Eighteen Years Later: Grateful Dead Debut Unbroken Chain

Eighteen years ago this evening the Grateful Dead debuted a song at The Spectrum in Philadelphia that had been written over 20 years prior. Though Unbroken Chain appeared on From The Mars Hotel in 1974, it was never played live until March 19th, 1995. We thought enough of this unprecedented performance that we put it at number one on our list of favorite Grateful Dead bust outs.

On today’s anniversary, we wanted to share the brief bit of video that has surfaced…

Also, the fine folks @GDTLP have pointed us towards a chill-inducing audience recording of the debut…

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We especially love the cheers of “YES, YES, YES!” when the song ends.

Craig Hillwig of the @GDTLP team attended the final Dead show at The Spectrum and shared some thoughts about what went down at the venue when the Dead started playing Unbroken Chain. You can read them in the Unbroken Chain entry on The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site.