Eyes to the World: The Ending of the Sixties and the Evolution of the Grateful Dead

8/3/2019 Eyes to the World: The Ending of the Sixties and the Evolution of the Grateful Dead

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/eyes-to-the-world-the-ending-of-the-sixties-and-the-evolution-of-the-grateful 1/14

1

Eyes to the World: The Ending of the Sixties and the Evolution of

the Grateful Dead

In his book Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of

Eighties America, historian Philip Jenkins argues that rather than its nominal ending in

1970, “the sixties,” as a name for a constellation of tumultuous social, cultural and

political events, are best understood as having begun in late 1963 with the assassination

of John F. Kennedy and ending in 1974 with the resignation of Richard Nixon from the

presidency of the United States. For if one understands “the Sixties” as standing for the

culminating events of post-war liberalism, “the year 1970 is an especially implausible

candidate for marking the end of an era, because so much of the unrest of the 1960s was

peaking in that year, while critical events we think of as characterizing sixties liberalism

actually occurred afterward.”1 And though the Watergate crisis that eventually forced

Nixon from the presidency “was a strictly political affair,” it coincided with the definitive

end of the post-War economic boom as the results of Nixon’s unilateral abnegation of the

Bretton-Woods accords in 1971 (the so-called “Nixon Shock”), itself the consequence of

the deterioration of the United-States’ post-war global economic dominance, and the

1973 OPEC oil embargo ushered in a very different, and much less optimistic, world

economic situation than that which had fueled the optimism and liberal reforms of the

1960s, such as President Johnson’s Great Society initiative.

That 1974 was also the year that the Grateful Dead, one of the musical groups

most strongly associated with the counterculture of the sixties, chose to “retire” is an

intriguing historical parallel especially since when they resumed touring in 1976 their

1PhilipJenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of

Eighties America(NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress),4.



2

musical practice had changed in significant ways: with the return of 2nd drummer Mickey

Hart they had two drummers for the first time since early 1971, quite a few new songs (or

old ones with new arrangements) were introduced and a number of songs and

instrumental segments that had been staples of their live repertoire disappeared from their

performances. And as John Dwork and Michael Getz point out in their editorial

comments on the Dead’s 1976 performances in the second volume of The Deadheads

Taping Compendium, “the band’s ability to access the same sort of deep psychedelic

realms previously reached through improvisation seemed to have been lost…it was a

band that had left behind its far-left-field esoteric/mystical character. While this was

disappointing for many Deadheads, the resulting sound was a more down-to-earth,

structured style, which made the Dead’s live music much more accessible for a larger

audience.”2

In this paper I’d like to interpret this turn towards a more grounded, less overtly

psychedelic performance style through the lens of Jenkins’ thesis in order to argue for a

connection between them: that the Dead’s post-retirement performance practice reflects

the broader social-cultural shift in the mid-1970s (what Jenkins argues marks the real

“end of the sixties”) through an eschewal of the extremities of improvisational flexibility

and musical esotericism that had previously been foregrounded in their live

performances. Although elements of both would survive in their repertoire until the

group’s end in 1995, after coming out of retirement in 1976 their manifestations were

increasingly incorporated into designated structures within the two-set form that would

2JohnDworkandMichaelGetz,TheDeadhead’sTapingCompedium:AnIn-depth

GuidetotheMusicoftheGratefulDeadonTape,Vol.II (NewYork:HenryHoltand

Co.),97.



3

become standard for the Dead by the late 70s. On one hand, this would seem to represent

a troubling loss of freedom or lack of willingness to venture into the more adventurous

musical forms that they had before. On the other, as Jenkins’ thesis as to the proper

chronology of the sixties points out, the world of 1976 was very different than that of

1973-74, let alone that of 1969, and it would have been foolish and artistically

reactionary for the Dead to pretend otherwise by not changing with the times. Although

they were, and are, often characterized as forever-caught-in-the-past perpetuators of

sixties nostalgia, that they managed to survive for three decades, becoming even more

popular as the years passed, reveals the opposite: while continuing what they began

during the Acid Tests in the mid-1960s—bringing popular music and the avant-garde

together in a highly improvised, dance-band context—the Dead remained highly aware of

the broader cultural context and consistently reflected its changes in their musical

practice.

