by Charles Siegel
Sun went down in honey
And the moon came up in wine
You know the stars were spinning dizzy
Lord the band kept us so busy
We forgot about the time
That is a verse from “The Music Never Stopped,” a song written by Bob Weir and John Barlow, and recorded on the Grateful Dead’s 1975 album “Blues for Allah.” Weir, the rhythm guitarist and one of the two principal composers for the band, died earlier this month at 78. His obituary appeared in the New York Times and everywhere else. I can add nothing to all the tributes and encomia, or the descriptions of his life and music. But one aspect of his career that seems to have gotten little attention is fascinating to me: he may very well have played before more people than any other musician ever.
I do not remotely qualify as a Deadhead. I saw the Grateful Dead seven times, albeit in seven different cities. I’ve seen Dead and Company, the most recent successor band, a few times, including last year at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
But I’ve been listening to their music for most of my life. I had some of their albums, though by no means all of them, and I had a few other albums on which one or more of the members played. I wore out “Old and In the Way,” for example, a great collaboration between Jerry Garcia and some bluegrass masters, during college. In law school I wore out the live album “Dead Set.” So while there are legions of people, some of whom are good friends, who saw the band many more times, I have spent a fair amount of time listening to and thinking about them.
Weir had an unusually long and productive run. He legendarily met Garcia, the Dead’s lead guitarist and other songwriter, on New Year’s Eve in 1963, when he heard the sound of Garcia’s banjo emanating from a music store in Palo Alto. Weir, then 16, went in and jammed with Garcia, and on the spot they decided to form a band. This proto-group, which was called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, eventually morphed into the Grateful Dead. The band played its first concert under that name in December 1965.
From there, they proceeded to play around another 2,300 shows. That count stops on July 9, 1995, at Soldier Field in Chicago, because Garcia died a month later. Amazingly, however, this was just the first half of Weir’s career as a performing artist. He still had another 30 years of live playing left to go.
And play he did, and play and play. There were the various successor bands to the Grateful Dead: The Other Ones (eventually also known as “The Dead”), and of course Dead and Company. And all the while there were his various solo projects: Kingfish, Bobby and the Midnites, RatDog, Furthur and others.
The history of the Grateful Dead is meticulously documented. Every show and setlist has been documented and tabulated to a fare-thee-well. If you wanted to know, for example, how many times “Viola Lee Blues” was played at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco, you could find that online in minutes. There are similar records of shows for the other bands such as Dead and Company.
The numbers for all the shows Weir played with his own groups are perhaps less comprehensive or reliable. But there seems to be some broad agreement that from mid-1995 on, he played perhaps another 2300 or so shows. There is no definitive count, but it is safe to say that in total, Weir played somewhere between 4500 and 5000 shows. That’s a lot of nights, in hundreds of different venues, from tiny clubs to theaters to stadiums.
Does that total mean that Weir played more shows than any other musician? Hard to say. That case can be made. But there are certainly other candidates. B.B. King, for one, might well have played thousands more.
Beyond them, of course, lie the legions of unknown musicians who play night in and night out, but who aren’t touring acts and whose performances aren’t counted. Someone out there who played piano in a cocktail bar, five nights a week for 50 years. Or perhaps a New York trumpet player who played in a Broadway orchestra pit, five nights a week for 60 years. Such a person – if he or she exists – would have played 15,000 gigs, give or take the odd night off.
So we can’t be sure that Weir played more gigs than anyone else. But who played in front of the most people? Weir apparently thought he had; he is quoted in a documentary about the Grateful Dead as saying so. There’s no way to know for sure, but I think he was right.
The Dead’s early gigs were at small clubs. Beginning in about 1967, however, they were playing at venues like the Fillmore, which sat anywhere from 1000 to 3000 depending on the setup (and depending on whether you’re referring to the Fillmore or the Fillmore West, not to mention the Fillmore East in New York City). And for some number of years starting in the 70s, they were playing arenas such as Madison Square Garden and Boston Garden. When I saw the band for the first time, it was at the Summit in Houston, which had a capacity of over 16,000. (I also saw them at Madison Square Garden.)
That continued for 20 years or so. And there were huge stadium and racetrack gigs, and massive outdoor concerts in Golden Gate Park and elsewhere. Dead and Company played many such shows too.
Rooting around on Reddit a bit, it appears that while there is no indisputably correct answer to this question, the one act that might come closest to Weir – or might eclipse him – would be the Rolling Stones. They have been active for over 60 years, and for the substantial majority of that time they played only in large arenas or stadiums. And they’ve also played some truly extraordinary shows, such as the free concert on the beach in Rio de Janeiro in 2006 for 1.5 million people. There are other candidates, most notably Bob Dylan, who still tours more or less continuously even in his mid–80s.
But my guess is it’s probably Weir. For one, the sheer number of shows gives him an edge. While the Stones have played only large venues for decades, there have been many years when they didn’t play at all, and when they did tour, it might be two or three dozen shows at the very most. In all, they have played less than half the number of shows Weir played. Even Dylan is still probably a few hundred shows behind Weir. (Interestingly, Dylan played several dozen shows with the Dead.)
When you add in the size of Weir’s crowds over the years, I think he probably wins. Lots of big arenas, and thousands of shows at smaller, but still medium-size, venues such as theaters. To take just one example, the Dead played 29 shows at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, which seats 8500. Those crowds add up.
What a thing! It’s a thrill to play music for people. But to have played music, live, before more people than anyone else, ever? What a life. Thank goodness he heard Garcia’s banjo, all those new year’s eves ago. From then on, the music never stopped.