Grateful Dead Archivist David Lemieux Knows Where the Beauty is Buried

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Nearly thirty years on from the death of Jerry Garcia, one of the biggest bands in the world is the good ol’ Grateful Dead. And not just by fuzzy vibes-based metrics like “cultural impact,” either—the GD offshoot Dead & Company, with Bob Weir and John Mayer on co-lead guitar, made more money on the road last year than the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and on February 5 the Dead scored their fifty-ninth Top 40 album, thereby surpassing Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, who have fifty-eight apiece. The record-breaker is a set of archival live recordings, Dave’s Picks Volume 49: Frost Amphitheatre, Stanford U., Palo Alto, CA (4/27/85 & 4/28/85), and the Dave in question is David Lemieux, who for the last quarter-century has looked after the live legacy of what is surely the most-recorded rock-n’-roll band in the history of the form.

Lemieux was born in New Jersey 53 years ago, grew up in Ottowa, Canada, and saw his first Grateful Dead show at the Hartford Civic Center on March 26, 1987 (Dave’s Picks: Vol. 36; very dialled-in “Cold Rain and Snow.”) He got a master’s degree in film archiving from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. In January of 1999 he got himself hired to catalogue the band’s extensive film and video collection, and in August of that year, after original Dead archivist Dick Lavalta died of a heart attack at fifty-six, Lemieux became the keeper of the Dead vault.

The Dead played over 2,300 shows between the late ‘60s and the mid-’90s, and at every point in their career someone was usually in charge of documenting the proceedings on tape, beginning with the band’s original sound man, benefactor and acid plug Owsley “Bear” Stanley. In Bear’s wake, other recording angels stepped in to capture the music, from engineer Betty Cantor (legendary for her pristine 2-track Dead recordings, known to heads as “Betty Boards”) to crew members like Kidd Candelario to longtime soundman Dan Healy (not to mention countless fans with microphones under their hats.)

There are still holes in the archive, Lemieux says. They’re missing the second half of 1970, when Owsley went to the federal clink for possession of massive amounts of LSD. No one can find the first few months of ‘79, including the Dead’s first shows at Madison Square Garden. But new stuff still rolls in every so often—a box of tapes hung on to by a roadie’s widow, or a collection like the one that became known as the Houseboat Tapes, reels loaned by the band to Dead keyboardist Keith Godchaux in 1971 and never returned until 2004. “It was a pretty loose scene,” Lemieux says.

I spoke to Lemieux in January, exactly twenty-five years from the week he started working for the Dead.

I’ve spent a lot of time listening to live stuff from the Dead’s archive. As a fan, in theory, I want to hear everything, but in practice, I find it hard to get my head out of the ‘60s and ‘70s. These Stanford shows on Volume 49 were recorded in the mid-’80s, which is when you got on the bus. What have I been missing, by not really digging into the shows from that period?

At every single show, there's moments where the Dead hit that X factor. And it can be two times a night, it can be 10 times a night, but I call it that frenzy point—that moment where everything comes together. It's a release that happens. And in 1985, 1984, 1987, it happens just as often as it happens in 1977. Maybe at different times of the show.

In 1985, they're not doing a “Dark Star” that leads into a big “Feelin’ Groovy” jam, or something that is just unlike any music you've ever heard. But they're doing these versions of “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire on the Mountain” with these incredible transition jams. They're doing these incredible versions of “The Other One,” which clock in at six or seven minutes long versus the thirty-minute versions they were doing in 1972—but in those seven minutes, they packed in so much intensity. That's what I love about 1980s Dead—it's relentlessly intense. I listen to this music and I hear a band that is having fun and on every single song, including these formerly smaller songs like “Deal” or “Looks like Rain,” they're pushing the envelope, they're really pushing.

I mean, I get really passionate about all eras of Grateful Dead. If you were an ‘80s guy and had asked me “Well, what is it about the ‘60s?,” I would tell you the exact same thing about the intensity and the passion, but I'd be focusing on different parts of the show.

The stuff on Volume 49 really does have a lot of energy, which is surprising, in a way, because this isn’t a great time in Jerry’s life. It’s right after his drug bust and a year before his coma. But you wouldn’t know from the playing that this is someone struggling in any way.

