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Grateful Dead at the Sphere in Las Vegas
The Dead Forever residency at Sphere runs through Aug. 10.

Photo: Kevin Carter

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Why Dead & Company's Sphere Residency Is The Ultimate Trip

The 30-date Las Vegas residency is an unprecedented look at Dead & Co's live artistry. With stunning visuals and immersive technology, the Dead Forever residency takes attendees on an unpredictable, eye-popping vortex journey.

GRAMMYs/Jul 18, 2024 - 01:34 pm

The scene on Saturday, July 13, was one mostly familiar to Dead & Company fans: Usual suspects Jeff Chimenti on keys, Oteil Burbridge on bass, Mickey Hart on drums, and John Mayer on guitar, a Silver Sky in hand. Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir dutifully approached the microphone to deliver one of the Dead’s best-known opening lyrics: "You tell me this town ain’t got no heart."

Throughout the evening, appreciative cheers and whistles sounded at the first notes of a classic, like this one, intermingling with the hints of marijuana in the air. The crowd of thousands, who’d traveled from both near and far for the occasion, swayed to the music. Largely clad in the tie-dye t-shirts customary to the Dead fandom, they comprised a vivid sea of color, visible even in the venue’s dimmest lighting.

Bathed in the glow of a key anomaly — a 160,000-square-foot curved LED canvas — a Deadhead sitting in the row ahead of me turns around and asks if I’m enjoying the show (I am). When I return the question, he is emphatic, his response succinct: "it’s transformative."

He’s not wrong in that the audiovisual spectacle — which wrapped its eighth of 10 weeks this past weekend — metamorphoses Dead & Company’s concert format. Since it debuted in May, the now 30-date Las Vegas residency, dubbed Dead Forever, has attracted old-school and new-generation Deadheads, as well as curious first-timers. From one-of-a-kind production tools, like its 16K LED display (the highest-resolution display in the world, per developers) and stereographic projection, Sphere has empowered Dead & Company to carry forth the legacy of one of the most fervently-loved bands in American music history, with unprecedented storytelling capacities and complete creative control.

Read on for four reasons why Dead & Company’s residency at Las Vegas’ most-talked-about venue is the rock outfit like they’ve never been seen before.

The Meeting Of Music & Visuals Allows For True Narration

For the nearly four hours that Dead & Company play each Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of a residency week, the domed venue adjacent to the Venetian transforms from Sphere to spaceship. Narratively, the show is stylized as a long, strange trip through space that issues nods to the Grateful Dead’s history.

It’s only fitting that this story begins in San Francisco, where the Dead’s townhouse in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district becomes the focal point of the audiovisual journey’s intro. The 360-degree view of the Dead’s residence and the larger row of townhouses to which it belongs pans to a drone shot of the Bay Area at golden hour and soon thereafter, outer space.

Visually, attendees travel through time and space in an unpredictable, eye-popping vortex of fantasticality (and sometimes, reality). Take, for example, the segment that recreates the Dead’s performance at the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt. The scene is punctuated by black bats that flap swiftly through the desert landscape — a detail that comes as a surprise to those in the audience, and one ultimately added based on Weir’s recollection of this very phenomenon during the 1978 event, Mayer tells GQ 

Before Dead & Company bring Dead Forever full-circle by returning to 710 Ashbury Street at the show’s close, the show winds through a colorful, circuitous run of visuals: the Dead’s iconic technicolor dancing bears, Cornell University’s Barton Hall, and a wall made entirely of digital reproductions of Dead event posters and hard tickets. The show’s depth of reference is plunging, and Sphere’s technology allows the story to play like an abstract movie that blurs timelines, affording Dead & Company an unusual and nonpareil opportunity to leverage live storytelling in a way they’ve never before been able to.

While Dead Forever is accessible purely as a visual marvel, for the initiated, it is rife with Easter eggs. Its historical allusions are familiar touch points for the Deadheads who hopped on the metaphorical bandwagon back when Jerry Garcia was at its helm. Although some of its segments will evade those less fluent in the Dead’s storied past, they can nevertheless serve as educational gateways to it (and to greater, deeper fandom) for those who leave the show wanting to learn more. 

Read more: A Beginner’s Guide To The Grateful Dead: 5 Ways To Get Into The Legendary Jam Band

In A Way, Everything Is New

Whether one has seen Dead & Company once, five times, 20 times, or never before matters not, for Dead Forever is a brand-new show. Familiarity with the Grateful Dead’s legacy and its contemporary offshoot's genesis certainly enriches the overall experience, but it’s not a requisite to enjoy the show, making the residency a particularly good entry point for the Dead & Company-curious who may have missed them on The Final Tour in 2023.  

Dead Forever levels the playing field for attendees in that, apart from the songs on the setlist, the residency represents net-new material. The marriage of music and visuals makes each of the 18 tunes new from the standpoint of an audiovisual experience, and the novelty of Dead Forever deepens for even the most experienced Deadhead.

"When I was growing up, ‘Drums’ was always my bathroom song, but now you don’t want to miss it," an attendee tells GRAMMY.com at the end of the first set (Dead & Company play one six- or seven-song set and take a 30-minute intermission before beginning the evening’s second and final set).

A customary part of the Dead’s sets, "Drums/Space" is an extended percussion segment that takes on new life in Dead Forever. Led by Mickey Hart, the set two standout is where sound evolves into physical feeling. As this portion of the show starts, the curved LED canvas swirls with images of different drums that move wildly as Hart and Jay Lane (who stands in for Grateful Dead co-founding member, Bill Kreutzmann) diligently drum, steadily increasing the pace and intensity with which they do so. The instruments that grace Sphere’s screen are Hart’s own, the drummer tells Variety. Following 3D-photographing that enables them to be displayed in this fashion, an ensemble of at least 10 different drums joins the visual jamboree.

