Despite recordings available online, there’s still a demand for official Grateful Dead releases by those seeking high quality sound and distinctive packaging. Dead archivist and producer David Lemieux brought that to the ultimate level last year with a Europe ‘72 box set that included all 22 shows from the legendary trek overseas. The longtime Deadhead brought up the idea a several years before but Rhino Records, which releases the band’s albums, wasn’t thrilled about putting out a 72-disc set.
Pointing to the success of previous multi-disc sets such as the 10-CD Fillmore West 1969: the Complete Recordings set, he eventually convinced them that there was an audience for such an endeavor. A limited edition run of Europe ‘72 sold out in less than a week. The music-only box set and individual shows are now available at www.dead.net.
During the second part of my conversation with him we discuss the formation of this massive release as well as its companion piece, a two-CD compilation, Europe ’72 Volume 2 and the return of Stanley Mouse to add his artistic vision.
JPG: When you were talking about the sound and about people having favorite eras, favorite years and stuff like that I remember when I first started collecting tapes and I really didn’t like the late ’70s because the way the tapes had this very AM radio sound quality. It didn’t sound so strong, especially when you started getting into the later ’80s tapes where there was a very heavy muscular feel to the sound on those tapes. So, for years I never really cared for the late ’70s but now I’ve heard better recordings and I’ve come to appreciate those years a whole lot more.
DL: I hear ya. This comes down to listening experience, where it can be a great show and if it’s not fun to listen to and you have to wade through some bad mix or maybe too much audience or whatever it is, it detracts from it. Going back to your earlier question, that’s why we do pay a lot of attention to the listening experience we give to the Dave’s Picks buyer because, ultimately, we want them to enjoy it. The music is first and foremost always but there’s been plenty of releases that have been mixed based on subpar tape quality, where the engineer listened and like, “Look, I can’t get any bass out of this” or “Bob Weir’s guitar is not in the mix.” Things that I know and I notice this when I listen but I always figure, “Oh, they can fix it in mastering.” And now I clearly know they can’t [fix] a lot of these things when it comes down to a two-track mix. It’s a many person process. There’s a lot of checks and balances and certainly Jeffrey Norman is one of the major checks and balances because he’s the engineer that’s got to make this stuff sound good.
JPG: Speaking of sound, I reviewed the two-disc compilation Europe ’72 Volume 2. Was everything on that and the entire Europe ‘72 box set from two-track tapes or multi-tracks?
DL: Those were all multi-tracks, 16-track recordings, when they did that. The entire tour, all 22 shows were recorded to multi-track. Going back to earlier, talking about fixing things, occasionally we did have to fix things because they weren’t running two machines. There’s no overlap. So, when a tape ended in the middle of a song it takes them 30 seconds to put the new tape on. So, you’re missing 30 seconds of music on the multi-track. Fortunately, for the most part, they were recording two-track recordings as well. And so we would fix with those. Yeah, 99.5%, maybe more, 99.9% of that box set is from the multi-track, which is to say of the 71 hours in there, we’re talking a few minutes, a couple minutes from the two-track, where you won’t notice it unless you’ve got the headphones on and you know what you’re looking for. Again, that’s kudos to Jeffrey and David Glasser, the mastering engineer on that project for making these fixes so perfect.
JPG: From what I’ve heard it sounds astoundingly good.
DL: Make sure you put that statement into this printed piece because I agree and Jeffrey who spent almost a year working on this stuff. You get so close to it, you forget how good it sounds. I agree 100%. I listen to this stuff at least a couple of times a week and I’ve been listening to it now for a year-and-a-half. I’m just blown away by how great everything sounds. And again, Jeffrey’s mix and David Glasser’s mastering, a really absolutely spectacular combination.
JPG: Bringing up my review’s last paragraph, “It should also be pointed out that both discs sound amazing! One expects good things from the folks at Grateful Dead Productions but the clarity of these tapes is really a treasure. Even if you were never there, you can still feel as if you’re reliving the moment.”
DL: And the nice thing is no matter what you’re listening on whether it’s in your car or a mediocre home system or a huge studio version of a home system, it just sounds great. You’ve got perfect balance of the instruments. And you’ve got the nice bottom end keeping things down between the kick drum and the bass but you get defined bass as well. That’s the great thing is that you get the bottom end Phil’s putting down but you do get to hear every individual note that he plays, which is the unique thing about Phil. He’s constantly playing melodic lines that you want to hear as opposed to just keeping the rhythm down. Yeah, I agree 100 percent. I’m glad you said that.
