Bill “The Drummer” Kreutzmann Turns 80

The last of the Grateful Dead’s original members, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, turns 80 today.

Born May 7, 1946, Kreutzmann hits the milestone as the last survivor of the Grateful co-founders. Former Dead men Mickey Hart, Tom Constanten and Bruce Hornsby also live on, but Kreutzmann is the only person on Earth to have been at every Grateful Dead concert, having outlived fellow originals Pigpen, who died in 1973, Jerry Garcia (1995), Phil Lesh (2024) and Bob Weir (2026).

Kreutzmann’s been at a number of Dead-spinoff shows as well, as a member of the Other Ones, the Dead, Rhythm Devils and Dead & Company and his own solo bands like BK3, 7 Walkers and Billy & the Kids.

No matter the group, Keutzmann was the man to give it swagger and swing. And as he seems to be happily retired in Hawaii these days, birthday No. 80 is almost certain to be filled with sun, sand, certain medicinal plants and drums.

They didn’t call him “Bill the Drummer” for nothing.

TAKING A PHOTO OF A PHOTO BEING TAKEN -- WAY BACK TO THE OLOMPALI YEARS.

NOTE: The person in between Bob and Bill is Ken Babbs, not a member of the Dead.

PIC INFO: Resolution at 1053x1557 -- Spotlight on a group portrait of American rock band, the GRATEFUL DEAD, photographed by Thomas Weir during the band's "Aoxomoxoa" period at Olompali State Park in Novato, California, c. 1969. 📸: Sylvia Clarke Hamilton.

OVERVIEW: "The Dead had a close connection to Olompali – it was, for them, something like sacred ground. After returning from Los Angeles in spring ’66, they moved to Rancho Olompali and stayed there through May and June, renting the property for several weeks.

Though they weren’t there long, they would remember their stay as an idyllic golden age, a “paradisiacal retreat.” (Although sometimes in their acid trips, they’d have threatening visions of the ancient Indians who’d used to live there, their spirits still haunting the walls and trees.)

The band held some famous parties during their stay, playing music for a stream of tripping visitors from San Francisco. On one occasion, May 22, they sent a flyer to all their friends in the music scene: "The Grateful Dead invite you to an afternoon of inter-galactic travel, to a communion with the spirits of long dead Indians, to a dance celebrating mainly all of us.""

-- GREGORNOT (via Reddit), "Aoxomoxoa" photo shoot 1969, 📸: Thomas Weir"

Grateful Guinness Dead

- Band holds world record with 66 top-40 albums

Grateful Dead took their long, strange trip to the annals of Guinness World Records.

With the release of 2025’s Dave’s Picks Vol. 56, the defunct-since-1995 band has logged 66 top-40 albums on the Billboard 200 dating to 1970.

“So, Grateful Dead, congratulations,” a Guinness spokesman said in a video statement, “you are, officially, amazing.”

The honor caps the band’s 60th-anniversary year, which saw the release of its first Gratest Hits LP, a celebration of the milestone with three Dead & Company concerts in Golden Gate Park and the death of singer Donna Jean Godchaux.

“The record demonstrates the dedication, passion and loyalty of the massive legion of Dead Heads, as well as the consistent quality of the Grateful Dead’s recorded output and archival activities over the past six decades,” archivist David Lemieux said in a statement.

The Wheel is Turning and Nothing’s Gonna Bring Him Back

- Bobby Weir Incident’s hat tip to Phil Lesh is SCI’s fare thee well to Weir

The wheel is turning and so it comes to pass that the Bobby Weir Incident’s farewell to Phil Lesh is now String Cheese Incident’s fare thee well to Weir.

It comes in the form of “Standing on the Moon” as performed Oct. 27, 2024, in the wake of Lesh’s death. Before taking the stage, Weir told SCI: “Well boys, let’s ring the bells for Phil.”

Now, a “deeply saddened” SCI rings the bells for Weir, who died Jan. 10, with a pro-shot video from the gig.

“Bobby was a gem of a human and a true original as a musician,” SCI said in a statement. “He changed the course of music and his legacy will live on forever. We will continue to ring those bells loud and proud for him.”

