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Brent Mydland (October 21, 1952 – July 26, 1990) was an American keyboardist, songwriter and singer. He was a member of the rock band The Grateful Dead from 1979 until his death in 1990, a longer tenure than any other keyboardist in the band.
Growing up in Concord, California, Mydland took up music while in elementary school. After graduation, he played with a number of bands and recorded one album with Silver before joining Bobby and the Midnites with Bob Weir and jazz veterans Billy Cobham and Alphonso Johnson. This led to an invitation to join the Dead in 1979, replacing Keith Godchaux who had decided to leave. Mydland quickly became an important member in the Dead, using a variety of keyboards including Hammond organ and various and singing regularly. He wrote several songs on the band's studio albums released while he was a member.
After a tour in the early summer 1990, Mydland died of an accidental drug overdose.
Mydland played trumpet in the school's marching band, but was dismissed for having long hair. He graduated from Liberty High School, Brentwood, California, in 1971.
After graduation, Mydland lived in a quonset hut in Thousand Oaks, California, writing songs. He joined a band with Rick Carlos, who was invited by John Batdorf of Batdorf & Rodney to join their band. Mydland was asked to join shortly after. He then formed the band Silver with Batdorf, releasing one album on Arista Records.
Mydland then got in touch with Bob Weir via a connection from Batdorf & Rodney, and joined Weir's side project Bobby and the Midnites as keyboardist and backing vocalist.
Mydland quickly became an integral part of the Dead owing to his vocal and songwriting skills as much as his keyboard playing. He quickly combined his tenor singing with founding members Weir and Jerry Garcia to provide strong three-part harmonies on live favorites. He easily fit into the band's sound and added his own contributions, such as in Go to Heaven (1980) which featured two of Mydland's songs, "Far From Me" and "Easy to Love You", the latter written with frequent Weir collaborator John Perry Barlow. On the next album, In the Dark (1987), Mydland co-wrote "Hell in a Bucket" with Weir and Barlow; he also penned the train song "Tons of Steel".
Built to Last (1989) featured several more of Mydland's songs: the moody "Just a Little Light", the environmental song "We Can Run", the live-performance-driven "Blow Away" and the poignant "I Will Take You Home", a lullaby written with Barlow for Mydland's two daughters.
Mydland wrote several other songs that were played live but not released on any studio albums, including "Don't Need Love", "Never Trust A Woman", "Maybe You Know", "Only a Fool", all written solo, and "Gentlemen Start Your Engines", with Barlow. Many of these were intended for a solo album that was started but never completed, along with "Love Doesn't Have to be Pretty", performed live solo, but not with the Grateful Dead. He also co-wrote "Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues" with Phil Lesh and Lesh's lyrical collaborator Bobby Petersen, although the song was performed live only once.
His high, gravelly vocal harmonies and emotional leads added to the band's singing strength, and he even occasionally incorporated scat singing into his solos. Monty Byrom, guitarist on Mydland's unreleased solo album, said Mydland was "one of the most talented guys I've ever met. I've never seen anybody that could sing with those kind of notes, night after night. He was a cross between Gregg Allman and Howlin' Wolf. It was crazy." Mydland's vocals added color to old favorites such as "Cassidy", "Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo", "Ramble on Rose", the Band's "The Weight", and he even wrote his own verse for Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster". He sang lead on many covers, including Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy", the Beatles' "Hey Jude", the Meters' "Hey Pocky Way", and, with Lesh, the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'. Mydland's instrumental interactions with Garcia became an increasingly prominent factor in the Dead's music over the years—their duo exchanges in "Friend of the Devil" were an early and lasting example.
Mydland's last show with the Grateful Dead was on July 23, 1990, at the World Music Theater, in Tinley Park, Illinois.
In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.
In mid 1987, Mydland's synthesizer setup changed once again. Bob Bralove had been hired by the Grateful Dead to program and maintain new MIDI systems. The GS-1 and Emulator II were replaced by a new Kurzweil MIDIboard MIDI controller, which gave Mydland the ability to use voices from an array of different synthesizer modules, and blend them together using volume pedals and foot switches. The MIDIboard, like the GS-1 it replaced, was capable of polyphonic aftertouch, a relatively rare feature in MIDI controllers. The synthesizer racks included a Roland MKS-20 digital piano, a Kurzweil 250RMX (the rack-mounted version of the famous Kurzweil K250 synthesizer), a Roland S550 sampler, an Oberheim Matrix 1000, a Lexicon PCM41 digital delay, a Lexicon PCM70 reverb/effects processor, and an Akai mixing board. A Roland D-50 keyboard was added in the fall of 1987, and a Korg M1 keyboard was added in the fall of 1989 after experimenting with the M1R module version on the 1989 summer tour. These keyboards could be controlled through the MIDIboard, or could be played independently.
Mydland also regularly played the Hammond organ, and had a B-3 with ten modified in his setup for his entire tenure. The Grateful Dead purchased three B-3 organs for his use when he joined the band, and he personally owned several B-3 organs at the time of his death. The B-3 he played for the majority of his tenure with the Grateful Dead, known for once being covered with stickers, is currently used by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti during live performances. It was present at the 50th anniversary concerts in July 2015.
In the summer of 1985, he performed with Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann in their band Kokomo along with 707's Kevin Russell and Santana's David Margen.
In 1985, he performed at the Haight Street Fair with Weir, John Cipollina, and Merl Saunders, among others.
In 1986, Mydland formed Go Ahead with several San Francisco Bay area musicians, including Bill Kreutzmann, also former Santana members Alex Ligertwood on vocals and David Margen on bass, as well as guitarist Jerry Cortez. The band toured during the time Jerry Garcia was recovering from a diabetic coma, and also briefly reunited in 1988.
In 1988, Mydland performed at the Bay Area Music Awards, sharing an organ with Merl Saunders and performing alongside Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, John Fogerty, and others.
He also did numerous solo projects and performances, as well as duo performances with Bob Weir numerous times throughout the 1980s, with Weir on acoustic guitar and Mydland on grand piano.
Mydland is buried at Oakmont Memorial Park in Lafayette, California.
David Gans has described Mydland as "a talented synthesist sic, who was able to play all this beautiful synthesized string stuff, but he could still kick ass and take names on the Hammond organ."
Mydland's younger daughter, Jennifer Mydland, is an aspiring singer-songwriter.Archived at Ghostarchive and the
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