Chapter 9 - Grateful Dead

             When we speak of worship being an organic entity that finds its own energy in the dynamism of the river, or when we speak of flowing gracefully between the new and the old song, an example comes to mind that I hope will be helpful. I want to illustrate this from the experiences of a non-Christian rock band. Stay with me, I think you’ll find this example quite illuminating.

            One of the most fascinating advents of the rock-n-roll era has been the uncommon legacy of an American band called “The Grateful Dead.” The driving force of the band was guitarist Jerry Garcia, who led the band with his innovative chord sequences and colorful harmonics. The group toured regularly from the late 1960’s until Garcia’s death in 1995.

            The band would go through their customary songs during their concerts but then at some point would shift gears. Turning from their prepared repertoire, they would launch out into an improvisational riff, find a groove that was working musically, and then begin to push the envelope. The drummer would throw in unusual syncopations; the guitars would whine and scream creatively; the keyboard would strain for color and dissonance. Together, they would move out to the edge of almost losing one another musically, but yet would follow each other’s improvisational initiatives closely enough so that they stayed together. And then they would begin to grope for “it.”

            “It” was what would sometimes happen in the midst of one of these improvisational free-for-alls. Occasionally, the band would catch a wave of momentum, an emotional energy would ripple through the auditorium, a power would grip both the band members and the audience, and the concert would take off into another dimension. They had found “it.”

            When this happened—whatever it was—the concert hall became an explosive altar of spiritual encounter. Everybody in the place knew that a line had been crossed, the transition had been made, and now the night became a pulsating celebration of connectedness to a cosmic consciousness. It became unclear whether the band or the audience was leading, as the concert became a participatory dance that included every attendee. It was spirit, and it was palpably real.

            The spiritual atmosphere that filled the concerts was so powerfully compelling, in fact, that many fans became spiritual followers, actually making the Grateful Dead their religion. They called themselves Dead Heads. Garcia was viewed by many as their spiritual leader and came to be dubbed “the godfather,” a term he privately disliked. Fans would get in their Volkswagen vans and follow the band from city to city, reserving their place in one concert after another. If it didn’t happen in one concert—that is, if they didn’t cross the spiritual threshold—then they would just pick up and go to the next one, knowing that eventually it would happen again.

            Once the transition was made in a concert, a spiritual energy would actually take over. It was as though the band members could read each other’s minds. They instinctively knew where the others were going, what song would be sung next, or what the next chord was going to be. The power on the stage was intoxicating as the band held the hearts of multiplied thousands in their hands.

            One former Dead Head told me that when the concert would crescendo, the crowd would empty their pockets and begin to share what they had with one another. Quite often it would be some form of a drug, but the fact remains that a generosity would overtake the crowd. I was also told that when the throngs would eventually leave the stadium, they would shuffle out quietly except that they would bleat like sheep.

 

My Personal Amazement

             When I first learned about what happened in these concerts, I was totally fascinated. Having grown up in a Christian family, I never went to a secular concert of any kind during my growing up years, much less a Grateful Dead concert. So I had no idea what happened at such events. I knew what it was like to be in a Christian meeting and have a holy anointing take hold of a worship service, but I had no idea there was a counterfeit anointing that operated in a similar way at secular concerts. So I wanted to learn more about this dynamic.

            A friend of mine used to play guitar in a variety of bands during his younger, pre-Christ years, and he told me all the bands of the day would look to the Grateful Dead as their role model. They would all try to find the same kind of improvisational groove and spiritual momentum, but they couldn’t ever reach quite the same plateau for some reason.

            Now, I have a bit of a confession to make. I’m not proud of this, but it’s the truth. It really happened to me. Back in the 1970’s, when I was going through some of my teenage crisis years, I went through about a five-year period when I listened regularly to Top 40 Radio. Ouch, now the truth is out. So if the song was a hit in the 70’s, I probably knew the song.

            So as they’re telling me the story of the Grateful Dead, I’m scrolling back to my recollections of 1970’s rock-n-roll. “Grateful Dead…Grateful Dead…let me think. What was a song on the radio by Grateful Dead?” And I couldn’t think of a single Top 40 hit performed by that group.

            That’s when I was told, “The Grateful Dead didn’t have any hits.” Apparently they had no hit albums, nor hit singles. The power of the band was not in their ability to produce hits but was rather in the power of their live concerts. (Imagine my surprise to learn they were the number one top grossing rock-n-roll band in the world for at least 30 years, even without a single hit album.)

            For that reason, there is an active internet industry, up to the present day, of fans who sell or swap recordings of concerts that reach back 35 or more years. The band had the policy of allowing fans to bring portable cassette recorders into the concerts, so as a result there are a host of homemade recordings that are still being duplicated and sold between fans worldwide. The Grateful Dead did produce some studio recordings, but that’s not primarily what the fans want. The greatest demand remains for the low-fidelity, home-spun recordings that carry the unpolished, spontaneous ambience of the live concerts.

 

The Other River

             One reason I was so fascinated by these accounts of their concerts was because I had no idea, growing up in my Christian world, that there was an unholy river. I knew there was a holy river of God to be found in worship, but I had no idea that Satan, the master counterfeiter, had devised a way to harness the power of music to sweep the hearts of the undiscerning into a river that leads to death.

            When this river began to take over the concerts, Mickey Hart (one of the band members) coined a term to describe what was happening. He would say, “It’s when the seventh man shows up.” So I asked my friends what he meant by that term. Apparently there were six people in the band at the time he coined the phrase. He was recognizing that there was a power present in the concert that went beyond the members of the band. There was a spiritual presence which gave to the band an impact that exceeded the sum of the parts.

            The Grateful Dead had found the river—the other river—and used it to promote their own agenda. But I will say this to their credit: They discovered more of what God intended through music than have most churches today. It is here that the saying applies, “‘I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation’” (Deuteronomy 32:21). We who have the right to the great river of God stay back in the shallows of our rigid service orders and miss the fullest purpose for which God created music.

 

The Fourth Man

             My point in this chapter is not to talk about The Grateful Dead per se. The point I want to make is that where there is the counterfeit, it is testimony to the existence of the genuine. The experiences of a secular band only serve to substantiate that there is a reality that is available to us in God—a river of divine glory that can be touched in corporate worship.

            When they touched their river, they described it as “when the seventh man shows up.” But when we touch our river, I prefer to call it “when the Fourth Man shows up.”

            I’m referring to the time when Nebuchadnezzar threw the three Hebrew slaves into his fiery furnace, but when he looked into the flame, he saw not only three men walking around, but also the form of a Fourth in the fire (read Daniel 3). And the Fourth looked like the Son of God—because that’s who He was!

            There is a fiery river to be found in God, and when we find it, it is a blazing inferno in which the Fourth Man, Jesus Christ, reveals Himself. In this fire, bondages are burned away. (The ropes were burned off the hands of the Hebrew men.) In this fire, there are manifestations of the Glory of God. There are healings and miracles; there is power to be delivered from demonic snares; there is a holy anointing that causes unbelievers to fall on their face in conviction, to confess their sins, and to leave the meeting saying, “If you go to that place, you will meet up with God!” (1 Corinthians 14:25).

            Oh God, evermore give us these waters to drink!