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Live/Dead | ||||
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Live album by | ||||
Released | November 10, 1969 | |||
Recorded | January 26 – March 2, 1969 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 75:07 | |||
Label | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts | |||
Producer |
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Grateful Dead chronology | ||||
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Live/Dead is the first official live album (and fourth overall) released by the rock band Grateful Dead. Recorded over a series of concerts in early 1969 and released later the same year, it was the first live rock album to use 16-track recording.
In 2005 the tracks "Dark Star", "St. Stephen", "Death Don't Have No Mercy", "Feedback" and "We Bid You Goodnight" were released, in their original sequence and with a new mix, on the respective February 27, 1969 and March 2, 1969 discs of the Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings box set (the first 1:34 of "Dark Star" can be found on the previous track, "Mountains of the Moon"). "Feedback" and "We Bid You Goodnight" were also released on the triple disc, highlights release Fillmore West 1969 .
To assuage debt accrued with their record label from their recent album Aoxomoxoa , as well as fulfill their record contract, the band decided to record a live album. They were also interested in releasing an album more representative of their live performances and actual musicianship, as opposed to the in-studio experimentation of previous albums. The band's soundman, Owsley "Bear" Stanley, asked electronics designer Ron Wickersham to invent a microphone splitter that fed both into the PA and the record inputs, with no loss in quality. [1] The songs were recorded with an Ampex 16-track machine. [2]
Kreutzmann later explained, "We got our hands on the latest in recording technology — a sixteen-track recorder (which, of course, is antiquated these days) — and we hauled it up the steps of the Avalon, and later the Fillmore West, and we became the first band ever to make a live sixteen-track recording. We weren’t trying to make history; we were just trying to record a live album. ... Studio versions could never do those songs justice, but advances in live recording (some of which were at our own hands) meant that we could bring the live Dead experience to vinyl". [3]
"We're not performers, strictly speaking, and we can't manufacture intensity in a recording studio… we're musicians more than anything else"
Jerry Garcia [4]
Unlike in later years, in early 1969 the contents of the Dead's set lists varied little. They improvised the medley of "Dark Star"/"St. Stephen"/"The Eleven" several times a week, which enabled them to explore widely within the songs' simple frameworks. The "Dark Star / St. Stephen" pairing was taken from the February 27, 1969 show at the Fillmore West; "The Eleven" and "Turn On Your Love Light" were from the January 26, 1969 show at the Avalon Ballroom; "Death Don't Have No Mercy," "Feedback," and "And We Bid You Goodnight" were recorded March 2, 1969, at the Fillmore West.
Two songs had seen previous release. "St. Stephen" had appeared in a studio version on Aoxomoxoa and "Dark Star" as a single. "The Eleven" was named for its unusual, complex time signature (11
8 time).
The title has a double meaning. It refers both to the band (the "Dead") playing live, and is an oxymoron, contrasting the two words in apparent contradiction. The artwork, created by Robert Donovan Thomas (aka Bob Thomas), also illustrated this juxtaposition. The word "Live" is seen on the front cover, and the word "Dead" fills the back cover of the gatefold.
The original Warner Bros. LP [#2WS 1830] included an 8.5" × 11" bi-fold insert with Celtic symbols and lyrics for "Saint Stephen", "The Eleven", and "Dark Star". The tracks are presented as one continuous concert. As such, vinyl copies are pressed with automatic sequencing, for stacking on a record changer (Record One containing sides 1 & 4 and Record Two containing sides 2 & 3). CD versions present the track segues without interruption.
The album was a financial success for the band in the eyes of their label, Warner Bros. Keyboardist Tom Constanten commented that "Warner Bros. had pointed out that they had sunk $100,000-plus (about $820,000-plus adjusted for 2023) into Aoxomoxoa ... so someone had the idea that if we sent them a double live album, three discs for the price of one wouldn't be such a bad deal." [2] It was the final album with Constanten, who left the band in January 1970.
A six-and-a-half-minute edit of "Turn On Your Lovelight" was issued first on the Warner/Reprise Loss Leaders album The Big Ball in 1970, and later on Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of Grateful Dead . A two-and-a-half minute edit of "Dark Star" was released on the soundtrack album for Zabriskie Point , an Antonioni film for which Garcia created additional music. The album's version of "St. Stephen" appears on the 1977 Grateful Dead compilation What a Long Strange Trip It's Been , but fades out during the final verse.
