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March 6, 2020

20 Amazing Vintage Photos of the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound, 1974

Weighed over 70 tons, comprise dozens and then hundreds of amps, speakers, subwoofers, and tweeters, stand over three-stories tall and stretch nearly 100 feet wide. Its name could only be the “Wall of Sound”.

The Wall of Sound was an enormous public address system designed specifically for the Grateful Dead’s live performances in 1974. It was the creation of audio engineer Owsley “Bear” Stanley. The Grateful Dead gave the sneak peek of the Wall of Sound on February 9, 1973 at Stanford University’s Maples Pavilion but it was on March 23, 1974 when they debuted the completed system during their tour stop at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California.

After got out of prison in late 1972, Stanley, Dan Healy and Mark Raizene of the Grateful Dead’s sound crew, in collaboration with Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and John Curl of Alembic, combined six independent sound systems using eleven separate channels, in an effort to deliver high-quality sound to audiences. Vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and piano each had their own channel and set of speakers. Phil Lesh’s bass was piped through a quadraphonic encoder that sent signals from each of the four strings to a separate channel and set of speakers for each string. Another channel amplified the bass drum, and two more channels carried the snares, tom-toms, and cymbals. Because each speaker carried just one instrument or vocalist, the sound was exceptionally clear and free of intermodulation distortion.
Bassist Phil Lesh told Rolling Stone magazine, “I started talking to Bear about our sound problems. There was no technology for electric instruments. We started talking about how to get around distortion and get a pure musical tone. He did some research and said, ‘Let’s use Altec speakers and hi-fi amps and four-tube amps, one for each instrument, and put them on a piece of wood.’ Three months later we were playing through Bear’s sound system.”
This system projected high-quality playback at six hundred feet with an acceptable sound projected for a quarter mile, at which point wind interference degraded it. The Wall of Sound was the first large-scale line array used in modern sound reinforcement systems, although it was not called a line array at the time. The Wall of Sound was perhaps the second-largest non-permanent sound system ever built.

There were multiple sets of staging and scaffolding that toured with the Grateful Dead. In order to accommodate the time needed to set up and tear down the system, the band would perform with one set while another would “leapfrog” to the next show. According to band historian Dennis McNally, there were two sets of scaffolding. According to Stanley, there were three sets. Four semi-trailers and 21 crew members were required to haul and set up the 75-ton Wall.

As Stanley described it,
“The Wall of Sound is the name some people gave to a super powerful, extremely accurate PA system that I designed and supervised the building of in 1973 for the Grateful Dead. It was a massive wall of speaker arrays set behind the musicians, which they themselves controlled without a front of house mixer. It did not need any delay towers to reach a distance of half a mile from the stage without degradation.”



Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com



Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com

Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com


Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com


Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com

Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com

Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com





Photo: © Richard Pechner/rpechner.com

50 comments:

  1. Gotta wonder who bankrolled all that equipment for a band that never broke into the mainstream with a big hit. My guess is the CIA.

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    Replies
    1. Actually, many would argue that the worst thing that happened to the Grateful Dead was breaking into the mainstream with a big hit in 1987.

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    2. The Dead and the Bear- Stanley came from a wealthy family

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    3. The Dead paid for it themselves. They were a hard working band that gigged steadily for decades, and long before mainstream media noticed them were filling large venues, which is why they wanted that system.

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    4. They had a MASSIVE following for a long time before they had a mainstream hit. My cousin saw them over 150 times. If they played at a arena for 5 nights he'd go every night. His son too. I saw them in 1973 fill up the RFK baseball stadium in D.C., 40,000 or so people. They were already
      making a LOT of money back then.

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    5. Stanley “Bear” Owsley. Financed the band. He was one of the top LCD producers at the time. He was was the inspiration for the dancing bear. And also created the Steele logo

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  2. The CIA! Of course it was!

    Except that it broke the band...

    But hell, don't let facts deter you.

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  3. Absolutely. The CIA. And the Trilateral Commission. The band did, and it drove them to the edge of bankruptcy, and was part of the reason for the 1975 hiatus.

