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| The Randy Tuten poster for the Bill Graham Presents show at Fillmore West on January 2-3-4, 1969, with the Grateful Dead, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Spirit (a Sunday January 5 show was added) |
The Grateful Dead and their fans, in a collective enterprise, have attempted to preserve all the music they ever made. The Dead's archive of live tapes is unprecedented in the 20th century rock industry for its vastness. Dead fans themselves have taped shows, going back to the 60s, with audience tapes often filling in gaps left in the archive of board tapes. Grateful Dead fans have also made an extraordinary effort to determine every show and catalog the setlist for all of them. For the 2,400 or so live shows by the Grateful Dead, surprisingly little is unknown.
There are gaps, of course, here and there, usually back in the 60s. Inevitably, if the band played an unscheduled show in Ohio or a Wednesday night in Baltimore, it's not totally surprising that we don't have any record. Indeed, the remarkable thing is the number of out-of-the-way 60s shows where we at least have some kind of tape or good eyewitness account, so we at least have a feel for what happened. The near-completeness of the historical record adds to the depth and color of the Grateful Dead's long journey.
On the weekend of January 2-4, 1969, the Grateful Dead were booked to headline the Fillmore West from Thursday to Saturday. Although neither of the Dead's two albums had been successful, really, the Dead were genuine rock stars in San Francisco, and had been since 1966. The Dead had co-headlined an epic party at Fillmore West on New Year's Eve, and they were back for more a few days later. We know the weekend was a success, because Graham appears to have added a Sunday afternoon show. In general, Graham only did this when the rest of the weekend's ticket sales had been robust. So it had to have been a pretty good weekend.
1969. San Francisco. The Fillmore West. Four Grateful Dead shows.- I know of no tape of any of the four nights
- I know of no setlists for any night
- I don't even know of an eyewitness accounts of any of the shows.
Why? Four nights, likely good crowds, probably eight sets, on their home court, and we know nothing about what the Grateful Dead performed? This isn't Athens, OH or Baltimore, on some weeknight on the road, it's San Francisco, Fillmore West and a weekend. I don't know the reasons--maybe my post will resurrect some long buried sources or memories--but I think I can figure it out.
The Grateful Dead's immortal Live/Dead album was recorded in San Francisco in January, February and March 1969, at the Avalon and Fillmore West
Why No Tapes?
The absence of any Grateful Dead tapes from the January run at Fillmore West is easier to explain, although I can't be definitive. Paradoxically, I think the absence of any tapes has to do directly with attempts to record Live/Dead. As you will recall, the Dead were attempting to record a live album using a brand-new Ampex 16-track tape recorder. Since the Dead were playing New Year's Eve at Fillmore West, Ampex engineer Ron Wickersham helped the band lug the recorder they were using at Pacific Recorders in San Mateo to the Fillmore West in order to record the show.
Apparently the attempt to record the New Year's Eve show was a disaster. One track remains, a messy version of "Midnight Hour." The rest of the tape was recorded over a few weeks later, since 16-track tape was expensive. I do not know what the technical problems might have been on New Year's Eve, nor would I likely understand if they were spelled out. It does appear, however, that Wickersham and the band lugged the Ampex 16-track back to San Mateo, probably mid-day on January 1. A review of the tape showed dismal results, and apparently modifications were in order.
It does make sense, however, to consider that the Dead had set up their sound board and sound system to record on December 31, and returned without their gear on January 2, since Wickersham was resolving the problems. Now, of course, with hindsight, we say "didn't Owsley have his regular deck--what happened?" Honestly, who knows? But it does make a certain sort of sense that the Dead had a certain plan, to record New Year's Eve and the subsequent shows, and it all went South. The Dead did not return to 16-track recording until January 24 at the Avalon, and in between Owsley taped a show the old way (January 17 in Santa Barbara). Still, the band had a plan for Fillmore West, and it went wrong. So the lack of tapes, while still mysterious, is at least somewhat explicable to me.
