Dead refused to agree to being filmed. However, knowing that the Grateful Dead's staunch resistance to allowing themselves to be filmed, despite the implicit damper it would put on their career, it makes it all the more significant that the Dead allowed themselves to be filmed and recorded for their concert at the final week of Fillmore West, preserved in the 1972 Fillmore movie and the June, 1972 Columbia album Fillmore: The Last Days.

The Closing Of The Fillmore West
The Grateful Dead had first played for Bill Graham at the old Fillmore Auditorium, on 1805 Geary Blvd on December 10, 1965. However, the Dead had always had a contested professional relationship with Graham, and the band had opened a larger competing venue, the Carousel Ballroom. The Carousel was about a mile away, at 1545 Market Street (at Van Ness). However, the Dead's naive mismanagement of the venue allowed Graham to take it over and rename it the Fillmore West. Nonetheless, despite  having been bested, the Dead still played both the Fillmore East and Fillmore West many times for Bill Graham. However, by 1971 both venues were too small for the booming rock market, and the Fillmore West building had been sold to the Howard Johnson's hotel chain, so Graham decided to close both places. The Fillmore East had its final concert on June 27, 1971, and the Fillmore West closed the next week.

There were six nights of concerts during the final week of Fillmore West, from June 29 through July 4, 1971, most of them broadcast on KSFX-fm. Bill Graham was always a great self-promoter, so a big hullabaloo was made about the concerts. Graham was an aspiring mogul, as well, so he arranged to have a movie made and an album recorded. The Woodstock movie and album had been huge successes on a mammoth scale, and the promoters of Woodstock never had to work again. Graham was looking for a similar gold strike. However complex and contested the Grateful Dead's relationship with Bill Graham may have been, for his sake the band made their only exception to being filmed by outsiders. As a result, there are two Grateful Dead songs on the Fillmore: The Last Days triple album ("Casey Jones" and "Johnny B. Goode" from the July 2, 1971 Fillmore West show). The album also featured the first officially released live recording of the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, with Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar, performing "Henry." The Dead's performance of "Johnny B. Goode" was in the Fillmore movie, along with some scenes of Garcia tuning his pedal steel during a basketball game. Apparently, he was tuning his guitar for the Rowan Brothers set, but that wasn't plain at the time.

The Fillmore DVD cover

Fillmore and Fillmore: The Last Days
Bill Graham obviously conceived of the Fillmore movie as an homage to himself and the San Francisco rock scene of the 60s, with the Fillmore: The Last Days album as the soundtrack. Much as I personally enjoy the movies and the album, that view was not widely shared by the public at large. San Francisco had been perhaps the most important rock "scene" in the 60s, but it was feeling kind of tired by 1971. Janis Joplin was gone, having died the previous October. The Jefferson Airplane were off the road, with new mom Grace Slick taking a hiatus. Quicksilver Messenger Service was sounding very strained, with John Cipollina having left, and the group dominated by the nasally vocals of Dino Valenti. Sly And The Family  Stone were hugely popular, but they had long since graduated from the Fillmore West. Creedence Clearwater Revival was happy to headline the final night, but for whatever reasons, probably related to their record company, they were not willing to be on film or on the album. Santana was the one relatively recent arrival who shone at the closing of the Fillmore West, although their performance was the last of the classic Abraxas lineup.

Fairly or not, the Fillmore album sounded kind of anemic in 1972. The Dead's two tracks, ably mixed by Steven Barncard, were simply an addendum to their then current album (Grateful Dead, aka 'Skull & Roses'). One of the songs, "Johnny B. Goode," had even been on that album. The other song, "Casey Jones," while classic and enjoyable, was hardly seminal. Much as I love Hot Tuna, the rest of America must have thought an extended blues jam on "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning" was a far cry from Grace and Marty soaring on "Volunteers." Quicksilver, once the pride of the Fillmore, by any objective standard sounded just terrible by 1971. Only Santana really stands out, with "Incident At Neshabur" and a unique version of Miles Davis's "In A Silent Way."

The rest of the album featured San Francisco bands, mostly with just an album or two under their belt. A few years earlier, up and coming San Francisco bands would have been the shape of things to come, but now they didn't really have an impact. Now, speaking personally, I am a huge fan of San Francisco music, so I love hearing Elvin Bishop or The Sons of Champlin, but that feeling wasn't shared nationally. Ironically enough, the two most forward looking performances on the record, by Malo and Tower Of Power, were simply too early for the rest of the country. Both of those groups would be hugely popular and influential worldwide, but their impact would not be felt for some time. Boz Scaggs and Elvin Bishop would go onto considerable success as well, but not in the specific incarnations on the Fillmore album. A few other groups, like It's A Beautiful Day, Cold Blood, Stoneground and Lamb, just sound like second tier groups today, and the record buying public didn't disagree.

