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1978 Grateful Dead setting it all up
Well I've been hired and met everybody. They would like to tour Europe again and I'm the one to set it up for them.
I'm now going to go visit every venue in Europe that the Dead want to play and make sure the stage is set up and built correctly to the right size. I have to hire the sound and lighting companies.
I make sure they have trucks and buses for transporting everybody and everything.... Next job, the hotel, flights and then they call me back to the US to have a chat about Egypt!!!
A picture I took of Jerry and Ramrod Summer of 78
The day after the last show with Sailor in Oxford, I had to rush up to London for a meeting with Richard Loren, the Deads manager. He was in London preparing the ground it turns out for the shows in Egypt. I'm not to know that yet. I tell him I'm going to NYC in a couple of days for a meeting with John Scher and then with Brockum about merchandising or so and he asks me to fly to San Francisco first thing after my meetings. I reported back to John about the European shows and then fixed up a week on the road with ELO to check out the way merchandising is organised big time in the States. I got to San Fransisco and the Dead put me up at the lovely Miyako hotel
The following day they flew me up to Eugene Oregan where they were playing at the College Football Stadium and here are a couple of photos I took of the day. I recall how quiet the audience was, considering how many people were there. It was because everyone was stoned, including me!! Santana was the support act and I just had a great day floating around front and backstage.
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Dick from ML Executives in the UK flew over with me this time to get everything technically needed for the tour and Egypt from the Dead road crew chiefs.
Neither of us remember too much about the day in Oregon though.....
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After the Eugene show we all flew back the following day to SF and to the Dead's base, a huge warehouse on an industrial site across the bridge. I had a big production meeting with the crew to make sure I hired all the right equipment for the tour and got to ride their tour managers Harley Davidson around the block, which was a blast and my first ride on a Harley.
I spent a couple of days with everyone before I caught a flight to Omaha to link up with the Brockum crew for the start of the ELO spaceship tour, as I liked to call it.
I spent two weeks on the road with ELO and then flew to NYC to pick up my girlfriend and fly back to San Fransisco with my friends Jay and Stevie Chatellier to have nearly two weeks holiday driving around California.
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Anyway I left San Fransisco to go back to Hermosa beach for a week before going home, I needed a bit of space I guess and whilst there a got a phone call from Richard Loren. He said they had been thinking about my fees and had decided that they were not paying me enough.......... yes not enough.... I nearly fell on the floor, and then Richard said they were going to double my salary. I'll never forget that amazing phone call in all my life.
I went out and bought One Size fits all by Frank Zappa the following day and then going back to the motel drove past the Lighthouse Jazz Club. Would you believe it but George Duke, Chester Thompson and Tom Fowler were in there that night jamming, in fact probably doing some early George Duke stuff. I went out to the car after the show and grabbed my new album and got them to sign it. It's the only autographs I've ever asked for in my life. Here they are right here.....
After the couple of days spent in Santa Barbara we headed south to LA and ended up at The SeaSprite Motel on Hermosa beach for three nights. What a great place to hang, a completely laid back surfy atmosphere in the middle of LA. We then went back north to San Fran via the desert and Lake Tahoe and that was the end of my holiday.
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I went back to the Dead's offices in town and had a couple more meetings with Richard and Alan when they dropped the bombshell of shows in Egypt, and could I get all the gear I was hiring for the European tour to Cairo for them to do three shows in front of the Pyramids. The thing was, it was more than the touring stuff, they also needed scaffolding for follow spot towers, a generator to run the lighting and to top it off a mobile recording truck to record the shows. Of course I said I'd go back home and start setting this up now as well, after all I only had a month to sort things out.
When I got home I went over to ML Executives and sat with Roger Searle and Dick Hayes and started to get a quote together to get everything the Dead had asked me to organise. In the gallery above you can see the orginal final costs sent to John Scher and Richard Loren.
I arrived back in the UK to move into my first house, here's the for sale sign still up!! More responsibility, mortgage to pay, very grown up, I was still only 25...
So halfway through our touring hoilday of California we were on Highway One driving north to LA on July 22nd and we stopped in Santa Barbara. There are posters up advertising a Bob Marley concert the following day. Well, Jay and Stevie went to school with Al Anderson in Montclair New Jersey, who is in the Wailers at this time with Marley. We get a message to him and the following day spend the whole day on stage and backstage with Bob Marley and the Wailers, how cool...... And unbelievably it was recorded and on YouTube now....... wow, enjoy......Oh and the photo below I took from side stage, and just caught Bob turning round whilst on stage during the show. Stevie I think that's your head in the way xxx
