“This show in particular has been on our radar for over two decades,” Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux says of the band’s June 22, 1991 appearance at Chicago’s Soldier Field. “We nearly released it back in 2001 when we were working on the second volume of the View from the Vault series.”
On Thursday, June 22, the 32nd anniversary of the original performance, the show will finally get its close-up, when it screens worldwide via the Grateful Dead’s 11th Meet-Up at the Movies event (an encore presentation is slated for Saturday, June 24, with the list of participating theaters available here). The 6/22/91 show marked the group’s debut at the storied stadium where the band would later deliver its final performance on July 9, 1995.
“I think the entire summer 1991 tour is magnificent,” Lemieux says. “There was a connection between Jerry and Bruce Hornsby that to me was very reminiscent of the chemistry between Jerry and Brent in ‘89 going into ‘90. I also think Vince was singing and playing great. He was learning his way into the Grateful Dead and doing some really inventive things. Everybody else’s playing was inspired as well, which is why it was in such strong consideration for View from the Vault, Volume 2.”
The “Hell in A Bucket” show opener (which premieres below), as well as the “Shakedown Street” that followed set the tone for a marvelous evening. Lemieux is particularly buoyant about the “Bucket”: “Bob is rocking out the place. It’s one of those versions with the final, vocal closing where Bob is screaming his lungs out and Jerry is playing these incredible riffs underneath.”
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The Solider Field performance includes the dazzling takes that one expects from songs such as “Playing In the Band,” “Terrapin Station,” and “Let It Grow” along with a “Dark Star” jam but there are numerous unanticipated apogees as well. Lemieux affirms, “I think there are so many little surprises in this show. I love listening to it. This one should have come out a long time ago and but we’re thrilled that in 2023, people are going to get to see it in the theaters. It’s going to be a good time. I’m going to be up and dancing, I’ll tell you that.”
The performance that will screen on June 22 and 24 is drawn from the original multi-camera video feed. How many shows do you have in the archives with IMAG footage?
Pretty much any time the Dead played either a stadium or an amphitheater that had screens up, they were pulling tape. Unfortunately that wasn’t all that often, nor does it go way back. Really from the summer of 1989 to 95, any time they played a stadium show, they had the screens up.
When I mentioned amphitheaters, there’s really two in particular. One of them is Alpine and only in 1989—that was the only year they had the screens up. Unfortunately there’s no screen footage from 1988 at Alpine.
The other is Shoreline. Interestingly, Shoreline, more often than not, they would play a weekend there—Friday, Saturday, Sunday—and the shows would generally get a little earlier each day. So the Friday show might be 7:00 PM and then by Sunday it might be 5:00 PM. So oftentimes with Shoreline, there are videos of the Friday and Saturday shows because in order for the screens to work, it had to be somewhat dark out. Then with the Sunday shows, which would generally be a little earlier, they didn’t have the screens running because you couldn’t really see them, it was too light out.
Still, in the case of Shoreline, we have a whole lot of Shoreline multi-camera videos—they had a great crew there. While there are some Sunday shows, for the most part it’s Fridays and Saturdays at Shoreline from October 87, right through 1995. Those are really good videos. I think there was a video production booth—a permanent space at Shoreline—as opposed to most stadiums where the Dead would have to roll up with their own crews, and basically build a studio right there on site.
When it comes to the East Coast, any time the Dead were playing stadiums from the summer of 89—specifically Foxboro on July 2nd ’89—right through the last Grateful Dead Show on July 9th, 1995 [at Soldier Field], there are videos of those. There also was a little bit in the summer of 87 on the tour with Bob Dylan.
Unfortunately on those same tours, when they would dip into an amphitheater in the middle of a tour or maybe play the Knickerbocker in Albany, they didn’t have screens up for those shows. They were really only running them because the venues were so big that they were needed for the people in the back to be able to see what was going on.
It’s well over a hundred shows from that one primary era—89 through 95. Then there are some other things throughout— some 80, a little 83 and 85, along with some 87. There are little bits and pieces but those would usually be related to a project. For instance, there are a couple of shows from Radio City Music Hall specifically, because the Dead were doing two things on Halloween 1980. They were doing the pay-per-view in theaters around the country at the Radio City Music Hall. Then they were also pulling tape for what ended up becoming the Dead Ahead home video, the Dead’s first real home video.
