Grateful Dead: Skeletons From the Closet - The Best of Grateful Dead [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This EU reissue brings back the band's best-selling album, certified four times platinum by the RIAA. Its eleven tracks gather the Warner years, from the 1967 debut through Aoxomoxoa, Workingman's Dead, American Beauty and Europe '72.

This edition

• Pressed in the EU

About the album

By the time this arrived in February 1974, the Grateful Dead had already fulfilled their Warner Bros. contract and moved on, putting out Wake of the Flood on their own Grateful Dead Records. Warner rounded up the best of its back catalogue anyway, and the timing worked out rather well for everybody: it became the record that introduced countless listeners to the band.

It's a tidy tour of the classic period. "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)" comes from the 1967 debut, "Rosemary" and "St. Stephen" from Aoxomoxoa, and "Uncle John's Band" and "Casey Jones" from Workingman's Dead. American Beauty supplies "Truckin'," "Sugar Magnolia" and "Friend Of The Devil," Bob Weir's Ace lends "Mexicali Blues," an edited "Turn On Your Love Light" stands in for the epic live jams, and a live "One More Saturday Night" from Europe '72 brings the house down. Close harmonies, Jerry Garcia's lyrical guitar and Robert Hunter's storytelling run right through it.

John Van Hamersveld painted the cover without any input from the band: Botticelli's Venus holding a rose, a figure in sunglasses and a skeleton spinning a gold record on one finger. As forecasts go, that last bit turned out to be spot on.

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Tracklist

Listen

On Warner Records (cat# R1 2764), a reissue of the 1974 compilation.