In late April 1985, as the Grateful Dead played a two-show run at Stanford University’s Frost Amphitheatre, author and radio show host David Gans had a proud moment when he brought some of the first copies of his new book to the show to distribute. Playing In The Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead, an officially sanctioned biography of the band co-authored with Peter Simon. In progress since 1982, the book was completed and published in time to coincide with the Grateful Dead’s 20th anniversary as a band, whose then-current lineup consisted of Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals), Bill Kreutzmann (drums) and Mickey Hart (drums) The book also took fond looks back at former members Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (vocals, keyboards, harp), Tom Constanten (keyboards), Keith Godchaux (keyboards, vocals) and Donna Godchaux (vocals), songwriting partners Robert Hunter and John Barlow, and many other people and events that became part of the band’s history.
By any standard of the day, 20 years of being a working band was a nice milestone, but up until now, Grateful Dead-related anniversaries were something the band studiously ignored. In his book What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been, Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally humorously disclosed that a pair of 1980 shows at Boulder, CO’s Folsom Field on June 7th and 8th had been booked and advertised as the band’s 15th anniversary shows, but after a strong yet uneventful first show containing no musical surprises or even an onstage acknowledgement of the anniversary, it came to light that apparently no one had actually told the band. Once told, they’d collectively shrug but open the second show with a medley of “Uncle John’s Band” and “Playing in the Band” to give the crowd one special moment.
However, by 1984, McNally had been hired as the band’s full-time publicist, and he ensured the band wouldn’t forget to acknowledge their 20th anniversary, first by confirming to Garcia during a spring band meeting that Deadheads would want them to revive some “old stuff” for the upcoming tour. And instead of a tie-dyed or rainbow backdrop behind the band at the band’s annual run of shows at the Greek Theatre, San Francisco artist Rick Griffin was commissioned to create a striking blue “Twenty Years So Far” banner featuring a skeleton minuteman figure standing in front of a waving American flag, holding Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar instead of a musket. The design was also replicated on the band’s official tour merchandise that summer and would become yet another enduring Griffin/Grateful Dead image.
Despite the band’s protestations to the contrary it became clear the anniversary meant something to them, because the next month they’d deliver the best and most consistent show-to-show tour during the band’s so-called dirty ’80s era that lasted from the beginning of 1983 until the middle of 1986, when Garcia’s offstage health and substance abuse issues rendered shows and tours consistently inconsistent, albeit with moments of brilliance that kept almost everyone coming back. On top of the rare consistency from show to show, no other tour from the era contains as many “big moments” over the space of just 14 shows.
GREEK THEATRE — BERKELEY, CA
The summer leg of the Twenty Years So Far tour launched with three shows on the band’s Bay Area home turf at Berkeley’s 8,500-capacity Greek Theatre at University of California, Berkeley, by now a favorite outdoor venue for both band and Deadheads alike. The band held an annual three-night run there from 1981 to 1989, and while every year delivered at least one special show, this was a year where all three nights were exceptional.
Friday, June 14th
While the actual date of the band’s formation was acknowledged to be on or around June 7th, 1965, the cancellation of the previous weekend’s shows in Sacramento meant the opening night of the Greek run on June 14th was now the band’s “20th anniversary” show. Much to the band’s chagrin, McNally even made the band endure a rare press conference on the afternoon of the show, which contained an exchange discussing the band’s decision to cancel the previous weekend’s shows at Sacramento’s Cal Expo Amphitheatre (so they could attend the San Francisco Opera’s performance of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle). It also had some unintentional foreshadowing when a journalist asked how the band would react if, “God forbid…you had a hit (single?),” a question met by total silence before Weir made a quip about installing electric fencing around his house, a successful attempt to avoid a serious answer and get to the next question.
