In the early morning hours of June 20th, 1977, Mickey Hart left a local Half Moon Bay club in his Porsche with long-time friend Rhonda Jensen. As they were pulling up the gravel driveway at his Novato ranch, Mickey gunned the car, fishtailed, and careened off the steep side into eucalyptus trees.
The car caught in branches and dangled over a ravine. Mickey was seriously injured, but Rhonda managed to struggle free. She ran to the ranch house and summoned help. After a tense period, the fire department and paramedics finally managed to secure the sports car, get to Mickey, and rush him to the hospital.
Mickey’s condition was touch and go for some time. As Mickey described, “when I finally opened my eyes, Jerry was there, and he said, ‘You look like shit!’” And Mickey must have, with a broken arm, collarbone, and several ribs along with various other cuts and bruises, including one of his ears dangling by a piece of skin. Lucky to be alive, he was not going to be behind his kit anytime soon.
Of course, this was all just eleven days after the close of the legendary Spring ’77 tour. Despite playing phenomenally well over the previous four months, the Dead were deeply plagued by financial problems. The band also had a new album, Terrapin Station, on the way that they needed to promote under their new Arista contract. Surely they had summer tour plans to consider.
Lore has it that most of the band were in favor of going out on the road without Mickey. After all, Billy had been holding down the drums all by himself until the hiatus. Mickey supposedly even gave his blessing to the plan. However, Jerry said something along the lines of we all go or nobody does, and that was that.
The decision to forego the tour certainly intensified the financial issues. The unplanned vacation probably also deepened Jerry and Keith’s heroin habits – to say nothing of Phil’s alcoholism – though all of that likely would have happened regardless. For her part, Donna underwent surgery during the layoff, though the nature of the procedure remains unclear.
About the only obvious positive thing to come out of the summer of ’77 was that Bobby took the time to record his second solo album, Heaven Help the Fool. Unlike on Ace, no other Dead members contributed to the effort.
Despite the ravages of the summer, the Grateful Dead finally returned triumphantly on September 3 at John Scher’s massive Englishtown concert in New Jersey. More than 150,000 fans packed Raceway Park for what was then one of the largest ticketed concerts in American history. This helped shore up the the band’s finances and provided proof to the music industry that the Dead’s ticket sales were not just fueled by repeat business.
But the band was still not at full strength. Mickey, less than three months after the car accident, played cautiously. Donna stayed seated for much of the show, unable to hear herself in the mix and still recovering from the surgery. As Mickey said, “It was like an out-patient clinic on stage.”
The Dead were back, but they were not quite the same band that had left Winterland in June. And it was not just the injuries, the surgery, or the substance abuse. The spring of 1977 had been defined by precision, patience, and a remarkable consistency from night to night. By the fall, the music had become heavier and less polished. Tempos loosened and the grooves deepened. Jerry’s playing grew more aggressive, while the rhythm section pushed with a new muscularity. The result was not necessarily better or worse than the celebrated spring tour, but it was a distinctly different, darker, more expansive sound that would define the final months of 1977 and bleed into the new year.
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