(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Wed 8 October 2025 21:45, UK
Across the 1980s, blues jam noodlers Grateful Dead had lapsed into the unfortunate perception of fusty relics of the Woodstock era.
Jerry Garcia and his penchant for elongated live stretches hadn’t endeared the West Coast titans to the punk and new wave explosion. While cultivating a ‘Deadhead’ fandom unrivalled in their unwavering dedication, and standing as key pillars of the San Francisco hippy idyll, such lauded legacy barely translated beyond the early 1970s.
Kurt Cobain infamously sported a “Kill the Grateful Dead” T-shirt during his Nevermind pomp, and Big Black frontman Steve Albini was the subject of a cruel joke when, upon Garcia’s death in 1995, grieving Deadheads were handed Albini’s phone number for moral support by WHPK Radio’s Matt Gambino, such was the Electrical Audio founder’s loathing.
Even the Grateful Dead’s supposed peers couldn’t dig their eternal psychedelic poodlin’. Meat Loaf and John Fogerty have both spoken candidly about witnessing their live jams and struggling to stay awake, Frank Zappa made indirect jibes at the broader ‘San Fran’ hippydom at odds with his freak radicalism, and The Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker spat even fiercer venom at Garcia’s tie-dyed jazz rock, “…just tedious, a lie, and untalented. They can’t play, and they certainly can’t write. The Airplane, the Dead, all of them”.
Soldiering through the 1980s and its rapidly shifting pop climate with the recruitment of keyboardist Brent Mydland, Grateful Dead limped on, kept afloat by the loyal Deadheads who’d attend every concert and snap up every record. Yet, fortunes began to favour Garcia’s psych-outfit by the decade’s end. Enjoying a surprise hit with 1987’s ‘Touch of Grey’, its promo brought the Grateful Dead to the attention of the MTV generation with its heavy rotation, and entered a renewed profile by sharing in the joint national mini tour with Bob Dylan, captured on that year’s Dylan & the Dead live album.
Things were on the up. But, as Garcia was struggling with an on-off hook on smoked smack, and still dealing with the after effects of a five-day diabetic coma, Grateful Dead trundled along with their final official album in 1989, Built to Last, a record that sold reasonably well but failed to capitalise on the recent flurry of contemporary appeal.
As befell many great artists from the pre-punk era, the 1980s’ recording trends and studio toys were slathered over many a confused boomer’s album, from the new age dross that mushed Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, to the excellent songs slapped with dated production clouding Leonard Cohen’s otherwise canonical I’m Your Man.
Such is the fate of Built to Last, a grating indulgence of terrible keyboard washes and chirpy presets, sagging whatever stirring pearls of jam journey are supposed to be in Grateful Dead’s masterful hands. Four numbers feature Mydland on vocals that plummet awful depths of soft-pop muzak, and, aside from Garcia’s trademark guitar licks, feature none of their creative captain’s personality amid its processed murk.
The last studio effort before Garcia’s death, Built to Last, marked a sad end to the Grateful Dead legacy, a blot on their work that’s taken copious amounts of live records and quasi-reunion shows to reorient the Deadhead story on a better note.
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