JPG: I mentioned in the review about clearly hearing Pigpen’s organ fills on “Not Fade Away” and stuff like that. Maybe I didn’t notice it so much on other recordings but it was just really a cool thing to hear going on here.
DL: Yep. Agreed. And that’s something that Jeffrey was very conscious of doing, making sure that the nuances of the things that you might not have heard before. He wanted to make sure that that stuff all came through clearly. Not accentuating anything unnaturally, but like you say, when Pigpen is doing an organ flourish at the end of “Not Fade Away” or doing the vocal at the end of “Not Fade Away,” he wants to make sure that that is heard because they, obviously, did it for a reason onstage. So, it certainly should be heard. The word ‘nuance’ of what Jeffrey was doing in the mixes came up many times during the mix and there’s a version of “Loser” on that compilation and it’s the same thing where you really hear the nuances of what Bobby’s doing on guitar and, of course, what Jerry’s doing. But it’s just that you really hear everything. Kudos to Jeffrey once again. He brought these 40-year-old tapes to life. Now we get to hear them forever. So, it’s great.
JPG: Speaking of Pigpen, when putting together the compilation, was it an accidental set of circumstances or was it always an idea of making disc one highlighting Pigpen and disc two focus on lengthy jams?
DL: Not really. We knew that we wanted to make disc one similar to a first set and, generally, a first set on this tour would have three or four Pigpen tunes. So, we got those ones on there. We got “Next Time You See Me,” “Good Lovin‘” and “Chinatown Shuffle.” We knew that we wanted those. And, obviously, we didn’t want to repeat any song titles that were also on “Europe ’72,” the original one. That’s why you don’t see “Mr. Charlie” or “It Hurts Me Too” on there.
Disc two, there really weren’t any Pig tunes that we hadn’t already released from the tour that were the exceptional versions. So, we definitely wanted disc two to be focused on a major jam, either “Dark Star” or “The Other One.” Fortunately, we got both. And then, we wanted to end it with the typical rockin’ ender of the tour, which in this case was “Not Fade Away”>“Going Down the Road”>“Not Fade Away.”
It wasn’t by design like, “This’ll be the Pig disc and…” It was more playing it like a show. The versions of “Lovelight” on the tour, there are only a couple. We’ve released them. So, there were no other versions of “Lovelight” to put on there. And in terms of doing a “Caution,” the only way we could have done a “Caution” is…the “Caution”s came out of “Sugar Magnolia” and there’s already a “Sugar Mag” on the original album. So we didn’t want to do one of the “Dark Star”>“Sugar Mag”>“Caution”s. There was definitely thought in terms of all that stuff. A lot of things that maybe you don’t think about, but then you realize, “Oh, it would have been great to have a “Dark Star” and “Caution” on that disc, too,” but they all came out of “Sugar Mag,” which meant that we would have been repeating “Sugar Mag,” which we didn’t want to do.
So, it wasn’t by design. It just happened that way. What we ended up with we were very satisfied with. We originally thought about doing this as a three-CD set and then when it was decided to do it as a two-CD, it became very exciting because you’re really getting it packed with the important songs from the tour and great versions of them all. It worked out well.
JPG: With all these, for lack of a better word, “rules” in there about not repeating songs from “Europe ’72” or use songs that were included in previous releases, did it make creating “Volume 2” easier or harder to put together?
DL: Neither. It was a unique set of challenges and that was all. There’s so much other good music. It certainly was never a case of scrambling and it was the kind of thing where if we come across a “Cumberland Blues” and think, “Gee, I wish we could have put that on there, but there’s already…” But you know what? The best version of “Cumberland Blues” from the tour is already on the original album, though it didn’t bother us at all. The only thing that really did was for the most part every “Other One” on the tour came out of “Truckin’,” which was already on the original album. So, putting another one on disc two was problematic. And likewise, most of the “Dark Star”s went into “Sugar Magnolia,” which was also on there. So that was a problem.
