SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 8: Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band

This is the eighth and last major act to perform for the 1975 SNACK benefit concert in San Francisco. In my opinion, it's the most interesting one, because it was a very rare collaboration between Neil Young and Bob Dylan, with three members of the Band assisting for good measure.

It's not entirely clear how this collaboration came about. Only Neil Young was billed as the final act for the concert. Promoter Bill Graham later said that Young and the Doobie Brothers were the biggest draws. Bob Dylan seemed to a last minute addition because this group probably didn't practice much. I'm guessing the Band members joined due to their connection with Dylan. They'd never played with Young before, as far as I know, but they'd been Dylan's most frequent backing back from 1966 all the way until a big tour in 1974. Only three members of the Band were there though: Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson. That meant Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel were missing. But the key thing was that Helm was there, because he was the lead vocalist on most of the songs by the Band. And indeed he sang lead on a couple of the songs here.

According to Rolling Stone Magazine's account of the concert, Dylan wasn't expected by the crowd whatsoever. When he showed up on stage, very few people recognized him until Bill Graham introduced the band members. Then a huge roar went up, naturally, since he was arguably the biggest name of all the acts in the concert.

But what's curious is that one normally would have expected Dylan to dominate the set, but for this concert he seemed content to be just one member of a group. For most of the songs, he just played guitar and/or harmonica, and sang backing vocals some. He only sang lead on two of the nine songs, his "I Want You" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," which was inexplicably renamed "Knockin' on the Dragon's Door" for this concert only. He also sang lead on some of the verses for the traditional song "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," but he forgot how a verse went, so the song finished more as an instrumental.

Young sang lead on three songs: "Are You Ready for the Country," "Lookin' for a Love," and "Helpless." "Lookin' for a Love" wouldn't be released until it appeared on the "Zuma" album towards the end of the year. This was its concert debut. The Band dominated the singing on "Ain't That a Lot of Love," "Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever," and "The Weight." "Helpless" flowed directly into "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (er, "Dragon's Door") in an interesting way.

Unfortunately, there was one very big problem with the audio of this set that I think has prevented it from being much better known: Bob Dylan's microphone was turned off or malfunctioned for the entire set! As a result, he was practically inaudible at times. The only reason he could be heard at all was because he was singing in a particularly shouty style (perhaps because he noticed the microphone problem?) and his voice was picked up somewhat by some of the other nearby microphones.

Luckily, in this day and age there are things that can be done to fix this. Using the UVR5 audio editing program, I did my best to boost Dylan's voice up to normal levels as much as possible. However, in some cases there wasn't enough there to do any boosting. For "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (sorry, "Dragon's"), and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," I was able to get by with just boosting. It doesn't always sound great, but it's way better than previous versions. 

However, I had a lot more trouble with "I Want You." His voice was nearly totally gone for the first verse. So I found a soundboard of him singing the song from 1976 and pasted his vocals in for that part. But for the bridge and the second and third verses, I was able to get by with just boosting the existing vocals. The choruses were also a problem. Rick Danko sang backing vocals, and that was picked up very loudly, totally drowning out Dylan. So again I used that 1976 version and pasted in Dylan singing on the choruses, trying to match it with Danko's timing. I think the end result more or less works, but you can tell the difference in style between the 1976 parts, where he was singing the song normally, and the parts from this concert, where he was much more shouty. 

So that's why the three songs with Dylan lead vocals all have "[Edit]" in their titles. With "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," the last verse didn't have a chorus following it due to Dylan forgetting the words, so I pasted in the chorus from earlier in the song.

I'm afraid there are probably other songs where Dylan sang backing harmonies that are now totally lost due to the microphone problem. In such cases, his quiet voice would have been totally drowned out by whomever happened to be singing lead. Oh well.

It's too bad that Dylan and Young in particular didn't collaborate more, but at least we have this. 

This album is 36 minutes long.

73 talk by Bill Graham (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
74 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
75 Ain't That a Lot of Love (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
76 talk (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
77 Lookin' for a Love (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
78 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
79 I Want You [Edit] (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
80 The Weight (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
81 Helpless (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
82 Knockin' on the Dragon's Door [Knockin' on Heaven's Door] [Edit] (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
83 Will the Circle Be Unbroken [Edit] (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209136/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197508NilYungBbDylnthBnd_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/msdWqABs

For this set, due to the big names involved, I found some more photos from this exact concert, including a couple of color ones. But the one I liked the best was a black and white one. So again I colorized it with the Palette program. Then I used the color ones as a guide to get the colors of the clothes right.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 7: Joan Baez

The seventh major act to perform at the 1975 SNACK benefit concert was folk singer Joan Baez.

