The Grateful Dead once crashed a Bar Mitzvah party
Psychedelic heroes Grateful Dead remain one of the most storied acts of all time. A countercultural rabble of musical greats, the band made their name off the back of their hazy form of Americana and extended – often drug-fuelled – jams that marked them out as one of the most exciting acts that the flower power movement produced.
Led by the eminent Jerry Garcia and featuring the equally as brilliant Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, the insane anecdotes surrounding the group are the stuff of legend, ranging from eating a cake dosed with 800 hits of acid to taking part in Ken Kesey’s famed Acid Tests. The band invariably pushed life to the limits, creating a mythos that is one of the most colourful in music.
However, it didn’t all revolve around drugs, and a lot of their most memorable moments occurred purely by chance. The fact that the band had a knack for finding themselves in wholly unbelievable circumstances is a skill that cannot be understated. One of the best came on December 12th, 1971, when the group ended up crashing a Bar Mitzvah party in St. Louis, Missouri. Before too long, the band were on stage, playing music, dazzling everyone who could not believe their eyes.
That night, Richard Gerber had his Bar Mitzvah party at the Aiport Marriot Hotel, and it was here that he and his guests would have a chance encounter with Jerry Garcia and Co. “This was my Bar Mitzvah in 1971. The party was on a Sunday night. It was kid party only,” recalled Gerber on The Good Ole’ Grateful Dead podcast. “At that time, I was not into rock ‘n roll. I don’t think I even knew who the Grateful Dead were.”
At the time, Grateful Dead had just completed a run of two shows on December 9th and 10th at The Fox Theatre and were staying at the Airport Hilton before moving on to Michigan. It is said that some of Gerber’s guests met Dead band members in the lobby, where they signed autographs and gave posters away.
“My sister Jo, comes up to me while I’m playing and says ‘the Grateful Dead are here,” said Mark Slosberg, who was playing in Spring Rain, the band at Gerber’s party on the podcast. “I told her to go away, but she insisted I look, and then, there they were.”
During his podcast appearance, Gerber revealed that his sister actually invited the band to play. Ever respectful and not wanting to interrupt Spring Rain, The Dead waited until the band took a break. “Jerry Garcia was the only one who wasn’t there, but everyone else was there plus Marmaduke,” Slosberg recalled. “All of the kids used the payphones to call their older brothers and sisters, and so within 25 minutes there were high schoolers arriving in the lobby while the Dead played.”
After playing a handful of songs, Grateful Dead let Spring Rain take the stage back but stayed at the party. However, as proceedings wound down, some of the band members joined Spring Rain on stage and partook in a customary jam session to see the night out.
“We jammed jointly on some blues changes,” Slosberg said. “Spring Rain probably started out with a 12-bar thing to get the set going and it just ramped up from there.”
After their final performance, Grateful Dead hung a round for a while, chatting to partygoers before they eventually called it a night. It became the stuff of local legend, as Slosberg said: “It was the talk of the high school for years to come.”
