The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound

On a night in 1974, sound engineer Stan 'Bear' Owsley stood alone in an empty theatre - the former Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Rumoured to have especially sweet sonic qualities, the venue was a converted ice rink and by this point was showing wear from decades past. Despite this, some of the biggest names of the 70s had graced its stage: Pink Floyd, Queen, The Stones - you name it. This night, however, was the Grateful Dead's turn, and they had brought some heavy artillery with them – the Wall of Sound.

Owsley stood before a three-story behemoth. A solid wall of over 600 speakers. A feat of engineering only he could dream of, let alone accomplish. He was perched on the stage, mixing and testing the sound; a gentleman on the shorter side, he was especially dwarfed by his brainchild. Tears streamed down his face and he whispered to the mass of wood, metal, and wiring, with the tenderness of any parent witnessing their child's first recital.

The Dead's intermittent drummer Mickey Hart told Rolling Stone about walking in at this very moment.

"We heard somebody sobbing and we went over to the side of the stage and Bear was talking to the amplifiers. He was addressing these electronics as if they were a person. At first, Bill and I were laughing, but then we said, 'Wow, he’s really serious.''

And serious Owsley was. The mad-genius knew that sometimes you have to push the envelope and sometimes you just do it because you can. Was his ludicrous wall built just for the sake of it then? Definitely not, the Wall of Sound was state of the art and changed the way technicians thought about live engineering. It was free of all distortion and served as its own monitoring system and solved many, if not all of the technical problems that sound engineers faced at that time.

Did it need to be quite that big? Probably not, but it did look damn impressive.

Hosted by Bill Robinson

#EQ #gratefuldead #wallofsound #rock

[AudiophileTubes]

Nobody mentions that 'The Wall Of Sound' consisted of JBL speakers and cabinets, and McIntosh amplifiers driving them! Give some credit to these great, classic American audio companies that are still thriving today!

[garynewman]

Heard the Great Wall quite a few times. Still have my LAST SHOW ticket from Oct. ‘74. It was clean as a whistle.

[zeddythehead]

This soundsystem can still hold up with most today! These men were pioneers (and I'm not talking about the brand)

[The_sinner_Jim_Whitney]

I believe the wall of sound used microphones and essentially noise-cancelling technology 40 years before we peons got it.

[CO]

Out of all the great band's mentioned The Grateful Dead is by far my favorite. The best rock band ever IMO. NFA 65-95!!!

[jaymontgomery]

I heard it sitting 6 rows back and at the back of a couple of arenas, sound was the same no matter where you sat!

[nexgenhippy]

good video, liked the footage of building the wall, never saw those clips before. One thing though, Bear's full name was Augustus Owsley "Bear" Stanley III

[lesterkahanap]

This channel is so underrated like dang

[tunnelportterror]

it was free of distortion, because it was primarily tube amplified, which is a soft distortion a listener and audience can live with, that actually jazzed up and enhances the sound. in a home stereo setting it makes the sound actually more pleasing to the ear, if the amp is single ended circuitry. furthermore, the Deads music was not like Zeppelin, Sabbath, or Deep Purple. it was an electric jug band. the Deads hardest rock LP was way more laid back than even Led Zeppelin III LP. so it's pretty hard to get irritating distortion tendencies from a Dead song to begin with. it's like making it a point not to distort a Willie Nelson song, or Frank Sinatra..if you get my drift. listen to the live LP Steal Your Face. it's like a heroin high. but that's exactly what makes it good. its like anti-Zeppelin. I saw the Dead with Garcia in the 1980s. I never could understand why they'd even want to crank jug music to 105db in the first place. If you want to hear a great vintage concert PA, watch Zeppelin Sobg Remains Same movie. that was 100, 000 watts quadraphonic with speaker towers in all 4 corners of Madison Square Garden.

[williamwallace]

FYI, his name was Owsley Stanley. Not the other way around. RIP Owsley. The Acid King.
Kid Charlemagne.

[palealien]

We all know the story well, except for this particular producer it would seem. TBH I didn’t get very far after the “Stan” part, but the first trial was Stanford in 73, then the Cow Palace and into the lineup for a time too brief, but that at least some of us got to witness.

[Jakeman]

The wall of sound would sound like muddled garbage compared to modern pa or even pa from 30 years ago. Putting the pa behind the band was a mistake