![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Friend of the Devil” made its first public appearance in March 1970 at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y., a couple of months before the Dead began opening their own shows with full-blown acoustic sets. Today the music that the Grateful Dead recorded on their pair of 1970 albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, can be considered proto-Americana at the time they didn’t fit into any easily delineated category. Following the lead of their friends Crosby, Stills and Nash, they polished up their vocal leads and harmonies, broke out what rhythm guitarist/singer Bob Weir dubbed the “wooden instruments” (plus, in Garcia’s case, the pedal steel guitar), and investigated song material that was less kaleidoscopic in nature, music that, in some ways, had more in common with the themes inhabiting the songs The Band’s Robbie Robertson had been creating. Their first tentative forays into acoustic music could be found on 1969’s Aoxomoxoa album, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1970 that the Dead became seriously committed to exploring the form onstage on a regular (if sadly short-lived) basis. Hunter had come aboard as in-house lyricist in ’67, penning words for such lysergic templates as “Dark Star,” “China Cat Sunflower” and “Alligator,” but by ’69 and early 1970 the Dead were looking to quiet things down a bit. The Grateful Dead underwent a seismic stylistic adjustment beginning in 1969, as lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia and his preferred songwriting partner Robert Hunter began incorporating more acoustic music into the band’s repertoire, to offset the psychedelic jams they’d been trafficking in since their formation four years earlier. (Written by Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter/John Dawson) ![]()
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