We think of the Grateful Dead as big rock stars, and that was true in San Francisco in 1969. Nonetheless, the Grateful Dead were also a hometown band who played quite regularly. So while there was plenty of coverage of the Dead in the local newspapers, there were rarely actual reviews of them. A touring band who might show up once a year was worthy of some column inches, but the Dead were a constant, like the cycles of the moon. So they weren't reviewed, not the way that Cream or even The Doors got reviewed.
Also, the regular beat writers for the local papers were a lot less likely to go out and about on the weekend after New Year's Eve. This was just human nature. Chronicle writer Ralph Gleason, as well as Examiner music writer Phil Elwood, often went to Grateful Dead shows, and commented on the goings on. But since neither of them appear to have gone out that weekend, we have no reports. To my knowledge, no other Bay Area paper, nor the Berkeley Barb or any other underground paper commented on these Dead shows, either. So we have no information at all from the press.
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| A printed ticket for Thursday, January 2, 1969 at Fillmore West. The same run of printed tickets was used for Sunday January 5 (the tickets had a printed reproduction of the poster to prevent counterfeits). |
The weekend of shows was originally announced as Thursday through Saturday, January 2-3-4. From some surviving ticket stubs, it appears that a Sunday night show was added. This was common practice for Bill Graham Presents. It made sense to sell tickets for three shows, and if the demand was there, to add an additional show. This was particularly true for the kind of acts which might cause people to see a show and say, "wow, that was great, I'd love to go again." Of course, the Sunday night scheduling was agreed to in advance by the bands, their agents and managements.
The Grateful Dead had just co-headlined four nights at Fillmore West on November 7-10 with Quicksilver Messenger Service. The Dead and Quicksilver had also hosted New Year's Eve, along with the rising groups Santana and It's A Beautiful Day. Quicksilver's debut album, released in May of 1968, was hugely popular on FM radio. It was also far more accessible than Anthem Of The Sun. So while the Dead were local legends, they were more likely to draw people who had already seen them. The Dead were rock stars, sure, but they couldn't really sell out a weekend at Fillmore West on their own dime.
The two other bands booked with the Dead on this January weekend, as it happened, were perfect examples of bands who were hot. Blood Sweat & Tears and Spirit had both had successful debut albums, and now they were following them up. It appears to have been Blood Sweat & Tears and Spirit who drew the crowds, more than the Dead. Now, to be clear, the Dead were popular, and many of the people drawn to the shows would have looked forward to seeing the Grateful Dead as well. But another reason we know so little about the January shows may be that the Dead were overshadowed by their openers.
I don't mean to suggest that the Dead were "blown off the stage," or anything so dramatic. I just think the what hardcore Deadheads there were in those days were wiped out by New Year's Eve, and other local rock fans were the ones attending on the weekend. Neither Blood, Sweat & Tears nor Spirit have the kinds of fans who document everything they saw 50 years later, which is a shame, because I think that is who were really excited about this show.
Blood, Sweat & Tears debut album Child Is Father To The Man was released by Columbia in April 1968. Al Kooper was the principal writer, arranger and lead singer.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
If we set the Wayback Machine to January 1969, the top group playing this weekend wasn't the Grateful Dead, it was Blood, Sweat & Tears. Blood, Sweat & Tears had been formed by Al Kooper and Steve Katz in Fall, 1967, out of the remains of the Blues Project. Kooper's idea was to have a rock band modeled on the big band sound of Maynard Ferguson. B,S&T's debut album Child Is The Father To The Man, released in April, 1968 was a sophisticated homage to the likes of Ferguson while still retaining a rock beat and a soulful groove. The album sold pretty well, and it got good reviews. B,S&T was an eight-piece band, with the horns actually part of the group, instead of added on later. With players like Randy Brecker (trumpet) and Fred Lipsius (alto sax), the horns were big-band quality too.
