On this day · 39 years ago · 1987
39 Years Ago Today: Grateful Dead Release In the Dark, Their Only Top-10 Album
Two decades into their career, the Grateful Dead had never cracked the Billboard top 10. Then they recorded an album in an empty theater with the house lights down, and Touch of Grey did what nothing else had.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
The Grateful Dead released In the Dark on July 6, 1987, on Arista Records, their first studio album in six years. Recorded in an empty, darkened theater at Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium, it reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200, the band's only top-10 album, and the single Touch of Grey hit No. 9 on the Hot 100, their only Top 40 hit. It went double platinum in the US.
A band that had never cracked the top 10, twenty years in
By 1987, the Grateful Dead had been a working band for more than two decades, built almost entirely around touring and a famously devoted live following rather than studio hits. They hadn't released a studio album in six years, not since 1980's Go to Heaven, and none of their prior studio records had ever reached the top 10 of the Billboard 200. On July 6, 1987, that changed. Per Wikipedia's account of the album, In the Dark, released on Arista Records, became the first and only Grateful Dead studio album to crack the top 10, peaking at No. 6.
Recorded live, with the house lights down and no crowd
The band's approach to making the record was unusual for a group with access to their own well-equipped Club Front studio. Most of the songs on In the Dark, including "Touch of Grey," had already been part of their live sets since 1982 or 1983, and the band wanted the record to capture that same feeling. So they set up on the stage at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael, California, using the same stage lighting they'd use on tour, and recorded live takes as a full band with no audience in the room.
Drummer Bill Kreutzmann described the sessions in his memoir Deal: "We ran all the electric instruments through amplifiers in the basement, in isolation rooms, and kept the drums bright and loud on stage. Everything was fed to a recording truck parked outside the venue. Everybody played their parts in real time, together." Jerry Garcia, who co-produced the album with engineer John Cutler, put it simply: recording without an audience in that room "was in the nature of an experiment."
Touch of Grey, and the hit nobody expected
"Touch of Grey," the album's lead single, hit No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, the only Top 40 single the Grateful Dead ever had in their entire recording career. Its music video, built around an eerie skeleton-puppet performance, became a fixture on MTV and introduced the band to an entirely new, younger audience decades into their run. "Hell in a Bucket" and "Throwing Stones" also picked up significant album-rock radio airplay, but it was Touch of Grey that turned a cult touring act into a genuine platinum-selling commercial force, almost by accident, on a song they'd already been playing live for five years.
Garcia's guitar on the record
Jerry Garcia's lead voice across In the Dark runs through Tiger, the Doug Irwin-built custom electric guitar that served as his main instrument from 1979 to 1989, which puts these January 1987 sessions squarely inside its decade on Garcia's shoulder. His documented string brand was Vinci, not one of today's major manufacturers, gauged .010-.046 with occasional variations to .011 on the high E and .047 on the low E, played in standard tuning. Vinci isn't a current, easily sourced product line, so for players chasing that same era-accurate electric tone today, a standard nickel-wound set in the same .010-.046 range is the sensible modern equivalent.
Boomers GBL Nickel-Plated Steel (.010–.046)
Why this one: A modern nickel-wound set in the same .010-.046 range Garcia's own Vinci strings ran, a sensible equivalent since Vinci isn't a current sourced product line.
Two years later, on October 31, 1989, the band released Built to Last, their final studio album before Garcia's death in August 1995. But In the Dark stayed the commercial peak, the one time an accidental hit crossed a famously insular touring band over into the mainstream.
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