Grateful Dead, Vince Welnick, Bruce Hornsby

I read an interview a few weeks back that suggests that Vince really didn’t care much for sharing the spotlight with Bruce. It was a one on one interview with Vince in 2000 (I cannot remember the link). Anyways, I think that Bruce really pushed Vince along during his tenure and tried to make the most out of the situation. Once he left, you can easily tell by listening that Vince killed some concerts between 92-95. I still respect him though for staying with it and having to replace the big shoes left by Brent. That would be a tough situation for anyone. Anyways, the best concert of that time span still is the March concert in Charlotte, NC with Bruce. Vince really was on that night, it almost seemed like he was trying to prove to Bruce that he finally had the chops.

The Vince/Bruce years with the Grateful Dead was my favorite era…with Vince on the keyboard and Bruce on the grand piano and accordian. My favorite GD shows are mostly from 1991. I have the show 9/20/90 and never heard any cord calling, but remember that is only the fifth show with Vince and Bruce playing together and only Vince’s eighth show with the Dead. Stander on the Mountain was a couple months later anyways.
I have seen and heard many Vince interviews and never heard of the so-called ‘sharing of the spotlight’ comment. Vince was too grateful for earning his job with GD to even have an ego. I have met Vince many times as well as the rest of the GD members and Vince was the most down to earth of the bunch. Hell, some of those dudes actually run from you after a show to get away from fan interaction.
Vince was easily the most under-rated GD member and didn’t get the credit he deserved. He and Bruce kinda resurrected GD in the 90’s. Bruce woke up Jerry and Vince brought in some great songs. The Dead sounded their best in years, between 90 and 93. Vince busted out some great Beatles tunes and resurrected ‘Here Comes Sunshine’ plus the addition of his songs. Yeah, Vince’s solos were not as hot as Brent’s at times but his sound was great and refreshing. I love his midi-effects. I have a huge collection of 90’s shows and never heard Vince ‘kill’ a show, if anything Jerry killed plenty of shows with his mumbling at times and singing the wrong lyrics. Dead shows from 94 and 95 had some bad shows but there was still some magic.
Listen to Vince’s band ‘Missing Man Formation’ and you’ll see that he was a great musician and what a great band he had. It sucks that he was sold so short and how so-called dead heads treated him the way they did.The Vince years are all I got to see of the Grateful Dead and he did not disappoint. He was cool as hell and is missed.

Dave, I’m surprised you haven’t received any backlash over that last post. But I tend to agree with you to some extent. I don’t “get” the Dead much, either. Maybe I’m getting too old, but then, I didn’t get them when I was younger, either. But I have to disagree with your statement about why Bruce played with the band, and here’s why. I think that every artist is influenced by those around him. Listen to the album “Night on the Town”, then listen to the album “Hot House”. Big difference, huh? I think this was close to the time Bruce hooked up with Jerry. I once read an interview from Bruce that said Jerry really encouraged the whole two-handed independence thing. He would tell Bruce, “play this with this hand, now play this with the other hand. Now, can you switch out?” I think the piano solos on “What a Time” from Harbor Lights and “Spider Fingers” from Hot House are phenomenal. Without the Jerry “influence”, we would not have “Sunflower Cat (Some Dour Cat)( I’m Down With That)”. I also think Jerry influenced “White-Wheeled Limousine”, and you have to admit that Jerry’s guitar on “Cruise Control” is something else (is it me, or does R.S. Hornsby sound just a bit like Jerry??)

Here’s a thought — maybe Bruce has railed against drug use so much (and I STILL say that’s what “Candy Mountain Run” is about, I’ll tell why in another post) because of his friend Jerry????? Just a thought.

My favorite group is the Grateful Dead. I believe they are and have always been underrated. I would disagree and say that Bruce’s music fits in perfectly with the Grateful Dead’s. I am not here to persuade anyone, you can like and dislike whomever you choose. For me, the Grateful Dead will always be my favorite band and an incredible influence on my life.

I do have one big objection to the poster. It is this: The question of whether stoned fans were the only ones who liked the Dead. That question is immaterial in evaluating their (Grateful Dead’s) music. I will not even waste my time by answering such a query that is both injudicious and nescient.

I believe that one can evaluate the music on its own and without outside influence by actors who really have nothing to do with the music itself—song lyrics, song music, arrangement. If you want to have a discussion about their fans or the live performances, then that is a separate issue; a separate discussion.

(The Grateful Dead did participate in the ‘Groupmind’ ethos that allowed interaction between the band and the crowd, but again, that is a separate issue generally limited to live performances and also huge part of the Band’s live existence but again one can evaluate the studio albums–those lyrics, the music, arrangements, the songs themselves, etc. . . on their own.)

