In the months before Jerry Garcia died on August 9, there were many unprecedented events that plagued the Grateful Dead on their final tour of 1995.

There was a near riot and gate crash at Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville on July 2, which forced the cancellation of the next night's show. The gatecrashes during the final tour have mostly been blamed on new fans of the Dead but three cities decided to take it out on the band, and the Dead were banned from playing Albany, NY; Highgate, VT; and Noblesville, Ind.

Then some fans were struck by lightning.

And a structure in a camp ground occupied by Dead fans collapsed. Both incidents were like something out of the Twilight Zone.

There were persistent rumours of threats to Jerry Garcia’s life. It was at the show in Indianapolis that he received the first threat. He was reported to be afraid for his life.

It seemed like something was going to happen. The Dead played their final gig at Soldier’s Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995. Then Jerry Garcia started taking heroin and committed himself into a drug rehab centre for two weeks at the end of July and everything seemed fine. He voluntarily admitted himself a second time into another centre at the beginning of August. It was here that he was found dead in bed at Serenity Knolls from a heart attack.

The Grateful Dead started life avoiding the trappings of commercialism. They were outlaw hippies with ideals. The ideals were simple - they wanted to make great music for people to enjoy. They wanted to make music as best as they could. The Dead spent a lot of money and time perfecting their sound in the studio. This memorable anecdote comes to mind:

In 1967, Joe Smith the exec who signed the Dead to Warner Brothers, wrote a letter to the Dead’s manager complaining of the time wasted in completing the Anthem Of The Sun album. "The Grateful Dead are not one of the top acts of the business yet," Smith wrote. "Their attitudes and their inability to take care of business when it’s time to do so would lead us to believe that they never will be truly important. No matter how talented your group is, it’s going to have to put something of itself into the business before it goes anywhere."

Later, the letter was found with big capital letters scrawled on it the words, "FUCK YOU".

To be young, to be alive, to be Dead.

The Deads’ attitude to business was typical hippie idealism. They looked after the fans, they cared for their music and they showed all this by allowing every concert they played to be taped by fans and shared. The Dead took great pains and at great expense to make their sound system the best money could buy. They treated their fans like real people not consumers of their records. Today when you hear about music "collectives" whether it’s the folks at Elephant Six or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Dead were there at the beginning building a community, setting an example.

On the internet, sharing of the Deads’ music won’t get you in trouble. The band also started their own indie label to put out high quality recordings of their many concerts from 1968 to 1995. They have a large and active mailing list of fans and there are numerous sites discussing the Deads’ music.

When Tower Records opened in $ingapore in 1995, the American manager who stocked the magazine section filled it with Rolling Stones’ Jerry Garcia issue, not knowing if the Dead were popular here. He was paying tribute to a fellow traveller.

The Grateful Dead seem immune to the trends of the rock business and the whims of fashion and technology. Neither the fast changes of the internet nor the fickleness of pop culture have affected their popularity and commercial appeal. The secret of their success is indeed simple. They cared. And in return we cared about them.
- The Savage Hippo

Click on the panels to download artwork

THE GRATEFUL DEAD
At Soldier’s Field [no label 2CD]
July 9, 2025 in Chicago

This was Jerry Garcia’s final performance with the Grateful Dead. Garcia died exactly 10 years ago to this day on August 9, 1995. To commemorate his passing we are offering Set 2 of this show as an MP3 download less one song that has been officially released on the Dead’s So Many Roads boxset.

This is taken from a pre-FM soundboard source.
Click on the highlighted tracks to download MP3s.

	Disc 1
Track 01	Touch Of Grey
Track 02	Little Red Rooster
Track 03	Lazy River Road
Track 04	When I Paint My Masterpiece
Track 05	Childhood’s End
Track 06	Cumberland Blues
Track 07	The Promised Land
	Set 2
Track 08	Shakedown Street (19.1MB)
Track 09	Samson And Delilah (11.2MB)
Track 10	So Many Roads [THIS SONG IS NOT INCLUDED]
	Disc 2
Track 01	Samba In The Rain (9.2MB)
Track 02	Corrina (20.3MB)
Track 03	Drums/Space (37.2MB)
Track 04	Unbroken Chain (9.5MB)
Track 05	Sugar Magnolia* (13.3MB)
Track 06	Encore: Black Muddy River* (7.3MB)
Track 07	Box Of Rain* (6.8MB)
	* with Bob Weir on acoustic guitar

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