Since you mentioned the ‘87 Dylan tour, how much of that do you have? You released two Grateful Dead sets a number of years ago but do you have any of the Dylan and the Dead performances? If so, do you think there’s any chance they might surface down the road?
I really don’t know. We haven’t explored it because I think there might be concerns with getting rights. But in saying that, we’ve got a box set coming from 1973 [Here Comes Sunshine]—it’s audio, not video—that features a couple members of the Allman Brothers.
It’s turned out that people who play with the Dead are eager to see that stuff come out. We’ve obviously released a lot of material with Branford Marsalis, Bruce Hornsby—these are people who very much respect the Grateful Dead and are proud of their time with the band.
So I’m not sure. We also don’t have video of the Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead sets in the vault, so that would be another search. We’d have to look into that, but we haven’t really given it too much consideration.
We do have the video of the Grateful Dead sets from the Oakland show on July 24th and then the final show of the tour on July 26th in Anaheim that we released as part of the DVD series View from the Vault about 20 years ago. Those are two shows, but we don’t have the first three—the East Coast shows in Foxboro, Philly and Giants Stadium—or the first West Coast show in Eugene. Also, the two that we do have from the end of the tour are only the Grateful Dead Sets, not the Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead sets.
I’ve seen a multi-camera video of Giants Stadium, with the two Grateful Dead sets, on YouTube. It’s quite degraded, though, so it’s certainly not directly from the master. I don’t know where that master is. It’s not in the Grateful Dead Vault because the Grateful Dead weren’t pulling tape. I think that may have been more of a John Scher situation but we don’t have it.
The one Bob Dylan set I’ve seen—again, that was on the YouTube world—is only one or two cameras. I don’t think for the Dylan sets they had cameras right at the front of the stage the way they did for the Grateful Dead. I don’t think the cameras were quite as present for the Dylan and the Dead sets.
You mentioned the early Sunday start times at Shoreline. I remember when the Dead played at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, the shows would often begin at 2. I think the band doesn’t quite get its due for this fan-friendly approach that enabled Deadheads to go out afterward and experience Vegas at night.
I feel it was a respect for the fan base. I saw them in Eugene in ‘90, a couple shows with Little Feat opening. The show started at noon. So as a taper, I was in taper lineup by 10 in the venue with my mics set-up by 11 and Little Feat at noon. They played till about one, the Dead came on at two and played till five. Then you’re back at your hotel by 5:30 or 6 o’clock. You’re back in time to have a nice dinner, get an early night, and do it all again the next day. That was big respect.
Especially now that I’m older, I think back and getting out of a venue at 11 o’clock and stuck in traffic for an hour or two, then moving on to the next city and getting to your hotel at two in the morning, just doesn’t sound like fun to me anymore. [Laughs.]
Back then, being able to go see the Dead in the daytime was very special. I loved it. But again, what that also meant with those daytime shows is there’d be no screens for the most part, if it was very bright out. So Eugene ‘90 is a great example, whereas the stadium shows the Dead played later that summer on the East Coast were night shows. There’s incredible video of all those stadium shows. There’s also great video from Tinley Park—that’s another amphitheater—for Brent’s last shows at the end of July ‘90.
But with Eugene, unfortunately, there’s no video because again, the shows were at noon. So there’s the pluses and the minuses, but I’ll take that plus of having the experience of seeing the Dead at noon. That was amazing.
I have one more overarching question for you that calls on your perspective as someone who is so familiar with the band’s music. Roger McGuinn opened the show on 6/22/91. To what extent do you think historically, the performance of openers impacted the Dead’s own performance? I’m not necessarily talking about Roger McGuinn’s set but the Miles Davis opening sets in April 1970 certainly come to mind.
The Dead didn’t have opening bands too often, but when they did, I think it did have an impact.