Luckily, Bickershaw [Festival] had the “Dark Star”>”Other One” but it didn’t have either a “Truckin‘” or a “Sugar Mag” attached to it. And it was something we wanted to get out anyways. So the “Dark Star”>“Other One” [at Bickershaw] in terms of the jams, that was one of the top two or three jams of the entire tour. The fact that it didn’t have a “Truckin‘” or a “Sugar Mag” was like that perfect storm where you say, “Well, great! This is a script writing itself where this is a thing we wanted to get out and we don’t have to deal with the limitations.”
JPG: You used Stanley Mouse for the “Europe ’72 Volume 2” cover. Makes sense since he did the original one. Was it easy or difficult to get him to do this?
DL: Rhino has an excellent relationship with Mouse. So, it seemed like a natural fit to have him do the cover for Volume 2, which he was very happy to do. We were all happy with what he came up with, and he was very open to suggestions. However, working with an artist of Stanley’s talents and history, we very much let him do his thing and were thrilled with the results. Working with Mouse is a trip, as he has a knack for delivering the perfect piece of art for any given project.
Working with Mouse is fun, as he presents a series of ideas in rough sketch form, and we all agree —Rhino and Mouse — on what’s the right one for this project. Then, a little while later, out appears the finished art, perfectly executed. I didn’t think there was much coaxing involved. Rather, everyone thought it was a good idea. I believe Stanley is still very busy. You can check his web site, www.mousestudios.com, to see what he’s up to, and the breadth of his work.
JPG: Also, I saw a photo of Bob and Phil with what looked like a backstage ceremony in relation to Europe ’72. It featured what looked like approximately a dozen or so Mouse designs on it. Are those related to the box set? Any chance of those being available in some other manner such as t-shirts or posters?
DL: That Bob and Phil photo was taken backstage at the Greek in LA on October 5th, 2011 at the Furthur show during the set break where they were receiving their RIAA-certified gold records for the Europe ‘72 boxed set. It had been certified gold a couple of weeks earlier. The small [art] designs are actually the 22 individual cover arts for the 22 shows in the box, and are the same as the 22 individual shows if bought as the music-only edition or on their own. They were done by our good friend Scott McDougall, who did the Road Trips cover art. The 22 new covers were in the style of Mouse’s original, an homage to the original artwork. We’ve been working so closely with Scott the past few years, we all felt he was the right guy to be able to deliver 22 individual album covers in a short time. And he nailed it, perfectly.
Rhino has created some great merchandise using these cover arts including shirts, magnets, posters and other cool things.
JPG: When you were solely responsible for the archives, did you always have an idea of what you were sitting on with these shows? Were there notes from [original Vault archivist] Dick Latvala, Europe ’72 tapes, 4 stars, so you knew that if you wanted to someday put the whole thing out…
DL: There weren’t…Dick definitely had his favorite shows from the tour but it was the kind of thing where if we had decided to put out Europe as a much smaller release — a 10 CD compilation or maybe the three best shows — we certainly would have looked into Dick’s notes as well as the band’s original notes. Remember, they worked very hard on the original album. They had listened to everything incredibly closely. So, there were a lot of notes from the band and some of them we did actually pay attention to for the compilation.
But when you’re putting out the whole tour it becomes…we would joke that for me, obviously, I oversee a lot of aspects of the audio, of the transfers, the packaging and that kind of thing, but when you’re doing a complete tour some of the usual challenges, which is, “Well, which show are we going to pick?” or “Which versions of..?” we didn’t have those challenges because we did the whole tour. It’s the kind of thing where if we’d released these shows and people said, “Oh, they should have done these.” Well, we didn’t have that.
The only thing on the compilation we certainly did pay attention to were the band’s notes about versions that they liked back in 1972, which is to say songs, they considered for the original album but didn’t make the cut. Some of those ended up on Volume 2. Virtually everything that they wanted on that original album ended up on there with the exception of three songs. And those now ended up on Volume 2. So, we’re very happy to get those out.
JPG: I read that when you originally brought up this project Rhino was not too excited.
