Dead & Company Talk ‘Pushing The Envelope’ At Las Vegas Sphere

Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and John Mayer recently sat down for an interview with The Los Angeles Times on Dead & Company’s Dead Forever Las Vegas Sphere Residency. The bandmates talked how their landmark run at the state-of-the-art venue is “pushing the envelope” for the band and the concert experience in general.

Read an excerpt from the interview below:

“We’re pushing the envelope here,” Weir says as he munches a handful of peanut butter-filled pretzels. The whiskery guitarist likens Dead Forever’s storytelling to opera; Mayer says the visual content, which he took a lead role in developing with the London-based Treatment Studio, “has a little Disney ride in it.”

Mayer added that Dead Forever is “a trip through the metaphysical anthropology of the Grateful Dead with Dead & Company as your hosts.”

The Los Angeles Times also spoke with Dead biographer (So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead) and Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne, who noted that the Grateful Dead were always masters of the visual as well as the sonic.

“From the beginning, there was always a sense when you went to a Dead show that you were entering this self-contained world — a kind of land unto itself,” Browne said. “The light show and the trippy album covers were part and parcel with their whole aesthetic.”

The conversation also touched on how Dead & Company have to tailor their music to what’s going down on screen, with Mayer calling bandleader Bob Weir “a genius of temporal awareness.”

“I pride myself in being able to watch the union steward,” Bobby said. “He’s thinking, ‘Oh, boy, these guys are hard into it…’ But I can cut it off as the clock is ticking.”

Head here to read the full feature. Dead & Company’s Dead Forever Las Vegas Sphere residency continues tonight. Scroll down the remaining dates and ticket info.