Just before the band came onstage at 7 p.m., The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” played over the PA, an appropriate choice with its “twenty years ago today” lyric. The band went old-school to start, opening with their ’60s arrangement of the Motown hit “Dancing in the Street” ahead of solid versions of “West L.A. Fadeaway”, Ma Rainey’s “C.C. Rider”, the traditional “Peggy-O”, and Weir’s “Hell In A Bucket” before repeated equipment issues forced a temporary halt to the set. When it resumed, there were fireworks, starting with the debut of Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock’s “Keep On Growing”, first made popular by supergroup Derek & the Dominoes and now sung by Lesh and Mydland, to a wild reception. It was immediately followed by the first version of “Stagger Lee” since 1982 before “Let It Grow” and “Deal”, making for a stellar four-song sequence to finish the two-part first set.
The second frame delivered more big moments, starting with “Morning Dew” opening a second set for the first time since 1973. “Playing in the Band” followed and led to a beautiful “China Doll”, and following the band’s signature song “Truckin’”, Garcia added yet another breakout to the show through the band’s first version of “Comes A Time” since 1980. All in all, this one was as good as the first night of a tour would ever get, and one show in it seemed that the band had also taken McNally’s advice to revamp the setlists.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
Saturday, June 15th
Saturday’s 5 p.m. show featured a fairly straightforward set with mostly shorter material, highlighted by “Cassidy” and “Dupree’s Diamond Blues”. The second set that took place during nightfall remains one of the most underrated Grateful Dead sets out there, starting with one of the premier versions of “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” from the 1980s. Mydland’s keyboards effectively shadowed and complemented Garcia’s guitar lines throughout “China Cat”, while Lesh added a couple well-placed bass bombs during “Rider”, along with some sublime lowest-end rumbling during Garcia’s final solo. One of the definitive versions of “Lost Sailor” followed, one of those versions where everyone kept on hitting everything just right. Mydland’s keyboard delivery confidently propelled the song forward throughout, all the way to its “drifting and dreaming” crescendo, when Lesh stepped in with some unusually forceful bass lines to put the music over the top as Weir nailed his vocals.
After “Saint of Circumstance”, “Terrapin Station”, “Drums”, and “Space” the band delivered the common pairing of “The Wheel” and “Gimme Some Lovin”, but this time with an adroit transition between the two songs that was so effective it’s a little surprising it was never repeated. Garcia chose to forego a slower ballad as the band delivered a strong “Throwing Stones”, which begat yet another highlight—the set-closing “Not Fade Away” contained a Garcia-and-Mydland-driven peak during the solo before Garcia’s clever lead-in to the song’s last verse. As a final bonus, Garcia delivered a ballad after all, with a rare version of Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me” preceding “U.S. Blues” during the encore.
[Audio: Matthew Vernon]
Sunday, June 16th
Sunday’s 3 p.m. showtime ensured that the entire affair took place in daylight, allowing Bay Area residents to actually get home at a reasonable hour before work on Monday. The first set featured only the second-ever version of Robert Johnson’s “Walkin’ Blues”, with the debut version featuring guest star Boz Scaggs at a benefit show in 1982; from 1987 onwards, the song remained a staple of Weir’s first-set repertoire. Later, “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” and Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land” rounded out the set.
The second set kicked off with the classic pairing of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”, a version so strong that Dead & Company guitarist and sometime pop star John Mayer cites it as his favorite. Weir followed with “Samson & Delilah”, with Weir adding, “In case y’all forgot it’s Sunday,” during its drummed introduction. Deadheads weren’t quite prepared for what happened next, but they have Dennis McNally to thank. Garcia did indeed resurrect one more item of “old stuff” when he sung the first version of “Cryptical Envelopment” in 13 years, doing did what it was always designed to do—provide an introduction and coda to “The Other One”, making a now-unusual appearance on the front side of “Drums”. After Garcia completed the “Cryptical” reprise, the band yielded the stage to the drummers as the crowd celebrated. The rest of the show was era-standard material, but the day and the weekend had already been won in convincing fashion.
[Audio: Matthew Vernon]
ALPINE VALLEY MUSIC THEATRE – EAST TROY, WI
During the 1980s, one of the most reliable stops on the Grateful Dead’s summer tours was Alpine Valley Music Theatre, an outdoor shed in a rural setting with a distinctive, aesthetically pleasing wooden roof, a steep lawn, and a 30,000 capacity, enough to hold the hordes of fans who traveled from Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and elsewhere throughout the upper Midwest to see the band.
