There was a moment at the end of Dead & Company’s Sunday night performance at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park when you could truly feel gratitude float through the chilly night air. Not from the 60,000 in attendance, but the two men standing with hand to heart on the stage.
Bob Weir and Mickey Hart have taken it upon themselves to continue the legacy started six decades earlier in the very same spot. The Grateful Dead, which they co-founded along with the late Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, had gone on to tour stadiums and have hit records, but they very much remained a local band — as synonymous with the city as the fog.
Photo by Jay Blakesberg
And for that, San Francisco rallied to mark the 60th anniversary in a big way. Flags bearing the Dead’s iconography flew over trolly tracks throughout downtown; “Jerry Day” was declared on what would have been the musician’s 83rd birthday, and with it, a Jerry Garcia Street was unveiled; pedicabs were decked out and blaring Dead classics; and the Haight-Ashbury house where the band cohabitated in the 1960s was swarmed by selfie-seeking fans. Mayor Daniel Lurie was on hand to welcome the band to the stage, while former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was among the VIP guests spotted grooving in the “Friends and Family” section alongside scores of California constituents.
As a music tourism experiment, Dead60 succeeded in that it was well-organized despite its size. Another Planet Entertainment hosts three consecutive weekends of music at the park’s polo field, including the Outside Lands music festival, which kicks off on Friday, with a footprint much larger than Dead & Co.’s one-stage show, and the team is adept at creating a friction-less experience getting onto the grounds. At the same time, Dead & Co.’s own management — led by Activist Artists’ Bernie Cahill, Liz Norris and Red Tanner, with Steve Moir and Brandon Phelps — allowed space for the open-air market known as “Shakedown Street” and ensured a multitude of viewing options inside the gates. And with a strict curfew of 10 p.m., that meant a reasonable bedtime for the more veteran of followers. Not that anyone would have minded more music — certainly not Weir.
The music was the main event. Ever since John Mayer joined this formation a decade ago (alongside bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and drummer Jay Lane), the Dead has expanded its audience by age, allowing those who may not have been around for Garcia’s final years to hear the guitarwork as it was meant to be played. A bold statement, no doubt, but it’s a challenge Mayer has stepped up to tour and tour again. And on this three-night bow, the pressure was most certainly on — not just because it was an icon’s birthday in heaven, but with the knowledge that another guitar god, Phish’s Trey Anastasio (who opened night three), would join the brotherhood on stage.
Mayer and Anastasio hadn’t quite crossed paths musically, though the former was in attendance at 2015’s Fare Thee Well where the latter played alongside Weir, Lesh, Hart and drummer Bill Kreutzmann in a series of 50th anniversary concerts. Deadheads saw then that Anastasio’s fret-defying, crescendo-stretching style complemented the Jerry jams they knew intimately.
Mayer, for his part, has the benefit of 10 years of practice. He’s mastered the melodies, no doubt, but continues to challenge himself when it comes to solos, almost as if he’s going for a world record of interstitial notes in each bar. The combination of these two titans was a sight to behold, and especially so on “Scarlet Begonias,” which helped kick off set two of the final show and allowed Anastasio’s vocals to shine. On “Fire on the Mountain,” each player took turns with a verse. Hart opted to rap his part, which delighted his ecstatic band-members, the reggae-rhythm providing a steady groove and allowing for Mayer and Anastasio to trade licks back-and-forth.
Openers from the previous two nights, Billy Strings and Sturgill Simpson, also came out to join Dead & Co., performing “Wharf Rat” and “Mountain Dew,” respectively, and Grahame Lesh, playing his father’s bass, accompanied the band nightly on early classics like “Box of Rain” and “St. Stephen.”
Photo by Jay Blakesberg
Covers dotted the set lists — “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” “Broken Arrow,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” a snippet of “Hey Jude” — but perennial favorites like “Uncle John’s Band,” “China Cat Sunflower,” “Sugaree,” “Brown-Eyed Women” and “Shakedown Street” warmed hearts and bones as the sun dipped along with the temperature.
Fortunately, the production offered comfort — for a price. VIP tickets allowed for separate bar and food areas as well as bathroom trailers; SVIP, known as the “Golden Road,” was a cordoned off upstairs deck where elevated food options and a full bar were free. Decked out in carpeting, velvet couches and tables, the space also supplied blankets for patrons.
Elsewhere, private tented suites lined the perimeter and hosted a slew of executives including Warner Music Group’s Val Blavatnik, Live Nation’s Sid Greenfeig and Bob Roux, Meta’s Sabrina Kartzman, ESPN’s Burke Magnus and Chris Benchetler, FOX Sports’ Jacob Ullman, Amazon Music’s Jordan Davidoff, Rhino Entertainment’s Mark Pinkus and Redbird Capital’s Rob Klein and Mark Dowley. Other notables in attendance included actor Miles Teller, Bravo’s Andy Cohen, singer JP Saxe and designer James Perse. Dead-affiliated Allison Statter of Blended Strategy Group and Michele Bernstein of Michi B. Inc. also beamed of the successful and mammoth undertaking.
Each night ended with a poignant number — “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” appropriately, on Aug. 1; “Brokedown Palace” on the 2nd; and “Touch of Grey” on the 3rd — echoes of which could be heard up and down the surrounding neighborhoods, bouncing off houses and hills to “fill the air,” as the Dead sang. Timeless music, Garcia might have posited, has no end. And Weir is taking that to heart, writing on Instagram the following morning, “60 years… I’d say that’s a damn good start.”
