Grateful Dead - Rambling Rose (1972)

The Grateful Dead released their seventh album (and third live album), Europe '72, in November 1972 through Warner Bros Records. It featured live recordings from their April/May European tour of that same year, and the album is also notable in that it's their first release after keyboardist Keith and singer Donna Jean Godchaux joined the band, late in 1971. As was the case with the previous year's Skull and Roses, the album featured a couple of brand new compositions that were never recorded in the studio, as the band was pretty busy releasing solo albums and touring incessantly in the USA and, for the first time, Europe and the UK. Some of those even feature a couple of studio overdubs and other touch-ups, making those live versions the fan-approved definitive versions of the songs and live/studio hybrids. However, that wasn't always the plan on what to do with the material, according to the band themselves and people close to them.

That particular batch of songs, started with the live debut of "Brown Eyed Women" in late August 1971 and finished during the European tour, was supposed to become a studio record named Rambling Rose, according to the band's main lyricist, Robert Hunter. However, as was the case with my previous reconstruction, the band was simply too divided between touring and making solo albums (this time Bob Weir's album, also named Ace) to go into the studio and give these songs a proper recording. And since Skull and Roses had already sold a lot, it seemed that live albums with new material were a smart decision to make, especially when it comes to a band as notable for its live performances as the Dead were back in the day, and the little expense it provided when compared to a couple of months locked away in a studio somewhere in California. It was a win-win situation for both the band and it's fans, or at least so it seemed.

Plans were even made for them to enter the studio sometime after the tour, in June 1972, but seen as the band was exhausted from the two-month-long tour of Europe they'd just come out of, they were scrapped and the band focused on turning the tour's recordings into a live album instead, which was tentatively titled Steppin' Out. After that, the band's next studio album would only be released a full year later, as Wake of the Flood, leaving many live staples, possible hits and overall classic songs orphans of studio recording, stranded among twenty-minute jams and older songs in a live album. Because of that, what Deadheads all over the world still wonder is: what would a 1972 Dead studio album look like? Is it possible to take that fantastic group of songs and turn them into a cohesive whole? That's what we will be doing today, all that while taking care not to overstep our previous reconstruction of Thunder and Lightning, of course. Here's what we've got going:

Jack Straw (Europe '72)
He's Gone (Europe '72)
Chinatown Shuffle (Europe '72)
Ramble On Rose (Europe '72)
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Brown-Eyed Women (Europe '72)

Comes a Time (Reflections)

One More Saturday Night (Europe '72)
Tennessee Jed (Europe '72)

Bonus tracks:
Empty Pages (Dick's Picks Vol. 35)

Pigpen, Weir, and Garcia playing live in April 1972

First of all, we need to comb through the available material and see what can and can't be used in the Rambling Rose album. Unlike with the 1971 album, there is enough material so that both Bobby's record and a GD album could be released, so we need to select where each song goes. First of all, both "Greatest Story Ever Told" and "Playing in the Band" were already in the last album, so they are both excluded. "Jack Straw" and "One More Satuday Night", as the only Weir/Hunter compositions of the batch, stays with the Dead, and all other Weir/Barlow songs go to the solo album. As "Mr. Charlie" has also been used in the last album, it is replaced with another Pigpen song, "Chinatown Shuffle", which was in rotation with the former during the tour. All of Jerry's new songs played during the tour are included, even those that weren't selected for the live album, as was the case with "Comes a Time", later recorded solo by Jerry for his "Reflections" album. And considering this is supposed to be a studio album, having a studio-recording song is not too bad!

In all, all the material they debuted between August 1971 and the end of the European Tour in May of 1972 amounts to eight tracks, and we need to sequence them in a fashion that makes sense and flows well together. We can start off with "Jack Straw" as the album opener, as it was a pretty common first set opener for the band from '77 onward. And hey, if it's good enough for a gig, it's good enough for an album! I took some cues from the Europe '72 album as well, sequencing "He's Gone" as track two, and having "Brown Eyed Women" and "Tennessee Jed" as side two opener and closer respectively. Other than that, I went with what flowed well together and made sense together, amounting to two sides of 22-ish minutes each. Had these songs been recorded in the studio, they'd probably have some acoustic touches to them, as the studio versions of the '71 material had in the Garcia LP, but other than that, they'd mostly stay the same. They'd also have shorter solos as well, bringing the lenght of the album closer to Workingman's Dead territory, at some 38 minutes.

As for the album cover, we can use one of the many Stanley Mouse paintings of Bertha, a skeleton with a crown of roses (a coincidence we will use in our favor, of course), as it fits the material and the general themes of the songs pretty well. As an album, Rambling Rose can stand alongside any other GD studio album from their songwriting peak and still make a run for being the best of them all, which is quite a feat in my view.  This sequencing really gave the songs a nice, cohesive form, which it desperately needed in its original release, and the studio track of "Comes a Time" really doesn't feel out of place at all. It really is a shame songs so great as "Tennessee Jed", "Brown Eyed Women" and quasi-title track "Ramble on Rose" weren't given the opportunity to have their own LP, as they certainly deserved it (more so than many other songs they committed to recording after that, that's for sure!). But that's the way things are, and we're really lucky to even have these songs (to fill the air), no matter how and where they were recorded.

Sources:
- Grateful Dead - Europe '72
- Grateful Dead - Wake of the Flood
- Grateful Dead - From the Mars Hotel
- Jerry Garcia - Reflections
- Grateful Dead - Europe '72, Vol. 2
- Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 35