By the late 1980s, The Grateful Dead were an aging rock band who depended on live tours to sustain themselves. When the band's reluctant leader Jerry Garcia suffered a major health scare in 1986, the Dead had to stop touring, and their future really seemed uncertain.
That all changed a year later, when the Dead released the single "Touch of Grey." The song
became an instant hit, reaching number nine on the Billboard pop charts, the group's first and only top-10 single.
Music historian John Brackett has written a book about this time called Touch of Grey, or How The Grateful Dead Became Pop Stars. Brackett will discuss the book at California's First Theater in Monterey on Aug. 26, where he'll focus on Monterey's specific connection to the song. I spoke with him ahead of the event and began by asking him why this was arguably the most pivotal moment in the Dead's career:
John Brackett: This was the moment that the Grateful Dead broke from being this kind of underground cult band still — this remnant from the 60s — and became one of the biggest pop stars of the 80s and beyond. And it hit at this right time, and the way that it was marketed by the band's label, and also the anthemic chorus of "we will survive" really kind of resonated with audiences at that point.
Click the audio player at the top of this story to listen to the interview or read the highlights below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Brackett on this pivotal moment in the Grateful Dead's career and on Monterey's connection to the "Touch of Grey" song:
It was, you know, unsure of what the future held for the band and the organization for a while. There was a lot riding on [the success of "Touch of Grey."] There was a lot of attention paid to the production of the album. But there was also a heavy emphasis on the video. And this is where the video and Monterey really kind of enters the picture.
Dylan Music: The band records the video for "Touch of Grey," which is actually their first real music video. It features skeleton puppet versions of the band on stage playing instruments. They're called 'the Dead Ringers.' And something that I never knew is that the video was filmed literally right down the street from our radio station at Laguna Seca. So how did that all come about?
John Brackett: Yeah, by about March of 1987, the band and director Gary Gutierrez had settled on a general outline and visual storyboards had been put in place for the "Touch of Grey" video. At that point, they decided that they were going to shoot the band and the skeletons live in front of an audience.
They were going to do that in between two shows at Laguna Seca. So on Saturday, May 9th, when the Dead finished up in the early evening, some of the representatives from the video and the Dead came over to the campgrounds and invited people back to the stage area to witness the filming of the video and to 'play themselves'— you know, to be fans [and] be the audience for this video. And so when you watch the video, there are so many cutaway shots of the audience—-
DM: And it seems like a pretty young crowd. I was kind of surprised when I was re-watching that video. Some of them were pretty young kids there.
JB: Yeah, I mean, it's a mix though, too. And there's contemporary kind of news footage at the time that really emphasizes that too.
Brackett on what audiences can expect if they go to his talk at California's First Theater in Monterey on Aug. 26:
It's going to be really just focusing on the significance of Monterey in the history and in the story of "Touch of Grey," focusing on the concerts and the production of the video itself.
I'll be bringing in audio and video clips and a lot of images from the archive to really get a sense of the planning and the production of the video and then the aftermath [and] how it figures into the story of "Touch of Grey" and the Dead.
Music historian John Brackett will be doing a talk about his book, "Touch of Grey or How the Grateful Dead Became Pop Stars," at California's First Theater in Monterey on Aug. 26, where he'll focus on the video for "Touch of Grey" and its filming at Laguna Seca.