Back in the spring of 2007, the executive team at Rhino, which controls the rights to the Grateful Dead audio-visual vaults, asked archivist David Lemieux for his suggestions regarding future large scale projects. Two years earlier, Lemieux had spearheaded the Fillmore West 1969 box set, which presented the Dead’s four celebrated performances at the venue.

He gave it some thought and decided to step things up, recommending a complete tour collection. The shows he focused on were the Grateful Dead’s 22 nights in Europe from the spring of 1972, which served as the basis of the group’s triple live album Europe ‘72.

Lemieux projected that the tour could be collected on about 60 CDs and present it in some form of collectible container (Eventually the number would reach 72 “because we decided not to break up any of the big jams” ).The response to his proposal?

While there was some moderate interest, he also met some skepticism. Lemieux recalls, “At least one person asked me, ‘How many people are going to buy this? One?’ Almost mocking my idea.”

By the fall of 2009, following the successful releases of Winterland 73 and Winterland June 77 – which like Fillmore West 1969 sold out of their production runs, although they contained “only” 9 CDs – Rhino wanted to revisit the Europe box, which Lemieux explained would require a 18 month timeline, with Jeffrey Norman, the principal mixer of the Dead’s multi-track material for the previous 15 years, working from the original 16-track recordings.

This past January with work well underway, Rhino announced that it would release Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings, encompassing over 70 hours of music, packaged in the replica of early 1970’s steamer trunk along with a coffee table book, tour memorabilia and a series of essays drafted by such celebrated Dead scholars as David Gans, Gary Lambert, Nicholas Meriwether, and Steve Silberman. The limited edition offering of 7200, which retailed at $450, found a receptive audience of far more than one individual, as 7199 others purchased The Complete Recordings within weeks, selling out the entire run (A music-only edition was then offered).

While Lemieux acknowledges moderate surprise that it sold as quickly as it did, he had long retained faith that other like-minded Deadheads would share his enthusiasm for the project.

“In terms of the performance quality, these were really some of the best shows they ever did. But also look at the amount of new material they had, going back to the spring of ‘71 between Jerry’s first solo record which came out around this time, Weir’s first solo record which came out around this time and then all of this stuff they were playing starting in October ‘71 that appeared on the Europe ‘72 album (including "He’s Gone," “Jack Straw” and “Tennessee Jed.” ). They had a lot of other great tours, but I think this is the one where everything lined up perfectly."

What musical moments particularly thrill Lemieux? He can wax rhapsodic about each of the shows but when asked which ones grab him at the moment, Lemieux pinpoints the second night of the tour at Wembley Empire Pool on April 8 ( “Really, even ‘Me and My Uncle’ is just outrageously good. It is the kind of thing where you jump out of your seat and go, ‘Man that was a great ‘Me and My Uncle.’” ), the first of two evenings at Paris’ Olympia Theatre on May 3 ( "The second set contains a jam sequence that is one of the most interesting bits of music I’ve ever heard the Dead do, it’s a 60 minute piece starting with “Truckin’” through the “Other One” ending with “Wharf Rat.” ), the two dates in Copenhagen on April 14 and 17 ( “Really different but both just crackling with energy” ) and Rotterdam on May 11 ( “There’s a big warm, round ambient sound that I just really dig. You feel like you’re listening to a jazz quintet in a small club and it’s the Grateful Dead playing some of the finest music they ever played.” ).

And then there are those evenings, such as Munich on May 18 when Jerry Garcia put aside his guitar and moved to organ for portions of “Good Lovin.”

“It’s pretty wild to hear. It’s just absolutely so different than anything Pigpen would ever do, not to mention there’s no lead guitar happening. Then they go into the crescendo of the song and Jerry comes back onto the guitar. I’d heard it before and I thought, ‘Here’s Pig playing this cheesy little organ part.’ But it’s really Jerry and it’s not cheesy, it’s because Jerry’s not an organ player, he’s a lead guitarist. It just shows how much fun they were having.”