The Brief, Happy Life of the Wall of Sound
How the Grateful Dead invented the modern concert experience
The Grateful Dead liked to think big.
First there was the swirling, symphonic mix of “Dark Star/St. Stephen/The Eleven,” which inspired generations of jam bands; there was the time in the early 70s when the band began its own record company, envisioning distribution through a fleet of ice cream trucks; there was the famous concert at the Egyptian pyramids in the late 70s; the complete reinvention of marketing when they created a viral network of fans by giving away content for free; and, of course, the continuing alchemical transformation of the American songbook with songs like “Black Peter,” “Dire Wolf” and “Mississippi Uptown Toodeloo.”
Then there was the Wall of Sound, which made its debut 50 years ago this month. It was what business writer Jim Collins (“Built to Last”) would have called a “BHAG” — a big, hairy, audacious goal. In the end, it turned out to be too big, hairy and audacious, but not before leaving an indelible mark on the entertainment industry. More on that in a minute.
The Dead formed in 1965 during a time of intense disruption and innovation, particularly on the West Coast. The Beatles and the Stones were redefining rock and roll, the Vietnam War was metastasizing, and young people with a weird look in their eyes had begun moving into the cheap tenements and Victorians of the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.
The Dead’s evolution from 1965 to 1974, from jug band to juggernaut, was astounding in scale and scope. They were never a standard outfit trying for the next Top 40 hit that would drive albums sales supported by a national tour. From the very beginning, the Dead were experiential, not commercial. They were communing with their audience, not entertaining them, a dynamic that came out of their experience as the house band for Ken Kesey’s infamous Acid Tests. They were dedicated to their craft, endlessly rehearsing and fearlessly pushing music into new realms, blending the earthy raunch of “Turn on Your Lovelight” with the ethereal, spherical bliss of “Dark Star.”
A driving force for the Dead in these early years was a man named Augustus Stanley Owsley III, a trained electrical engineer, native genius and polymath who hooked up with the band after an Acid Test at the California seaside hamlet of Muir Beach in 1965. Owsley was a man in search of a mission, the first of which became his LSD manufacturing complex. While the drug was still legal, he began making huge batches in his garage; he’s credited with producing 5 million doses between 1965 and 1967, some of which fueled the Beatles’ antics in “Magical Mystery Tour” (for a brief history of this period of Owsley’s life, listen to Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlamagne”).
Owsley’s other mission, after that fateful night at Muir Beach, became the Grateful Dead. He adopted the role of patron saint. He supported the band financially, fed them (imposing his idiosyncratic diet of milk and meat on them during a summer sojourn in Los Angeles in 1967), designed some of their graphics, and most important, became their first sound engineer. In this role, he helped the Dead develop their unique sonics by improving monitors, refining microphone placement on stage and mixing the band’s sound during live performances. He pioneered the technique of plugging a recorder directly into the soundboard, thus producing tapes that were the feedstock for many later live album releases and his treasure trove of “sonic journals.”
But it was in 1973 that Owsley had his trademark breakthrough (besides being the Willie Wonka of LSD). By now, the band was playing at stadiums and other large venues for which their sound system was clearly inadequate for the kind of experience they wanted the audience to have. It wasn’t just the lack of reach of the system, but also the lack of quality. By the time they played RFK Stadium in Washington in the summer of that year, they were frustrated. As was Owsley. So he simply reinvented the modern concert sound system, which fans quickly dubbed the Wall of Sound. It was big (more than 600 speakers, three stories high and weighing 75 tons), hairy (it took about eight hours to set up) and audacious (it set a bar for sound quality that no one at the time could match, or had even thought of).
It wasn’t just the scale of the system, but also the technology. For instance, to give vocals more clarity, Owsley designed a unique two-piece microphone for band members, one part of which picked up ambient signals and filtered them out, giving the vocals much more prominence (a double-edged sword for the Dead, since their vocals were notoriously often out of pitch). That technology later went on to power noise-canceling headphones.
The Wall of Sound was doomed to fail. Logistically and financially it became untenable. On the road, the band had to operate two complete systems — one of which would be in use at a venue while the other one was heading to the next night’s show for setup, a process the band called “leap frogging.” Owsley claimed there were actually three systems in use at any given time — one being broken down, one in use, and the third being set up for the next gig — but that’s likely a figment of his florid imagination.
Finally, the weight of the system became unbearable. The Wall of Sound made its tour debut at San Francisco’s Cow Palace in March of 1974 (there is some irony in that members of the Dead attended the Beatles show at the Cow Palace in 1964 during their first US tour, at which point the inadequacies of existing sound systems became painfully clear; the Beatles were inaudible above the din of the frenzied crowd). The last time the WoS was used was just seven months later at Winterland, a run magically documented in “The Grateful Dead Movie.” I was fortunate to be in the audience one of those nights and can attest to the power and majesty of the WoS — it transformed a derelict old hockey arena into a glistening cocoon of auditory delights. It was like listening to the show through a pair of audiophile headphones. It was loud but never harsh. The sound didn’t come at you; it simply surrounded you.
After the Winterland shows, the band took a hiatus, partly because of internecine squabbles, partly because of touring pressures, and partly because the WoS had broken them down. When they returned, it was with a much smaller and more nimble sound system, but sacrificing none of the sound quality. Their live recordings from the late 70s, especially the 1977 tours, are remarkable. The band went on to become a huge live act, especially after they broke through on MTV in the late 80s with “Touch of Gray.” Their sound system never again touched the grandeur of the Wall of Sound, but the quality was never compromised.
The Dead always strived for an immersive experience, beginning with the early Acid Tests. They sought to break down the barrier between performer and audience (which is one of the reasons they agreed early on to never proselytize at a live show; they believed in the sanctity of the stage and didn’t want to use it as an advantage over the audience). In addition to sound, they pioneered the use of light shows to augment the sound. The culmination of that type of immersive experience — of sound, light, and community — has reached a zenith of sorts with the Sphere in Las Vegas. The seeds of what the Dead pioneered 50 years ago have sprouted in a hundred different ways. And we’re all the beneficiaries.
Totally miss that wall