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The Brent Mydland Years: An Appreciation of the Grateful Dead in the 1980’s

A year into Brent’s stint with the band came another important milestone: the Dead’s fifteenth anniversary in 1980. The group celebrated by performing acoustic sets for the first time in ten years at extended series of shows at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco and Radio City Music Hall in New York. Unlike the Dead’s acoustic sets in 1970, which mostly featured Garcia and Weir playing as a duet, with just occasional accompaniment from the others, the 1980 sets found all six members playing together as an exquisite chamber ensemble that moved easily through folk, bluegrass and a number of Grateful Dead tunes, ranging from open-ended vehicles like “Bird Song” and “Cassidy,” to “China Doll,” with Brent on harpsichord, the beautiful love ballad “To Lay Me Down,” and “Ripple,” which always got everyone singing along. The acoustic sets were beautifully captured on the 1981 live album, Reckoning. The Dead never played acoustic sets after that, but the experience appeared to rekindle Garcia’s interest in folk music—later he started playing occasionally in an acoustic duo with John Kahn, and eventually with the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band and then, in the early ’90s, with David Grisman.

Though the Dead wouldn’t put out a studio album between their first effort with Brent, Go to Heaven, in 1979, and 1987’s breakthrough smash In the Dark, their profile continued to grow through the early ’80s. There was considerable national publicity surrounding the Radio City shows and the 15th anniversary in general, and then they were seen by their biggest audience ever when they appeared on Saturday Night Live in April 1980 promoting Go to Heaven. A Showtime TV special and a video called Dead Ahead were culled from the Warfield and Radio City shows, as well, giving the band its highest visibility in years.

The other thing that happened in the first few years of Brent’s time with the band is the group started playing more interesting venues than they had previously. In California, a succession of wonderful facilities opened up to the group: The Oakland Auditorium (later called the Kaiser Convention Center) in 1979; the Greek Theatre in Berkeley in 1981; Frost Amphitheater on the campus of Stanford University, and the Ventura County Fairgrounds (north of L.A.) in 1982; Irvine Meadows amphitheater south of L.A. in 1983. In the Midwest, Alpine Valley in Wisconsin was a popular destination beginning in 1980, and Red Rocks in Colorado, which the band first played in 1978, became a magnetic Mecca for touring heads as the years passed. And though places like the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, the Hartford Civic in Connecticut, the Centrum outside of Boston and Madison Square Garden in New York were really just soulless sports arenas, they, too, seemed to take on a special glow that allowed them to transcend their utilitarian roots whenever the Dead came to town.

Throughout the 1980s, the Deadhead legions continued to grow. By the early years of that decade, the loose Deadhead taper network was firmly established and thousands of new fans thronged to Dead shows just from having been turned onto the group by friends who had live tapes. Beginning in 1984, too, the Dead established formal taping sections at their shows for the first time, further increasing the number of people who were making (and trading) tapes. In the West, Bill Graham Presents conceived of regular weekend getaways for the Dead and the Heads every spring and summer, at the Greek, Frost and Ventura, as well as exotic locales such as the downs in Santa Fe and Austin, the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas and the tiny Hult Center in Eugene, Oregon.

White-collar Deadheads could fly in or drive to these weekend jaunts, and Deadheads who weren’t tied to jobs either because they were students on summer break or simply unemployed, found that following the band for weeks at a time—camping out, sleeping in tour vans, crashing with friends or overpopulating the hotel rooms of other Heads—was both feasible and incredibly fun. As the legions caravanning along the Dead’s tour routes grew, so did the number of people who tried to support their touring by selling crafts outside of shows. What started as a few folks spreading their wares on blankets outside the Oakland Auditorium in 1979 had mushroomed into a full-on bazaar in just a few years. And it wasn’t just hippie peddlers selling homemade T-shirts, stickers and the odd veggie burrito. After a while, larger businesses, with huge racks of Guatemalan clothing, and food trucks equipped with stoves and grills, became fixtures in the parking lots outside of shows, and the scene started to attract hundreds—then thousands—of people who didn’t particularly care about seeing the Dead, but who liked the commercial circus outside. This led to considerable problems for the Dead in the second half of the ’80s, when various cities and towns refused to allow the band to play there because of the uncontrollable hippie city that sprang up around each show, whether it was in the middle of a city or in more rural locations.