Among those who study the music of the Grateful Dead, the years 1973-74 are

commonly recognized as the period in which jazz exerted its strongest influence over

their musical practice. Clearly aware of the contemporaneous developments in jazz

fusion—Miles Davis and his then electric quintet had in fact opened for the Dead over

four nights in April of 1970, an experience that bassist Phil Lesh has stated was

incredibly influential on the group—the Dead had, by 1973, realized a jazz-rock fusion of

their own, but one that moved from rock towards jazz rather than the other way around.

They were, of course, hardly unique in this as many other pop-rock musicians in the late

60s and early 70s also found inspiration in jazz and incorporated elements of it into their

music (e.g. Blood, Sweat & Tears; Santana; Frank Zappa), but the Dead undoubtedly



4

foregrounded the improvisational character of jazz more than any other rock group at the

time, along with a significant amount of its harmonic complexity, and at no time more so

than in their live performances in 1973 and ‘74.

Such influences are particularly evident in “Eyes of the World,” a song the Dead

introduced in concert in early 1973 and that appeared regularly in their set-lists until the

group disbanded in 1995 after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. As with much of

their repertoire, “Eyes” changed over the years reflecting the Dead’s improvisational

aesthetic and goal to never play a song exactly the same way twice, but the basic slightly

modified verse-chorus form remained the same. Its versions from 1973-74 differ

significantly from later ones, however, because of an instrumental “outro” section that

always followed the final chorus. Featuring numerous shifts in modality and metrical

modulation in a highly flexible form, this outro is an ideal example of the jazz-like

character of the Dead’s music at this time. An analysis of this musical material thus offers

important insights into the Dead’s pre-retirement practices and thus into the evolution of

their musical style.

Before discussing the outro, however, a few remarks on the song structure of

“Eyes of the World” are necessary. That it immediately acquired a long, extensively

improvised outro is not surprising given its strongly jazz-influenced character. First,

rather than the triads or dominant 7th chords that serve as the basic harmonic structure for

most rock songs, “Eyes” begins on, and continually returns to, an E major seventh chord.

Although this sonority was not unheard of in the pop-rock music of the time

(interestingly, Marvin Gaye’s 1971 hit “What’s Going On” also tonicizes an E major

seventh chord—a source of inspiration perhaps?), its use as the primary harmonic color in



5

up-tempo rock songs was then, and remains today, unusual; whereas in jazz major

sevenths, along with added sixths, are the usual extensions to non-dominant functioning

major triads.3

The other jazz-connoted aspect of the song is its relative harmonic

sophistication. As you can see here (Example 1), the clearly expressed E major tonality at

the song’s beginning is continually undermined by one-measure interjections of A major

(two beats of a Bm7 chord, two beats of an A major chord) after the first two lines of

each verse, as well as by a hint of through-composition in the first verse, where the line

“Wings a mile long just carried the bird away” is set to a D major triad (some subtle text-

painting perhaps), foreshadowing the even more surprising shift to G major for the chorus

(Example 2). And although harmonic third-relations, usually based on the minor

pentatonic scale, are quite common in rock music (what Alf Björnberg has referred to as

“Aeolian” harmony4), such third-related key changes (E major to G major) are

considerably less so and, in the case of “Eyes,” serve to dramatically emphasize the

chorus. At its end, the return to E major is brought about, somewhat paradoxically,

through another instance of the one-measure interjection of A major: again, two beats of

Bm7, two beats of A major. And though this brings the song back to its E major seventh

“home” chord, this modulation is not confirmed by a move to its sub-dominant or

dominant as a proper tonal modulation should; instead, it is reinterpreted modally as E

3“ Now, what makes the major-seventh sonority so distinctive and sonically attractive is

its perfect fifths and major thirds. Of all the tetrachords it is the only one with exactly twomajor thirds and two perfect fifths.” Allan Forte, “Harmonic Relations: American

Popular Harmonies (1925-1950) and Their European Kin,” Contemporary Music Review 19m no. 1 (2000), 5-36.4AlfBjörnberg, “On Aeolian Harmony in Contemporary Popular Music,” paper

presented to the Third International Conference of IASPM, Montreal (1985). Available:http://www.andrelambert.org/uqam/analyse/aeolianharmony.pdf (accessed Nov. 15,

2011).



day, June 30, 2011



day, June 30, 2011



6

Ionian as the band begins to collectively improvise, shifting to B minor seventh, modally

B Dorian, two bars later. This four bar section is then repeated ad lib until they decide to

begin the next verse. With the exception of the aforementioned appearance of the D

major chord in the first verse, this form is repeated twice to constitute the song’s basic

form. As complex for rock music as the song’s basic form and harmonic syntax is,

however, the outro from 1973-74 pushes the degree of complexity even further.