When they hit that stage, they were professionals, and whatever else was going on outside of that stage, I don't think they brought it on there with them. And there's one show in particular, it was [keyboardist] Brent Mydland’s penultimate show, four days before he passed away. It was the second last show of the summer tour of 1990. And Brent brought his demons onto the stage. And there's a video– there's a performance of Brent singing one of his songs where his anger comes out very clearly in this song. And the same thing had happened in 1986 at a Berkeley show, where his anger came out a little bit. And the look on Jerry's face was, I don't think he was angry with Brent. I think he was disappointed.

I think it bummed him out that his friend was hurting so much. But it was also, Look, this is not the place where we do that. And unfortunately, Brent four days later was gone. I was at that show in Chicago when that happened in 1990. I was 19 years old. I was about 15th row, right in the middle. And I remember I could tell Brent's anger was coming through. And for me, having seen at that point, fifty shows, a lot of shows, it was a real shock because I had never thought of these guys having personal demons or personal issues because they were so professional.

And the only thing I knew about them was what I heard on the stage. There was no gossip, there was no socials, there were no paparazzi photos of them doing things. It was all based on the music. And based on the music, you would not think that that was the case because they were professionals when they hit that stage. And at the Frost shows, no matter what might've been going on, you don't hear it. Jerry's voice at times is a little strained, but his guitar playing is as good as it ever was.

You’ve heard more live Grateful Dead music than almost anyone. Where should people begin, if they maybe know the Dead mostly by their studio albums and haven’t dipped into this vast, vast pool of live Dead that’s out there waiting for them?

It might sound like a bit of a cop-out answer, honestly, but I would start with the famous May 8th, 1977 show at Cornell. It's a very accessible show, but it's also incredibly well played. It sounds phenomenal. And then to really [show people] the breadth of what the Dead could do live and really blow some minds, I would go back to Dick's Picks Vol. 8, the Harpur College show. The first hour of that show is the acoustic Grateful Dead, then they follow it up with probably the most intense electric set I can think of. So it shows all of the world of the Grateful Dead in a three hour chunk. From there, it’s really hard. Maybe something later, like the Rich Stadium show from July 4th, 1989— it's a DVD and CD release called Truckin’ Up to Buffalo. That's about as high as the Grateful Dead perform in the late eighties. Maybe the Veneta, Oregon show in 1972 as well. It's an album called Sunshine Daydream. Those are three or four incredible places to start to get a sense of how great the Grateful Dead are, and how varied they are, as well.

You came into it when it was Dick's project and then it has become your project. This has been handed off to you. Do you imagine there will be another person in your position after this? Do you think about that this will go on long after you're not here?

I'm 53 years old now. I'd like to think I'll be around another 40 or 50 years, but you never know. For me, what it comes down to is there's so much great music in the vault. In the early years that I was doing this, I would almost be racing to make sure that we can get that show because that show has to come out, because if the archival [release series] ever stops, that show will not see the light of day. I don't feel that way, because I've learned to have faith that people are going to be interested in them, I think, for quite some time.

If ever I hit burnout, if ever I feel that I'm putting in anything less than a hundred percent or I'm going through the motions or have anything less than the feeling I had on day one, 25 years ago, which I still have—when that happens, I care too much about the Dead legacy to continue and that's when it would be time for me to step aside. I've never felt that way. I've never even come close to it saying it out loud. I still take every single release we do as an incredibly special project, as an incredibly special moment. I never kind of go through the motion say, oh, what's going to be 52, 3, 4, 5, 6? I never kind of look ahead like that. I've been asked before, is such and such a show on your list of future releases? And the honest answer is we don't have a list of future releases.

We don't have this kind of generic list of a hundred shows that we feel are the best and we're just working our way down. We literally go into every, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, every single release we go into as a blank slate and it's created as its own entity. Every single one is treated as though that was the only Grateful Dead archival release ever. If there was only ever one, this is the one. As opposed to just yet another release in an endless series of things. I look at Stanley Kubrick's movies. Every single one of them is unique and very different, and that's what we try to do.

Originally Appeared on GQ