The cinematic, multisensory nature of this segment grows increasingly climactic, with the percussion becoming so thunderous it becomes physical. No surprise, considering Sphere’s immersive, crystal-clear sound system, or the fact that 10,000 of the venue’s 17,385 seats are haptic seats that can vibrate in time with the mounting percussion. This technology transforms "Drums/Space" and allows a customary piece of the Dead’s traditional sets to be heard, seen, and felt anew.

The Environment Is Unusually Immersive —And Intimate

Upon mention of Sphere’s size — the globe measures 875,000 square feet and can accommodate up to 20,000 people — "intimate" is not the first word to come to mind. Still, the venue felt remarkably intimate during Dead & Company’s final performance of July.

This was owed in equal parts to its self-contained design and its immersive visual environment, in which Sphere’s LED screen wraps over and behind the audience. However uncannily, the latter contributes to a sense of closeness, creating the illusion that Sphere, its visual displays, and its audience are situated much more closely than they actually are.

Its 580,000-square-feet of LEDs, coupled with its 360-degree shape and structure, render Sphere the most immersive live music venue in the world. To that end, it’s not hyperbolic or unreasonable to call Dead Forever Dead & Company’s most immersive live venture yet.

Of course, the Dead Forever narrative — a trip through space undertaken together, as one community — only adds to the show’s combined sense of intimacy and immersion.

No Show Is The Same

It’s not out of character for Dead & Company to play no repeats across consecutive evenings (as they did at San Francisco’s Oracle Park, where they laid their touring career to rest last July), and Dead Forever is no exception. Apart from "Drums/Space" — the sole item on the setlist that recurs each night — the 17 other songs that the band will play and their visual accompaniments are left to Dead & Company’s whim. 

"What’s become really interesting — and I would say it’s a challenge, but it’s a really fun one — is that not only do you have to make the songs work in some kind of a flow for the setlist, but every piece of content has maybe eight or 10 songs that can go with it," Mayer told Variety. 

No show is the same, yielding similar but unique viewing experiences across a given residency weekend and, more broadly, the portfolio of Dead Forever shows performed to date. This aspect has enticed avid fans to return not once, not twice, but three times in a given weekend, to see a fuller scope of what Dead Forever has to offer across its many possible variations.

With the residency’s July run now in the rearview, Dead & Company will take a brief break before returning to Sphere Aug. 1-3 and 8-10 for the final Dead Forever trips — for now.

Explore The World Of Rock

Phil Lesh performs as Phil Lesh & Friends during the Great South Bay Music Festival at Shorefront Park on July 22, 2023 in Patchogue, New York
Phil Lesh performs as Phil Lesh & Friends in 2023

Photo: Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images

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Remembering Phil Lesh, Grateful Dead Co-Founder And Bassist With An Unbreakable Chain

The legendary bassist and his bandmates in the Grateful Dead will be honored as 2025 MusiCares Persons Of The Year during a GRAMMY Week event on Jan. 31 in Los Angeles.

GRAMMYs/Oct 26, 2024 - 01:48 am

And then there were two. Phil Lesh, co-founder and innovative bassist for the Grateful Dead, passed away peacefully on Oct. 25 at his California home surrounded by family. He was 84.

With Lesh’s death, Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann are the only remaining original members of the psychedelic rock band that formed in Palo Alto in 1965. Earlier this week, it was announced that the Grateful Dead had been named the 2025 MusiCares Persons Of The Year

Lesh’s death was announced late in the day on Friday on his official Instagram. Margo Price, one of the first to comment on the news, simply said, "Thanks for the music." Just this past March, Lesh was joined on stage at The Capitol Theatre by friends and fellow artists to celebrate his 84th birthday. On Friday night on X, the New York venue said they already missed the musician "more than words can tell."

"The Recording Academy mourns the loss of Phil Lesh," Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason, jr said in a statement."For their outstanding contributions to the recording industry, he and his fellow Grateful Dead members were honored in 2007 with our Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. Phil’s legacy is timeless and will live on for generations to come and we look forward to honoring him and the Grateful Dead at our MusiCares Person of the Year ceremony in January."

Phil Lesh left a lifetime's worth of music to be grateful for. The musician was born in Berkeley, California on March 15, 1940. He played trumpet and violin in high school and, during these formative years, fell in love with free jazz and experimental music. This penchant for improvisation that became his trademark for three decades as a member of the Grateful Dead — a  band of musical brothers that left a lasting legacy on the world. 

Lesh became a bassist by default. He was working a variety of jobs, including driving a mail truck and working at a radio station, when Jerry Garcia convinced him to join the new rock band he was forming (the Warlocks), who quickly morphed into the Grateful Dead.   

The Dead defined an era. The band represented a subculture that influenced the mainstream for decades from lifestyle to fashion; from music to marketing. And Lesh, as a co-founder of these musical misfits, was a key cog in this long and strange trip.  

"Phil Lesh changed my life," Dead drummer Mickey Hart wrote on X. "Phil was bigger than life, at the very center of the band and my ears, filling my brain with waves of bass…. Phil was a master of a style he invented, he was singular, an original, nobody sounded like him, nobody."

Read more: A Beginner’s Guide To The Grateful Dead: 5 Ways To Get Into The Legendary Jam Band

The bass does not often get the glory, but it is the backbone of many groups; it provides that steady beat and rhythm that guides the rest of the band. Sometimes, the bass lines are simple; other times complex. Lesh's dexterity with the instrument allowed him to wield it as an inspirational source and force — especially live — as a conduit to take the Grateful Dead and their fans to new realms. 

Lesh played bass like it was the lead instrument of the band. Listen to the Grateful Dead’s vast catalog and the groove of his funky bass notes and improvisations often trump Garcia’s lead guitar playing. Rolling Stone cited Lesh as one of the "50 Greatest Bassists of All Time," noting that that "In the same way that the Grateful Dead reconfigured how a rock band should sound — looser and jammier, incorporating equal parts jazz and country — Phil Lesh made us hear the bass in a new way."  

