Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Grateful Dead's Wall Of Sound: A Musical Revolution [Episode 307]

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The Grateful Dead's Wall Of Sound: A Musical Revolution [Episode 307] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On this episode of Booked on Rock, the Grateful Dead's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Quest for Audio Perfection. This is the story of the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Wall of Sound. We're totally rock and roll.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'll leave you you're reading.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll up.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: We are totally booked. Everybody. Welcome back to book don
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Rock podcast for those about to read and rock. Am
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Eric Senich very excited to talk about this book today
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: with this episode's guest who's making his first appearance on
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the show, Brian Anderson. He's the author of Loud and Clear,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound and the Quest for
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Audio Perfection. Brian, thanks so much for being here.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Eric. This is great.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of books on the Grateful Dead,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: but this is a first here. This is the first
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: to really zero in on this topic, which is the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: wall of sound. Right.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are so many books that are out there
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: on the Grateful Dead, and there's so much scholarship out
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: there on the Grateful Dead. Dead studies is like a
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: legitimate field of research, and all of that I think
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: speaks to the enduring force of the phenomenon of the
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: grafel Dead. Right that, like books are still coming out
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: about this band that is just about to well, you know,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: currently sort of celebrating sixtieth anniversary, which is very crazy.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: But I knew that going into this project that I
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: didn't want to just write another book about the Grapel Dead.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: And you know, as a journalist, you want to break ground,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: you want to be additive. And I knew that if
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: I was going to do this, that I couldn't just
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: write you know, fanfare, and I really couldn't just pander
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: to dead heads, right, And I say that lovingly, like
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: as a Deadhead myself, and as someone who is surrounded
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: by dead Heads people who love this music. I didn't
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: want to just pander to deadheads, like, I wanted to
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: sort of hit a crossover audience, right of people who
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: maybe aren't super familiar or even interested in the Dead's
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: music per se, But independent of how one feels about
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: the music, whether they enjoy it or not, I think
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: there's still so much for people to dig into in
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: this story. So all of that is to say that
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: I knew that if I was going to do this
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: book justice, because it's a massive story, that I really
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: had to break some new ground somehow, right, So there
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: was sort of a moment where early on, like when
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: the book project was starting to kind of gain momentum,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: where I kind of had this realization, like I can't
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: believe no one else has written this book yet about
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the Wall of Sound, right, because you know, this groundbreaking
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: piece of technology, the Wall of Sound still doom's large
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: and grateful dead lore and history, and you still see
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: it in the stage dressings in the form of like
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: you know, homages and the sphere or whatever. So yeah,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: I was like, I can't believe no one has done
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: this book, but I guess it's going to be me.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm going to be the one who's gonna
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: take this on. So it was a fun challenge, and
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: we're like a little bit over a month post release,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: so it's it's crazy that it's out there in the
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: world now.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: There's also a personal connection for you. There's that moment
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: in November of twenty twenty one that you write about
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: in the book. Have me thinking of a scene out
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: of Indiana Jones. You have in your possession a very
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: special piece of dead history and it relates to the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Wall of Sounds. So tell us about that. How this
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: story is personal because your parents were at some legendary shows.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean you can see right behind me.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: So this that's the artifact.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: That's it. Yeah, it hangs out in my office wow
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: behind me.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: So this is a piece of the wall of sound.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: And for those who are listening just the audio version
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: of this, you got to go to YouTube and check
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: this out because it's right there.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a hulking speaker busted up speaker cabinet that's
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: sitting right behind me in my office. And there was
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: an auction in late twenty twenty one through Southeyby's and
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Southeby's partnered with Grateful Dead Productions to auction off around
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty lots of decommissioned Grateful Dead gear
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: and ephemera and so forth from the Grateful Dead's Northern
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: California warehouse. So I knew that this auction was going on,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: but didn't really bother to start looking through sort of
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: scrolling through the lots and like the descriptions of the
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: items until there was like twenty four hours left to
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: place a bid. So you know, this was this wasn't
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: an in person auction. This was like all remote sort
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: of digital auction. So here I am sitting on my
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: couch scrolling through the items with twenty four hours to go,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: and you know, there's so much neat stuff that was
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: up for auction. But I'm a writer. I have a
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: very limited budget, and I didn't have hundreds of thousands
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: of dollars to blow on Garcia amplifiers from the Wall
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: of Sound. But I came across this item here that
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: had the lowest starting bid. I was like, gee, just
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: out of curiosity, like what's going for the lowest bid?
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And it's this busted up speaker cabinet that I now own.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: And compared to some of the other items in that auction,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: this had a very kind of bare bones description. It
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: just said monitor speaker used onstage. And then it had
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: like the dimensions of the box compared with some of
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: the other items. And that auction that had like super
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: detailed descriptions, and some of the bees worked with a
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: long time former Grateful Dead roady Steve Parrish to sort
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: of like fill in some of the details on some
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: of these items, and so some of them had really
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: detailed descriptions, whereas this was it was very bare bones
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: in terms of like information about it. But I had
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: already looked at enough imagery and photos of the Wall
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: of Sound to that point, really across my entire life.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: And I'll sort of speak to that personal component in
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: a moment here, But I had already looked at enough
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: photos of the Wall of Sound to that point in
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: late twenty twenty one to know just kind of looking
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: at like the vintage and the condition of this cabinet
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: that I was pretty sure it was from this early
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: seventies era, so like seventy three seventy four, kind of
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: right in like peak Wall of Sound era. So I
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: put a bit in on it, and I ended up winning,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: and I had it shipped to my parents' house, my
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: childhood home out in the suburbs of Chicago, where it was.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: It was cheaper to ship out there than it was
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: to send it to my apartment here in the city.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: So this massive crate arrives, and yeah, as I describe
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: it in the book, it was like something out of
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Indiana Jones, like some ancient artifact being moved between museums
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: or something. Right, So this huge crate shows up and
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: with my folks were in their garage and we open
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: it up, right and the first thing I did was
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: I stuck my head inside of it. So you know,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: you can for those who are watching on on YouTube,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: can you can see there's two of these twelve inch
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: speaker cones that are in this type of speaker, and
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: there were a bunch of there were a bunch of
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: this type of speaker within the Wall of Sound, but
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: one of the twelve inch cones got cannibalized at some point,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: so probably post Wall of Sound the dead in a
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: later configuration of their sound system, someone probably said like, hey,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: we need a twelve inch JBL cone. Just grab it
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: out of that busted old speaker. So like, there's just
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: this gaping hole in it, right, So the first thing
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I did after my folks and I opened this box
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: up is I stuck my head inside that hole. And