Comments

There are 12 comments associated with this post

thestarfactory1 November 24, 2011, 08:11:36

Taste the thunder of hen parties by entertaining at studios or celebrate children birthday at studio. Make your children experience popstar parties.

Rob November 25, 2011, 08:22:51

My active DH yrs. were from 84-95 at least for Live shows. I’d often head for the restroom or talk about setlist with fellow heads. I had often wondered what that device was called that Mickey was bending and stretching. The Beam you learn everyday. Thanks !!!

Manny G Lomas November 25, 2011, 14:59:24

This piece is essential Blair, in the literary post-Jerry cannon. Years from now, when the scene has birthed itself into the next incarnation, your work (and Scrib’s) will be the apex from which all academic endeavors shall be measured by. Thank you from a fellow dead-scholar for illuminating a path to a calling!

Briandrum November 26, 2011, 12:33:33

MSG is a soulless arena? Hampton too? Wow…..I’ve read and heard a lot of crazy things in my life, but saying those 2 arenas are “soulless” is down right ridiculous!

Bruce Scotton, M.D. November 30, 2011, 18:06:19

Blair, as always, well-written and thoughtful. However, whatever historical or sociological cast you give to the story, one inescapable fact remains and taints those years you write about. 1979 was the beginning of the “16 year skid on a 30 year ride.” The changes visible in Jerry that year, as he dipped into the addiction to the Persian white, were so dramatic to those of us who had watched the band up until that time that several of us talked about how we could pull together some kind of surprise healing ritual at one of the shows where people could spontaneously express their love and support for him. It was also about the time when the first of several classic “you’re addicted and need help and we love you and will help you get that help” confrontations were staged by the Dead family. Unfortunately, as we know, these various attempts failed to save the day and our beloved friend sank ever farther and lost the creative sparkle that had touched so many, and then he lost his life. I have trouble listening to the music from this period because I always compare it to what had been present but was now lost, in terms of Garcia playing as an ever-changing fountain of creativity, working one idea for a minute or a half-hour until, now fully fleshed out and having seized the rest of the band and those of us dancing, it was replaced by another and then another. We were lucky to have seen or even just heard a musician and a man like that.

Doogie Howser Scotton, M.D. December 6, 2011, 23:17:10

Dr. Bruce has put his finger on Jerry’s ever-changing styles and approaches, but I wouldn’t say that his latter-era playing, where he and the band dropped their “turn on a dime” style was a paradise lost. As a 31-year-old Deadhead who remembers only shows that my mom took me to in the 1990s, I can say that Dr. Bruce’s assessment is just relative to his relationship to a different era, but not necessarily one that was more magical than the 80s or 90s. Of course, my initiation to the Dead was as a in the late 80s, so I have my own biases. My initiation was with the BIG and rich stadium sound with Brent’s twinkling synth/keys. This sound, captured so well in Without a Net, for example, accompanied my larger than life sense of awe and wonder as I watched seas of thousands of people all dancing as one big undulating wave. I still can listen to 89 or 90 shows and feel that power —- much more so than when I listen to tapes from 69 or 70 — which sounds more like relics, or nostalgia. Perhaps it’s because I dont have a personal connection to those shows. Either way, I dont hear any dope-induced deficits in Jerry’s playing in the late 80s. Put on a pair of headphones and listen to Without a Net and tell me that Jerry is not at a creative peak, albeit different energetically from the 60s.

