Grateful Dead find overnight success after decades

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 35

Grateful Dead find overnight success after decades

By

SHARON LIVETEN

The Grateful Dead are alive and well, thanks to “A Touch of Grey,” and not the kind of grey that peppers the beard of the singer, Jerry Garcia. For the first time in the group’s 22-year history the Grateful Dead have cracked Billboard’s Top 40 with the single, "A Touch of Grey,” from their “In the Dark” album. Not only is the song blaring from car radios and making cash registers ring, the entire album is attracting pop attention. Until recently the Grateful Dead were simply the cult band to end all cult bands. They existed and flourished purely as a live band and toured literally for months on end even though they had not appeared on vinyl since 1981.

The band’s refusal to produce a new studio album was frustrating — at least to their label, Arista Records. Though Arista spokesmen have spent most of the past six years assuring hardcore fans there would Indeed be a new Grateful Dead record, it hhd become somewhat of a joke within the company. No one seriously believed the Dead would ever finish another album.

“People kept asking about a new Grateful Dead record,” says Jay B. Ziskrout, Arista’s director of album promotion. “Particularly in the last couple of years, when there has been a tremendous growth in their concert business. The Grateful Dead had not historically been a major band on radio. That has been partly due to the concept people have of the records and the band. It has also been because there just has not been anything for radio to hear in such a long time. For a long time there just was not anything to tell people.” The other, often unspoken assumption was that if the band did come up with a record, it would be far from commercial. Though the group has made 20 authorised albums (there have been literally scores of bootlegs on the market) they have come near the top 40 only once — with “Alabama Getaway,” in 1980. Contrary to popular belief, the singles “Truckin’” and "Casey

Jones” in 1970 never came dose, although they were hits on FM radio, which at the time was not included in Billboard’s Top 40 survey. No one at the label was holding his breath, praying for history to repeat Itself.

Then the Grateful Dead delivered “In the Dart.” The band knew they had a winner and the label knew there was something there. They just had to convince the rest of the world.

"People thought a record by the Dead would never go to pop radio,” says Jim Cawley, vicepresident of sales for Arista. “They kept telling me it would sell 300,000 units and fall apart But we communicated the actual truth about the record and the band by convincing people to listen to the music with an open mind. Once they heard the record, they liked It” Says Jack Silver, music director for top-rated KIIS-FM and AM in Los Angeles, “If someone had told me six months ago that we’d be playing the Grateful Dead, I'd have found that very difficult to believe. For one thing, we’re a Top 40 station, and are pretty oriented to hit radio — Whitney Houston, Billy Ocean. The Dead had not had a record out in seven years and when — and what — was their last Top 40 record? But about two months before the record came out, some of the record company people played me the compact disc, and I remember thinking, ‘l’m going to have to deal with this record.’ While Jerry Garcia is no Whitney Houston when it comes to vocals, the record is pop, it has hooks. We became believers the first time we heard the record.”

Obviously, they were not alone. “Touch of Grey" (perhaps known to more listeners as “I Will Survive,’’ the song’s catchy chorus) has been one of the most heartily rotated records in radio since its release, and it has been played on a variety of formats: classic rock, A.O.R. and Top 40. (c) 1987, Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Winner