“Beautiful mad stuff”: The album that changed the sound of Grateful Dead
The unrelenting creativity of the Grateful Dead directly results from the band’s constant desire to find new music to listen to and different sounds to become immersed in. When you listen to their catalogue, which means what they recorded in the studio and what they performed at their live shows, there is no escaping the fact that they are a diverse group of musicians who deeply understand a range of different styles and sounds.
It is this versatility that keeps them relevant. Despite not releasing new music for some time and some of the most iconic members of the band no longer being with us, clips of their live shows continue to entice fans because of the genuinely unexpected nature of what they will end up playing at their shows.
The band’s lead and one of the biggest brains behind their music, Jerry Garcia, famously had a huge record collection. His music catalogue spanned old and new, transcending genres, giving him access to sounds from all over the world that effectively bled into the music he was making with the band.
Garcia was always proud of his record collection, aware that to most people, it wouldn’t make sense but that the haphazard nature of the albums he liked greatly reflected his attitude towards music. When he was asked what kind of music he liked to listen to, he was ambitious in his answer, smirking and saying, “Everything. Anything. If it’s good, I’ll listen to it, or if it’s around, I’ll listen to it. I listen to anything that turns me on. Or that somebody turns me on to.”
Grateful Dead’s sound comprises all of these different influences rolled into one, projected through a shared understanding. However, there was one artist that the band was a fan of and who impacted their sound as a collective unit. This was their friend, Bob Dylan, who was equally a fan of the Grateful Dead.
“I never used to like Bob Dylan until he came out with electric music,” admitted Garcia when discussing the folk singer, “And I’m not sure why I like that more. I sure liked it a lot more. Boy, when Bringing It All Back Home came out. Yeah, lovely. Very fine guitar player. [Bruce Langhorne] It just all of a sudden had something going for it.”
Garcia described the sound as “Beautiful mad stuff. And that turned us all on, we couldn’t believe it.”
It’s no surprise that someone with a sound like Dylan influenced all of the Grateful Dead. The two artists saw eye to eye when it came to creativity and the writing process, which is why they did so well when they went on tour together. Their attitude towards playing live was also similar, as they cared more about playing off of the feeling that they were experiencing in the moment of the show rather than just reeling off the hits. It can be a divisive way of playing, but it really taps into the power of music and how effectively it can capture feelings on a broad scale, as well as something as small as a very specific point in time.
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