Live/Dead was expanded with hidden bonus tracks as part of the 2001 box set The Golden Road (1965–1973) , and has a longer intro on "Dark Star". This version was released separately in 2003.
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [5] |
The Village Voice | A+ [6] |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [7] |
The album was met with very positive reviews, with Village Voice critic Robert Christgau writing that it "contains the finest rock improvisation ever recorded" [6] and Rolling Stone magazine's Lenny Kaye saying it foreshadows "where rock is likely to be in about five years". [8] In his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine's 1970 critics poll, Christgau ranked Live/Dead as the third best popular music album. [9] [nb 1]
In retrospect, AllMusic notes that "few recordings have ever represented the essence of an artist in performance as faithfully as Live/Dead", [5] while Grateful Dead scholar Blair Jackson regards it as the best psychedelic rock album of the 1960s. [10] Engineer and author Michael Hageloh claims that with the album, the Dead "spontaneously create[d] the form now known as 'jam rock '" and became "legends with a generation-spanning cult following". [11] Drummer Bill Kreutzmann comments "It was our first live release and it remains one of our best-loved albums. Its appeal was that it took great 'you-had-to-be-there' live versions of songs like 'Dark Star' and 'The Eleven' and put them right in people’s living rooms." [3]
In 2003, the album was ranked number 244 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, [12] and 247 in a 2012 revised list. [13] It was voted number 242 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). [14]
No. | Title | Recording date | Length |
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1. | "Dark Star" (Garcia, Hart, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir, Hunter) | 27 February 1969, Fillmore West | 23:18 [lower-alpha 1] |
No. | Title | Recording date | Length |
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1. | "St. Stephen" (Garcia, Lesh, Hunter) | 27 February 1969, Fillmore West | 6:31 [lower-alpha 1] |
2. | "The Eleven" (Lesh, Hunter) | 26 January 1969, Avalon Ballroom | 9:18 |
No. | Title | Recording date | Length |
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1. | "Turn On Your Love Light" (Deadric Malone, Joseph Scott) | 26 January 1969, Avalon Ballroom | 15:05 |
No. | Title | Recording date | Length |
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1. | "Death Don't Have No Mercy" (Reverend Gary Davis) | 2 March 1969, Fillmore West | 10:28 [lower-alpha 2] |
2. | "Feedback" (Constanten, Garcia, Hart, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir) | 2 March 1969, Fillmore West | 7:49 [lower-alpha 3] |
3. | "And We Bid You Goodnight" (Traditional, arr. by Grateful Dead) | 2 March 1969, Fillmore West | 0:35 [lower-alpha 4] |
No. | Title | Length |
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8. | "Dark Star (single version)" (Garcia, Hunter) | 2:45 |
9. | "Live/Dead radio promo" | 1:01 |
Notes
Year | Chart | Position |
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1970 | Billboard 200 | 62 [15] |
Certification | Date |
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Gold | August 24, 2001 [16] |
Ronald Charles McKernan, known as Pigpen, was an American musician. He was a founding member of the San Francisco band the Grateful Dead and played in the group from 1965 to 1972.
Workingman's Dead is the fourth studio album by American rock band Grateful Dead. It was recorded in February 1970 and originally released on June 14, 1970. The album and its studio follow-up, American Beauty, were recorded back-to-back using a similar style, eschewing the psychedelic experimentation of previous albums in favor of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter's Americana-styled songcraft.
Tom Constanten is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Anthem of the Sun is the second album by rock band the Grateful Dead, released in 1968 on Warner Bros/Seven Arts. It is the first album to feature second drummer Mickey Hart. The band was also joined by Tom Constanten, who contributed avant-garde instrumental and studio techniques influenced by composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The album was assembled through a collage-like editing approach helmed by members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, in which disparate studio and live performance tapes were spliced together to create new hybrid recordings. The band also supplemented their performances with instruments such as prepared piano, kazoo, harpsichord, timpani, trumpet, and güiro. The result is an experimental studio amalgam that is neither a pure studio album nor a live album.
Aoxomoxoa is the third studio album by the Grateful Dead. It was one of the first rock albums to be recorded using 16-track technology. The title is a meaningless palindrome, usually pronounced.
Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings is a 10-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains four complete concerts recorded on February 27, February 28, March 1, and March 2, 1969, at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. The album was remixed from the original 16-track concert soundboard tapes. It was released as a box set in November 2005, in a limited edition of 10,000 copies.
What a Long Strange Trip It's Been is the second compilation album by American rock band Grateful Dead. It was released August 18, 1977 by Warner Bros. Records, three and a half years after the Skeletons from the Closet compilation. Both albums are subtitled "The Best of the Grateful Dead". Unlike the previous compilation, What a Long Strange Trip It's Been is a double album.
So Many Roads (1965–1995) is a five-disc box set by the Grateful Dead. Primarily consisting of concert recordings from different periods of the band's history, it also contains several songs recorded in the studio. All but one of the forty-two tracks were previously unreleased. The album was released on November 7, 1999. It was certified a gold record by the RIAA on April 12, 2000.
The Golden Road (1965–1973) is a twelve-CD box set of the Grateful Dead's studio and live albums released during their time with Warner Bros. Records, from 1965 to 1973. After 1973, the band went on to create its own label, Grateful Dead Records. Also included in the box set is a two-disc bonus album, Birth of the Dead, containing very early recordings of the band.
Live at the Fillmore East 2-11-69 is a double live album by the Grateful Dead recorded during the Live/Dead tour on February 11, 1969, at the Fillmore East in New York City. The first disc represents the early show that night, the second the late show. The Dead opened for Janis Joplin. This album contains the first Grateful Dead CD release of the Beatles' "Hey Jude".
Dick's Picks Volume 4 is the fourth live album in the Dick's Picks series of releases by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded on February 13 and February 14, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City, and released in February 1996. It was the first of the Dick's Picks CDs to have three discs. It was also the first Dead album to include the song "Mason's Children".
Dick's Picks Volume 16 is the 16th live album in the Dick's Picks series of releases by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded on November 8, 1969 at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, California. It contains the first live performance of "Cumberland Blues". There is a monologue by someone not in the band during the song "Caution" shortly before the segue to "The Main Ten," who has never been definitively identified.
Fillmore West 1969 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains selected songs recorded at the Fillmore West in San Francisco on February 27 through March 2, 1969. The album was remixed and remastered from the original 16-track concert soundboard tapes. The album is packaged as a hardcover booklet, with photos of the band and an essay by Dennis McNally.
The Warner Bros. Studio Albums is a box set of five vinyl LPs by the rock group the Grateful Dead. It is a reissue of their first five studio albums: The Grateful Dead (1967), Anthem of the Sun (1968), Aoxomoxoa (1969), Workingman's Dead (1970), and American Beauty (1970). These albums were originally released by Warner Bros. Records. The box set was released by Rhino Records on September 21, 2010.
Road Trips Volume 4 Number 1 is a live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. The 13th of the Road Trips series of archival releases, it contains two complete performances by the band, recorded on May 23 and 24, 1969. It was released as a three-disc CD on November 16, 2010.
Dave's Picks Volume 6 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains two complete concerts: one from December 20, 1969, at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco and the second from February 2, 1970, at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis. It was produced as a limited edition of 13,000 numbered copies, and was released on May 1, 2013.
Dave's Picks Volume 10 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert recorded on December 12, 1969, at the Thelma music venue in Los Angeles, California. It was produced as a limited edition of 14,000 numbered copies, and was released on May 1, 2014.
Dave's Picks Volume 19 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert recorded on January 23, 1970, at the Honolulu Civic Auditorium in Honolulu, Hawaii. It also includes bonus tracks recorded the following night at the same venue, keyboardist Tom Constanten's last show with the band. It was produced as a limited edition of 16,500 copies, and was released on August 1, 2016.
Fillmore West 1969: February 27th is a live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. As the name suggests, it was recorded on February 27, 1969, at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. It was produced as a four-disc vinyl LP, in a limited edition of 9,000 copies. It was released on April 21, 2018, in conjunction with Record Store Day.
Dave's Picks Volume 30 is a 3-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete early and late shows recorded on January 2, 1970 at the Fillmore East in New York City, along with five songs from the band's performances at the same venue the following night. It was released on May 3, 2019 in a limited edition of 20,000 copies.