The Kennedy Center Honors is an annual event held in Washington D.C., paying tribute to performers & creators who have contributed to culture and the arts. It is attended by past recipients, fellow artists, celebrity friends and the political elite – the latter of which usually includes the President and Vice President of the United States. For 2024, the honorees included film director Francis Ford Coppola, singer-songwriter/guitarist Bonnie Raitt, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, the legendary Apollo Theater, and the Grateful Dead. The event was held on Dec. 3 with an edited broadcast on CBS following on Dec. 22.
Earlier that year, the Grateful Dead recipients of the honor were the then-surviving members: drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, guitarist Bob Weir and bassist Phil Lesh. The four had planned to reconvene before the event for some kind of musical celebration, but before that or the ceremony occurred Lesh passed away on Oct. 25. Surviving recipients Weir, Kreutzmann and Hart attended the ceremony, with Jerry Garcia’s daughter Trixie and Lesh’s son Grahame representing two of the late founding members.
That leaves one wondering why other departed honorees are not recipients. This includes founding member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and others who joined and left – or passed – during their tenure. (Full list here.)
Reviewing the list from past honors, the discrepancies are dizzying: the Who without Keith Moon or John Entwistle, Led Zeppelin without John Bonham, but Glenn Frey of the Eagles was an exception, and Paul McCartney but not the Beatles? Yes, McCartney was also a solo artist but that only followed his tenure in inarguably the biggest force in musical history, and at the time Ringo Starr was (and thankfully still is) alive. Last December, Billboard awards editor Paul Grein wrote an op-ed tackling what appears to be an honors policy decision, and anyone interested in the subject can read that perceptive piece on the Billboard site.
Promoter Bill Graham is famously quoted as saying “They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones that do what they do.” That first appeared on a billboard displayed on the side of Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco when it closed with a final show headlined by the Grateful Dead on New Year’s Eve 1978/New Year’s Day 1979. Those of us who followed the Grateful Dead from its formative time in the late 1960s through its demise with Garcia’s death in the 1990s understood what that meant. This was comprised of surprisingly dedicated followers including Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Walton, right-wing pundit Anne Coulter, and Bravo executive and show host Andy Cohen.
It’s not something that is easily articulated to the casual rock aficionado, let alone to the general public. Viewing the edited tribute on CBS the main takeaway for the uninitiated was that the Grateful Dead was a band that was followed by a lot of fanatical people enjoying the large catalog of songs which may or may not be enhanced by mind-altering substances. President Biden’s comments at his opening ceremony may have added some meat to the bones with his description that the Dead were “technical virtuosos fiercely dedicated to their craft” who “fused decades and dozens of musical styles to create a willowy new American sound: experimental, innovative and brave.”
From what we heard at the event, we wouldn’t have known it. Yes, there were some great performances by very talented folks, with a band led by Don Was featuring contributions from Dave Matthews, Susan Tedeschi, Leon Bridges, Maggie Rogers, Derek Trucks and Sturgill Simpson. The problem was the tributes stuck too much to what could be characterized as being safe for a generic viewing audience, including “Ripple,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Not Fade Away” and “Sugaree.” The only noticeable deviation was when show host Queen Latifah all too briefly offered the funkiness of “Shakedown Street” in the ceremony’s introductory performance.
The honors missed the boat in key areas. One was showing the complexity of the “fused musical styles” as Biden had described it. By 1972, the Grateful Dead had settled into presenting songs about Americana folklore with colorful Old West-style stories of love, loss and betrayal, mainly courtesy of lyricist Robert Hunter. This culminated with the triple live LP Europe ’72 which featured a large number of those songs new and old. While practically all the material heard at the honors originated before 1973, that year was a major turning point in the band’s creative output.
The albums that followed started to break out into different territory, starting with Wake of the Flood which included Weir’s “Weather Report Suite” and From the Mars Hotel which featured two new Lesh-penned originals (including the inventive “Unbroken Chain”). Recognizing they needed to further refuel their creative juices — and address setting up the business aspects of their growing enterprise – the band took a short break from large-scale touring in 1975. They released the experimental Blues for Allah during that period, followed by Terrapin Station, with its side-long progressive rock-tinged suite.
