Grateful Dead: Europe '72 (1972)

 By the time 1972 rolled around, Pigpen’s health had started to fail. Keith Godchaux had joined the band on piano, and his wife, Donna Jean, joined in on vocals. The band’s sound vastly expanded and this was aided in more than an album’s worth of new songs, all of which further explore the cosmic Americana vibe the band had started, two years prior. They spent the fall of 1971 hammering down this new arrangement on the road before taking the entire roving circus to Europe the following spring. The entire tour was recorded and featured some of the band’s best performances, to date. Their playing was fluid, otherworldly at times, and the command they had on the new material was already immense. 

So inspired were these performances that, rather than take those new songs into the studio, they decided to just put out another live album, this time delivering the triple-LP known as Europe ‘72. A handful of songs from this set had appeared on album before but these versions (especially “Cumberland Blues”) are vastly superior takes. The bulk of this album is made up of newer songs, making their primary appearance on album here. This crop of songs - “He’s Gone”, “Ramble On Rose”, “Brown-Eyed Women”, “Tennessee Jed”, “Jack Straw”, “Mr. Charlie, and “One More Saturday Night” (along with the other new ones that had just appeared on Garcia and Weir’s solo albums) - is arguably the most important batch of songs in the band’s entire songbook. Not a single one of these songs (aside from “Mr. Charlie”) ever left the rotation, and rightly so. 

Aside from the 22 shows the band played, this trek also served as an extended family vacation, for everyone in the band, and was also Pigpen’s last hurrah. This resulted in performances that were both relaxed and fiery. The entire tour had been in the trading loop for ages, and has since been released, every recording a masterpiece of its own (seven of these shows have been released on vinyl this far, each one a work of art…more on those later). 

Rumors abound that much of this album was re-recorded in the studio, and that is quite probably the case, but whatever. It sounds phenomenal and the point is to illustrate the songs anyway, not get bogged down in semantics).  This album does a perfect job of it.