So Many Roads by David Browne

Author:David Browne [Browne, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306821714
Publisher: Da Capo Press

The new era, arising: The vast crowd and empty boxcars at Englishtown.

PHOTO: HARRY HAMBURG/NY DAILY NEWS/GETTY IMAGES

CHAPTER 9

ENGLISHTOWN, NEW JERSEY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1977

As their helicopter whirly-birded toward the grounds, Garcia, wearing one of his customary black T-shirts, and Richard Loren, their manager of nearly three years, weren’t sure what to expect. No one was. Along with John Scher, the gregarious, Jersey-based promoter who had started booking their east-of-the-Mississippi shows, both men knew that the corridor between Washington, DC, and Boston had been teeming with Deadheads. In 1970 alone the band played seemingly nonstop in the New York area and built up one of their most rabid followings.

But today’s concert in Englishtown would nonetheless be a test and a gamble. The nearby raceway, its name immediately recognizable to anyone who’d grown up in Jersey and heard its ubiquitous “RRRRaceway . . . Park!” radio ads, could hold up to ninety thousand people. Aside from their participation in festivals, the Dead rarely if ever played to that many paying customers, and no one was 100 percent sure whether that many would pay. The weather was another miserable factor: by the time all the members of the Dead began arriving in Englishtown the Jersey Shore’s notoriously humid summer heat had blanketed Raceway Park.

The tickets had begun selling briskly, a positive sign for the Dead but bad news for local municipalities, who were horrified at the thought of tens of thousands of unruly rock fans descending upon their suburbs. Scher told authorities he’d be lucky to sell fifty thousand tickets, but that didn’t mollify the politicians. “We were still in an era,” he says, “where anything that smelled, hinted, or suggested Woodstock scared people.” The towns sued to shut down the concert; when that failed, mysterious construction jobs on all the major roads leading to Englishtown suddenly materialized a day or two before the concert. Luckily for Scher, a judge ordered the towns to fill in the holes they’d already dug in the highways.

Not every Deadhead heard about the ruling, and starting the night before the show, many simply ditched their cars as close to Raceway Park as they could and began walking. To prevent gate-crashing, Scher devised a complicated but ingenious security plan—renting empty boxcars from local rail yards in Newark and connecting them in a large circle around the park. (The Dead’s crew jokingly referred to the sight as the “Polish Railroad”—“it looked like a train, but didn’t go anywhere,” chuckles a friend who was there.) Fans couldn’t squeeze in between the cars, nor could they climb up its slippery surfaces; if they did, they’d be greeted by security guards patrolling atop the boxcars. One fan managed to slip in, holding massive wire cutters, and was stunned to discover there was no fence to slice open even if he wanted to do it. Working to set up the stage throughout the day, Steve Parish and other members of the crew took in the spectacle. “From the side of the stage we watched the security guards repelling people all day long who were climbing up those things,” Parish says.

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