Faithful Followers Live for Concerts of Grateful Dead

In everything from new Winnebagos to garishly painted school buses, they arrived in Irvine as early as Thursday night for a concert that did not begin until Saturday. Their cars and vans bore license plates from Utah, Minnesota, Oregon, Arizona, Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado. Many of the bumpers were festooned with stickers quoting Grateful Dead song lyrics or carrying the message: “There is Nothing Like a Grateful Dead Concert.”

Some came from as far as New Jersey, pitching tents in the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre parking lot. To finance their travels, many peddle T-shirts emblazoned with roses and skeletons and featuring messages such as “Deadercise,” “Deadicated” and “Club Dead: The Antidote to Civilization.”

“Tattoo Randy” from San Bernardino covered willing arms with skull tattoos. A table in front of a weathered camper offered free face painting, and all around the parking lot, people hawked cold beers, jewelry and bumper stickers as they waited for the concert to begin.

By Saturday afternoon the parking lot looked more like a swap meet than a pre-concert gathering as early arrivals threaded their way among the impromptu sales stalls.

It was a gathering of “Deadheads,” hard-core fans of the San Francisco rock group, The Grateful Dead. Although fans have a reputation for using psychedelic drugs and wearing the headbands and fringed leather jackets of the ‘60s, the band actually attracts a diverse crowd that includes young professionals and parents with small children.

It was the first Grateful Dead concert for Mark and Eve, a 60-ish Palm Springs couple who didn’t want to give their last name, Eve said, for fear it might “embarrass their grandchildren.” Their son had bought them tickets for the show, Eve said, because “he thought we ought to experience this.” Mark, who described himself as a “senior citizen,” said that “there are some unusual looking people in comparison to what we usually see. But there are lots of smiles and friendly faces.”

Even the Irvine Police Department, which made 44 arrests Saturday night during and after the concert, compared to 42 arrests during the band’s two-concert series at Irvine Meadows last year, considers the Deadheads a fairly mellow audience. Sgt. Bob Kredel, who handles concert security for the department, said that the “people are, for the most part, a peaceful crowd. Unfortunately, our policing problem occurs in that they get pretty drugged out.”

While Kredel was describing some of the logistical problems created by the diversity of the Grateful Dead crowd, a message came over his walkie-talkie saying that two officers were trying to corner a “subject spaced out on acid” who had somehow gotten on the other side of a barbed wire fence that separates the adjacent Lion Country from the amphitheater grounds.

The Saturday night arrests, mainly for drug sales, ranged from one alleged drug seller who had 115 “hits” of LSD on him when apprehended to seven arrests for possession of marijuana. One man who allegedly struck a security guard with a chain was arrested on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Two were booked on assault counts and four others on charges of public drunkenness.

40 People Ejected

On Saturday night 40 people were ejected from the concert, while last year there were fewer than 20 ejected each night, Kredel said.

“But when our officers move through the crowd,” Kredel said, “there’s no fear of rocks and bottles being thrown that we might find at a heavy metal concert.” More than 15,000 attended Saturday’s sold-out concert, with another full house expected Sunday.

As the second concert got under way Sunday evening, Sgt. Gary Shull said, “It’s a zoo out there.” He predicted there would be another 35 to 40 arrests before the night was over. “And it’s mostly all for (possession of) drugs,” Shull said.

Even the Irvine Meadows management makes special concessions for return of the Deadheads. Jeff Apregan, Meadows vice president and executive director, said the tickets are made directly available to the band itself, which then sells them by mail order to its “die-hard” fans.

“The Grateful Dead is very, very good about providing fans with information on inexpensive hotels, and we provide their organizations with the (lodging) information they need to get to their people,” Apregan said.

Born in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1967, the Grateful Dead, to many of its fans, is one of the last surviving outposts of psychedelic rock. But in 20 years of playing together, the band’s sound has evolved into a difficult-to-categorize mix of blues, folk, rock, jazz and even reggae elements. The Grateful Dead, because of its longevity and its legions of Deadheads, enjoys enormous popularity despite not releasing an album in the last five years.

Bob Barsotti, concert manager for Bill Graham Presents, the concert promotion firm that handles the Grateful Dead’s West Coast shows, said the band sold over 800,000 tickets--at about $16 each--in 1985 and “they’re selling more tickets than ever before.”

Grateful Dead Productions in San Rafael maintains “Deadhead” telephone hot lines that provide ticket information and concert dates. For some concerts, the Grateful Dead will make tour packages available through its own travel agency.

Eileen Law, who described her job with the Grateful Dead as “head of the Deadheads,” says that on a busy day 1,000 calls will be logged on the 24-hour-a-day hot lines. Fan mail pours in at a rate of 30 letters a day. “We get lots of nice letters thanking the band for certain concerts or telling them something isn’t right about a certain venue the band plays. The band even gets invitations to bar mitzvahs, weddings and offers of home-cooked dinners.”

Although many of the Deadheads have the flowing manes of hair and tie-dyed garb associated with the ‘60s, Barsotti said there are “lots of fans who are doctors, lawyers and architects.” Apregan added that “what we’re noticing every year is there are a lot of younger fans also.”

Just Back From Thailand

Alan Buck, 42, of Redondo Beach, his reddish-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, who had just returned from Thailand, was selling woven cloth satchels out of his yellow van at Saturday’s gathering. He estimates that he sees between 40 and 50 concerts a year and makes “enough money (off sales) to cover the shows and put a little in the pocket afterwards.” Following the Dead can be done “quite thriftily,” he said. He estimated that his annual costs are about $1,000. But each year, as he meets more Deadheads in different cities, the price goes down because he stays with other devotees around the country.

The attraction for him, he said, is the music and being able to “meet some of the nicest faces in the world.”

Steve Durbeck, 36, a Long Beach psychologist, has been going to Grateful Dead concerts since 1968. Because of his job, he said, he doesn’t travel as much as he used to. “If I see half a dozen shows a year that’s good, versus three times that in the past.”

Red Allen, 51, of Redwood City got hooked on the Grateful Dead after seeing them perform at a free concert in Golden Gate Park in 1975 with the Jefferson Starship. Despite selling glow-in-the-dark T-shirts to support his traveling between concerts, Allen admits that he’s “always in the hole. But it’s a whole lot of fun trying to break even.”

Fans Flock In

As the 8 p.m. show time approached, the fans flocked into the amphitheater, whooping and hollering. Once the music started, the crowd changed into an enormous dancing and swaying mass, with fans whirling up and down the aisles, buckskin fringe flying and hair waving--but keeping away from security officers who wanted to put them back in their seats.

And, 3 1/2 hours later, when the band left the stage, those in the crowd filed out to the parking lot to resume selling their wares, throwing Frisbees and downing a few cold ones. Homemade tapes of the concert blared from speakers throughout the parking lot and, as the night waned, the Deadheads began falling into their sleeping bags in the makeshift campground. They stretched out on the pavement in exhaustion, hoping to catch a little rest before Sunday, when they’d get up and do it all again.