Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Grateful Dead Munich Fire Incident Of '72 [Highlight From Episode 307]

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The Grateful Dead Munich Fire Incident Of '72 [Highlight From Episode 307] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Rock Brian Anderson. He's the author of Loud and Clear,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound. In the Quest for
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Audio Perfection.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: That very famous europe seventy two tour, they hit Munich
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: and the fire Marshal and the fire Brigade were like
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: really hassling the crew when they were setting everything up.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: You know, they were like looking at the manifest of gear,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: like the inventory that they had with them, asking all
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: these questions about like how much power they're going to
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: be using it and so forth. The show gets going
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: and the fire Brigade in Munich doubled the number of
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: fire brigadiers I guess present on the scene, So like
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the venue was crawling with folks from the fire brigade.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: They were backstage, they were standing on the stage behind
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: the back line, which was like kind of a no
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: no at the time. They were out in the crowd,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: and supposedly some of these fire brigadiers had buckets of
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: sand to like snuff out fires, right, So they were
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: convinced that the Grateful Dead were like using up so
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: much power through this like crazy electronic beast that they
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: were going to set the venue on fire. Right, So
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: as the show got going, on top of Garcia's on
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: top of one of his amplifiers, he had like a
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: big hash joint, right that he was.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Well, it was the exact wording from the book, a huge, fat,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: badly rolled hash joint.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: There you go, a huge, fat, badly rolled hash joint.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: So and that was like sat at top of his amplifier.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: You know, the smoke from that was like going up
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: into the into the lights, and apparently one of the
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: fire captains freaked out and instead of a bucket of sand,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: got a bucket of water and threw it like kind
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: of over Garcia's amp and the whole place went dark.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: You know. The audience in response started you know, lighting
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: matches right in the darkness, and that like pissed off
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: the fire captain even more, right, So eventually they got
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: the power restored to finish the show. And there's some
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: conflicting reports because you know, memories from this time. It's
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: memory is a funny thing, right, and I talk about
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: this in the book, but there's some people who remember
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: that incident leading to like half of Munich being like
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: blacked out that night and supposedly you could hear, you know,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: later on after the show at night, you could hear
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: like transformers around town, just like ohasting. Yeah. So that
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: sort of thing was just sort of illustrative of the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: dead being way out on the edge, insisting that they
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: do everything their own way. And you know, they knew
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: they couldn't rely on some of these old decrepit European
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: venues to like supply enough power. So what they would
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: do is they would clamp into the main city, like
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the municipal line, which is crazy. They would like drill
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: down into the ground and like clamp on to like
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: get enough juice. Right, There's all sorts of stories in
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: the book about like you know, close calls like that,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: you know, and everything was electric. It was such an
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: electric time.