Live/Dead

To ease the debt run up on Aoxomoxoa and meet their contract, the band decided to record a live album, one closer to how they sounded on stage than their studio experiments. Their soundman, Owsley Stanley, asked the electronics designer Ron Wickersham to build a microphone splitter that fed both the PA and the recorder, and the shows were taped on an Ampex 16-track machine. Kreutzmann said they became the first band to make a live sixteen-track recording. Dark Star and St. Stephen come from 27 February 1969 at the Fillmore West, The Eleven and Turn On Your Lovelight from 26 January at the Avalon Ballroom, and the last three tracks from 2 March at the Fillmore West.

The title plays on the band's name: the word Live is on the front of the sleeve and Dead fills the back. The gatefold artwork is by Bob Thomas, and the original Warner Bros. LP came with an insert carrying the lyrics to Saint Stephen, The Eleven and Dark Star. It was the last album with Tom Constanten, who left in January 1970. Constanten recalled that the label had sunk more than $100,000 into Aoxomoxoa, so a double live album seemed a fair trade for it.

Robert Christgau of the Village Voice wrote that it contains the finest rock improvisation ever recorded, and Lenny Kaye of Rolling Stone said it foreshadowed where rock was likely to be in about five years. Christgau ranked it third on his 1970 critics' ballot. It reached 62 on the US Billboard chart and was certified Gold in 2001. Rolling Stone placed it at 244 on its 2003 list of 500 greatest albums.