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: immediately I picked up a couple of clues that kind
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: of confirmed my hunch that this was in fact right
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: from that Wall of Sound era seventy three seventy four.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: There's some dates that are stamped inside of it that
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: confirmed that hunch. So that really set the book into
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: high gear. I knew that owning a piece of this
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: sound system, this artifact could provide this window into telling
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: this much bigger story about obsession and Titanic human achievement
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: and the Grateful Dead to unrelenting quest for audio perfection. Right,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: So I mentioned my parents being there and how that
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: was kind of special, and that feeds into your question
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: about the personal dimension of this story, and that is
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: I was raised by two hardcore deadheads who were seeing
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: the band beginning in the late nineteen sixties here in
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Chicago and in the Tri State area up in Madison, Wisconsin,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: over in Des Moines, Iowa. Chicago kind of in this
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Midwest region. The Midwest was a real crucial proving ground
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: for the Grateful Dead and their amazing sound system as
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: it was scaling up to the wall sound. So both
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: of them were going to shows right in this era,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: and both my parents were kind of orbiting each other
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: and the band at this time. My mother when she
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: was still in high school, when she was still a teenager,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: she got hooked up with a local promoter that was
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: putting on big rock shows in Chicago at the time.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: So not only the Grateful Dead but three other band
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: going at the time. So Black Sabbath who Ozzy Osbourne
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: just passed away today, So.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Like yes, rest in peace. Yet on the day we're
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: recording this ye.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: They were recording this Yes. So she worked some Black
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Sabbath shows, Hawkwind, The Who, the Kinks, every band that
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: was going on back in that era. She my mother
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: would work day of production odd jobs backstage at those shows.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: And at the same time, my dad was going to
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: the shows, but he was in the crowd right like
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: as a member of the audience. And then fast forward
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: into the eighties, after they had met each other, my
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: dad got hooked up with The Grateful Dead's Midwest local crew.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: So he was a stage hand and he would roll
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: out the ornate Afghan rugs that the band would perform on,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: and he would help the roadies rig up the speaker
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: arrays that they were using at that time, a much
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: different type of sound system in the late eighties than
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: the Wall of Sound, right, But a lot of that
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: work that they did in this crucial early to mid
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: seventies era sort of informed where they were going with
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: their sound later in their career. So all that is
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: to say, I sort of grew up with this music
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: around me. Some of my earliest flashes of memory are
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: of the Grateful Dead performing on stage. So my very
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: first concert, when I was three years old, just a
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: toddler in nineteen eighty nine, was the Grateful Dead up
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. So my dad was working
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: those shows. He was sort of at the end of
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: his Midwest local crew stage hand tenure at the end
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: of the eighties. So I just grew up with this music,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: and I absorbed so much knowledge through my parents over
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: the years and on long family road trips, long drives
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: grown up, my folks would sort of regale my sister
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: and I with stories about seeing this band back in
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: the early seventies when they were performing through this mountain
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: of speakers right and in this sound system just kept growing.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Every time you'd see the band, it got bigger and
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: bigger and bigger. So it's really just captivated me my
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: entire life. And over the years, I just kind of
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: did the survey of reading every Grateful Dead book out there, right,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Like going back to your point about there being so
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: many books about the dead that have been written, and
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to write a book about anything,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: you kind of have to do that survey of every
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: other book that's been written about that topic, and even
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: adjacent books just to get like that lay of the land.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: So I feel like I've kind of been doing that
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: my whole life, just like working through all of the
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: existing dead literature and dead books out there. So when
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: it finally came time to write this book, I had
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: done a lot of legwork and a lot of groundwork
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: had been laid. Of course I had to finally sit
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: down and write the thing, right, But I feel like
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: I've kind of been leading up to this my whole life.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Way Book on Rock podcast will be back after this.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: We're gonna take a break, He'll be back.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: What was it that made this particular sound system so
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: extraordinary for not just the band but the audience.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: I think it was the clarity of the sound was remarkable.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: The wall of sound was really six individual pas, so
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: each musician had their own stack and they could control
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: everything from right there on the stage. So the wall
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: sound kind of got rid of the need for a
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: front of house mixer, someone like out in the crowd,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: kind of right at a sweet spot in a mixing
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: booth mixing right. The dad still had folks in their
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: circles who would be out in the venue at points
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: during a show to be listening, and they would come
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: back and report back to the band like, hey, we
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: can take out a little bit of this, add a
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: little bit more of that. But the band was mixing
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: everything right there on stage, so they could respond note
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: by note and beat by beat the energy that was
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: feeding off of the audience, right. But because each musician
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: had their own stack, their own individual pa, effectively, the
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: wall of sound eliminated what is known as intermodulation distortion
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: by having no two sounds go through any one particular speaker.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: So the clarity was just pristine. It was like crystalline,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: and people who saw the band at any of these
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: shows that they were performing with the wall sound still
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: talk about that clarity. And it was loud for sure,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: you know, like on stage noise level readings through the
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: wall sound would measure at one hundred and twenty decibels, right,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: which is about as loud as a jet engine at
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: close range. That's really loud. That's like enough to to
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: do permanent hearing damage. But the noise, the sound was
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: so clear and so inoffensive that you could be out
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: in the audience and hold a normal conversation if you wanted.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: It was that clear. So I think the clarity is
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: really what made it so special, and related to that,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I think the wall of sound, the connection between the
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: dead audience and the dead the musicians was always crucial, right.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: They were always in this symbiotic relationship, and the fans
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: were always as much a part of the show or
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: the experience as the band was. And with the wall
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: of Sound, they got rid of traditional monitor speakers that
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: are like at the musician's feet right through which the
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: band can sort of hear themselves playing, and they moved
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: all of those monitors behind the musicians. So if you
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: look at photos of the wall of sound, everything is
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: behind the band in a unified back line like a
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: literal wall.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Right. The front cover of the book is a good
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: example exactly.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that effect was twofold. Basically, the wall of sound
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: effectively was the band's monitor, right. But because of that,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: the musicians in the audience all heard the same thing,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: so they were all in the same sonic envelope kind
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: of trap.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: No matter where you were sitting or standard.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Matter where you were sitting exactly. And that was a goal,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: was to ensure that the person who was sitting in
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the very back seat in an indoor hall or like
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: an outdoor stadium, whatever the case was, that that person
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: in the furthest backseat was getting a quality of experience
