DEAD RECKONING #2

SHOW: Bickershaw Festival, May 7, 1972 EYEWITNESS: Mark Cooper

I AM RIDING pillion on a friend’s motorcycle, heading north on the A1 to Wigan, going down the road feeling, well, a little bad. I have no schooling in how to flow with the bike and I keep threatening to put my foot down on the tarmac as we turn another bend. Death has no mercy and seems but a roundabout away.

It is to be my second Grateful Dead show after my first communion with the band at Wembley’s vast Empire Pool the previous month. I am 19 and my hair has grown since I cut it all off to please my parents before starting university some six months ago. We have no camping equipment, no rain gear, and no food but I know things will work out fine. After all, we have the stash…

Although I have pored over On The Road and The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, I have yet to visit the US. However, I have taken to playing

American Beauty at least once a day on my grey Dansette, in company or alone. I have stared at the ceiling to

Live Dead and inhaled the street wisdom of Wharf Rat from ‘Skull Fuck’, the double live album that came out the week of my last haircut. None of this had quite prepared me for the glory of the Dead at Wembley. The vast speaker stacks, the size of the crowd, the smell of dope, the band’s sudden shifting of moods, Garcia’s endless lyrical soloing, Bob Weir’s complex chords, Pigpen’s menacing biker growl, Donna Godchaux’s waist-length hair waving to the beat, the abundance of new Western shuffles like He’s Gone or Jack Straw, the quality of the songs from both Garcia and Weir’s new solo albums, the freeform trip to the stars and back in the second set. The Dead were laid-back yet electric. They certainly didn’t behave like stars, and they exuded bonhomie. Garcia seemed like the wisest of elder brothers, twinkling behind his glasses, his beard, and his guitar. They seemed happy to transport us beyond tattered reason and bring us back with a shrug, a smile, and the joyous Sugar Magnolia.

Wembley was a glorious evening, but Bickershaw was a trip to hell and back. I couldn’t walk at first after six hours on the back of the bike and then I couldn’t walk because of the mud. It rained all weekend as we crouched beneath some helpful plastic sheeting and stared at the bonfires that started at night. I can’t remember what I ate, if anything, and the site stank, but Captain Beefheart and Dr John both underlined my current certainty that all musical wisdom emanated from America. Finally, on Sunday evening, as the Dead took the stage, the sun came out through the clouds, and all was right with the world.

I make my way towards the front although the area beneath the stage is flooded. I stare up at the giant screens and put my life in the Dead’s hands. In the second set they play both The Other One and Dark Star, one moment free of all moorings, the next locking into some heaven-sent groove. It’s like Test cricket, intermittently boring, suddenly on fire. Then they lurch into Merle Haggard’s mournful Sing Me Back Home. Garcia is the doomed prisoner, begging the warden to allow his guitar-playing friend to make his old memories come alive, and he’s the guitarist, climbing into heart-rending solo after solo. I don’t think I’ve ever been sadder. Or happier.

I have no idea how I got back south but I can promise you that in 1972, the Grateful Dead were The Greatest Band In The World.

“It’s like Test cricket, intermittently boring, suddenly on fire.”