How the Grateful Dead Changed Live Music Forever

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Listen to more Grateful Dead music from The Wall Of Sound era:

00:00 Intro
00:38 Title Card
00:45 Owsley "Bear" Stanley
02:01 Live Sound
03:34 Bear’s Solutions
04:27 China Doll Live
05:17 The Wall of Sound
06:39 Fidelity
07:17 The Price
07:49 Conclusion

[COPhill]

The irony of the song cutting out because of copyright on a video about sound.

[GeoffreyGentryMusic]

One thing that you should have mentioned is that acid was legal to make in California until 1966; this explains why Owsley was originally able to get away with making it. There's even a story from 1965 where police raided his lab for amphetamines but only found LSD, and he successfully sued them for the return of his equipment.

[jonmars]

Back in the eighties when I was an aspiring teen rock star, a friend of mine loaned me a speaker cabinet that apparently had been part of the Wall of Sound. His mother had lived in the Bay area in the seventies and picked it up somewhere along the line. It was made of maple plywood, corners heavily rounded over for transport, completely enclosed and had held 2 twelve inch speakers that were no longer installed. Looking at photos, it would have been one of the cabinets on the far left vertical stack (when facing the stage). I had it set up in my bedroom for years (with new speakers installed) before the realities of life forced me to focus on making a real living. I gave it back years later. It was a cool little piece of history I treasured playing through and shared my living space with.

[HardlegGaming]

Wow. I had heard about the wall of sound, but I had never seen it before. I didn't realize it was a literal wall of towering speakers. That's amazing. Excellent work as always Mr. Polyphonic.

[jhendrixfanatic]

I saw the Dead with the Wall Of Sound in Philadelphia in 1974. Two things, apart from the music itself, stand out in my memory of it. The music they played at intermission was an incredible test of the system. The thundering bass, when isolated, was amazing!! I heard later that Lesh designed the audio for the intermission, which was kinda like a space jam. Also, when all the lights were out in the theater at the beginning of the show, all the individual red lights from each JBL speaker looked like a field of stars reaching to the rafters, so cool!!

[PepalaPow]

Oh no, there is a mute in the sound of this video... YouTube copyright strikes. I hope its only a mute & it goes no further @polyphonic

[scoobertdoobert]

Owsley Stanley is also the inspiration for the Steely Dan song "Kid Charlamagne"

[astrophonix]

Another innovative sound system you could look at is Pink Floyd's early use of quadraphonic sound system with its Azimuth Co-ordinator, a joystick they could use to pan the sound around the audience.

[cecilia]

The Grateful Dead are SO important. There will never be anyone like them. They broke so many barriers with what they could do with sound, lyrics, and what it meant to be a musician. Their artistry will live on in music history forever. I am so proud to be a deadhead.

[taborturtle]

Great video! I'm the sound guy/road manager from Melvin Seal's JGB from years ago and I think you nailed most of what the wall of sound was. A couple of friends of mine actually own pieces of the wall! They auctioned it all off after they stopped using it. My only critique of your video is that the recordings you used for the wall of sound weren't audience recordings so don't really represent what the band or audience were hearing. Bear actually split the snake and ran every channel to a back room where there was a "recording studio" of sorts where they could get an independent mix of the show. They couldn't use what the band used because the band was constantly making adjustments and they didn't want the adjustments on tape. They created a separate recording mix live for the recordings and that is what you heard on the clip you played.

That being said, my friend Marty(former Bass player for Melvin) was actually at a few of the wall of sound shows. Unfortunately I am a little too young being born in 72'. He told me that it wasn't loud and you could hear a pin drop on stage no matter where you were in the venue. He also said that the Dead was the ONLY band to ever make the Cow Palace in South SF sound good! It is a huge concrete box which is notoriously terrible to mix in. The dead actually made it sound like a warm home stereo!

I have a million factoids about the wall of sound. I don't want to bore anyone here in a message. Let me know if you are interested to hear more. Thanks for making this video! It is definitely an amazing period of an amazing band and they were huge innovators of sound!

[jebstewart]

of note is that in light of the walls' transport problem/cost a new idea had to happen and thus the hanging of smaller arrays of speakers with bass speakers on stage or on the floor in front of the stage which the grateful dead were amongst first, if not the first to use. and, of course, different kinds of hardware to 'work' the sound coming out of those speakers. you got very close to the wall of sound and as time has gone by i feel surpassed it.

having just retired from studio work after 35 years i was always amazed at how the technical side of what the grateful dead were doing would show up in the trade magazines and then in what we were doing. they were unrelenting in making sure their live sound sounded as if it was in the studio and for the most part they made it happen.

the next big moment was the ear monitors/buds. totally changed the game. it was said that jerry held out for the wedges, but everyone else loved it for it made it sound like a studio---or truly the front porch---they were playing in for the first time. and for the audio guy a final end to most of the most common feedback problems.

so when you go to a live show here in america today, and you love the sound, chances are you are hearing a by product of the deads' early and subsequent work in live audio reproduction. and i find that pretty cool!

i've seen hundreds of live shows of all sorts of bands over the years, but i have to admit that the grateful dead shows were consistently sounding good no mater what 'room' they were playing in. others might sound good here, but not there, in light of the mixers or the venues not taking to heart the deads' lessons. those grateful dead shows were live music magic to be sure. thanks for this generalized look at a major moment in live audio history!