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: that was on par with someone who was right up front.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: So the dead went to great pains, and like they're
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: their audio wizards and their sound technicians and consultants and
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: roadies and all these people who were involved in making
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: this thing go went to great pains to be sure
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: that one hundred percent of the best sound was going
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: to exactly where it needed to go in any venue, right,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: and every venue is a little different. So if you
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: look at photos of the wall of sound at all
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: of these shows, the configuration is a little different at
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: every stop because they were, you know, taking acoustic readings
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: of every space that they were going to play in
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: so that when they could set it up, you know,
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: you might see like a couple speakers kind of angled
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: off this way right to like project into the upper
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: reaches or like you know, angled down a little bit.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: So that was sort of by design. The wall of
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: sound was never set up exactly the same way twice.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I think to your question, it was it
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: was really the clarity that made it so special and
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: that it sort of dissolve the barriers between the band,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: the performers, and the audience so that everyone was sort
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: of in it together. I think those are like the
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: really the two key takeaways about what made this thing
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: really so unique and special.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: That second chapters titled The Mother Rig nineteen sixty four
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty six to get into the eventual formation
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: of the Warlocks who became the Grateful Dead and the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Mother Rig that was the origin of the Dead's quest
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: for audio perfection. So let's go back to those early
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: days the Early Dead PA. Jered Garcia's mom gifted him
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: with the equipment that became the Dead's first PA.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, And in the same Selby's auction at
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: which I acquired the artifact here, when I was scrolling
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: through those one hundred and fifty lots, I came across
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: this pair of speakers and the item description read the
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: earliest speakers in the Grateful Dead story and a pair
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: of clipsch speakers, which at the time in the mid
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: sixties where those were pretty nice, those were pretty high end.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: The average household in the mid nineteen sixties probably couldn't
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: afford to have that sort of gear that was for
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: like more kind of aficionados. More like audio file types
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: would seek out that sort of gear. But I'm scrolling
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: through the lots and I'm reading the description of this
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: pair of clip speakers, and I go on to read
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: that it was Ruth Garcia, Jerry Garcia's mother who realized
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: very early on that her young son's band was onto something,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: so she purchased these speakers for the Warlocks. Right, they
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: weren't known as the Dead yet, so this is really
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: really early early days in the history of the band.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: You know, they were playing pizza parlors in Menlo Park, right,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: and like little dive bars in the Bay Area, So
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: those were the sort of spaces that they were playing
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: at the time, really just kind of getting their chops,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: kind of earning their stripes. But I loved that that
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: it was Garcia's mother, who wasn't macan Bank at the time, right,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: but who still believed in what her son was doing
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: and purchased really nice gear for them, so nice that
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: like from the get go, this band sort of had
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: a leg up on most any other bands out there
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: at the time. It was unheard of for a band
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: to roll into a club with their own like their
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: own rig, you know, their own pa, like that, and
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: people took notice in the book. You know, I speak
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: with folks who were seeing the Warlocks in this era
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: in sixty five at some of their very first shows,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: and they noticed right away, and you know, they sort
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: of caught wind that, you know, Garcia's mother purchased them
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: this really sweet gear, and they took notice of that
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: for sure. But I knew that this story wasn't just
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: going to be the story of the year nineteen seventy four.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: In Grateful Dead history, nineteen seventy four is a year
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: that a lot of people when they think about Grateful
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Dead and Wall of Sound, they think about nineteen seventy four,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: which was the culmination, the full expression of the big,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: big system. But I knew that if I was going
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: to tell this story, I kind of had to start
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: at the very beginning with this very first iteration of
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: the Grateful Dead sound system, the mother rig as I
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: call it, right, and it's sort of a play on
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: words there. But I knew that I had to start
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: there with that embryonic system and then just sort of
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: show and track how it sort of evolved and grew
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: over the years on into the seventies right to this
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: much bigger bigger thing. And you can see with each
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: chapter in the book, each chapter is mapped onto basically
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: an iteration or a version of the Grateful Dead sound
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: system as they were kind of figuring things out and
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: like trying different things out, buying different off the shelf gear,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: and then by the late sixties or early seventies starting
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: to build more of their own custom stuff. So yeah,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: each chapter is like a version of the Dead sound System.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: It's like the Yellow Brick Road. All the people. It's
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: like Jerry's Dorothy and he's just getting all these people
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: that are involved that help to create the sound, like Bear,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Rightousley Stanley is it's pronounced ously right, it.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Was as Ousley. Yeah, Ousley Stanley.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: He provided the band LSD, but he also knew his
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: stuff when it came to sound equipment, and he claimed
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to be able to see sound thanks to a diving accident,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and that leads to the Walls sound. Was a writer,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Steve Silverman, a dead head and science writer who felt
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: he was autistic, which would be utilized to great results.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Owsley Stanley aka Bear.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Is always that where the dancing Bears comes from? Is
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: that have any.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: There was an artist later on he sort of made
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: that design. He drew those bears. But yeah, the name
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: like the Bears, that sort of an homage, sort of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: a tribute to Bear. They called Owsley Bear because he
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: was very her suit. He was like kind of a
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: hairy dude. Yeah, he was the Bear. But Owsley is
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: a huge and important character in this story. He first
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: saw the Warlocks. They weren't the Grateful Dead yet in
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: late nineteen sixty five, he saw them performing at one
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: of the Acid Tests, which were these psychedelic fueled audio
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: visual happenings that were taking place on the West Coast
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: from Portland down to Los Angeles, and they were organized
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: by the novelist Ken Keasey, who was sort of riding
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: high on the success of his breakout novel One Flew
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he had this sort of
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: troop of Mary pranksters who were kind of like roving
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: performance artists. So Keezy would throw these acid tests right,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: and the Warlocks and then eventually the Grateful Dead were
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: sort of the in house band at the acid tests.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: But the LSD that was fueling these events was manufactured
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: by Owsley Stanley, who had a massive underground LSD manufacturing operation,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: and they were making millions of hits of LSD. Right, So,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Owsley sees the band in late nineteen sixty five, and
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: he's so taken with their sound that he basically has
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: this realization that he has to follow this band kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: of to the ends of the earth and contribute to
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: their very revolutionary project in whatever way he could. And
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: initially that took the form of funding for better equipment. So,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: using funds that he was making from his successful acid empire,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: he would funnel those funds to outfit the Dead with
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: really really good gear. And eventually, after about a year
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: of the Dead performing through the Mother rig, they kind
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: of mothballed that system and Ousley sort of took the
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: role as their first official soundman. He was their patron,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: their original patron, but he also very quickly kind of
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: became their soundman, and he said, hey, why don't you
