An artist changing with the times is often doing so out of financial necessity, rather than because their music would benefit from Bee Gees-like soft rock. Grateful Dead, donned in white suits to make it look as though Go to Heaven has been passed down directly from the pearly gates, is a tad on the nose. The band at this stage looked like variants of Tom Selleck. Nine tracks of borderline yacht rock, which would fit the background of a half-decent Hawaii Five-O episode, are what the band offers, just five years on from the phenomenal Blues for Allah. Nine songs of zero consequence. Such is life for the artists who made it big in the 1960s, derailed their personal lives in the 1970s, and attempted to claw back the soft rock, pop-like payouts of the 1980s. It is a trail walked by Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and Paul McCartney. Good company at the best of times, but not when trying to reinvent yourself as a yacht rock-adjacent group.
Repetitive but catchy works are the best of what Grateful Dead offers here. Opener Alabama Getaway sounds relatively simple and that feeling is secured by the repetition of the title track and the fade out. Either fade out or pair all the instrumentals together for a final bow. It is the rite of passage for rock and roll in the 80s, and who was Grateful Dead to deny it? The once trendsetting band find themselves on the backfoot throughout Go to Heaven, an album which, to put it nicely, is one for the completionists. Every artist worth their weight will grow and explore their sound, but for Grateful Dead, the aim of studio efforts always felt like checking off a contractual agreement so they could head back on the road. It leaves their studio sound feeling lifeless, and yet their on-stage efforts are a brilliant experience. This is Jerry Garcia and the band tackling the so-called “necessary evil” of being a known name.
Where the irony of the white suits and disco era may be a knock at the 80s aesthetic, it does not help that Grateful Dead had been slipping into the soft-rock sound anyway. Their mockery of the genre comes at a time when Bob Weir and Garcia were losing the grasp of those psychedelic, heavier highs. Feel Like a Stranger offers some respite for the listener hoping the band had a bit of bite, a little venom left in them, but it suffers from the radio-friendliness of preceding album Shakedown Street. Founding member Bill Kreutzmann remains proud of the songs, not the cover. That is fair for him to say, though it does not excuse the relatively loose style Grateful Dead were poking at in the late 1970s and 80s. Go to Heaven is still music you can crack a beer to, but Grateful Dead were, at one point, much more than easy-going background noise.
B-side efforts like Lost Sailor and a cover of traditional song Don’t Ease Me In feel more like half-hearted jams which would spring to life on stage than anything The Dead were particularly proud of here. Some may suggest Go to Heaven is Grateful Dead losing their touch. They had lost it long before this. There is a placidity at play on Go to Heaven which has the sound inching ever closer to purgatory than anywhere else. A song like Easy to Love You may as well be a rejected Jeff Lynne effort while Saint of Circumstance hints at the bright lights of heaven, though it feels more like white noise than baptised brilliance. An underwhelming selection of songs which, true to form for Grateful Dead at the time, found new life, a more deserving sound, on stage. They needed more time, as is the case for most of their albums.
