With the announcement of another major Grateful Dead release comes the desire to discuss it with archive producer David Lemieux.
The 23-disc Spring 1990 (The Other One) represents the companion to 2012’s 18 CD set, Spring 1990. Both contain shows from that tour’s six cities – Landover, Maryland, Hartford, Hamilton, Ontario, Albany, New York, Uniondale, New York and Atlanta. This time around the set includes the classic performance that featured special guest Branford Marsalis at Nassau Coliseum. (That particular show is also out as a separate 3 CD release, Wake Up to Find Out. )
Before I get to that – and, later, attempt to get a hint or two about what’s in store for fans in 2015 for the Dead’s 50th anniversary – I clear a small bit of confusion regarding Lemieux’s latest in the “Dave’s Picks” series (#11, 11/17/72, Wichita, Kansas)
JPG: I emailed you the other day about what was up with the Dave’s Picks 11 cover because the artwork in the press release was in color and the CD I received was in black and white. Also, in my defense, I was in a hurry when I got the mail that day so when I looked at it my thumb covered up Dorothy and the Tin Man…
DL: It’s funny because I did get probably six or eight emails from people saying exactly the same thing. “I got the email and a beautiful color cover and then I get it. Is this only mine? Is there a printing problem?” I kinda let it sink in because I heard from a lot of people…”Wow! It’s great! There’s the Dead in Kansas and there’s the Wizard of Oz cover. That’s really cool.”
JPG: Was the show picked not just for quality but an easy choice because it was already Dick Latvala approved for the Dick’s Picks series?
DL: I get a lot of input from people on stuff we pick but certainly when something is endorsed by Dick that carries a heckuva lot of weight. It’s a weird show pick-wise in that it probably should have come out a long time ago but for whatever reason it didn’t. We do a ’72, and it wasn’t like it got overlooked. We figured, “Now’s the time to do a ’72 with a “Dark Star.”” So, think of something like 9/21/72 from the Philly Spectrum, which, again, was another show, interestingly the Dick’s Picks 36. That was something that Dick had put up as a possible Dick’s Picks Volume 1 going way back to 1993, and it wasn’t picked. Then, we finally put that out in 2005.
I don’t want to say it slipped through the cracks but every time we put something out from 1972 and then I go back and listen to this 11/17, the Wichita show I say, “Oh, my goodness! We ought to put this one out.” All good things in all good time. Honestly, I know it’s a bit of a cliché to say in this context but it’s really true. We can’t put everything out at the same time so if there’s something good it’s still on the shelf. It’s going to come out sooner or later.
JPG: Going with that sooner or later line easily segues into the box set Spring 1990 (The Other One). First off, why split the Spring 1990 tour into two box sets rather than one massive box set?
DL: Excellent question. When we did Europe ’72 that was 2011, and that was a 73 CD box set, $450. That came out in the summer 2011. Fall 2011, we started thinking about what was going to be our big project for 2012. Everybody in that meeting, which is a good team at Rhino and myself and a few other people, we decided, very unanimously, “We can’t do another 75 CD box set or even a 45 or 50 box set. It’s too much at once to come out with two back-to-back mega mega boxes.” So, we said, “Let’s keep the next one ‘small’,” which was 18 CDs. The first Spring 1990 certainly isn’t a small box set by any band’s judgment except now that we’ve done a 73, it did fall in the small box set category. So, we said, “Let’s do something smaller. Let’s definitely keep it under 20. If it comes out in 10 CDs or 15 CDs, that’s great, but let’s certainly not do anything 50 or 60 CDs again.”
Then, we started talking about tours we wanted to hit and we thought of a lot of ideas. One idea we came up with because it’s been at the forefront of what we wanted to do was something big from the Spring of 1990. We pretty quickly came upon the idea of six shows, one show from each of the six cities on that tour. That was the philosophy behind it.
Once that was set in stone — the format — it was just a matter of choosing the six shows. I won’t say we chose the six best shows because I certainly think that the eight shows that are in this are every bit as good as those ones. It was really just a case of what were the more complementary shows to one another. What created a very good six-show, 18 CD box set. And we were very happy with the ones that we picked.
