Reading Notes: “Dead Awaken: New Albums, Label, Tour,” Rolling Stone 163 (June 20, 1974), p. 28.

This unsigned, one-column thing datelined from San Rafael is chock full of tidbits. I’ll just throw them out and comment on them ad seriatim.

Gives 5/24/74 release date for Rum Runners and Garcia [Compliments], 6/21 for GD’s Mars Hotel.

“’Round Records,’ said Ron Rakow, head of both labels, ‘is a separate entity. Grateful Dead Records was designed to distribute just Dead product. We did this for maximum safety for the Dead.’ In other words, minimum risk.”

So the GD forced Garcia to create Round for his solo projects? (See my post on Garcia and Round here.)  That is a *very* interesting angle. (And the possibility that a bunch of them might go on to sink the label with their non-selling “product” would not be without irony.) Makes me think …

Rakow: “Even a Garcia album is more high-risk than a Grateful Dead record. Some of the Dead don’t want a risk. Garcia likes risks, likes worries, so he can always be on the edge.”

Same theme as above, but this is very interesting to me. One thing it shows is how committed Garcia was to the GD. Even though the GD couldn’t exist without him, they felt strong (and perhaps ungenerous?) enough to get him to shoulder his own risk *in addition to* radically lessening their own (on the GD side). I originally wrote “with friends like these …”, but having slept on it I guess I understand. If everyone but Jerry thought Rakow was a snake, and that seems clearly to have been the case, then it seems they were ensuring risk against Rakow, not against Jerry. Probably wise.

“[Rakow:] ’When Garcia wanted to do his LP, he and I got together with Jon McIntyre [sic] (the Dead’s manager) and Anton Round, an old rich guy I don’t know much about.’ … And another label was born.”