Steve Brown

After working at KSFO Radio, managing the band Friendly Stranger, and promoting records, Steve Brown – Bones to friends – served in the US Navy Reserve from 1966 to 1971 and on active duty from June 1967 to December 1968. During that time, Brown created the music tapes for the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, which had most of its operations in the Gulf of Tonkin throughout the Vietnam War. With access to high-quality recording equipment, Brown also began taping concerts. And it was with a Uher 400 reel-to-reel system owned by the Navy that Brown captured the famous March 3, 1968 Haight Street show. Brown then dubbed the tape, sending it out to unsuspecting Navy ships across the Pacific.

That March weekend in 1968, Brown had tripped north to his Bay Area home from his base in San Diego. He brought the Uher along to record a Cream show at Winterland on Saturday the 2nd. While there, he heard about a Grateful Dead free show the next day. With limited battery, Brown dragged the Navy’s recording equipment onto the streets, held the microphone in the air, and preserved the first four tunes – an incendiary Viola Lee Blues, Smokestack Lightning, Lovelight, and It Hurts Me Too – before his batteries started to die, making The Other One that he also captured unlistenable.

After his stint of active duty was over, Brown found a job as a buyer for a San Francisco record wholesaler. In late ’72, he heard the Dead might be starting their own label, and Brown wrote a personal note to the band, which landed him an interview with Jerry and Ron Rakow, head of the new Grateful Dead Records and Round Records. When Rakow got up to take a call, Jerry and Brown shot the shit about growing up in San Francisco. Jerry then left the room when Rakow returned, telling Ron to hire Brown.

Brown ended up working for the Dead from 1973 to 1978, working in various capacities, most notably assisting on the production of Mars Hotel and The Grateful Dead Movie. After leaving the Dead, Brown continued to work in video production, mainly for Pacifica Public Television. Over the years in this capacity, he worked on several Dead related projects, including producing documentaries of Europe ’74 and the 1995 Jerry Garcia Memorial.