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    1. yeah that's a great line of shit and I like it but the year off had more to do with cocaine than the CIA

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    2. plus Mickey Harts father was their manager and ripped them off of a lot of money, and Mickey quit the Band

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  4. Or you're just, you know, regurgitating the bullshit you've been fed đŸ˜‚

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    1. You my friend, don't know what you're talking about and are merely speculating. I worked on their crew. They made their money from live shows.

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    2. No, the CIA Grateful Dead connection is actually very well established. You shouldn't feel bad that they didn't share their CIA connections with their roadies đŸ˜‚

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  5. Replies
    1. Actually he worked for them then, not them for him. The Band paid for the system out of their ticket and lp sales.

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    2. He bankrolled the dead for a time.

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  6. Great pics! Any idea where each was from? I was at the 8/6/74 show at Roosevelt Stadium, such an amazing show!

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    1. The 1st and 5th photo were taken by Ray Ellison of Chicago, Il. It is from the 6-16-74 Des Moines Iowa show at the State Fairgrounds. I bought those two photo's from Ray in 1982. I later found out after he died, that Ray was a regular in the underground Chicago Punk and New Wave scene in the mid and late 70's and took 1000's of photo's of bands in that era.

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    2. I was at that show remember thinking when I walked "aint no fucking way I sit under that thing" that was over Bill's head. Saw them there a few times and always wondered WTF are they playing in this toilet but it was always a good time there

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  7. Absolutely perfect sound- it fill the Oakland Baseball stadium with perfect sound on the first Day on the Green in June 74 featuring the New Riders, The Beach Boys andthe Dead !

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    1. Dont forget Commander Cody at that show! '74, Fun times...

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    2. Commander Cody opened the June 1972 Hollywood Bowl gig, unannounced - it was supposed to be just NRPS and the Dead as usual. Bill Kitchen, the telecaster player in Commander Cody, was the first great telecaster player I ever saw, and I've been in love with the sound of telecasters ever since. Garcia played pedal steel with NRPS, one of the last times, and Pigpen played his last concert with the Dead at that show. It was my first Dead show, and what a great way to start my Deadhead daze! Saw the dead a dozen more times after that, Garcia's band even more, but that first show will always stay in my mind. I shared a box with a man who managed an audio store in downtown Los Angeles, who gave me his card, and I later bought my first (and last) great stereo from: JBL Century 100 studio monitors, B&O record player, McIntosh integrated amplifier. That stereo sounded great, and attracted some future friends who heard it blasting and came in to say hi. One of them was Brian Ray, bass and guitar player with Paul McCartney. The man who owned the house I rented a room in lived on the hill above Ray's family home in the Pacific Palisades, so he came over to visit and heard my stereo. We became friends, and he would stop by to roll a doobie out of my stems and seeds, then would tune and play my cheap acoustic guitar. I had given-up trying to play guitar, but after hearing how incredibly beautiful Brian Ray made it sound, I kept at it, and still play to this day. When I told him he would be famous someday, he said modestly: "many guitar players are better than I am", but I knew he had "it". Then there was the time Bob Dylan came into my mothers antique shop in Venice during the mid-1970's, stayed a couple hours buying gold rings for a "birthday" (his?), but I digress. The Dead were a phenomenal band when they were firing on all cylinders, and the central brain of the "octopus" took over control, the audience feeding-back to the music - great vibes and times back in the day, wish they had never ended........!

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  8. Always ask a dead fan if you want to learn about perfect sound. From the view of someone that is tone deaf.

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    1. Many great guitar player mention Jerry Garcia as an influence, but they are likely "tone deaf" too?

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  9. This looks like a perfect recipe for massive amounts of hearing loss! How much power did that whole thing draw? You sure weren't going to plug it into any normal venue's electrical system.

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    1. It wasn't that loud, it was designed to deliver clean, full spectrum sound to every part of a big venue, without distortion or echoes. It was not very efficient in several ways, but what was learned from that experiment completely revolutionized concert audio,and all live systems today use innovations the Dead pioneered.