Between the previous Jefferson Starship set and Joan Baez's set, famous actor Marlon Brando gave a speech about the importance of education to the vast stadium audience that went over very well.

Rolling Stone Magazine pointed out that Baez was given a difficult task of following that speech with her mellow solo acoustic folk music. But that's what she did, and the audience seemed to enjoy it.

Baez played some of the best songs from her career up until that point. Note though that one of her best known songs and biggest hits, "Diamonds and Rust," was released as a single in April 1975, a few weeks after this concert. So she didn't play that one.

This album is 31 minutes long.

60 talk by Bill Graham (Joan Baez)
61 I Shall Be Released (Joan Baez)
62 talk (Joan Baez)
63 Help Me Make It through the Night (Joan Baez)
64 We Want Our Freedom Now (Joan Baez)
65 Joe Hill (Joan Baez)
66 talk (Joan Baez)
67 All My Trials (Joan Baez)
68 talk (Joan Baez)
69 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Joan Baez)
70 A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Joan Baez)
71 talk (Joan Baez)
72 Amazing Grace (Joan Baez)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209135/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197507JanBez_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/owSkqqK8

The cover is another case of an exact photo from this concert. In this case, I actually found a decent color one, but I liked this black and white one more. So I had it colorized using the Palette program. But I also looked at that other actual color photo to make sure I got the colors of her clothes and guitar just right.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 6: Jefferson Starship

The sixth major musical act to perform at the 1975 SNACK benefit in San Francisco was Jefferson Starship.

Jefferson Starship was the 1970s version of the 1960s band Jefferson Airplane. At the time of this concert, the band had just released the single "Miracles" earlier in the month. It would go on to reach Number 3 in the US chart, the band's biggest hit by far. However, the song wasn't performed at this concert. That's probably because the song was written by Marty Balin and co-sung with him and Grace Slick. Balin was only a sometimes member of the band at the time, and he wasn't at this concert.

The album "Miracles" was on, "Red Octopus," wouldn't be released until July. It would go on to be a huge seller, reaching Number One in the US album chart. The band played some songs from it, like "Fast Buck Freddie" and "Play on Love," that would have been brand new to the audience.

There was some drama going on behind the stage prior to this set taking place. The band's bassist Peter Sears got stuck in traffic trying to get to the concert, and the band felt they couldn't go on stage without him. The audience grew restless as everyone waited for Sears to show up. Promoter Bill Graham was getting frantic. He was going to have Joan Baez go on stage instead (and have Jefferson Starship take her time slot later), but at literally the last minute, Sears showed up and ran to the stage, allowing the band to go on after all.

By the way, I don't think I've mentioned this, but for all the sets, the lead vocals were too low. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments.

This album is 39 minutes long.

47 Ride the Tiger (Jefferson Starship)
48 talk (Jefferson Starship)
49 Fast Buck Freddie (Jefferson Starship)
50 talk (Jefferson Starship)
51 Get Fiddler (Jefferson Starship)
52 talk (Jefferson Starship)
53 Play on Love (Jefferson Starship)
54 I Want to See Another World (Jefferson Starship)
55 Sweeter than Honey (Jefferson Starship)
56 talk (Jefferson Starship)
57 Somebody to Love (Jefferson Starship)
58 talk (Jefferson Starship)
59 Volunteers (Jefferson Starship)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209134/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197506JffrsonStrship_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/D9Td3SpW

Yet again, I could only find one photo of this act performing at this exact concert, so I used it. But it was another black and white one, so I colorized it with the help of the Palette program. The photo only should Paul Kantner on guitar and Grace Slick on vocals. I had to guess on the colors for Kantner (and I stuck with the colors chosen by the Palette program), but I read in a review of the concert that Slick wore all black.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 5: The Doobie Brothers

The fifth major musical act at the 1975 SNACK benefit in San Francisco was the Doobie Brothers.

I actually posted this set already, in June 2023. Unfortunately, it was later taken down to a copyright violation issue. So I'm going to roll the dice and try again here. Grab it fast!

Here's what I wrote when I posted it last time, with some minor changes.

This is a concert that seems to have slipped under the radar. But hopefully this post will help change that. I previously posted a Doobie Brothers concert from 1973. I said I wanted a concert of the band from the time when Tom Johnston was still the main lead vocalist, because he was replaced by Michael McDonald in 1975 (and then kicked out of the band in 1977). I said I had found what appeared to be the best bootleg from that era.

But then I came across this one. It's even better, because it's from two years later, which means more classic songs were included, especially their Number One hit "Black Water." I think this bootleg has gone under the radar because it's part of the SNACK benefit concert, which had lots of other big name artists, like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Santana, Jefferson Starship, and the Grateful Dead. 

