the grateful dead in 1979: a total transformation

When the Grateful Dead released Go to Heaven on April 28, 1980 — the white-suit “angel” cover, Brent Mydland’s debut, the full Arista push — it was meant to be their commercial breakthrough. Instead it opened seven years of studio silence.

This is the three-producer experiment that broke them: Keith Olsen (fresh off Fleetwood Mac) erasing Mickey Hart’s timbale from “Terrapin Station,” Lowell George and the chaotic Shakedown Street sessions, and Gary Lyons calling the Dead “the Bermuda Triangle for producers.” Jerry Garcia arrived with three songs, killed one, and kept only “Althea”; a 26-year-old Brent Mydland felt “embarrassed” when crowds went quiet for “Easy to Love You.” Sourced from Bill Kreutzmann’s Deal, Rock Scully, Dennis McNally, and Blair Jackson, it ends in January 1987 at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium, where the band finally cracked it — recording In the Dark on an empty stage and landing “Touch of Grey,” their first top-ten single.