Child Is The Father To The Man was a great album, and it still sounds pretty good today. Kooper was the primary songwriter and arranger. Really, the only weakness of the album was Kooper's lead vocals, which were only barely adequate to the power of the arrangements. Steve Katz and other members wanted to add a "real" lead singer. Notwithstanding other disputes in the band, Kooper did not take kindly to the idea of a new lead singer, and he left the group. Thanks to a recommendation from Judy Collins, Blood, Sweat & Tears signed up Canadian singer David Clayton-Thomas. After a few other personnel changes, they had returned to the studio in October 1968.
Columbia Records was very interested in merging rock bands with horn sections. At the time, Columbia not only had B, S&T, but Chicago Transit Authority and The Flock, who also merged horns with the rhythm section. Columbia assigned producer Jim Guercio, who had been in the Buckinghams, whose hit "Kind Of A Drag" seemed to imply the kind of soul-rock mix that the company was looking for. In late 1968, Guercio was working with both Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago Transit Authority, and those two groups were perhaps the biggest ever sellers on the rock-band-plus-horns model.
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| Blood, Sweat & Tears self-titled second album, released in December 1968. There were three huge AM hits on the album, and the lp sold over 4 million copies. |
"You've Made Me So Very Happy"-Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears second album, named just Blood, Sweat & Tears, was released in December, 1968. It was huge. Really huge. It sold 4 million copies, a staggering number for the time. There were three gigantic singles that came off the album. If you were sentient in America in 1969, you heard a Blood, Sweat & Tears single from that album all year long. The three big hits were:
- "You've Made Me So Very Happy"(single released Jan '69, remake of a '67 Brenda Holloway hit)
- "Spinning Wheel" (single released May '69)
- "And When I Die" (single released Sept '69)
Blood, Sweat & Tears was so big that they were the second highest paid band at Woodstock (Jimi Hendrix got $20,000, and BS&T got $15K). For various contractual reasons, they were not in the movie, but Blood, Sweat & Tears was one of the break-out bands of 1969. Even before the singles hit, BS&T would have been getting play on KSAN. To 60s hippies, "jazz" was sophisticated music, but parents still didn't like it, so liking jazz or "jazz-rock" meant you were sophisticated. At least initially, BS&T came into 1969 as a cool band. So I think the Fillmore West shows did really well because of Blood, Sweat & Tears, not the Grateful Dead.
Now, to be clear, unlike in later decades, there was no inherent dismissal at the time of the Dead as "an old hippie band"--hippies weren't even old yet. I think the sort of fan who wanted to see B,S&T thought, "oh yeah, the Grateful Dead are supposed to be good, it'll be fun." But I also think that a fan seeing B,S&T would sit through the first Dead set, and the second B,S&T set, but not stick around for Grateful Dead late night. So any killer "Dark Star" at 2am--there had to be at least one, right?--was probably to a pretty thin crowd.
"I've Got A Line On You"-Spirit
Spirit was a band from Los Angeles. Their situation was somewhat of the reverse of Blood, Sweat & Tears. The band had an underground following, and they got airplay on the few FM rock stations that existed. But the band did not sell many records until after they broke up. Today, many Spirit songs are recognizable from television commercials (like "Mr. Skin" and "Nature's Way"), and the group is widely revered by people who own too many records as one of the most original bands in the 1960s. In January, 1969, however, Spirit wasn't very well known. In December '68, the band had just released their second album on Ode Records, The Family That Plays Together.
Still, Spirit only had one kind-of-hit in the 60s, and it was the single "I Got A Line On You." The single was released in October 1968. It was a great song, and ultimately it got as high as #25 nationally. The Family That Plays Together was a great followup to Spirit's 1968 debut album, and it would have gotten some good airplay on KSAN. Now, to be clear, Spirit would have been a cult item, whereas Blood, Sweat & Tears would have been mass-market. But for the kind of hipster who would only go to a show if there was something super-cool to brag about, Spirit would have been it. The Grateful Dead were still reasonably cool, as these things went, but it was Spirit that would have been the draw for the hipoisie. Once again, this kind of fan would have cheerily caught two sets by Spirit, and enjoyed the Dead's first set, but they weren't hanging out for the late night "Dark Star."
