CENTERSTAGE

CENTERSTAGE

DEAD ON DEAD

BOB DYLAN & THE GRATEFUL DEAD Anaheim Stadium (July 26, 1987)

Roy Trakin

A scant two weeks before, I was walking up Seventh Avenue in NYC with my wife. We were in town for the New Music Seminar, and we passed by the PolyGram building where I used to work, between 51st and 52nd, just as a group of people were emerging from a nondescript Irish restaruant. It was about two in the morning—and oppressively humid. A guy wearing a grey sweatshirt with the hood pulled up tight around his head passed right in front of us and I jabbed an elbow into my wife’s side so as to check him out, a gesture that didn’t elude the object of my excitement. “Yeahh,” the familiar nasal, sing-song voice mocked. “Tell her who it is, maaan...” Well, if he didn’t wanna be noticed, why’s he dressed for winter in 95 degree temperatures? Without missing a beat, I kept walking and tossed over my shoulder, “Sorry, but, I couldn’t help myself,” as I segued to the Carnegie Deli for pastrami on rye. Of course, it was Bob Dylan.

Fast forward to 14 days later: a forlorn figure on a stage several hundred yards away is mangling a rushed version of what sounds like “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but one can’t be sure due to the dual distortions of stadium amplification and Dylan’s gnarly, allwrong delivery. The familiar tune’s nearly indistinguishable ’cept for those words, which even the echoey loudspeakers can’t block out. Oh yea, he’s wearing the same sweatshirt.

This was the sixth and final show of the much-ballyhooed, historic concerts bringing together the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, in what some pundits had dubbed the Grandpop Rock tour. With the (shall we say?) relaxed approach both have to the rigors of rehearsal, it wasn’t surprising that this pairing was a tad looser than the previous Dylan-Petty collaboration. The expansive tone was set with a pair of typically laidback hour-long Dead sets, which began at 5 p.m.t but really got underway long before that in the stadium parking lot, where the incredible bazaar these psychedelic survivors still inspire attempts to turn the clock back to—oh, well, I give up, but let’s just say when I was a lad with stars in my eyes and drugs in my head. Would your rather have your daughter swathed in peasant garb and kerchiefs, or looking like a 42nd Street hooker in garter and bra? Yer choice, oh childrearing baby boomers, but note, Bob Weir was wearing a Madonna T-shirt. It all seemed rather benign to me, and the Dead sounded in fine fettle, though this recovered Deadhead kicked the habit years ago when I noticed how s-l-o-o-o-w the band played. Now, they’re in favor again as New Age music for old long-hairs. What a long, strange trip it’s been, folks. It’s like the joke about the guy doing acid who’s stopped by the cops and asked how fast he thought he was going. “70?.. .80?.. .100?...” he replies, and the policeman goes, “No, man, you were going 15 miles per hour.” Oh wow.

Actually, by the time Dylan came on, about three-and-a-half hours into the whole thing, I felt I’d more than quenched my roots by catching some vintage Jerry Garcia fourand-a-half finger exercises on such inconcert classics finally committed to vinyl as “West L.A. Fadeaway” and Bob Weir’s “Throwing Stones.” Phil Lesh remained the invisible tie that binds the lighter-than-air jams to some semblance of terra firma, while the balding, pauching Bill Kreutzmann and the still-thin Mickey Hart proceeded to take a vintage Apocalypse Now drum trip in which the rest of the band actually left the stage for a cigarette break. There was even one of those inevitable Stevie Nicks-type earth mothers spinning like a top to the Dead’s magical (to their fans)/boring (to their detractors) improvisations, just as her predecessors first did at the Fillmore West twenty years ago during the Summer of Love.

And don’t think Bobby Zee didn’t notice the irony of the situation, performing to 45,000 or so out-of-time hippies young enough to be his kids. There was a scabrous bent to the set, as opposed to the mostly album-rock anthems he chose to perform with the Heartbreakers last time around. Mocking the Dead’s ethos of survival, Dylan chose to stare his own obsolesence square in the eye with a howl of protest. His repertoire was idiosyncratic, to say the least... “Chimes Of Freedom,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” “Rainy Day Women,” “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” “Simple Twist Of Fate,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “Memphis Blues Again,” “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Pretty harsh fodder for a crowd which responded most to the sardonic refrain, “Everybody must get stoned.” Or meet their Maker on Seventh Avenue.

The finale was a searing version of "All Along The Watchtower,” with Bob and Jerry dueling and dancing on the edge, putting off the dark night of the soul with words and chords. The Dead returned for an encore of “Touch Of Grey,” a pleasant-enough ditty which concludes with “I Will Survive”—but Dylan’s fare-thee-well was the foreboding, mournful “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” Light and dark. The yin and yang. The old and the forever young pass the torch to the next g-g-g-generation. By this time, Dylan’s changed his sweatshirt.