I think Miles in particular had an impact. I actually know that with certainty because I’ve heard band members talk about it—they watched Miles and his band, the Bitches Brew band play, and they couldn’t believe what they were hearing. This was at a time when the Grateful Dead were kind of in this transitional phase going into the Americana with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. They were playing some acoustic sets, but then Miles comes out and does this incredible progressive music. It’s psychedelic jazz or whatever you want to call it. I think it did inspire the Grateful Dead to push the boundaries even further. Maybe they were even scared by what they had just seen in terms of how do we follow this? But they did. Those are great Grateful Dead shows, those April shows.
In the later years, I imagine Roger McGuinn’s show was a pretty mellow show. I wasn’t at this one, so I didn’t see it, but I certainly saw some different types of bands open for the Grateful Dead over the years on those stadium shows. I think of Los Lobos—clearly respected David Hidalgo and the whole band. They’re a really great band and very complementary with the Grateful Dead.
The Dead also got to play with some real classic bands that they were peers of theirs way back in the day, like The Band, Bob Dylan and Traffic. I saw CSN open for the Dead a few times in around ‘90. I saw a New Year’s show in ‘89, with New Grass Revival and Bonnie Raitt opening, and that was spectacular, then Bonnie Raitt came out and played a few songs with the Dead during their first set.
I certainly think they wanted to play well in front of their friends. They wanted them to respect what they’re doing. So having those bands there watching did have an impact on them.
Moving to this year’s Meet-Up, can you talk about the process of selecting this show?
We first began thinking about it in 2001, after we began our View from the Vault releases. I think we did one a year from 2000 to 2003. The first one we did was a Pittsburgh show at Three Rivers Stadium in 1990. The bulk of our videos are from the late Brent Era, the Vince and Hornsby era or the Vince era. So because we did Brent with the first one, we wanted to hit that Hornsby-Vince era. It was also a chance to get more of that material out because the Dick’s Picks, which were still coming out then, were not hitting up that era too often—they tended to focus on the 60s and 70s.
There wasn’t video for that stuff, so we figured with the amount of video that the Grateful Dead have, and so much of it is from the later eras, let’s really have fun with those eras. That’s why we’ve got some ‘90 and ‘91 in there, along with some ‘87 as the last one.
So, way back in 2001, when we were working on the second View from the Vault, we wanted to do something from the 1991 tour. The two keyboard arrangement was just so powerful. It was a unique sound of the Grateful Dead. I also think Phil was playing a new bass. I saw the two shows right before this Chicago show, in Pine Knob, a small amphitheater just outside of Detroit.
When we created the View from the Vault series, it was only going to be two-track material. We saved the multitrack for bigger projects, things like Downhill from Here and Ticket to New Year’s, which were video projects that were mixed from the multitracks.
We wanted the View from the Vault to be more akin to the Dick’s Picks series with two-track material, straight out of the vault—multi-camera video with the two track original audio. So it really came down to a couple of shows—RFK on June 14th and Soldier Field on June 22nd. It was an incredibly difficult choice. They were both exceptional shows but very different setlists and performances. We really struggled with that decision in a great way because we knew whatever we went with was going to be a great show, and then whichever one we didn’t go with would come out the next time we hit this era.
That’s kind of always been our philosophy with every Dave’s Picks or Dick’s Picks or whatever. Any time we release something, it means something else is not being released. That’s okay, because then when we hit that era again, we’ll get to that show. So while we ended up going with the RFK Show—which is a great show—we put the Soldier Field on hold until next time.
Unfortunately, the View from the Vault series ended after four volumes. So there never was a next time. There was never a way to get that music out in the DVD world from a two-track source. That’s why it kind of sat on the shelf for so long. It’s always been on our radar, though. We never wanted to release it as part of the Dick’s Picks or the Road Trips, or the Dave’s Picks series because we had this incredible video component. We wanted to make sure that it came out on video in some way, whether that was DVD or in theaters.
So here we are, 11 volumes into the Meet-Up at the Movies, and we’ve had so much great music. We’ve had a lot of ‘89 and we’ve had some things that were sort of in conjunction with another project we were working on—for instance, Giants Stadium ‘91, we put in theaters a couple of years ago because we put out a Giants Stadium ‘91 box set. We had this incredible video, and we’d mixed the multitrack and it sounded great. Last year we did a Europe ‘72 show from the Tivoli [Concert Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark] because it was the 50th anniversary of Europe 72 and we wanted to celebrate that. So there have been reasons why we haven’t hit this show. It’s always been at the very top of the list, though.
