San Francisco Chronicle pop culture Peter Hartlaub is lookin’ for a miracle, man. After working his way to successful blogger and media correspondent, Hartlaub was preparing a piece on the “Summer Of Love” when he was presented with a packet of photos from the society files of the Chronicle from 1966. A tumultuous time in our nations history, the trinity of sex, drugs and rock and roll were joined by full rebellion, as the Vietnam war raged on while minds were expanding back state side. A hold out ritual of the fading old guard, a debutante’s ball, was held and for entertainment the got an unknown band, the recently renamed Grateful Dead.
Bill Young, San Francisco Chronicle photographer, was assigned to shoot the Debutante Ball of Ayn and Lyn Mattei, a society event this combat veteran was nmore than ready for. What he ended up recording was something more than another societal ball, he ended up capturing some of the earliest images of the then freshly named Grateful Dead in existence. The band appears to have been hired to play the Ball, in what we can only hope was a sitcom worthy comedy of errors that was the results of the straights “…just not gettin’ it, man.”
The members of the band, including Pigpen, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzman can be seen wandering through the back ground then taking a make shift stage. Again, these are the only images that survive the evening, so we can only assume that the grey haired dancers reacted to the music by comically squeezing their eyes shut while plugging their ears with their fingers. Oh, and that also there was a wide variety of personal assumptions challenged, life altering revelations had and at least one total freak out from those that sampled the punch after set break.
There’s Pig[en on the left, Lesh in the center and Billy K pm the right.
Writer Hartlaub wrote the story of his find in his column for the Chronicle’s online blog, and reached out at the time of publication to see if he could find anyone who had attended, but as of yet has had no luck. It’s likely that those in attendance were of an ge that they were making life choices that would scatter them to the wind. Add to that that it was the late sixties, and a lot of people changed fairly drastically, and some simply vanished, into thin air and themselves. But he shouldn’t have to search alone.
It turns out that the “Selfie Generation” didn’t invent getting pictures of themselves in front of the band. Makes you wonder if these folks know who it was they ended up using as a backdrop. At least one person was dancin’ like no one was lookin’, though.
We hear at Live For Live Music would like to help Hartlaub’s mission by sharing this story in hopes that one of you readers might recognize the lucky few who got to see a show. It’s kinda funny to think of the dozens of uninterested listeners in attendance that night, that hundreds of thousands of people would dearly loved to have been there. So if any of the faces in the photographs look familiar to you, from old photos like these, ask your cool aunt or weird uncle what year they first saw the Grateful Dead. Their answer might just surprise you, and help solve a mystery for us all.
All photos credited to Bill Young of The San Francisco Chronicle, circa 1966.
Additional information for this article was gathered from The San Francisco Chronicle,the online publication SFGATE and the writings of Peter Hartlaub.
