photo: Jonathan Weiner

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In the summer of 1992, Mark Pinkus landed a dream gig.

The staunch and steadfast music fan, then in his mid-20s, took a job at Rhino Records. His initial focus was licensing songs for the robust compilations that had long endeared Rhino to listeners across the globe. Pinkus embraced the opportunity to proselytize for the artists who moved him and discover new sources of enthusiasm. By 2014, he had become the president of the rebranded Rhino Entertainment, a title he holds to this day.

Throughout his tenure at the label, Pinkus’ passion for the live-music experience has not abated. He affirms, “I’ve seen every Springsteen tour since The River Tour in 1981, including the smaller acoustic shows. Every time The Who and the Stones have rolled through, I’ve been there. I have no idea how many times I saw Warren Zevon. I saw The Clash, and then I went to see everything that Joe Strummer did from Earthquake Weather to The Mescaleros. Another one of my favorite acts is Will Hoge, who I’ll see every time he comes through town.”

He is also an inveterate Deadhead, who attended his first show the summer before his senior year of high school. In July 1984, Pinkus traveled from his Southern California home up to Berkeley, ostensibly to visit the college that he would eventually attend. He also found his way to the Greek Theatre where he happened upon the famed performance in which the group delivered a “Dark Star” encore. Over the decade to follow, he saw 72 additional Grateful Dead shows, followed by many more from the individual band members.

As a result, he takes pleasure in the relationship that Rhino has established with the group. The label just released the 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of From the Mars Hotel, which follows Enjoying the Ride, the 60-CD box set that collects performances from 20 hallowed venues across the band’s history. Meanwhile, the Dave’s Picks archival series remains active and has steadily catapulted the Dead onto the charts, where the group now holds the record for the most albums to appear in the Top 40 of the Billboard 200.

“While I’m very much associated with the Grateful Dead and therefore Dead.net, which I believe is the biggest band website and retail store in the industry, I’m also closely associated with Rhino.com, which we believe might be the biggest label direct-to-consumer store,” Pinkus observes.

Rhino maintains its tradition of notable artist compilations and deluxe editions, with recent offerings from Talking Heads, The Replacements, Randy Newman and The Cars. The company also appeals to audiophiles, via Rhino High Fidelity—which just reissued the critically lauded Buckingham Nicks—as well as Quadraphonic sound releases and a new series for folks who own reel-to-reel tape players.

Indeed, Pinkus continues to stoke the fires of fellow music enthusiasts. Returning to the Dead at Berkeley, by way of example, he attests, “It was nothing like any of the shows I’d ever seen. It was just this totally different musical experience. I knew no songs that first day and I only knew a couple the next, but it blew my mind. I just knew I wanted more. Now, 41 years later, I’m getting all I want.”

[Note: this conversation, which appears in the year-end issue of Relix, took place prior to the passing of Bob Weir.]

Can you recall the first artist who captivated you?

I would say the first artist that I fell in love with was Elvis Presley. I was 10 years old in 1977, when he came to play the Forum. My dad said that he would take me, but I had to buy my own ticket. It was $17.50, and I did have a paper route so I had a little money, but I was like, “Oh, I’ll see him the next time.”

Then, when I was at camp that summer, my parents sent me the LA Times cover story saying that Elvis had died. We used to do mail call at the end of lunch and I remember being alone at the table, just crying. So that was the first artist I loved and lost.

It was crushing and made me realize that I should never miss a show that I want to attend, ever again.

What was the initial band you eventually saw live?

It was Journey, June 1981, at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, which became a popular place for the Grateful Dead to play. I went with five other friends, and two of them are still my closest buddies. We reminisce all the time about Journey as the headliner, Billy Squire as the middle act and an unknown group called 415 that opened. It was quite a San Francisco bill.

Your first Grateful Dead show was 7/13/84 at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. What led you there?

It began in the summer of 1983 at Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu. I started hanging out with a young lady named Hillary, and when we got back from camp, I went to her house. At this point, I’d seen a bunch of great bands— the Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Springsteen, The Clash. Well she had a picture of this band sitting on bales of hay in front of a barn. I said, “Who’s that?” She goes, “You consider yourself a music fan who knows his shit but you don’t know who that is? That’s the Grateful Dead.”

After I left her place, I drove down to Tower Records on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. The only thing they had in the Grateful Dead bin was Skeletons From the Closet. I thought it was a greatest hits, which it’s so not. From that day on, I was hooked, although I didn’t get to my first show until a year later.

What’s your memory of that show? How far along were you in your fandom to appreciate what you were experiencing with the “Dark Star” encore?

When I saw that show, at that point I had Skeletons and I had Europe ‘72. I really liked what I’d heard, but I wasn’t well educated. I had another friend who I turned on to the Dead, and we drove up to Berkeley to look at the school and to go to a show. We didn’t have tickets, we got them out front.

We were planning on going just that first night, July 13, and they played no songs off of Skeletons from the Closet. I didn’t understand that—if this was the greatest hits, how does the band not play any of their greatest hits?

So I was terribly naive in every which way. I also remember that we were told it was going to be a special encore, which turned out to be my only “Dark Star” in the 73 Grateful Dead-specific shows I saw. I knew it was really cool, and I knew that it was magical and the crowd was freaking the heck out, but I did not fully appreciate it.

I do remember very explicitly, the minute the show ended, I turned to my buddy and said, “We’re going tomorrow night, and I’m going to see this band as many times as I can.”

In 2015, I went to Fare Thee Well with my friend David, the guy who went with me to those shows. He remained a fan. I remained a fan, and we both ended up going to Berkeley. For $5 a night, we got to sleep on the floor of a fraternity and could drink all the beer we wanted. Fraternity Row was right across from the Greek Theatre, so it was all in walking distance. It was quite a successful weekend.

You saw a lot of good shows at a relatively young age. Did you anticipate that you might do something with music as a career path?

Certainly not in high school. It was not in my mind. I just knew that people would say, “What do you want for your birthday?” and my answer would always be an album. I’d loved music since elementary school, but I did not think I was going to make a career out of it until after college. I wrote for the school newspapers at the universities I went to [Berkeley, then Stanford for grad school]. I was a really good cheerleader, but I knew I wasn’t a great writer.

I gave the best review I’ll bet anyone has ever written for the Bob Dylan album Knocked Out Loaded, which I recently saw was his lowest ranked album. I still love the record, but at the time I felt, “Who am I as a college kid to write a negative review about Bob Dylan?”

So I knew I couldn’t be critical enough to be a writer, but I enjoyed music, and I went and got my teacher’s degree. I got my master’s in education and taught a year of high school English up in Palo Alto. Then I came back to LA and thought, “Well, maybe I’ll work in music and see if that works out. If not, I’ll go into teaching.”

Can you talk describe the culture of Rhino when you started?

Rhino in the ‘80s, and especially in the ‘90s with the birth of CDs, was the compilation king, both with single artists and multiple-artist compilations.

For example, John Coltrane had recorded for a bunch of different labels, and our A&R department has always been the best in the business. When I got there, I was head of licensing, and I would license all the tracks that Rhino didn’t own.

So I cleared the Fantasy and the Universal stuff. In addition, our head of A&R, a guy named James Austin, tracked down a recording of John Coltrane in the Navy that I had to clear from Alice Coltrane. I got to speak with her and she was wonderful. To clear that Navy performance, she told me that she needed to go talk to John and to call her back after the weekend. So that’s what I did, and she told me: “I spoke to John, and he says it’s fine for you to use this song from the Navy, and he wants it to be track one.” I still get chills from that story because I’m absolutely convinced that somehow Alice Coltrane spoke to John [who had passed away in 1967] and got approval.

