"In terms of the flow, the first part has a roughness. It's a little fuzzy, a little hot and not really gathered. Then, later on, the whole thing composes itself, until finally the cinematography is really incredible. In the second half, the clarity comes in. And that's a way of expressing that thing: When you go out and play, at first things are confusing — it's noisy, you're still trying to tune up, and the whole first half is like settling into something."
The spectacular hallucinatory animated sequence designed by Gary Gutierrez that opens the film was icing on the cake, and the performances are spellbinding throughout, offering a wonderful collection of Dead favorites, from "Truckin'" and "Eyes Of The World" to "Playing In The Band" and "Morning Dew." The sound, mixed down from multitrack reels, really captures both the musical breadth and sonic depth of the band, as well as the vibe of Winterland.
The Grateful Dead Movie proved commercially to be a popular videotape and laser disc release (remember those?) back in the day, but those formats seem ancient and quaint compared to the magnificent two-DVD set that was released in 2004 (30 years after the concerts), which is what appears in this collection. Besides boasting a completely new print transferred from the original 35mm negative in high-def, and new Dolby Digital stereo and 5.1 surround mixes, Disc 1 also features a running commentary by editors Susan Crutcher and John Nutt. Disc 2 contains an incredible collection of songs from those October '74 shows, specially edited for that release, including "Uncle John's Band," "Dark Star," "The Other One," "China Cat Sunflower," "I Know You Rider," "Scarlet Begonias" and more. It's a dynamite 90-plus-minute concert in itself. Add to that documentary shorts about shooting the movie and the making of the animation sequence, a gallery of photos and lots more little treats, and you've got an amazing package, for which we must tip our hats to longtime Grateful Dead vaultmeister David Lemieux, whose tireless work on the project over several years allowed it to happen.
Winterland is also the setting for the next DVD on our timeline — specifically, the show recorded on December 31,1978, when the Dead's traditional New Year's Eve concert also marked the final show at the venerable arena. With the corner property that held Winterland already sold, and demolition assuredly in its future, promoter Bill Graham turned December '78 into a celebration of the old venue, bringing in one top act after another, including Van Morrison, The Tubes, Ramones, Kenny Loggins, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers and, of course, the Grateful Dead (Winterland vets since '66!), who were joined for the evening by their old country-rock pals the New Riders Of The Purple Sage and serio-comedic R amp;B sensation-of-the-moment the Blues Brothers (featuring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd of Saturday Night Live). The Dead's entire marathon three-set performance was televised live over KQED-TV in the Bay Area (and broadcast on KSAN), and this time it was also committed to videotape, so 25 years later the band could release another magnificent double-DVD set, The Closing Of Winterland.
It was a lonnnnnng night. The Dead didn't even go on until midnight, following another one of Bill Graham's classic New Year's entrances dressed as Father Time — on this night he descended from the balcony to the stage in a giant joint dubbed the S.S. Colombian and showered the delirious crowd below with rose petals and "funny cigarettes." What a guy! Balloons fell from the ceiling, the Dead kicked into their (semi-) traditional NYE midnight anthem "Sugar Magnolia," and the Winterland party officially went into overdrive. Their sets were peppered with new and old favorites, including "Scarlet Begonias" › "Fire On The Mountain," "Friend Of The Devil," "I Need A Miracle," "Terrapin Station," "Playing In The Band," "Not Fade Away," "Dark Star," "St. Stephen" and many more. The playing is loose but intense, the frequent peaks reliably transcendent. The sound — mixed from the 24-track master reels — is superb. Crank it up and you can really feel Phil Lesh's bass rumbling through the big hall. And Garcia seems to have a slightly wicked smile on his face much of the night; clearly he got off on it too! A few musician friends also stopped by to help out: harmonica players Lee Oskar (of War) and Matthew Kelly (of Kingfish); former Quicksilver axeman John Cipollina; and, during the amazing solo percussion segment in the second set, former Santana drummer Greg Errico and author/psychedelician Ken Kesey in his famously cacophonous Thunder Machine.
The Closing Of Winterland DVD is also packed with bonus features galore, including two songs by the Blues Brothers and one from the New Riders (which were shown during one of the set breaks during the original telecast); a documentary about Winterland; a "2 a.m. interview" with Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Ken Kesey; another with Bill Graham; a mini-doc "Making Of" about putting the DVD together; a few different audio options; and more. All that's missing is the breakfast-in-a-bag that was handed out by Graham's troops to the weary but happy revelers as they left Winterland in the wee hours of January 1, 1979.
That DVD is by far the best audiovisual document we have of the much-loved lineup that included both Keith and Donna Godchaux and Mickey Hart. Three months after Winterland's swan song, the Godchauxs departed, and keyboardist Brent Mydland, who had been playing in Bob Weir's occasional solo band, hopped onboard for what would be the longest-running and most commercially successful incarnation of the Grateful Dead, spanning April 1979-July 1990.
In the fall of 1980 the Dead decided to celebrate their 15th anniversary in style by playing two special series of shows in elegant theaters (rather than the usual sports arenas they'd grown into). Inspired by Bob Dylan's two-week run at the intimate Warfield Theatre in San Francisco during his Slow Train Coming tour in 1979, Bill Graham booked the Dead there for 15 shows, to be followed by eight John Scher-produced concerts at that art deco wonder in the heart of Manhattan: Radio City Music Hall. The schedule was designed so the final concert at Radio City fell on Halloween — and would be simulcast as a closed-circuit pay-per-view event at 20 movie theaters stretching from Maine to Minnesota, the most ambitious project of that sort attempted by a rock group up to that point. To make the shows even more memorable, the band added an opening acoustic set each night — their first since 1970 — while retaining their usual two-set electric format as well. All 23 shows were recorded to multitrack for projected live album releases, and the fact that cameras would be on hand for the pay-per-view broadcast allowed the Dead to plan for a video release (VHS and laser disc) as well.
This is the point where Len Dell'Amico, who directed all of the remaining videos in this box, enters the story. Dell'Amico had shot the Dead a few times in the late '70s for the in-house video feed at John Scher's Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ. But he never actually met the band until he was flown out to San Francisco during the Dead's Warfield series in September-October '80 to talk about possibly directing the Halloween-night extravaganza at Radio City. "I was this nerdy New Yorker being thrown into this pot-smoking den of pirates," he recalled with a laugh recently. "But they needed someone who could shoot live music without a script, because they didn't know what they'd be playing, and I had a lot of experience shooting live music." He hit it off immediately with Garcia, who had been put in charge of recruiting a director for the telecast. By the end of the Warfield series, they had already committed to tape several short comedy bits that would be shown at different points in the telecast — hilarious backstage encounters featuring the Saturday Night Live comedy team of Al Franken and Tom Davis (both big Dead Heads) interacting with each of the band members and even some of the notorious Grateful Dead crew.