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Foreign Affairs: Grateful Dead Archivist David Lemieux Discusses The Europe ’72 Box

Back in the spring of 2007, the executive team at Rhino, which controls the rights to the Grateful Dead audio-visual vaults, asked archivist David Lemieux for his suggestions regarding future large scale projects. Two years earlier, Lemieux had spearheaded the Fillmore West 1969 box set, which presented the Dead’s four celebrated performances at the venue.

He gave it some thought and decided to step things up, recommending a complete tour collection. The shows he focused on were the Grateful Dead’s 22 nights in Europe from the spring of 1972, which served as the basis of the group’s triple live album Europe ‘72.

Lemieux projected that the tour could be collected on about 60 CDs and present it in some form of collectible container (Eventually the number would reach 72 “because we decided not to break up any of the big jams”).The response to his proposal?

While there was some moderate interest, he also met some skepticism. Lemieux recalls, “At least one person asked me, ‘How many people are going to buy this? One?’ Almost mocking my idea.”

By the fall of 2009, following the successful releases of Winterland 73 and Winterland June 77 — which like Fillmore West 1969 sold out of their production runs, although they contained “only” 9 CDs—Rhino wanted to revisit the Europe box, which Lemieux explained would require a 18 month timeline, with Jeffrey Norman, the principal mixer of the Dead’s multi-track material for the previous 15 years, working from the original 16-track recordings.

This past January with work well underway, Rhino announced that it would release Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings, encompassing over 70 hours of music, packaged in the replica of early 1970’s steamer trunk along with a coffee table book, tour memorabilia and a series of essays drafted by such celebrated Dead scholars as David Gans, Gary Lambert, Nicholas Meriwether, and Steve Silberman. The limited edition offering of 7200, which retailed at $450, found a receptive audience of far more than one individual, as 7199 others purchased The Complete Recordings within weeks, selling out the entire run (A music-only edition was then offered).