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: use my home Hi fi system as your rig as
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: your sound system. That is known as the Ousley Stein,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: which is a combination of Ousley and Einstein. People called
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: him Ousley Stein. So that's chapter three, right, the Ousley
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Stein Rig. So in early nineteen sixty six, the Dead
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: were living for a couple of months in Los Angeles,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Ousley was paying their rent, He was paying for all
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: of their groceries, and they had to adhere to his
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: very strict all meat, all milk diet. He had some
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: really interesting ideas, and he was such a force of
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: influence that he kind of brought everyone in with him. Right,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: So he's like, if I'm going to be paying your
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: rent and buying you the best gear available, you're going
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: to have to stick to my diet.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: But as the Dead were rehearsing and performing around LA
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: using his home Hi Fi system that was now their
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: new rig, he would be high on his own supply
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: of LSD and he would experience the Dead sound flowing
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: out of the speakers, these big all tech voice of
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: the theater speaker which you know you'd see in like
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: movie theaters at the time, and he would see the
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: sound waves coming out of these speakers as color, interacting
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: waves of color is what he described it as. And
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Owsley had synesthesia, which is a condition where you experience
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: one sense through another, so he saw sound as color.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: And this happened on a couple of occasions when he
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: was watching the Dead perform and it had such a
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: profound it sort of it shook him and he was like,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I have to remember what this feels like. And over
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: the years he would sort of set them on this
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: course to eventually build up the big system, the big
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Wall of Sound, and that big system was really kind
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: of a vehicle for Ousley to kind of conjure that
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: experience of taking in the sound as color. So he
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: had some pretty out there ideas and Owsley was very
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: much the force of ideas behind this whole project, and
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: at times that could bring him into conflict with folks
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: on the Dead Road crew or like you know, some
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: of the sound texts, little turf wars started to enter
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: the picture, but they needed that force of ideas which
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Ousley could provide. They needed that to sort of point
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: them in the direction of where they needed to go.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: But Ousley also needed folks with hands on expertise to
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: really actualize some of the ideas that he had. But
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of individuals will kind of take credit for
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: the Wall of Sound. I came across this in my reporting,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: when in reality, it took this whole cast of characters,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: and there's a list of characters at the beginning of
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: the book. There's fifty seven characters who are like prominent
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: in the book. So there's a lot of people in
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: this story, and it took all of them coming to
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: the table and being in the room to make this
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: thing happen. But if there's one person who, or rather
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: without whom, the Wall of Sound probably would never have
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: come to be, it would be Ously. Very early on,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: he set them on a path to always be questing
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: for a better sound. And you mentioned the late great
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Steve Silberman telling me about Owsley probably being on the spectrum.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: And Silberman wrote a fantastic book called NeuroTribes, which really
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: changed the conversation around autism and what it means to
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: be on the spectrum. So Silberman really knew this stuff,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: and he spent a couple of days at a Grateful
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Dead scholar's conference with Ousley, and he walked way convince
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: that Ousley was on the spectrum in the best possible way.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: And part of that manifested in Owsley's aversion to unclean signals, right,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: So that fed into this wall of Sound being basically
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: distortion free by eliminating intermodulation distortion, which I sort of
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: talked about earlier. Yeah, Owsley's aversion to like distortion and
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: uncleaned signals from very early on. That set them on
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: this course to like build the ultimate sound system that
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: delivered pure not just loud, but pure sound. That was
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: the goal.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Booked on rock podcast, We'll be back after this. You've
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: got to come back with me. Where to the future
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: you write in the book quote By the early seventies,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: when the wall was further scaled up and they started
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: seeing real success and employees shared in the wealth. The
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Dead pulled in tens of thousands of dollars on big
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: stadium gigs and festivals, but even those figures won't cover
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the organizations ballooning overhead as the band's rig including labor costs,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: accounted for an ever growing percentage of every Dead dollar.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Talk about the challenges the Dead were facing now in
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the early seventies. They had the sound, but the band
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: was now in a state of chaos just trying to
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: keep all that together.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: There were so many individuals who were on the payroll.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: It took this small army of people to keep this
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: sound system going night after night after night. It was
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: a herculean task, and it took so many people behind
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: the scenes to make this thing happen. And from the
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: very early days, the Dead had this ethic where they
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: would always funnel money back into furthering the sound. So
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: through the end of the Wall Sound, even the musicians themselves,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: the band members were kept on very modest cost of
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: living salaries because they were they had a lot of
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: mouths to feed, that a lot of people on the payroll,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: but they also allocated a big chunk of every grateful
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: that dollar to furthering the sound. But at a certain
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: point that ethic kind of caught up to them. Throughout
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: the you know, the late sixties, that was a very
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: righteous approach. We're going to keep ourselves on like very
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: meager salaries, kind of live communally. Whatever money we make,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: we're just going to like funnel it back into like
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: getting better and better gear. Right, But eventually, as the
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: whole operation was scaling up, things were becoming more mechanized,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: more success, they're playing in bigger spaces. That approach to
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: furthering the sound by always funneling money back into their
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: gear it kind of became untenable, kind of became unsustainable,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: and by nineteen seventy four, there was a fuel crisis
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: on at the time, so like the cost of gasoline
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: alone was astronomical. They also had to often pay rent
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: at two venues simultaneously, so there was one wall of sound.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: There was like one set of all the six hundred
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: plus speakers and the dozens of amplifiers, right, but there
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: were two identical sets of staging and scaffolding, and those
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: staging and scaffolding sets would leapfrog venue to venue, so
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: that when crew A would roll into a given town,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: crew B would already have the scaffolding and the staging
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: all set up so that they could just basically load
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: in all of the gear, get wired up, and then
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: those crews would just flip flop kind of leapfrog from
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: show to show. But they had to pay rent, you know,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: at two venues sort of simultaneously, So that's a huge
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: cost and right, just also the overhead of paying all
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: of these people who were working for the dead at
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: the time. Very early in nineteen seventy four, the writing
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: became very clear on the wall, right that this wasn't
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: going to last. So by the summer of nineteen seventy four,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: some band meetings were taking place where they talked about,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: you know what, this isn't really fun anymore, and fun
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: was so key to the Grateful Dead project from the
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: very beginning. Garcia in particular, was like, this is about
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: having fun, right.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was about to say I love that was
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: his thing about having fun.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: It's all about having fun, yeah, man. But by summer
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: of seventy four, like the burnout was creeping in the
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: grind of the road. The late Grateful Dead Rody Joe Winslow,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: who's a character in this book, he talked about how
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: the road turned you into gristle. That was his word
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: for it. So just burn out hard, drugs starting to