Friday, June 21st
Mother Nature also chose to attend Alpine Valley, pouring rain on the crowd during opening night and making for a slippery hillside as the band acknowledged the situation with the opening “Cold Rain & Snow”. Weir’s blues medley of “Meet Me In The Bottom” and Willie Dixon’s “Ain’t Superstitious” followed before Garcia played the newly revived “Stagger Lee”, and Mydland’s seemingly accidental use of a chorus sample added a dramatic touch to the opening line of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” before Weir and Barlow’s “Mexicali Blues”. Afterward, music then opened up for the first time with “Bird Song” before the appropriate “Looks Like Rain”, and a hurried version of “Keep Your Day Job” closed out the first set.
After a tuning that featured the theme from the recently rebooted TV show The Twilight Zone (whose theme the band has scored earlier in the year with longtime collaborator Merl Saunders), “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” kicked off a second set for the first time in nearly two years, and instead of its usual hard stop it contained a clever, short transition into a standout version of “Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad”. The more common pairing of “Estimated Prophet” > “Eyes of the World” led to a lengthier “Drums” and “Space” segments before the set zipped to a close with “Truckin’” > “Black Peter” > “Around & Around” > “Sugar Magnolia”. Garcia’s reflective take on Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” was the encore of the slightly shorter but very energetic set.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
Saturday, June 22nd
Alpine Valley’s second show began normally enough with the common “Hell In A Bucket” and “Sugaree”, but new addition “Walkin’ Blues” and Garcia’s little guitar licks during the final verse of “Candyman” were the first subtle signs that the night could be above special, and Weir’s reading of Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now” bopped along energetically. Garcia responded with a spirited “Althea” before three straight rockers closed the first set, in the forms of “Cassidy”, Brown-Eyed Women”, and “One More Saturday Night”.
On this night, the pre-“Drums” segment was eventful but quick, lasting a surprisingly short 26 minutes. First up was the repertoire’s newest song, Lesh and Mydland’s cover of Derek & the Dominoes’ “Keep On Growing”, debuted a week earlier at the Greek Theatre. This was the only time the song opened a second set, and one of only four times it was ever played. A longtime Garcia favorite, “Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo”, quickly followed, and its performance benefited from its second set placement when the band was fully warm. Weir’s pairing of “Lost Sailor” > “Saint of Circumstance” ushered in a powerful “Drums” segment, with Hart and Kreutzmann making use of an unusually large number of the instruments at their disposal.
Following an effects-laden “Space” segment from Weir and Garcia, another cover version emerged via Mydland’s take on Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” which had been in the live rotation for less than a year (and had not yet found its partner in The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” coda). A short version of “I Need A Miracle” served as the lead-in to Garcia’s late-show ballad choice, “Stella Blue”, and solid versions of “Throwing Stones” and “Not Fade Away” rounding out the set. “Brokedown Palace” finished the two-night stand before Deadheads got a final night of revelry in the notoriously festive Alpine Valley parking lots and made either the drive home or to Cincinnati.
[Audio: Matthew Vernon]
RIVERBEND MUSIC CENTER – CINCINNATI, OH
Monday, June 24th
The first of two Grateful Dead visits Riverbend Music Center was so eventful that 30 years later it became only the second 1985 show to receive an official release, as part of 2015’s 30 Trips Around The Sun box set. The first set’s openers, “Alabama Getaway” and “Greatest Story Ever Told”, warmed the crowd up quickly. Three songs later, after Weir sang “My Brother Esau” he took to his mic for an unexplained joke: during the upcoming set break the band will hold a raffle for which the winner “gets to hold the rhythm section hostage.” After that puzzling routine, the set finished strongly with a compelling “Loser” and a “Let It Grow” that turned its multiple corners nicely over the course of 12 minutes.
