Before the Sphere, There Was the Wall

The Atlantic

7 days ago

Picture yourself at a concert. If you're standing by the soundboard, usually near the rear center of the venue, you'll enjoy the best possible version of the band's performance—what the 'sound guy,' whose job it is to make everything coalesce inside the room, hears. But if you step away to grab a beer and end up watching from a different place, you'll hear something else. At an outdoor show, the experience is even more varied, because of the open acoustics and elements such as wind, which break up sound waves. Far too often, the song you've waited all night for may finally reach your ears as a distorted puddle.
How does a band ensure that it sounds like the most pristine version of itself, no matter where the show takes place or where the audience listens? In the early 1970s, the Grateful Dead tried to solve this dilemma with the help of their on-again, off-again sound engineer, Owsley 'Bear' Stanley, who conceptualized one of the boldest innovations in music history: a literal 'wall of sound.' On hits such as the Ronettes' 'Be My Baby,' the music producer Phil Spector had famously created a figurative wall of sound by layering instruments and orchestral sweeps. But the Dead's wall was essentially a behemoth sound system, a hulking electrical mess of amps, speakers, wires—like the menacing heavy-metal rig in Mad Max: Fury Road, but far larger, louder, and, perhaps, more ludicrous. The grand idea was both utopian and egalitarian: The wall placed virtually every piece of technology needed for a live show behind the group, allowing the crowd to hear precisely what the Dead heard as they played.
The wall, the journalist Brian Anderson writes in his new book, Loud and Clear, 'weighed as much as a dozen full-grown elephants' and 'stretched the length of a regulation basketball court.' At each tour stop, roadies would assemble the nearly 600 speakers that, when operable, stood at about the height of a small apartment building and sounded 'as loud as a jet engine at close range.' During outdoor shows, fans could be up to a quarter mile from the stage and still hear Jerry Garcia's guitar runs with depth and clarity. But a relatively short time after its creation, the complexity and expense of maintaining the wall catalyzed the band's first serious brush with burnout—and, Anderson argues, played a factor in its hiatus.
In trying to shorten the pathway from instrument to eardrum, the Dead's wall had simultaneously created a host of previously nonexistent issues. On paper, the wall was a tool to expand the scope of their sky-reaching jams; more than any of their rock contemporaries, the Dead were known for extended, full-band improvisation. But relying on engineering in order to achieve a perfect sound brought a new set of anxieties: Because there was frequently some glitch with the wall, the band was often held back from reliably playing at its best. Stanley helped the Dead reach a new stratosphere of live performance, but he also established an impossible standard—one the band couldn't measure up to.
Grateful Dead fandom invites—and thrives on—obsession. Though the Dead's jam-band sound is undoubtedly groovy, many of its songs concern heavy themes such as life and death. There's a deceptive weight to their songs, even when the tunes feel bright; the music is an ongoing search to unlock something hidden in the recesses of your mind. Though the band has a wonderful collection of studio recordings, the real juice is in the live stuff: the thousands of concerts performed over dozens of years, with a different set list every night.
There's a lot to get lost in, and from their early days as a touring band, the Dead won legions of stoned and tripping devotees. Anderson's book, though, is dizzying in a different way: It's a detailed, almost show-by-show breakdown of the band's live performances across its first decade (roughly 1965 to 1974), augmented by insider stories. Readers meet not only Stanley but also other engineers, roadies, and crew members who worked long hours under difficult conditions to help the Dead put on incomparable shows. (Many of the roadies also relied on, according to one band member, 'mountains of blow.')
But undergirding this occasionally exhausting narrative effort is a tale about the tension between innovation and hubris. The wall was, in a sense, a physical manifestation of a brainiac's acid trip; after Stanley took LSD at a legendary Dead show at an upstate–New York speedway, Anderson writes, he believed that he could weave an unbreakable connection between the wall, the band, and the crowd. His acid-tinged goal with the wall was 'hooking it up to a whole sea of people like one mind,' he said. For years, most other bands had played the same way in concert: with instruments connected to amps, and amps and vocals running through the house PA. Even when traveling with their own sound guy, they'd still be beholden to each venue's setup—unless they toted all of their own gear, which just wasn't realistic.
The wall, in theory, allowed for both top-notch sound and show-by-show consistency. In practice, though, it was an unwieldy nightmare. Speakers often blew out or failed mid-show. Stanley drifted in and out of the band's orbit; other engineers and roadies expanded on his original visions. All the while, maintaining the rig became more convoluted: The band kept booking larger venues, thus requiring more sonic power, more crew members, and more attention to detail. Peak functionality was far from guaranteed, and Anderson convincingly makes the case that many early versions of the wall sounded better than the 'official' wall shows in 1974, because the smaller scale allowed for relatively more control (though it was far from an efficient process; early iterations could still take five hours to set up and another five to break down).
Within the band itself, the wall was divisive. Bassist Phil Lesh called the wall 'apocalyptic,' but also compared it to the 'voice of God.' For him, the wall allowed for 'the most generally satisfying performance experience of my life with the band.' Bob Weir, who sang and played guitar, called the wall 'insane' and 'a logistical near impossibility.' Drummer Bill Kreutzmann, according to Anderson, said it was a 'creature that was supercool to look at, but impossible to tame.' And Garcia, it seems, would have been fine keeping things a little more down-to-earth. At the wall's official debut, on March 23, 1974, technical difficulties led to Garcia's guitar volume plunging moments into the first song. When you listen to this show today, the beginning sounds, well, kind of crappy.
In the end, the Dead played only a few dozen shows with the fully built-up wall, as the cost and draining elaborateness of touring with the device eventually became too much. At the end of 1974, the Dead downsized its crew and, in Garcia's words, 'dumped' the structure. When they hit the road again almost two years later, their sound setup was more practical—in essence, sacrificing the perfect for the sustainable. They remained road dogs until Garcia's death in 1995, and have kept offshoots of the band rolling along since.
Though I never saw the band perform with Garcia—I was 7 years old when he died of a heart attack—I've seen its different configurations over the years. Last summer I saw Dead & Company play as part of their residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. That night demonstrated the clearest and most all-encompassing live sound I'd ever experienced. Most people have heard about the Sphere's mind-bending visuals and mondo LED screens; fewer may realize that it also contains 167,000 individual speakers (including in each seat).
Though I was able to lose myself in the show, a very real part of me almost would have preferred hearing these same songs outside in the sun, in an uncontrolled setting, where any number of variables—the breeze, a storm, air pressure—might have affected the sound. Imperfection can feel just as right, in a different way, as technical perfection. It's freeing to accept that something might always be a little off, no matter the herculean effort; the Dead seemed to accept this too. Anderson's book makes a compelling argument that reaching for total audio domination was—and is—a noble endeavor, albeit one rife with pitfalls. But even the most advanced rig in the world doesn't necessarily make the songs any good. That much is up to the band.