Listen To Grateful Dead’s Otherworldly ‘Close Encounters’ Jam

In November 1977, the Stephen Spielberg-directed sci-fi feature film, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, introduced a five-note phrase that characters in the movie played as a means of communicating with extraterrestrial beings. Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia was a well-known fan of science fiction and reportedly went to the theater to see the film shortly after its release.

Gary Lambert, a longtime Deadhead and radio host, saw Garcia at a screening of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind before the Grateful Dead’s December 1977 New Year’s Eve show at The Warfield in San Francisco. Both Lambert and Garcia had previously seen the groundbreaking UFO movie and were back to watch it again. Garcia toyed with the theme as the band prepared to start the second set that night.

The five-note musical phrase written by composer John Williams that was the centerpiece of Spielberg’s picture seemingly had a lasting effect on Garcia. The guitarist incorporated the motif during the second set of the Grateful Dead’s concert held on this date 46 years ago.

On January 22, 1978, Garcia and his bandmates played a show at the University of Oregon’s MacArthur Court in Eugene, Oregon. In the second set, Garcia took charge of a lengthy jam developed out of “The Other One” and layered in the familiar Close Encounters melody. Recorded by longtime Grateful Dead sound engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson, the January 22, 1978 master reel was reacquired by the band in 2017 and the show was released that year as part of current Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux’s archival Dave’s Picks series.

Author and host of the Good ‘Ol Grateful Deadcast podcast, Jesse Jarnow wrote an essay for the Dave’s Picks Vol 23 release showcasing the ‘78 MacArthur Court concert. Jarnow’s insightful essay entitled “McArthur Court Is Melting In The Oort (Close Encounters in Eugene),” which included the anecdote about Lambert seeing Garcia at Close Encounters, described Garcia’s performance within “The Other One” jam, writing:

“At that point, ‘The Other One’ had already wound on for nearly 17 minutes when it arrived at the show’s musical heart — an abnormally long rendition by the standards of the era, stretching deep into the far-flung territories more common to versions from earlier in the decade. It’s a full-blown conversation of the highest order that arrives somewhere special even before Garcia quotes the Close Encounters theme.

“For nearly four minutes, Garcia plays almost completely solo, floating untethered into space. It is a soliloquy in Garcia’s own unearthly dialect, rich, deep tones shooting in from the icy Oort cloud at the edge of our solar system to echo around the giant box of McArthur Court.”

Jarnow’s essay notes Garcia toyed with the Close Encounters theme on other occasions, but never as overtly as in Eugene. The essay also dispels the false rumor that Garcia appeared as an extra in the background of the Close Encounters film, which has often been wrongfully attributed to the guitarist.

Listen to the full Grateful Dead concert from January 22, 1978 featuring Jerry Garcia’s intergalactic solo out of “The Other One,” as well as the Close Encounters Of The Third Kind scene featuring the iconic five-note phrase:

Setlist (via JerryBase)

Set One: Minglewood Blues, Dire Wolf, Cassidy, Peggy-O, El Paso, Tennessee Jed, Jack Straw, Row Jimmy, The Music Never Stopped

Set Two: Bertha > Good Lovin’, Ship Of Fools, Samson And Delilah, Terrapin Station > Drums > The Other One > Close Encounters [1] > Saint Stephen > Not Fade Away > Around And Around

Encore: U.S. Blues

Notes:

• [1] Only known performance