150 Sergio Pisfil
S.P. But before that, it never made you want to stop working there? I mean,
not being valued because of your work, but because you are someone
else’s shadow?
B.C.-J. Frustrating position at times. I really like learning and experi-
menting. The Grateful Dead were always open for trying new things.
Although not openly acknowledged, I knew what I did made a dif-
ference. It was good. And Jerry always called on me and valued my
input. So you continue. Keep on keeping on. In other words: “perse-
verance furthers”.
S.P. I believe there were a couple of other female employees. I don’t know
if they were part of the crew, but I also found out about Melissa Cargil
and Rhoney Gissen. Did they work as part of the P.A. crew?
B.C.-J. They did do a lot of soldering, putting together cables and stuff
before road tours.
S.P. And going back to your position there in the crew, when did you feel
you started to gain their respect? Was it after something specific that
you did in a show? Or was this something natural that eventually hap-
pened after some time?
B.C.-J. I think it happened naturally just watching me work. I was always
trying to make things a little better. I’m really not sure, it sort of hap-
pened because we were a family. Members of family gravitated to
various areas of interest. We were always pushing the envelope of
what was possible with sound. Experimenting with change. Within
that framework of change, people seemed to fill the space to which
they gravitated. As a family, each found a role.
S.P. It’s interesting that most members of the Dead organization consid-
ered themselves as being part of a family. Yet, I imagine it must have
felt a bit contradictory to feel like a member of the family and, at the
same time, you, as a woman, were not getting the same treatment.
How did you deal with that contradiction?
B.C.-J. Yes, but it was a family where the females were walking behind
the men so to speak. Most of the females in the family were mainly
office workers and significant others. I didn’t exactly conform. I had
to accept I was the only female on the road as crew. There were actu-
ally a lot of people on the road at times. Sometimes the band members’
children, their personal friends. Some of them were family related,
some of them were not, but they were considered extended family.
I felt like the Grateful Dead was my first real family. And still is.
S.P. What about your mixing skills? I’m sure you are well aware that the
community behind the Grateful Dead, those that proudly carry the label
“Deadhead”, have a special love for the so-called “Betty boards”.
8
These have a special place in their ears and are widely praised. Why
do you think that is?
B.C.-J. Well, one thing is that I started with mixers with Left, Right, and
Center outputs only, and no EQ. So you have to learn how to mike the
stage and mike the instruments. Particularly how to mike the drum set;
and make it sound stereo, with limited amount of inputs. Sometimes
two microphones, you didn’t have a lot. So you learn what kind of
151 Interview With Betty Cantor-Jackson
mikes to use and where to position them, to get your best sound. For
me, what I always tried to do was recreate what’s going on onstage. So
you hear that stage. And my take for that was to close up. To make you
feel you are in the front row, not at the back of the hall.
S.P. The things you learned, you took them from a man-driven world, but
you put your own sensitivity into it.
B.C.-J. Oh yes, you first have to do what everybody wants, and then you
do what you want to do. Sometimes you need to demonstrate you have
ideas that are valuable.
[Once] Jerry [Garcia] was rehearsing to go into a studio in the
city to make an album. I recorded the rehearsals, and Ron Tutt, the
drummer at the time, liked the drum sound. He suggested that we just
record the album at the practice studio. As Ron was Elvis Presley’s
band leader, Jerry took heed and said [to me], “oh, you could have
my 16-track here by tomorrow, right?” I said: “sure, no problem”;
which I did, because at that point it was just mixers; two mixers going
to the tape machine. I’d put two mics on the drum. . . . And then
Jerry let me order the Neve! But with that album, I was put to the
test again. Workingman’s Dead had been my first solo vinyl master-
ing: the band was on the road, so I went to mastering alone. I didn’t
like how the normal settings they applied to it sounded. Because
I was on my own, and it was going to be on my ass what came out
of it, I changed the process to make myself happy. They very much
liked the results. That became something I did, I mastered. I would
always make the record. But then when I transformed the practice
hall into a studio, John Kahn, as part of the band, was skeptical. He
didn’t trust me yet. So he went out and had another test cut done of
the album I had engineered. I was in L.A. doing the same. When we
came back into the studio, we played my disc. John put on his other
version. He played about 30 seconds and said “take it off” and that
was it. John trusted me forever after that. But I had to do that A/B test
that I didn’t know was happening. I didn’t care, I just wanted it to be
the best possible. So, if somebody else would have done it better, I’d
say, “Oh please, have them do it”.