A Call For Archaeologists
- The Grateful Dead, in their prime, make no tapes of the early January weekend shows at Fillmore West, presumably because of tape equipment issues related to recording what would become Live/Dead
- Blood, Sweat & Tears has just released one of the biggest albums of the 1960s, and probably helped pack the house.
- Spirit, not well known but well regarded, seemed to be a band on the rise to stardom, a far more intriguing band to see than the Dead, who had headlined Fillmore West five times in the previous eight weeks
No tapes, no setlists, no reviews, no memories: can someone prove me wrong? Please? Find a review, a lost comment thread on a Blood, Sweat & Tears chat board? January 1969, at home, and we got nothing?
The internet is a remarkable instrument. I'm counting on the audience to find something.
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| Spirit released their fourth album, Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus in late 1970. The band broke up in January 1971, but the album went on to become a huge hit afterwards. |
Aftermath
The Blood, Sweat & Tears album was a monster, 4 million sold and three giant hit singles. The next album, 1970's Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, was also huge. It too had a giant hit single, "Lucretia MacEvil." B,S&T, however, for all their success, was rapidly shoved down the hipness ladder, seen as a bunch of poseurs. By 1970 standards, B,S&T mostly played covers, and the band played charts and didn't improvise. Clayton-Thomas, though an excellent singer, was a trained vocalist, like a Las Vegas singer, rather than gravel-voiced like Rod Stewart. BS&T had to answer the claim that they were "inauthentic," a fatal criticism in those days. Since the band toured on behalf of the US State Department and then appeared regularly in Las Vegas, the group lost all the jazz credibility that had been established with their debut.
By about 1973, although Blood, Sweat & Tears were still very popular, no one was going around bragging about the time they saw them opening for the Dead. BS&T has toured for many decades--they may still--but they don't have the kind of fans who document every show back until the dawn of time. So any memories of the time that the band opened for the Grateful Dead at Fillmore West remain uncaptured. Indeed, some of the SF rock fans who went to check out Blood, Sweat & Tears may have been embarrassed about it after they heard "Spinning Wheel" for the millionth time, so they blocked it out.
Spirit, in contrast, has remained the height of cool since 1968, and deservedly so. Unfortunately, despite the initial success of "I've Got A Line On You,"The Family That Plays Together wasn't a big hit. It's followup, 1969's Clear Spirit, another great album, went nowhere. Spirit broke up in early 1971, shortly after their album Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus was released. Twelve Dreams was a huge hit, a staple of FM radio, and much beloved by rock fans everywhere. Various versions of Spirit performed into the 1990s, and there were some spinoffs (like JoJo Gunne), but nothing could recapture the magic of the original band. Spirit's brilliant lead guitarist Randy California drowned in a tragic accident in 1997, and that ended any chance of the heroic recognition they richly deserved.
The Grateful Dead toured continuously until 1995, when lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died. Members of the band have continued to tour and record, and archival releases of the band's material continue to sell in great numbers into the present day.
Appendix: Lineups, January 1969
Blood, Sweat & Tears
David Clayton-Thomas-lead vocals
Steve Katz-guitar, harmonica, vocals
Fred Lipsius-alto sax
Lew Soloff-trumpet
Chuck Winfield-trumpet
Jerry Hyman-trombone
Dick Halligan-organ, piano
Jim Fielder-bass
Bobby Colomby-drums
Randy California-lead guitar, vocals
Jay Ferguson-vocals, piano
John Locke-organ, electric piano, piano
Mark Andes-bass, vocals
Ed Cassidy-drums