The Grateful Dead's "Hard to Handle" from the Hollywood Palladium 8/6/71: The audience tape, the soundboard tape, and one of rock and roll's greatest guitar solos

Friday 5/9/25

There's nothing quite like an outstanding audience tape. They put you back in the room in which that gig occurred and may be the closest we get to a rock and roll-based time machine. The best audience tapes have a warmth to them. Their sound is enveloping. The crowd, too, can be a factor. Certain bands--and I'd say the Grateful Dead more than any other--used the crowd as part of their own dynamic and music-making. Jerry Garcia said that on the nights when it was really working--which, if you know the Grateful Dead's music, was a great many--then the crowd was as important a contributing factor as the band.

Quite rightly, then, Grateful Dead people celebrate the audience recording of their Hollywood Palladium show from August 6, 1971. It may be the finest audience recording ever made. There are other strong contenders, and others with the Dead. The fidelity isn't quite the same with the 11/8/70 Ken and Judy Lee audience recording from the Capitol Theatre, but that tape is the the most dynamically intense I've ever heard. It's the sound of an experience that, for instance, during the section when "Truckin" becomes "Dark Star"--talk about a transition--all but swallows you whole. Retroactively absorbs you. Were you to say, "Okay, sir, here you may have a soundboard of that gig, but you must part with the audience tape," I'd have to decline and stick with what I know cannot be beat.

With soundboards you get direct clarity, though there's actually a lot of variability from board to board. Not all soundboards are created equal. We know this, of course, about audience tapes. It always gives me a chuckle, for instance, what a Grateful Dead listener--and I think that's a better word than "fan"--rates as a bad audience tape. I think, "You wouldn't last a second listening to the Yardbirds' Last Rave-Up in LA!" which is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, but it does take some getting used to. And, believe it or not, it used to sound worse than it does with the top version that you can locate online now.

With a soundboard, you usually lose the crowd element, but again, that varies. For instance, listen to the Who's Live at Leeds and you barely know there's a crowd there. Contrast with the full version of show courtesy of the bootleg, Live at Leeds Complete--I recommend the Captain Acid remaster--and that's a bit different, isn't it?

Then again, listen to the soundboard tape of the Grateful Dead's justifiably renowned 2/13/70 gig at the Fillmore East. You can hear the crowd clapping along to the first two minutes of "Dark Star," which isn't something you can say about any other tape with the song and may not have happened any other time.

The Dead's revered 8/6/71 tape has this moment when Bob Weir actually gives the taper instructions on where to stand. Helpful! It's an outstanding concert, whose most famous portion occurs in the band's cover of Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle."

People have speculated that Jerry Garcia broke a string on his guitar, or else a strap, and this sidelined him for a while, so Weir soloed instead, and then Garcia came charging back and took over, dazzling the crowd, working them up, and ultimately finishing this solo on his knees.

None of this probably happened. Garcia likely remained upright, and Weir was supposed to solo when he did. It's like the Beatles with "Long Tall Sally." John Lennon, the rhythm guitar player, solos first, and then George Harrison, the lead guitar player, takes the second and final solo.

Listening to this audience tape, you hear the crowd go nuts. They're worked up into one hell of a lather by Garcia's playing. You should definitely hear it.

But what I'd recommend--despite the greatness of the audience tape--is the soundboard of this gig, because it gives you Phil Lesh's bass in a way that the audience tape doesn't. And that bass in crucial to everything the Dead did--okay, not the acoustic stuff, but near about--and "Hard to Handle" isn't nearly the same in terms of power and virtuosity and swing--yes, swing--without that Lesh bass.

On the board tape, Lesh's bass is dead center. Garcia gets a channel, as does Weir, but it's Lesh who bleeds into everything. This is some poppin' bass, man. We're talking James Jamerson meets Jimmy Blanton and throw in some Reggie Workman.

Actually, the bass isn't only dead center; it's like this elastic live wire that snaps at the composite modules of sound. It's a ferocious, exciting thing, and though this will be sacrilege for the many loyalists to the audience recording of the 8/6/71 show, I think the soundboard is the better option. I mean, I listen to both. But if you could only choose one, or wanted to dazzle someone else with what this band could do, the soundboard is the choice.