DL: I think perplexed. “Is this guy for real?” I, generally, bring a fair amount of credibility and rationality to the table and in this case I kind of got the look of, “Man, is he crazy?” It wasn’t even like a passionate argument from anyone except for me wanting to do it. I think it was very dismissive, and you know this goes back to early 2007 when I was started pitching this. Fortunately, I kept pitching it a couple of times a year when we would have our idea sessions. “Well, what do we want to do over the next 18 months?” That’s what we generally do. We kind of map out things, maybe not specific shows as we were talking about earlier with the Dave’s Picks but we do know that we want four Dave’s Picks in 2012. We map this stuff out 12 to 18 months in advance. Whenever we’d have these sessions, which were a couple times a year, I would always bring this up, “You know if you really want that major release. I think it would blow some minds, and it’s great music. This is the one to do.”
What had happened was we did the Fillmore West box set, 10 CDs. And then we did Winterland ’73, Winterland ’77 and the Warlocks. In the course of these, it became very clear that there was an interest in complete runs of shows of nine, 10 CDs, seven, six CDs, whatever. The natural progression from that was to do a complete tour. If there is a complete tour to do it is Europe ’72 to start with. There are definitely others. If you start something you should start with a bang. I’m not a big fan of soft launches. I’m of the mind where I don’t want to sit on things because…”Well, we’ll start with something of lesser interest and then we’ll build up.” I don’t ascribe to that. I figure if we’re going to ever try this, just as when we started it with complete runs… that’s why we started with the Fillmore West because that’s the best complete run we had and we wanted to test the waters with that. And clearly it was popularly received as was Winterland in’73, ’77 and Warlocks.
So, the natural progression from complete shows to complete runs is complete tours and Europe was the one. It wasn’t like I was just randomly throwing this out there. I made a very rational case of why Europe ’72 would be a good project to do this with.
Then in 2010, luckily, a very senior person at Rhino agreed. He said, “You know what? This is a great one.” And then, there were some changes at Rhino around the summer of 2010 right as this project was getting rolling and the new person, Mark Pinkus at Rhino in charge of the Dead world, he was 100%. He was a Deadhead too. He was completely on board with it. It literally took a couple of conversations with him to, I won’t even say convince, he was convinced. But he just wanted the rationale behind it and the overall vision of how I’ve been envisioning this over the last three years. Once he got that, he championed it. He pushed it through at Rhino and he said, “This is absolutely a great project.”
What it came down to is Mark and myself having faith in it. It was nothing more. Nobody was heavy-handed with it or anything. We just had faith that this is what people would want. And it wasn’t like we were proven right and somebody was proven wrong. It wasn’t that at all. It was just, sometimes, when you just have faith in something and you know what you’re doing, you’ll be rewarded. And clearly, I think Rhino feels that way, having faith in this to the point that we’re already beginning to look at another big complete run. Hopefully, we’ll get something else in the next 18 months.
JPG: When the limited edition sold out within, what was it less than a week?
DL: Less than a week, yeah. There was a weird ordering glitch but the bottom line is it sold out in less than a week.
JPG: When that happened did Mark or somebody else from Rhino send you a nice email that just said, “Wow!” or something like that?
DL: I think I sent it to them. I think as much as they might have done that, I was equally enthralled with what they had done in pulling the trigger on this. They stood to lose a heck of a lot of money if this thing wasn’t the success we all hoped it would be. There was a huge level of mutual respect when this happened and most certainly they were very grateful that I had the vision to do it, but I think more importantly, I was grateful that they had the faith to do it.
In this day and age, record companies…you know it’s tough to pull the trigger on something this huge and really back one horse. And that’s what we did, we backed it. It won for us. Again, all kudos to Rhino. Mark Pinkus, great guy and huge Deadhead. He’s not a micromanager. So, he understands. He has a great team around him. Mark is incredible at being able to view the Big Picture. I’m constantly impressed with the way that they view things. So far I have been working with Mark from about August of 2010. I work with him several times a day. We’re on the phone or by email. It’s a huge level of mutual respect. I’m very pleased with it. I loved the previous regime at Rhino as well. I really like those guys, too. A lot of good friends. But, you know I feel having a Deadhead in charge has been beneficial to the relationship.
JPG: Now, you have Mark and a core group of Deadheads that you discuss shows with and get their input. When it came to something like the limited edition version of “Europe ‘72” was it gut instinct or did you bring up to them the idea of, “We could put it out this way. Would you be willing to pay for this? But we could also do this, so would you be willing to pay this much more?”