The end of Weir’s long strange trip is, in a way, the end of Sound Bites’ as well. The blog’s days of seeing Grateful Dead members on stage - 2020, in the year of the pandemic was the first since 1985 that had not happened - are likely over as Bill Kreutzmann is semi-retired; Mickey Hart is left without a band at the moment; Tom Constanten is ill with cancer; and Bruce Hornsby, despite his important contributions to the Dead, doesn’t really count.

From 1985 in Ohio to 2025 in London, Weir was the musician Sound Bites saw on stage more than any other; Lesh a close second.

Pre-Sound Bites, as a reporter for The (Canton, Ohio) Repository, I was also fortunate to interview Weir, an experience I’ve always treasured (I still have the tape) and will continue to treasure in the same way I do the evenings we were in the same room - him on stage, me in the audience.

Over the 40 years of those evenings, Weir morphed from a youthful, clean-shaven rock star who favored Izod golf shirts, Madonna Ts and pink guitars to a grizzled, grey-bearded elder statesman in capri pants or ponchos who preferred clangy guitar tones and was as often playing in a stripped-down trio format or fronting an orchestra as he was playing Grateful Dead songs in a standard rock ’n’ roll format.

As Robert Hunter once said, via Lesh: Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there.

Thank you. Goodnight.

Flashback at 60: Grateful Dead - Grayfolded (1996)

Editor’s note: The year 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s birth. This is the 30th Flashback on 60, a periodic feature in which Sound Bites revisits the band’s career.

A radical concept aimed at an audience fond of radical musical ideas, Grayfolded is nevertheless a niche LP.

Armed with 100 versions of “Dark Star” the Grateful Dead performed between 1968 and 1993, producer John Oswald sampled, remixed and layered the archival recordings to come up with two, one-hour sequences released as Transitive Axis and Mirror Ashes in 1994 and ’95, respectively. They were subsequently reissued together as Grayfolded in ’96.

The novelty of potentially hearing keyboardist Tom Constanten (1968-1970) alongside Bruce Hornsby (1990-’92) - the soundscapes are so dense, it’s impossible to know - is negated by Oswald’s decision to eliminate virtually all melody and rhythm in favor of sonic chaos, through which the “Dark Star” theme swirls, emerging and dissipating across such tracks as “Clouds Cast,” “The Phil Zone,” “Recedes (While We Can),” and “73rd Star Bridge Sonata.”

While the music is challenging and only occasionally satisfying, it’s the remixed and manipulated vocals that sink the project. They sound like something a house-music deejay might deploy.

Oswald deserves credit for taking big chances with the music of a band of iconoclastic risk-takers. And while most will likely think Grayfolded didn’t work out, some will surely revel in its anti-musicality.

Read Sound Bites’ previous Flashback on 60 items here.

Flashback on 60: Grateful Dead - Download Series Volume 2 (2005)

Editor’s note: The year 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s birth. This is the 18th Flashback on 60, a periodic feature in which Sound Bites revisits the band’s career.

It’s Jan. 18, 1970, and a youthful, still-developing Grateful Dead are playing pretty well and singing pretty terribly at a gig in Oregon.

Things are in flux. Second keyboardist Tom Constanten will leave the band within a couple of weeks; percussionist Mickey Hart will begin a hiatus in a year.

Pigpen, whose health will fail within two years, is still up front singing the blues on “Big Boss Man,” which finds Jerry Garcia experimenting with the riff that would become “New Speedway Boogie,” and “Turn on Your Lovelight,” while the rest of the group is inching ever closer to the sound it would carry - while constantly evolving - all the way to 1995.

Released in 2005 as Download Series Volume Two, this partial-show recording finds the band going back to the very beginning with such numbers as “Cold Rain and Snow” and “Dancing in the Street,” during which an uncharacteristically chatty Bob Weir asks the fans to boogie. And though the harmonies are not at all harmonious, they’re spirited in the extreme.

The same is true of “Mason’s Children,” which despite its raggedness, is a special inclusion as the song was played fewer than 20 times and never recorded. Ditto, “China Cat Sunflower” -> “I Know You Rider,” which had been recently linked, to virtually never again disconnect.

File under interesting historical artifact; inessential listening.

Read Sound Bites’ previous Flashback on 60 items here.