Five reasons why the Grateful Dead were the world’s best live band
One of the hardest jobs in music went out to Dennis McNally, who was the publicist for the Grateful Dead.
The problem McNally had was that the band were incredibly difficult to describe. It was hard to properly promote them to publications and audiences because it was borderline impossible to put them into words. He admitted: “It was always a challenge because there’s so much distraction about them.”
The one thing that continued to bring out audiences; however, regardless of how difficult the band were to define, was their excellent live sound.
There was simply no getting away from how much of a good show the Grateful Dead put on, as they would spend the majority of their time on stage jamming, drawing from different emotions within the band and in the room to create a sound which existed in that moment and that moment alone.
To put it plainly, they’re the greatest live band of all time, and this is why.
Why the Grateful Dead are the best live band:
An unspoken bond
You can always tell when you’re playing with an artist with whom you truly have a connection, as you don’t even need to talk about your musical ideas. Instead, you tap into something subconscious, a level of understanding which means everything goes unspoken, and the music just works. This is what the Grateful Dead had, as when discussing their excellent live sound, Jerry Garcia admitted that it all stemmed from this energetic bond the band all had with each other, one that he couldn’t put into words but that he understood intuitively.
“The Grateful Dead has some kind of intuitive thing – I don’t know what it is or how it works, but I recognise it phenomenologically,” said Garcia. “It’s been reported to me hugely from the audience, and we’ve compared notes about it among ourselves in the band. We’ve agreed that we’ll continue to keep trying to do this thing – whatever it is – and that one best attitude toward it is a sort of stewardship.”
No need for a setlist
There are very few great artists who can walk on stage with nothing prepared and still wind up creating something beautiful. However, the Grateful Dead were one of these artists. When they took to the stage, their existing songs weren’t a strict guide to be followed, instead, they were merely a silhouette of their set, something that provided an outline but still needed to be coloured in.
Lenny Kaye previously spoke about how good the band were at pulling exceptional sets out of nowhere. “A list of song titles would mean very little in terms of what actually goes on inside the album,” he said. “Like the early Cream, the Dead in concert tends to use their regular material as a jumping-off point, as little frameworks that exist only for what can be built on top of them.”
The show must go on
Something else that highlights just how tight the Grateful Dead are as a live act is the fact that if you remove a couple of performers from the band, they’re still able to go out on stage and perform exceptionally. We’ve seen that recently, as different iterations of the band continue performing despite Jerry Garcia’s passing away in 1995.
Without dwelling on the loss of Garcia too much, though, one of the funniest stories which highlights how well the band can play despite not all members being present comes from when Donna Jean once took so many drugs that she couldn’t perform. However, the show went on, and Jean woke up on stage, under a piano, halfway through the band’s set.
“I was so stoned during one of the Paris shows that I found myself under [husband] Keith’s piano. And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is really fantastic music!’”, she recalled. “Then, ‘Oh, my gosh, I sing with this band!’ I don’t know how in the world I pressed through.”
Songs are made to be played
The Grateful Dead are also in their own league as a live band because of their committed approach to ensuring their music lives on, even when the original members are no longer here. They didn’t intend to gatekeep their music, and believe the free-flowing nature of their music means bands can continue playing it forever.
“The number 300 was in his head,” said Don Was when discussing Bob Weir’s approach to his music. “In 300 years, he wanted people to still respond to this music. And we won’t let him down.”
“That whole thing is constructed so that anyone can step in and do it,” admitted Bob Weir. “I’m hoping that people of varying persuasions will find something they can agree on in the music that I’ve offered, and find each other through it.”
The numbers don’t lie
Look, we can talk about all the wonderful artsy stuff all day long. We can talk about the unspoken bond that band members seemed to have, we can talk about how the show went on regardless of whether or not all band members were available, and we can talk about the longevity of their sound, but at the end of the day, numbers don’t lie, and that’s the case for Grateful Dead.
In February 2024, the release of the album Dicks Picks: Volume 49 saw Grateful Dead break the record for having the most top 40 albums of all time. The release was their 59th record to break top 40, and this consistent engagement from fans is a reflection of their exceptional live sound, given a lot of those albums (including Dicks Picks: Volume 49) were made up of snippets of live shows. You simply can’t argue with a stat like that.
