This week marked the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead‘s run at Winterland Ballroom which became The Grateful Dead Movie. In celebration of the landmark five-night run in San Francisco, the band shared 83 minutes of bonus footage that landed on the cutting room floor.
By 1974, the Grateful Dead had become a touring behemoth, a lumbering beast of burden exacerbated by the revolutionary but highly impractical Wall of Sound PA system. While Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Keith Godchaux, and Donna Jean Godchaux were playing some of the best shows of their career at that point, they were exhausted. The band decided to take a hiatus of indeterminate length, taking a break from touring in 1975. Before that, however, the Dead decided to throw a farewell (for now) run at Winterland Ballroom from October 16th to 20th and film it for a theatrical release.
Directed by Garcia and released on June 1st, 1977, The Grateful Dead Movie includes iconic performances of classics “U.S. Blues”, “Truckin’”, “Playing in the Band”, “Stella Blue”, and “Morning Dew”, highlighting the band at the top of their game. Between songs, viewers got a fly-on-the-wall view of all the people who made the Grateful Dead possible from the road crew to Bill Graham to the Deadheads themselves, including ticketless masses in need of miracles and those camped out all week for a front-row spot.
With over 100,000 feet of film, there was plenty of footage that didn’t make it into the 132-minute runtime. When the Dead released the film on DVD in 2004, they included the same bonus footage that the band uploaded to their official YouTube channel on Wednesday. The additional video includes singalong favorites “Uncle John’s Band”, “Sugaree”, and the pairing “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” as well as some extended performances that show the Dead at an improvisational high-point. The band’s instrumental prowess is seen through an otherworldly “The Other One” > “Spanish Jam” > “Mind Left Body Jam” > “The Other One”, a jammed out “Scarlet Begonias”, and finally a primal “Dark Star” that finishes with a lights-out drum solo by Bill Kreutzmann.
Check out the additional footage from The Grateful Dead Movie below along with an HD remastered cut of the film, available on the band’s YouTube channel.
The Grateful Dead Movie Bonus Performances — October 1974
The Grateful Dead Movie
The Grateful Dead Movie Bonus Footage Tracklist
0:07 – Uncle John’s Band
8:55 – Sugaree
17:51 – The Other One > Jam > Other One
33:43 – Scarlet Begonias
48:44 – China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
1:04:00 – Dark Star
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