Was Healy just an asshole or what?

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So I'm cranking a show while working as usual (1-29-87) and Healy starts in with his bullshit early, making Bobby sound like Mickey Mouse for a verse in the Bucket opener. We've all heard the stories about Weir allegedly fucking his woman, or him wanting to replace Bobby, thus turning his guitar down to where it's almost inaudible.

Did any of the band or crew members ever confront him, like, kick his ass or anything like that? I've never heard of a sound guy intentionally trying to make his employer sound worse.

I remember hearing an ugly rumor about Healy trading board tapes for blow at some point, but that doesn't really explain him fucking around with Bobby's vocals, etc.

As for confronting Healy, my understanding is that confrontations were usually avoided, or ineffective, in the core GD family. Except for Billy's dick-punching, of course.

I've heard that about Healy and the blow too. And I doubt Parish gave a shit about someone messing with a band member's sound unless it was Jerry. The whole thing with Healy just seems odd. I enjoy Bobby's rhythm playing. Although like someone in the 1983 thread said, switching guitars by then him a "tinny" tone that he still prefers to this day for whatever reason.

He was pleasant when meeting him at some Skynard bar in Jacksonville doing sound for DSO 2007

He got his guitar stolen a few years back. Did they eventually find it?

Healy>Bralove or whoever took over the sound

From Dennis McNally's A Long Strange Trip:

After some early March [1994] shows in Phoenix, the band met and decided to fire Dan Healy. Since Healy had spent at least a couple of years muttering, "When are they gonna fire me?" it did not come as a total surprise. To some band employees, he appeared bored with the band's music, and a good deal of his efforts with the sound system seemed mostly for his own amusement. Healy was irascible and at times terribly difficult. But he was also heart and soul a brother, and to be fired with a phone call from the manager after so many years was a profound statement of the band's emotional cowardice. His departure did little good. His replacement, John Cutler, got more bass to work with from Lesh, and in general went for less radically stereo sound that probably served the audience's needs better, but Cutler's studio orientation and stubborn refusal to sacrifice his hearing led to audience chants of "Turn It Up" (607-608).

Yes, letting someone or several people patch into the board at the '93 UNC shows in Chapel Hill didn't help, as someone put

out a high-quality CD for sale.

  Phil also mentioned the fact that he turned down Sting's volume on the '93 summer tour, and was pissed about that.

That said, he was the best at his job, and the Wall of Sound would have never existed without him.

Healy must have had some sort of non-disparaging clause in his contract or maybe he's just a cool dude who doesn't want to dredge up anything bad from the past. Which is super cool if that's the case. Because if he wrote a book, would sell big time. 

My Healy story took place 4/15/78. We were taping shows for a few years 76-78. Last day of tax season for my concert and taping buddy who's an accountant, so we drove down to William & Mary for the show. Set up and put our tape deck on the soundboard  platform (as we usually did, and were never hassled), but for some reason Healy was in a piss ass mood, probably not happy with the sound (we thought the sound sucked that night and for a long time afterwards, until we actually got to hear the soundboard version) or something, and decided to deliver a roundhouse kick to our deck. Needless to say that was the end of the deck and our taping days too. 

Damn Bob that blows that Healy KO'd your deck. Wouldn't have thought he'd have a God-like complex in 78 but there was probably copious amounts of coke around back then that didn't help matters.

>>> After some early March [1994] shows in Phoenix, the band met and decided to fire Dan Healy. Since Healy had spent at least a couple of years muttering, "When are they gonna fire me?" it did not come as a total surprise. To some band employees, he appeared bored with the band's music, and a good deal of his efforts with the sound system seemed mostly for his own amusement.

It's been a long time since I've read McNally's book and didn't remember that. Sounds about right though. I'll have to poke around and read about some of the other shit he'd pull with the audio. It happened a lot over the course of several years.

I was living in Hong Kong when I received those Chapel Hill tapes in the mail.  My mouth dropped when I heard how clean they sounded.

