With ‘American Beauty’ the now dominant songwriting team of Garcia/Hunter delivered their greatest collection of songs, with musical backing that is pure americana and reflecting the jug band history of the band and Garcia’s love of the Bakersfield country of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.
As some commentators have said, ‘Anthem Of The Sun’ simply drips acid, and as such is not only a musical landmark but also a social one. It is the first Grateful Dead record to feature drummer and percussionist Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh’s friend Tom Constanten joins on piano and prepared piano and brings his John Cage and Stockhausen influences, and we get the first Robert Hunter lyrics. ‘Anthem’ contains only 5 tracks composed by various members of the Grateful Dead, and is a collage of live and studio recordings.
If you want to experience the essence of the Grateful Dead via their studio albums then I would recommend 1968’s ‘Anthem Of The Sun’ and 1970’s ‘American Beauty’ as must listens. For a band that existing for nearly 30 years which ignores the later variously named aggregations following Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, they only released 13 studio albums, reinforcing the importance of live recordings to their legacy. Also, while they helped pioneered the recording of live music, their two and three hour shows meant that until the vault releases, all official live albums were selective and again did not necessarily give the whole experience.
Grateful dead full#
The challenge with Grateful Dead music is that it is only in concert that you can experience the full range of their abilities and sounds, which means that most of their studio recordings fall short of expectations. The final key ingredient to the Grateful Dead was the lyrics of lyricist Robert Hunter who managed to capture the psychedelic experience and the mythology of American history and society ensuring that the songs written by Garcia and Hunter are some of the greatest songs of the second half of the 20 th Century. In 1991 the Grateful Dead opened their legendary Vault and started releasing whole concerts on their own Grateful Dead Records, and this regular release of legacy live recordings continues to this day meaning that there is more recorded Grateful Dead music than any other artist or band. The other unique aspect of the band is the fact that they actively encouraged fans to tape their shows and trading of tapes among Deadheads helped consolidate the fan base, the only proviso being that fan’s tapes could only be traded not sold. At the time LSD was a legal drug in California, and the free-form nature of the Acid Tests and the experience of a psychedelic acid trip informed the attitude and ebb and flow performance of Grateful Dead concerts and their approach to their career and underlying business model, even after they stopped using the drug itself, and it is this lasting psychedelic influence which is reflected in their iconography that is a significant part of their uniqueness. The Grateful Dead had a similar early history to most ‘60s bands in that their members were influenced by the folk revival, first-generation rock and roll, blues, and R&B however, the Grateful Dead moved away from the norm when modern classical music fan and self-taught bass guitarist Phil Lesh joined Jerry Garcia (guitar), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar), Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (keyboards and harmonica), Bill Kreutzmann (drums), and the Grateful Dead became the house band for author Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests.
If you approach the Grateful Dead as just another rock & roll band, then you will very likely fail to get a true sense of their music, this is because to quote legendary promoter Bill Graham, “They aren’t the best at what they do, they are the only ones that do what they do.”. However, as with most things in the Grateful Dead world, this is just my opinion, and they will be plenty of alternative views on the subject. What follows is simply my view on how someone can get an overview of the music of the Grateful Dead that will allow them to either delve deeper, or say no, not for me. To the uninitiated, getting a handle on what the Grateful Dead are all about can seem quite daunting, and this sense of challenge is exacerbated by the fact that their fanbase, the Deadheads, are probably the most informed and opinionated set of fans in the world.
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