If the Grateful Dead weren’t already skeptical enough about studio recording by the mid- Seventies, their initial forays into that arena for Arista Records certainly confirmed their well-grounded suspicions. After leaving Warner Bros. Records, the psychedelic warriors had explored all manner of making albums during the time they had their own independent label—beginning with Wake of the Flood and continuing through From The Mars Hotel and on to Blues For Allah—but their experiences late in the same decade, during the creation of Shakedown Street and Go To Heaven, had likely as not left them dolefully resigned about their prospects for any breakthrough to mainstream popularity.
Imagine the Grateful Dead’s surprise then, when 1987’s In The Dark became a runaway hit. Largely via the popularity of the single “Touch of Grey,” but also due to a wholly positive response largely via MTV, to the videos for that song and others for the LP, a mainstream success that had eluded them for upwards of two decades invigorated the band in the wake of titular leader Jerry Garcia’s brush with death the previous year. Over the long-term, however, the broadening expanse of their audience, based on this breakthrough, would also have some adverse repercussions for the duration of the group’s career.
The general consensus regarding the Grateful Dead’s level of frustration in the recording studio—including that of the band itself–overlooks how successive sessions gave birth to and/or fostered the composition of stellar and durable original songs. All the questions and concerns about works such as From The Mars Hotel really boil down to whether any another band so improvisation-oriented had such a wealth of memorable material (in the case of the latter LP, “U.S. Blues” and “Scarlet Begonias,” to name just two). That said, there’s no question “Touch of Grey” is a bit of fluff when compared with many other tunes in the Grateful Dead canon. But is it really any more lightweight than “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)” from the band’s debut album?
No doubt its sing-song quality can grate, but no more so than its predecessor. And besides, that’s a superficial reaction that gives way to a sensation of self-deprecating empathy by the final verse and chorus: the vulnerability in Jerry Garcia’s lead singing becomes unmistakable at that point, buoyed as it is by the chipper air of the number itself, combined with the light touch of his guitar work. The titular leader’s delicacy further echoed by his bandmates, the cut thereby avoids the very anonymity of Brent Myland’s “Tons of Steel;” the bland nature of the song only serves to point up how the keyboardist’s greatest contributions to the group during his decade-plus tenure were his facility with a Hammond organ (shades of the late Pigpen) and his soulful background singing.
Written by Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow with Mydland, “Hell in a Bucket,” also sounds too clever for its own good for much of its duration. Yet here as well, by the final refrain, the words carry a significance that correlates with the accepting sentiment of the previous track: ‘I may be going to hell in a bucket, but at least I’m enjoying the ride.’ It’s a wizened perspective not only echoing the opener, but one that no doubt figured into how that selection entered regular rotation in the Grateful Dead’s stage repertoire, albeit without the heavy handed guitar. “West L.A. Fadeaway” benefited from a more stripped down arrangement in a live setting as well: the blues connection it shares with the comparatively unimaginative “When Push Comes to Shove” does not lend itself to washes of synthesizer, one of Bob Bralove’s few faux pas in his tenure with the Dead.
Rather than a lack of confidence in their songwriting, it’s a measure of the extent to which the Grateful Dead could over-think their studio projects that such errors would occur. And given how much time the group had to perfect their renditions of these songs–upwards of five years in concert renditions like the one included as a bonus track from the CD in the 2004 Beyond Description box set – the inability to leave well enough alone is even more enervating. As is Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann’s strictly stolid drumming throughout, but then, the Rhythm Devils’ predictable tandem playing is the bane of the group’s Eighties music, both in the studio and on the stage.
Yet the very longevity of the band’s devotion to tunes such as “Throwing Stones” allowed the faithful capture of at least some of songs on this record. This other Weir/Barlow collaboration didn’t change much more appreciably over the years than did In The Dark’s closer “Black Muddy River,” but that’s due to the craftsmanship of the composers; the latter in particular is one of Garcia’s loveliest ballad collaborations with long-time songwriting partner, the late Robert Hunter, and its performances turned especially poignant in the later years of the guitarist/vocalist’s life. Still, it never sounded any more eternal in its appeal, like a traditional folk song, than as the last of these seven album cuts.
Recording this twelfth Grateful Dead long-player under the auspices of sound man John Cutler (who co-produced with the group’s titular leader), the ensemble set up in San Rafael California’s Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium using the lights intended for illumination in a concert setting: given the musicians’ long-term familiarity with the material, how better to simulate the spontaneous interaction of a show?
Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter whether all these good intentions led directly to the eventual widespread connection of this album’s music and/or the accompanying videos (including a documentary on the project) because the fundamental virtues of the results have remained durable over the years. As have those aforementioned efforts the Grateful Dead expended on the LP. Notwithstanding Jerry Garcia’s wry observation–”We’re like bad architecture or an old whore. If you stick around long enough, eventually you get respectable”– if the time was right for In The Dark, it’s not because it just happened that way. Setting aside the subsequent challenges that arose for their tours attended by increasingly larger and unwieldy crowds in the wake of this breakthrough, it was otherwise karmic retribution of the most positive sort, wholly deserved on the part of a band whose essential virtues of patience, courage and forbearance were rewarded as they rose above the