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: creep in, right, and that just kind of that takes
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: its toll. And you know they were burning money too,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: just to keep this thing going.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: So things they never planned when they started. You just
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: don't think you're going to get to that point. You
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: don't even when you start a band. You're just thinking,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I just want to go out there and play, make
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: enough money to go out to the next gig, put
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: some food on the table, and that's all we need
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and we're.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Good, exactly, yeah, Because it was all just kind of
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: this natural progression over really like the first grand ten
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: year era of this band, from like sixty five through
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: the end of seventy four. It was all just kind
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: of this progression, right, and they had no way of knowing.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And then it happens again after touch of gray. Then
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: they have a whole new set of problems.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Then like, yeah, I think things get really crazy.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: At parking lots are overcrowded with people. There's just all
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, things they could never have anticipated. It
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: never have anticipated that term wall of sound. By the way,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: for those listening and watching who may be wondering where
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: did that all come from? The first documented term you
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: have this in the book may very well have been
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: on February fourth, nineteen seventy. This was at the Family
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Dog on the Great Highway in San Francisco. How many
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: people were could you fit in the Family Dog? This
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: sounds like a couple hundred people.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Couple hundred Max Yeah Dead.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Played alongside Santana and Jefferson Airplane. How about those three
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: bands at the Family Dog. A reporter from the Yonkers
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Herald Statesman Robert W. Newbert wrote, by the time Grateful
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Dead leader Jerry Garcia brought the jam to a triumphant halt.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Members of the audience were straining on tiptoes toward the
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: shattering wall of Sound. When the jam ended, most of
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the crowd was emotionally and physically exhausted. So there is
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: most likely the origins of the wall of sound by
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: seventy two, logistical issues, mounting costs for equipment, how many
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: people it's going to take to move and set it up.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Now we're talking about the safety of the road crew,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: right insurance their tech Tim Scully said, you're not going
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: to get a union got to do this stuff.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's it's amazing when I was just
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: doing the reporting and researching for this book that no
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: one died as a direct result of working on this
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: wall of sound. Thankfully, at a time before OSHA standards
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: were enforced. Right here, they were stacking up three stories
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: tall worth of speakers one hundred feet wide, quite often
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: at like outdoor venues, a little bit more along the
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: lines of like eighty to eighty five feet wide indoors.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: But this massive assembly of equipment, they carried their own
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: power supply with them. They had enough power to light
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: up six blocks of tracked homes because they couldn't rely
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: on venues to supply enough juice to make this thing
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: go right, So they had so much power with them.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: But I was amazed that nobody fell off the top
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: rung of scaffolding and bashed their head open. Nobody got
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: crushed under a stack of speakers that went thirty two
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: feet in the air, right, Nobody got electrocuted to death.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Some people definitely got the shocks of their lives working
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: on this thing. And there's some pretty wild stories about
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: dead roadies and texts told me about working on on
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: amplifier in like a dark backstage area and getting the
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: shock of their life and being thrown you know, ten
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: feet back, you know, wow, nearly blowing themselves up working
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: on generators backstage and so forth. But it's amazing that
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: nobody bid it. No one died as a direct result
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: of this thing.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Booked on Rock Podcast. Will be back after this. We
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: suspense is killing me. Can you share the story about
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the fire department in Munich. They're hassling that. They're saying,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: you guys are not up to code. They doubled their crew.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that very famous europe seventy two tour they hit Munich,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: and the fire marshal and the fire brigade were like
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: really hassling the crew when they were setting everything up.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: You know, they were like looking at the manifest of gear,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: like the inventory that they had with them, asking all
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: these questions about like how much power they're going to
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: be using and so forth. The show gets going and
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: the fire Brigade in Munich doubled the number of fire
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: brigadiers I guess present on the scene, so like the
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: venue was crawling with folks from the fire brigade. They
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: were backstage. They were standing on the stage behind the
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: back line, which was like kind of a no no
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: at the time. They were out in the crowd. And
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: supposedly some of these fire brigadiers had buckets of sand
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: to like snuff out fires. Right, so they were convinced
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: that the Grateful Dead were like using up so much
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: power through this like crazy electronic beast, that they were
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: going to set the venue on fire. Right. So, as
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: the show got going, on top of Garcia's on top
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: of one of his amplifiers, he had like a big
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: hash joint, right that he.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Was, well, it was the exact wording from the book,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: A huge, fat, badly rolled hash joint.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: There you go, a huge, fat, badly rolled hash joint.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: So and that was like sat on top of his amplifier,
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: you know, the smoke from that was like going up
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: into the into the lights, and apparently one of the
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: fire captains freaked out and instead of a bucket of sand,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: got a bucket of water and threw it like kind
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: of over Garcia's amp and the whole place went dark.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: You know, the audience in response started you know, lighting
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: matches right in the darkness, and that like pissed off
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: the fire captain even more, right, So eventually they got
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: the power restored to finish the show. And there's some
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: conflicting reports because you know, memories from this time. It's
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: memory is a funny thing, right, And I talk about
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: this in the book, but there's some people who remember
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: that incident leading to like half of Munich being like
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: blacked out that night, and supposedly you could hear, you know,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: later on after the show at night, you could hear
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: like transformers around town.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Just like oating.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that sort of thing was just sort of
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: illustrative of the dead being way out on the edge,
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: insisting that they do everything their own way, and you know,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: they knew they couldn't rely on some of these old
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: decrepit European venues to like supply enough power. So what
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: they would do is they would clamp into the main
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: like the municipal line, which is crazy. They would like
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: drill down into the ground and like clamp on to
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: like get enough juice.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Right. It just shows you how serious they were about
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: the sound. Absolutely serious they were about the live show.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Yeah, like whatever it took, they're going to
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: do it. But there's all sorts of stories in the
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: book about like, you know, close calls like that, you know,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: and everything was electric. It was such an electric time.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Like electricity is such a kind of character in this story,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: especially with the Wall of Sound. And yeah, really amazed
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: that like nobody nobody got fried to death quite honestly,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: but there were some close calls.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Tell me about the birch tree in Finland. They discovered
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: this in the early seventies and this tree is very
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: important to the Wall of Sound for sure.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they realized some of their audio wizard types who
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: were working at Olympic, which is a still active custom
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: instrument and electronics company but was co founded by bear
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: by Ousley Stanley in nineteen sixty nine. It was him
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: and a fellow named Ron Wickersham and Rick Turner. These
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: are all characters that you can read about in the book.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: But it was the folks at Alembic who landed on
