3/30/2023 0 Comments Touch of grey grateful deadRolling Stone put them on the cover and declared a “New Dawn of the Grateful Dead.” MTV devoted an entire day’s programming, dubbed “Day of the Dead,” to the band, broadcasting from the parking lot outside a show at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium. For one, the media behemoth that had mostly ignored the band was roused from its benign neglect. After “Touch of Grey”? Well, things changed. Before “Touch of Grey” the Grateful Dead were an attraction that, while certainly popular, was still able to duck past the searchlights of the broader American consciousness when it suited them-selling out arenas, sure, but able to play smaller venues as well. SiriusXM’s Grateful Dead channel is among their most popular artist-branded offerings, and the band continues to release archival live recordings at a brisk pace, including limited editions that routinely sell out.īut it’s true, too, that the mid-1980s were an important, and not entirely positive, inflection point for the band. Dead and Company, the band featuring original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, along with upcycled pop star John Mayer on lead guitar, is playing, and selling out, stadiums across the country. ” Today, it’s clear that the Grateful Dead and their music have survived-more than survived-in various forms. Which is ironic, of course, considering the optimistic forecast of the song’s anthemic chorus: “We will get by/We will survive. McNally echoes the longstanding assessment of many observers when he calls “Touch of Grey” “a song that almost killed the Grateful Dead.” Indeed, this was exciting but uncomfortable territory, a branch high enough in the tree to afford an impressive view, but also to begin to feel a bit of sway, a sense of compromised stability. “And he was only somewhat joking,” adds McNally. “And they sort of looked up at me and I said, ‘You’ve made the Top 10’.” Guitarist Jerry Garcia’s response? “I am appalled,” he said. “I said, ‘I have some imposing news to tell you’,” he says. Tim Mosenfelder // Getty Imagesĭennis McNally, then the Dead’s publicist, recalls addressing the assembled musicians backstage one night at Madison Square Garden. The Dead at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 1987.
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