The Grateful Dead were innovators. No two shows were ever the same. The spirit of each night was unique and that spirit was fuelled by the band members (and just as often by the various drugs that they were under the influence of) and where they went on these spacey jams and explorations, Lesh was often the guide.  

In 1994, Lesh and his jamband mates were enshrined into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame when Bruce Hornsby officially inducted the Grateful Dead. In his acceptance speech, Lesh thanked Deadheads worldwide, acknowledging that "without them, we wouldn’t be anywhere, much less right here, right now."   

After Garcia passed away in 1995, Lesh and Weir both continued to play and perform, together and separately, but never again under the Grateful Dead moniker. Lesh founded Phil Lesh & Friends and, in later years, played often with his sons: Grahame and Brian; Weir fronted Dead and Company, who this past summer completed a 30-day residency dubbed Dead Forever in Las Vegas at the Sphere.

On X, as news of the musician’s passing spread, tributes poured in from celebrities, fellow musicians, legendary venues, and regular Deadheads. The Empire State Building even announced it would light up the New York City skyline for one hour on Friday night in homage to Lesh’ legacy.

Beyond its longtime care for its community of loyal fans (Deadheads), the band supported many causes over the years — from mental health to music education and social justice. In 1997, Lesh and his wife Jill founded the Unbroken Chain Foundation to raise money and give back to various charitable organizations. 

MusiCares also mourned the loss of Lesh. "As a legendary bassist and founding member of the Grateful Dead, Phil’s distinctive contributions to music, advocacy, and philanthropy leave an enduring impact," the organization said in a statement. "Phil will be reverently honored with his Grateful Dead bandmates as our 2025 Persons of the Year, commemorating their journey that transcends music and fosters a profound sense of unity and generosity. This tribute stands as a testament to Phil’s remarkable legacy, commitment to creating community, and unwavering dedication to causes close to his heart, including his Unbroken Chain Foundation and MusiCares."

Phil Lesh leaves behind his wife Jill and children, Grahame and Brian. 

In memory of Phil Lesh, press play on five songs that feature bass lines that groove, melodies that linger long after the record is done, and showcase his musical legacy and influence.

"Box Of Rain"

This country-folk song is a Deadhead favorite and concert staple. The melody and instrumentation for "Box of Rain" (from American Beauty,1970), came to Lesh as something to sing to his dad, who, at the time of its writing, was dying of cancer; Lesh practiced it in his head during his drives to visit his ailing father at his nursing home.

"Truckin'"

One of the Dead’s most mainstream cuts and highest-charting songs, it’s hard to listen to this catchy number without getting hypnotized by the funky bass groove supplied by Lesh that keeps the song rollicking down the highway on this long strange trip.  

"Cumberland Blues"

From 1970's Workingman’s Dead, this song is about the trials and tribulations of toiling in the Cumberland coal mines in Kentucky. In live shows, this is one where Lesh was let off his leash; listening to this track you can feel how much fun the bassist is having.   

"St. Stephen"

This song was co-written by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter. Appearing on the 1969 album Aoxomoxoa, this tune opens with Lesh playing single notes that resonate and then kicks into a romp that continues to build until the bridge that slows things down briefly before another explosion of sound that spirals the song to a climactic ending with the melodic bass lines of Lesh leading this psychedelic trip. 

"Unbroken Chain"

Lesh co-wrote this complex melodic song, which is also the name of his charitable foundation, with longtime Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Appearing on 1974’s From the Mars Hotel, the band never performed the song in concert until 1995, likely due to its difficulty. 

The phrase symbolizes (just like the classic 1907 gospel hymn "Will the Circle be Unbroken" the journey of the band and the fans that have followed them on their trips for nearly 60 years. Though yet one more member of the Grateful Dead is now gone, the songs remain to help family, friends and Deadheads grieve to make sure the links to their music never breaks or fades away.  

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Zedd performs live at the Twitch DJ Category Launch Event at Elsewhere on August 08, 2024 in New York City
Zedd performs in New York City in 2024

Photo: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Twitch

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Zedd's Road To 'Telos': How Creating For Himself & Disregarding Commercial Appeal Led To An Evolutionary New Album

'Telos' "isn't going to be that pop album that some people may have wanted me to make," Zedd tells GRAMMY.com of his highly anticipated album — his first in nine years.

GRAMMYs/Aug 29, 2024 - 02:11 pm

At the time of our call, the release of Telos Zedd's first studio album in nearly a decade — is just seven days away. Snug in an earthy brown crewneck, the 34-year-old musician joins the Zoom from his new home in Encino, California, with a degree of poise that some might find surprising at this point in the rollout. 

Still, his relaxed body language, decisive, measured speech, and quiet confidence make it clear that any anxiety he once felt about the LP has been replaced by pure anticipation. 

"I am honestly just really excited. I think I've released music in the past that I was nervous about, but it's quite different with this album," he tells GRAMMY.com. "I feel very calm and just happy to be able to release this music that I've been working on for so long, some of which has been in the works as late as nine years ago." 

Out Aug. 30, Telos arrives about four years later than initially announced and about eight years after it was contractually due. Though Zedd confirmed that the long-awaited answer to his second studio album, True Colors (2015), would arrive in 2020, he indefinitely postponed the project at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

"I decided to push back the album to when things are more back to normal," he wrote in a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) in November 2020. "I really wanted it to come out this year, but I put the album on standby because during quarantine, I just didn't feel the inspiration to make this the best album possible."