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: a particular type of material in which to build these
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: cabinets for the Wall of Sound. So the artifact behind
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: me is made of this material. It's finish birch wood,
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Baltic birch. This stuff is like basically bulletproof. It can
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: take a beating tailor made for a life on the
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: road with a rock and roll band right like, it
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: can withstand a beating, but it could also like hold
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: in like the internal reflections inside of the speaker. So
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: they were getting whole shipments of this Baltic birch that
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: would arrive at mcbeethe Hardwood, a hardwood store in Berkeley.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: So they would buy the entire shipment of Baltic birds
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: that would come into mcbeef. They would buy all of
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: it and they would take it to their workshop in
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: Santa Rafel, California, that was the Dead's workshop, and they
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: would also take it to the Alembic workshop, which was
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: in San Francisco at the time, and they would construct
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: hundreds of these speaker cabinets out of this fourteen ply
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: finish birch. That's like the ply that they landed on,
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: and I love it. Like I picked up a story
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: in the reporting of the book that on one hand,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: they were doing some real high flute heady acoustic engineering
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: in terms of what they were doing to assemble the
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: wall of sound, vocal microphone system and so forth. But
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: then also some of the stress testing that they would
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: do for these boxes was just pretty kind of almost
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: like low brow, pretty kind of brute force testing. And
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: some of these boxes they would just take them to
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: the parking lot and throw them up in the air
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: as high as they could and to see like when
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: they landed if they could just withstand before so just
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: getting thrown around. So yeah, Baltic birch, that is the
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: material that was prized within the Dead Crew, And supposedly
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: they caught wind of that material from an ex con
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: who was building high pressure cement forms building the Bay
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: bridge for example, So they would use Baltic birch when
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: they would construct the massive pillars that would basically hold
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: up something like the Bay Bridge. So supposedly this ex
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: con sort of turned them on to hey, like baltic birch,
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: you might want to look into Baltic birch it's really rugged.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: I think it might be good for building speakers, right,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: you know, at the time, like the Dead were open
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: to any idea, if there was a good enough proposal,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: they were open to it.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: It's almost fictional. It's like Robert Redford in the Natural World,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: totally wonder Boy the bats.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Made out of a tree.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Brian Anderson, he's the author of Loud and Clear, The
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound. In The Quest for Audio
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Perfection January of nineteen seventy four, the final element in
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the building of the Wall of Sound arrives. There was
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: a center cluster being developed. Tell us what the center
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: cluster is, What was the end result that the crew
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: was hoping for with this, and how do they go
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: about making it happen.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: So if you look at any photo of nineteen seventy
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: four peak wall of Sound, you can actually see it
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: on the cover of the book.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Here that's from where by the way, which city is at.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: This was in Los Angeles. This was the Hollywood Bowl,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: an amazing outdoor show. But you'll see in the middle
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: of the system there there's this kind of death star
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: looking cluster of speakers, and that was the vocal cluster.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: That was arguably the first time that a curved speaker array.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: So this cluster, it was curved to throw or like
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: sweep the sound across an audience, right, So it wasn't
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: just like a flat surface. It was curved so that
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: they could throw the sound across an audience. And the
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: theory in the mathematics existed for a curved array, but
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: no one had built one and then flown one, suspended
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: one up in the air, and the Dead were the
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: first to do that. They built that in early nineteen
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: seventy four at a local fabrication shop that were friendly
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: with the Dead, and it was a couple of roadies
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: and the designs were drawn up by some of the
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: sound technician types Olympics Ron Wickersham, another individual named John Curl.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Some of those folks were sort of involved in actually
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: designing this thing, but when it came time to build it,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: it was some of the Dead roadies who kind of
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: led the charge to build this curved array. And to
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: that point, if you look at photos of the Gravel
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Dead sound system in late nineteen seventy three, for instance,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: and even very early nineteen seventy four, you can see
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: in the middle of the system. They were using like
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: individual cabinet stacks just sort of like fanned in a curve.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: But here was the first time once they had it
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: built and it debuted in May in Reno, Nevada, which
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: was the first time that the wall of sound proper
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: was set up outdoors. They debuted this curved center cluster,
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: which is really like a sonic sculpture because it was curved,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: and again that was in order to throw and sweep
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: the sound across the audience. And they would, you know,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: depending on the configuration of the venue, they could tilt
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: this cluster up or down, so quite often it would
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: be like a four degree tilt downward, and that was
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: just like the optimal spread for the cluster. But yeah,
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: like I said, that was really the first instance that
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: a curved speaker array was ever you know, suspended. So
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: they hung it with these heavy duty granger winches and
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: that was the first time that had ever been done before.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: And if you go to any concert today you go
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: to like a giant stadium, you go see Metallica right
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: in like an eighty thousand seed stadium, to like a
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: two thousand seat auditorium or down to just a little
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: beer soaked dive bar that puts on shows. You're probably
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: you are going to see a curved speaker somewhere in there.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: So that's, you know, just one lasting legacy of the
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: wall of sound, the whole idea of a curved speaker,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: And there were a whole other there's so many other
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: like sonic firsts that the Grateful Dead notched through to
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: the wall sound and their adjacent audio activity. Right, they
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: were the first two stack speakers in a linear array.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: You look at the wall sound and it's stacks and
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: stacks and stacks of speakers, and today that's kind of
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: like a no brainer, but no one had done that
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: in the early seventies. Phil Lesh, the bass player of
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: The Grateful Dead, his stacks alone were thirty two feet tall,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: thirty two feet being the height of a standing basewave.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: So they're like to get the full effect of a
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: base wave, we need to build his stacks thirty two
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: feet tall. Right, So the whole idea of like a
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: linear array, a stack of speakers that can propagate sound
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: like as it moves forward. You see that everywhere today.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: You sometimes see like curved hanging arrays on the side
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: of a stage. That's the Dead. That's the lasting impact
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: of the wall sound right there. You also see it
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: with the lay towers. If you go to a big,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: gigantic show, there's the sound reinforcement or the PA system
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: that's on the stage, but then out in the crowd
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: there's often like a ring of these delay towers, so
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: speakers that are projected out into the audience to account
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: for the distance that sound needs to travel to hit
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: the upper decks of the stadium. And the Dead were
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: the first to really figure out the lay towers. In
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: the summer of nineteen seventy three, there were a series
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: of shows where they kind of figured that out. So
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: they were the first with so many things when it
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: comes to sound reinforcement as we know it today.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: The book Down Rock podcast will be back after this.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: You're on our like to ask for a recess.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Find the bookdown Rock website at bookdownrock dot com. There
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: you can find all the back episodes of the show.