It actually was slated to come out in 2020. We went into production on this Soldier Field show in late 2019 into early 2020. But the pandemic meant we didn’t have a Meet-Up that year. Then when we finally came back with Meet-Up at the Movies in 2022, it was the 50th anniversary of Europe 72. So we went with Tivoli. But here we are, 32 years after the show took place, finally getting to see it. It looks great.
Back in 2001 when we did the RFK Show instead on DVD, I must have watched this video 15 to 20 times straight through, just doing the comparison, and I was really enthralled with how great this performance was. Then over the years I’ve watched it a few times. In 2018 and 2019, I must have watched it another half-dozen times giving it consideration for that 2020 Meet-Up at the Movies. After we went into production with it about eight months ago, I watched it a whole bunch. So I know this show incredibly well, and I’m really excited about it. I can’t wait to see it on the big screen in theaters. It’s a really wonderful show.
During the spring 1991 tour, Bruce Hornsby missed a stretch of six shows in Albany and Nassau. When Bruce rejoined the band in Greensboro, he added an infusion of energy that resulted in one of my favorite “Eyes” of all time. He had the ability to contribute that dynamic element during this era.
I find that whole spring 91 through fall 91 is filled with music like that—incredibly inspired and music you can hold up and say, just like you did, “This is one of the best ‘Eyes’ I’ve ever heard.” I find that in the six month period, particularly the shows Bruce was at. As you mentioned, he wasn’t at six of the shows on the spring tour. He also wasn’t at Cal Expo in May of 91—those were the three West Coast shows I chose to go see and he wasn’t there [Laughs.] But then he was there for the whole summer and the fall. There were a lot of moments you can point to and say, “This is some of the finest music I’ve ever heard.”
That’s what I feel about this show. Every version of every song in this first set is a definitive version from the last decade of Grateful Dead. A lot of them I would hold up as some of the best versions they played of any of these songs. To me, this entire tour is relentlessly powerful.
My recollection from that time is that folks were talking quite a bit about the Solider Field “Shakedown,” which was quite atypical, since it was the second song of the night.
It’s a huge “Shakedown Street.” I’ve always found that when “Shakedown Street” starts the second set, it more easily goes to those places because they’ve already had the first set kind of warm-up, if you want to call it that. The “Shakedown Street” at Merriweather in ‘85 [6/30/85] and Pittsburgh in ‘89 [4/2/89] really hit those stratospheric levels. There are countless examples like that.
But this is a second set “Shakedown Street” played as the second song of the night. It goes places, and the nice thing about the quality of the video is you can see Jerry taking it places. You can see Bruce elevating it. You can see Vince elevating it. You can see all the guys playing like that and it’s the second song. That’s when you realize, “Okay, we’re in for a special night.” It didn’t take them an hour to warm up.
The “Hell in a Bucket” opener has a steady keyboard presence, that as you mentioned, is a hallmark of the era.
I think keyboards are a good thing to focus on. I find the entire era is very rich with the keyboard sound because Bruce and Vince were doing such different things on the keyboards. They were playing completely different instruments, but they also play very differently. So you get a very rich, sonically dense sound of the keyboards filling a space that Brent as one keyboard player even with the variety on his sounds, still wasn’t doing.
By this point, “Hell in a Bucket” had been in the repertoire for eight years [it debuted on 5/13/83]. I feel that it’s one of these songs that gave the band a chance to play with some serious raunch. There are not a lot of Grateful Dead songs like that over the years. I felt that “Passenger” always had that and when they were playing it hard, could bring them to a really powerful rock-and-roll place, almost punk rock Grateful Dead. “Hell in A Bucket” is another one, “Victim or the Crime” is another one, and “Picasso Moon” is yet another one. But I feel that “Hell In A Bucket” is one of those songs that when they played it, it got people up.
I love the shows that open with “Cold Rain and Snow,” I love “Half-Step,” “Bertha”—I love all those as openers, but with “Hell in a Bucket” it felt like you were seeing a Saturday night Grateful Dead show even it wasn’t Saturday night. Although interestingly enough, this Soldier Field show is a Saturday night.
