Editing American Beauty (album) (section)

==Recording==
''American Beauty'' was the result of a prolific period of the songwriting partnership of [[Jerry Garcia]] and [[Robert Hunter (lyricist)|Robert Hunter]]&nbsp;– one that yielded two studio albums in one year for the Grateful Dead. This was the only time the band would return to the studio so quickly. However, unlike the previous effort, where almost all the songs were written solely by the pair, the album saw more input from the rest of the band. Included are [[Phil Lesh|Phil Lesh's]] "[[Box of Rain]]" and [[Bob Weir|Bob Weir's]] "[[Sugar Magnolia]]", both written with Hunter, and "Operator", [[Ron McKernan|Ron "Pigpen" McKernan's]] only singing-songwriting effort on a Grateful Dead studio album.

The album was produced after the discovery that the band's manager, Lenny Hart (father of drummer [[Mickey Hart]]), had renewed their contract with Warner Brothers Records without their knowledge, and then skipped town with a sizable chunk of the band's wealth.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lesh |first=Phil |date=2005 |title=Searching for the Sound |publisher=Little, Brown & Co., New York, NY. Chapter 11 |isbn=978-0-316-00998-0 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/searchingforsoun00lesh }}</ref> In between near-constant touring and gigging, recording began only a few months after the release of ''Workingman's Dead''{{spaced ndash}}without their regular sound crew, who were out on the road as part of the Medicine Ball Caravan tour (which the Dead were originally scheduled to join). Instead, studio staff engineer [[Stephen Barncard]] replaced Bob Matthews as producer{{spaced ndash}}"a move that irks Matthews to this day" (Matthews had co-produced the band's two previous albums<ref>{{cite book |last=Trager|first=Oliver |date=1997 |title=The American Book of the Dead|publisher=Simon and Schuster, New York, NY. }}</ref>). Barncard also mused "I had heard bad stories about engineers' interactions with the Dead but what I found were a bunch of hardworking guys".<ref>{{cite book |last=Jackson |first=Blair |date=1999 |title=Garcia: An American Life |publisher=Penguin Books, New York, NY. p. 196}}</ref>

Both ''Workingman's Dead'' and ''American Beauty'' were innovative at the time for their fusion of [[bluegrass music|bluegrass]], [[rock and roll]], [[American folk music|folk]], and, especially, [[country music|country]] music. Lyricist Hunter commented "We went back into American folk tradition but, being experimenters, nothing would do but that we try to reinvent ''that''."<ref name=anthem2>{{cite AV media|title=Classic Albums&nbsp;– ''The Grateful Dead: Anthem to Beauty'' |date=1999 | medium=DVD | publisher=Rhino/WEA}}</ref> Compared to ''Workingman's Dead'', ''American Beauty'' had even less lead guitar work from [[Jerry Garcia]], who increasingly filled the void with [[pedal steel guitar]]. It was also during the recording of this album that Garcia first collaborated with [[mandolin]]ist [[David Grisman]], a friend who had recently relocated to California following the dissolution of [[Earth Opera]]. "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, whose playing is heard on "[[Friend of the Devil]]" and especially "[[Ripple (song)|Ripple]]".<ref name=multiple>{{cite book |last=Jackson |first=Blair |date=1999 |title=Garcia: An American Life |publisher=Penguin Books, New York, NY. p. 202}}</ref> [[Howard Wales]], another musician from outside of the band, added keyboards to three songs. Drummer [[Bill Kreutzmann]] commented, "Wales came to us through Jerry, who played with him in side projects. [He] had done session work with [[James Brown]] and [[the Four Tops]] before we brought him in for ''American Beauty''."<ref>{{cite book |last=Kreutzmann |first=Bill |date=2015 |title=Deal |publisher=St. Martin's Press, New York. Chapter 10 |isbn=978-1-250-03380-2}}</ref> [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] student [[Ned Lagin]], a jazz pianist who had corresponded with the band after attending their 1969 New Year's Eve concert at the Boston Tea Party, also contributed piano to "Candyman".<ref>Gans, David (February 3, 2001). [http://www.gdhour.com/transcripts/lagin.010203.html "Ned Lagin Interview"], ''The Grateful Dead Hour''. Retrieved January 1, 2017.</ref> Lagin subsequently [[guest appearance|sat in]] with the band on occasion from 1970 to 1975.

Phil Lesh, in his autobiography ''Searching for the Sound'', commented "the magnetism of the scene at [[Wally Heider]]'s recording studio made it a lot easier for me to deal with [the loss of my father] 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, [[Carlos Santana|Santana]], [[David Crosby|Crosby]], [[Graham Nash|Nash]], and [[Neil Young]] working there, the studio became [[jam band|jammer]] heaven. Thank the Lord for music; it's a healing force beyond words to describe."<ref>''Phil Lesh: Searching for the Sound'' by Phil Lesh,  Little, Brown and Company, 2005, p. 190.</ref>{{Quote box|width=25em|bgcolor=#A9E5E1|quote="It was a surprise to us{{spaced ndash}}as it was to everybody else: this machine-eating, monster-psychedelic band is suddenly putting out sweet, listenable material"|source=—Robert Hunter<ref name=anthem2/>}}

Though both albums focused on [[Americana (music)|Americana songcraft]], ''Workingman's Dead'' mixed the grittier [[Bakersfield sound]] with the band's psychedelic roots, whereas the mostly-acoustic ''American Beauty'' focused more on major-key melodies and folk harmonies, evincing the influence of [[Bob Dylan|Dylan]] and studio neighbors/friends [[Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young|Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young]]. Kreutzmann later explained, "The singers in our band really learned a lot about harmonizing [from] Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, who had just released their seminal album '' [[Déjà Vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album)|Déjà Vu]]''. Jerry played pedal steel... on that record. [[Stephen Stills]] lived at Mickey's ranch... and [[David Crosby]] enjoyed partying as much as we did. So our circles overlapped."<ref>{{cite book |last=Kreutzmann |first=Bill |date=2015 |title=Deal |publisher=St. Martin's Press, New York. Chapter 9 |isbn=978-1-250-03380-2}}</ref>

Crosby has demurred on this point: "Sometimes they have given us credit for teaching them how to sing and that's not true. They knew how to sing; they had their own style and they had the most important quality of it down already, which is tale-telling". However, he has also stated "The idea is{{spaced ndash}}when you hang out with other musicians{{spaced ndash}}to sort of cross-pollinate your idea streams, and that naturally happened between us on a level that was very rare. We would listen to what they were doing with time signatures and with breaking the rules, and it appealed to us a lot."<ref name=anthem2/>