What was new compared to last year’s run of Dead Forever shows?
Dead & Company at Las Vegas’ Sphere in May.
Rich Fury
LAS VEGAS — After playing 30 shows at Las Vegas’ Sphere in 2024, Dead & Company found new life once more on Thursday night (March 20) with round two of their Dead Forever residency, mixing the greatest hits from last year’s setlists and visuals with a healthy dose of fresh material.
The band – a Grateful Dead offshoot that includes original members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, along with John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti and Jay Lane – seemed more comfortable than ever in the supersize venue, given both their decade of history playing together and a summer of Sphere shows under their belts. And their new visuals seemed to match that comfort level, never threatening to overpower the band and its potent live performance, but shooting for the moon (sometimes quite literally) in terms of scope and ambition. Last year’s May 16 opening night (reviewed by Billboard here) included far more static shots of the band on giant video screens; this time around, every moment on the 240-foot-tall curved display served an aesthetic purpose beyond what any other concert venue can even attempt to provide.
Most importantly, however, just like last year, Dead & Company kept the music and the fans at the core of everything they did. That made the show-closing “Touch of Grey” – the Dead’s lone top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 – especially poignant, as everyone left the striking orb singing along together: “We will survive” and “We will get by.” As ever, the Deadheads are a key component of everything the impactful group has accomplished in its 60 years.
But what was new compared to last year? Below, find our five favorite new moments from opening night of Dead & Company’s return to the Sphere.
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A First-Time Dead & Company Cover
For the opening song of the night, Dead & Company played a cover they’ve never played since their 2015 formation: The Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’.” Looking back in the Setlist.fm archives, the Grateful Dead performed the song dozens of times between 1988 and 1990. While trying to see when else the cover had been deployed, Billboard found a fan forum discussing what happened to the band playing the song, with one commenter writing: “That should definitely get dusted off and played again in the Dead world!” Your wish has been granted.
Of the night 1 setlist, “Gimme Some Lovin’” was the only song that wasn’t also played at least once during last year’s shows.
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The Dancing Bears Become Dancing Pixels
One of the coolest visual updates came during the third song of the night, “Bertha,” when a grid of the band’s colorful Dancing Bears kept zooming in before morphing into multicolor pixels that made up videos of the band playing live. The result was almost like wearing night-vision goggles, where you could make out the shapes of Mayer strumming his guitar or Hart banging on the drums in a kaleidoscope of kinetic colors. It was the perfect mix of the band’s nostalgic imagery with the cutting-edge possibilities of the Sphere.
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Toppling Televisions
One of the most notable visuals from the first residency was the establishing shot in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that zooms out into a disorienting drone shot of the whole Bay Area before whisking the crowd into outer space. It’s a striking, stunning first impression that makes you question which way is up, and that image smartly remained (during song 2, “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”) for the 2025 opening night.
But the band had a new trick up its sleeve to leave the crowd in awe yet again. For set 1 closing number “Don’t Ease Me In,” old CRT televisions began stacking on top of each other onscreen all the way to the Sphere ceiling… only for one giant TV to tumble down from the top of the stack toward the crowd in jarringly realistic fashion. The moment left fans holding their arms up to stop the imaginary television from crashing down on them and sent a loud, in-unison “whoa!” up through the crowd before an eruption of cheers at the wildly successful illusion.
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The Most ‘WTF’ New Visual
For the second song after a 30-minute intermission, “Scarlet Begonias,” a new video features six people wearing absurdist masks and costumes all staring down at the stage and the crowd. In various scenes, they hold a television screen that features grainy footage of the band, and they alternate positions – sometimes dancing together, sometimes standing completely still like statues or draping their bodies over chairs and couches. They almost looked like Teletubbies in human form, and it truly made for the most surreal moment of an overall surreal night. Can we please get a full thesis on the symbolism behind each of these bizarre characters?
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Uncle Sam Rides His Motorcycle All the Way to Vegas
Uncle Sam is back on his motorcycle, but his ride has a new final destination this year. After riding through a pastel, cartoon world, he emerges at the edge of a canyon before making his way to a Dead-branded version of the Sphere’s home of Las Vegas, including the “Terra-Pin Bowl” bowling alley, a billboard for the “Darkstar Hotel & Casino, Dead Ahead,” and a sign for “Shakedown Street.” The show begins and ends in San Francisco, but it takes a fitting detour to the band’s new home of Sin City.
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Dead & Company’s Dead Forever 2025 Night 1 Setlist
SET 1
Gimme Some Lovin’
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
Bertha
New Speedway Boogie
Brown-Eyed Women
Good Lovin’
Don’t Ease Me InSET 2
Feel Like a Stranger
Scarlet Begonias
Fire On the Mountain
Terrapin Station
Drums
Space
Standing on the Moon
Althea
Going Down the Road Feeling Bad
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
Touch of Grey -
Remaining Dead Forever Dates
March 21, 22
March 27, 28, 29
April 17, 18, 19
April 24, 25, 26
May 9, 10, 11
May 15, 16, 17
