Why Robert Hunter called the Grateful Dead ‘Europe ’72’ tour “tragic”
In many ways, Europe ’72 was the closing of a chapter for the Grateful Dead. After having survived the 1960s more or less intact, the Dead had evolved into a new beast. The dense and heavily psychedelic jams that were essential to the band’s “Primal” era had been supplemented by more concise songs like ‘Tennessee Jed’ and ‘Ramble On Rose’. Bob Weir had established himself as a full-fledged co-frontman, often alternating songs with Jerry Garcia in concert. Even Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan was stepping up, composing new songs like ‘Mr. Charlie’ and ‘The Stranger (Two Souls in Communion)’.
But after the final stop on the Europe ’72 tour in London at the end of May, the Dead that continued on were much different. Pigpen played one more show with the band before taking another leave of absence due to illness. He would eventually die in March of 1973, almost a full year after the European tour. The Dead took on a jazzier direction while they graduated from theatres to stadiums. The Dead were becoming big, and a new attitude was taking hold.
To primary lyricist Robert Hunter, the change wasn’t exactly for the better. “What I most remember about ’72 was the tragedy of it,” Hunter told Steve Silberman in 2001. “Looking back over empty years that should have brimmed with joyful greatness, I realise more and more fully how tragic it was… How much should be said? To me, the ’72 tour was about division.”
He added: “I joined to see Europe and to write songs (and because I always toured with the band) – endless European bus trips seemed like a God-sent time to get the next album sketched out since Garcia was almost always otherwise occupied in the States – maybe a fourth album to follow the Workingman’s Dead/American Beauty/Rambling Rose trilogy. Instead, a major insurrection occurred.”
A new attitude had become prominent among the band and crew during the Europe ’72 tour. A certain lawlessness that always surrounded the dead continued to reign, but now that things were getting bigger for the band, so too were the shenanigans. As the Grateful Dead family divided into the “Bolo” and “Bozo” buses, a certain silliness was rubbing elbows with a potent slice of brutality.
“The Bolo-Bozo metaphor was a way of laughing it off, but the always incipient schism between crew consciousness and artist orientation became decisive,” Hunter recalled. “Every meal was a food fight. Sensitivity to cultures was nearly non-existent. It was not only insinuated but bluntly proclaimed that the show could not go on without muscle and tech. Strike was threatened. The band was intimidated, and no one was able to call the bluff.”
Hunter’s reaction was to leave the Dead’s touring party. “I split off from the group at the end of that tour, feeling alienated, groundless and forlorn, eventually moving to England. Though I continued providing songs and collaborating with Garcia, in essence, I retired from the Grateful Dead touring and business juggernaut after ‘the ’72 tour,” Hunter remembered. “It was plainly headed for a brick wall. So was I.”
