Grateful Dead
with The Beach Boys
1971-04-27
Fillmore East
New York, NY
Soundboard Recording
256 kbps
Artwork Included
CD 1;
1st Set
01. Tuning
02. Truckin’
03. Mama Tried
04. Bertha
05. Next Time You See Me
06. Cumberland Blues
07. Me & My Bobby McGee (not included - officially released)
08. Loser
CD 2:
1st Set (continued)
01. Hard To Handle
02. China Cat Sunflower
03. I Know You Rider
04. Casey Jones (not included - officially released)
2nd Set
05. Sugar Magnolia
06. Deal
07. Me & My Uncle
08. Bird Song
CD 3:
2nd Set (continued)
01. Tuning
02. Playing In The Band
03. Tuning/Stage Noise
04. Dire Wolf
05. Tuning
06. Searchin’ (with the Beach Boys)
07. Riot In Cell Block #9 (with the Beach Boys)
08. Good Vibrations > I Get Around (Beach Boys solo)
09. Help Me Rhonda (with the Beach Boys)
CD 4:
2nd Set (continued)
01. Okie From Muskogee (with the Beach Boys)
02. Johnny B. Goode (with the Beach Boys)
03. Tuning
04. Sing Me Back Home
05. Uncle John’s Band (not included - officially released)
06. Turn On Your Lovelight (not included - officially released)
Beach Boys present for this show are:
Mike Love
Carl Wilson
Bruce Johnston
Al Jardine
The Grateful Dead are
Jerry Garcia - lead guitar, vocals
Bill Kreutzmann - drums
Phil Lesh - electric bass, vocals
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan - vocals, harmonica, organ, percussion
Bob Weir - rhythm guitar, vocals
In 1999, Fire Power, a Japanese bootleg label, released The Beach Boys Meet The Grateful Dead: Live At Fillmore East 1971. Possibly the first time a silver disc bootleg of this show appeared. However, versions of this show have circulated but without The Grateful Dead and Beach Boys both performing Help Me Rhonda.
In June, 2011, a torrent site upped a version of this show that had the complete Help Me Rhonda. It came with this interesting note about the lineage:
“I decided to put this out for a number of reasons but mainly it’s an improvement as to what circulates. The main reason being Will’s reels (Wilson Boswell) are in prime condition and have never had to be baked over a number of times. The exact lineage of all the April ‘71 Fillmore East reels are still a mystery so perhaps we will really never know the whole story BUT some low gen reels @ 7.5 ips have survived in one piece and these are some of them.
“According to the story from Wilson and Pat Lee, Peter Kafer and Bill Gadsden ‘purchased’ the supposed masters from a guy named Buddy Miller (now a country musician) and brought them up to the Northwest for them to copy back in 1973. Will’s are 7.5 ips. and Pat’s are 3.3/4 ips. Nobody for sure knows exactly which were masters since Buddy decided to keep a few for himself which is truly the crux of the mystery or if even Buddy had masters himself.
“I realize in some circles this is considered heresy but it’s true and until Buddy comes forward and flat out states he had masters this should be considered as a possibility. We can only now just listen carefully and try to figure it out that way. Anyhow please enjoy!”
As if a retort, on July 8, 2011, a Pink Floyd torrent site upped a similar torrent of the Grateful Dead with The Beach Boys at Fillmore East, April 27, 1971. The sharer says his tapes come from famed Dead fan Charlie Miller who transferred and mastered the show in 2008. But this version from Miller’s tape was again remastered on July 6, 2011. The sharer said his set 2 was “seamless” whereas the one here uses tracks from the “Ramrod source” to patch in several songs from set 2.
Miller is well known for liberating and cleaning up Grateful Dead soundboards. Where he got his copy is unknown. Go here to see full details of the Charlie Miller version.
This version we share uses Wilson Boswell’s tape sourced from “Buddy Miller” but includes patches from the Ramrod source and the 16-track source. Go here to see full details.
While all the above is important to archivists, it should be noted that these are probably the best sounding tapes you’ll hear until the Dead release the full show.
The other interesting thing of note is the Beach Boys performance. The week-long shows at Fillmore East were to mark the closure of the famed venue and among the guests invited were The Beach Boys and Duane Allman.
You can hear Mike Love trying to sound hip. This was 1971, with the band struggling to regain their form despite critically acclaimed albums like Sunflower (1970) and the soon to be released Surf’s Up (August 1971). Chart success had not been forthcoming and the only recent top 5 single was their remake of the Harry Belafonte song “Cottonfields”.
When introducing Good Vibrations, Mike Love says, “How about a song that reflects these really fucked-up times?”
He even namechecks the Buffalo Springfield in the middle of “Good Vibrations”. “We did this one night with the Buffalo Springfield - all stoned and drunk - and it sounded great.”
When the band get to their third Beach Boys hit, it is an extended version of “Help Me Rhonda”. “We took one of our old songs,” says Love, “that we tried to kinda just make an arrangement the way it would sound if it was written out.” The added space allows the Dead to move around and fill.
But when the boys sing Okie From Muskogee with the Dead, you know who are the Okies. Despite their adoption of transcendental meditation and the drastic change of appearance from clean cut kids in matching striped shirts to heavily bearded “Pilgrims from New England”, the stigma remained that they were a pop band. The Dead, however, were at their peak in the early ’70s.
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