The 1970s

Jerry Garcia during the legendary 1977 Winterland run in San Francisco.

The Palladium, formally the Academy of Music, was a theater turned concert hall in Manhattan. This iteration of the Jerry Garcia Band featured the Grateful Dead’s Keith and Donna Godchaux along with Maria Muldaur on vocals, John Kahn and Buzz Buchanan.

When I was 18, I took a bus cross-country, solo, from Brooklyn, N.Y., to San Francisco to attend this 1977 New Year’s run at Winterland. I made my way up to the stage to photograph the band with my new Minolta SRT-101 camera. At the time I was beginning to get my work published in Relix magazine.

Just after the balloon drop at Winterland, the Grateful Dead breaks into “Sugar Magnolia;” a nod to promoter and impresario Bill Graham, it was his favorite Grateful Dead song.

The show in Binghamton was possibly my favorite Grateful Dead show that I attended. The band was on fire that night.

There’s no place like Red Rocks, one of the nicest outdoor venues in the country. After hearing about the Dead’s shows there the previous year, I made up my mind to go for this three-night run during the summer of ‘79. Unfortunately it rained like crazy after this show, forcing the remaining two concerts to be moved indoors to Denver’s McNichols Arena. In this era of the Dead, the drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart had a massive percussion and drum ensemble known as “The Beast.”