The second set started with two percussion-heavy songs, “Iko Iko” and “Samson & Delilah”, before taking a slower, bluesier turn with “He’s Gone” and its segue into “Smokestack Lightning”. From there, though, the set took the turn people were hoping for when a short tease of “The Other One” led to its old-school companion and introduction song, the recently revived “Cryptical Envelopment”. Its short duration led straight to a “Drums” segment that took heavy inspiration from what was to come, and after a “Space” segment filled with Prankster-type noises of honking horns and diabolical laughter, a second “Other One” tease begat Garcia’s reflective “Comes A Time” before finally launching into a full version of “The Other One” and a short “Cryptical’ reprise. The total journey lasted 36 minutes. A second Garcia ballad, “Wharf Rat”, preceded sturdy covers of Chuck Berry’s “Around & Around” and The Rascals’ “Good Lovin” to close the set before a spry “U.S. Blues” encore wrapped up one of the best start-to-finish Grateful Dead shows of 1985.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
BLOSSOM MUSIC CENTER – CUYAHOGA FALLS, OH
Tuesday, June 25th
This show tends to get overlooked because it took place between the high-profile and more widely known Riverbend and Saratoga shows. The show has a rock-harder vibe that is absolutely appropriate to Cleveland, but this go-for-it approach ensured there were numerous miscues and musical misses over the duration of the show, a trade-off that band and fans have long been willing to accept.
The Grateful Dead’s second and final visit to Blossom (the summer home of the Cleveland Philharmonic) started with a bang when Weir called for the band’s garage-rock version of The Beatles’ “Day Tripper” as the first song, complete with some gloriously wide misses in the vocal department. It was the fourth of only five versions the band would ever play, and the only time it ever opened a show. Garcia’s “West L.A. Fadeaway” and Weir’s take on “C.C. Rider” restored comparative order to the proceedings for two songs, but the set’s highlights came from the five-song flurry of “Me & My Uncle” > “Big River”, “Big Railroad Blues”, “Jack Straw” (outside its then-customary role as show opener), and “Might As Well”.
In the second set, Lesh and Mydland teamed up for their spirited cover of “Gimme Some Lovin’” to open before the East Coast tour’s sole pairing of “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”. Next up was an extended 17-minute version of “Playing in the Band” in an era when most versions ran half as long, leading to a flowing, hypnotic “Drums” segment. Later in the set, the “Playing” reprise appeared before Garcia’s delicate “China Doll”, but the show reverted to form via a pair of rockers in set-closer “Sugar Magnolia” and encore “Touch of Grey”. The Grateful Dead properly rocked the Cleveland area on this night, even though the show continues to fly under the radar to this day.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER – SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY
Thursday, June 27th
When you add up the music, the crowd, and the vibe, this was one of the wildest Dead shows of the 1980s. We’re keeping this one a little shorter because this show was covered in detail in our previous retrospective of the Grateful Dead at Saratoga, but we’ll summarize the highlights here. This was still a time when authorities might look the other way when a venue or promoter might choose to oversell its legal capacity if the demand was there, and on this day the attendance at venerated Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center went above and beyond. While the venue’s capacity is 25,103, on this day an astonishing 40,231 Deadheads made it inside the show, which was a banger from the beginning.
A raucous “Midnight Hour” opener preceded “Bertha”, and prior to the newly revived “Stagger Lee”, the band had to pause the show to stop poeple from hanging off the venue’s balcony. It was that kind of night. Later first-set highlights came from “Crazy Fingers”, a rare “Supplication Jam”, and one of the superlative versions of “Hell In A Bucket”. The second set kept up the momentum and featured an only-time-ever segue of “Feel Like A Stranger” > “Eyes of the World” > “Going Down The Road Feelin’ Bad”, with transitions between each song before a stalwart “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” charged straight into “Drums”. Later, a double encore of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” closed out the night.
[Audio: Matthew Vernon]
HERSHEYPARK STADIUM — HERSHEY, PA
Friday, June 28th
Mother Nature attended her second show of the tour on this evening, drenching the crowd in summer rain for much of this stadium show. Adjacent to Hersheypark, an amusement park in southeastern Pennsylvania, the venue remains an efficient location for large-scale concerts due to its location within two hours of both the Philadelphia and Baltimore/Washington, D.C. metro areas. Perhaps because it was cooler outside from the rain, Garcia wore a blue sport coat onstage, a rare instance of him wearing something other than his signature plain t-shirt.