Note that when I posted this, I included two bonus tracks from a different 1975 concert. Perhaps the copyright issue was with those tracks, since I'm pretty sure this entire show remains officially unreleased. We shall see. This version doesn't include those bonus tracks.

This album is 33 minutes long.

34 talk (Doobie Brothers)
35 Jesus Is Just Alright (Doobie Brothers)
36 talk (Doobie Brothers)
37 Neil's Fandango (Doobie Brothers)
38 talk (Doobie Brothers)
39 Take Me in Your Arms [Rock Me a Little While] (Doobie Brothers)
40 talk (Doobie Brothers)
41 Black Water (Doobie Brothers)
42 talk (Doobie Brothers)
43 I Been Workin' on You (Doobie Brothers)
44 Long Train Runnin' (Doobie Brothers)
45 talk (Doobie Brothers)
46 China Grove (Doobie Brothers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209144/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197505DobiBrthrs_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BnMqAkv9

The photo I used for the cover does not come from this exact concert. However, I picked one that looks like it could have, with the same daytime appearance, complete with tarp and scaffolding in the background. This one is actually from a concert at the Oakland Coliseum June 29, 1975. It only shows one person, who I believe is lead guitarist Jeff Baxter, a member of the band at the time. The photo was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Palette program.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 4: Santana

The fourth major musical act at the 1975 SNACK benefit in San Francisco was Santana.

There's not much to say about this set. Santana did their usual Latin soul music thing with lots of tasty lead guitar from Carlos Santana. Most of the songs were better known songs from earlier albums, with the exception of one new one, "Let the Children Play."

During their set, a large group of people tried to scale a 70-foot high wall in the stadium in order to get in free, but they were foiled by the stadium security forces.

After the set, there were speeches by baseball hero Willie Mays and football hero Gene Washington.

This album is 36 minutes long.

25 talk by Bill Graham (Santana)
26 Incident at Neshabur [Instrumental] (Santana)
27 Let the Children Play (Santana)
28 Oye Como Va (Santana)
29 talk (Santana)
30 Toussaint L'Overture [Instrumental] (Santana)
31 talk (Santana)
32 Soul Sacrifice [Instrumental] (Santana)
33 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen (Santana)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209132/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197504Sntna_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/B33UPXBn

Once again, I could only find one photo of Santana from this exact concert, so I used it. Once again, it was in black and white. So I colorized it with the help of the Palette program. I did find a mention that lead guitarist Carlos Santana wore "a knee-length white sweater trimmed in blue, with a photo of guru Sri Chinmoy pinned at his throat," so I made sure the colors reflected that.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 3: Tower of Power

The third major music act to perform at the 1975 SNACK benefit in San Francisco was Tower of Power.

Tower of Power was formed in 1968. The American band focused on soul and funk music with an emphasis on horns. They were a big band at the time of this concert, with ten band members. They had their biggest success in the early 1970s. 

A few months prior to this concert, they changed lead singers, from Lenny Williams to Hubert Tubbs.

This album is 32 minutes long.

16 talk (Tower of Power)
17 Oakland Stroke (Tower of Power)
18 What Is Hip (Tower of Power)
19 talk (Tower of Power)
20 Down to the Nightclub [Bump City] (Tower of Power)
21 talk (Tower of Power)
22 Sparkling in the Sand (Tower of Power)
23 You're the Most [To Say the Least] (Tower of Power)
24 You're Still a Young Man (Tower of Power)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209145/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197503TwerofPowr_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nGGCoa8A

I found only one photo of the band from this exact concert, and I used it here for the cover. However, I had to crop out some of the band members on the left and right because it was a long rectangular photo that I needed to fit into a square space. I also colorized the photo with the help of the Palette program, and then some Photoshop fixing.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 2: The Grateful Dead

The second major act to perform at the 1975 SNACK benefit was the Grateful Dead. 

Note that this was a very unusual concert for the Grateful Dead. That probably explains why the band appeared quite early in the day, to lower expectations. 1975 was a strange year for the band. They went on touring hiatus in October 1974, and only resumed touring on a regular basis in June 1976. In 1975, they just played four concerts, including this one.

Technically, this act was billed as "Jerry Garcia and Friends." But actually, it was every member of the Grateful Dead plus Merl Saunders on organ and Ned Lagin on keyboards. 