Integral to the outro’s proper understanding, however, is that it seems to have

developed fairly organically over the course of the first half of 1973, at which point it

attained a relatively consistent overall form, while remaining relatively flexible in terms

of the length of each formal area. Because the vast majority of the approximately 2,300

performances by the Dead were recorded by the band and/or audience members, and are

now available online, scholars of the Dead’s music are able to document to an

unprecedented degree how their music changed over their 30 year performing career. I

have thus been able to trace the development of the outro from its nebulous beginnings in

a jam at the end of the song’s first performance on February 9, 1973 to its last

performance on October 20, 1974, during the group’s final concert before their

retirement. Given my limited time I cannot hope to go into the details of its evolution or

dozens of different examples; instead, the following analysis is of a synthesis of a number

of key examples from this period.

As you can see here (Example 3), after the final chorus, the outro begins with the

group collectively improvising in E Ionian rather than shifting to the B minor seventh

every two bars as in the earlier improvised sections between the first two choruses and

2nd

and 3rd

verses. From there the group works their way through the various modes that



day, June 30, 2011



7

I’ve diagrammed: the lengths of each are highly variable but generally occur in some

multiple of four bars. (I’ve condensed them here for the most part to two bars in order to

fit legibly on one page.) Although at first the modal shifts are relatively close—E Ionian

shares all but a single note with G# Aeolian, and with G# Dorian all but two—when

moving from the E Ionian to Eb Dorian four notes must change. The harmonic drama

then further builds as the group moves outside the diatonic pitch collections to improvise

on the whole-half octatonic scale starting on D#, F#, A or C. Although none of these are

more clearly emphasized in the bass, and thus a clear root note, I refer to it here as D#

diminished because although the band is using it modally—that is, as an independent

harmony rather than as part of a functional chord progression—it simultaneously

suggests a functional progression as a diminished chord built on the leading tone, D#, of

the following E Ionian modality. The band then moves back to Eb Dorian before

launching once again into the unexpected: rather than the root movement that has

accompanied every other modal change thus far, the band moves to the parallel Eb

Mixolydian mode (although with a bluesy Gb as well), but metrically modulated to 7/8,

to play the riff you see here. Repeated seven times, and shortened to 6/8 the last, they

then move to D Dorian thereby suggesting that the previous Eb Mixolydian be

reinterpreted harmonically as Eb7, that is, as the tri-tone substitution of A7, the dominant

of D minor. They then match the number of repetitions of the 7/8 riff on a higher formal

level with 7 repetitions of the 16 bar form beginning with the movement to Eb

Mixolydian before finally ending the outro in D Dorian, gradually seguing into another

song.



8

I have gone into this degree of theoretical detail because I think this outro is a

remarkable musical construction; I am unaware of anything quite like it in the history of

popular music. Although clearly influenced by the modal improvisation pioneered by

Miles Davis on Kind of Blue, the Dead here manage to integrate its allowance for endless

melodic inventiveness with significant harmonic and rhythmic complexity in a

collectively improvised yet compositionally sophisticated form. Given that they would

never again perform this outro, or indeed anything closely similar to it, upon their return

to touring in 1976, however, one must wonder why.

The usual explanation for the Dead’s decision to retire from touring in late 1974 is

that the band was exhausted from nine years of nearly constant touring, made worse by

the work and expense needed to set up, take down and move their monumental “Wall of

Sound” PA system introduced in March of 1974. (It was, in fact, so complex that two

were required so that while one was being used, the other could be set up at the next

venue). In addition, the sharp increase in fuel prices on account of the 1973-74 OPEC oil

embargo made touring with such a massive sound system economically prohibitive. But,

returning to my initial thesis as to their music reflecting broader cultural currents, I would

suggest that there was another reason as well: aware on some level of the passing of the

decade that had so defined their identity and their music, they needed time away from

who they were, a constantly touring band, to figure out who and what they were going to

be in the very different world that was dawning in the mid-1970s.

