Turk Pipkin: 1970 is when I first started hearing the Dead. I was a high school student in West Texas and I would come to Austin to drink like all high schoolers did. I used to go to the only place that served minors: the Pink Lizard, a fabulous, fantastic bar on the Drag about a block from the Hole in the Wall. It was run by a guy named Eddie Burke, who'd call on me to bartend even though I was a teenager. There was lots of trippy music on the jukebox and he always played "Truckin'." That song was ubiquitous in the early Seventies and it put the Dead on the map.

Carl Huff: Everybody in Austin was waiting for the Dead. It was a must-go kinda concert. [Municipal Auditorium] was the biggest venue, and it was filled with the hardcore tie-dye crowd and the traveling Deadhead crews. New Riders of the Purple Sage opened with Garcia on pedal steel. The guy doesn't get enough credit for his phenomenal pedal steel playing. With both bands, he played probably four or five hours. It was the first time I'd gone to a Dead show, and I didn't know what to expect, but it prepared me for every other Grateful Dead show I ever saw: lots of acid, and so long I wasn't sure it was ever going to end.

Eddie Wilson: I'd been out there in Marin [County, Calif.,] trying to stir up some business for the Armadillo. First time I saw Jerry Garcia was at this little club that they jammed in. He was in the kitchen and somebody that I knew told me to go on back. We had the same kind of granny glasses, the same denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the same Levis, the same hair that got big out to the side, and both our physiques relaxed towards the waist. We looked so much alike that it looked like I was trying to impersonate him. I walked into the kitchen and he was leaning against a prep table tuning up. He looked up at me and said, "Far out!"

He had a bag of coke bigger than a baby's head and about a 14-inch screwdriver that was an inch wide at the end. He put it forward and the pile at the end of that thing was as large as my whole nose. So I did the best I could to levitate it off the screwdriver.

The day the Grateful Dead made its third appearance at Municipal Auditorium on Nov. 22, 1972, Wilson received a call from Sam Cutler, a former Rolling Stones tour manager who'd been demonized after that band's deadly Altamont Speedway fiasco and later managed the Dead. Cutler asked the Armadillo to feed the band, and the venue's hippie kitchen served them tenderloins with bowls of joints as table centerpieces.

"During dinner, Garcia looked up at the place and said, 'I'd like to play here,'" recalls Wilson. "I said, 'Okay, I can arrange that. When?' He said, 'We're not doing anything tomorrow.' So I asked, 'What time?' and he kind of got short. He didn't like promising details."

The Dead were on fire in 1972, having logged a monumental European tour. Although vocalist and organist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan had recently bowed out with fatal health problems, the band played an energetic set that included an 18-minute version of Bob Weir masterpiece "The Other One."

"After the show, I was standing there with Leon Russell when Jerry walked in," continues Wilson. "He goes, 'We're gonna jam tomorrow at the Armadillo; why don't you come over?' Leon says, 'Fine, what time?' And Garcia looks over at me and I say, 'How about 3 o'clock?'"

The club owner placed one call to a local radio station, announcing that the 'Dillo would be open on Thanksgiving and some friends would be playing.

"The next day, the doors open and people are filtering in, wondering what's going on," says Wilson. "Garcia wouldn't go on. He said, 'Lets just wait till Doug [Sahm] gets here. He's the bandleader; he knows a thousand songs.' And he did exactly that."

The impromptu band, featuring Garcia again on pedal steel, Sahm, Russell, Dead bassist Phil Lesh, and several backing musicians, rallied through 29 covers by artists including Charley Pride, Roger Miller, Hank Williams, and Bob Dylan.

"It swelled into a real nice crowd, probably about 1,000 people," smiles Wilson. "Leon Russell later told me, 'It may have been my worst performance ever.' He's not a jam musician. He's an arranged guy."