When the Grateful Dead eulogized Bill Graham with an insane ‘Dark Star’
The Grateful Dead were no strangers to death. America’s most beloved band of psychedelic jammers have been wrapped up in the safe and cuddly hippie ideal for decades now, but drugs and destruction added a palpable edge and danger to life within the Dead. Numerous members of the Grateful Dead family, from Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan to Rex Jackson to, eventually, Jerry Garcia, all shuffled off the mortal coil far too soon, and the band started to rack up quite a body count in their midsts.
There are plenty of excellent Grateful Dead songs that confront the video of death, but ‘Dark Star’ isn’t one of them. At least not explicitly: like almost all of Robert Hunter’s best works, ‘Dark Star’ is open to all kinds of interpretations. If you believe that the “transitive nightfall of diamonds” is a metaphor for the great beyond, nobody will stop you from believing so. But whereas songs like ‘Black Peter’ directly cover death and others like ‘He’s Gone’ became eulogies for fallen brothers, ‘Dark Star’ never had that specific energy to it.
With one major exception: October 31st, 1991. Just six days before their show at the Oakland Coliseum in California, the band’s long-time concert promoter and closer friend Bill Graham died in a helicopter crash. Graham had helped catapult the Dead from playing in pizza parlours to playing some of the biggest stages in the world, being the mastermind behind legendary venues like The Fillmore and the Winterland Ballroom.
Even after the Summer of Love, Graham continued to be the Dead’s near-exclusive west coast booker well into the 1990s. Graham’s love for the Dead was almost unrivalled in music, with Graham acting as an eccentric master of ceremonies at numerous New Year’s shows across the band’s career. He was a close business partner, personal friend, and key player in the success of the Dead, so when he passed away, it greatly affected the band and their extended family.
The Halloween show was an appropriately spooky affair, kicking off with the winding ‘Help on the Way>Slipknot!>Franklin’s Tower’ suite before descending into a somewhat standard first set. However, the Dead decided to lay out and get weird for the second set. It starts with a celebratory ‘Scarlet Begonias>Fire on the Mountain’ before the band dives headfirst into a rollicking ‘Truckin’ that eventually transitions into the blues standard ‘Spoonful’. As that track winds down, Phil Lesh gurgles out the iconic opening riff to ‘Dark Star’.
The Dead had only just begun to bring back the beloved jam vehicle two years prior after only having played the song six times total in the 1980s. Tonight’s version proved to be one of the final truly “out there” performances of ‘Dark Star’ with extended improvisation giving way to nebulous jams and a surprise eulogy from author Ken Kesey.
Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters were essential figures in the San Francisco scene, having staged some of their notorious Acid Tests at Graham’s performance halls. After the first verse of ‘Dark Star’, Kesey takes the stage and shares some impromptu spoken word over the jam, highlighting Graham’s kindness after Kesey’s own son died. Kesey then gains intensity along with the music, eventually reciting e.e. cummings’ ‘Buffalo Bill’ poem that ends with the line “how do you like your blue-eyed boy now, Mister Death?”
The ‘Dark Star’ dissolves into the ‘Drums/Space’ section not long afterwards, but the song’s second verse makes an appearance out of the fog before the band descends into a raucous version of The Rolling Stones’ ‘The Last Time’. It would perhaps be the final version of ‘Dark Star’ that lived up to its formidable reputation, full of exploratory possibilities and unknown pleasures.
Check out Kesey’s eulogy during ‘Dark Star’ down below.
