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

While Lemieux acknowledges moderate surprise that it sold as quickly as it did, he had long retained faith that other like-minded Deadheads would share his enthusiasm for the project.

“In terms of the performance quality, these were really some of the best shows they ever did. But also look at the amount of new material they had, going back to the spring of ’71 between Jerry’s first solo record which came out around this time, Weir’s first solo record which came out around this time and then all of this stuff they were playing starting in October ’71 that appeared on the Europe ‘72 album (including “He’s Gone,” “Jack Straw” and “Tennessee Jed.”). They had a lot of other great tours, but I think this is the one where everything lined up perfectly.”

What musical moments particularly thrill Lemieux? He can wax rhapsodic about each of the shows but when asked which ones grab him at the moment, Lemieux pinpoints the second night of the tour at Wembley Empire Pool on April 8 (“Really, even ‘Me and My Uncle’ is just outrageously good. It is the kind of thing where you jump out of your seat and go, ‘Man that was a great ‘Me and My Uncle.’”), the first of two evenings at Paris’ Olympia Theatre on May 3 (“The second set contains a jam sequence that is one of the most interesting bits of music I’ve ever heard the Dead do, it’s a 60 minute piece starting with “Truckin’” through the “Other One” ending with “Wharf Rat.”), the two dates in Copenhagen on April 14 and 17 (“Really different but both just crackling with energy”) and Rotterdam on May 11 (“There’s a big warm, round ambient sound that I just really dig. You feel like you’re listening to a jazz quintet in a small club and it’s the Grateful Dead playing some of the finest music they ever played.”).

And then there are those evenings, such as Munich on May 18 when Jerry Garcia put aside his guitar and moved to organ for portions of “Good Lovin.”

“It’s pretty wild to hear. It’s just absolutely so different than anything Pigpen would ever do, not to mention there’s no lead guitar happening. Then they go into the crescendo of the song and Jerry comes back onto the guitar. I’d heard it before and I thought, ‘Here’s Pig playing this cheesy little organ part.’ But it’s really Jerry and it’s not cheesy, it’s because Jerry’s not an organ player, he’s a lead guitarist. It just shows how much fun they were having.”