• 51:55
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• 51:57
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• 52:00
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• 52:05
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• 52:08
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• 52:11
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• 52:21
  Speaker 1: March twenty third of nineteen seventy four. You write, the
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Dead's years long pursuit of audio perfection had come to
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: this moment. It's billed as the sound test. The Dead
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: ran ads for the show at the count Palace in
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: San Francisco on the radio for a month. This is
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: when the band and the audience would be the same.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: How does that night go for the band, the crew,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: and the audience.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, that was a very momentous date in the evolution
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: of the Wall of Sound, and right like I wrote,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: like they had kind of been building to that. So
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: there were a couple shows. There were three shows in
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: February of nineteen seventy four at the WINTERLND in Tem Francisco,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: a smaller space than the Cow Palace. That Cow Palace show,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: March twenty third, nineteen seventy four. Some people sort of
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: point to that as like kind of like the debut
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: of the Wall of Sound, And I sort of take
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: issue with that because I think, as you read in
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: the book, I really think like some of the first
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: wall of sound shows were like late nineteen seventy three,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: where everything was behind the band, But that show in
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: March of nineteen seventy four was really like they had
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: the room to breathe, to really like set that whole
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: thing up. But there were still snags. At the beginning
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: of playing in the band, the whole system drops out
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: and the musicians were sort of totally exposed, naked to
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: the audience when that happened, right because they had eliminated
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: the monitors at the musician's feet, so like they were
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: right there with the audience when that kind of thing happened,
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: and like the whole song falls apart. They needed to
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: like you know, fix something that went down in the system.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: But by that point their road crew were so kind
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: of dialed in, and like the divisions of labor were
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: like such that it was very clear, like you know,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: if something went down on stage right or if something
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: went down on stage left, certain individuals would sort of
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: be like quick to hop on fixing whatever needed to
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: get fixed. Yeah, things fall apart at the beginning of
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: playing in the band, but like they recover, it was
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: an amazing show. It was later released as a dix Picks.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: So Dick lot Valla, for those who don't know The
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Grateful Debt's original archivist, he had a series of official releases.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: He would release live shows, so that Copalace Sound Test
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: was eventually released as a dix Picks. It's a great show.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: It's Volume twenty four, Volume twenty four.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: There you go, yeah, But then I think you really
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: start to hear the wall sound like in its full effect.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: By like May of nineteen seventy four, May and June
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy four, I think everything had clicked into place.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: If you listen to the indoor show in Missoula, Montana
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: in May of nineteen seventy four, the clarity that I
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: talked about is just undeniable. It's amazing. You listen to
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: this recording that's, you know, over fifty years old at
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: this point, and it's pristine. It's amazing. But yeah, I
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: really feel like every show leading up to and through
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four was such an event and that they
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: could pull it off. There was always going to be
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: like some technical difficulties. Bob Weir In particular, he had
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: a couple of lines pretty much every show, a song
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: or two, and he'd be like, all right, well bear
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: with us, we're experiencing our first technical difficulty of the evening.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: Like that was kind of par for course, but that
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: was also kind of like the charm. They were way
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: out on the cutting edge.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: What was the show in Miami in seventy four they
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: played something called Sea Stones? What was Sea Stones?
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: Sea Stones was a piece of ambient music, computer music really,
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: and it was written by an electronic musician and composer
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: named Ned Lagan who met the Dead in nineteen seventy
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: when he was a student at MIT, and him and
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: Phil Lesh really hit it off because Lesh was like
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: a student of avant garde music, right, So him and
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Ned really really hit it off, and Ned got the
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: invitation to basically come out to California. So all through
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: you know, seventy seventy one, seventy two, seventy three, and
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: then again at seventy four, here and there, not every show,
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: but Ned would sit in and play keyboards and some
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: piano as well, so I would sort of consider him
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: like a member of the band. In those years, not
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: a lot of people know his name.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: But kind of like a Bruce Hornsby type of.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Thing, exactly right. So Ned had been working on this
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: piece of computer ambient music, which at the time was
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: like so out there, like no one was really doing this.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Ned was the first person to perform with a computer
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: on a stage, which is amazing to think about nowadays.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: But Phil, being very into like avant garde music, collaborated
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: with Ned on this piece of music called Sea Stones,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: and during the intermission of Around I believe like just
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: over twenty shows in nineteen seventy four with the full
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: wall of sound the intermission, so between like set one
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: and set two, Ned and Phil would come out and
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: they would perform Seastones, which would be usually between like
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: fifteen maybe close to twenty minutes or so, and people
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: really didn't know what to make of it at the time.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just very kind of like harsh dissonant feedback.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Not drums in space type of thing.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: It was sort of a kind of a precursor to Space.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Because Mickey Hart is into that stuff, and I'm sure
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Mickey Hart dug that to.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: Mickey Hart like very much into that stuff show. But
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: it was interesting, like in one of my interviews with Ned,
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: he considers sea stones in the same continuum of the dead.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: They did feedback in the late sixties, you know, feedback,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: and then there was seastones, and then there was drums
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: in space, so he considers it kind of all in
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: the same continuum of just very out there musical exploration
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: and experimentation. But during these Seastones intermission sets, Ned and
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Phil would come out and perform this piece of music.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: And Phil had a quadraphonic bass and he could throw
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: each of his strings to a different cluster of speakers
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: in his thirty two foot tall stacks. So that's pretty
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: crazy in and of itself. But Ned basically had like
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: an infinite pallette of noises because he was using you know,
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: this very like expensive computer rig and synthesizer rig to
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: perform seastones, and all of his signal would go through
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: that big center cluster that I was just talking about,
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: and Ned could move so much air through the wall
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: sound that he could bounce this seventy five ton system.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: He could bounce it up in the air by a foot,
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: that's how much power he could push through that thing.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: So it would freak people out understandably, like no one
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: had really heard harsh ambient music like this at the time.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: But I wanted to include and give some love to
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: Seastones in the book, which Seastones debuted in Miami, like
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, in June of nineteen seventy four, that's where
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: they first performed Seastones, and then they did it kind
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: of through the end of the year. But I wanted
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: to really include that and dig into what it was
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: like to pull that off, because I think Seastones is
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: really the like farthest and most radical application of the
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: Wall Sound and Sea Stones was the studio version was
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: released in nineteen seventy five. It was sort of a
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: commercial flop, but in more recent years it's been reissued
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: and it's kind of become like a cult classic. If
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: you listen to Seastones, it's still so ahead of its time.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: It kind of calls to mind Brian eno A, but
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: a little bit more like a little bit more out there,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: a little bit more alien, kind of super ahead of
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: its time stuff. But I had, you know, amazing interviews
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: with Ned. He told me, this is kind of the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: last time I'm going to talk about this stuff about
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: like my time and involvement in this scene. So I
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: was very touched and honored that he would open up
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: to me about all of this stuff. But yeah, Seastones
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: is just like amazing stuff. Listen to any live any
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: of those twenty or so live shows where Sea Stones
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: was performed in nineteen seventy four, and it's like, Wow,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: this stuff still sounds futuristic. It's amazing.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Books on Rock podcast will be back after this. Look,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: we're gonna take a pause. What a call. Hey guys,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: thanks so much for checking out the Booked on Rock podcast.