Cameron Mitchell December 14, 2011, 17:08:37

I was in full a Brent era head and thought that those years were some of the best at least for me. Of course my favorite years to listen to are always the 76 to 78 years but I did not see any of those shows personally. From my first show at a ski resort in utah in 83 until I stopped counting in 87 I had seen over 105 shows. Almost one every 10 days and all were with Brent. After that I saw a few with vince and Bruce but just couldn’t really get into it. I was truly a Brent era deadhead and miss them dearly. Lots of great music out there now and find fun in the moe. umphreys, disco biscuits, sts9, new deal and countless others now but the dead and the brent era is where I got my start into great improve and psychedelic rock.

Robin C. Moody December 15, 2011, 05:03:51

The first Dead album I bought was Aoxomoxoa, which happened to be their latest one at the time. I had heard of them, but I didn’t know what they sounded like. It was the cool artwork on the cover that made me want to take a chance on whether I would like the album or not. After all, I was only risking $2.08 at Fedco, a now defunct discount store chain. Even after adjusting for inflation, that was still pretty darn cheap. The next year, 1970, I saw them live for the first time. I was barely fifteen at the time. Excluding the 60s’, when I hadn’t yet discovered them, I got to catch at least a few of their shows during each period of the band’s long, strange trip. Though I think the Dead peaked in the 1970s’, I never failed to enjoy their concerts, but…and this is the comment I’ve been working up to, but during Mydland’s stint in the band, I started to develop a real dislike for him. Not Brent personally, for I knew very little about him, really, but his style of playing the keyboards, his voice, the sort of songs he wrote. This is a very subjective thing, of course. I still, when I’m shopping for live Grateful Dead recordings, try to avoid those from the Mydland years, unless he’s mixed down really low, which it seems to me he sometimes was. I wish, too, that he had left the band some other way; I never harbored any ill will toward him.

tp December 15, 2011, 13:36:54

I too was a Brent ear deadhead. I first saw the dead in 1981 at College Park Maryland and my run lasted until RFk in 95. When I listen to those early 80’s shows ( 80-83), they are outrageously good and very different the rest of the 80’s. The mid 80’s were really hit or miss with Jerry and the summer of 85 was probably the peak for that period. The worst for Jerry was the late fall solo acoustic tour in 85 and I still try to block that memory from my head. Then in 89 to the early 90’s, Jerry seemed to get another spark and maybe he cleaned up for while but there are some stellar performances from that period. Listen to the All Along the Watchtower from Dozin’ at the Knick, and try to tell me Jerry ever played better on guitar. I loved Brent’s playing, and his death in 1990 left me deeply saddened. That was the end of the Dead for me. I went to a bunch of shows after that, but it was never the same. I had a friend who spent a couple of hours with Brent a week or two before he died and he said he never felt accepted by the deadheads and it hurt him a lot. He didn’t understand it, and neither did I. To me that was the sadness part of his story.

Gary December 15, 2011, 22:03:48

I saw keith and donna’s last show in Oakland, but didn’t know it at the time. I think Brent did great, and was part of some classic 80’s shows. Sad to think he never felt accepted. My group certainly accepted him. I think he just got too wrapped up in the rock and roll party scene (to have fun, and yes…escape his demons) and he just didn’t survive.

Ayako May 4, 2012, 03:59:28

Your article sotpped me Dead in my tracks. I too am a Monster Deadhead. Never in my mind did I think (or consider) that an artist could touch my Grateful Dead experience or my love for Jerry Garcia. Lady Gaga has done just that. She completely captivates me, and her live Monster Ball concert extravaganza was one of the best shows of my life. I saw 70 plus shows before Jerry died, and have continued seeing every rendition of the band since (to date with Furthur). Lady Gaga taps the same vein.Lady Gaga resides in my heart, right by Jerry, and I will forever love her and being a Little Monster at the ripe old age of 43. She captures the young essence of my Spirit, and I am so Grateful for this piece that you wrote, as it solidifies my Monster Deadhead existence. Peace out fellow Monsterhead. )

Cliff Hanger December 5, 2012, 19:41:11

Fuck Lady Caca