Timing is everything and Zedd, who counts a clock ticking sample among his stylistic hallmarks, knows this well. Zedd embraced the axiom while making Telos, an album that "isn't for the algorithms" in an era when creative works' cultural capital is largely decided by how well they pander to an algorithm. Telos is decidedly — and in some ways, daringly — non-commercial. "Lucky," alongside singer/songwriter Remi Wolf and "Automatic Yes" with John Mayer, are notably the only two tracks palatable for commercial radio airplay. The 10-track album largely plays like a love letter to classical music (there is an orchestra on the entire LP), with flashes of pop, dance/electronic, jazz, world music, and metal influence. A cross-generational list of collaborators including 40-year-old musician and composer Jeremy Kittle, who recorded each string for the album one by one, and Gen Z singer-songwriter Bea Miller further dynamize Telos.

Telos "isn't going to be that pop album that some people may have wanted me to make," Zedd acknowledges. Nor will it be the dance/electronic LP that purists from his name-making run in the early-2010’s might long for. Fans gained during the GRAMMY-winning producer's complextro, electro, and progressive house-heavy era (think "Shave It") have been some of his most outspoken critics in recent years, reproaching his stride into commercial pop.

This response is neither surprising nor foreign to Zedd. "I felt the same way about a lot of bands and artists that I grew up listening to when I heard their new music," he reflects. "In the moment, you might be like, I'm disappointed, 'cause I wanted X, Y, Z, and with a little bit of perspective, you realize what an artist has done, and maybe those become your favorite works when you give it time."

Zedd has already proved his ability to craft pop hits with staying power — with help from some of the genre’s most prominent voices. The 2017 single "Stay" with Alessia Cara (2017) and 2018's "The Middle" with Maren Morris and Grey were two of Zedd's biggest smashes in the dance-pop domain post-True Colors. Both singles achieved platinum certification, though "The Middle" has since struck platinum six times. Like "Clarity" — the 2012 breakthrough single that scored Zedd his sole golden gramophone (for Best Dance Recording) — "Stay" and "The Middle" imbued him with the confidence and greater depth of reference to make an album like Telos.

"If I made another album today that felt the same way Clarity felt back then, you wouldn't feel the same way about Clarity today," Zedd reasons, adding that Telos has some of the "internal motivations" and experimentation of Clarity. "It's just a more mature and experienced expression, so I think the people who loved Clarity will find plenty to love on Telos."

The album's debut single, "Out Of Time" featuring Bea Miller, is likely to serve as one such point of connection. It retains the DNA of Zedd's established, melody-driven sonic identity while still feeling fresh and exploratory.

"It's a really good example of a new version of an old me," he attests. "The real core of what Zedd feels like isn't the sound. It's not the synths, and it's not the kicks you hear at the festival. It's actually really deeply rooted in chord progressions and melodies. Those are well alive, and more than ever, on Telos."

At nine-and-a-half-years-old, "Out Of Time" is the oldest track on the album, penned just after Zedd delivered True Colors (OG fans will recognize the song's chord progression from the intro to his DJ sets). His motivation to repeatedly rework the track and fashion it into the album opener stems, in part, from the feeling that it was "too theatrical" to be a standalone single.

Telos provided "the perfect canvas to deliver all these meaningful songs to my life and to my career that couldn't just be one-offs," he says.

Zedd’s current musical ethos is born from his disenchantment with the direction of music in the age of algorithms and TikTok, and the resulting Telos is the product of his "decision to really be free musically."  

"There was one moment in making Telos that made me realize this is like my autobiography. This is everything I am as an artist, and everything I do musically is for me," Zedd says with conviction. "That was a really liberating moment because I am essentially guaranteeing that I'm not going to disappoint anyone because the only audience is me. I'm making this for myself." 

"It sounds so silly to even say [this album is just going to be for me] because you would think that everything you make as an artist is for you," he concedes. "But really, the truth is it's hard to block out the feeling that people might be disappointed, and the feeling that you could change a song, and you would make so many people happy." 

Telos' exhaustive creation process was as much a matter of deconstruction as it was reconstruction. About halfway through the first version of "Z3," as the album is known colloquially among fans, Zedd scrapped 90 percent of what he'd written, salvaging only "Dream Brother." The hypnotic interpretation of Jeff Buckley's 1994 song embodies the musicality that threads Telos — from the texture of the opening guitar chords and piano, to the swell of strings, and Zedd's signature clock ticking sample in its outro. Telos marks the first and only time the Buckley estate has given an artist the rights to the late creative's work. 

"Dream Brother," Zedd explains, was "the only song that felt like this is living very much in the world that I really deeply feel," citing it as "a song that has inspired me since my early days as a musician." 

Between his successes on Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and the coveted Hot 100, it may be easy to forget that Zedd's musicality traces back to childhood. A classically trained musician, Zedd began playing the piano at the age of four and still writes his music on the piano first. Telos is a cerebral reminder that it's reductive to think of Zedd as anything less than a natural-born composer.

Elsewhere, "Sona," featuring the olllam, harkens back to Zedd's days as a member of German metalcore band DIORAMIC in its use of the 7/4 time signature. "Sona" is the first song in this time signature that Zedd has made since his days as a band member (he was the group's drummer from ages 12 to 20). 

Still, Telos' unequivocal pièce de resistance is "1685" with GRAMMY-winning English rock band Muse. The six-minute and 11-second album finale takes inspiration from Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Well Tempered Clavier" — the first classical piece Zedd ever learned to play on piano as a child and as he calls it, "probably the most influential piece ever written in life for me."

Named for Bach's birth year, "1685" extends the full-circle nature of Telos. Both a tribute to his favorite composer and a reference to Zedd's earliest days as a musician (he performed a cover of Muse during his very first concert with DIORAMIC), these connections imbue Telos with authenticity and soul.  

Intricate and lovingly-crafted, Telos is Zedd at his most musically honest. "It's my entire life in one album," he says. "It's truly an evolution of who I am as a musician." 

His decision to eschew trends and commercial formulae to embrace "music for the sake of art" confers a sense of timelessness to Telos. For those versed in gaming terminology (like the multi-platinum producer, a notorious gamer) Telos is Zedd in his final form — a state unlocked only after the successful completion of considerable, skill-building challenges. 