S.P. Even though it was difficult for them to trust you, I get the impression
that when you dared to take you own decisions, as you did on that
occasion, they did appreciate what you did.
B.C.-J. Yes, the product spoke for itself. When I was the only one there
and, like I said, it was on me, then I had to manifest my preferences;
I had to make decisions.
S.P. And you took those decisions because you thought you needed to?
No one was in charge of making decisions about “who gets to do it?”
B.C.-J. Well, I did that because it had to be done. It had to be mastered.
And I didn’t like the formula. The formula the industry used didn’t
work for me. So, I had to come up with my own formula. And it was
so well received! I mean, they didn’t know they were going to hear
that. They didn’t know that I had done anything different. I took off
the record and I played it, and they went: “What the hell!” (laughs).
152 Sergio Pisfil
S.P. You must have an especial relationship with the music, to be able to be
so confident and decide at that time you were going to do it your way.
B.C.-J. I couldn’t honestly represent anything but my own choices.
S.P. Were you a musician yourself?
B.C.-J. I do things by ear. I played flute, clarinet when I was a child. But
the piano is where you can always find the note.
S.P. Interesting. On a different topic, it has been well documented that
women are often invisible in history, in all types of historiographies;
do you think it was the same in your case? For instance, regarding the
Grateful Dead’s history, it took me some time to realize that you had
a crucial role. I had to do a lot of research to be able to understand the
importance of your role. How can you explain this?
B.C.-J. Well, in terms of invisibility, it’s how you move around onstage
and nobody even knows you’ve done that. When you go up and fix
a microphone, for instance, it’s part of that invisibility. Now when it
comes to my mixing, I want to be as invisible. I do not want to be seen.
I just want to represent the band, capture the music that’s happening.
I try to affect the sound as little as possible. I don’t use EQ and a lot
of processing, because I don’t want to interject my own thing. I want
it to be purely what it is.
S.P. Let’s go to a couple of specific examples. Were you at Altamont?
9
B.C.-J. Absolutely. I worked the stage, I set the stage.
S.P. Was there a big crew there?
B.C.-J. The recording crew was me and Bob [Matthews]. Bob drove the
machine to the site and, when he got there, I had been handling the
stage all day.
S.P. I think Dan [Healy] was there as well, right?
B.C.-J. Yes, he was upfront, he was working with the P.A. He wasn’t
doing the recording at that point.
S.P. And in terms of the recordings, were there any difficulties there? How
would you share the role of recording at that specific concert?
B.C.-J. At that specific concert I did the stage, I was the one out risk-
ing my life (laughs). I was onstage making sure everything stayed
mounted and got recorded. I think I scared Charlie Watts.
10
S.P. So were there two different sets of microphones? One for the record-
ing and one for Dan Healy?
B.C.-J. No, we split microphones, one output for the P.A. and the other
for the recording.
S.P. Interesting, what about the Medicine Ball Caravan?
11
B.C.-J. Bob and I were fairly interchangeable there, as far as running the
stage, although I did a little bit more of that. Part of my expertise was
doing that miking thing. So I did more of that and Bob ran more the
machine.
S.P. I’m asking about those scenarios, because when you go to festivals
and you are doing things on the road, there are other people from other
road crews that are also there trying to make their own decisions. The
fact that you were the only female setting up microphones onstage,
how was that with the other road crews?
153 Interview With Betty Cantor-Jackson
B.C.-J. Well, they were surprised! (laughs). “Oh look, there’s a girl”. And
of course they discounted me. It still happens unless they are “Dead-
heads” and have heard my name.
S.P. You don’t think things have changed from those days in the 1960s to
now?
B.C.-J. Well, now there are a lot of women running shows all the time,
working the stage or working something. A lot of the time they have
that same attitude towards other females, and I say “wait a minute”
(laughs). So you get that from females, too.