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    2. They had 48 McIntosh 2300 amps driving the PA system. Some of them are visible in the photos. Jerry had one of these amps at his house.

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    3. There were actually 60 McIntosh MC-2300 amplifiers powering the system. Although it had great dynamics and bass power it didn't sound that loud, due to the extremely low distortion, something of a rarity in those days. I was at 2 shows, one on 6/28/74 at Boston gardens, then 2 days later at Springfield MA Civic Center. I was quite far back in Boston, quite close in Springfield. In both places the sound quality was identical and set a very high new standard for clarity and quality. The Dead stopped touring for 1975 because they were exhausted from constantly being on the road from 1969-1974. Because of the multiple crews involved in set up and tear down it was financially draining as well. And then there was the Saudi Oil Crisis at the time, where gas prices skyrocketed. Although they were incredibly popular, selling out huge arenas from the 70's onward, they were always on the verge of being broke until the last 10 years of their career, due to their insistence on using only the very best sound and lights. There was no feedback, due to a special vocal microphone arrangement that was very sophisticated. The system was an astonishing and standard setting technical marvel, which was only exceeded very late in their career.

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    4. Also, so far as I know, the Dead were very anti establishment and had absolutely no involvement with the CIA, ever. If it's true, it's been long enough, so put your money where your mouth is if you can prove it.

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  10. The thing that seems fishy to me is that the band is standing in front of the sound system. If you were to turn any of those mics on or semi acoustic guitars, you'd be deafened with feedback. There is enough feedback on normal stages where the band is behind the pa with monitors facing the players. As an experiment, I'm sure everyone learned a lot but there is a reason this set up hasn't been replicated. Claiming that it was an innovation in big stage set ups seems strange to me. What did they learn? Sound system culture had already learned about arrays, projection and phasing when it came to designing a well balanced dance floor. Horn loaded cabinets came before this. These are all front loaded cabinets in what seems to be a random ass assortment of unmatched speakers. It looks pretty wicked but it doesn't look like it worked amazingly.

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    1. The mics were differential. Meaning the band sang into one and the other which was 180 degress out of phase with the other mic cancelled out any sound that came through both mics

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    2. I had the pleasure of listening to this sound system at UCSB in 1974. I remember telling people at the time how crisp and clear the sound was. We had a "base camp" at the the bleachers at the back of the stadium, and we walked around a bit, and met up with some friends that were much closer. The sound was just as clean, front or back. I think the Dead had to drop the Wall of Sound because it was just too expensive to set up and maintain.

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    3. I worked for Altec Lansing during this period and supplied eq's and real time analyzers to the band. Dan Healey was my contact and gave me access to photograph the system. I have some great photos of the system, and not of the typical "front" wall only.
      The microphones were NOT out of phase.....they were 180 degrees out of polarity. 2 completely different terms.

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    4. and is that why there was no feedback?

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    5. 180 degrees out of polarity with 0 degrees is out of phase.

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    6. The only problem with the mics was, for it to work, you had to place the mics so close to each other, that the one you weren't singing into actually picked up the vocal a bit. That's why when you listen to any Dead show from 73-74, the vocals are real thin sounding, because you were a bit of the cancellation on the vocals.

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    7. The microphones were based on the T-45 which Lou Burroughs developed at ElectroVoice during WWII. The military bought over 2 million of them, they allowed Army Tank commanders, Naval Gun Directors, etc. to communicate effectively over the din of battle. Without the, "Noise Cancelling," mics, the Wall of Sound would have never worked.

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    8. They used EV mics in the very early stages of their career but experimented with different makes and models constantly. The differential mics were B&K calibration mics, a very precise mic that manufacturers use to measure the frequency response of their speakers

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  11. Myself and my friends back in the mid 70's bought a lot of their records and a lot of concert tickets, you couldn't just steal music in those days, not like today...yes I was one those high people bathing in the fountain.

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  12. They sure didn't travel light. Loved those guys.