• 1:01:08
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• 1:01:11
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• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: to the show, Chapter nine, titled The Other Side nineteen
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: seventy five, and you'd lead with quote post mortems rolled in.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: So what became of the Wall of Sound and the
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Grateful Dead in nineteen seventy five?
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: The band decided to shut it all down at the
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: end of nineteen seventy four, and you know, as Dennis mcnae,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: the band's former longtime publicist and their biographer, as he
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: put it to me, the band was too chicken shit
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: to fire anyone. So they were basically like, we're going
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: to take a break, We're going to go on hiatus.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: You all need to find something else to do for
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: a while. So they would eventually come back and hit
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: the road in like spring of nineteen seventy six, but
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: sort of in that year and a half the Dead
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: worked on a new studio album. But right, what happened
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: to all of this stuff? So that question I wanted
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: to unpack that what happened to the wallside, all of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: this gear, seventy five going on eighty tons worth of equipment.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: What happened to all of it? So you can see
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: in the book there's sort of like a number of
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: different streams through which all of this gear got sort
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: of disassembled and parted out and eked out into the
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: world at large. Some of it was gifted to like
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: smaller Bay area bands that needed gear, right, the Dead
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: would be like, here, we can give you your own
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: sound system basically, so that happened. Also, some folks who
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: were involved in this scene told me that basically everyone
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: who was working for the Dead at the time had
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: components of the Wall of Sound in their home high
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: fi systems. Right, So people would take maybe a couple
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: speaker cabinets, maybe an amplifier and have a sweet home
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: high fi. Right. Other parts of the system went into
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: crew Chief Ramrod shirt Lift. His real name was Lawrence,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: but everyone called him Ramrod. He had a farm in Pataluma,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: and some of phil Lesh's Wall of Sound speaker boxes
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: went into a chicken coop. They formed a chicken coop
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: in his farm. Right. So, like all of this stuff
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: kind of fell into different buckets as the whole system
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: was disassembled and you know entropy, right, Like, some of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: the stuff just kind of like broke down as the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: years went on, maybe got water damage, some of it
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: maybe just got trashed. Because you know, you have to remember,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: I was speaking with some sources in the book who
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: worked for the band and had parts of the Wall
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: of Sound in their home High Fight, for instance, And
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: they were telling me that by the late nineteen seventies
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: that stuff was just considered old gear, you know, like
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: they didn't necessarily know that this thing would go on
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: to be the thing that it is today, right and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: like have all this lore and hold this huge presence
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: in the Grateful Dead story, it was just old gear.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: So maybe they would sell that stuff, they would trade it.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: Quite a few of them were like, maybe I shouldn't
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: have sold that stuff, right.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, well I was gonna say the Rock and
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame maybe trying to get HOLDI as soon.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean it's pretty amazing that, like,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: you know, there's is it for sale though it is not.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: This is not for sale currently, Yes this is this
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: is here in my home. But but yeah, it's amazing that,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: you know, there's not much of this stuff survives today.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: And in the later chapters, I connect with who I
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: call like fellow keepers of parts of the Wall of Sound.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: So there's a network of people out there who have
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe they have a speaker box kind of
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: similar to this one that I have. Maybe they have
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: an old Macintosh amplifier from the Wall sound. So it
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: was really cool to like connect with some of those
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: people because there isn't too much of this stuff surviving today.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: So that's what makes it like really special to have
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: a part of this like really groundbreaking piece of technology
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: and rock music history right just sitting here in my office.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: And like you say, whenever you go to a concert,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: chances are you going to see something in that setup.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: That's a connection. There's a straight line you can draw
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: from the Dead's Wall of Sound to what you are seeing,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: like a curve speaker, things like that. You keep that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: in mind. Loud and Clear, the Grateful Dead's Wall of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: Sound owned and the Quest for Audio Perfection out now
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: find out wherever books are sold. You could look forward
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: at your nearest bookstore. Go to book don rock dot
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: com to find your nearest independent bookstore. And Brian, where
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: can people find you online?
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: You can find me on socials so you can find
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: me on Instagram, you can find me on Blue Sky,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: you can find me on Facebook as well. I can
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: give you my handles maybe you can put them in
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: like the show notes or something.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: And be happy to absolutely but uh.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my dms are open. I always love to hear
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: from people, So if you've got a line on where
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: a piece of the wall sound, maybe the plan did,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: hit me up, or just say hello, Like I'm always
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: open to chat.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Brian Anderson, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. Man, this was
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: a blast. That's it.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: It's in the books.