When Grateful Dead Concert Tour?
The Grateful Dead is often considered to be one of the most significant and popular rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. The band originating from Palo Alto California in 1965 developed a massive following due to a style that was a fusion of rock, folk, blues, blue grass, and Jazz and long protracted concerts. The Dead were also known to be always on tour, moving from one city to another all across America in their tour bus wearing their tie-dyed uniforms to ensure that their fans got a chance to hear their music live.
Their first performance as Grateful Dead occurred on 10th December, 1965, at a party in a house at Palo Alto, California . In nineteen sixty-six, they evolved into the Ken Keseys Acid Tests, which were early LSD-inspired music events. Their first public performance was on November 19th, 1966 at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. They began touring up and down the West Coast, appearing at the Avalon Ballroom, and the Matrix in San Francisco.
As for the touring, nineteen sixty-seven witnessed that the Dead started playing in cities which they had not performed before like Vancouver, Miami, and New York. That year they performed in several short tours along the East and West coasts. Their first few tours were not moneymaking ventures but instead, it was more of an effort to promote their music to the public. They usually performed in a crummy tour bus and would play in small clubs and ballrooms.
During the year, nineteen sixty-eight, the Dead performed more than one hundred concerts in the United States. Some of the shows included a gig at the Kings Beach Bowl in Lake Tahoe in March and the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island in July. They concluded their nineteen sixty-eight schedule with three concerts at the Shrine Exposition Hall in Los Angeles in November.
Nevertheless, nineteen sixty-nine was one of the Dead’s busiest touring years yet. They undertook several minor tours of the Mid-West and east-coast in April and May In June was the historic three-day Atlantic City Pop Festival which was just a precursor to Woodstock. The Dead performed sets for two days of the fest. August saw the historic Woodstock Music and Art Fair where the band played nine numbers including St. Stephen and Turn on Your Love Light. In late October they did several concerts along the East Coast ending with a four night engagement at the Fillmore East in New York.
The nineteen seventies are often referred to as Dead’s touring years where they went even farther and played over fifty concerts annually. The year nineteen seventy started with a breathtaking sixteen night stint at the Fillmore West in San Francisco from late February to early March. One of their most memorable tours was in June where they played at Portland Memorial Coliseum and in Spokane at the Expo Theater for two nights. That fall came another longer string of West Coast gigs and cranberry farm benefit shows in Wisconsin.
The year nineteen seventy-one began with Dead live shows on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. That spring saw the so-called Festival Express train tour across Canada with Janis Joplin and The Band. In that May, two legendary bands in the Fillmore East in Manhattan were recorded in their live albums History of the Grateful Dead Volume One (Bear’s Choice) and Volume Two. The year ended with three nights at the Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Dead took part in one of their largest excursions across North America and Western Europe in nineteen seventy-two. From March to May they crisscrossed the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, Midwest, then began an historic tour of Continental Europe from April to May with such stops as Denmark, West Germany, France, Belgium, England, and Holland. After arriving back in America that fall, they quickly got back to the college circuit, performing multiple shows at Brown University, Boston University, University of Wisconsin, and Ohio University.
The following year of 1973 witnessed a further expansion of touring, with cross country spring and fall runs surrounding their largest show to date – one day at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen a rock festival held in Watkins Glen, New York with an audience of more than half a million people in late July . Other performances that year included that year included four shows at the Winterland arena in San Francisco in October and another New Year’s Eve show at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas.
With the arrival of the nineteen eighties, the Dead maintained their breakneck pace of touring, averaging more than eighty concerts per year. They celebrated nineteen eighty with a few concerts at San Francisco’s huge Civic Auditorium towards the end of the year. During spring, there were shows in different states across the United States including stadium in Alabama and Indiana. That summer there was another stadium festival gig – two long performances at the Heatwave festival near Toronto in August. They were back in the college areas during the fall, including Syracuse New York, Chapel Hill North Carolina, and Rochester New York. They concluded the year of nineteen eighty with a New Year’s pop concert at Oakland Auditorium Arena for three consecutive nights.
The Grateful Deads marathon touring thus persisted throughout the rest of the nineteen eighties and into nineteen ninety. Some of the highlights of the remaining decade of shows include concerts at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, Madison Square Garden in New York, Philadelphia’s Civic Center, and many other locations. Their last show with Garcia occurred on July ninth, 1995 at the Soldier Field Stadium in Chicago. Garcia passed away slightly over a month later, and the remaining members officially dissolved the band in December of nineteen ninety-five, thus bringing the curtain down on another legendary three-decade career of being one of the most active bands in rock ‘n roll history.
