Grateful Dead at Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, 1971

The December 14 and 15 shows at the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium (capacity, 4,100) were the last shows in a legendary Fall of 1971 before the band closed out New Year’s Eve at Winterland. The poster was done by Detroit poster artist Gary Grimshaw, whom many consider to be nearly the equal of the Big Five San Francisco artists.

The Dead had released the live Skull and Roses double album in October and had convinced Warner Brothers to gamble $100,000 on buying radio time to air 15 full-length concerts in large cities and college markets. This was unheard of - record executives were paranoid about people taping live concerts from the radio and selling bootlegs - but it won the Dead a huge legion of new fans.

Pigpen had taken a few months off for health reasons and rejoined the band on December 1 in St. Louis. Keith Godchaux had stepped in to play keyboards and by the time of these shows had become quite integrated musically with the band enabling creative and lengthy jams. So by these shows the band had both Pigpen’s vocal power and swaggering stage presence along with Keith’s heady, increasingly explorative keyboard work.