Bob Weir’s proposed Old Globe musical followed his arrest at final San Diego Grateful Dead show
The death Saturday of Grateful Dead singer, guitarist and co-founder Bob Weir came 36 years after the fabled San Francisco band performed its final San Diego concert in 1993 and 27 years after he unveiled plans to mount a musical at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater.
Weir succumbed to what his family described as “underlying lung issues” after being treated for cancer last year. He was 78. His death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member of the Dead, the storied San Francisco group that debuted in 1965 and disbanded in 1995 following the death of guitarist-singer Jerry Garcia.
The Dead’s final San Diego concert took place in 1993 at the San Diego Sports Arena and was their first concert at the venue, now known as Pechanga Arena San Diego, since a 1980 Sports Arena show here.
It was just after that 1980 concert had concluded that Weir, drummer Mickey Hart and road manager Daniel Rifkin were all arrested after objecting to what they contended was the unnecessarily rough arrest of a young San Diego man suspected of engaging in a backstage drug transaction.
“They were busy working over this kid,” Weir said in a 1980 San Diego Union interview a few days after his arrest. “I thought they were going to kill him . . . I got about three words out of my mouth before a cop came up from behind and put a choke hold on me. I blacked out.”
Weir was arrested on suspicion of assault on a police officer, a charge he vehemently denied. “I offered no resistance other than to fight for air,” he said in the 1980 Union interview.
The Dead returned to San Diego in 1982 to perform at Golden Hall and in 1985 to perform at Southwestern College’s Devore Stadium in Chula Vista, where the Jerry Garcia Band also played in 1992. But the 13 years gap from 1980 to 1993 between the Dead’s San Diego Sports Arena concerts led some fans here to erroneously conclude that the band had vowed not to play here again as a result of animus over the 1980 Sports Arena incident.
Hart, who joined the Dead in 1967, strongly disputed that contention in a 2018 Union-Tribune interview, saying: “We love it down there in San Diego. We always have.”
Even after he, Weir and Rifkin were arrested backstage at the San Diego Sports Arena in 1980?
“Um, well,” Hart replied, coughing for dramatic effect, “we won’t go into what happened that night. We can’t go there, but I do remember it!”
Members of the Dead would sometimes stay at the Balboa Park-area home of Bill Walton, the San Diego-born basketball legend who estimated he had attended more than 850 concerts by the band. Walton’s home, which looked like a Grateful Dead shrine-cum museum, included one of Hart’s drum sets mounted on a wall.
Weir performed multiple times in San Diego with the post-Dead bands The Other Ones, The Dead, Furthur and Dead & Company. His final San Diego performance was in 2022 at Humphreys Concerts by The Bay with the Wolf Brothers. He was in very good spirits when the Grateful Dead was honored at the Grammy Awards’ all-star MusiCares concert in Los Angeles last January.
Alas, Weir’s proposed musical at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre never came to pass. He unveiled his plans for it in a 1999 Union-Tribune interview and spoke excitedly about how the musical — inspired by pioneering African-American baseball legend Satchel Paige — would team him with roots-music great Taj Mahal and jazz saxophone dynamo David Murray.
“Satchel was an amazing American who truly belonged in the American pantheon with Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Thomas Jefferson,” Weir said. “There aren’t enough black folks in that pantheon, and there should be.
“In our writing, David, Taj and I are trying to (musically) quote a lot of the old greats — Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan. We’ve steeped ourselves in those traditions for a couple of years, and wrote a bunch of music in those traditions.
“In that era, a lot of ballplayers went to clubs to hear music at night, and a lot of musicians went to the ballpark during the day. There was a really well-developed culture. I got giddy when I first realized it would make a great musical.”
Indeed, it would have. Sadly, Weir, Mahal and Murray never got around to finishing their Paige-inspired musical.