I am not sure if I understand the idea of Bruce ‘hankering for greatness’ and what that has to do with the original opinion of the Dead or music or a musical artist. I don’t believe that I even know what that phrase means. But I digress . . .

Even Mr. Hornsby has spoken about how many never really ‘understood’ the Grateful Dead’s music, amazing lyrics, and musical ability (01/30/07 Malibu, CA show after ‘Spider Fingers’). That’s fine by me. After all, a lot of people don’t get Nietzsche, Plato, Socrates, Montaigne, Galileo, Copernicus, Sophocles, Hunter S. Thompson, Descartes, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Zappa, Aristotle, Shakespeare, John Coltrane, Bret Easton Ellis, Phish, Bill Evans, Big Swing Face, Grayfolded, Infrared Roses, Camp Meeting, Nardis, Night in Tunisia, dissonance, atonality, heavy metal, the blues, folk, bluegrass, punk, classical, opera, bebop, hard bop, gospel, and country, and that in no way diminishes the astonishingly eclectic excellence that can be found in each of them.

So kudos to the original poster for making me realize just how wonderful & important the Grateful Dead really were.

So no, there was no impassioned defense of the Grateful Dead here. People’s musical likes and dislikes are all fine by me. We remain united in our appreciation for Mr. Hornsby’s music.

On an unrelated note, my first rock concert was a Grateful Dead show with Mr. Hornsby on piano. It was at that show that I saw my first ‘Deaf Section’, a section in the audience for deaf people with a signer. It was such a positive feeling knowing that even people who were hearing impaired could ‘get’ and enjoy the Dead, feel the vibrations coarsing through the ground, smile in the summer sun, then dance the night away. That’s really what it’s all about.

If you get it, that’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too because for the many people who do get it, it’s something special and awfully good.

I wonder what Mr. Hornsby thinks of the Grateful Dead?

-Nicos

“When a true Genius appears in the World, you may know Him by this Sign, that the Dunces are all in confederacy
against him.” (Jonathan Swift 1667-1745)

This is an absurdly shortsighted question that I find quite demeaning and insulting as a longtime Dead fan. Please do not try to stereotype their fanbase. It still shocks me that anyone could ask a question that is so utterly offensive, fatuous, and impertinent.

Go up to Capitol Hill and ask longtime Grateful Dead fan Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who has served more than 30 years in the Senate, that same question. I wonder what his response would be.

Fortunately the poster and I both like Mr. Hornsby so the ties that bind us shall remain stronger than those that divide us.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. I aplogize for the harshness but when I see something that truly disturbs and offends me, I feel compelled to reply.

Now I am off to listen to some vintage Dead from the spring of ’77. I think Barton Hall is a good choice.

-Nicos

Man, I forgot about this post I haven’t read it in a long time and was a little disturbed at a couple lame posts. It seems that the guy that some how doesnt ‘get’ the Dead but some how magically gets Bruce.
I mean…how do you even get Bruce without getting the Dead.
I may be taking a stab in the dark here but I suspect you an ‘older’ fan and Im guessing started jamming Bruce with the Range in the eighties, right.
Ok now lets do the Bruce timeline here…
Bruce and the Range doing their pop rock thing in the 80’s and start opening up for Bruce’s favorite band called the Grateful Dead also at this time Bruce stands in a few songs a night….
Brent dies in 90 and Bruce is called for keyboard duty but only wants to fill in part time so he guides Vince along seeing that Vince came from The Tubes and played a totally different style than the Dead…
anyways during this time you are off not getting the Dead but listening to other stuff …
but then during the early 90’s Bruce changes his style and gets jazzy and alot more jamming…
92 after the Dead Bruce gets a whole new band….
Ok now tell me how do you still ‘get’ Bruce after all that but for some reason not get the Dead.

My point is that you went from pop rock music to stretched out jazzy jams… just like the Dead’s music and in which Bruce started learning to do while with the Dead.
They are his influence. Actually the Dead got me into ‘getting’ Bruce.

I ‘get’ it….Nicos totally ‘gets’ it…..but after reading your posts I really don’t see how you ‘get’ it.

Unless you’re one those guys that Bruce always talks about in the crowd that comes for my hits and doesn’t know none of this other shit were doing up here.
Man, you must have been so stoned when you made those posts. 😳

ps.. if I came off too harsh then 🙄
nicos said it pretty well in his last post.
go download a soundboard of 91 Dead show(my favorite year) and you might just finally get it.
You wont be ‘bored’ and wont need to be ‘stoned’ to get it. 😆

It’s quite possible to get one without the other. I could never be called the Dead’s biggest fan – or even a fan, frankly.