I'm going to use gd1971-08-06.sbd.miller.96541.sbeok.flac16 from the Archive for the timings. This is a Charlie Miller mastering, and usually he's the guy you want to go with if you have a choice.

It's first worth stating that Ron McKernan was an outstanding singer. So was Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia. Not enough is made of the vocal talents of the Grateful Dead. He sings the beginning of the song in an exaggerated fashion; it's like a touch of meta. A wink. "Bah beeee!" He's not being totally serious. This is fun. We're here to have a good time, like that grafted-on interview voice says at the start of Primal Scream's "Loaded."

The bass is the lead, driving voice from the initial notes. This is rhythm and blues, but the cosmic variety--closer to Sun Ra than Otis Redding.

They rock the groove--with the guitars on each side of Lesh tweaking it--from 1:31 to 2:56--with McKernan vocalizing--and then Lesh begins his solo with McKernan's directive to "Play your guitar!"

Weir's solo is limited but precisely rhythmic; it's a solo you'd expect from a rhythm guitar player, a solo that also serves to keep and accentuate the beat. Now, Weir is more than a rhythm player; he's one of the great guitarists. There's a Steve Cropper aspect to this solo. It keeps the good times being good. The longer Weir's solo goes on, the more that Lesh asserts himself on bass.

They're building to both a wrap of the solo--which is ironic, because this is like a tandem event in some ways--and a peak and what will be a passing of the guitar honors to Jerry Garcia, who begins his solo at 4:23.

Now you're really in for something special. This solo reminds me a lot of the one that Paul Gonsalves played with Duke Ellington's orchestra at Newport in 1956 on "Diminuendo and Cresdendo in Blue" (and which he may have improved on with the All Star Road Band version). It's a song unto itself, a solo you can dance to, hum, sing, that charges your whole body and your mind. Jolts more like into you.

Listen to how much Garcia accomplishes with the handful of notes from 4:27 to 4:31. He's established a sort of technical dominance right there, and that's all it took, those four seconds. The Weir solo was nice, but we know now that we're dealing with a whole other animal.

Weir's rhythm guitar feels like it's back to what it should be doing, singing out and cheering on, in effect, the master soloist as he does his thing, Lesh is pumping away, but the floor is Garcia's. At 5:21 he starts playing these trumpet-like lines that presage what will soon be an even fuller flowering of that motivic idea come ten seconds later. It feels like more time has passed, given how well-designed this solo is, that it's this thing we sense of as having a start, a middle, a recapitulation, and so forth. It's a journeying thing.

Those elongated trumpet-like lines start coming fast--it's like a blaze of them--at 5:51. This is the fireball stuff. There's another transition--another kick upwards--at 6:00. Garcia keeps having more to give. Each time he gives it, you're surprised, because how much more can there be? He's going off, and up to another level, and then he's like, "Boom! Have another level!" And we're thinking, "That must be the peak?" And then, "Boom! Another level!"

We get another at 6:10, which extends to 6:30, when Garcia gets downright percussive and antiphonal. He smashes the strings. You really have to go hard at your guitar to produce these sounds. This isn't babying it. He sounds a riff and then answers that riffs call with a yet-more-intense response that utilizes the same riff. Hear that urgency? That drama? Now it's like the solo has two parts to it. It's a dual-solo, played by one person.

He continues with the call and response until 6:40, and we have our final peak--the towering summit--and the tension breaks. Or does it? Because we're right back into the swing of that groove now, and because we've been rocking--and rocked so hard--it feels like it's swinging even harder than it was when this whole thing started. And you won't get the same degree of that effect without the soundboard and Lesh's bass sounding like it does here.

You still get a feeling for the crowd with the soundboard as they cheer what Garcia just did. On the audience tape, you're engulfed by their enthusiasm. Again, different listening experiences.

I'm going to put a link to the audience tape version below, because I have to illustrate this entry with something, and now both versions will be in the same spot. But the Dead's 8/6/71 gig at the Hollywood Palladium is perhaps the best example out there of why you'd need both the audience and soundboard recordings of a show.