​It Was Always About
​by John Scher
​When I started working with the Grateful Dead in the mid-70s, there was no traditional manager. Once things clicked between me and the band as a promoter, they came to this realization that they just didn’t want to deal with the outside world. They didn’t want to deal with the outside business world, for sure. They left a lot of it to me. I was never their manager, but I was sort of their representative. I made some of their record deals and I booked their tours.
​In 1974 they made The Grateful Dead Movie—still to this day one of the greatest rock-and-roll movies ever. They took off a year, and Jerry and Bobby did do some touring on their own. I got very involved with Jerry and the film and their agent: a guy named Richard Loren. Jerry brought me in for the distribution and marketing of the film. After that came out, and they had taken a year off, they were ready to go back to work, but they really didn’t know where and how they could play to control what was going on. They realized how hugely popular they were, and when they were playing a single night at a 3,000- or 4,000-seat theater, the demand was overwhelming. There was always tension with the local police, there was always tension with the local communities, because there were so many kids outside of the venues.
​This was the time when I got involved in a fully fledged way. I talked to them and they said, “We’d like you to come out and have a meeting with us.” At this point they were not working. We went to Bob’s house, which was the ultimate bachelor pad. I remember sitting on the floor for hours trying to figure out what to do. The last tour they had done had been with The Wall of Sound, which simply didn’t work. We talked about getting back on the road without things being too chaotic. I just went to venues and booked multiple days in the same theaters they loved playing in. Instead of playing one night, we’d play two nights or three nights. This sounds like an awfully simple solution, but at the time people weren’t doing it.
​It met the demand at the time, but the band kept getting more and more and more popular. After that, they moved into arenas at a time when there were a lot of new arenas being built that accommodated music concerts better than the older ones did. Meadowlands Arena was built, with acoustic paneling on every inch of the interior, because they knew there would be a lot of concerts. The old Boston Garden or Madison Square Garden: there had never been a concert at MSG until they moved to their current location. When people would go and play some of these older venues, they sounded terrible. The Dead’s sound guys were always absolutely tops.
​The Grateful Dead were always innovative, and it was always about the fans.
​With Bob Weir it got real close to personal management. The only way you can have a healthy relationship when you’re in a management position is to be able to speak the truth. The truth sometimes works out to be this homogenous group-decision. But at other times, telling the truth, musicians don’t want to hear about it, and your relationship falls apart.