I appreciate what they did, and especially their songwriting – and the countless covers are testament to the high regard they’re held in. But here’s the thing with the Dead – I could name very few songs which weren’t covered better than the original artists’ performance. All in my humble opinion.

Interesting — the amount of ‘Hornsby only’ fans, including the founder of the board!

I can empathize, but only to a degree. Never been what you might call a ‘Deadhead’ — in fact, I’ve spent my fair amount of time lovingly mocking my friends who were…but I think that that had more to do with the ‘followers in-group ideology,’ if you will. (Seeing the Phish phenom. take off in the early ’90s put that all in perspective…Phish phans were/are much more irritating, to be sure.) But I’ve always liked the Dead, sometimes more, sometimes less. And no, the amount of herbage consumed had nothing to do with the waxing and waning and waxing of my interest. But the some of the waxing DID have to do with Hornsby joining…

That said, I must confess that my fave Dead studio album IS “In The Dark.” 😆 Seriously. And I prefer the later shows — ’86 to ’92 — and yes, I’ve never listened to a show post-Hornsby.

So people, you owe it to yourselves to give the Dead another try — they are truly an original American popmusic force. As with getting into Zappa, sometimes it depends on where in the catalog you start…if you’re like a good number of us on this board, DO start with the later live shows, like the downloads or Dick’s Picks. Ya never know what you might happen.

T

Re.: “They Love Each Other” — I love that tune! 😆 Maybe because I’d never heard it prior to watching the “Intersections” dvd! Seriously…but agreed, there are other performances that could’ve been spotlighted that weren’t so laid back, shall we say.

(One aside, it’s quite revealing — based on watching most of the available Dead dvds, the effect BH had on the band, particularly Jerry and Mickey smiling and laughing with Bruce onstage — versus shows with Brent.)

Re.: Bruce still doing “pop” (the John Mellencamp/Dylan/REM “Americana” vein that he found himself in circa ’86-’89) — I dunno. He’s mentioned that in doing the tribute cds for artists — Elton, The Band, Keith J, Bill Monroe, The Dead — he tried to stick to artists who influenced him the most. Not to mention the “Camp Meeting” cd, with its covers of Ornette, Coltrane, Monk, Powell, Miles, etc. Plus his schooling at Berklee, then a jazz perf. degree at U Miami. I think that BH woulda met the Dead no matter what hap’d, performing with them is another issue entirely. But instrumental performance and ability has always been part of Hornsby’s bag, so it was probably just a matter of time that he began to find most conservative “pop confines” a bit too restrictive.

Re.: BH’s regard for his audience: I do know that it seems to thrill him when people, perhaps the more fanatical among us, submit challenging requests. Maybe BH just doesn’t wanna take his audience for granted, whatever portion of that audience that still exists that wants to hear “Mandolin Rain” or “Way” or “Look Out Any Window” or etc EXACTLY THE WAY THAT IT WAS RECORDED. (Whew. That hurt me just typing that… :lol:) I can empathize with the poor stuck-in-a-rut schmucks, but I ain’t wit’ ’em.

Re.: talking about the Dead: Don’t be like that, Goon. You, me, and Mike C (among others) can talk about the Dead here! But I hear ya ’bout mentioning BH on Dead and RatDog boards…you either get a cyber sneer or they claim that BH was trying to steal the limelight (have they watched the dvds? Never in my life have I seen someone SO obviously happy to be onstage rocking out with a band he loved), was playing too loud, pissed off Kreutzmann, made Vince feel inferior, etc etc. Oh well…waddaya gonna do?

T

Hey Everyone,

I think all the 90’s dead concerts have grown on me over time. I truly enjoy all the Bruce shows with the dead all the way until 95. Whenever he showed up, it gave the band a boost. Also, while exploring the 90s, I have stumbled across quite a few shows and can now agree that Jerry killed more shows than anyone else during that time. He even turned down the sound of his guitar from 94-95 because of his lack of confidence. I know that was a frustrating thing for all in attendance because they paid to hear him play too. I would highly recommend listening to 02/21/1995 at the Delta Center to hear a great Vince Concert. You can get it here: http://www.archive.org/details/gd95-02- … sbeok.shnf

As for Bruce, I can’t remember hearing a bad show at all. There are 2 concerts he did in 92 that he played his best versions of Jack Straw with the dead: http://www.archive.org/details/gd1992-0 … efail.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd92-03- … sbeok.shnf

Anyways, thats my two cents.

-Jeff