Over 13 studio albums, the Grateful Dead embarked upon a sonic voyage like no other. While their 1967 debut saw them tear through blues and R&B covers, within a few years their psychedelic jams were pushing boundaries.
An embrace of formative country and folk inspirations saw them at the vanguard of country-rock in the early ’70s, before exploring orchestral arrangements, funk, rootsy rock and even disco on subsequent albums.
For the uninitiated, it’s tough to know where to begin (and don’t get us started on the live albums), so here are the Dead’s studio albums, ranked.
Grateful Dead albums, ranked
13. Built To Last (1989)
With anticipation high following 1987’s unexpected smash hit, In The Dark, the Dead came up frustratingly short on their follow-up. As ever, Jerry Garcia’s contributions are a cut above, in particular the yearning groove of ‘Built To Last’ and the epic ballad ‘Standing On The Moon.'
But while Bob Weir can usually be relied upon for a few enjoyable rockers, ‘Victim Or The Crime’ and ‘Picasso Moon’ are blustery, over-produced chores.
Meanwhile, the decision to allow keyboardist Brent Mydland to contribute four tracks – each of them loaded with industrial amounts of cheese – confirms that, in the studio at least, their heart wasn’t in it at this point.
Key track: 'Built To Last'
12. Go To Heaven (1980)
It all starts promisingly enough, with the heads-down boogie of Garcia’s ‘Alabama Getaway’. Things quickly go south with the sappy soft rock of Mydland’s ‘Far From Me’ and are rescued briefly by the mellow groove of ‘Althea’ before Weir’s clunky attempt at funked-up R&B, ‘Feel Like A Stanger’ ends the first side on a rotten note.
The rest of it ambles by without making much of an impression (save for Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann’s weird, insects-in-conversation instrumental ‘Antwerp’s Placebo’) until an upbeat studio version of long-term set staple ‘Don’t Ease Me In’ ends things with some harmless boogie – much preferable to what had come before.
And we haven’t even mentioned that cover, a vision in soft focus that finds the Dead clad in white suits, hair swept back by an out-of-shot wind machine and beaming, as if they’re the delegate sent to meet Deadheads at the pearly gates… or perhaps they’re advertising a new brand of washing powder?
Key track: 'Alabama Getaway'
11. Shakedown Street (1978)
Two words that strike fear into the heart of any Deadhead – disco dead. With disco dominating the charts a year on from Saturday Night Fever, the Dead put one platform-booted foot on the dancefloor with the title track of their 10th album, Shakedown Street.
It’s not that ‘Shakedown Street’ is a bad song, as harder-edged live versions confirmed, but the flat studio version lacks the fizzy joy of the best disco tracks – try as they might, sequins and glitter just didn’t suit the Dead. The same problem plagues the rest of the album, produced by a fast-fading Lowell George of Little Feat.
The odd mix of covers (a chintzy ‘Good Lovin’, Garcia’s rewrite of ‘Stagger Lee’), southern rock roleplay featuring extra hoarse Bob Weir vocals (‘I Need A Miracle’, ‘All New Minglewood Blues’) and a tribal percussion interlude (‘Serengetti’) feel disjointed and lacklustre, as if the band can’t quite find their flow – a helluva problem for a Grateful Dead album.
Key track: 'Fire On The Mountain'
10. The Grateful Dead (1967)
Though the Dead would later remember their self-titled debut as rushed (it was recorded in just four days) and unrepresentative of their live show, the album has its moments.
Opener ‘The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)’ is one of only two originals on the set (credited to McGannahan Skjellyfetti, the group’s collective pseudonym) and crackles with beat group energy. The other original, Garcia’s ‘Cream Puff War’ has a hint of Arthur Lee’s Love about it but feels a little too chaotic to have the impact it seeks.
Among the frenetic blues and R&B covers, it’s the Garcia-led take on folk singer Bonnie Dobson’s ‘Morning Dew’ that endures – though it has yet to settle down into the tender epic it would become during their shows, there’s a sense of the band finding their way.
Key track: 'Morning Dew'
9. In The Dark (1987)
The Dead wore many hats – counter-cultural icons, marketing gurus, tech pioneers, jam band grandads… but pop stars?! Amazingly, that happened on the release of their 12th studio album – and first in seven years – In The Dark, which sold over two million in the US alone and reached No 6 in the Billboard 200, their highest position in the chart by some distance.
Its success was mainly down to the chugging lead single ‘Touch Of Grey’, a sunny anthem of endurance in the face of tough times, which benefitted hugely from heavy MTV rotation for its video.
Meanwhile, the of-its-time, overly polished production of Garcia’s ‘Black Muddy River’ doesn’t do it any favours but can’t obscure the quality of the song, while ‘West LA Freeway’ gives the group a chance to cook a little.
Key track: 'Touch Of Grey'
8. From The Mars Hotel (1974)
The Dead’s seventh studio album features some of the band’s most beloved material, with a clutch of the songs becoming live staples. ‘US Blues’, Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter’s rabble-rousing Vietnam and Watergate-informed update of Carl Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, was played over 300 times by the band.
Bassist Phil Lesh and poet Robert Peterson contributed another fan favourite with ‘Unbroken Chain’, one of the Dead’s most musically complex songs, originally attempted for 1973’s Wake Of The Flood.
It would later become the first Dead song to be sampled when they allowed Animal Collective to use a looped fragment in their 2009 psychedelic opus, ‘What Would I Want Sky?.’