The first set had some lively twists and turns. The band quickly acknowledged the weather with the “Cold Rain & Snow” opener while front of house Dan Healy ran an echo effect on the first line of Garcia’s vocals (an effect usually reserved for Weir), which immediately made everyone play harder for the soaked crowd. The seven-song set also contained the band’s final version of Weir’s “Meet Me At The Bottom” / “Ain’t Superstitious” blues medley before finishing with a rare “triple Jerry” (aka three straight Garcia/Hunter originals) medley, the one-time-only sequence of “Bird Song” > “Comes A Time” > “Deal”.
The second set kicked off with a transcendent performance of “The Music Never Stopped”, a version that remains not a highlight of the dirty ’80s era, but of the Grateful Dead’s 30-year career. As the rainfall continued, the band’s shifting of this customary first-set closer into the second set leadoff position did wonders. Weir chose to relax the song’s quicker tempo ever so slightly to allow the band some extra groove, an approach that paid off spectacularly when the band transitioned into the song’s jazzy 6/8 time middle section. On some nights, this section was little more than a palate-cleaning transition between the body of the song and its extended closing jam based on the song’s three primary chords. However, on this night, the middle section caught fire early and soared steadily upward for nearly three minutes, reaching a stunning peak before Garcia’s lead line surged in over the top in dramatic fashion as Weir found the perfect chords. It’s the sort of moment that everyone who ever turned up at a Dead show hoped to experience, even band members.
The closing jam also starts out a little more slowly, probably so the band could solidify its musical footing after the earlier peak, and this time Mydland’s keyboards played a central role in guiding the jam back up to another surge before the song’s conclusion. The Grateful Dead played 234 versions of “The Music Never Stopped” between 1975 and 1995, but there is no other version quite like this one. If you’re about to hear it for the first time, we’re a little jealous. Enjoy the ride.
Lesh’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” emerged from the aftermath of “Music” and kept people happy, as it was a relatively new addition to the repertoire, making its debut just three months earlier. The rest of the set was pleasurable, and highlights included “Terrapin Station” and the only “Morning Dew” of the tour’s Midwest/East Coast segment, but this one is always going to be remembered for the rain and that version of “The Music Never Stopped.”
[Audio: Matthew Vernon]
MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION — COLUMBIA, MD
Located between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., Columbia, MD holds the Merriweather Post Pavilion, the outdoor shed that served as the summer home of the D.C. orchestra as well as rock, pop, and country shows. However, its location in the middle of a residential area ensured these would be the Grateful Dead’s final pair of shows here because of the logistical issues that Deadheads invariably brought with them. From 1986 through 1995, the band played 35 more shows in the D.C. metro area, consisting of 13 summer shows at Washington’s RFK Stadium and 22 spring or fall shows at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD, but before all that the Grateful Dead’s final Merriweather visit became one of the premium twofers of the dirty ’80s era.
Sunday, June 30th
This Sunday night show was a standout of 1985, to the point where Phil Lesh & Friends chose to recreate the full show in 2016 as part of an ongoing residency at Terrapin Crossroads in 2015 and 2016, where a full show from each of the Grateful Dead’s 30 year career was played through in sequence. The first set was a well-played, relatively standard set for the era, opening with “Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo”, “C.C. Rider”, and “Brown Eyed Women” before Weir’s cowboy tunes pairing of “Mama Tried” and “Mexicali Blues”. But the newly revived “Keep On Growing” suffered from technical issues and a couple musical stumbles, and after this performance it was shelved and only played once more in early 1986.
The “Shakedown Street” that opened the second set remains one of the band’s most popular versions among Deadheads 40 years later, and it’s not hard to hear why. Its extended closing jam hears Garcia’s playing take a wild turn that the band was somehow able to latch onto and follow, and at the jam’s peak, Lesh dropped a perfectly timed bass bomb to complete the knockout blow. Like the version of “The Music Never Stopped” at the previous show, no other “Shakedown” has a moment quite like it.
