The hilarious moment Phil Lesh pranked the Grateful Dead with a Barney costume
By the 1990s, the backstage scene at a Grateful Dead show had almost become family-friendly. At the start of their career, just about anybody (and everybody) who wandered backstage was at risk of getting dosed with some powerful acid. However, things had calmed down by the time the band members were in their 50s. Everyone had families, the Dead had become more of an organisation/business, and LSD use was rare among the group and their inner circle. The outside of shows was still chaotic, but things were relatively calm behind the curtain.
By the 1990s, nearly all the musicians, managers, and even roadies had children to take care of. That helped calm down the backstage scene, and soon, designated areas for small children became a necessity in the otherwise rough-and-tumble world of the Dead. One thing that never went away, however, was the devious energy and pranks that the band loved to pull on each other.
From their very earliest days, gags and jokes were a permanent fixture in the Dead experience. The phrase “never trust a prankster” might have come from Ken Kesey’s entourage, known as The Merry Pranksters, but it also applied to the Dead themselves. Whether they were deliberately taking the piss out of interviews, getting the better of each other offstage, or subtly messing with each other while on stage, you always had to keep your head on a swivel when you were around the Dead.
Those pranks didn’t usually make it onto the stage, but one date out of the year was prime time for wack Grateful Dead hijinks. April 1st, also known as April Fool’s Day, was a proud holiday on the Grateful Dead calendar. In 1980, the group took the stage during the first set, and all took up different instruments to play Chuch Berry’s ‘The Promised Land’: Jerry Garcia and Brent Mydland were on drums, Bob Weir sat at the keyboards, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann handled guitar, and Mickey Hart played bass while taking on lead vocals.
For the band’s 1988 concert, Weir played a reversal and bid adieu to the crowd before the band even played a note of music. But the best April Fool’s Day onstage prank came in 1993. Evidently, there had been a birthday party for the young children backstage before the show featuring a cameo from Barney the Dinosaur. That’s where the late Lesh devised a genius prank. When the band finished their first set, Lesh made his way to the man in the Barney outfit and had him outfitted with a bass.
While the rest of the band took the stage for the start of the second set, an unusual presence lumbered into Lesh’s usual spot. Once ‘Iko Iko’ was counted off, the lights came up to reveal Barney playing along. The band members apparently had no idea that Lesh was going to dupe them, and some pictures from the concert show a confused Weir and highly amused Garcia glancing over at the big purple dinosaur. All the while, Lesh remained behind his amplifiers, playing the real bass parts and probably laughing his ass off.
Check out footage of the Barney incident from April 1st, 1993, down below.
