The iconic " Steely" towers over the Las Vegas Strip.
The recent death of La Mesa resident Bill Walton coincided with what may be the final run of what remains of The Grateful Dead, and there is no doubt that, if his health had allowed he would have been at every one of The Dead and Companies residency shows at the new Sphere venue in Las Vegas.
He was one of the born-again Deadheads. I noticed that much, if not most of the content in the news stories surrounding his passing included his gushing comments about The Grateful Dead and the impact they had had on his life. It was almost as if his basketball career was second to who he became as one of the curious followers of what the casual fan might have called " The Dead".
I was late to the party. I got to see them play back in 1990, and once again a year later, but I did not become a Deadhead until I saw the current iteration at The Sphere.
Like many, I considered the era to be over when the band's iconic leader Jerry Garcia died. My wife is like Bill Walton was; he would speak of the band and particularly about its leader in something that was mildly fanatical. Indeed, Jerry Garcia was known uncomfortable with his demi-God status in the hippy culture, and it takes some time to figure out why it all got so big, so ongoing, and still vibrant today, almost sixty years after they started their long strange trip.
I think I understand it now, but I had to see it and hear it to get it.
The Dead and Company, as the remainders of the band are now known, recently started a residency at the new Sphere venue, and after seeing their opening night without me my wife insisted that we had to go see, it because, she explained, The Dead and Co. were not just a cover band rehashing out the old favorites, but that like the venue itself, it was something new and amazing. The band was revitalized and alive again somehow. It was important for her that I understood what it was that they meant to her, and that is what it was with Bill Walton. He wanted to tell everybody about it, because for them, what it was had been something profound, something beyond music. Mr. Walton and my wife both seemed to have had life-altering changes because of this culture and the music.
We navigated the curiously packed San Diego Airport and made our way to Sin City. On the approach, you can see The Sphere, and the other past wonders, like the pyramid of The Luxor. Our flight had been delayed and it was a mad scramble to the venue to arrive after they started. We found our seats with empty bellies and immediately it became clear that this venue was as much a part of the show as the band.
The Sphere must be experienced., it cannot be properly described. Like a Deadhead trying to explain the band to someone who had never heard of them, trying to describe The Sphere is like trying to describe a rainbow to a blind person; it feels like the future. There are something like 40 individual speakers per seat and the venue can have some sections receive audio in Chinese, and some in English, because the sound is focused like a laser beam. The scale is massive and incredible visuals and giant screens of the band play at the same time. For a short time, it was hard to judge the band as the visual experience was demanding my attention.
I couldn't help but be impressed by the musicianship of the relatively young John Mayer, and the rest of the new blood in The Dead. He was doing many of the key licks of Jerry Garcia, but taking them a bit further in some ways. His vocals were not trying to sound like Jerry at all, but all the words were there in all the right places.
In short order, I was dancing with the rest of the arena. Back in my day, when the band did their drums and space thing, that was bathroom and beverage time. The band does a drum section of the show, where this giant contraption with dozens of drums and assorted instruments is played by three members of the band. This is when the haptic seats became noticeable. The seats move and/or have speakers in them, because when the drums hit certain notes you can feel it through the chair. The sound seems to be three-dimensional, at times bouncing noticeably off the front, back, and sides and changing direction. It was not like panning a speaker left and right, it was all around you/ Then, the original drummer Mickey Hart did something with an instrument called the beam and triggered light effects that were unlike anything I had ever experienced before. A one-hundred-and-fifty-foot brain appeared on the screen with the nerves pulsating as triggered by whatever it was he was doing. It was incredible! I would pay the ticket price just to see that one aspect again.
We came back for the Friday show with better seats and again on Saturday. Each night the emotional impact built on me. These old favorite songs were new again.
The Grateful Dead is an acquired taste. It took me three decades to acquire it, to become born again Dead. That's how it works for many of us; you have these great old songs, and because you grew up hearing them on the radio, memories of key life events become associated with the songs, so when you get to experience it again, it can be that the realization that the songs are timestamps of moments in your life, it hits deep.
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I wanted to better understand this hippy culture and the way that it did not seem to be fleeting because I have known people who are like Bill Walton was; not just a fan, but more of a disciple. It was not enough for folks like Bill Walton to attend shows put on by the band, they were prone to something that felt like the proselytizing of a religious zealot, where they had to tell everybody how profound the experience was and convince them that they had to come along. They would declare things like, " You got to get on the bus, man!" and look at you with a big smile hoping you'd say yes.
For many, including myself, it was like trying to describe a rainbow to a blind person.