I knew when we had that meeting in the Fall of 2011 that someday we would do volume two of this box set, where even the shows that didn’t end up in the first box set sooner or later – again, all good things in all good time – the other shows would come out. We just have to some patience.
It’s funny. As soon as we decided we were going to do this format – six shows, one show from each city — I submitted my initial list of the six shows that we selected and we didn’t go into production on that for two months. And in those two months I changed four of the six shows that were in that box, which goes to show that the list that I submitted I was 100 % confident it was the right list to submit and I was 100% confident that those were the right shows to do but the shows were so good, and as I kept listening to the other shows in those two months before we actually did set things in stone and start production, I changed. But now, it’s all a moot point because the other four shows that didn’t make it in that box set ended up in this box.
It was an interesting process. That first one was a very hard one to select the shows only because everything was so good and every show that we knew wasn’t going to be in that box was a great show that was going to not be released. But again, knowing that sooner or later we’d do Volume Two (The Other One) made the selection a lot easier.
JPG: As far as the Branford Marsalis show, 3/29/90 — I’m thinking that for myself I probably have three or four copies of it — was that held up because it had made the rounds for years among traders?
DL: Well…that’s a good question. It really had to do with not knowing how hard it was going to be to get the rights to it. As it turned out in 2014, I didn’t work closely with Branford’s management to get the okay to get this. By all accounts Branford and his manager were an absolute dream to work with. They were incredibly accommodating. They were completely supportive of the idea. It was definitely a collaboration. When you ask permission for something like that you never know if it’s something that Branford looks back fondly on or not and wants to come out. Certainly, he does look back on it fondly and we’ve read enough things where Branford has sung his praise of the Grateful Dead. You never really know until you ask.
I won’t say it was easy because I wasn’t involved in the negotiations but I’m sure it was pretty smooth It was something we didn’t explore on the first one, and I really don’t know why. We were very happy with the show that we did put in that box set, the 3/30 show, but when we decided to do the other eight shows we kind of knew that this show had to be in there. And if it wasn’t, all of sudden, you’ve got the other seven shows and you’ve still got a show from the tour that has not been released. So, I know Rhino worked very hard on getting the rights to it but Branford, again, was very supportive in making that happen. Now, we get to do the whole thing.
I think you know that show is being released on its own outside of the box [as Wake Up to Find Out ]. It’s such a classic, special show. It’s a show that is going to have a wide audience, quite a wide demand for it. We just wanted to make sure that the people who didn’t want 23 CDs, eight shows for $240 would still be able to get the whole Branford show sounding as good as it does.
JPG: It’s funny that you mention about rights. Since the version of “Eyes of the World” with Branford appeared on Without a Net years ago, I thought the rights and legal situation would have been taken of at that time.
DL: No, that would have been just for that one song. This is the whole show with him playing the entire second set, aside from “Drums,” plus “Bird Song.” It was definitely a lot more than that.
JPG: It’s kind of surprising that they didn’t take of that.
DL: Yeah, well, that’s just how it works.
JPG: How many shows did you attend during that Spring ’90 tour?
DL: I attended the first 10, the first four cities, 10 shows. I went to Cap Centre, Hartford, Hamilton and Albany. Did not go to Nassau or Atlanta.
JPG: Oh, so my question about your reaction to Branford coming out at Nassau Coliseum is not going to work.
DL: No, I did not attend the Branford show. And it was funny because I knew who Branford was because I was a big fan of the Police in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. A couple years after the Police disbanded Sting put out his first solo record, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. I really liked the album. I thought there were a lot of good songs on it. I distinctly remember this incredible sax player on the record. That was the first time I ever heard Branford Marsalis play. I hadn’t listened to it in many years, and I listened to it while working on this project. The key moments of the album that I constantly can think of are Branford-related stuff. So, I was a big fan of Branford because of that album.
