Don’s Pick • Halloween Special, Week 4 of 5

A Top Hat, a Poem, and the Last Howl the Dead Ever Gave the Werewolves

Grateful Dead • October 31, 1991 • Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA

Some nights carry more weight than the setlist alone can explain. This show closed a four-night Oakland run mourning the death of legendary rock promoter Bill Graham, killed in a helicopter crash just six days earlier. It also marks the final time the Grateful Dead ever played “Werewolves of London” live, closing out a Halloween tradition that had run for over a decade. Grief and ritual collided directly on this particular night, and the result became one of the most talked about shows of the band’s late career.

The emotional core of the entire evening arrived during the second set’s “Dark Star.” Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist Gary Duncan was sitting in on guitar as the band drifted into the opening verse when Ken Kesey, the counterculture icon and author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, walked onto the stage in a top hat. Over a sparse, spacey instrumental backdrop, Kesey delivered a spoken word eulogy for his close friend Graham, recalling the promoter’s quiet kindness, including financial support Graham had sent after the death of Kesey’s own son, before reciting E.E. Cummings’ poem “Buffalo Bill’s.” His booming delivery of the poem’s final line, asking how death likes its blue-eyed boy now, sent a visible shockwave through the arena.

The first set opened with real purpose, “Help On The Way” flowing into “Slipknot!” and resolving into “Franklin’s Tower,” a trifecta built to pull a grieving crowd back up onto its feet from the very first notes. Phil Lesh later took a rare turn on lead vocals for Bob Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” a fan favorite that doesn’t come around often. Gary Duncan stayed on stage well past the Kesey tribute, joining in on Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful” and carrying through “Dark Star,” Space, and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time,” adding a second guitar layer alongside Garcia for a genuinely different texture than the band’s usual sound.

Coming out of Kesey’s eulogy, the band moved through Drums and Space before circling back into a brief, haunting Dark Star Reprise. Given everything the night carried, Garcia’s performance of “Standing On The Moon” later in the set landed with unusual weight, widely regarded as the musical high point of the second set’s final stretch. The encore closed things the way Halloween always had for this band, Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” not knowing yet that this would be the last time they’d ever howl through it together.

A friend eulogized on stage, a werewolf song howled for the final time, and a band finding exactly the right notes for a night that needed them. Week four of five, and this one still gives chills.