My significant other is one of these acolytes of the band, and in particular, the late guitarist Jerry Garcia. She kept showing me videos of The Sphere in Las Vegas, and there seemed to be a buzz building in the online chatter groups that the venue was a must-see. ( end extra? Content)
"I am the human being that I am today because of the Grateful Dead": Bill Walton attended at least 859 shows
I had a friend who was one of the more hardcore Dead fanatics back in the day. He insisted that this was something I had to see. " A band beyond description." He bought me tickets to a set of weekend shows in a college field called Cal State Dominguez Hills. He proudly declared these his first Miracles. I had no idea what he meant, but could not resist a free concert, plus, he was very sincere about the band, in an almost sentimental way, sharing it with me seemed important to him, so on May 5th, 1990 I attended my first Grateful Dead concert with my best friend at the time, a drummer named Steve Harris.
I was into progressive rock; polished bands delivering tight, note-for-note performances of often complex music. It was extremely hot. We were sitting fairly close to the stage on the grass. I remember a lady in front of us said, " I wish I knew somebody who was at their first show," and my buddy quickly spoke up that it was mine.
" Here," she said, handing me a tiny square of colored paper, about the size of a tic taco, " eat this."
I looked at Steve for assurance that I'd be alright, and she gave us both a 16-hour psychedelic ride. I had never experienced LSD before, and after about one hour the situation became almost overwhelming. The band strolled out onto the stage well before the gift she had given had kicked in and proceeded to take about five minutes tuning and making various disorganized sounds from their instruments, which was not something I had ever seen before. And when they started, they kind of fell into the song, the vocals kind of...sloppy seeming. The crowd seemed to approve, but I wasn't getting it. I didn't hear any of the songs from them I had heard on the radio. At one point they took a break and the drummers played what seemed like a long section with drums only before the rest of the band came out. What followed was the strangest thing I had ever seen musicians do. It was like they were intentionally playing bad and making discordant sounds that did not seem to link together in any discernable way.
It sounded, in my altered state, weird and almost...ominous. My buddy Steve leaned over to me and said, " Space."
I remember feeling almost annoyed because there was so much hype going on about how good these guys were. Finally, they started a song the crowd seemed to recognize, and it was like the whole audience exhaled at once and relaxed in unison, this guy who looked more like a grandfather than a Rockstar started to sing something about needing a miracle every day. Steve explained that a Miracle wasn't Just a free concert ticket, it was a gift.
We eventually had to leave the venue, but were in no condition to drive. Steve played his current favorite on the cassette player in his car, a slower number called " Box of Rain " while we waited. He explained that the song was about the bass player's father dying of cancer. I remember still not getting it, Saying something like they sounded like a low-budget CSN and Young with passable but loose harmonies.
Eventually, my friend died of cancer. When I hear the song Box of Rain now I am taken back to the good times we shared before the sickness blossomed in him like a poison flower, and invariably I will weep.
On the last night of the three shows people were doing the exit shuffle, and at one point some escalators brought people up and down from the four levels of the long-term up and escalators face each other, and on each one other last show for us, the people cheered each other as our eyes met. I doubt The Sphere designer intended this, and maybe only hippies would bring that true general love and goodwill for their fellow humans that was shown that night when each escalade became a hippie conveyor belt with people cheering not the band this time, but for each other.
They Love Each other and Lord, you can see that it's true.
The Sphere is a must-see attraction in Las Vegas. Even if you think you hate The Grateful Dead, you should try to see a show and take in the history that is displayed at the casino adjacent to the music venue. If you want to see the people who are devoted followers of the band and know what they are about, you go to a thing called Shakedown Street. That's where artists who make the tee shirts like Bill Walton wore, and a great many other creative things congregate, this time with the facilitation of the city and casinos. You can ask them what it was about the band, and for many, they will just say, " They are a band beyond description." Others will articulate it. They might explain that for many of them, the music of the Grateful Dead and the community that it created was as close to a religious experience for them as they ever got. Jerry Garcia was the reluctant High Priest. He was never reluctant to perform music, but he saw himself as a working man, not somebody to make a demi-God out of.
Back home, I sought out the local Dead cover band scene. There are around a dozen bands In San Diego that play most Grateful Dead music, and no less than 1,800 bands nationwide with at least six of them being full-time touring acts capable of selling thousands of concert tickets.
One of the San Diego bands has played Winston's bar in Ocean Beach every Monday night for over thirty years, and it's usually packed with an enthusiastic crowd. They are called Electric Waste Band. The other prominent band is called Easy Wind, with a relatively new band called Diego Dead bringing a lot of energy, the scene around all things related to The Grateful Dead seems bigger still than any other band. There is no other band that has six different cover bands playing its music exclusively every single weekend, in just one town.
The long strange trips seem like they will be going on for a while. The Dead and Co call their run at The Sphere " Dead Forever " and at least in our culture, I cannot imagine anything that will surpass the love and long-term devotion the fans of the band share for the music and each other.
I get it now.