Then, I sought out some other stuff he did in the late ‘80s. Before internet in 1990 on this tour information still spread quickly, not as quickly as it would through Twitter and Facebook and emails but it spread pretty quickly because at a good show — we were all pretty obsessed with the stuff – you would get calls right after a show. And I distinctly remember getting the call just as I did after Hampton [when the Dead in 1989 were billed on the marquee as the Warlocks] and things like that. I got the call after the Branford show, 11:30 or 12, from my friend Larry. “Branford Marsalis came out.” “Oh wow! The sax player from Sting’s band.” “Yeah, he came out. He played the whole second set and “Bird Song…”
We talked about how special guests with the Dead didn’t always work that well only because the Dead had been playing together so long that all of a sudden you throw in a new element that doesn’t necessarily have that ability to jump right in with the Dead’s music and they kind of had to tone it back a bit. With Branford it was the complete opposite of that. He pushed them forward and the band played to an incredibly high level to meet Branford’s incredibly high level as a jazz musician. And the songs they selected and the type of music was absolutely perfect for Branford. Even the end of the show with “Lovelight” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” it’s absolutely perfect music for a sax player.
And hearing that, I remember I couldn’t wait to hear this show. On that tour the Dead weren’t giving out board patches all that freely because they were recording Without a Net and they didn’t want a lot of board tapes going out. So, it was really tough to find a board recording of the show, which, fortunately, we did hear one shortly after but I heard audience tapes and Larry was taping in the audience.
I could not wait the week it took for that package to arrive with the Maxell ll-S with an audience tape. I was just blown away.
JPG: I used to work in a record store with a friend who also attended shows, and we used to play Without a Net all the time. I just remember loving that version of “Eyes of the World” with Branford.
DL: Yep. I remember right before the Dead played Europe — three of four weeks before — Without a Net came out. I remember going into my local record shop in Ottawa and getting it on CD and putting on the “Eyes of the World” and it just blew me away, how good it was, how well it flowed. You take Branford out of that mix and it’s an incredible “Eyes of the World.” You add Branford and it’s literally one of the top five versions I can think of ever hearing.
Yeah, it was something special. It was a special guest appearance that beyond worked. It was perfection in terms of the two musical styles and how much they were compatible with each other. And that’s not always the case when you have a special guest sitting in with the Dead.
JPG: I agree. I’m a _huge- Who fan and I remember watching the video when Pete Townshend joined the Dead in Germany [March 28, 1981 Grugahalle, Essen, Germany]…
DL: …and he looks a little confused, right?
JPG: Yeah. I remember during “Not Fade Away,” which should be a pretty basic one to play, but you can tell that he’s not sure if he should play or solo or what…
DL: Yeah, exactly. Looking around like, “What do I do here?” That was exactly the thing. With Branford it worked perfectly.
JPG: Because he played with Sting in a loose rock format I wonder if he was able to transition into what the Dead did easier than others.
DL: Yeah, exactly. I think it did help, for sure.
JPG: The other thing about the box sets, do you have any idea why the band was so strong night after night?
DL: Not being a musician and not being all that tight with the band members, particularly back then when I was a guy in the crowd. I think relative to the matter, they were all very healthy at the time and that certainly contributed. I think that they knew that they were playing well and they didn’t want to let each other down. I don’t think they wanted to let the fans down, obviously. They were just really enjoying playing. That’s what you get out of it, where Brent was now a really equal member of the band. He was singing two, sometimes three songs a night and his contributions to every song, he wasn’t adding color, he was leading the way a lot of nights. Jerry was playing incredibly inspired music. Bob and Phil and the drummers were locked in perfectly. The sound was great.
Everything was working really well for them, and I do think they were all very healthy at the time. That certainly comes through vocally and instrumentally how healthy they sounded and how tight they sound. It sounds like they’re listening to one another, and that really comes off as being a band that is enjoying playing. That’s the thing. They really seemed to really have fun on this tour.
JPG: You mention Brent. I always felt that as Brent asserted himself more and more, you can hear that in the music but it was something to see in the live videos, that Jerry enjoyed being able to let him take over. It wasn’t all on him. When Brent was gone, then all the responsibility and pressure was on Jerry. And it became too much.