Meanwhile, ‘Scarlet Begonias’ was an all-time Dead classic, often played as part of a medley with ‘Fire On The Mountain’ (check out the transcendent version on Cornell 77, officially released in 2017). And ‘Ship Of Fools’ ends …Mars Hotel on a graceful and profound note.
Key track: 'Ship Of Fools'
7. Terrapin Station (1977)
The Dead’s return to the studio after a two-year hiatus with their first album for new label Arista saw the band pay lip service to the idea of commercial success by working with producer Steve Olsen, then hot from the success of Fleetwood Mac’s first album with the Buckingham/Nicks line-up.
Any ideas that the Dead were about to dial down the weirdness for chart glory were swiftly rebutted by the fact that said album was not only called Terrapin Station and had a cover painting of the shelled reptiles in question cavorting on a railway platform, but that the title track was a 16-minute suite that took up the entire second side.
Olsen’s influence is noticeable on the more FM-friendly first side, but it’s that lengthy suite which provides the highlight – an enigmatic and audacious trip through prog, jazz and classical sections that sounded unlike anything else they ever did.
Key track: 'Terrapin Station'
6. Aoxomoxoa (1969)
The recording of the Dead’s third album nearly sunk them. Aoxomoxoa took eight months of studio time and cost a then-massive $200,000 to complete, not least because the band chose to re-record the entire thing once they took delivery of a new Ampex 16-track recorder.
The album is the sound of the Dead grappling with that technology, often while under the influence of mind-altering substances. As a result, the mix was so jumbled that two years after its release, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh were moved to remix it.
Still, moments of greatness shine through – particularly on ‘St Stephen’ and ‘China Cat Sunflower’ – and the feeling of psychedelic chaos that overwhelms the album speaks evocatively of the time. And in case you wondered, it’s pronounced ‘ox-oh-mox-oh-ah.’
Key track: 'China Cat Sunflower'
5. Blues For Allah (1975)
Blues For Allah saw the Dead shake up their tried-and-tested formula – rather than road testing material and honing it through improvisation, they decided to cook up new material in the studio.
With no producer to keep watch on the band’s excesses, they could truly indulge themselves – Garcia later claimed that one session went on for an unbroken 50 hours. The process resulted in a focus on dextrous time signatures and more complex melodies than usual as the band dipped their toes into the jazz-fusion sound that was gaining traction at the time.
‘Franklin’s Tower’ is the highlight, a lightly funky song delivered beautifully by Garcia that would go on to become one of the band’s defining anthems.
Key track: 'Franklin's Tower'
4. Anthem Of The Sun (1968)
In another example of the young band’s aversion to the confines of the studio, Anthem Of The Sun producer Dave Hassinger was so frustrated by the sessions he quit halfway through.
The Dead had a novel solution – they enlisted engineer Dan Healey and avant-garde sound artist Tom Constanten to help turn their unfinished recordings into adventurous sound collages.
The result was a Dead album like no other, and one that Garcia likened to going on a psychedelic trip. Opener ‘That’s It For The Other One’ is the highlight, a multi-part suite stitched together with an ahead of its time melee of electronic bleeps and gurgles.
Key track: 'That's It For The Other One'
3. Wake Of The Flood (1973)
Following the commercial breakthrough of the early ’70s came upheaval as percussionist Mickey Hart left the group after his father, a onetime Dead manager, defrauded the band of $150,000.
More trauma came when original keyboardist Pigpen died before sessions for what would become Wake Of The Flood began. In the aftermath, the Dead regrouped and expanded, adding pianist Keith Goodchaux and his wife Donna on vocals.
Improbably, their first studio set in three years was a subtle triumph. ‘Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo’ was a hugely enjoyable Dixieland groove, ‘Eyes Of The World’ introduced blue-eyed soul to the mix and ‘Stella Blue’ was a thing of sun-dappled beauty.
Key track: 'Stella Blue'
2. Workingman's Dead (1970)
The album that changed everything for the Dead. Following the wild confusion of Aoxomoxoa and the psychedelic majesty of Live/Dead, Garcia and guitarist Bob Weir embraced their country and folk roots and crafted a collection of eight songs remarkable for their straightforward simplicity.
Lyricist Robert Hunter was on the same page, writing about characters from a dusty, near-mythic America – railway workers, truck drivers, card sharks, miners.
The album chimed with the times, with The Band’s first two albums, Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut and The Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo.
‘Uncle John’s Band’ introduced close harmony singing and featured a melody seemingly written to coax the sun from behind the clouds and ‘Cumberland Blues’ is a country-rock marvel.
It’s not all downhome acoustic Americana though, ‘New Speedway Boogie’ shows the band’s increasing way with electrified, sleazy rock’n’roll.
Key track: 'Uncle John's Band'
1. American Beauty (1970)
Inspired by the success of Workingman’s Dead, the band took that blueprint and bettered it with American Beauty, released the same year.
Garcia and Hunter had become housemates as well as collaborators and were on a rare roll of writing form. The harmonies were tighter, the lyrics more profound and the melodies sweeter.
The move from Haight-Ashbury to the rural idyll of Marin County was reflected in the sunlit bliss that infused the album’s every moment.
There’s not a weak spot among its 10 tracks, but ‘Box Of Rain’, ‘Sugar Magnolia’, ‘Ripple’ and ‘Brokedown Palace’ deserve special mention – songs of near-disarming beauty with a wisdom that only deepens with time.
Key track: 'Ripple'
All photos Getty Images / Album covers Amazon
Top image The Grateful Dead, 1970 (clockwise): Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Mickey Hart and Jerry Garcia
