"PIGPEN'S CELLULOID BLUES"

GRATEFUL DEAD
4/17/72
"TV FROM THE TIVOLI"
TIVOLI CONCERT HALL
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

WHEN I FIRST BECAME A DEADHEAD AND STUMBLED UPON THIS FOOTAGE ON YOUTUBE MY EYES ONLY REGISTERED “THE FRONTLINE” OF GUITARISTS PLUS BILLY KREUTZMANN ON DRUMS. The only other Dead footage I had seen were edited snippets of the 1980 Radio City Music Hall shows which PBS stations furthered truncated during their pledge weekend enticement programming. You know: ten minutes of the music followed by thirty minutes of live on-camera begging for more money, then repeat, then repeat...Anyone who has ever watched enough PBS knows the drill. Children’s programming and the daily news shows are sacrosanct, but everything else is fair game.

In the pre-Internet age—hell, in the pre-AOL/Compuserve days, when the VCR ruled households, this was the only footage you were privy too….

But the last time I watched the Tivoli I couldn’t take my eyes off Pigpen. I couldn’t stop being moved by Pigpen, to the point of tears. I had forgotten about his sad plight, that he would be dead by 1973, a victim of hepatitis and alcohol abuse. 

I was shaky with the details without consulting a reference. I remembered that his last year or two with the Dead his concert appearance had been sporadic due to his dwindling health. That Europe ‘72 couldn’t even been his full last hurrah because he missed so many shows. 

When I first saw this footage years ago I wsn’t aware of any of that. When I last saw the footage I hadn’t immediately remembered. But when I did...it wasn’t quite like Proust dipping a madeleine into a cup of tea, not a full-fledged epiphany of illumination. I saw a man who thoroughly resembled Pigpen, but who couldn’t be Pigpen but of course was Pigpen. A voluminous coat failed to camouflage how thin he had become by then. Looking spent, even angry at times, playing an organ draped with a Grateful Dead flag, no happiness in those eyes. 

Those eyes. There’s a photo of Pigpen at a press conference the day after a 1967 Haight-Ashbury drug bust, which centered on possession of LSD. As any Deadhead knows then and now Pen did not trip with the boys or the Merry Pranksters or anyone else. He might have been dosed by them from time to time, but psychedelics was never his thing. Pen; unhappy about busted at home/band headquarters for something he did not do, glares on at the proceedings with murderous intentions. 

On celluloid he’s captured frowning, always unsmiling, not his normal effusive self with the audience. Looking up from the organ his dagger-our glances doesn’t seem to be directed at the band—he’s probably seeing through them. Maybe The Grim Reaper was dancing before him, and he was in no mood to be as magnanimous as a “Black Peter.”

There’s much to like about this clipped concert for Danish television(only the first two sets were recorded and then condensed even further to accommodate television restrictions on time): the band’s good humor(and I’m not referring to the silly vaudeville masks broken out for “Big Railroad Blues”); raucous versions of “Truckin’,” “Ramble on Rose,” and “Big Railroad Blues” which all nearly derail but are snapped back like rubber bands; a subdued but groovy “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” which is easily eclipsed by the audio renditions of the medley all over Europe, but is valuable for the visuals alone. 

Yet Pigpen’s turns steals the show. His occasional turns stepping forward and leading the band in the blues are highlights--and I hope not just for the contextual reasons previously outlined. Pigpen was never a conventionally great blues singer like Bobby "Blue" Bland or Big Joe Turner, nor a great harpist a la Little Walter. He wasn't a blackface minstrel. He was a great enthusiast of the form, which was the greatest contribution he made to the band. After his death Weir and Garcia always acknowledged this, that his evangelical love of it was contagious and that he taught them how to play and feel it.
"It Hurts Me Too" is the summit of this. Summoning all his energy to step forward and, as they say in Black churches, "testify." He does so in an understated way, which still breaks your heart, and that's before his harmonica solo. And matching him is Garcia's exquisite slide work, both accompaniment and solo, which further elevates this selection as one of the finest moments ever of the Pigpen-era of the Grateful Dead. It should give you the shivers.
The blues are many things--read Albert Murray and Robert Palmer if you don't believe me. Sometimes the only defiance we have to the inevitability of death. Nietzsche's quote about staring into the abyss is just another form of the blues. That night in Copenhagen Pigpen stared into the abyss. And did not blink nor surrender. Maybe he was "Black Peter" after all. Rest in peace Rod "Pigpen" McKernan.