What really sets this concert apart for the band though was the set list. For one thing, they were used to playing two hours or longer each concert. But here, they were limited to a 30-minute long set. (They went a little over.) They decided to fill nearly all of that with a completely instrumental performance, except for the encore. Furthermore, their big instrumental section was music that they'd never put on record or performed in public yet. According to media reports, they called the entire thing "Space Age." However, later in 1975 they would release the studio album "Blues for Allah" and most of it was on that album in different forms, so we can assign names to the parts of the instrumental sections.

That was a pretty ballsy move to perform such experimental music, especially in front of a crowd that mostly did not consist of their usual "Deadhead" fan base. The only thing they did to appeal to the masses was the encore, a lively cover of the Chuck Berry standard "Johnny B. Goode," with vocals. This has to be one of the most unique concerts the band ever did. The only times they played versions of this "Blues for Allah" song making up most of their set was in their four 1975 concerts.

This album is 37 minutes long.

Note that the track numbering continues where the numbering for the previous album from this concert left off. All the rest of the albums from the concert follow that same pattern.

08 talk by Bill Graham (Grateful Dead)
09 Blues for Allah [Instrumental Version] (Grateful Dead)
10 Milking the Turkey [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
11 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
12 Milking the Turkey [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
13 Blues for Allah [Reprise] [Instrumental Version] (Grateful Dead)
14 talk (Grateful Dead)
15 Johnny B. Goode (Grateful Dead) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209138/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197502GrteflDed_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/y8zQGFnP

I was ready to post the albums from this concert weeks ago, but I was held up by the cover art. I found photos for six of the eight acts from this exact concert, but all of them were in black and white. So it took me a while to get around to colorizing them with the help of the Palette program. This photo only shows the band's two lead singers, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir. I know I got the colors right for Garcia, because I found a color photo of just him. I preferred this one though. I had to guess the colors for Weir, and stuck pretty closely to what the Palette program chose.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 1: Graham Central Station

It's time for me to post another big rock festival. This one is the SNACK Benefit in San Francisco in 1975. SNACK stood for "Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks." This concert was a charity benefit organized by rock promoter Bill Graham after he found out the San Francisco school district was going to make drastic budget cuts, including eliminating all after school sports and other extracurricular activities. 

Since this is the first of eight albums containing the sets from the SNACK concert, here's where I'll give some background to the concert as a whole. If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia entry about it:

SNACK Benefit Concert - Wikipedia

You can also read an interesting Rolling Stones Magazine article about it here:

Dylan, Brando and Co. Work for Snack (rollingstone.com)

Bill Graham called up famous musicians he knew and convinced them to perform at this concert. He later told the media, "The children will not have musical instruments. There will be no football practices. There will be no cheerleaders. No after-school tutoring. ... We make our living from the youth of San Francisco. This is one way we hope to thank them." The school district was facing a two million dollar shortfall. The concert didn't raise that much money, considerably less than a million dollars. However, the date before the concert, the district announced they had "found" two million dollars in the budget due to an accounting error, eliminating most of the shortage and saving the cuts from happening. I'm sure the district was embarrassed into doing this due to bad publicity, so the concert was successful in its goal.

The concert was held in a huge sports stadium, resulting in an audience of 60,000 people. That made it the largest benefit concert in rock history up until that point. In addition to a bunch of famous music acts, some famous celebrities gave speeches between the music sets, including Willie Mays, Marlon Brando, and Jesse Owens.

Now let me discuss this exact album. The albums in this concert are sorted chronologically by the times the acts went on stage. The American funk band Graham Central Station was the first major act to perform. (Latin jazz pianist Eddie Palmieri actually went on first, but I don't have that set.) In 1974, Graham Central Station released their first two albums. They had a minor hit with the song "Can You Handle It."

The band has only ever released one live album, and that's from way later, a 1992 album by a reunited version of the band. So it's good to get a live recording of the band in the mid-1970's prime. Their commercial peak was actually be 1975, when they had their biggest hit, "Your Love," later in the year.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 The Jam (Graham Central Station)
02 Feel the Need (Graham Central Station)
03 We've Been Waiting (Graham Central Station)
04 Release Yourself (Graham Central Station)
05 Can You Handle It (Graham Central Station)
06 People (Graham Central Station)
07 It Ain't No Fun to Me (Graham Central Station)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209146/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197501GrhmCntrlStaton_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eD4MjAuM

I was able to find photos from this exact concert for the cover art for all the acts except two. One of those two was Graham Central Station. Instead, I found a photo of the band at Munich TV Studios in Munich, Germany, on January 23, 1975. Using Photoshop, I removed the band from their background and put in a background that would match all the other covers from this concert. The end result isn't great, but hopefully it's good enough to get the job done. 

The logo at the top left was taken unchanged from promotional materials for the concert.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.