I always loved seeing it as an opener. When I heard hear those first notes of them tuning up “Hell in a Bucket” I got really excited. To me, it’s another one of those kind of “Brother Esau” songs that’s a bit of an anomaly. There are no other songs in rock music like “Hell in a Bucket.” It seems that the band’s always having a really good time playing it—that’s something you hear and also see in the video.
What else can you point to from the evening that folks might not expect if they only look at the setlist?
There are quite a few moments with songs that are quite common, generally pretty straightforward songs where people might not perk up when they see them on a setlist. But what I love about the Dead, is that it has nothing to do with the setlist. It has to do with how they’re playing.
There are a few things in this show in particular that just blow my mind in terms of them being in the strangest of places—things that you just didn’t quite expect to be another highlight. “Wang Dang Doodle” is one of them. I’ve always been a fan of the Bob Weir blues slot, whether it was “Rooster,” “Minglewood,” “C.C. Rider” or later “The Same Thing.”
“Wang Dang Doodle” was always one of my favorites. I liked that you never knew where it was going to appear. It could come out of “I Need a Miracle” in the latter part of the second set or it could be in the first set. It also could open a show, which it did in 1983.
Here they were playing “Wang Dang Doodle” in the Bob Weir kind of blues slot in the first set, which they did at most shows. By this point Jerry had been playing with the Midi effects on his guitar for a couple of years now, and he was playing some incredible horn sounds like the saxophone sound on this “Wang Dang Doodle.”
Another thing I love with the Dead is that a lot of the songs they would cover like “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” “Samson and Delilah,” “Me and My Uncle” or this one, it was as though they wrote them. You can tell people “That’s a cover song, an old blues song” and they had no idea. They’re like, “Wow, I thought the Dead wrote that.”
But this version of “Wang Dang Doodle,” in particular, is one of the definitive versions from the last decade of Grateful Dead performances.
In the second set, a similar song I always loved hearing live is “Looks Like Rain.” Sometimes it would just blow you away and this one really does. It comes out of a really good “Foolish Heart.” I think the “Foolish Heart” clocked in around 11 minutes or so. It’s got a really nice jam with a peak during the guitar solo where it just ends abruptly and then goes into the next verse, and it’s followed up with “Looks like Rain.”
I love this “Looks Like Rain.” It feels that Bob is commanding a stadium of 60,000 people. It’s a Saturday night, and here’s Bob with what’s ostensibly kind of a mid-tempo, almost ballady kind of song and he is blowing the roof off the place. If there was a roof. [Laughs.]
It’s really a powerful “Looks Like Rain.” That to me is a sign of a great Grateful Dead show when a song like that can be the one that just knocks you off your feet. In this case, it’s “Looks Like Rain,” amongst “Playing in the Band,” “Terrapin Station” and all that material.
In talking about kind of the lesser expected things, I should also say “Brown-Eyed Women” in the first set. You expect the “Let It Grow” that ends the first set to soar. You expect it to hit those heights—to be complex and dense and dark. It really hits some incredible places. “Brown-Eyed Women,” though, is the song that you’ve heard hundreds of times. This one is elevated, where Jerry is just so present. That’s a real hallmark of this six or eight month period from the spring of ‘91 through the fall ’91—the band is present and engaged in that moment.
Meet-Up at the Movies offers a unique opportunity to commune in those moments, 32 years later with fellow Deadheads.
That’s the thing with Dead & Company getting people into stadiums—there’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like dancing and listening to Grateful Dead music with a lot of people. On the archival side, we don’t do that because we’re putting out CDs and DVDs and projects like that, but this is the one time on the archival side that we can also bring that community together.
I live in Canada and Meet-Up at the Movies hasn’t always played in Canadian theaters, but for the last few years it has. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to go to them and I’m amazed that even when the small theater near my home in Canada has 40 or 50 people in it, it feels like I’m at a Grateful Dead show. There are people whooping and hollering. You look over in the aisle and somebody’s dancing. It’s the community aspect of being a Deadhead that I love. It’s one of my favorite things.
