Grateful Dead Albums: The Best of the Rest

The definitive document of the Dead onstage in the Sixties, designed to communicate the essence of the band in their most comfortable setting. Recorded in early 1969 on their hometurf, Fillmore West and Avalon Ballroom with then-state-of-the-art 16-track technology, Live/Dead captures their lysergic blues lightning with classic versions of the epic trip “Dark Star” and Phil Lesh’s spiraling”The Eleven.” There’s also “Turn On Your Lovelight,” a primo biker-soul moment from Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Jerry Garcia’s beautifully forlorn “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” and, as a show-ending farewell, their raggedly sweet a cappella version of the Bahamian field recording “We Bid You Goodnight.” J.D.

Often overshadowed by the empyrean heights of Europe ’72, this live double-LP is still one of the most concisely enjoyable documents of the Dead in the early Seventies. With a generous helping of covers that highlight the band’s country and early-rock roots (“Mama Tried,” “Me & Bobby McGee,” “Johnny B. Goode”), it adds context to the breakthroughs made the previous year on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty — and with a handful of energetic originals in that tradition (particularly Garcia/Hunter’s “Bertha” and Weir/Hunter’s “Playing in the Band”), it shows how inspired the Dead’s songwriters were in this era. The band’s proposal to call the album Skull Fuck has become a legend among fans, propelled by the colorful recounting of Warner Bros. exec Joe Smith: “I said, ‘You worked so hard, and if you call it that, we’ll only sell it in headshops, and we won’t get paid for it,’” he told RS’ David Browne in 2015’s So Many Roads. In the end, most fans called it Skull & Roses after the iconic cover art, and it earned the Dead their first gold certification for sales above half a million records. SVL

The band’s third live album documented their tour of Western Europe, ambitiously released as a triple LP in hopes that Warner would recoup the money spent overseas (more than 40 people came along for the ride). From Bob Weir’s rollicking “One More Saturday Night” to Jerry Garcia’s elegiac 10-minute “Morning Dew,” Europe ’72 maintained the argument that the band was best heard live. It also marked the last record with Ron “Pigpen” McKernan — who died months after its release — and the arrival of husband and wife Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux. “We were playing so much that we had hot hands,” Weir told Rolling Stone in 2011. “Our heads were loose, our hearts were open and the music was flowing.”AM

With only Bill Kreutzmann accompanying him, Garcia conjures both the singing-gambler and mad-musical-scientist sides of the Dead on what is arguably the best outside-mothership project. In addition to introducing songs that would become stage favorites—he and Hunter’s doomy “Loser,” rollicking “Deal” and tweeting “Bird Song,” their homage to Janis Joplin — Garcia is also a showcase for Garcia’s guitar and pedal steel playing, since he handled all the parts himself. The sound-effects collages play into the Dead’s oddball tendencies — and you may even recognize one of those tracks (“Eep Hour”) from its use in a long-ago Cher perfume ad. DB 

The Dead’s first attempt to make a radio-friendly rock record—and help prop up their own newly launched and self-distributed label—makes its intentions known right away: The playful, Nixon-era boogie of “U.S. Blues” actually was a single (if not a top 40 hit). That same sense of  accessible Dead boogie enriches “Scarlet Begonias,” which would also be a repertoire regular for decades, and Lesh’s jaunty honky-tonker “Pride of Cucamonga.” But it’s not all sunshine daydreams, as the chilling ballad “China Doll,” the maybe-autobiographical “Ship of Fools” and Lesh’s lush but tangled “Unbroken Chain” attest. DB