While I understand that all honorees had a limited time for tributes, there could have been even just a nod to those more expansive efforts. Branford Marsalis, Billy Cobham and Alphonso Johnson have all been guest performers at Grateful Dead concerts. Had the honors featured a segment with artists like (or including) them, it would have shown the true depth and appeal of the Grateful Dead’s music. Cobham and Johnson have participated in Jazz is Dead, an instrumental project where they and many of their peers would perform jazzy instrumental versions of the Dead’s catalog.
The Grateful Dead could also rock, something else not apparent at the honors. The closest they came was with the hoary “Not Fade Away,” a cover of a Buddy Holly song. A better representation would have been an original like “Alabama Getaway,” “One More Saturday Night” or “US Blues.”
Another area absent was pretty major. It was something that made the Dead so special, and how their live performances differed from those of their contemporaries: the jams. Biden mentioned in his remarks how the band members would have a “conversation” among themselves and with the audience, whose presence contributed to the overall vibe.
This is something that needs some examination, as there is a distinct difference between a solo and a jam. A solo occurs when one of the instrumentalists takes the spotlight by playing over a set of chords introduced during a vocal portion of the song. It’s usually the same solo that appeared in a studio recording of the tune, on occasion with slight variations. There are bands who take that further, where familiar passages might occur during the solo but may be changed and even extended in a predictive pattern from night to night. Examples of this are Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” and Yes’ “Yours Is No Disgrace.”
However, the Grateful Dead’s jams weren’t merely extended solos — far from it. When the piece they performed reached the instrumental, the prior musical structure would initially recur. Instead of repeating the same melodies and rhythms previously heard, the members would wind through different melody lines, chord inversions and syncopations, listening to what the others were doing and moving in coordination to, and with, each other.
That alone set the Grateful Dead apart but it was only the beginning. What distinguished their approach was eventually moving away from the obvious repeated chords: the underlying structure could appear to fall away altogether. That is closer to the actual definition of a jam session. This might have been a recipe for cacophonous chaos, which likely happened on rare occasions. But more often than not the interplay of the various melodies and rhythms between each of the instrumentalists resulted in that aforementioned “conversation.” Starting and stopping points for chords within the structure might and could be ignored, depending on where the collective musical psyche was headed.
In a way, jazz was the precursor to the kind of instrumental flights where the Grateful Dead excelled, which may indicate why those notable jazz musicians referenced earlier were drawn to the Dead’s improvisational penchants. It’s probably not a stretch to say that the same folks who dislike what they see as the Dead’s “meanderings” in all likelihood also may not care for real (as opposed to soft, more conventionally structured) jazz. Once a Grateful Dead jam was initiated, the ultimate heights would occur when the music became unstructured and deliberately off-kilter, a characteristic shared with jazz.
I get that this event wasn’t the time or place to veer off into a lengthy “Space”-style jam (a recurring staple of their later shows where the music becomes highly experimental and improvisational). But just as the tributes could have included less of what might be termed the more standard material, it would have been a true honor if the ceremony’s musicians included a short jam where they could have given even just a taste of what Bill Graham was referring to in his famous comment. In doing so, these honorees could have been lauded for spawning jam bands – a category where new artists attempt to create their own kind of improvisational magic. These include Phish, Ween and the Dave Matthews Band among many others, though all owe a debt to the Dead’s innovative approach.
Finally, this isn’t meant to take away from the fact that the Grateful Dead actually received this prestigious honor. Nor is it intended to denigrate the participants who performed for the honorees’ enjoyment, which included many moments both moving – as when Garcia’s image and vocals for “Ripple” kicked off that song — and humorous, with speeches from David Letterman, Chloë Sevigny and Miles Teller.
Representing a wider array of the Grateful Dead’s musical styles and providing an indication of the interplay that made them influential would have gone beyond entertaining those present and the subsequent television audience. It would have truly honored the surviving band members and the departed’s offspring present in a way that they — and the true Deadheads — would have found more accurate, and in the process greatly appreciated.
Shoutout to Jason Sullivan whose inspiration moved me brightly, and to wingman Rick North for his input.
© 2025 Mike Tiano. All Rights Reserved
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