The End of the Road?
A Grateful Dead concert is for music, not for drug dealing. The problems we are experiencing mostly have to do with drug dealing outside our shows — it’s the most visible, high-profile reason for anybody to have a problem with us. In other words, dealing makes us a target — so please don’t buy or sell drugs at any of our shows. We’re not the police, but if you care about this scene, you’ll end this type of behaviour so the authorities will have no reason to shut us down. We’re in this together — so thanks. —
The Grateful Dead, from a flier distributed at a recent concert
For more than twenty years, the Grateful Dead hosted rock & roll’s best and longest-running party. Their frequent concerts were a place where the spirit of the counterculture lived on and where one had a rare opportunity to see a band dedicated to redefining itself night after night after night. The members of the Dead gave themselves to their fans, and many of their fans responded by structuring their lives around the Dead, following the band on its concert treks and creating the subculture of hard-core aficionados known as Deadheads. But now, with the Grateful Dead at the height of their popularity, the party could be over.
Since the success of the 1987 album In the Dark — which produced the group’s only Top Ten single, “Touch of Grey” — the Dead have become such a big concert draw that the scene is in danger of buckling under its own weight. Longtime Dead venues like the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University say they can no longer handle the crowds the Dead attract. More troubling are local police and politicians. who don’t want Dead concerts in their communities. Most frequently, the complaints are that there are too many Deadheads and too many drugs.
After a pair of concerts this year at the California State University at Dominguez Hills — where one of three reportedly LSD-related deaths associated with recent Dead shows took place — the school said it would not invite the band back, citing complaints from the neighboring community of Carson. In suburban Howard County, Maryland, the police have asked the Merriweather Post Pavilion not to book the Dead or the Jerry Garcia Band because of extensive drug sales tied to a past show. In Orange County, California, complaints from nearby residents have forced the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater to stop presenting the band.
Even in cities where the Dead continue to play, there have been clashes with public officials. In Hartford, Connecticut, the city’s corporation counsel was asked to study the feasibility of banning performances by the Dead after 5000 Deadheads camped in a downtown park; in Pittsburgh, the mayor said she didn’t want the band back after fans fought with police outside the Civic Arena; and in Washington, D.C., a city councilwoman who represents the neighborhood surrounding RFK Stadium lobbied against the group’s return before reversing her position.
It’s a particularly daunting problem for a band that draws its energy and inspiration from performing live. In 1989, the Grateful Dead played seventy-four shows and sold 1.4 million concert tickets (grossing $25 million), making them the third-biggest concert attraction in rock & roll, after the Rolling Stones and the Who. And they could have made a lot more money if they had wanted to: While the Stones were charging $35 a ticket, the Dead were charging $22.50 in deference to the large number of fans who come to more than one show.
In an attempt to address the problems associated with their tours, the Grateful Dead last year put an end to on-site camping and vending at their shows. Unlike any other rock band, the Dead have a hard-core following of 500 to 1000 fans who attend every concert. Many more Deadheads will buy tickets for all of the shows in one area or for all of the concerts up and down the East or West Coast. Until the recent restrictions, fans on the tour typically parked their buses, vans and cars outside the arenas and stayed there throughout the band’s two- and three-night stands. To support their habit, many Deadheads sold items ranging from food to jewelry. Now they may have to find other places to stay and other ways to make money.
Although most Deadheads have cooperated with the new rules, problems persist: On any given night hundreds and even thousands of kids show up without tickets, hoping to score one at the show or just hang out. One of the manifestations of the Deadheads’ belief that something special will happen at a Dead show is the many fans who come to each show hoping to find a “miracle ticket”: a ticket that another Deadhead will sell or give to them. “I need a miracle,” they chant — taking the line from a Dead song of the same name — or they walk around the parking lot simply waving one finger. A miracle, indeed: The ticket often does appear.
“With the number of people milling about the shows, there are problems,” says an exasperated Bob Weir, one of the Dead’s two guitarists and the only band member willing to be interviewed for this article. “I wish to hell our fans would pick up on it, or we won’t be able to play anywhere other than stadiums — and some of them are begging off.”
As the flier quoted above demonstrates, the Dead admit there is a drug problem associated with the tour. “I think we’re being followed by professional drug dealers,” says Weir. “I don’t know if they’re Mob related or if it’s bathtub acid of questionable quality. But if we come to town and there’s LSD choking the schools for the next three months, I can understand how people get upset — especially if it’s bad acid. [Grateful Dead fans] could stop buying drugs so drug dealers won’t come to our shows. Otherwise, we’ll have to go elsewhere; we’ll have to go and play in Europe or Asia.”
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