Grateful Dead: American Beauty (2020 remaster, limeade coloured vinyl, indie exclusive) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This edition pairs the 2020 remaster with limeade coloured vinyl. American Beauty went double platinum, and Rolling Stone ranks it among the 500 greatest albums of all time.

This edition

• Limeade coloured vinyl
• 2020 remaster
• Indie exclusive
• Stereo mix

About the album

Two studio albums in one year is a lot for any band, and for the Grateful Dead, a band better known for very long evenings on stage, it was practically unheard of. American Beauty followed Workingman's Dead by a matter of months in 1970, and it's the warmer, mostly acoustic sibling: major-key melodies, close harmonies and some of the finest songs Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter ever wrote together.

Everyone gets a moment. Phil Lesh sings his own "Box of Rain," Bob Weir brings "Sugar Magnolia," and Pigpen contributes "Operator." David Grisman's mandolin lifts "Friend of the Devil" and "Ripple," Garcia plays pedal steel where lead guitar might once have been, and "Brokedown Palace," "Attics of My Life" and the road-weary "Truckin'" round out a near-perfect side B. Engineer Stephen Barncard co-produced at Wally Heider's studio, where the band's friends in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Jefferson Airplane were often down the hall.

Fifty-odd years on, these songs have been played by the band and everybody else countless times. A record this green and this mellow is about as close as vinyl gets to a summer lawn.

Also at Kops: more Grateful Dead on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Warner / Rhino (cat# RCD1 1893), a reissue of the 1970 album.