The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area amid the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. The founding members were Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums). Members of the Grateful Dead had played together in various San Francisco bands, including Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and the Warlocks. Lesh was the last member to join the Warlocks before they became the Grateful Dead; he replaced Dana Morgan Jr., who had played bass for a few gigs. Drummer Mickey Hart and non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter joined in 1967. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973, and Hart, who took time off from 1971 to 1974, the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history. The other official members of the band are Tom Constanten (keyboards; 1968โ1970), John Perry Barlow (nonperforming lyricist; 1971โ1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards; 1971โ1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals; 1972โ1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals; 1979โ1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards, vocals; 1990โ1995). Bruce Hornsby (accordion, piano, vocals) was a touring member from 1990 to 1992, as well as a guest with the band on occasion before and after the tours.
The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, "[Jerry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary ... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial". According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of Fictionary. In the Garcia biography, Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. The term "grateful dead" appears in folktales of a variety of cultures.
Live performances
The Grateful Dead toured constantly throughout their career, playing more than 2,300 concerts. They promoted a sense of community among their fans, who became known as "Deadheads", many of whom followed their tours for months or years on end. Around concert venues, an impromptu communal marketplace known as 'Shakedown Street' was created by Deadheads to serve as centers of activity where fans could buy and sell anything from grilled cheese sandwiches to home-made t-shirts and recordings of Grateful Dead concerts.
In their early career, the band also dedicated their time and talents to their community, the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, making available free food, lodging, music, and health care to all. It has been said that the band performed "more free concerts than any band in the history of music".
With the exception of 1975, when the band was on hiatus and played only four concerts together, the Grateful Dead performed many concerts every year, from their formation in April 1965, until July 9, 1995. Initially all their shows were in California, principally in the San Francisco Bay Area and in or near Los Angeles. They also performed, in 1965 and 1966, with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as the house band for the Acid Tests. They toured nationally starting in June 1967 (their first foray to New York), with a few detours to Canada, Europe and three nights at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt in 1978. They appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Festival Express train tour across Canada in 1970. They were scheduled to appear as the final act at the infamous Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969 after the Rolling Stones but withdrew after security concerns. "That's the way things went at Altamontโso badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play", staff at Rolling Stone magazine wrote in a detailed narrative on the event.
Their first UK performance was at the Hollywood Music Festival in 1970. Their largest concert audience came in 1973 when they played, along with the Allman Brothers Band and the Band, before an estimated 600,000 people at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen. They played to an estimated total of 25 million people, more than any other band, with audiences of up to 80,000 attending a single show. Many of these concerts were preserved in the band's tape vault, and several dozen have since been released on CD and as downloads. The Dead were known for the tremendous variation in their setlists from night to nightโthe list of songs documented to have been played by the band exceeds 500. The band has released four concert videos under the name View from the Vault.
In the 1990s, the Grateful Dead earned a total of $285 million in revenue from their concert tours, the second-highest during the 1990s, with the Rolling Stones earning the most. This figure is representative of tour revenue through 1995, as touring stopped after the death of Jerry Garcia. In a 1991 PBS documentary, segment host Buck Henry attended an August 1991 concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre and gleaned some information from some band members about the Grateful Dead phenomenon and its success. At the time, Jerry Garcia stated, "We didn't really invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead, you know what I mean? We were sort of standing in line, and uh, it's gone way past our expectations, way past, so it's, we've been going along with it to see what it's gonna do next." Furthermore, Mickey Hart stated, "This is one of the last places in America that you can really have this kind of fun, you know, considering the political climate and so forth." Hart also stated that "the transformative power of the Grateful Dead is really the essence of it; it's what it can do to your consciousness. We're more into transportation than we are into music, per se, I mean, the business of the Grateful Dead is transportation." One of the band's largest concerts took place just months before Garcia's death โ at their outdoor show with Bob Dylan in Highgate, Vermont on June 15, 1995. The crowd was estimated to be over 90,000; overnight camping was allowed and about a third of the audience got in without having purchased a ticket.
Their numerous studio albums were generally collections of new songs that they had first played in concert. The band was also famous for its extended musical improvisations, having been described as having never played the same song the same way twice. Their concert sets often blended songs, one into the next, often for more than three songs at a time.
Tapes
Like several other bands during this time, the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to record their shows. For many years the tapers set up their microphones wherever they could, and the eventual forest of microphones became a problem for the sound crew. Eventually, this was solved by having a dedicated taping section located behind the soundboard, which required a special "tapers" ticket. The band allowed sharing of their shows, as long as no profits were made on the sale of the tapes.
Of the approximately 2,350 shows the Grateful Dead played, almost 2,200 were taped, and most of these are available online. The band began collecting and cataloging tapes early on and Dick Latvala was their keeper. "Dick's Picks" is named after Latvala. After his death in 1999, David Lemieux gradually took the post. Concert set lists from a subset of 1,590 Grateful Dead shows were used to perform a comparative analysis between how songs were played in concert and how they are listened online by Last.fm members. In their book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History, David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan identify the taper section as a crucial contributor to increasing the Grateful Dead's fan base.
