Wherever he goes, the people all complain

In addition to being Boxing Day, today is also St. Stephen’s Day. This video is a performance of the Grateful Dead doing “Mountains of the Moon” and then “St. Stephen” at the Playboy Mansion, on the program “After Dark” in the late 1960s. Shel Silverstein, a friend of the band (who wrote “A Boy Named Sue,” for Johnny Cash and did cartoons for Playboy, along with writing Where the Sidewalk Ends) was the contact that got them the gig.

There is a description of the evening’s escapades in the book Living with the Dead that’s so funny you’ll need oxygen. This was in part owing to the fact that Owsley (chemist, sound man and the band’s financier) spiked the coffee with LSD in revenge for not being allowed to set up the band’s sound system. Some people drank a lot of coffee, turning what was usually a totally stilted, stuck-up atmosphere into mayhem. Warned in advance, Hefner had a servant sitting on a cooler full of Coke in sealed bottles, who would open them one bottle at a time and pass them directly to him. Someone on the crew described it as “the closest thing to a party to ever happen at the Playboy Mansion.”

The song “St. Stephen” has references to the first Christian martyr and also Stephen Gaskin, founder of The Farm, sometime presidential candidate and friend of the band (I knew his daughter — she once bought me a lot of Elvis Costello CDs). In the early days he would sit on the stage and take questions from the audience during halftime at shows. Hence the line, “Wherever he goes, the people all complain.”

This link will take you to the annotated lyrics. This will take you to a different recording of just St. Stephen from the same night, not as sharp but a bit louder. If you find cool versions in You Tube or elsewhere please share them in the comments. This song can go 8 to 10 minutes — there must be some great recordings out there.

Hook up some speakers or headphones and turn up the throttle.

Did he doubt or did he try?
Answers aplenty in the bye and bye
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills
One man gathers what another man spills

Saint Stephen will remain
All he’s lost he shall regain
Seashore washed by the suds and the foam
Been here so long he’s got to calling it home

— Robert Hunter