DL: No, not really. I certainly didn’t. Even to me it was such a huge project that when we did the Fillmore West box, which was our first one where we did the multi-disc run of shows, that I did speak with a lot of people. “Look. Would you pay a hundred bucks for this?” And everyone of them said, “Yes.” I think we ended up selling it for $80. A few people who weren’t huge into the late ’60s said, “Look, I already have Live Dead, why would I want four versions of all this?” which to you or me that answer is obvious. There were people who said, “Yeah, I think it’s a great idea, but it’s just not for me.” And that’s why there are certain things that are for certain people.
The limited edition, we all hoped it would reach 7,200 units total, but I don’t know if we expected it. Certainly, you might remember when we put it on sale, we did announce that if it doesn’t sell 3,000 units, the project won’t happen. And it wasn’t a threat. It was just that without 3,000 units, economically, it’s just not feasible to do. The production costs on this were huuuge. They were just absolutely massive. That’s why we put it on pre-sale so early, so that if the project had to slow down, we could have.
I think 7,200 was exactly the right number. If we had done 10,000 or 12,000, I don’t if we would have sold out. Indications are we wouldn’t have based on music-only sales. We put the whole box on sale as music- only. Rhino nailed that number bang on. I give them full marks for having the faith that it would do well, but not expecting this to be a 25,000 seller. I think they did right. Not everybody’s going to want 22 shows from the same tour. Not everybody has $450. They definitely did research. This wasn’t a number they threw a dart at a dartboard and hit 7,200.
JPG: In that same vein, with the Dave’s Picks series. I’m reading that it’s a limited edition, so you can either do the subscription for all four or, correct me if I’m wrong, you can buy them individually.
DL: Yeah, if the subscriptions don’t sell out at 12,000, that’s the limit of how many CDs will be pressed. But if, 10,000 people subscribe then it means that 2,000 of each copy will go on sale when it’s put on sale.
It’s interesting when we say a number like 10,000. It’s kind of like season tickets for a sports team. Whatever isn’t sold through season tickets goes on sale for the public through the regular channels. So yeah, yes, absolutely people will be able to buy this a la carte, assuming the subscriptions don’t sell out at 12,000.
JPG: Again, is that something marketing-wise that Rhino had the sense that there’s interest, but there’s not that much interest after seeing the numbers that sold for the Road Trips series?
DL: I don’t pay attention to numbers. I really don’t. So, I don’t know how many of the Road Trips were selling, but I don’t think Rhino would have pegged this at 12,000 if they didn’t feel very confident that that was the right number. Which is to say I don’t know if that’s where the Road Trips are selling or not, but again, Rhino is going to do the research. If they felt that these could sell 25,000, they would have done 25,000. They’re not trying to create false demand, I don’t think. I’m certain they’re not. I think that they figured that this was the right number to do based on current sales of Road Trips and that kind of thing. Again, they are a very, very smart team and they know what they’re doing. They certainly did their homework. They wouldn’t just arbitrarily throw a number of 12,000 out there. It’s a number that was decided, I’m absolutely certain, based on a lot of research and past experience.
JPG: Now if you subscribe you’re supposed to get a collectible CD. Can you give any hint?
DL: I honestly can’t because it’s going to be coordinated with whatever Volume 2 is. It’ll be sent with Volume 2. I shouldn’t even say this for sure because I don’t know yet but chances are it’ll be something in the era of the Volume 2, but possibly not. There’s also a chance that we might have a great single disc from whatever year that would be a great bonus disc. The focus right now is to make it be a part of whatever Volume 2 is meaning the same tour, same era, whatever that is but things can change.
We don’t have to decide this soon, which is good. It gives us a lot of flexibility to find that right thing for a bonus disc. But, yeah, all subscribers will get that. It’s gonna be good. Our bonus discs are generally pretty darn great. That’s the way I see it. There’s no point in doing it, if it’s just gonna be filler. You do it because it’s going to be something special.
JPG: I didn’t know if it was going to be something like home demos of an album or rehearsal things or something like that.