After the death of Garcia in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as the Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and the Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company, Furthur, the Rhythm Devils, Phil Lesh and Friends, RatDog, and Billy & the Kids.
One More Saturday Night
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Looked up in the heavens Lord I saw a mighty sign,
Written fire across the heaven, plain as black and white;
Get prepared, there's gonna be a party tonight.
Huh, Hey! Saturday Night!
Yea, huh one more Saturday night,
Hey Saturday night!
Everybody's dancin' down the local armory
With a basement full of dynamite and live artillery.
The temperature keeps risin', everybody gittin' high;
Come the rockin' stroke of midnite, the whole place gonna fly.
Huh, Hey! Saturday Night!
Yea, huh one more Saturday night,
Hey Saturday night!
Turn on channel six, the President comes on the news,
Says, "I get no satisfaction, that's why I sing the blues."
His wife say "Don't get crazy, Lord, you know just what to do,
Crank up that old Victrola, put on them rockin' shoes."
Huh, Hey! Saturday Night!
Yea, huh one more Saturday night,
Hey Saturday night!
Then God way up in heaven, for whatever it was worth,
Thought He'd have a big old party, thought He'd call it planet Earth.
Don't worry about tomorrow, Lord, you'll know it when it comes,
When the rock and roll music meets the risin' sun.
The Grateful Dead's song One More Saturday Night celebrates the carefree and joyous moments that come with the weekend. The lyrics allude to a spiritual experience of the singer, who after drinking wine, sees "written fire" in the sky, which he interprets to mean there will be a party that night. The song captures the anticipation and excitement of going out to have fun with friends and strangers in local spots, in this case, an armory with a basement full of dynamite and live artillery. The temperature is rising, everybody is getting high, and when midnight rocks, the whole place is going to fly.
Then, the song takes a humorous turn, where the President comes on the news, singing the blues because he "gets no satisfaction." His wife advises him to crank up the old Victrola, put on the rockin' shoes, and forget about the worries of life. Finally, the singer imagines God having a big party on planet Earth, where rock and roll meets the rising sun. Altogether, One More Saturday Night is an ode to the celebration of life, friendship, and the hedonistic pleasures of youth.
Line by Line Meaning
I went down to the mountain, I was drinking some wine,
I took a stroll to the mountain while having some wine.
Looked up in the heavens Lord I saw a mighty sign,
I gazed at the sky and saw a powerful signal.
Written fire across the heaven, plain as black and white;
It was an obvious message, written in fire across the sky.
Get prepared, there's gonna be a party tonight.
Get ready, because tonight there will be a big party.
Everybody's dancin' down the local armory
Everyone is dancing at the nearby armory.
With a basement full of dynamite and live artillery.
The venue has dangerous weapons and explosives stored in the basement.
The temperature keeps risin', everybody gittin' high;
The atmosphere is heating up and everyone is getting excited/into an altered state.
Come the rockin' stroke of midnite, the whole place gonna fly.
When it hits midnight and the music rocks, the place will be electrified.
Turn on channel six, the President comes on the news,
Switch to channel six and see the President on the news.
Says, "I get no satisfaction, that's why I sing the blues."
The President can't satisfy himself, that's why he sings the blues.
His wife say "Don't get crazy, Lord, you know just what to do,
His wife advises him not to go insane, as he knows how to handle it.
Crank up that old Victrola, put on them rockin' shoes."
She suggests he listen to some old records and dance to relieve stress.
Then God way up in heaven, for whatever it was worth,
God in heaven, whatever His reason, decided to throw a huge party.
Thought He'd have a big old party, thought He'd call it planet Earth.
He chose the whole planet as the location for His massive celebration.
Don't worry about tomorrow, Lord, you'll know it when it comes,
Worrying about the future is unnecessary, as it will become clear when the time comes.
When the rock and roll music meets the risin' sun.
When rock and roll music pairs up with the rising sun, something magical will happen.
Huh, Hey! Saturday Night!
An exclamation of joy towards Saturday night!
Yea, huh one more Saturday night,
Excitement at the prospect of another Saturday night.
Hey Saturday night!
An enthusiastic greeting to Saturday night!
Lyrics ยฉ Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: BOB WEIR
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Crazy Otto
How can anyone listen to this and not feel joy flowing through them??
Chris Rand
Some people have cold, dead hearts, that's why. Wish them well <3
Lloyd Bergli
You can't!
sun dog
I felt joy for the first 10 seconds....thats what she said.๐
Nick
jerry's tone during Europe 72 was magic, pure Stratocaster sound!
Brandon Zimiga
I completely agree. I love his tone on Greatest Story Ever Told on this tour.
Eric Laurito
Pure Highly-modified Strat.
The guitar was transformed into a serious custom job including (but hardly limited to) new Schaller tuning pegs and gears, a series of bridges (Gibson ABR-1 Tune-o-Matic and an Alembic custom), a new control plate (hammered brass), taller frets, and an in-board post-volume "blaster". "Each pickup cover had its own individually grounded wire,"
litedawg1968
Yeppers. Probably not a popular opinion but he could have played that Strat his entire career and I would have been happy.
Nick
@litedawg1968 agreed
Steve Burch
Or the SG!