Grateful Dead’s Europe ‘72 Tour 50th Anniversary: April 24 – Dusseldorf, West Germany

In April 1972, the Grateful Dead embarked on their now-legendary Europe ’72 Tour. The band performed 22 times between April 7 and May 26, resulting in the landmark triple live LP, Europe ’72 that was released in October of that year. To celebrate the legacy of the band’s historic tour abroad, JamBase presents a retrospective look back at each of the Europe 1972 Grateful Dead performances.

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The Grateful Dead continued the German portion of their Europe ‘72 with a concert on Monday, April 24, 1972 at Rheinhalle in Dusseldorf, West Germany. The band took two days off following their taping a set for the Beat Club German television program in Breman.

The two buses (the Bozos and the Bolos) carrying the band, crew, family and friends trekked 300 kilometers southwest for the show at the Rheinhalle. Currently in operation, the concert hall is home to the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra.

The venue’s website offers this regarding its history (translated from German):

In 1926, a beautiful planetarium was built on the banks of the Rhine in Düsseldorf. It should make the approximately 5,984,000,000 kilometers from the sun to the outermost planet of our system a little more manageable. As so often in history, everything turned out very differently.

In the 1970s, the well-known hemisphere became a concert hall where the audience met to explore the endless expanses of culture and to be inspired by international stars from all genres. This ranged from classical to jazz, chanson and pop to cabaret.

In 2005, the conservative paintwork of the large concert hall gave way to a modern metallic blue ambience. The acoustics are terrific thanks to the sophisticated and sophisticated sound deflection. Thanks to light-emitting diodes and a sophisticated lighting concept, the Tonhalle is optically what it always was: a “planetarium of music.” The starry sky of Düsseldorf makes the concerts here a special experience …

More than 450 concerts with over 300,000 spectators per year make the “Planetarium of Music” a great forum for culture and a meeting place. Because in the long years nothing has changed in two things in particular: the large spectrum and the often euphorically celebrated discoveries in Germany’s most beautiful concert hall.

And then, of course, the Tonhalle is the musical home of the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra consists of 130 musicians.

The orchestra tradition in Düsseldorf goes back almost 400 years and Düsseldorf was the second German city to establish a municipal orchestra in the 19th century. With numerous guest performances, the orchestra has made a name for itself well beyond the borders of Düsseldorf.

The April 24, 1972 Grateful Dead concert at Rheinhalle was one of two shows on the Europe ‘72 tour to consist of three complete sets, having previously delivered three sets at their second Copenhagen concert. The concert began with guitarist Bob Weir leading the band through the first show-opening “Truckin’” of the tour. “Casey Jones” closed the first set, as it would a total of 15 times on the run.

“Dark Star” opened the second set for the only time on the European tour. While “Dark Star” segued into “Sugar Magnolia” more often than not over the course of the tour, the April 24 version veered from the frequent pairing and instead went into the Weir-sung cover of “Me And My Uncle” before steering back to “Dark Star.” After segueing into “Wharf Rat” from “Dark Star,” the band then ended the set with the tour’s second of two “Sugar Magnolia” second set closers.

Following its debut on April 17, the second performance of “He’s Gone,” written by guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter and still not fully developed into the song it would become, opened the third set. It was the only time “He’s Gone” was selected to open a set on the tour. The 41-minute third set and encore also consisted of keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan delivering the blues via Elmore James’ “Hurts Me Too” and Weir leading Marty Robbins’ cowboy ballad “El Paso.” Listen for a bit of “Stars And Stripes Forever” as they tuned up between those two covers. The set closed with “Not Fade Away” into “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad” back into “Not Fade Away.”

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The evening ended with one of the tour’s 13 “One More Saturday Night” encores. At the start of the song, Bobby tells the audience “This is our new single, you’ll want to run out and buy it.” He was referring to the “One More Saturday Night” single that was released off his 1972 solo album, Ace, that was recorded with the other members of the Grateful Dead. The show ends with bassist Phil Lesh emphatically telling the German audience “auf wiedersehen.”

Bobby had told the audience to “get up and dance” during the aforementioned “Not Fade Away,” which led to an intense back and forth with Pigpen. Pigpen had captivated the crowd during the first set “Good Lovin.” The jamming during this 16-minute version is extremely free-form, with drummer Bill Kreutzmann presenting shifting rhythms and dissolving meters. Keyboardist Keith Godchaux made considerable contributions to the improvisation.

Godchaux was also integral to the themes and variations that arose during the “Dark Star” in the second set that was split up into a 25-minute opening segment, followed by another 14 minutes when they returned to “Dark Start” after “Me And My Uncle.” Having joined the band in October 1971, Keith (whose wife Donna Jean Godchaux joined the Dead just prior to the tour) was coming into his own as a member of the Dead and there a many times during the “Dark Star” that he makes a significant impact on the group improvisation.

No songs from the April 24 concert in Dusseldorf, West Germany were chosen for the Grateful Dead’s original Europe ‘72 live album. The full concert was officially released in 2004 as Rockin’ the Rhein with the Grateful Dead, but the order of the songs was rearranged in order to preserve the continuous music across three CDs. The entire show, with the correct song order — fit across four CDs, was subsequently included in the 2011 Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings box set that came out in 2011.

Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux discussed the Dusseldorf “Dark Star” on a recent episode of the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast podcast. Lemieux revealed that engineer Jeffrey Norman added an echo to Garcia’s “Dark Star” vocals when he delivered the lyric “search light casting” causing the final word to reverberate.

Here are additional statistics and information regarding the eighth performance of the Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72 tour:

Setlist (via JerryBase)

Set One: Truckin’, Tennessee Jed, Chinatown Shuffle, Black Throated Wind, China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Mr. Charlie, Beat It On Down The Line, Loser, Playing In The Band, Next Time You See Me, Me And Bobby McGee, Good Lovin’, Casey Jones

Set Two: Dark Star > Me And My Uncle > Dark Star > Wharf Rat > Sugar Magnolia

Set Three: He’s Gone, Hurts Me Too, El Paso, Not Fade Away > Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad > Not Fade Away

Encore: One More Saturday Night

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Below, stream the official recording of the Grateful Dead’s April 24, 1972 concert at Rheinhalle in Dusseldorf, West Germany and Rockin’ the Rhein with the Grateful Dead, or check out other recordings via Archive.org: