Our NYC Rock & Roll tour visits the site of the Grateful Dead’s first concert in New York, Tompkins Square Park. So, we asked our friends at The New-York Historical Society, which has been showing an amazing Grateful Dead retrospective (thru Sept 5th), to write a bit about the Dead in NYC. Wow!

Guest blogger - Nina Nazionale, co-curator of The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society on view now through September 5, 2010.

People tend to associate the Grateful Dead with the San Francisco Bay Area, which makes sense because that’s where they first started playing, where individual band members lived, and where they spent a lot of their time. When people think of the Grateful Dead in New York City, besides hearing the lyrics to “Truckin” in their head (“New York got the ways and means, but just won’t let you be”), it’s often a memory of attending, or hearing about, a series of sold-out shows, either at Madison Square Garden/Felt Forum or the Meadowlands complex (Brendan Byrne Arena + Giants Stadium) in East Rutherford, NJ.

Dennis Larkins and Peter Barsotti, Radio City Music Hall poster Oct. 22-31, 1980. Special Collections, University of California, Santa Cruz. Grateful Dead Archive.

What most people don’t realize is the Grateful Dead first performed in New York City in 1967 and played at a lot of different small-to-medium sized venues well into the 1970s. Here’s a little background. Be sure to scroll down for a list of sources I consulted to write this post. And to those who were lucky enough to attend one of these early New York City concerts: Don’t be shy! Share the details! Post away!

The Grateful Dead first came to New York to play a 10-night run, beginning June 1, 1967, at the Café Au Go Go, located at 152 Bleecker Street in the Village. They played downstairs while Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were playing upstairs. Others performing at the Café Au Go Go around the same time were Eric Anderson, Dave Van Ronk, and Richie Havens.

While playing the Café Au Go Go the Dead stayed at the Van Rensselear Hotel, at 15 East 11th Street. In his memoir, Searching for the Sound, Phil Lesh describes trying to sleep, in a room without air-conditioning, in New York City, in the summer: “Trying to sleep your first night in New York ain’t easy anytime, but having the windows open to the music of the city made it impossible. Layer upon layer of sound—cars, horns, shouts, rumbles, sirens, cries, laughter, gunshots, screams, sirens, bells, impacts, screeches, sirens—the whole urban symphony of Industrial Man, coming from near and far, high and low, finally weaving a shimmering web of discontinuous rhythm, and in the longest slow fade ever, subsiding over hours to a dull roar, felt rather than heard, only to rouse itself anew as the sky brightened with the light of another day. If I slept at all that night, I must have dreamed it.” And, according to Dennis McNally, Bob Weir “almost came to tears over the traces of broken dreams that he could imagine ‘humming and buzzing in the elevator cage’” at the Van Rensselear.

In keeping with how and where they had been playing in the Bay Area—a mix of free, impromptu, outdoor concerts and unrehearsed performances at intimate, indoor venues—the Grateful Dead played a free concert in Tompkins Square Park on Thursday, June 1, before taking the stage at Café Au Go Go. New York City park officials hoped that the concert would help lessen the growing friction between Puerto Rican residents, who had been living in the area since the 1950s, and more recent arrivals, the hippies. The concert was preceded by a parade down St. Marks Place, after which Ron “Pigpen” McKernan was given a white carnation key to the East Village. Richie Havens opened for the Dead.

Two days later, on June 3, the Grateful Dead traveled to the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York, about 50 miles east of Manhattan, where they played in the gymnasium, and then returned to the Café Au Go Go for another performance.

On Thursday, June 8, 1967, the Dead played another free, outdoor concert, at the bandshell in Central Park. The New York Times headline read “The Music Is Hip in Central Park, 450 at the Band Shell Hear Electric-Guitar Combos.” The review began: “Hippies armed with electric guitars occupied the band shell at the Mall in Central Park yesterday and opened up with their musical artillery. An audience of about 450 withstood the two-and-a half-hour barrage. About half the audience was composed of hippies, from 15 to 32 years old. The rest appeared to be passers-by.”

Before heading back to San Francisco, the Dead played one night at the The Cheetah, a popular discotheque, located in midtown Manhattan.

The Grateful Dead returned to New York later in the summer, where they played a private party, intended to raise money for the Diggers, an anarchist guerilla street theater group. Billed as a “Trip Without a Ticket,” the party took place on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel. It was, as Rock Scully so aptly describes it, a gathering of the hipoisie: a combination of heirs, heiresses, and stock brokers, who spent their time at the Hudson Valley Millbrook estate, dropping acid with Timothy Leary, plus Andy Warhol’s entourage from The Factory. It definitely wasn’t the Dead’s usual audience; the band did it as a favor to the Diggers.

An event that harkened back to the Grateful Dead’s playing Tompkins Square Park on June 1, 1967, and also involved the Diggers (although, sorry, not the Grateful Dead), was a “conga-rock party” at The Cheetah on August 15, 1967. The Diggers, described by the New York Times as “the worker-priests of the hippy movement,” provided 1,000 free admission tickets, distributed through the Diggers’ Free Store in the East Village and through the Real Great Society, a group devoted to helping the Puerto Rican community. The goal was to “relieve the tensions that have been growing this summer between the Puerto Rican community around Tompkins Square and the hippies, who have been moving into the area in increasing numbers recently.” The music was provided by The Players, The Strawberries and the Mongo Santamaria Jr. Band.

In late December 1967 the Grateful Dead came back to New York to play the Palm Gardens, a midtown club. They then moved downtown, where they played at the Village Theater, which had previously functioned as a movie theater and a venue for Yiddish theater. Located at 105 Second Avenue, at the corner of 6th Street, the theater needed serious structural repair, a fact that was clear when snow fell on the band—from a hole in the roof—as they performed. It was so cold that the drummers had to wear gloves and concert goers built a bonfire on the floor in front of the stage. By the following March, the Village Theater would be transformed into the Fillmore East, repaired and restored by the concert producer and promoter Bill Graham, who also ran the Fillmore West in San Francisco. The band’s appearance at the Village Theater ended a year in which the Grateful Dead performed in New York City 19 times, all between June and December.

Turn the page and it’s 1968. In the spring of 1968, the Grateful Dead were booked at the Electric Circus, located at 23 St. Mark’s Place, for May 7-9, and—just like the preceding summer—they played two free concerts, at Columbia University and in Central Park, while in town. At the end of April 1968 students at Columbia University had occupied administrative buildings in protest of, among other things, the university’s role in developing weaponry for use in the Vietnam War. On April 30, police moved in and cleared the buildings, arresting 712 students. Students then called a strike, resulting in a shut down of the campus for the rest of the semester, with all entrances guarded by the police. Unable to pass up the chance for a little mischief, the Dead’s manager got in touch with the strike organizers by calling the Village Voice, and arranged to have the band slipped onto campus in a bread delivery truck on Friday, May 3. The strike organizers were excited by the prospect of having a P.A. system at their disposal, even though they were expressly told that it was for the use of the musicians only. When one of the strike organizers grabbed the microphone one too many times, Bob Weir kicked him off the stage. Look for a great photograph of the Grateful Dead playing at Columbia, taken by Rosie McGee, in our exhibit.

The day after playing at Columbia, the Grateful Dead traveled out to the State University at Stony Brook, where they played in the gymnasium, just as they had the year before, then returned to New York City to play Central Park, where they shared the stage with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Jefferson Airplane. The Village Voice reported “No tricks, just music, hard, lyric joyous—pure and together, dense and warm as a dark summer country night. There’s the Dead and then there’s everybody else…” A New York Times reporter wrote “The Dead are extremely driving, amplified and hirsute, even by San Francisco standards, and in their finale, one of the drummers appears to run amok and savagely attacks his cymbals, while another member of the band sets off a small explosion.” Following their free performance in Central Park, they played six shows, spread over 3 days, at the Electric Circus, the booking that had brought them to New York City in the first place.

On Friday, June 14, 1968 the Grateful Dead played the Fillmore East for the first time. It soon became a kind of home-away-from-home for them: they played there a total of 43 times between June 1968 and April 1971, years during which they experimented and—some would say— perfected their sound. With 2,600 seats, ornate murals and a gilt chandelier, it was an inviting, comfortable place to play and hear music. The Dead played 4 shows at the Fillmore East in 1968; 8 shows in 1969; and, reaching a true creative peak, 21 shows in 1970. They performed there for the last time (10 shows) in April 1971, just two months before the Fillmore East closed. Look for recordings of the Dead’s Fillmore East performances from February 13 and 14, 1970, released as Dick’s Picks Volume Four. Definitely required listening for anyone interested in the Dead’s early years in New York City. To get a sense of what the Fillmore East looked like—inside and out—check out Amalie Rothschild’s amazing photographs in our exhibit.

Fillmore East January 1970. Photography by Amalie R. Rothschild; courtesy UC Santa Cruz

In addition to spending a lot of time at the Fillmore East during the next few years, the Grateful Dead played throughout the New York City metropolitan area: the New York State Pavilion in Queens, built for the 1964 World’s Fair, in July 1969 (they were the first rock band to play there); back at the Café Au Go Go in September 1969; Colden Auditorium at Queens College in October 1970; both the Action House in Island Park, Long Island, and the 46th Street Rock Palace (built as a movie theater) in Brooklyn, in November 1970; a benefit for the Hell’s Angels (in my mind the Diggers were a worthier cause, but so it goes) at the Anderson Theater, on Second Avenue near 4th Street—just a few blocks below the Fillmore East—in November 1970; the Manhattan Center in April 1971; Gaelic Park in the Bronx in August 1971; the Academy of Music (later the Palladium, where the Dead played 5 nights in 1977) on East 14th Street in March of 1972. In 1970 and 1971 the Dead played the Capital Theater in Port Chester, a suburb north of the city, 19 times. Later, between 1976 and 1980, they played a different Capitol Theater, in Passaic, New Jersey—10 times. They also appeared frequently at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in the Long Island suburb of Uniondale—a total of 42 times between 1973 and 1994. Recordings of their May 1980 appearances at Nassau Coliseum were released on CD in 2002. A poster advertising the release of the compact disc hangs on what we think of as “The Wall of Posters,” in our exhibit.

On the same wall look for Dennis Larkins’s striking poster for the Grateful Dead’s 8-night appearance at Radio City Music Hall in October 1980. Larkins’s Radio City poster is based on the one he did for the Dead’s appearance at the Warfield Theater, San Francisco, in 1980. Larkins also designed the poster and T-shirt for our exhibit, The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society. Also of interest regarding the 1980 Radio City shows are a group of surveys filled out by audiences at video simulcasts of the Dead’s shows at Radio City in 1980. Whether people liked the video simulcast or not, when asked if they wanted to be added to the Grateful Dead’s mailing list, most everyone opted in. The concert is viewable on the DVD Dead Ahead.

And you know all about the Grateful Dead playing Madison Square Garden 9 nights in both 1988 and 1991, right? Check out the T-shirt, in our exhibit, designed by Antonio Reonegro, an artist based in Staten Island, for the September 1991 shows. His sketch for the T-shirt is also on display.

I’ll leave you with the fact that the Grateful Dead played the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden 5 times at the end of 1971 and, between 1979 and 1994, played Madison Square Garden 52 times. They appeared at the Meadowlands (Brendan Byrne Arena + Giants Stadium) 30 times between 1978 and 1995. The Grateful Dead’s June 19, 1995 appearance at Giants Stadium was the last time they played New York City. Jerry Garcia died less than two months later, on August 9, 1995.

The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society is on display through Sunday, September 5, 2010.

Recommended Sources

Books:
Fong-Torres, Ben. Grateful Dead Scrapbook. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009.
Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip. New York: DK Publishing, Inc., 2003.
Jackson, Blair. Garcia: An American Life. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.
Lesh, Phil. Searching for the Sound. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.
McNally, Dennis. A Long Strange Trip: the Inside History of the Grateful Dead. New
York: Broadway Books, 2002.
Parish, Steve. Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road with the Grateful Dead. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
Scully, Rock. Living With the Dead. New York: Little Brown & Co, 1995.

Websites:
www.dead.net
www.deaddisc.com
www.deadlists.com

CDs:
Dick’s Picks Volume Four: Fillmore East 2/13-14/70, released 1996. Liner notes by Owsley “Bear” Stanley.
Grateful Dead Go to Nassau (May 1980 concerts), released 2002 (re-release 2004).

This is a pretty amazing story and kudos to the Ramones and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for making things right:

At the Ramones’ induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, the award presentation and acceptance for Ramones lead singer Joey Ramone was mistakenly omitted from the program’s schedule. As a result, the statue meant for Joey ended up being abandoned at the podium.

The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame and The Estate of Joey Ramone are pleased to announce that on May 14th, 2009 at 3:00 PM , the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame will re-present the induction award for Joey Ramone.

The Induction Award will be presented by Danny Fields - the Ramones’ first manager and a noted journalist - and Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame President Joel Peresman; the award will be accepted by Joey’s brother, musician and author Mickey Leigh, and Tommy Ramone, a founding member of the band, their first drummer and sole surviving original member of the Ramones.

The 2009 Joey Ramone Birthday Bash will be held on Tuesday, May 19 which would have marked the birthday of the late rock star turning 58 .  The concert takes place at the Fillmore New York @ Irving Plaza; doors open at 7PM.

And, of course, to hear more about the unforgettable rock history right here in Manhattan, including the story of The Ramones and a visit to the site of CBGB, check out The Rock and Roll Tour of Manhattan, hosted by Q104.3’s Ken Dashow.