“Samson & Deliliah” followed and benefited from the momentum surge before “Gimme Some Lovin’”, a second Lesh/Mydland vocal of the night which fared far better than the first. “He’s Gone” followed, but when Weir began leading a transition to “Smokestack Lightning”, Garcia intervened and started steering the music toward the opening notes of “Cryptical Envelopment”. For about a minute, Weir and Garcia carried on an entertaining musical argument, but ultimately Garcia prevailed, and the band banged out “Cryptical” to usher in “Drums”. “The Other One” then made its expected appearance out of “Space”, but Garcia skipped the ”Cryptical” reprise and sailed straight to “Stella Blue” before “Around & Around” and “Sugar Magnolia” closed the set. A “U.S. Blues” encore wrapped up the high-energy evening in fine fashion.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
Monday, July 1st
After “Dancing in the Street” and “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” made for a distinctive ’60s-tinged start to the show, an unusually strong version of the recently introduced “Walking Blues” was the first indication that this could be yet another hot one. The scorching “Let It Grow” that came later did much to increase optimism that fans were in for another long, long, crazy, crazy night ahead.
Sure enough, for a third straight show, the second set launched with a highlight-of-the-era moment, this time in the form of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”. The pairing ran for 22 minutes and hit the usual highlights up to and including Garcia starting his customary descending solo after the final choruses of “Fire”, but then out of nowhere the band collectively jumped into double time for the final minute of the song while Garcia riffed all over it. It was an absolutely electric moment, and for the second straight night, an out-of-nowhere burst of creative madness led to a huge payoff.
However, there was still another hour to go in the set, which continued with “Playing in the Band” > “Uncle John’s Band” that ran for over 21 minutes without losing momentum. Following “Drums” and “Space”, the band stuck with upbeat material for the rest of the set, with “Dear Mr. Fantasy” containing some extra effort from Garcia in the backing vocal department before “Going Down The Road Feelin’ Bad” preceded a “Good Lovin’” with some extra vocal improvisation from Weir. As a final bonus, the band served up a double encore of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” (this song was never rehearsed, and its occasional appearance was nearly always a giveaway that it had been a hot night) and Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
CIVIC ARENA – PITTSBURGH, PA
Tuesday, July 2nd
The sole indoor show of the 1985 summer tour took place at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena, a unique igloo-shaped venue with a retractable dome and iconic status among locals. The weeknight show did not sell out, making for a relaxed, climate-controlled evening for the 11,000 in attendance, and while the show doesn’t equal the four shows that preceded it, it’s still a solid 1985 show.
The brief seven-song first set was short enough to fit on one side of a 90-minute cassette, with highlights including “Jack Straw”, “Friend of the Devil”, “Cassidy”, and “Big Railroad Blues”. The second set started with a brisk “Man Smart, Woman Smarter”, but then the proceedings slowed down for the next hour: “Crazy Fingers” > “Lost Sailor” > “Saint of Circumstance” > “Terrapin Station” > “Drums” > “Space” > “Wharf Rat”. Aside from the upbeat sections of “Saint”, it was an hour of superior songs and music that all happened to be slower, which did eventually affect the show’s overall momentum. Conversely, one of the rare versions of The Beatles’ “Revolution” (there were only ten) started the encore before a “Brokedown Palace” that Garcia had to restart after poking fun at himself for singing and playing the song’s opening lines in the wrong key.
Somewhat surprisingly, 40 years later, the Civic Arena is the only one of the eight venues of the Grateful Dead’s 1985 summer tour that’s not still in operation today. It closed in 2010 in favor of its replacement, PPG Paints Arena, and was subsequently demolished in 2012.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
VENTURA COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS – VENTURA, CA
Despite the fact that the Grateful Dead and its scene were never quite a natural fit in Southern California, the Ventura County Fairgrounds was the happy exception to that rule for much of the 1980s. Located 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles and nestled against the Pacific Ocean, the small city of Ventura was a surfers’ paradise in the middle of an area that was more conservative that one might expect at first glance, but the city recognized a good business opportunity by allowing Deadheads to buy camping passes for the parking lots between the venue and the Pacific Ocean, with the 101 freeway separating the fairgrounds and Deadheads from the city center. The shows from 1985 consisted of two weekend daytime gigs, with venue doors opening at noon for a 2 p.m. show each afternoon.
