Grateful Dead Announce ‘Europe ’72’ 50th Anniversary Releases
Grateful Dead have announced a plethora of releases and memorabilia to tie-in with the 50th anniversary of their legendary live album, Europe ’72, available to pre-order here.
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The Grateful Dead’s first tour outside of North America was immortalized on Europe ’72, a triple live album that distilled peak moments from the 22 shows the band played in six countries for thousands of Europeans. A triumph critically and commercially when it was released in November 1972, today the double-platinum album is an integral part of the Dead’s live legacy and beloved by generations of fans. Appreciation for the extraordinary tour grew in 2011 when every show was released in the unprecedented, 73-CD boxed set, Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the first show from the Grateful Dead’s European adventure. It took place on April 7, 1972, at Wembley Empire Pool in London. To mark the milestone, Rhino and Dead.net are announcing a series of upcoming releases and events connected to the celebrated tour.
LYCEUM 1972: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS marks the Dead’s largest vinyl boxed set of all time, a 24-LP collection presenting the final four shows from the tour at London’s Lyceum Theatre in their entirety on 180-gram vinyl for the first time. Limited to 4,000 copies, the set will be released on July 29 and is available now to pre-order exclusively from Dead.net].
LYCEUM 1972: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS comes in a colourful slipcase with new artwork by Brian Blomerth. The four shows are organized in individual clamshell boxes, each one features the cover art that Scott McDougall created for each concert in Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings. The accompanying book includes a new in-depth look at the Lyceum shows by noted Dead scholar Nicholas Meriwether.
A newly remastered version of the original Europe ’72 album will also be available on 29 July. EUROPE ’72 (50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION) arrives in 2CD, 3LP, streaming, and digital download versions including Apple Lossless and FLAC 96/24. A special “Bozo Or Bolo” 3LP version will see a special early release on 3 June, exclusively on Dead.net. Limited to 5,000 copies and available for pre-order now, this special edition of the historic album is pressed on psychedelic rainbow vinyl, a visual callback to the original album’s iconic cover design by Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse. Each LP features a 50/50 colour split with alternating transparent and neon colours of a rainbow: LP1 is transparent red and neon orange; LP2 is transparent yellow and neon green; and LP3 is transparent indigo and neon violet. All of the new 50th anniversary editions were mastered by Grammy® Award winning engineer David Glasser with newly restored audio by Plangent Processes.
Rounding out the list of anniversary releases is LYCEUM THEATRE: MAY 26, 1972. This 4-CD set from Rhino spotlights the epic last show of the Dead’s European tour. Notably, it was also the group’s penultimate performance with founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who died in March the following year. Despite his failing health, Pigpen electrified European audiences with his charismatic performances of Chinatown Shuffle, Good Lovin’ and (his latest song) The Stranger (Two Souls In Communion). The tour, and the show, represents a bittersweet capstone to his too-short career.
To jumpstart the 50th anniversary of the Dead’s 1972 European tour, The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast returns today for a fifth season that promises to delve deeply into the historic ’72 tour. The first two episodes are available now with new episodes continuing to drop every Thursday for the next eight weeks, allowing for listeners to take a real time retrospective of the tour as it happened 50 years ago. This season also features stories from fans who saw the band on the tour, and there’s still time for people to submit their Europe ’72 stories for later episodes at stories.dead.net