International Sad Hits

The Grateful Dead in front of their “Wall of Sound” PA system, 1974.

There’s an excellent new documentary about the Grateful Dead called (a bit predictably) Long Strange Trip, but were it an academic book a useful subtitle might have been: “Study of a Rock Band as a Function of Scale.” The Dead, like so many bands, started as a group of friends playing music together in a shared house. But unlike most everyone else, as they moved from the sitting room to the stage they refused to alter their techniques of working as a group. To the end they performed without set lists, without formal cues, without any of the usual trappings of a “show” that accompany professionalization in music.

It didn’t stop their audience from growing, however. And that increase in scale meant the band had to continually try and adapt to maintain their informality on stage. In the early 70s, it led them to construct a PA system they dubbed their “Wall of Sound” (pace Phil Spector). Placed behind each musician (instead of in front, as is usual) was a stack of speakers that projected only their individual instrument (instead of a mix, as is usual).

The idea was that each player’s sound would emanate from their particular position, just as it would around the sitting room of a Victorian in The Haight. But a lot louder. So loud that each could be heard a mile away in an open field.

It worked, after a fashion. It also weighed four tons, and took all day to assemble and all night to dismantle. And it required a unique, out-of-phase double vocal mic set-up to cancel sounds from the speakers behind each singer - not the most flattering way to amplify voices.

After a year, the “Wall of Sound” was scrapped. And the Dead went on hiatus. I wonder if, among other issues, they felt they had hit a limit of scale.

But when they returned a few years later - using more conventional PAs - the audiences got bigger again. So big that in the late 80s, as the band started playing stadiums, devoted Deadheads stopped buying tickets altogether and started gathering outside the arenas instead. There they could continue the community practices that had developed at a smaller scale.

“Has success spoiled the Dead?” Jerry Garcia was asked in a formal press conference during this period. “Yeah!” he answers - and laughs, along with everyone in the room, like they’re hanging out.