“An ambulatory black hole”: when the Grateful Dead refused to play for Andy Warhol
From the basement to the rooftop, New York’s Chelsea Hotel was a bustling and busy hub of creatives. At one time or another, names like Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and more resided in the place, making art in and about its halls. In general, the hotel was a friendly and collaborative space where ideas were shared, and figures were welcomed. Unless that figure was Andy Warhol.
When looking at the lengthy list of people who stayed at the hotel, anyone would expect Warhol’s name to pop up. His original superstar, Edie Sedgwick, lived there, along with his replacement superstar, Nico. He made a film called Chelsea Girls, which was shot in the hotel as he moved from room to room, spotlighting the inhabitants. The hotel sat in what Patti Smith called the city’s downtown “Bermuda Triangle”, with the Chelsea, Warhol’s Factory and Max’s Kansas City all being a walkable distance to one another. Her label suggests that people got sucked into it and never left, shrinking their whole world down to this distinct and thriving scene.
But Warhol and the Chelsea had a difficult relationship. Part of that is being asked lofty questions regarding the very point of art. On the one hand, the hotel was inhabited by people who truly believed art did and should have a purpose, that it had power and potential to change things. To Ginsberg, being an artist was akin to being God, as he wrote in Howl, “You are it, now, the god.” He saw his poem as the howl of a generation as he created an epic that was deeply concerned with society and the sharply political nature of its decline and counterculture’s role in helping save it. But then, on the other hand, Yves Klein set out the exact opposite in his Chelsea Hotel Manifesto, stating, “We must learn absolutely nothing.”
Warhol sat on the latter side. By the late 1960s, he declared he was only interested in making “business art”, on a mission to make money and make easily reproducible works. He’d laugh off any question of meaning by saying he’d “I ran out of ideas”, deeming himself “empty”. To some, that was funny or interesting. To others, especially the meaningful crowd of the Chelsea, it was an embarrassment to creatives everywhere.
The Grateful Dead clearly felt that. During their time living at the hotel in the late 1960s, they were one of many residents who offered Warhol a frosty reception, even going so far as to refuse to play in his presence.
In the summertime, the roof of the hotel was affectionately known as the ‘Chelsea Surf and Beach Club’, despite the managers repeated refusal to build a rooftop pool. Instead, the residents and friends would congregate there for film screenings, readings, debates and performances. On August 10th, 1967, the Grateful Dead put on a gig at the ‘club’, but when Warhol wandered in, they cut the music. They called him an “ambulatory black hole,” claiming his “New York vibe sucked the energy out of the experience and made it impossible for them to play”, as Sherill Tippins puts it in Inside The Dream Palace.
The disconnect between the Dead and Warhol makes sense. Warhol represents the epitome of making art for art’s sake rather than making art to bring about change. The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, always used their platform for good. Their rooftop show at the Chelsea was actually a fundraiser, working to make money for Diggers, a San Francisco group dedicated to providing free food, housing and services to the burnt-out and lost crowd in Haight Ashbury.
They both stand on two distinctly different sides of the counterculture. The pop artist is the ultimate New York figure, ruling over the more metropolitan scene on the East Coast. The Grateful Dead were an export from the West Coast. Formed in California and becoming one of the biggest bands in the trippy, hippie scene, the peace and love energy of the sunny states never quite travelled to the other side.
Whatever the reasons, the dislike was fierce enough that the band pulled the plug, downright refusing to play in the presence of the perfunctory pop king.