The Grateful Dead's ten-year dream climaxed on September 16th, when the band played its third and final concert under a full moon at the foot of the Great Pyramid. Despite some problems -- musically and otherwise -- neither the Dead nor Cairo is likely to forget the historic first rock shows at the Pyramid.

Though the Egyptian concerts were more or less a personal whim on the part of the band, they became the basis for a serious pilgrimage for hard-core Deadheads. A chartered DC-7 from California touched down in New York to pick up East Coast Deadheads, and then continued to Cairo. The scene on board the plane resembled Haight-Ashbury, circa 1967. Ken Kesey was there, along with his brother Chuck, their families, assorted Pranksters, Owsley, Mountain Girl -- all familiar faces from psychedelia -- and younger Deadheads.

Amazingly, the 110 Deadheads sailed through customs at the Cairo airport without a single bag bring searched.

The Dead had already shipped in twenty-five tons of equipment for sound, lighting, filming and recording the concerts for a live album and movie. The venture cost the band $500,000, and proceeds from the concerts (tickets cost from $1.50 to $7.50) were donated to the Egyptian Department 0f Antiquities and to the Faith and Hope Society, a home for the handicapped.

The entourage teemed to hit Egypt just at the right time. "The Camp David conference was peaking at the time we were playing," Weir commented after returning to America. "A lot of progress was being made, so the tow was kind of high. We were Americans playing American music, so we were apt to be pretty readily accepted to begin with. Also, the Arab kids had just concluded Ramadan [a month-long period of fasting]. Coming out of that there's a lot of feasting and carrying on, and we got there just at the end of it."

The entourage occupied the first day in the 110-degree desert heat by climbing the pyramids: basketball star Bill Walton, who accompanied the Dead, was filmed by Ken Kesey climbing inside the Great Pyramid. The hotel's bars, restaurants and gardens became filled with American and British hippies, and Dead music poured out of cassette machines everywhere. Jerry Garcia hovered around the hotel in a good mood. "This should be strange enough," he said on his way over to the Great Pyramid to oversee the miking of the 5000-year-old tomb of Pharaoh Cheops, which was used as an echo chamber for the Dead's shows.

The band's first performance, September 14th at the Sound and Light Amphitheater, was less than spectacular musically. Before about 2000 persons -- Deadheads, young Americans and Britons living in Egypt, Western travelers passing through and a mixed crowd of Egyptians -- the Dead came onstage after an opening set by Hamza El-Din, a Nubian oud player. Garcia tuned up for fifteen minutes and then the band eased into "Eyes 0f the World." That suddenly segued into Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." Bob Weir did a set of ill-received country songs, and the show ended with "Round and Round" and no encore.

"Our music is based on a number of presuppositions that we had to somehow get across to these folks," said Weir. "So we had to structure our sets in an illustrated manner. We did a streamlined version of what we normally do, starting out with some regular rock & roll that those kids might have heard on the radio and then backing off the tempo so that we're doing something slow enough so that they could ease into it."

Before the second concert, Ken Kesey raced up the Great Pyramid to plant a Dead banner as the top. Again, Weir performed country songs, like "Mama Tried." The Merry Pranksters undertook a long jam of electronic noise, and the show ended with "Terrapin Station" and "Sugar Magnolia."

The Dead's third night was their best. Playing during a lunar eclipse, the band opened the first set with "Bertha" and closed with "Deal." But the audience didn't really come alive until after the intermission, when the Dead's new reggae song, "Shake Street Shuffle," woke everyone up. Then, in what Bob Weir called an act of "questionable taste," Kesey and his Pranksters set off rockets and started taunting the Egyptians in the crowd with chants of "Bakshish, bakshish," a phrase used by Egyptian beggars, which, loosely translated, means, "Tip me, rich Yankee." The night ended with the Dead's only encore of the three concerts, "One More Saturday Night."

"I think I kind of left my little reality at that point," Weir said about playing during the eclipse. "It was so surreal that I wouldn't even try to describe what went through my mind."

Bill Graham treated the whole crew to dinner at the nearby Sahara City Restaurant to celebrate Kesey's birthday, and then produced a surprise: the promoter had rented fifty camels and horses for the entourage's return to the hotel.

Graham, back in the States, was ecstatic. "You know, I've never danced in public before. I was never relaxed in front of a crowd. But the third night was experiences of my one of the great life -- dancing to "Sugar Magnolia" in front of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. In my old age, if I remember major events in my life, this will be one of them."

Weir was equally happy with the excursion: "Everybody feels somehow different from the experience. I don't know how to explain it. But I'd love to do it on a regular basis."

[From Issue 277 — November 2, 1978]