Fittingly, the multifaceted nature of Telos and its creator is reflected in the album's title. The Greek word has multiple meanings, including accomplishment, completion of human art, and the end. He chose the name "telos" 30 or so minutes before he had to submit the LP — an  ironic timeline for a production that took years to conceive.  Yet like all of the creative choices that culminate in Telos, this, too, was part of a thoughtful strategy. Zedd wanted to be sure that the album's title would faithfully capture its concept, even after the LP’s many metamorphoses. 

"I really relate to all of the meanings," he says. "Accomplishment of a goal is one of them. I made this album that I was dreaming of making my whole life with the artists I love so much who have inspired me, so it's a genuine dream come true to make this album." 

With introspection written on his face, Zedd pauses, then continues: "One of the meanings of 'telos' is the end, and there was a good chunk of time where I thought this might be the last music I will ever release. It's kind of like I put all my emotions and feelings into this one album…is there any reason for me to take space away in this universe if this is all I have left to say? And for a moment towards the tail end, I was like 'yeah, Telos is the name for this album because I will never make another song in my life.'"
But Telos is merely another beginning, briefly disguised as an end. Zedd delivered the album, had a second to breathe, moved from Beverly Hills to Encino, put a piano in his bedroom, and "inevitably started writing new music." Timing is everything.

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Mickey Hart - Dead & Company
Mickey Hart

Photo: Nick Spanos

interview

Living Legends: How Dead & Company Drummer Mickey Hart Makes Visual Art From Vibrations — And Brought It To Las Vegas' Sphere

Dead & Company are currently embarking a residency at Las Vegas' sphere, which features drummer Mickey Hart's eye-popping, unconventional art. Hart spoke to GRAMMY.com about how it came to be, and how the Grateful Dead's legacy continues to ripple forth.

GRAMMYs/May 23, 2024 - 09:06 pm

Living Legends is a series that spotlights icons in music who are still going strong today. This week, we interviewed Mickey Hart, one of two drummers — along with Bill Kreutzmann — of the Grateful Dead and its contemporary offshoot, Dead & Company.

His first-ever solo art exhibition, Art at the Edge of Magic, will run through July 13 at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, as part of the Dead Forever Experience. His work is also incorporated into their current residency at Las Vegas' Sphere.

After decades behind a drum kit with the Grateful Dead, and now in the same role in Dead & Company, Mickey Hart has learned a truly cosmic lesson: "The basis of all of creation is vibratory." 

For years, in parallel with his legacy as a music maker, he's made visual art using a sui generis method, which has plenty in common with his techniques as a drummer. Check out his visual art, which he's been creating for years in parallel with his music making; some of it may look like paintings, but that doesn't quite describe what it is.

Rather, Hart employs vibrations — much like he's done behind the kit for decades — to bring out hitherto-invisible dimensions in paint. The results are captivating to the eye — at times, otherworldly.

The strength of Hart's visual art has added another layer to the Grateful Dead cosmos. If you're in or near Las Vegas, you can check out these works as part of the Dead Forever Experience, in an exhibition at the Venetian running until mid-July.

Additionally, if you catch Dead & Company during their Sphere residency (which runs through July 13), you can immerse yourself in it during the famous "Drums/Space" portion of the set — a percussive, celestial section stretching way back in Dead setlist history.

"I just love to do it. Sometimes, your hobbies overtake you and become a necessary ingredient in your life," Hart cheerily tells GRAMMY.com. "And that's what happened with this visual medium, that it kind of grew on me and made me want to go back over and over and over again to learn the craft."

Whether or not you'll be heading to Vegas, read on for an interview with Hart about how he makes these sumptuous textures and hues truly pop — as well as his gratitude for the potency and longevity of the Dead's afterlife. (No pun intended.)

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Your visual work is beautiful. What can you tell readers about how you make it — the brass tacks?

Well, I wouldn't say I paint. I don't use brushes — sometimes, once in a while — but really it's more of a pouring medium, and a spinning medium, and so forth. But I use vibrations in the painting process, and I think that's why people call it vibrational expressionism.

I use a subwoofer and the Pythagorean monochord — a stringed instrument — drives the subwoofer. Pythagoras, of course, invented it, and it goes down very low to 15 cycles, sometimes 10 cycles. And that vibrates the paint. I mix multiple colors, and the colors come up within each other, and it reveals these details that you cannot get in any other way.

And I just kind of fell on it. In the beginning, I was drumming them — beating underneath them and so forth. But now, I've progressed to using a Meyer subwoofer, and it works just fine. And that's how the paintings are born. They're vibrated into existence.

Once I apply my mumbo jumbo to it, and using additives that create unique features — shapes, people, animals, mountain ranges, glaciers — you see all kinds of things within the paintings if you look at them, and let yourself go, and become part of the paintings.

Everybody has their own interpretation of [what they reveal], which is really important. These are not, like, a rose, or a vase, or a car. It's not that kind of art form. So, it raises your consciousness. And if you can connect with it, you get high. And that's what these things are all about. That's what art's all about. No matter what it is, audio or visual, it's consciousness raising at its best.

I take it you've been developing this ability in parallel with your work in the Dead universe for some time.

Well, of course. I work with vibrations. The vibratory world is where I live, and I make my art there. It's always been like that. I'm a lover of low end; low frequencies are my specialty. And because I'm a percussionist and many of my drums are very large and they speak to the range, the frequency, which is not normally accessed.

So, I create these works using these low-frequency creations. And that was something that I fell on years ago, but as a hobby; this was nothing more than an escape to another virtual headspace. Now, I share it with others.

I feel like this sound-based approach to visual art is a fairly unexplored space.

For sure. I mean, you can look it up. I've looked it up. And when you look up vibrational expressionism, I'm the only one that's there. Someone coined that term years ago, and it's kind of fitting.

