Music on a different level: why do the Grateful Dead keep getting bigger?
Something being “too good to put into words” is often the cop-out description for somebody who can’t properly articulate themselves. Generally speaking, the words are always there to describe what makes something good; however, occasional exceptions exist, and the Grateful Dead are one of them. Their initial career, paired with the fact that the band seems incapable of ever slowing down in record sales and continued interest, is a true musical anomaly that defies description despite best efforts.
The band’s publicist, Dennis McNally, once spoke about how difficult it was trying to sell the Grateful Dead to various publications and venues. “It was always a challenge because there’s so much distraction about them,” he said. While a lot is going on in the band, with an ever-changing number of members and an unpredictable live show, there is no denying their popularity.
In February this year, the Grateful Dead broke the record for having the most top 40 albums in history. The release Dicks Picks: Volume 49 charted at 25 on the Billboard 200, giving the band a total of 59 albums that have made it into the top 40. Below them are Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra at 58. The Dead have been able to break this record because of their devout fanbase, a large group as resilient as they are loyal, obsessed with the sound that the Grateful Dead were willing to capture, and their attitude towards their music and life in general.
So, let’s try to put the allegedly indescribable into words. Why are the Grateful Dead so successful? And why do they continue to be successful despite the original lineup disbanding decades ago? Well, they are unique in their approach to live sound; their commitment is to music and feeling, not to their own songs, and as such, they are dealers in real-world experience, something which is often hard to come by.
To understand why people love the Grateful Dead, you need to know why people love music. Music is one of the most connective art forms on the planet. Hearing sounds and assigning melody to them is a natural way of the world; from birth, we seek tunes to latch on to. As we age, we develop tastes and listen to specific bands and songs. While our tastes in those artists might vary compared to those around us, our reasons for connecting with music remain universal: it helps us feel and makes the world a little bit less lonely.
If our understanding of being is a picture that is too big to look at, music provides us with a fisheye lens that allows us to see the image in its entirety, mistakes and all. We hear sounds and assign our emotions to them, regardless of whether those emotions are happy, sad or somewhere in between. Having somewhere to go to better make sense of things is an otherworldly sanctuary that we are lucky enough to have access to, and as such, we grow passionate about it and about anybody who contributes towards its creation.
Most musicians can tap into a feeling as they write about love and loss, but very few do it in real time. Despite having written and recorded music of their own, the Grateful Dead never rely on it when performing live. Instead, their songs form a shaky foundation, which they build upon depending on everything around them. They tap into the energy of the crowd, the weather, what is happening in the world that day, and how people in the band feel before laying it all out on stage for everyone to see. The result is a musical experience that seems as in tune with the earth as birdsong and rainfall, a declaration of love to the emotive properties of music and the connection we feel to it and the others around us as it plays.
Because of that, people are constantly keen on listening to the Grateful Dead’s live music; they don’t take in one song at a time but dissect the album as a whole. Listeners close their eyes, feel what is happening and are transported to a moment in time. Dicks Picks is a collection of archived live performances, and these contribute to a large amount of the band’s top 40 hits, all because they are an unfiltered version of the live performance.
Why do the Grateful Dead keep getting bigger? Because the more time passes, the more music there is and the more the Grateful Dead cement themselves as the one and only. They are a band that taps into music on a different level, providing an experience for listeners that no other artist can do. They focus less on a song or an album, for that matter. They are a testament to the existence of sound itself.