DL: Yeah, Brent by the end there, he really was a lead player. He would take on a lead role during a lot of songs at this time. He’d always done a solo during a blues song but now you get “Little Red Rooster,” and Brent would be singing a verse. “Women are Smarter,” he’d sing a verse. All of a sudden, he became this guy. It was, I think, the most powerful the Dead were in the later years, the last, let’s say, 10 years of their playing certainly. From ’85 to…even ’80, ’81 to ’95, this is some of the most powerful Dead there was.
And every night was consistently great. That was the thing is that there’s no duds in this tour whereas any tour you’re gonna get the very best shows then you’re gonna get the really good ones and you’re gonna get a couple shows or more, sometimes, that are just like, “Man, those aren’t very good shows,” and this tour doesn’t have that. There’s 16 shows and every single night is exceptional. Had we not done this as a boxed set or two boxed sets, every single night on this tour would have at one time or another been released on its own, I’m sure, because they’re that good. They’re really, really hot. They’re unique shows. That’s the thing. Every night, not only has a consistent level of performing but it’s also got something very special. You can really kind of pinpoint really special moments on every night, and that’s what you look for on a show that you’re trying to release on CD. You’re looking for overall excellent consistent playing throughout the whole show, but you’re also looking for a few moments that put it above and beyond a normal good show. And every single night on these 16 shows has those moments that make it exceptional.
JPG: Going with that idea of being unique, I was listening to Hartford, which began with “Shakedown Street” and later the song’s played in Atlanta, the last show of the tour. They’re different “Shakedown“s, even though it’s the same song. That’s always been the thrill right there.
DL: Yeah, how differently they could play the same song.
JPG: You mentioned Brent and that verse from “Little Red Rooster.” Do you know when he started chiming in with that?
DL: He was scat singing here and there. So, I don’t know the exact show. It would pop up in the last five years of him playing where he would start singing a verse of “Little Red Rooster.” It was very consistent in the last couple of years, ‘88 to ’90, where he would do it, I won’t say at every show but at most shows Brent would be singing a verse there.
He would just do stuff like that. He certainly became a prime contributor to the band plus there’s a lot of new material in ’88, ’89. And by ’90 all that new material, I think, all of it was being played incredibly well. We’re talking “Foolish Heart”…“Victim Or the Crime,” some people I don’t think were huge fans of the song but you couldn’t deny that it allowed the band to go to some incredibly deep spaces. I love “Victim Or the Crime.” One of the things I loved about it was how deep into space it could take them at the end where Mickey could just be going across the beam and scraping and Jerry could get into some really raunchy playing and Phil some really low end stuff.
So, all that new stuff, “We Can Run, “Just A Little Light“…all that stuff that came out on Built to Last … “Picasso Moon”….all this stuff was really rocking by 1990. And then the stuff that they debuted; a ton of stuff in ’88, ’89 and it was working incredibly well by 1990.
JPG: As I viewed it, Pigpen was the blues lover but even though some of his songs like “Far From Me” and “Blow Away” at least in the studio had more of a Gary Katz, Steely Dan’s producer, kind of feel to them, Brent, as a musician and a singer, was like a real bleeding from the heart bluesman.
DL: He certainly was and he had some pain in his life. No doubt about that.
JPG: It’s kind of sad because as I’m listening to his contributions I’m thinking about how he was affected by the haters. And I was thinking of Robin Williams and Brent and wondering if Brent was suffering from depression at the time but no one, especially back then, knew how to deal with stuff like that.
DL: Yeah it’s interesting that you mention haters in the same sentence as Brent because my friends and I, we’re your age and we’re young and we were young then. I was 19 years old on this tour. I absolutely loved Brent. To me, the Dead sound I knew, of course, I had a lot of tapes from the ’60s and ‘70s, but the Dead sound that I knew from live shows and listened to a lot was largely defined by Brent’s contributions. And so, I loved Brent. And they carried on after he was gone and they played some very good shows and even a few very good tours, complete tours after he was gone, but it wasn’t really the same, just as it wasn’t the same after Pigpen died and for a lot of people it wasn’t the same when Keith and Donna left.