I scanned through parts of Blair Jackson's Garcia, and didn't find any references to Healy's firing (Jackson's index was no help at all), but there's this from Phil's Searching for the Sound:

"Later [in 1993] we were back playing in stadiums--and embroiled in controversy with our opening act. We had been booking name acts to open for us at the biggest stadium shows. This was tough on the openers, since most of our audience spent their time before our set in the parking lot vending area or partying on their own tailgates. This meant that the opening act was playing to a less than fully attentive crowd, while the people were attempting to find their seats, setting up their taping gear, etc. For Sting, our opening act in '93, this situation was aggravated by the discovery that Dan Healy, our soundman, had been running the PA at 75 percent capacity for the opening act. Dan's rationalization was the he didn't want to risk blowing up the system, but in reality he was making sure that the opener didn't upstage the Grateful Dead on any level. Sting was understandably upset, and I was personally so taken aback at this breach of professional courtesy that I sought him out at breakfast at the hotel restaurant, attempting to assure him that the Grateful Dead would never countenance such actions on the part of an employee, and that we would ensure it never happened again.

"That was only one of the issues we'd all been having with Dan's mixing. Dan, an amateur guitarist, had special problems with Bobby. Bob's guitar would disappear from time to time, and strange electronic effects would be applied to Bob's voice or guitar. If Bob tried to say anything from the stage, Dan would drown his voice in artificial reverb so that nothing said was comprehensible. When this started happening during songs, Jerry and I decided to listen back to the recorded mixes to see what else was going on. We discovered far too many dubious mixing decisions for comfort, so we call a band meeting to discuss the problem. The band met at Mickey's ranch and listened back to some of the mix tapes, and all agreed that something had to be done. We dithered about for a while, admitting to ourselves that we were cowards who abhorred confrontation; no one wanted to be the one to tell Dan he was fired. So, wimps that we are, we had Cameron, our road manager, do the deed" (307-308).

I remember back around '94-'95 there was an Italian company called 'Kiss The Stone' who took advantage of a copyright loophole in that country to market live shows on CD from many bands, including the GD. There were no dates printed on most of the sleeves, but many were from that era, (listed in discogs as: 93-03-24&25; 93-08-21; and 93-06-26 to name a few) and assume they were sbds. They brazenly took out sizeable ads in major international music magazines for their mail order, touting high quality, before the loophole eventually closed. I always wondered if Healey had anything to do with any of those falling into their hands, or if the tapers he let patch in, cashed in (If they were real aud tapes, then sorry, Dan).

Screw Sting. Healy should have distorted Sting's voice during Roxanne to really mess with him. 

 

Love Dan Healy especially when fucking with Bob's vocals,, always exactly perfect

> Healy should have distorted Sting's voice during Roxanne

Falsetto on helium? Too funny.

I can understand Weir being upset, although I kind of liked the weird sound effects. They seemed to make some of the songs more interesting/trippy.

I always assumed Weir was in on the gag, Scott, and yeah, while tripping, those effects were highly amusing.

Whatever happened to Never Trust a Prankster?

((((Grateful Wimps))))

I thought the effects were cool and updated their sound.

 

Healy interview from 2018

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJYOYlid6pg

Thanks for the link.  Great interview.

I can picture Healys face as a former friend luged an lsd overdo throw up over the soundboard gate --- Healy was so pissed off he was screaming, throwing whatever he could find....  We were young & eventually moved on,,,,(another story).. 

Healy knew how to run that board....he was also an addicted jealous asshole.    

>>>> I can understand Weir being upset, although I kind of liked the weird sound effects. They seemed to make some of the songs more interesting/trippy.

He liked to use the echo during The Other One and that was pretty cool, but I recall some other TOOs where he made Bobby sound like a chipmunk. Turning Weir's guitar down for years is inexcusable though. He clearly had some sort of vendetta against him.

Okay, a sound engineer does not make decisions on what the artist wants.  He provides the best quality reproduction of what the artist.  What Healy did was unprofessional and he should have been fired the second time he did it if Bob didn't want it.  Period.

He must be an east coast guy

 >>>>>Was Healy just an asshole or what?

 

No - he was also an excellent sound guy for a number of years.

It wouldn't have been the same without Dan. 

 

 

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I have some more  "Scientific" insight regarding how some SBD recordings made it to the "Italian - Label" bootleggers,  but won't share it here.  The internet buully children will just say stupid things.

Let's just say it wasn't quite his fault.