Grateful Dead Details ‘American Beauty 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition’ Reissue

The Grateful Dead will give their 1970 studio album American Beauty the deluxe reissue treatment. American Beauty: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition will be available on CD via Rhino on October 30 with American Beauty: 50th Anniversary Picture Disc set for release on vinyl the same date.

American Beauty: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition includes a remastered version of the 10-track LP as well as a previously unreleased official recording of the band’s February 18, 1971 concert at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York. The Grateful Dead – which consisted of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart at the time — recorded American Beauty in August and September 1970 with producer Stephen Quinn Barncard at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco just months after the release of their previous LP, Workingman’s Dead.

Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux shared the following about the forthcoming set:

It still boggles my mind to think of the Grateful Dead’s creative output in 1970. For any other band, catching lightning with an album as perfect and excellent as Workingman’s Dead is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. The Dead, however, followed up just a few months later with an album that virtually every Dead Head considers its equal. Ten songs, nearly all of which became cornerstones of the band’s live repertoire for the next 25 years. Today, 50 years on, these songs are still essential parts of the band members’ continuing live activities. The 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition includes one of the first, and best, live performances of 1971, just a couple of months after the release of American Beauty, and the five live debuts in the show demonstrate that the spectacular creativity of 1970 was no fluke. This was the new Dead, and we’re still tapping our feet and humming along to these songs 50 years later.

Stream “Truckin'” from February 18, 1971 as a preview of the upcoming release:

American Beauty: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Tracklist

CD Track Listing

Disc One: Original Album Remastered

1. “Box Of Rain”
2. “Friend Of The Devil”
3. “Sugar Magnolia”
4. “Operator”
5. “Candyman”
6. “Ripple”
7. “Brokedown Palace”
8. “Till The Morning Comes”
9. “Attics Of My Life”
10. “Truckin’”

Disc Two: Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY (2/18/71)

1. “Bertha”
2. “Truckin’”
3. “Hurts Me Too”
4. “Loser”
5. “Greatest Story Ever Told”>
6. “Johnny B. Goode”
7. “Mama Tried”
8. “Hard To Handle”
9. “Dark Star”>
10. “Wharf Rat”>
11. “Dark Star”>
12. “Me And My Uncle”

Disc Three: Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY (2/18/71)

1. “Casey Jones”
2. “Playing In The Band”
3. “Me And Bobby McGee”
4. “Candyman”
5. “Big Boss Man”
6. “Sugar Magnolia”
7. “St. Stephen”>
8. “Not Fade Away”>
9. “Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad”>
10. “Not Fade Away”>
11. “Uncle John’s Band”

---

AMERICAN BEAUTY: 50th ANNIVERSARY PICTURE DISC

1. “Box Of Rain”
2. “Friend Of The Devil”
3. “Sugar Magnolia”
4. “Operator”
5. “Candyman”
6. “Ripple”
7. “Brokedown Palace”
8. “Till The Morning Comes”
9. “Attics Of My Life”
10. “Truckin’”