Things change. And for me, Brent was largely the sound that defined the sound that I associated with the Dead because I was seeing a lot of shows in the ’80s, and it was the Brent Sound. It just took a little bit of getting used to when Vince joined the band and then Vince and Hornsby. It certainly was a different sound. I saw some really good shows in ’90, ’91 after Brent died, excellent shows actually, some phenomenal things.
JPG: Yeah, I remember ’93…
DL: Yeah ’93. There’s some good stuff on that Spring Tour. Some excellent shows.
It is just different. Definitely different. I know what you mean. I’ve heard the same thing where Brent hadn’t felt all that accepted by some Deadheads and I just never understood that because for my generation, being a guy who in the live experience only knew the Brent years, I just didn’t get that because I was like, “Well, what’s not to like? The guy can sing. He can play. He can elevate the whole band performance when he’s really on just as any member of the Dead can elevate things.” Brent was certainly able to do that.
So, he was really missed. On the summer tour of ’90, I saw the whole thing from Eugene in June of ’90 right until the end in Chicago when Brent played his last show. And it was different. Certainly things had changed both for the Dead and for Brent.
JPG: What do you mean, different?
DL: I just didn’t feel that the Dead were the same in the summer from the way they were in the spring. They seemed happy and inspired in the spring, and not as much in the summer.
JPG: Speaking of that summer tour, I doubt I’ve heard as many versions of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” as you have, but I still feel that the one from Pittsburgh in summer of ’90 might be one of the best.
DL: Absolutely. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Terrific stuff.
JPG: Were you there five years later for the rain show? It was one of those perfect Dead moments where I was on the floor of Three Rivers Stadium and could see the rain clouds moving in during intermission. The band came out for second set, sang the opening line of the Beatles’ “Ra-a-a-a-in, I don’t mind.” Then, the moment they hit the first instrumental note, the sky opened up for the entire rain section of songs (“Box of Rain,” “Samba in the Rain” “Looks Like Rain”). You just didn’t care you were getting wet because it was just so amazing.
DL: Classic Grateful Dead.
JPG: Absolutely. Back to The Other One box set, tell me about the artwork.
DL: We went with Wes Lang on the first one and Wes is a tremendously talented artist. This year, we decided to go in a different direction with another artist named Jessica Dessner, and she’s incredibly talented. Look her up online. She’s done other album covers for a lot of other artists. She’s worked with the National and Sufjan Stevens. I don’t know if any of the readers have seen the National in concert, but it really is one of the best live shows out there right now. I highly recommend them. Saw them not too long ago in LA.
We said, “We need a front cover and a back cover because it’s a big box and then we need eight individual album covers for the eight individual shows plus other little elements.” And she just delivered in spades. She delivered incredibly good stuff and really appropriate. There’s some very cool things happening with the cover art, for the individual shows and throughout the box. Jessica was a top-notch artist to work with.
Kudos to Rhino for finding these people, particularly Doran Tyson (Manager of Grateful Dead Properties). She was the one who suggested and introduced everybody to Wes Lang and, certainly, he was the right choice for the first one and Jessica Dessner, Doran also brought her to the table on this one. Doran’s got the eye for who’s the right person and appropriate for a current project. And so far, everyone she’s brought in has been terrific.
It’s a very cool box, just like the first one. It’s a cool thing that you’re gonna want to put on your shelf and show off.
JPG: Did she do the artwork for Wake Up to Find Out as well?
DL: She did. That’s very cool when you see that in the hi-res and see that on the album cover. It’s really nice. That’s the hands with the roses. That’s the kind of thing where she knew enough about Dead imagery. When you have a talented artist and they understand the Dead’s imagery and the icons and then she comes in with that. Here’s something that we’ve never seen before the way that the skeleton hands are holding these roses. And that’s what we look for, something that could use the Grateful Dead iconography while at the same time being something completely new. Jessica nailed it.
There’s so many art elements on this box and she delivered. When we were in meetings, when she was showing us the originals, it was relentless how good they were and how many there were. Every single piece was perfect.
That was the thing with Jessica. We did have some direction because when we work with artists this talented who know the Dead’s icons and Jessica certainly knew them or at least learned the ones she didn’t necessarily know. When they get the project and they’ve had enough discussions with us about the project, generally they come back with something that we’re 100 % onboard with.
