Page 125 The Making of Blues for Allah

In January of ’75 the band was ready to hole up daily at Weir’s studio and put together a new album more or less from scratch. They had given themselves the luxury of retiring from the road in ’75, and each band member seemed to be hungry to sink his creative teeth into this new recording which would become Blues For Allah. The evolution of the songs for Blues For Allah was a fascinating and at times tedious process — working and reworking each segment of each musical piece over and over again. So it was with some dubious relief that the band took a busman’s holiday to rehearse for a few days with other musician friends for the upcoming SNACK benefit concert at Kezar Stadium in SF. Working with some of their new material, they jammed with David Crosby, John Cipollina, Merl Saunders and Ned Lagin. Since none of the new pieces had lyrics yet, they were all rehearsed and performed at SNACK only instrumentally. As the Allah tracks became keeper takes, lyric sessions were held and the musical tunes emerged as songs. There was no doubting that this was going to be a strong album for the for the Dead. — Steve Brown (The Golden Road)

“To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. And I think every human being should be a conscious tool of the universe. That’s why I think it’s important to get high. I’m not talking about unconscious or zonked out. I’m talking about being fully conscious.”

— Garcia

Photo Credits: Badger/Cole and Berry – Ed Perstein, The Healys and Joe – Peter Simon