Their failure to do so had absolutely nothing to do with Weir’s 1980 arrest at the San Diego Sports Arena, which is documented here in full in this 1993 Union-Tribune article:
Avoidance of San Diego a myth
By George Varga, December 12, 1993 | San Diego Union-Tribune
For the generations-spanning fans of the Grateful Dead, the mythology surrounding the legendary San Francisco rock band is almost as strong as its music.
These myths, regarded as virtually indisputable facts among many of the fans commonly referred to as Deadheads, are too numerous to list here. But they include the contention that the Dead has never performed a concert that was less than memorable.
For local fans one of the biggest myths is that the Dead, which performs sold-out concerts tonight and tomorrow at the Sports Arena, have deliberately avoided playing in San Diego since July 1, 1980.
It was then, only moments after the six-man band had completed its Sports Arena show here before a crowd of 6,100, that singer-guitarist Bob Weir, drummer Mickey Hart and road manager Daniel Rifkin were arrested backstage.
All three had voiced objections to what they charged was the unnecessarily rough arrest of a young San Diego man suspected of engaging in a backstage drug transaction with a woman who worked for the concert’s promoter. According to a police spokesman at the time, the young man in question was shouting obscenities “and other such statements likely to cause a riot.”
Yet, had the arrest occurred just five minutes earlier, Weir, Hart and Rifkin most likely would not have become involved.
“What happened was, the police were making the arrest (of the couple) quite vigorously at the exact moment the band was walking from the stage to their dressing rooms,” a backstage observer, who requested anonymity, recalled recently.
“Weir made a comment, which a police officer took offense to, that he thought they were putting too much enthusiasm into the act.”
Hart and Rifkin had already been arrested when Weir made his comment to police, according to an interview with Weir published in The San Diego Union two days after the concert.
“They were busy working over this kid,” Weir said at the time. “I thought they were going to kill him . . . I got about three words out of my mouth before a cop came up from behind and put a choke hold on me. I blacked out.”
Weir was arrested on suspicion of assault on a police officer, a charge he vehemently denied. “I offered no resistance other than to fight for air,” he said in the 1980 Union interview.
Hart was arrested for allegedly inciting a riot, disturbing the peace and interfering with a police officer. Rifkin was arrested for allegedly trying to strike a police officer. Weir, Hart and Rifkin quickly posted bail and were released. Weir subsequently pleaded no contest and was fined $150, while no charges were filed against Hart. Records do not indicate what happened to Rifkin, but a Dead spokesman indicated charges against him had also been dropped.
The Dead returned to San Diego for shows at Golden Hall in early 1982 and at Southwestern College’s Devore Stadium in Chula Vista in late 1985. Regardless, the myth persists among some fans that the band vowed not to play here again as a result of the 1980 Sports Arena incident.
“Golden Hall in ’82? No way, man. The Dead haven’t played (in) San Diego since the bust at the arena in 1980,” insisted a local Deadhead, who calls himself Mr. Greenleaf. “The ’85 show doesn’t count because it was in Chula Vista, which is outside (San Diego) city limits.”
The only grain of truth to the myth is that the Dead have not performed at the Sports Arena since 1980. But that is purely coincidental, according to Dennis McNally, the band’s longtime spokesman and publicist.
“The scheduling of rock concerts is an arcane process due largely to availability (of venues),” McNally said, speaking from his Bay Area office. “Deadheads are constantly making the assumption the band hates a place because they never play there. It just works out that way . . . .
“We have wanted to go back to Orlando (Florida), where we played three years ago, and haven’t — despite our best efforts — because the Orlando Nets (basketball team) play in the same hall and we need it for three days. We’re spending $10,000 to $15,000 on hotels for the band and crew, and you can’t have open (nonconcert) days.
“That’s a long way of saying we haven’t played in San Diego because it hasn’t worked out. . . . What happened at the Sports Arena was 13 years ago. I absolutely anticipate no problems of any sort (this time), and I’m sure the San Diego Police Department feels the same.”