All of these concepts were Jessica’s. When you look at the individual covers of the eight shows, they thematically hold together with that specific show. She put a lot of thought in it. It’s not like, “Here’s a cool piece of art. Let’s make this the Hartford show.” She made each cover appropriate for that specific show, that venue, that city, that state.
JPG: Moving on, after this year’s Meet-Up at the Movies event of the Beat Club, 4/21/72. I was expecting an announcement shortly after it screened that there would be a release. Is there work being done trying to get the rights to the visual side of Beat Club?
DL: Well, not really. Yes and no, not really, not at all. Our Meet-Up at the Movies is really a chance for us to get 500 people in a movie theater together. Grateful Dead Productions and Rhino do a great job of managing the Dead legacy in terms of getting CDs out there and very cool projects and…you were there for my Rock & Roll Hall of Fame [presentation], getting those things off the ground.
In terms of getting 200 to 500 people in a movie theater, that’s a big thrill for us to be able to bring community together like that because we don’t have a live band. RatDog does their thing and Phil does his and Furthur did their thing but that’s their own thing, the band members. We don’t get an opportunity very often to get people in a room, so that was the focus of that.
There was never an intention to do it on DVD. We made that clear from the beginning, that if you want to see this go to the movie theater because we aren’t releasing this on DVD. Yeah, maybe in years we will but it’s certainly nothing that’s on our radar or in our production schedule any time soon, and we generally have a production schedule of 18 months or even a couple years ahead of schedule.
It was a very special moment to get people out and we don’t own it so it isn’t really up to us entirely. Not up to us at all, actually. Maybe someday we’ll explore that but right now we didn’t and aren’t.
JPG: Okay, last thing. Usually, it is tough pulling anything from you on future projects and then a week after we talk or after our conversation is published some announcement comes out. So, I’ll put it this way. The Dead’s 50th anniversary is next year. What would you like to do? What type of things…?
DL: I already know what we’re doing, I think. I sure hope we know what we’re doing. We have big plans. I don’t know what to say because it is going to be incredibly cool. I will say that.
I’ve been with the Dead 15 years and in that time and before that there were a lot of cool things and since then we’ve done a lot of cool things whether they’re DVDs, whether they’re the Fillmore West box in 2004, whether it’s Europe ’72…we’ve done a lot of cool things. What we have planned for 2015 I think is the coolest thing we’ve done yet and that’s not hyperbole and that’s not the blowing of smoke. That is true.
Well, we’ve known the 50th was coming along for the last 49 years. More specifically, the last three years we’ve really known that we want to do some special things and we’ve been working towards them to make sure that they could happen and that’s where we are now is making them happen so that when 2015 rolls around, which means for the 12 months of 2015 we’re going to have a lot of very cool things happening. In terms of big things we certainly have big things planned that I think are certainly some of the cooler things we’ve ever done and, again, we’ve done some cool things.
So, I’m not just saying that. It’s not hyperbole. I approach all of this stuff not as a businessman and not as a this or that. I approach it as a Deadhead. What would I love to have come out that would really excite me. That’s kind of where we really start our discussions and then we look at them from a logistics..some of the ideas I come up with and others in the meetings come up with are logistically just impossible but this one is certainly feasible and it is something we’re going to do.
I don’t want to get into specifics until it’s well rounded. It’s not really worth talking specifics only because things are going to change. Things are in flux for at least the next 3 or 4 months in terms of specifics of the project. If it falls the way we’re expecting it to, it’s going to be extremely cool. So standby.
We have incredible cool things with the Dave’s Picks series. We’ve got some other very cool things planned throughout the year. We really want to make 2015 something that is going to commemorate 50 years of the Grateful Dead in America and really world culture and their importance and pay tribute to that in all the cool ways. The Dead are such a dynamic force. That’s what we want to do. Make sure that our body of visuals, there are, hopefully, moments where we can get people in theaters, where we can get people to listen together, to do things like that. Luckily, the whole team at Rhino is so driven and competent that I think everything is going to come together extremely well.
