A surprise opening spot for Miles Davis on Grateful Dead‘s tour had the jazz legend blow away the unsuspecting crowd.
Speaking on his experience with the band and show, Davis suggested the “real spacey” listeners thoroughly enjoyed his performance. For one night only, Davis would open for the Jerry Garcia-featuring band, and it seems to have worked well. Though the performance started calm enough, the jazz veteran would “blow out” the audience with work from Bitches Brew, regarded as one of Davis’ very best albums. Writing of the show in his autobiography, Davis suggested the crowd were high and unfocused before he began to play his hits. It’s a performance which even Grateful Dead members were stunned by, with the band’s Phil Lesh suggesting there was doubt in the band about whether they could follow such a strong performance.
Davis wrote of the experience: “The place was packed with these real spacey, high, white people, and where we first started playing, people were walking around and talking. But after a while, they all got quiet and really into the music.
“I played a little something like [from] Sketches of Spain and then went into the Bitches Brew shit, and that really blew them out. After that concert, every time I would play out there in San Francisco, a lot of young white people showed up at the gigs.”
Lesh would add the band were stunned by Davis’ performance, and that they wondered if they could go on after the opening act. Lesh wrote in his autobiography: “As I listened, leaning over the amps with my jaw hanging agape, trying to comprehend the forces that Miles was unleashing onstage, I was thinking what’s the use. How can we possibly play after this.
“With this band, Miles literally invented fusion music. In some ways, it was similar to what we were trying to do in our free jamming, but ever so much more dense with ideas and seemingly controlled with an iron fist, even at its most alarmingly intense moments.”
Surprise special guests in Grateful Dead shows were frequent, with The Who’s Pete Townshend once joining the band for a performance of Not Fade Away. Fans of both Grateful Dead and The Who have since described the moment Townshend joined the Garcia-fronted band for Not Fade Away as an “unforgettable” moment.
A video upload of the performance to YouTube has been hailed by fans of the two groups, with some wondering whether Garcia had brought Townshend in for the performance as he knew the energy the veteran guitarist would bring to the show. That moment never came for some viewers, who believe that as cool as it is to see Townshend perform with Grateful Dead, it doesn’t live up to expectations.
One viewer wrote: “I was 23 years old as I went to this incredible Rockpalast show. The Who and Grateful Dead on the same evening on stage! I am sure this is proof that God loves us! I stood directly in front of Bob Weir, and I will never forget as Pete Townshend came back on stage and performed Not Fade Away and Around and Around jointly with the Dead! Unforgettable! Therefore, thanks for uploading!”
