The Grateful Dead
215 images Created 6 Apr 2015
1978 and The Grateful Dead are in Egypt.
Playing three concerts before a thousand people a night at the Sound and Light Theatre, Giza, at the foot of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, with special guest, the local musician Hamza el Din. In reality the audience, other than a plane-load of Dead Heads, was a bunch bemused Bedouins and their goats. I am here with Max Bell from the NME and Mick Watts from the Melody Maker. My job was to photograph the event for both papers, in monochrome as the UK rock press was still 100% black and white. Our paymasters as usual was the record company, keen to promote the Grateful Deadu 2019s autumn UK concert and European tour. Today the idea of a rock band performing in Egypt holds far less cache than it in1978. It was unquestionably a novel notion when the Grateful Dead sought to begin diplomatic talks between the U.S. Government and Egyptian officials to permit the band to bring their acid trip to Cairo's new Gizah Sound %26 Light Theater. Considering the precarious political state of the world at the time, it is a minor miracle that these shows came off at all.
Playing three concerts before a thousand people a night at the Sound and Light Theatre, Giza, at the foot of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, with special guest, the local musician Hamza el Din. In reality the audience, other than a plane-load of Dead Heads, was a bunch bemused Bedouins and their goats. I am here with Max Bell from the NME and Mick Watts from the Melody Maker. My job was to photograph the event for both papers, in monochrome as the UK rock press was still 100% black and white. Our paymasters as usual was the record company, keen to promote the Grateful Deadu 2019s autumn UK concert and European tour. Today the idea of a rock band performing in Egypt holds far less cache than it in1978. It was unquestionably a novel notion when the Grateful Dead sought to begin diplomatic talks between the U.S. Government and Egyptian officials to permit the band to bring their acid trip to Cairo's new Gizah Sound %26 Light Theater. Considering the precarious political state of the world at the time, it is a minor miracle that these shows came off at all.