Along with those great single artist collections, which we still do, in the ‘90s we also had these other amazing compilations. We did a DIY nine-volume punk series, we had Have a Nice Day, which was a 25-volume ‘70s series, as well as 15 volumes of Blues Masters. If you look real carefully in the booklets, you’ll see “Licensing by Mark Pinkus,” which is what I did from ‘92-‘96.

Thinking back on that era, is there something you worked on that you were extraordinarily proud of, but never found the audience you thought it merited for whatever reason?

In our department for 25 years, almost right from the beginning, was a guy named Gary Stewart. He was a legend in the business and very open to people following their passion projects. So I went to him in the ‘90s and said, “I’d like to do a Warren Zevon anthology.” I felt that he needed to be celebrated. Gary asked me: “Are you passionate about it?” I told him, “I am super passionate about it.” Then he said, “Great, we can do it.” That’s how projects got approved in the ‘90s.

So I did this two-CD anthology. I worked directly with Warren, who came in for two meetings. He was everything you would want a true artist to be. I’m really proud of that collection, and I hoped it would have an even greater impact on his career than it did. I felt like it made Warren Zevon fans more excited about Warren Zevon, but I was hoping to convert additional fans. I have always felt that he’s an underrated artist.

How would you characterize your interest in the Grateful Dead during this period?

Anytime they came through LA, I always saw them, I just didn’t travel the way that I did in the ‘80s. So that changed, but my love of the band never waned.

The only shows that we traveled for in the ‘90s, as a newly married couple trying to scrape by, were in Vegas. We went out to Sam Boyd and saw those stadium shows they did every year with these great opening acts, like Sting and Steve Miller.

The last time I got to see the Grateful Dead live was the four shows that they did at the Sports Arena here in LA in 1994. My wife was pregnant, so my oldest daughter got to see the band in utero. All of my daughters have seen Dead & Company multiple times at the Sphere, and a lot of other places too, so they’ve become fans.

From there, I went to the very first Furthur Festival at Irvine Meadows [in 1996]. I saw RatDog shows. I remember the first Phil & Friends show I saw at the Greek. I saw 7 Walkers with Bill, which I thought was great. I enjoyed the Mickey Hart shows around Mysterium Tremendum, which remains one of my favorite post-Grateful Dead albums. So I never stopped seeing the band.

Did you ever anticipate that you might have a chance to work with the Dead?

I never thought about it. When Rhino did the first two boxes, The Golden Road and Beyond Description in the 2000s, that was before Rhino made its deal with GDP. Those were each one-offs, and at one point, James Austin, who was heading up to the Bay Area to meet with Dennis McNally for the second box, asked me if I wanted to go with him. He knew the early years really well. He had seen Pigpen a couple of times but had lost touch with the band after 1974, and he knew that this was my era—I’m a huge proponent of Brent Mydland and the ‘80s Dead. So he said, “We’re going to talk about this new box. Do you mind coming with me?” I was like, “Do I mind going up to Marin to sit with Dennis McNally?” [Laughs.]

So I went to this meeting and it was just great. We were in the Dead’s office and I didn’t see or meet anybody but Dennis, but he’s one of the most interesting people on the planet. So I had a great meeting with him and came back.

Then a few years later, Rhino made a deal with GDP, but I was not involved with it. We made our deal in 2006 and I didn’t get involved until 2010.

Can you describe the moment at your initial meeting when you won over the band with your singing voice?

The band members and their representatives were in this room. I was being introduced by my then boss and now boss, the head of Warner Music Group catalog, Kevin Gore. He gave a brief introduction about what was going on at Rhino and that the new person who was going to run the Grateful Dead’s business for Rhino would be Mark Pinkus. I was glad he went on for a few minutes, which gave me a chance to catch my breath and just digest where I was.

Then after the introduction, I said “Hi,” and one of the band members said, “We’re a pretty unique band. To understand our music and properly represent us, you need to be a fan. Do you like us?” I responded, “Let me tell you, I love the Grateful Dead. You pick a song, I’ll sing it. It won’t be pretty but go ahead and try.” Mickey Hart said, “Victim or the Crime,” so I sang the first line, which is a very heavy one—“Patience runs out on the junkie…” I was way off-key and people got a laugh out of it, but onward, 15 years later.

