June 7, 1977. I Wasn't There. But I Was Close.
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Forty-nine years ago tonight, the Grateful Dead took the stage at Winterland in San Francisco for the first of three nights that Deadheads are still talking about.
I wasn't there.
But I was closer than I knew.
New Haven, May 5, 1977
Six weeks before Winterland, I walked into my first Grateful Dead show. I was 16 years old. Veterans Memorial Coliseum, New Haven, Connecticut. May 5, 1977.
I didn't know what I was walking into. I just knew it was loud. Loud doesn't cover it, actually.
What I didn't know — what none of us in that building knew — was that we were in the middle of one of the greatest tours the Grateful Dead ever played. The spring 1977 East Coast run is now considered sacred ground. Three days after New Haven they played Cornell — May 8, Barton Hall — which became arguably the most famous bootleg in rock history. The whole run has since been officially released. People study these shows the way scholars study texts.
I was just a 16-year-old kid trying to figure out where to stand.
The setlist that night was absurd in the best possible way. They opened with Promised Land and didn't let up. Scarlet Begonias into Fire on the Mountain. St. Stephen. Sugar Magnolia as the closer. And Donna — I couldn't keep my eyes off Donna. She was holding a glass of red wine.
I went home with my ears ringing and my head somewhere else entirely.
My brother-in-law told me not to get too attached. Said the Grateful Dead had a shelf life. I told him Beethoven had a shelf life. Mozart had a shelf life. Turned out to be more of a nuclear half life.
Winterland, June 7–9, 1977
Six weeks after New Haven, the Dead closed out that spring run at Winterland in San Francisco. Three nights — June 7, 8, and 9 — that were later released as Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings.
The band was on fire. They'd just spent the first part of the year recording Terrapin Station. Jerry had finally finished post-production on the Grateful Dead Movie, which had opened just six days earlier. They came into Winterland loose, energized, and ready to play.
The June 7 show opened with Bertha and closed with Morning Dew into Around and Around, with an Uncle John's Band encore. The second night featured Estimated Prophet into Eyes of the World. The third night — June 9 — included Help on the Way into Slipknot into Franklin's Tower, and closed with Terrapin Station.
Three nights. Nine CDs when it was finally released in 2009. The kind of run that makes people rearrange their record collections.
I wasn't there for any of it. I was back in Connecticut, still trying to process what had happened to me six weeks earlier in New Haven.
The Music Just Waits
That's the thing about this music. It doesn't care when you find it. It just waits.
The spring 1977 tour happened whether you were there or not. The tapes circulated for decades. People discovered them in the 80s, the 90s, last Tuesday. Every generation of Deadheads finds their way to these shows eventually.
If you haven't heard them yet, we added all three Winterland nights to Crew Tunes. Put it on while you're doing something else. Start with June 7. See where it takes you.
You're right on time.
Barry Bear is the founder of eDeadShop, a Grateful Dead apparel company making handmade, 100% cotton tie-dyes and officially licensed shirts in the USA. Sizes up to 6X.