DL: It wouldn’t be anything like that. No, something closer to a live show bonus disc; the kind of things we were doing with the first half dozen or dozen Road Trips. It’ll be closer to that. If we found some rehearsal stuff that was absolutely mindblowing performances, yeah, of course, it could be that. But right now, that’s not what we’re focusing on. It could be a compilation. We’ve done some great compilation bonus discs over the years. So, it could be any number of things. We’re actually keeping an eye out for an extra 80 minutes from that same tour of the three or four tours we’re looking at. And if it doesn’t happen, it just means we found something even better.
JPG: Speaking of rehearsals and unreleased years and eras, when the Dead played with Dylan, I traded for the rehearsals years ago, and I recall a lot of people were not too happy with the album that came out from those dates together. I always felt that the album, if it was a double album, and “Joey” was the beginning of side three on vinyl then maybe the whole thing would have moved along better. Is there any okay with Dylan’s people or any thoughts in your head of trying to release something better from that tour?
DL: There aren’t but that would really be up to Dylan to do. I’ve never spoken to his management, and I don’t know if they have any interest in it. I assume that here we are 24 years later and the fact that we haven’t got a call…I don’t think that he’s got that much interest in it. But I could be wrong. It could be just off his radar. I don’t want to speculate because I have no idea.
What might be interesting is one or two of the shows; they were pretty good, both the Dead sets and the Dead with Dylan sets. I think it would be very cool some day to do a complete thing. But that’s getting waaaay ahead of ourselves. Certainly, it’s nothing we’ve ever considered. It’s just something I thought would be cool. As far as the rehearsals go, I don’t think anything would be done with that. But again, things happen. Who knows?
JPG: I didn’t know how much control the Dead even have over those shows or if it was mainly Dylan having control …
DL: I think the Dead would be okay with it if he wanted to release them. It’s entirely up to him. I think the Dead, physically, own the tapes. Dylan, most certainly owns his performances. And there’s some very good stuff on there. I’ve heard a couple of the shows. I’ve heard audience tapes of a few of those six shows, and there’s some good stuff. There’s one version I listened to not too long ago of “I Want You” from the Oakland show. Bob Weir and Bob Dylan, they do this great harmonizing on it and they kind of do a co-lead vocal on it and the magic happens. It happened again at Giants Stadium. I think it’s during “Wicked Messenger” or something. And again, the magic clicks, both Dylan singing and playing and then the Dead’s performance. It’s just. The magic happens.
It’s so far off my radar. I really don’t have much of an answer for it except I was at one of the shows. I had a good time and the music was pretty good. Some definitely inspired stuff went on for sure. But you never know. That’s the one thing. We have no plans for a lot of things. If you asked me five years ago about Europe, I would have said, “No plans.” But things change.
JPG: With your deep involvement with the Vault and the production of these releases, does listening to the Dead ever become work, and you’re like, “Oh, I want to go home and listen to the Ramones or Dylan or something just to get away from this…”
DL: I do that. Sure. I get burned out on it. I never get burned out for long periods. Like, I’ll get burned out in a day where I’ll be listening from seven or eight in the morning until five or six at night and later. Then, I put something else on that’s dramatically different. Today, put on some Clash or David Bowie. It happens all the time. When I get burned out on it, it’s for an hour or two and it’s time to change.
Or maybe I’ll get burned out on an era. Maybe, I’ll get burned out on Summer ’85 and then I’ll go put on some Europe ’72. I listen to a heck of a lot non-Grateful Dead music and I think that’s what keeps it fresh. I’m not listening to the Dead 14 hours a day. Some days I do but for the most part not at all. I’ll pick a couple of shows a day to listen to and I’ll listen to them very, very closely. And if I happen to miss something because the postman is at the door or something, I’ll go back and play it so can I make sure that I paid attention to that version of “Loser” or whatever.
But then I listen to a heck of a lot of Dead still just for pleasure, where it has nothing to do with my work at all. I listen to a ton of Dead that’s completely for my own pleasure. Oh heck, even when I’m working it’s for my pleasure. But there’s times when I’m absolutely, most clearly, not working on a 1972 release thanks to Europe but I still, just the other day, I listened to some November ’72 two days ago. Listened to a whole lot of November ’72 just because I wanted to. That happens all the time or we’ve just picked this great show from May of ’77 to be released and here I’m listening to other shows from the very same tour for no reason except for I feel like it. They’re not going to be released any time soon and that’s a certainty. But you know, I feel like hearing it.