I might be unique in that particular way, but that's the only way I know how to bring the colors up within themselves and reveal the super details.

Mickey Hart - Visual Art

Photo: Emily Frost

And I'm sure this process is fluid and mutable; you don't apply the same technique for every piece.

Yes, I apply different frequencies and different rhythms to different paintings. They're not the same. Every time I approach it — whether it be a canvas, or wood, or plexiglass, or glass, or whatever the surface is — it's always different. I never repeat. Every one of them is unique. 

It's about the mixing of the paints, and the ingredients I put in the paint. And then you have to let it go and you jam. That's what these works are — they're jams. Sometimes, I have a thought on how I want it to be, and then sometimes it'll completely change once I put paint to canvas.

You learn over years. I've been doing this for about 25 years as a hobby, so I've got hundreds of these. And some of them never see the light of day. That's the luck of the draw, but luck favors the prepared mind, and I prepare that before I go in. I focus and concentrate on not concentrating. I just try to be there now and let the flow happen.

I improvise. That's my love. That's the only thing I really know how to do. Memorizing things and repeating is not who I am. I don't paint by the numbers. You don't need me for that.

Much like what you do on stage!

The Grateful Dead never did memorize many things. It was mostly a seat-of-the-pants kind of art form, but you learn how to become a seat-of-the-pants artist, if you will. There's adventure, there's failure, there's success, there's luck, there's chaos, there's order, and back and forth. 

The duality of all of that reflects life. It gets you high too. You can look at it and all of a sudden you're in a different, virtual space. That's what art does — good art, anyway. It puts you in a place of great wonder and awe.

Mickey Hart

Photo: Emily Frost

Can you talk about using the Sphere as a canvas for your work?

That's how I look at it — as a blank canvas. When I hit the stage, I'm not thinking of anything. I prepared, I have my skill, I'm ready to go, but I'm not really thinking in the normal sense of the word. I throw that away and I just feel muscle memory, you might call it.

When you're playing music in a band, you become a groupist. You learn to be able to interrelate between six people each having their own consciousness, making something larger than the parts. Music is great at that. But in painting, it's a singular thing.

Music is just the moving of air. That's the delivery system. It's the movement of air. And in this case, it's light. It's what the light does to you. The eye is more powerful than the ear as an organ. So people really react to the visual. Hopefully in the Sphere, there's a combination of both that come together and form something much larger.

I appreciate that you view a drum as far more than simply a drum.

It's not something that just played to keep time. It's something that is an integral part of the orchestra, right up there with melody and harmony. The primacy of rhythm is something that has come into music in this century. If you listen to the radio, it's rhythmic-driven, mostly. Of course, there's the melodies, but the basis of it all is rhythmic.

Visual art is the same thing. It's all about rhythm and flow. If you don't have that, you don't really have anything. You have to have a groove.

The basis of all of creation is vibratory. These arts are just miniatures of what's happening in the cosmos. I mean, we are in the wash of these vibrations that were created 13.8 billion years ago from the singularity, the big bang, and that's still washing over us. And that's where art comes in. It connects you to the infinite universe at its best.

You guys seemed to realize early on that you could transcend simply playing rock songs in a band.

When we were younger, we were all ingesting psychoactive drugs. They certainly freed our perspective, and created a different kind of perspective when we all played together. Some of it was drug-related, you might say. We took what we could from those experiences and created a new kind of music.

That was an important part of our exploratory nature as we were falling on Grateful Dead music. We were exploring realms of consciousness that were not accessible to us normally in a normal waking state. These chemicals certainly helped in that respect, used correctly and professionally. They were an enormous, enormous help.

And now we're finding out that LSD is being used in therapeutic and medicinal and diagnostics and all of that. These are very helpful in many ways.

Mickey Hart

Photo: Emily Frost

How has it felt watching the Grateful Dead turn into a franchise, a universe? This visual element at the Sphere adds a whole new layer to it.

Well, it's very interesting to see all the corners and of the universe that the Grateful Dead spirit has reached and all the people and all the bands that copy our music. It's very rewarding and complimentary, I think.

We knew it was special. First time I ever heard it, I knew it was special. How special? You never know, but you have to keep at it being special. And eventually, it skips generations, which is what we've done — generation, after generation, after generation. The parents share with their kids, their kids, their kids.

It's something that's very friendly — hanging out with your parents at a concert like that, and having a great time together, and sharing something that they shared when they were younger.

It's fantastic. It's unbelievable that it has that power. I was just talking to someone the other night and they asked me to explain it. You can't explain it in words. You have to hear it. You have to be there. You have to feel it. You have to feel the community that it spawns, and this feeling that you get in the music. It's very seductive, if you allow yourself that moment.

I was just reading this morning that Diplo — the electronic musician, a very good musician — just became a Deadhead the other night.

Really!

Oh, yeah. It transformed him completely. You never can tell who gets touched by our music. It's something that's not explainable, but it keeps going on. The people will not let it go.

As long as people are interested in our kind of music and our kind of scene, we'll keep playing. There's no end to it until we don't have the facility to play, or the rhythm stops. I plan to do this till the day I die. There's no question about it. I've always thought that. There's no secret.

I think Bob and I both agree on that, and all of the Grateful Dead, Bill, Phil, certainly Jerry, we're all in the same boat when it comes to Grateful Dead music, the passion that we bring to it. And it's very rewarding that people enjoy it as deeply as they do.

I tell you, I can't express the gratitude that I have just being part of it. We all feel that same way. It's very humbling, to be honest with you, that it's grown to be this. It was just a little cub. Now it's a roaring lion. It's just a gigantic monster that is always meant for the good, and that's very rewarding. It's a good life to lead. We work very hard at it.

A Beginner's Guide To The Grateful Dead: 5 Ways To Get Into The Legendary Jam Band

John Mayer performing in 2023
John Mayer performs at the Heart and Armor Foundation benefit concert at The Wiltern in September 2023.