One of your early decisions was to release the Europe ‘72 box, which was both bold and wildly successful. Can you talk about your thought process?

The very next night after I had that band meeting, I had dinner with David Lemieux, who’s a great guy. It’s been a highlight of my career to work closely with him for the last 15 years. We’re in contact daily.

We had dinner that night and I said, “Is there one project you’ve wanted to do that hasn’t happened for one reason or another?” Without missing a beat, he answered, “The complete Europe ‘72. We have all 22 shows and the album is obviously a compilation. I would love to release a box with those 22 shows.” So I asked him: “How many CDs is that going to be?” He told me it would be 72, and I said, “I’m in.”

His response was, “What do you mean?” Then I said, “I would buy it, what about you?” He said, “I would definitely buy it.”

That’s truly been the test that we’ve had from day two of me being involved with the Dead’s business to now. Our primary litmus test is whether David and I, as fans of the band, would buy it.

With Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, if you listen to those 22 shows, they shine and in a different way than Europe ‘72 because there are so many overdubs on that album. The 22 shows are all from the original master tapes, so you hear how the band sounded that night in each venue.

I am so proud of that box and it’s definitely a career highlight. Ultimately one of the shows was too long and went on four CDs rather than three, pushing it to 73 discs. But isn’t that the Grateful Dead way?

When we put it on sale on Dead.net, the response was so overwhelming that it crashed our site. I was in panic mode. I was afraid the moment was going to pass and people were going to give up. In 2012, direct-to-consumer stores were still getting their sea legs. We were certainly getting our sea legs. Then when we finally got it back up and running, all 7,200 copies sold out in four days.

Five years later, you released May 1977: Get Shown the Light. Prior to that point, I’d heard Deadheads debating whether you’d put out a box with Barton Hall [5/8/77] if the original tapes came back to the archives, since so many people already had a copy of the show. Was there much internal debate about that?

It was interesting working the deal to get those sets of tapes back that had been lost from the vault. Eventually, we figured out where they were. They were represented by different people, but I was finally able to do a deal to get them back.

If this comes out arrogantly, it’s supposed to come out passionately, but David and I talked about it, and we were both so confident in the job Rhino does with Grateful Dead releases that we didn’t hesitate to move forward. Given the level of the sound, the art, the liner notes and the entire package, we believed that even if everyone had Cornell 5/8/77, nobody had it looking or sounding or contextualized the way that we did it with Get Shown the Light. Of course, all four of those shows happened to be stunning.

Bringing this back to Elvis, last year the Grateful Dead broke his record for most releases in the Top 40 of the Billboard 200. Since then, you’ve padded the score due in large part to ongoing interest in the Dave’s Picks series. To what extent have you been surprised by that response?

With Dave’s Picks, I came up with the initial idea while I was on a bike ride. Again, I was thinking about what I would like and Dave agreed with me. My thought was, since all of us are so busy, what would be the easiest way to get Grateful Dead music? I would love to give somebody $100 at the beginning of the year and, every three months, they’d send me a Grateful Dead concert. They wouldn’t even need to tell me what any of the shows were going to be—although we now tell them the first two shows for the subscription. That was how it started.

In 2012, it began as a limited run of 12,000. Then it was 13,000, and by the time 2015 rolled around, we jumped to 20,000. In 2016, we capped it at 25,000 and people continue to pay $100. The price hasn’t changed in 13 years and every three months, you get a Grateful Dead show. I’m in the middle of listening to 56, which is two shows at the Rainbow Theater in London from the ‘81 tour—3/20 and 3/21/81. It’s just awesome.

We’ve done 56 volumes and I still get super excited the minute they come in. The person who gets the box knows to bring me a copy right away. One of my favorite parts of my entire job is that I don’t have to wait until street date to listen to Grateful Dead.