Fare Thee Well: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Grateful Dead Edited by Jay Blakesberg
- Stuart Ake
- 8 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Published 2015 by Rock Out Books
Looking through this historically visual gem, you'll see how Jay and his squad perfectly captured all that went down. Jay's talent, persona, and artisic vision qualify him as the classic saint of circumstance for this criticially important task. - Bill Walton, foreward Fare Thee Well: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Grateful Dead
Upon cracking the cover, it was clear that Fare Thee Well: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Grateful Dead would be something different. Most photography books about bands lead with musicians in performance or posed for the camera. Editor Jay Blakesberg chose another path. Instead of opening with the band at work, he gives readers a full two-page spread of fresh roses in every imaginable color. It’s a gorgeous and confident statement from a photographer who understands his subject.
This large-format volume chronologically presents the work of nine photographers who documented the five 2015 Fare Thee Well concerts in Santa Clara and Chicago. The book includes live shots, backstage images, rehearsal material and band portraits. In addition to the photographs, it features the setlists, a thoughtful foreword by Bill Walton and an afterword by archivist David Lemieux.
Confession. I did not always fully appreciate books of photographs. While I loved experiencing large-scale images in galleries and museums, I rarely returned to coffee table books. That changed during the pandemic. The strange haze of that period somehow rewired my mind. I found that I could finally sit with a book of images rather than flip through it once and return it to the shelf.
Deadheads often divide the Fare Thee Well experience into camps. For some, the shows were a moving communal sendoff. For others, they were a complicated, overhyped and expensive money grab that had Jerry rolling in his grave. Blakesberg’s visual approach sidesteps the debate by inviting readers to look again at what actually happened when the surviving members stood together to mark fifty years of music.
Having documented the Grateful Dead and related projects for more than forty-five years, Blakesberg has, in many ways, served as one of the band’s great visual storytellers. Whether focused on a single face or the collective force of 60,000 united in song, he has an eye for detail and emotional texture. The photographs gathered here understand that Fare Thee Well was more than the notes. It was about the tension between celebration and farewell.
A strength of the book is that it never becomes too slick. A project like this could easily have turned into a glossy victory lap. Instead, Blakesberg’s editing keeps the experience grounded and human. While the band members may have been carrying the weight of hype and history on their backs, the close-ups reveal that Billy, Bobby, Bruce, Mickey and Phil seem to be having the time of their lives making music together. Here, fifty years into the journey, they were still creating. To this reader, that matters. The Grateful Dead were always about the live experience and less compelling when treated as a museum piece. Their power came from risk, humor and the understanding that muffed lyrics, blown segues and the occasional clam were all part of the high-wire act. This book gets that.
The collection also captures scale remarkably well. Fans came to celebrate, to grieve, to compare, to complain, to bear witness and, in some cases, simply to say they were there. A cultural pile-up of that magnitude could not have been easy to photograph. Yet again and again, Blakesberg and his fellow photographers find frames that make the whole thing legible. You see the concerts, the phenomenon and why those five nights loomed so large for so many of us. On the first night in Santa Clara, one of those magical, only-at-a-Dead-show moments arrived near the end of the first set during “Viola Lee Blues,” when an actual rainbow formed over the venue behind the stage. When I received the book, it was the first thing I looked for. I was glad to see it so beautifully documented by Michael Weintrob. At the same time, the image made me think about the dozens of photographers who may have been positioned elsewhere in the stadium, unable to see what was unfolding as the band took flight. “Did you see the rainbow?” “Missed it. I was shooting the spinners on the concourse.”
And, if there's one thing we've learned from the Grateful Dead, it's to open our ears and minds, and look for beauty in the world around us, wherever we go, whatever we do. It's out there in the strangest of places if you look at it right." - David Lemieux, afterward to Fare Thee Well: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Grateful Dead
For readers who attended one or more of the shows, the book will trigger beautiful memories. For those who caught the streams on Nugs or watched the DVDS, it offers something slightly different. You may not feel as though you were there, but you will understand more clearly why so many people needed to be.
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