Photo: Timothy Norris/Getty Images

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10 John Mayer Songs That Show His Versatility, From 'Room For Squares' To Dead & Co

As John Mayer launches his latest venture with Dead & Company — a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas — revisit 10 songs that show every side of his musical genius.

GRAMMYs/May 16, 2024 - 04:45 pm

At the 2003 GRAMMYs, a 25-year-old John Mayer stood on stage at Madison Square Garden, his first golden gramophone in hand. "I just want to say this is very, very fast, and I promise to catch up," he said with a touch of incredulity.

In the two decades that have followed his first GRAMMY triumph, it's safe to say that Mayer, now 46, has caught up. Not only has the freewheeling guitarist and singer/songwriter won six more GRAMMYs — he has also demonstrated his versatility across eight studio albums and countless cross-genre collaborations, including his acclaimed role in The Grateful Dead offshoot, Dead & Company. But the true testaments to his artistic range lie simply within the music. 

Over the years, Mayer's dynamism has led him to work deftly and convincingly within a wide variety of genres, from jazz to pop to Americana. The result: an elastic and well-rounded repertoire that elevates 2003's "Bigger Than My Body" from hit single to self-fulfilling prophecy. 

From March 2023 to March 2024, Mayer took his protean catalog on the road for his Solo Tour, which saw him play sold-out arenas around the world, mostly acoustic, completely alone. The international effort harkened back to Mayer's early career days, when standing alone on stage, guitar in hand, was the rule rather than the exception. Just after his second Solo leg last November, Mayer added radio programming and curation to his resume via the launch of his Sirius XM channel, Life with John Mayer. Fittingly, XM bills the channel (No. 14) as one notably "defined not by genre, but by the time of day, as well as the day of the week."

Mayer's next venture sees him linking back up with Dead & Company, for a 24-show residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas from May 16 to July 13. In honor of his latest move, GRAMMY.com explores the scope of Mayer's musical genius by revisiting 10 essential songs that demonstrate the breadth of his range, from the very beginning of his discography.

"Your Body Is A Wonderland," Room For Squares (2001)

The second single from Mayer's debut album, "Your Body Is A Wonderland" became an almost instant radio favorite like its predecessor, "No Such Thing," earning Mayer his second consecutive No. 1 on Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay chart. The song's hooky pop structure provided an affable introduction to Mayer's lyrical skill by way of smart, suggestive simile and metaphor ("One mile to every inch of/ Your skin like porcelain/ One pair of candy lips and/ Your bubblegum tongue") ahead of Room For Squares' release later that June. The breathy hit netted Mayer his first career GRAMMY Award, for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, at the 45th Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2003.

In recent years, Mayer — who penned the song when he was 21 — has chronicled his tenuous relationship with "Your Body is a Wonderland" in his infamous mid-concert banter, playfully critiquing the song's lack of "nuance." Following a perspective shift, Mayer has come to embrace his self-proclaimed "time capsule"; it was a staple of his set lists for his Solo Tour.

"Who Did You Think I Was," TRY! - Live in Concert (2005)

The product of pure synergy and serendipity, the John Mayer Trio assembled after what was intended to be a one-time stint on the NBC telethon, "Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope," in 2005. The benefit appearance lit the creative fuse between Mayer, bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Steve Jordan — who, over the years, have also played alongside the singer on his headline tours.

The John Mayer Trio propelled its eponymous artist from pop territory to a bluesy brand of rock 'n' roll that then demonstrated his talent as a live guitarist to its greatest degree yet. The Trio's first and only release, TRY! - Live in Concert, was recorded at their September 22, 2005 concert at the House of Blues in Chicago. 

Mayer acknowledges his abrupt sonic gear shift on TRY! opener, "Who Did You Think I Was." "Got a brand new blues that I can't explain," he quips, then later asks, "Am I the one who plays the quiet songs/ Or is he the one who turns the ladies on?"

"Gravity," Continuum (2006)

Though "Waiting On the World to Change" was the biggest commercial hit from 2006's Continuum, "Gravity" remains the pièce de résistance of Mayer's magnum opus. Its status as such is routinely reaffirmed by the crowds at Mayer's concerts, whose calls for a live performance of his quintessential soul ballad can compete even with Mayer's mid-show remarks.

The blues-tinged slow burn marries Mayer's inimitable vocal tone with his guitar muscle on a record that strides far beyond the pop and soft rock of his preceding studio albums. Though Continuum builds on the blues direction Mayer ignited with TRY!, it does so with greater depth and technique, translating to a concept album, sonically, that evinces both his breakaway from the genres that launched his career and his skill as a blues guitarist — and "Gravity" is a prime example. 

"I'm very proud of the song," Mayer mused on his Sirius XM station. "It's one of those ones that's gonna go with me through the rest of my life, and I'm happy it's in the sidecar going along with me." 

"Daughters," Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles (2008)

"Daughters" wasn't Mayer's first choice of a single for his sophomore LP, 2003's Heavier Things, but at Columbia Records' behest — "We really want it to go, we think it can be a hit," Mayer recalled of their thoughts — the soft-rock-meets-acoustic effort joined the album rollout. Columbia's suspicions were correct; "Daughters" topped Billboard's Adult Pop Airplay in 2004 — his only No. 1 entry on the chart to date.

But "Daughters" didn't just enjoy heavy radio rotation — it also secured Mayer his first and only GRAMMY win in a General Field Category. The Heavier Things descendant took the title of Song Of The Year at the 47th Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2005, helping Mayer evade music's dreaded "sophomore slump."

While the studio version may be the GRAMMY-winning chart-topper, Mayer's live rendition of "Daughters" during his December 8, 2007 performance at Los Angeles' Nokia Theater for Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles compellingly demonstrated the power of the song — and his acoustic chops.

