Grateful Dead—Winterland Arena, San Francisco, CA, December 23, 1970
w/Hot Tuna and The New Riders of the Purple Sage
54 years ago this month, the Dead teamed up with Hot Tuna and the New Riders for a benefit for a local Montessori school and the Bear. While a good number of people must have recognized that Bear was famed chemist and soundman Owsley Stanley, even the Grateful Dead must have had some trepidation about overtly publicizing a benefit performance for a recently rearrested LSD chemist (even if he was ostensibly retired from the psychoactive fabrication trade).
At the end of the performance, Garcia says that Hot Tuna will be coming out to do a set, and thanks everyone for “…helping us to bail out the Bear.” It’s a miracle the tape survived since Owsley was probably in the clink at the time the whole thing was thrown together. The recording sounds terrific and stands as a superb example of how well the Dead executed even the most basic material on a good night in late 1970.
And as it happened, it didn't work, and Bear wasn't freed.