American Beauty (album) - History

History

The band began recording American Beauty only a few months after the release of Workingman's Dead, and without their regular sound crew, which was out on the road as part of the Medicine Ball Caravan tour (which the Dead were originally scheduled to join), and this led to staff engineer Stephen Barncard replacing Bob Matthews as producer—"a move that irks Matthews to this day." Barncard mused that "I had heard bad stories about engineers' interactions with the Dead but what I found were a bunch of hardworking guys."

Both Workingman's Dead and American Beauty were innovative at the time for their fusion of bluegrass, rock and roll, folk and, especially, country music. Compared to Workingman's Dead, American Beauty had even less lead guitar work from Jerry Garcia, who instead filled the void with pedal steel guitar passages on both albums. It was during the recording of this album that Garcia would first collaborate with mandolinist David Grisman. "I just bumped into Jerry at a baseball game in Fairfax, and he said, 'Hey, you wanna play on this record we're doing?'" commented Grisman. Phil Lesh, in his autobiography, commented "the magnetism of the scene at Wally Heider's recording studio made it a lot easier for me to deal with Dad's loss and my new responsibilities. Some of the best musicians around were hanging there during that period; with Paul Kantner and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, the Dead, Santana, Crosby, Nash, and Neil Young working there, the studio became jammer heaven. Thank the Lord for music; it's a healing force beyond words to describe."

"Truckin'" and "Ripple" were released as singles, and the songs "Box of Rain", "Sugar Magnolia", and "Friend of the Devil" also received radio play. In his book on Garcia, Blair Jackson noted that "if you liked rock'n'roll in 1970 but didn't like the Dead, you were out of luck, because they were inescapable that summer and fall." American Beauty peaked at No. 30 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart (North America), while the single, "Truckin'", peaked at No. 64 on the Pop Singles chart and achieved considerable FM rock radio airplay. It is the final album with Mickey Hart until his return to the band four years later in 1975.