It is therefore of some interest that the 1973-74 outro of “Eyes of the World”

seems to have provided the group with some important starting points to later musical

developments. In early 1974 lead guitarist Jerry Garcia began to play with a riff based on



9

a diminished, octatonic scale in some of the group’s improvisations that is closely related

to the diminished mode jam in the outro of “Eyes”; in fact, at least twice (one of which

was during its very last performance on October 20, 1974) it appeared as an addendum to

the outro. In 1975 this riff would become the nucleus of a composition entitled

“Slipknot” that would serve as an instrumental bridge between their songs “Help on the

Way” and “Franklin’s Tower.” And on account of their shared time signature and similar

rhythmic pattern, it seems likely that the outro’s repeated 7/8 riff was the origin of the

instrumental “King Solomon’s Marbles>Stronger Than Dirt” that bassist Phil Lesh

composed in 1975 (from their album of that year Blues for Allah). These genealogies

would also seemingly explain why the Dead never played the “Eyes” outro after their

retirement: if they understood these later compositions as resulting from what they had

been previously experimenting with in the outro, the outro itself would have served its

purpose and represented a less sophisticated musical realization than what they had by

1976 accomplished. But this still does not answer the question why worked out

compositions, rather than loosely organized improvisations, would have seemed more

appropriate to the band in the mid-70s.

In his seminal essay “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Isaiah Berlin defines two

different and, in many ways, contradictory, understandings of liberty or freedom: positive

and negative. In simplest terms, by negative liberty Berlin means the freedom to make

choices unhindered by external restraint; by positive liberty, he means the freedom to

fully realize one’s individual capacities. These contradict because while the negative

form of liberty is highly individualistic, the positive form is highly dependent on others

since one’s capacity to fully realize oneself, to achieve self-mastery, is very often



10

inseparable from the social conditions that make it possible. I would like to suggest a

possible connection between these two forms of liberty and the movement by the Dead

away from their earlier more freewheeling improvisational practices in the mid-1970s.

For it was precisely the attempt to have the fullest extant of both negative and positive

liberty, ignoring their tensions, upon which foundered the beliefs of so many in the

Sixties that the world could be radically changed for the better. One cannot build a better

society with greater equality if no limitations on the satisfaction of each individual’s

private desires are to be accepted. But neither can individuals accept their wholesale

subsumption into a collectivity that presumes to know what is best for each. Both forms

of liberty must be respected, while recognizing, as Berlin so forcefully argues, that they

can never be wholly reconciled; they are incommensurable because the complete

realization of positive liberty would require complete social equality, but this would

require the almost total abrogation of negative liberty since individuals’ freedom to make

choices is precisely what leads to inequality.

In closing I would suggest that awareness of the tension between these two forms

of freedom, and an attempt to achieve a balance between them, is what the Grateful Dead

were trying to achieve with their music upon resuming touring in 1976. Although they

created some incredible music in years before, it sometimes reflected too much their own

negative freedom to play what they wanted without due consideration to the broader

social context. In contrast, after they resumed touring their more down-to-earth

performance style, improvising both with and within established songs, but rarely making

use of structures like the outro I’ve discussed today, suggests a greater consideration of

their audiences ability to realize themselves within the music. Instead of the more utopian



11

dreams of the sixties, in which everyone could have what they want while at the same

time believing it possible to realize a radical transformation of society, the Dead’s post-

retirement music seems to suggest an awareness of the limitations that such dreams must

face: a greater emphasis on bringing the musically familiar into unfamiliar relations

rather than a constant search for the wholly unfamiliar. It is, then, the group’s eyes to the

world, rather than any claim to know what the eyes of the world might see, that perhaps

best defines the Grateful Dead’s post-retirement musical direction.

Bibliography

Berlin,Isaiah.“TwoConceptsofLiberty.”InTheProperStudyofMankind:An

AnthologyofEssays,191-242.EditedbyHenryHardyandRogerHausheer.

NewYork:Farrar,StrausandGiroux,1997.

Dwork,JohnandMichaelGetz.TheDeadhead’sTapingCompendium:AnIn-depth

GuidetotheMusicoftheGratefulDeadonTape,Vol.II .NewYork:HenryHolt

andCo.,1999.

Jenkins,Philip. Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America.NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,2006.

Documents

Eyes to the World: The Ending of the Sixties and the Evolution of the Grateful Dead