The final night of Fillmore West, on July 4, 1971, featured Creedence, Santana and Tower Of Power, the two of the most popular bands from San Francisco (Creedence and Santana) and two of the most influential (Santana and Tower), and the evening ended with a couple of hours of epic if formless jamming, some of it broadcast on KSFX-fm. However, the Fillmore album merely included some rather uninspired blues jamming from an earlier show in the week (with Elvin Bishop and Taj Mahal). I don't doubt that contracts prevented the final night's jam from being released, but it was a mistake to fill up the record with some dull blues. It suggested that the legacy of the Fillmore was just some overrated shuffles in major keys, with nothing that merited a second listen, playing into the prejudices of early 70s fans who thought the Fillmore was just for stoners. Fillmore: The Last Days was not much of a success, and the Fillmore movie bombed. It was a few years too late, so nobody even noticed that it was the Grateful Dead's only contribution to the industry of commemorative festival movies and soundtrack albums.

I'm aware that the Grateful Dead contributed an amazing recording of "Dark Star," from April 8, 1972 at Wembley, to the Glastonbury Fayre album. Remarkable as that was, the Glastonbury Fayre album was a different sort of project, very much a hippie non-profit thing. Even though an unexpected hit single came off that record (Hawkwind's "Silver Machine"), the enterprise wasn't designed as a showcase for mass market appeal, and the release was a relatively limited edition (not surprising for a triple-lp with a do-it-yourself pyramid insert).

The Grateful Dead At Fillmore West, July 2, 1971
Ironically, while the Dead's performances at Monterey Pop and Woodstock were unmemorable and dreadful, respectively, and they didn't play at all at Altamont, they actually played pretty well at the closing of the Fillmore West. While much of the material from their Fillmore set was featured on the Skull & Roses album, they could have hinted at their power by allowing a very different version of one of those songs to be released. On July 2, they also performed a 17+ minute version of "Good Lovin'"--that would have been something to remember Fillmore West by. And yet, they released a basic version of their most popular song, and a fairly dumb cover of a rock standard, which in turn had just been released on their own record. What could they have been thinking?

Over the years, the principal concern about live releases of the Grateful Dead has always been sound. With professional recording gear and Steve Barncard mixing, I don't think the Dead would have been that concerned what was chosen. Warner Brothers Records, their label, would also have been fairly flexible in this instance. For one thing, all record labels had seen that the Woodstock album had made a lot of careers, and would have been open minded about allowing one of their acts to release a live track. The Woodstock album had been on an Atlantic affiliate (Cotillion), but numerous acts on other labels had benefited enormously by allowing their music to be licensed (examples included Joe Cocker on A&M, The Who on Decca and Santana on Columbia, to name just a few). In any case, Warners was trying to get the Grateful Dead to re-sign with them, and would not have wanted to alienate them by refusing to let them license a track to Bill Graham's album project, even though it was being released on Columbia.

My own belief is that out of long-standing personal friendship with Bill Graham, and despite their complex business history, the Grateful Dead made an exception to their own preferences and allowed themselves to be filmed and recorded for his Fillmore project. I also believe that they would have been willing to let Graham use whatever he wanted from their performance. Sure, they would have objected if there was a technical problem with a track (or Garcia was out-of-tune, or something), but in general, I think having given permission the Dead would likely have agreed to any reasonable suggestion by Graham and his Columbia producers, Jeffrey Cohen and Bruce Good.

However, I think Graham and his producers thought small and picked the wrong tracks. While I hardly think the week of June 29-July 4, 1971 was the best week of San Francisco music, there was plenty of fine music played. I'm not guessing--almost all of it circulates on tape in one form or another. With the exception of Santana and arguably a few other tracks, I think the producers made very poor choices. They consistently chose the simplest and most accessible songs by each artist, and for the angular nature of Fillmore music that was not a good criteria.

In the case of the Dead, a Chuck Berry song and a popular FM song with a catchy hook may seem like good choices, but both tracks tire quickly, even to hard core Deadheads. Conversely, if the Fillmore lp had included 17 minutes of "Good Lovin,'" in an era when almost no tapes existed, the effect would have been very different indeed. Certainly, a professionally shot Pigpen rap would be truly memorable today. As a point of comparison, Ten Years After's career was made by the inclusion of their rave-up on "I'm Going Home" being included in its entirety in the Woodstock movie and album, and in retrospect it was not an obvious choice. Yet I can remember seeing Woodstock in a midnight movie (at the Varsity Theater in Palo Alto in about 1972) and being absolutely mesmerized by "I'm Going Home", even though I had heard it already on the album. If Graham's producers had included "Good Lovin,'", or "Not Fade Away">"Going Down The Road">"Not Fade Away," it might have been truly stunning, but they thought small.

Everyone, including me at the time, took for granted that the Grateful Dead would be included in the Fillmore album and movie, and never paid attention to it. In fact, the movie and album became mere footnotes, and as more and more Grateful Dead material became available formally and informally, the two tracks that were actually released became less important. I have to think that the Dead must have only conceded to allow the tracks due to their long standing friendship with Graham, and when the album and movie bombed, they felt free to return to their policy of refusing all such proposals. While we don't lack for recorded Grateful Dead, professionally filmed Dead music has been very hard to come by from the early days, and the one moment when it could have happened seems to have been frittered away on "Johnny B. Goode."