40 Toronto friends fly to Chicago for Grateful Dead’s final shows,
T.O. fans commandeer flight for three gigs in Chicago
When the Grateful Dead announced they would play three farewell shows this weekend in Chicago, Larry Feldman knew what he had to do: get his closest friends really high. Teaming up with friend Scott Goodman, he arranged for 40 Toronto Deadheads to commandeer Friday’s Porter Airlines Flight 387, travelling en masse to the Dead’s final farewell.
In an army-green Dead shirt, bead necklace and backward cap, Feldman, 43, giddily kissed cheeks and clapped backs of lifelong friends, one carrying a mandolin, another with a stuffed Jerry Garcia doll, in the lounge at Billy Bishop Airport. A chiropractor by day, Feldman also plays guitar and sings in the popular Grateful Dead tribute band Mars Hotel.
Doctors, lawyers, teachers, an actor and one of Porter’s own vice-presidents were among the group en route to Chicago, each paying $310 for the flight and buying tickets to all three shows, to celebrate one last jam with the Dead’s surviving “core four” — Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. Sunday marks the last of five reunion shows with Phish singer Trey Anastasio on lead guitar and tackling the vocals originally sung by Garcia, who died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 53.
Garcia’s death capped the band’s 30-year career. Pioneers of psychedelic music in the 1960s, the Dead brought improvisation to rock music, playing 2,318 shows together and releasing 140 albums, most of which were live.
The farewell tour has been this summer’s hottest ticket. All three of this weekend’s shows at 70,000-seat Soldier Field sold out, as did the two June shows in Santa Clara, Calif. And true to tradition, its Grateful Dead Ticketing Service sold a block of seats via mail order. More than 500,000 hopefuls requested tickets, which ranged from $80 (U.S.) to $200, once more on a 3-by-5-inch index card placed in a No. 10 envelope. Most were disappointed — roughly 10 per cent of requests were filled, with tickets awarded to those with the earliest postmark.
Prices on the ticket resale market were running as high as $2,000 back in March, Forbes reports, but have since settled to an average of about $600. On Friday night, the cheapest ticket available on StubHub for Saturday’s show was about $300. Many who followed the band around can recite the number of shows they’ve seen. Goodman, a 47year-old vice-president of human resources, first discovered the Grateful Dead as a young “wannabe hippie” alongside Feldman’s older brother, Dave. “It was like 1967 still existed, and it travelled around with the Grateful Dead,” Goodman says. When Sunday’s encore wraps, Goodman will have seen 58 shows, Larry Feldman will have seen 80 and Dave Feldman will have seen a whopping 107. However, the Most Dead-icated Deadhead of the group is Tevan Houpt. The 49-year-old has been to well over 100 shows, paying his way at one point by selling amethyst, agate and geode crystals to like-minded Deadheads.
Dressed Friday in a tie-dye T-shirt and matching tie-dye socks, he calls the Deadheads his extended family. “Most of us here are Jewish,” he says. “I consider myself a Deadhead before I consider myself a Jew.”
Andrea Rooz, 48, has seen 22 shows. The voice actor recalls having her young mind expanded as she witnessed the original hippie generation tripping out on roller-coasters during the Dead’s show at Kingswood Music Theatre at Canada’s Wonderland in 1986.
While a pop-culture “farewell” is no guarantee of a goodbye, for Goodman, this is where he gets off the bus (or plane). “I see it as a chance to say thank you and goodbye,” he says.