Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection
Brian Anderson. St. Martin’s, $32 (384p) ISBN 978-1-250-31967-8
In this uneven debut, music journalist Anderson traces the evolution of the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound, the mammoth PA system the band toured with in the 1970s. Spearheaded by audio engineer and LSD manufacturer Owsley “Bear” Stanley, the band’s search for the “perfect sound” culminated in 1974 with a hulking system that stood 48 feet wide, weighed upwards of 75 tons, and emitted a sound that was “like confronting the sublime.” The system pioneered such innovations as placing speakers behind the band, which allowed them to hear what the audience heard, rather than rely on monitors controlled by sound mixers, and putting control knobs on amps that let band members adjust their individual mixes, which allowed them to connect with the audience in unprecedented ways and laid the foundation for noise-canceling headphones and hearing aids. Other Wall of Sound innovations set precedents for reconfiguring studios and performance spaces for rock music’s acoustic particularities. Though Anderson is a lively storyteller, his insightful points about the Wall of Sound’s legacy sometimes get lost in a sea of granular details about audio technology and meetings between engineers, and his attempts to use the system as a lens on broader cultural shifts can feel like a stretch. It’s a mixed bag. (June)
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Reviewed on: 02/18/2025
Genre: Nonfiction