Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA 3/23/75

I saw the Grateful Dead for the first time on March 23, 1975.  The concert was a benefit that featured many 
bands and speakers.  The Doobie Brothers, Grand Funk Railroad, Tower of Power, Joan Biaz, and Neil Young 
were also on the bill.  Willie Mays, Joeseph Aleotto (then the mayor of SF), and Bill Graham all spoke about 
the good cause of the benefit, the San Francisco schools athletic program.   The Dead did a 45-minute set 
in the middle of the show.   The short set seemed like one long jam, and I remember it had no lyrics and did 
not contain any recognizable hits.  They also played a five-minute one-song encore, Johnny B. Goode.  That 
brought everyone to their feet in a frenzy of recognition and dance. 

I was 17 years old and a senior in high school.  I had a large number of rock and roll albums by the Beatles, 
Neil Young, Yes, Chicago, America, and other artists.  I had collected records over about a 7 or 8 years period 
that began with a few Beatle records in 1968 and grew to about 50 albums by 1975.  I kept my older albums, but 
I was always getting new albums that reflected my maturing tastes.    As my emotional sensibilities changed so 
did my taste in music.   In the late 60’s and early 70’s I listened to top 40 music of bands from the am radio 
music like Three Dog Night, Bread, Rare Earth, Loggins and Massina, and Stevie Wonder.  By the mid 70’s my tastes 
were moving towards the rock blues of Clapton and the Allman Brothers, and John Lennon’s  or Neil Young’s solo 
music, Pink Floyd, and the Who.   I felt I could identify with the esoteric lyrics and I saw alignment with 
my adolescent rebellion and sexual desires.  I also liked   local Marin county bands, the Sons of Champlin, 
and the Grateful Dead.   I had gradually been turned on to acid rock during high school in the early 70’s.  
I stopped listening to top 40 and tuned in to KTIM the progressive FM for Marin county.  The music had a 
profound influence on my life and my life revolved around listening to records in my room and writing poetry 
I thought sounded as cool as the lyrics of the music I was buying.
  
I think of 1968 till 1975, the age 10 to 17 as being my puberty years.   The time roughly between when I was 
a "little boy", and the time I became a "young adult."   It began with a few pimples and, Meet the Beatles and 
the Greatest Hits of the 5th Dimensions, in 1968.  It evolved to it natural completion in 1975 with graduation 
from high school, moving out of my parent’s house, and the discovery of new musical frontiers in Axis Bold as 
Love, Wheels of Fire, and American Beauty. 

When I saw the Dead live for the first time in the spring of 1975 I was nearing the end of my pubescent years 
in high school and maturing into the young adult who would leave home and go to college.  I know now, which 
I did not know then, that 1975 was also a musical transition point for the Dead, and their transition was very 
much akin to my own.  The synchronicity between my own personal evolution and the evolution of the Dead was 
the metaphor of my maturation process that would play tag with itself for the next 20 years.  It was all hidden 
to me in 1975.  What I remember from that first concert is eating dope brownies, a distant view of the Dead 
on stage playing incomprehensible music, and Joan Biaz and Neil young singing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" to 
end the show.

That "incomprehensible" musical jam was actually the sneak preview of what would become the album that would 
bring the Dead out of their retirement.  1975 was a year for remaking the band that had lost their innocence 
and matured into more jazzy blues based ensemble.  My 17th year was also my own time of remaking and loosing 
of innocence.  That 45 minutes of jam was: Blues for Allah>Stronger Than Dirt>Drums>Stronger Than Dirt>Blues 
for Allah.  It was the only time in 300 shows I would ever hear the title song from the album of the same name.

Gordon Baker