All the Years Combine by Ray Robertson

Author:Ray Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2023-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

9/10/74 – Alexandra Palace, London, England

1: Around and Around; Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo; Peggy-O; Tennessee Jed; Black-Throated Wind; China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider; Loser; Black Peter; Weather Report Suite (i. Prelude; ii. Part One; iii. Let It Grow) > Stella Blue

1.5: Phil and Ned

2: Me and My Uncle; Dire Wolf; Not Fade Away; Ramble On Rose; Big River; Dark Star > Morning Dew; Sugar Magnolia

E: US Blues

You know when you know. You can understand it, somebody can tell you about it, it can be spray-painted in Day-Glo orange on the wall outside your bedroom window, but you don’t know it until you know it. Until you feel it. The Grateful Dead had never toured longer or harder or performed before more people, so why were they broke? Answer: the Wall of Sound. They’d also never played better—more consistently or more adventurously—so why were people in management and among the crew threatening to quit, and why were band members sniping at each other? Answer: drugs, principally cocaine.

Just when everyone was wishing there was something stronger than a cup of coffee to help get them through the day (and most of the night), along came the coke. People didn’t refer to it as “Vitamin C” for nothing. It wasn’t long, however, before some Grateful Dead insiders began to see the drug as no longer part of the solution—an occasional pick-me-up to facilitate longer hours and more work, as it had been used in the past—but as part of the problem. This wasn’t like sharing a joint with friends or exploring inner space via a psychedelic. Cocaine—at least how it was employed, by this point, by many people in the world of the Dead (who only did moderation in moderation)—was a ’70s drug, a go-go-go, me-me-me drug. Talking to biographer Blair Jackson for his Garcia: An American Life (the best book written not just about Garcia, but about the Grateful Dead), Garcia’s second wife, Caroline (a.k.a. Mountain Girl), recounted how “If anything ruined our lives it was cocaine. Jerry and I had fights about it. Coke makes you think you know it all and it makes you shoot your mouth off and it makes you hate everybody the next day. It was the end of the open heart.” It would be disingenuous, however, to say that for a long time, cocaine didn’t help keep the train on the track and rolling down the line.

Which is where they were and what they were doing on August 2, 1974, at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey, when, according to Dennis McNally’s A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, the weather turned nasty, and so did the crowd. Drawing the short stick, Weir was in the process of explaining to the assembled thirty thousand that, for safety reasons, they’d have to postpone the gig because of the rain but would return soon to make it up (which they did four days later), when someone hit him with a bottle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.