GRATEFUL DEAD, BOB DYLAN, TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS
GRATEFUL DEAD, BOB DYLAN, TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS
“4th of July - Buffalo”
Bootleg Recordings - July 4, 1986
For a holiday we’ve decided to go a little off the reservation and if you want to listen to this chronicle of a pretty fantastic day of music in Western New York you’re going to have to do a little online digging. For a frame of reference, the number one song on the Billboard Chart on July 4, 1986 was, “There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry),” by Billy Ocean and the nation’s highest grossing motion picture was, “The Karate Kid, Part II.” Of course, for the 75,000 gathered on this sweltering Friday at Rich Stadium, these mainstream diversions were of little consequence or concern. The performance careers of Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead were both already of legal age in New York State and if Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were comparative minors they had the looks and licks to pass as of age but each act was already timeless in comparison to the contemporary successes of the day. In a rare openly slot, the Dead began the day by stumbling into the opening, “Jack Straw,” after Bob Weir admitted they were stalling for time and then jokingly bemoaning, “This is gonna feel a lot like work today,” apparently in reference to the tight schedule they needed to watch in order to sync up with a live simulcast for the second annual “Farm Aid” benefit happening concurrently in Austin, TX. By the lyrical holiday reference, “Leaving Texas, fourth day of July,” the band is locked in and follow with the holiday picnic suitable jaunt of, “Dupree’s Diamond Blues.” The set concludes with a strong delivery of Weir’s war lament, “My Brother Esau,” and the then frequently played but still unreleased, “Touch of Gray,” which found Garcia in fine voice and form despite the Deadhead wardrobe warning sign, “Jerry in red, trouble ahead” (less than a week later he’d be in a diabetic coma). The second set begins with, “Cold Rain and Snow,” applauded as much for the relief that had arrived from the skies during the break as for the tune. Mid-set the band is cued for the television simulcast feed with Weir telling the now national audience in a bow to “Farm Aid,” “America is an agrarian nation, let’s keep it turning,” They then roll into “The Wheel,” followed via segue by, “I Need A Miracle,” and finally, “Uncle John’s Band,” and, in equally typical and surprising Dead fashion they screw up the time by playing too short! As a result the non-Deadhead viewers must have been puzzled by half the band leaving the stage for an extended drum solo. Post “Drums/Space” is strong, concluding with an energetic, “Turn On Your Lovelight,” before the predictable but always enjoyable Independence Day encore, “U.S. Blues,” prefaced by Weir as, “Our little version of America’s tune.”
Perhaps due to the heat, perhaps because it was a show concluding with the sun still out, perhaps as a result of the overabundance of recreational enhancement, or potentially a combination of all three, but many Deadheads split at this point, betraying their oft-mentioned reputation for being amongst the biggest-eared audiences in music.
Dylan pushed his disregard for the modern day even further by leading his backing band, Petty and the Heartbreakers, through a 1957 rockabilly obscurity, “So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye,” by Weldon Rogers to start his set. He soon moved to more familiar territory and the Heartbreakers proved imminently up to the task on “Positively 4th Street” before giving Dylan a kick in the keester that he likely hadn’t enjoyed since his days with The Band as Belmont Tench’s keys fueled the underrated, “Trust Yourself.” Even the four-piece all-female, all black, backing singers Dylan had brought along seemed of another time but the Heartbreakers followed their legendarily mercurial host adroitly around every turn he threw their way. TP & the HB’s soon got their first shot on their own and their driving, “Straight Into Darkness” as well as the already classic, “The Waiting,” were the first songs fans would hear that stood a chance on landing on a current rock radio station’s 1986 playlist. Petty even got a stadium-sized call-and-response working during, “Breakdown,” before Dylan reappeared for a solo acoustic set. Dylan later recalled these shows in his autobiography, “Chronicles, Volume I,” “Everything was smashed. My own songs had become strangers to me, I didn’t have the skill to touch the right nerves, couldn’t penetrate the surfaces. It wasn’t my moment of history anymore.”
While that may have been his mindset it takes a pair the size of bowling balls to face up to 75,000 people armed with nothing but a guitar and harmonica (not to mention black leather pants in that scorching heat) and deliver a moving, “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna’ Fall.” As the Heartbreakers rejoined him, he offers another pop quiz with Cecil Null’s, “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know,” first recorded by the Davis Sisters and Petty goes face to face and line for line with him at the microphone which makes another of Dylan’s “Chronicles” admissions even more noteworthy. “Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine,” he said of serious consideration of retirement at the time. Dylan tests his band’s mettle again with Baker Knight’s, “Lonesome Town,” best known for being delivered to #7 on the Billboard Chart in 1958 by teen idol, Ricky Nelson then follows with among his own darkest ruminations, “Ballad Of A Thin Man.” When given the chance to take over the stage once more Petty delivered his own influential cover as he and Heartbreakers steamroll through Chuck Berry’s “Bye Bye Johnny” (which they had covered at the previous year’s inaugural, “Farm Aid”). They were then beamed via satellite into this year’s festivities in Texas and dedicated, “Even The Losers,” to the cause before Mike Campbell’s pulverizing lead guitar on, “Refugee,” put the appropriate exclamation mark on the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' personal portion of the program.
Dylan returned for the evening’s least surprising election, a bouncy, “Rainy Day Women, #12 & 35,” an energized, “Seeing The Real You At Last,” and Ry Cooder’s, “Across The Borderline, all of which also went out to “Farm Aid.” For the rest of the night, Dylan alternated between the classics (“Like A Rolling Stone”) and the near classics (“I And I”) with a crackerjack band that heightened his own guitar intensity. Being that close to a band running that clean at such a high temperature must have rubbed off on Dylan. The following summer he went out with the Grateful Dead in the same role Petty and his Heartbreakers had played but with decidedly mixed results (the Dead had worked up over 50 songs in anticipation of playing with a hero and Dylan was floored). “After an hour or so, it became clear to me that the band wanted to rehearse more and different songs than I had been used to doing with Petty,” he admits in, “Chronicles.” “They wanted to run over all the songs, the ones they liked, the seldom-seen ones.” Ultimately Dylan quickly settled into an established, rarely varied, setlist.
(You didn’t really think I’d make you dig for this all by yourself, now did you? Here’s video of the Dead’s first set, second set, and the Dylan/Petty set. And, for one last thought about that Independence Day in 1986 in Buffalo: tickets were $20-25… and that included parking)