[Juancilra]

As a young lad in the late 70’s and 80’s, I never really got the Dead. When they came to town, their fans kind of disgusted me – a zombie horde of white dreadlocked hippie burn-outs following them everywhere. But the ones I knew personally were all good people and lived (mostly) normal lives.
The music was all loose and jangly. Was it psychedelic, or folk music? I hardly listened since it all seemed kind of long, slow and boring. It bounced around all over the place. I was puzzled about why some people were so obsessed. Later in my teens, I got some of Deadhead friends and they had vast collections of concert tapes (technically not bootlegs since the Dead allowed it). These were polite Deadheads and usually offered to change the music when non-fans like me came over while they were blasting one of those tapes. But one fateful day, I walked in and declined their offer to turn off the Dead tape. I was mostly ignoring the music when something strange happened. I was 100% sober, but at some point, I slowly started hearing the music with completely new ears. It was incredible – a glorious sound. It was like all my life, I had been standing outside Grateful Dead music, hearing it at a distance and hearing it in 2-dimensions. All of a sudden, I was standing inside the music and it surrounded me and I heard it in 5 dimensions (I swear I was not high). For the first time, I was hearing all the instruments at the same time and noticing how it all fit together. The music no longer sounded sloppy and wobbly – it was deeply layered and free – they were winging it... improvising. Garcia was playing these amazing guitar lines, the keyboard answering in call-and-response fashion. And the rhythm guitar and bass and drums were not playing a standard back-beat; they were jamming too, feeding off one another and weaving in and around. What I heard was not a typical solo – it was group improvisation; the band was conversing musically. But it wasn’t avant-garde or aimless. They were making a point, or trying too. They were striving to reach musical inspiration, and it was like listening to your favorite band composing
a new song in real-time in public. It was a little like jazz, but closer to a
hoedown or a Dixieland revival, transformed into an arena rock concert. It was a crazy revelation – one of the greatest things I had ever heard. I started
borrowing my friends’ tapes and quickly fell down a rabbit hole and been a die-hard fan ever since. But I still understand why some people who don’t like the Dead. Not everyone wants music which is long-form and escapist. It’s not short and crisp and not for perfectionists. You don’t play it in the background – you have to actively listen. So, it’s not music for socializing (unless all others are also Deadheads). But I know that a certain percentage of people are like I used to be. You are potential Deadheads who just does not “get-it” yet. But it’s all hard to explain since they’re a band beyond description.

[joeynice]

Fantastic. This dead head loves the separation of instruments of this era. Hearing Bobby and Jerry separate yet together is what made the wall so great. Bob is often times muddled in the mix, but as you mentioned, the wall allowed for each to be heard distinctly and brightly.

[SirSamTheThird]

I love music trivia and would probably consider myself fairly knowledgeable when it comes to music history but I always come away from your videos with something new. I love it. Keep up the great work.

[lenini]

Poor Mickey Hart, he never got to experience the "wall of sound" except for the last gig at Winterland just FOR ONE SONG! After that, The Dead stopped using that wall of sound and Mickey never had a chance to experience that ever in his life. I love you Mickey despite that many deadheads hate you since majority of them say "the dead's peak was 71-74" which was the era he wasnt in the band.

[DeadheadYates]

I'd hardly describe LSD as nefarious, as most people who've taken it would agree. Not to take the piss out of the video, which was great by the way

[keef]

Great vid! One thing you left out: because it took so long to set up and break down the WOS, they actually needed two of them: 2 complete systems. While one was in use in one city, the second was already at the next city/venue being set up, and then the first one would get broken down and leap-frog the second one on to the third city. Major cost inefficiency, but just goes to show their dedication to the sound that they would do it for so long despite losing money.

[erichanhauser]

Their music, their sound system & Jerry Garcia. Some of the audience tapes from 74 are absolutely magical. Mind blowing stuff. Can't imagine it live.

[DavidMFChapman]

The only time I saw the Dead live they had this system. Vancouver, 1974.

[robertbrown]

The problem with this video is that the sound samples which are meant to demonstrate/compare the various PA systems are actually SOUNDBOARD recordings. The soundboard captures the audio signals from stage before they ever get to the PA so they cannot possibly be used for this kind of comparison. In fact, these recordings would sound the same regardless of the PA being used at the time. One issue I have always had with soundboard recordings is that they do not represent the actual sound of the venue and do not capture what the audience was hearing as far as sonic qualities.

I agree with the points made in the video, but the examples are not scientific at all. Also consider that recording technology has changed over time as well. The Grateful Dead were generally doing a much better job recording shows and were working with better equipment in the 1970's as compared to the 1960's . Since all we have are recordings to sample, this must be considered as well.