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  13. 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 17, and 18 are 06-16-74 des moines. photos 1 and 5 are by ray ellingsen of chicago

    2 is 06-08-74 oakland

    4 is 05-25-74 UCSB

    7 is 05-17-74 PNE vancouver soundcheck

    8 is probably from 02-23-74 cow palace

    10 and 12 are 05-21-74 seattle soundcheck

    11 is 07-31-74 hartford (photo by jim anderson)

    13, 14, and 19 are 05-12-74 reno

    15 is 05-19-74 portland soundcheck

    20 is 07-21-74 hollywood bowl (photo by david gans)

    I-) ihor

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  14. 16 is probably from 05-25-74 at UCSB

    I-) ihor

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  15. dates with the photographers credited:

    1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 17, and 18 are 06-16-74 des moines. photos 1 and 5 are by ray ellingsen of chicago

    2 is 06-08-74 oakland

    4 and 16 are 05-25-74 UCSB (photos by richard pechner)

    7 is 05-17-74 PNE vancouver soundcheck (photo by richard pechner)

    8 is probably from 02-23-74 cow palace

    10 and 12 are 05-21-74 seattle soundcheck (10 - photo by richard pechner)

    11 is 07-31-74 hartford (photo by jim anderson)

    13, 14, and 19 are 05-12-74 reno

    15 is 05-19-74 portland soundcheck (photo by richard pechner)

    20 is 07-21-74 hollywood bowl (photo by david gans)

    I-) ihor

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  16. There's some great comments left here. Chkm out....

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  17. hey geniuses .. while you're squabbling about who knows the trivia better: how come no one mentioned that owsley and audio engineer was actually much better known as the king of acid at the time ...

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    1. Everybody already knows that (maybe you didn't), so why mention it? Something not as widely known is that Robert Hunter - the Dead's lyricist, and Ken Kesey of "Electric Koolaid Acid Test" fame, both took part in the CIA's experiments with LSD at the "Stanford Research Institute" (SRI), which is said to be part of the "Tavistock Institute of Human Engineering" infamy. That is about the only CIA connection I know of, although I'm sure the CIA was interested in the "Acid Tests", to see how LSD pacified the potentially "dangerous" anti-war protestors, which the hippies had become thanks mostly to Stu Albert (RIP)- a Portland native. Everybody has heard of the Yippies, and Abbie Hoffman etc. - who admitted they were financed by the Rockerfellers, but Stu Albert was the one who, more than anybody else, radicalized the hippies into being part of the anti-war movement. LSD was supposed to pacify them/us (I was born in 1955, but was a hippie of sorts in my teenage years, very anti-war, anti-establishment, and because my father was an important part of the "department of defense(war)" - I became a "targeted individual", and am only alive by a series of miracles, or God answering my prayers when I should have been dead. Long live the Dead................!

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  18. Replies
    1. Absolutely spectacular! It was the first time I had ever heard high fidelity in the context of a sound system for a rock band. I heard it in 2 places; June 28th 1974 at the Boston Gardens (now an archival release in the 'Dicks Picks' series) and June 30 at the Springfield MA Civic Center. Boston I was near the rear of the arena, Springfield I was around 20 feet from the stage. The sound was identical in both places; great clarity and dynamics. The system was such that I could carry on a conversation with whoever was next to me without straining my voice or my hearing, yet the music had this incredible punch and clarity. One would think that having all those speaker drivers behind them it would be deafening to the musicians but the way that actually works is they heard the sound from speakers up to the level of their ears; the sound didn't completely focus until around 20 feet out from the stage. An amazing technical achievement for the time. The bands year off came about due to many factors in play; The Oil Crisis at the time; gas prices were though the roof and the expense of having all that gear and the number of crew required to set up and tear down was a huge financial drain. It took over 6 hours to set up and another 3 to tear down. I'm sure that major coke use, as well as a whole other world of drugs figured in there as well. the other big factor was the sheer physical and mental exhaustion from 5-6 years of nearly constant touring. During the hiatus they established a real management structure (they had never had one previously) with a more sensible touring schedule that allowed for time off. There was nothing like a Grateful Dead concert!

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