Brace Yourselves: 60 CD Box of Grateful Dead '72 Europe Tour Due In Fall

The February 3rd issue of Rolling Stone with Lil' Wayne on the cover has a story which will give all Grateful Dead fans a heart attack of sheer joy. There will be a 60-CD set of the complete Europe '72 Tour to be released this Fall. It will cost about $400.00 and will be a limited edition set. The article is on page 22 of the new issue. This project has been getting worked on for 2 years and has, obviously, been kept a secret.
This news appears top be completely legit. Bob Weir even states in the article that complete tours are in consideration for box sets. Mentioned in the article are the possibility of Fall '73 and '89.

 

Oh, my!

This IS interesting new indeed. It's a bit pricey but look how much the Fillmore box sells for now. This may be worth the investment.

 

Europe 72 might be my favorite Dead album.... but two discs is fine, maybe even four..... but 60?

 

Any bonus tracks?

 

This will definitely be an investment to have and hold.
Can't wait.

 

My first thought is that this particular box set could be a game-changer beyond the Grateful Dead camp & audience realm. It may make the rumored Dylan-Complete Blonde On Blonde Sessions box a more likely reality. It may also make other great bands consider something of this nature. Imagine a Complete 1966 Tour box of Bob Dylan, a Complete 1969 or 1972 (Europe '73) box set of The Rolling Stones or any number of super group sets. The possibilities are both exciting and frightening at the same time.

 

It would help if they actually recorded all those shows.........

 

Hmmm.... Very interesting, if true. Pricey, but not unreasonable for 60 disks - $6.50 / disk? One of my very favorite tours. But, to be honest, that would be a lot - really too much - to digest.

One would assume all fresh mixes from the multis. But wonder what they will do for the E72 tracks that were supposedly cut from the 16-track master reels for overdubs & sweetening?

 

According to the article, David Lemieux says " and there's a pristine 16-track recording of every show. It's the perfect storm."

 

For old tours, yes, it would be new.

Pearl Jam, Who, Peter Gabriel and possibly Duran Duran(cancelled?) did it for new tours within the past decade. Those 4 got pressed on cd, other have done it with downloads. PG/Who made them in limited edition cd boxsets.

The Doors have officially released all 13 performances they multitracked for the 1970 Absolutely Live album.

 

i'd consider buying that.

 

Dylan recorded/multitracked a bunch of shows in 1966.

Other artists like Bowie and George Harrison have admitted to have complete sets of soundboards from mid 70's tours.

 

DGMLive put up King Crimson's entire Europe '95 tour for download recently.

There was some sort of April Fools joke about a complete Dead Europe '72 box among Dead fans a few years ago, so interesting that there seems to be a legit plan now.

 

I have most of the tour. It truly is remarkable, just about every show is transformative and interesting in it's own right, you can listen to the transformation of a band. Yes, it is sort of a dream come true. However, the recordings that I have are "pretty good" (some of them could be much better) and I have just about every show so I am not sure I would pony up the cash for the entire box set. I am still waiting (and will continue to wait I am sure) for the Winterland 1973 shows in 24/96 as they mastered them from the reels. A lot more work doing remixes from the multitrack, really should make them available in 24/96 stereo if not creating new surround mixes in hi rez audio.

It DOES sound interesting and exciting, that"s for sure and there is no entire tour I would rather hear than Europe 1972.

I'll be on the Bozo bus, thank you......

 

interesting, yet you can get cdrs of the entire tour for the price of postage and blanks...I only have four A+ sbd shows from this tour, but the one to get this for, imo, would be the Rotterdam 5-11 show with the longest Dark Star ever, at 47 minutes of awesomeness....I'd be much more interested in a complete '73 tour though, but again it's hard to contemplate spending so much money on stuff I can get for free, when there's so much expensive free-jazz from the same era I still need to acquire...

 

Gosh-I don't know-60 cds at one time is a lot. As great as the E 72' tour was there will be a lot of repeats (that's a lot of "Me and my Uncle"s). Maybe they should have incorporated more '72 into the Road Trips series. (Speaking of which I still need to subscribe!)

 

DEAD REACH BACK TO LEGENDARY 1972 TOUR FOR MASSIVE BOX SET
Due in fall, the 60-plus CD release includes every show from European
trek.

On April 1st, 1972, the Grateful Dead arrived in Britain for the
opening dates of their first European tour. The timing was perfect -
"the feast of fools," guitarist Bob Weir says, laughing. "There was a
challenge for us, playing for people not familiar with what we were up
to. But we were ready for fresh ears...we were hot."...

In the fall, the tour will be released by Rhino as a limited-edition
beast: 22 shows on more than 60 CDs. The lavish set, available by pre-
order from the Dead's website, will cost over $400 and is
unprecedented even by their archive-box standards.
"By the time we're finished, we'll have put two years into this," says
producer David Lemieux, who expects mixing and mastering to wrap by
June. "If there was ever a tour that needed a complete release, it was
Europe '72. It's one of the top three tours the Dead ever did, and
there's a pristine 16-track recording of every show..."

"I remember that tour clearly," says bassist Phil Lesh, noting that no
one in the band had been to Europe before. [SIC] "In Hamburg, we
played in the hall where Brahms played. In Paris, I literally felt the
spirits of Chopin and Debussy. I think that made us play better. I
remember being on..."
"Someone would catch fire, and that would spread," Bob Weir says. "I'd
catch a riff everyone coalesced around. Then someone else would come
up with something that took us another way. It was a collective flash
- time to move on."

The Dead were in dramatic transition that spring, emboldened by the
jazzy ambitions of new pianist Keith Godchaux. "It was amazing how
tuned in he was to our music," Lesh says. "In Paris, he played like a
god."
The European tour was also the Dead's last with ailing singer-organist
Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan, who died in 1973. "He didn't have as much
energy as before," Weir says, "but he was trying his best to deal with
it."...

Lemieux says other Dead tours deserve full release, such as the fall
of '73 and spring 1990: "It's such a diverse band. You can do boxes
from '72 and '89 back-to-back, and there's nothing similar about them,
except it's Grateful Dead music."
"It all boils down to, 'Is there a story there?'" says Weir. "If we
can find an era like this, with a story line and development - and I
have a feeling there is - there would be merit in doing this again."

 

Is it fall yet????

I'm in.

 

Enticing, but too much $$ and too much to try and wade through at once.

 

Just put aside $2.00 a day until it's released and you'll be there. Now I'm just waiting for the them to announce the 120 LP vinyl box set...

 

I agree it's a lot of cash, (it'll be real hard to justify $400 with the boss) but if it looks as good as it sounds I'll sell some stuff to have this....

 

I'd love to invest it. But I have 16 of these shows on CD-R, mostly Millers, and while I still have kids and a big mortgage, I think I am going to have to pass...

 

A few years ago, I'd have KILLED for a set like this - however, I've got all I need on CDR, absolutely zero chance of having that kind of cash for this when it comes and it really doesn't feel that important anymore (I even sold my Fillmore West box last year and barely miss it!)

Deadheads with lots of spare cash and collectors is where every copy of this is going - without condoning or condemning, everyone else will find "ways and means"...

 

this is fantastic news! Looking forward to this one (even though I have all the Europe 72 shows).