"Edge of Desire," Battle Studies (2009)

Come 2009, what critics almost unanimously proclaimed to be Mayer's biggest musical success had become his Achilles heel; everyone wanted another Continuum. But as they were to learn, Mayer never repeats himself. Thus came Battle Studies.

Born from a dismantling and transformative breakup, his fourth studio album arguably only becomes fully accessible to listeners after this rite of passage. Mired in introspection and pop rock, Battle Studies broadly engages with elements of pop with a sophistication that distinguishes it from Mayer's earlier traverses in pop and pop-inflected terrain. 

His artistry hits a new apex on "Edge of Desire," a visceral and tightly woven song that remains one of the strongest examples of his mastery of prosody — the agreement between music and lyrics that results in a resonant and memorable listening experience. 

"Born and Raised," Born & Raised (2012)

On the title track of his fifth studio album, Mayer distills growing up (and growing older) into a plaintive reflection on the involuntary, inevitable, and, in the moment, imperceptible phenomenon. He grapples with this vertigo of the soul on a record that, 12 years later, remains among his most barefaced lyrically.

The tinny texture of a harmonica, heard first in the intro, permeates the song, serving as its single most overt indicator of the larger stylistic shift that Born & Raised embodies. The 12-song set embraces elements of Americana, country and folk amid simpler-than-usual chord progressions for Mayer, whose restraint elevates the affective power of the album's lyricism. 

"Born and Raised - Reprise," with which Born & Raised draws to a close, is evidence of Mayer's well-demonstrated dexterity. In its sanguine, folk spirit, the album finale juxtaposes "Born and Raised" both musically and lyrically. "It's nice to say, 'Now I'm born and raised,'" Mayer sings as the last grains of sand in Born & Raised's hourglass fall.

"Wildfire," Paradise Valley (2014)

Even before Paradise Valley hit shelves and digital streaming platforms, the cowboy hat that Mayer dons in the album artwork intimated that the hybrid of Americana, country, and folk he embraced on Born & Raised wasn't going anywhere — at least not for another album. The sunbaked project was a gutsy sidestep even further away from his successful commercial formula, and finds him expanding his stylistic fingerprint across 11 tracks that run the gamut of American roots music.

"Wildfire," the breezy toe-tapper with which Paradise Valley opens, grooves with Jerry Garcia influence. It is therefore unsurprising that many interpret "We can dance with dead/ You can rest your head on my shoulder/ If you want to get older with me," to be a lyrical nod to the Dead. Perhaps uncoincidentally, Mayer's invitation to become a member of Dead & Company came one year after the release of Paradise Valley.

"Shakedown Street," Live at Madison Square Garden (2017)

There is perhaps no better example of Mayer's dynamism than his integration in Dead & Company. The Grateful Dead offshoot, formed in 2015, intersperses Mayer among three surviving members of the band — Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann — as well as two more newcomers, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti. Mayer's off-the-cuff guitar solos and vocal support at Dead & Co's concerts are the keys that have unlocked a new plane of musicianship for Mayer, the solo artist.

This is evident on "Shakedown Street," a staple of The Grateful Dead's – and now, Dead & Company's – set lists. The languid, relaxed number gives Mayer the space to improvise guitar solos and use his vocals in a looser style than how he sings his own productions, all while feeding off the energy of his fellow band members. In addition to being one of The Dead's best-known songs, "Shakedown Street" is also the name of the makeshift bazaar where "Deadheads" socialize and sell wares ranging from grilled cheeses to drink coasters emblazoned with The Grateful Dead logo outside Dead & Company concerts. 

Mayer's long, strange trip with (and within) the jam band has cross-pollinated his and The Grateful Dead's respective fandoms, attracting scores of Dead & Co listeners to his own headline shows, and vice versa. The takeaway: Mayer's involvement with Dead & Company offers a new, comparatively more rugged and improvisational lens through which to view his artistry.

"You're Gonna Live Forever in Me," The Search for Everything (2017)

"You're Gonna Live Forever in Me" evokes the sense of walking in, unexpected and undetected, to one of Mayer's writing sessions, watching him sing the freshly-penned piano ballad. This is owed to the song's abstract lyricism, the sentiment of which is deeply personal and universally accessible — a juxtaposition that's not often easy to achieve in songwriting. (Take, for example, "A great big bang and dinosaurs/ Fiery raining meteors/ It all ends unfortunately/ But you're gonna live forever in me.") But the studio version of "You're Gonna Live Forever in Me" also happens to be the original vocal take, adding to the feeling that Mayer is fully engrossed in a moment of poignant reflection mediated by music.

"I sat at the piano for hours teaching myself how the song might go. I sang it that night, and that was it…I couldn't sing the vocals again if I tried," Mayer recalled in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone

Mayer's lilted, Randy Newman-esque singing on the track finds him unintentionally but impactfully adopting a vocal technique distinctive from anything he's ever done before.

"Wild Blue," Sob Rock (2021)

Buoyed by a honeyed hook and slick production from No I.D., "New Light" was the unequivocal commercial standout of Sob Rock, a soft-grooving pastiche of '80s influence. Though the catchy pop-informed number finds Mayer stylistically diversifying by working with "The Godfather of Chicago Hip-Hop" (whose credits include Kanye West, JAY-Z, and Common, to name just a few), a look beyond the Sob Rock frontrunner reveals evidence of more sonic experimentation on the album.

Cue "Wild Blue." In its hushed, double-tracked vocals, the song plays like a love letter to JJ Cale. Mayer's whispery vocal emulation of the rock musician yields another new, but still polished, strain of John Mayer sound. 

With hints of the '70s embedded within its taut production, "Wild Blue" is a beatific semi-departure from its parent album's '80s DNA. Together, they evince Mayer's ability to work not only across genres but also across sounds from different decades in music — further proof that his artistic range is both broad and timeless.

A Beginner’s Guide To The Grateful Dead: 5 Ways To Get Into The Legendary Jam Band