"Tonight they're the greatest group in the world. "We played all night, till dawn," said drummer Mickey Hart.
As a supporting act, he booked the great party band of the moment - - the Blues Brothers with Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi, at the height of "Saturday Night Live" mania. It contains the complete concert performed on December 31, 1978. The Dead celebrated the closing as an approximately five-hour-long party (complete with breakfast with the audience at dawn) and invited some guests including guitarist John Cipollina of Q…
. Ken Babbs of the Merry Pranksters rolled out the Thunder Machine, with Kesey banging away from inside.and then set off a small bomb, while wild-eyed Hart attacked the percussion contraption from the outside.
".KQED-TV will air an 80-minute selection Zamacona edited from those tapes at 9 p.m. Saturday, the first time these performances have been seen since they were originally broadcast, a pledge-drive sneak preview of the nationwide PBS broadcast in November to coincide with the release of a two-DVD set that contains the complete, unedited version of the epic four-hour performance. After their set, the Blues Brothers moved their scene to an after-hours party at the Airplane mansion on Fulton Street that lasted through the night.Backstage, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang swarmed over the party en masse,"They started pouring in the place," said Dead road manager Steve Parish.
It contains an additional nine tracks recorded on New Year's Eve in 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1977.Bonus disc – "New Year's Eves at Winterland",Epilogue patter of Bill Graham from December 31, 1972,"The Closing of Winterland: December 31, 1978","It was 1978, the Night They Closed Old Winterland Down — and the Grateful Dead's All-Night Show Lives On in Memories, Flashbacks — and Now a DVD",History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear's Choice),Ladies and Gentlemen... the Grateful Dead,Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead: England '72,Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings,Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings,Family Dog at the Great Highway, San Francisco, CA 4/18/70,30 Trips Around the Sun: The Definitive Live Story 1965–1995,Shrine Exposition Hall, Los Angeles, CA 11/10/1967,July 29 1966, P.N.E. The Closing of Winterland is a four-CD live album by the Grateful Dead. The Band filmed "The Last Waltz" and the Sex Pistols closed the band's U.S. tour at Winterland. "There was a bit of blow going around," said Weir. ".The band would soon graduate to hockey rinks and baseball parks. Peter Frampton recorded his blockbuster double album "Frampton Comes Alive" there. Cream recorded portions of "Wheels of Fire" there, and the Dead's Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart caught the show.
The evening promised a rich emotional subtext, even for the relatively unsentimental Dead. On the sidewalk under the sign, a Deadhead waiting days in advance of the show held a sign of his own: "1535 Days Since Last S.F. "We were pretty on our game," said guitarist Bob Weir. Weir started the second set with the never-more- appropriate "Samson and Delilah" ("If I had my way I would tear this old building down . Graham served champagne, ham and eggs to the entire crowd.
"This was home base," said drummer Hart, "Dead Central, longtime center for the San Francisco Dead universe. The Rolling Stones gave four memorable shows at the rickety old hall in 1972. ".In a news conference two weeks before the event, producer Graham speculated he could have sold 500,000 tickets. Jimi Hendrix played one of his great shows at Winterland. The night Janis Joplin died in a seedy Los Angeles motel room, the Dead worked Winterland with the Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service (another evening, coincidentally, broadcast on KQED). Pre-ordered DVD sets included the bonus CD "New Year's Eves at Winterland".
The concert was also released as a two-disc DVD.
."). But on this last New Year's Eve at Winterland, the Dead was still part of a small community in which band members could actually read the signs in the crowd.At the start of the third set, deep into the post-midnight hours, Jerry Garcia tickled opening notes out of his electric guitar and a shudder of recognition swept through the crowd. Hart thought the three-man group featuring Eric Clapton on guitar must have been the greatest group in the world. The Dead played the old ice rink at Post and Steiner 59 times beginning in 1968, including four New Year's Eves.
",Instead of a touching farewell, however, the evening descended into a deranged bacchanalia.
Lee Oskar of War and Gregg Errico of Sly and the Family Stone joined the onstage throng during the drum solo. The Winterland Ballroom, where scores of memorable live albums and movies were recorded, went out in style on Dec. 31, 1978. Another five-night run in 1978 celebrated the band's return from Egypt.Winterland itself was built in 1928 for what was then an astronomical cost of $1 million on the site where a temporary theater had once been erected after the 1906 earthquake and young unknown Al Jolson gave one of his first important performances. But pieces of plaster were raining on the heads of concertgoers at almost every show, and Graham estimated the cost of repair at more than $350,000, which his landlords refused to deduct from his rent.He made an emotional appeal to the Grateful Dead to play New Year's Eve and close the hall for him.