S.P. And now that you cross paths with a lot of women, in terms of music
production, can you identify any type of differences between the way
women work onstage and the way men work onstage?
B.C.-J. Generally speaking, women are a little more careful and particular
about details. They often want to make sure that they did everything
in the right order. I think they are a little bit more attentive, because
they have to be. It’s more or less expected. You have to do more to be
equivalent. It’s still that way.
S.P. Any possible explanations?
B.C.-J. (laughs) Well, men still think that way, and the basis of society
is still male-oriented. It was male-dominated and it’s still male-
dominated. So therefore, you have to be on it to be considered an
equal. You are really careful on how to do things.
S.P. Was this something specifically gender bias, or would you say
that any new member of the crew would get that unfair treatment,
and would have to learn how to earn the respect of the people in
charge?
B.C.-J. There will always be “the new guy”. Whether male or female,
there’s a pecking order. But females have a higher hill to climb.
S.P. Thank you, Betty. This was all very informative.
B.C.-J. Cheers!
CONCLUSION
Besides shedding some light on the cultural context and rudimentary tech-
nological circumstances in which live audio production developed in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, Betty’s testimony is a rare source to identify
early attitudes towards female engineers.
Her story confirms the rather unique position of working with a rock
band on the road in a completely male-dominated field. On one side, it
reveals her determination and highly praised skills to record quality sound;
and, on the other, it represents an intimate account of the contradictions
and frustrations produced by gender-biased decisions within the Grateful
Dead sound crew.
Although it’s clear that the working conditions within the band’s road
crew were regulated by conventions that were unfavorable to women, it is
important to highlight that, as ethnomusicologist and live sound historian
Nick Reeder states, “the Dead family was a more likely place than others
for such conventions to be overturned” (2014: 275). Indeed, the Grateful
154 Sergio Pisfil
Dead did have a substantial role in the counterculture movement and led
the way for the transformation of musical and societal alignments that had
prevailed until that time. Jerry Garcia’s high regard for Betty’s technical
judgment cannot and should not be used as evidence of the lack of sexual
discrimination within the band, but rather, as an example of the complex
and multiple ways in which gender-based discrimination can happen in
big organizations. Instead of being solely an ensemble of musicians, rock
bands − like most labor establishments − have different, sometimes rather
independent, social spheres, and discriminatory practices may take place
only in specific scenarios.
Although female roadies and live sound engineers are not uncommon
nowadays, there is still an obvious imbalance in the percentage of male and
female employees in live music production. Moreover, Betty confirms that
inequalities do not only remain, but they are sometimes triggered by female
employees, too. In response to this situation, an online platform was created
in 2013 to encourage women’s participation in the field of professional audio
and to expand their job opportunities.
12
Working conditions of female live
sound engineers are without a doubt different from those in the 1960s but,
paraphrasing Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo, there is still much left to be done.
NOTES
1. Created in 1965, the Family Dog was a community-based organization in the
San Francisco music scene, and it organized and promoted some of the most
inuential events in the counterculture movement.
2. Bob Mathews became a recording technician for the Grateful Dead in 1967.
3. Alembic was a company created by Owsley Stanley (aka Bear) to focus on
innovation in sound technology. Engineers at Alembic were responsible for
the design of what was later called the “Wall of Sound”, a new concept in
P.A. systems.
4. Jerry Garcia was the lead guitarist, singer, and founding member of the Grate-
ful Dead.
5. Dennis McNelly was the former Grateful Dead publicist and ocial historian
of the band.
6. Ron Wickersham played a key engineering role in Alembic since its inception
in 1968.
7. Ben Haller was hired to assist Candace with the lighting set-up during the
1972 Grateful Dead European tour.
8. “Betty Boards” is the colloquial name for the highly regarded soundboard
recordings of the Grateful Dead, made by Betty Cantor-Jackson during the
1970s.
9. Altamont was a free music festival held in northern California, in Decem-
ber 1969.
10. Drummer of the Rolling Stones.
11. Conceived to put touring musicians and other counterculure personalities on
screen, The Medicine Ball Caravan began in San Francisco and travelled the
United States through August 1970.
12. See soundgirls.org.
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