Owsley "Bear" Stanley, longtime sound engineer for The Grateful Dead, died from injuries sustained in an auto accident March 13 in Canberra, Australia. He was 76. Known as an early developer of LSD and also for the creation of the Grateful Dead's dancing bear icons, Stanley is also credited with audio innovations including the "Wall of Sound" used at Grateful Dead concerts in 1974, a precursor to line arrays.
Stanley, who spent two years locked up on drug charges, started work on the "Wall of Sound" after his release in 1972. Together with Grateful Dead sound crew members Dan Healy and Mark Raizene and also Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and John Curl of Alembic, Stantly combined six independent sound systems using eleven separate channels so that each speaker would be used for one instrument or vocalist, minimizing intermodulation distortion.
Using a total of 26,400 watts RMS of audio power, the system was said to be able to be heard from a quarter mile away before wind interference would degrade the sound, with the highest-quality audio heard in the first 600 feet.
One of the largest sound reinforcement systems ever assembled, The Wall of Sound weighed in at 75 tons and required four semi-trailers and 21 crew members to setup and move. It was first used at the Cow Palace in the Bay area in March 1974 and last used in Oct. 1974, retired in part due to the rising cost and limited availability of fuel.