Saturday, July 13th
Saturday’s show got off to an unusual start with “One More Saturday Night” getting a rare airing outside its usual spot as an encore, opening a show for just the third time in 14 years. It was followed by “Fire on the Mountain”, also a song usually held back until the second set. The rest of the frame was more customary first set material, capped off with “Bird Song” and “The Music Never Stopped”.
The nonstop second set contained only three songs before the “Drums” segment (“Touch of Grey”, “Man Smart, Woman Smarter”, and Terrapin Station”), but it was balanced out by a six-song salvo after “Space” that found the band in general, and Garcia in particular, in top instrumental and vocal form. “The Wheel” preceded the hoped-for “Cryptical Envelopment” > “The Other One” before Garcia slowed down for an excellent “Comes A Time”, with Weir picking the pace back up for “Around & Around” and “Sugar Magnolia”. The seasonally appropriate encore of “U.S. Blues” sent the crowd out to the parking lots/campgrounds by 6 p.m., giving everyone the evening and the night to party away in the oceanside setting. The post-“Space” segment of this show was the high point of the Ventura shows and one of the highlights of the tour.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
Sunday, July 14th
The first set of the final date of the 1985 summer tour featured four well-chosen Weir/Barlow originals in “Hell In A Bucket”, “My Brother Esau”, “Cassidy”, and “Looks Like Rain”, while Garcia interspersed those choices with “They Love Each Other”, “Althea”, and set closer “Might As Well”. Only Garcia’s reworking of Gus Cannon’s 1928 song “Big Railroad Blues” was a cover.
The second set was a generous one by 1985 Grateful Dead standards, with 11 songs covering familiar and popular ground. On the front half, the “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” pairing started things off, and the tour’s sole airing of “Ship Of Fools” preceded the locally appropriate “Estimated Prophet”. The band’s autobiographical anthem “Truckin’’’ kicked off the show’s closing run, and after the common but well-delivered pairing of “Throwing Stones” and “Not Fade Away”, the band wrapped the tour with a quick encore of “Keep Your Day Job”, a song whose lyrics made it unpopular with many Deadheads. This would be one of the song’s final performances before it was permanently shelved after a final performance in April 1986.
[Audio: Jonathon Aizen]
AFTERMATH
The 20th anniversary tour was a success on a financial and especially a musical level, but it would be no barometer for what would happen next. A year later, after the conclusion of the 1986 summer tour, Garcia lapsed into a diabetic coma for five days. Fortunately, he and the Grateful Dead would barely survive. In early 1987, a rejuvenated band recorded their first album in seven years, In The Dark, and it would make anyone at the band’s June 1985 press conference shake their head in disbelief. Not only did the album go platinum with sales of over a million copies in the U.S., it also contained the band’s first (and only) Top 10 single, “Touch Of Grey”.
The resulting success made the band bigger than ever, with the band’s fanbase all but doubling when Generation Xers joined the action, and by 1990 the Grateful Dead and their accompanying scene had become too big to continue playing at nearly every venue on the 1985 summer tour. In Deadhead slang, “The Greek,” “Alpine Valley,” “Blossom,” “Saratoga,” “Merriweather,” “The Igloo,” and “Ventura” had all become places where the Dead were too big to play. They’d each be replaced by sheds or stadiums for the rest of the band’s career, which lasted until 1995 after Garcia’s death from a heart attack at age 53.
But before all that, the 14 shows of the Grateful Dead’s 1985 summer tour were a collective blast.
Dead & Company play three shows celebrating 60 years of the Grateful Dead at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on August 1st–3rd, 2025. Head here for more details on tickets and travel packages.