Eleven years on, folks are still talking about Fare Thee Well. It was the last time the Grateful Dead‘s Core Four—Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart—appeared together onstage, a fleeting moment of authenticity (albeit stadium-sized) when the tribes that splintered post-Jerry Garcia came together to sing sweet songs. Plus, there was that rainbow.
Not since the simultaneous eruption of Mount Saint Helens while the Dead played “Fire on the Mountain” 75 miles away in Portland, OR has a natural phenomenon intersected with the Band Beyond Description in such a tantalizing way. On the opening night of the five-show, two-city run in Santa Clara, a rainbow streaked across the red Northern California sky just south of where the Dead were born in San Francisco. As Bobby, Phil, Bill, Mickey, Phish’s Trey Anastasio, and Bruce Hornsby dug into an engrossing 17-minute “Viola Lee Blues”, nature unfurled its own colorful banner above the sea of tie-dye.
But was it nature?
In Billboard‘s coverage of the show the following morning, the reputable music trade publication cited an anonymous insider in reporting that Fare Thee Well promoter Peter Shapiro had paid $50,000 for the visual effect. Billboard later issued a correction of the story, which currently contains the addendum, “This article has been updated to include the continuing debate over the appearance of the rainbow, which upon further investigation appears to have been real. Turns out this band really does jam with God.”
A Billboard recap of the next show quoted Shapiro as saying of the rainbow, “It was man-made,” adding, “and the man that made it was Jerry Garcia.”
The saga stands as one of the great conspiracy theories in Deadheadom, along with the theory that the band’s May 8th, 1977 show at Cornell University‘s Barton Hall—a common pick for the greatest Dead show ever—never actually happened, a theory to which Bob Weir himself lent credence in 2013.
Even after staging thousands of concerts and festivals, running New York City’s famed Wetlands Preserve, reinvigorating The Capitol Theatre, and amassing many other accolades that helped define the 21st century of jam band music, the question still dogs Peter Shapiro: Was the Fare Thee Well rainbow real?
The jam impresario addressed the conspiracy in his 2022 memoir, The Music Never Stops, even adorning the cover with a picture of the infamous rainbow. Then, during a recent conversation with veteran Relix editor-in-chief Dean Budnick, Shapiro was once again pressed for answers.
Related: Master Class: Lessons Learned From Peter Shapiro [2022 Interview]
In a video of the exchange, the concert promoter remembers that the Billboard reporter seemed convinced that the rainbow couldn’t have been real when she reached out for comment. “It’s a rainbow,” Shapiro recalls telling the reporter matter-of-factly.
“She wouldn’t stop, so I was like, ‘We paid 50 grand for it,’ and we went to bed,” Shapiro said. When he woke up, however, headlines around the world claimed the Grateful Dead had purchased a rainbow for $50,000.
“You gotta be careful what you say sometimes,” Shapiro says with a smile in the clip.
Readers and a Billboard writer weren’t the only ones who bought into the story. Even Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart texted Shapiro.
He wrote,
Just tell me the truth: how did you pull it off? I will never reveal your very clever illusion. P.S. How much did it cost?
—Your friends at the NSA.
Watch Peter Shapiro give the official Warren Report explanation for the Fare Thee Well rainbow. The truth is out there…🛸
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