Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead & the Rise of American Counterculture [Episode 316]

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Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead & the Rise of American Counterculture [Episode 316] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: Coming up on Booked on Rock. It's the story of
0:02
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia and the lasting influence of
0:05
Speaker 1: American counter culture with author Jim Newton, who we're totally
0:09
Speaker 1: boomed rock and roll.
0:12
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll leave you. You're reading Little Hands says
0:15
Speaker 2: it's time to rock and roll roll, I totally booked.
0:25
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those
0:27
Speaker 1: about to read and rock. Our guest is Jim Newton,
0:31
Speaker 1: who is the author of the new book Here Beside
0:34
Speaker 1: the Rising Tide Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead, and an
0:38
Speaker 1: American Awakening. Welcome to the podcast, Jim.
0:41
Speaker 2: It's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.
0:43
Speaker 1: We're recording on the last day of August. And Jerry
0:46
Speaker 1: Garcia was born August first, nineteen forty two, passed away
0:49
Speaker 1: August ninth, nineteen ninety five. The book is an in
0:53
Speaker 1: depth look at Jerry's life The Grateful Dead, but also,
0:56
Speaker 1: as it says in the title, an American Awakening, it's
0:58
Speaker 1: an exploration of counts culture and it's importance right up
1:02
Speaker 1: through to this day. So if you could talk about
1:04
Speaker 1: what inspired you to tell Jerry's story, but also with
1:07
Speaker 1: the sixties counter culture interwoven throughout.
1:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, well again, thank you for having me. A couple
1:15
Speaker 2: of ways to answer that question. The first one I
1:17
Speaker 2: have been I was a fan of the Dead growing up.
1:19
Speaker 2: I grew up in paul Alta, went high school in
1:21
Speaker 2: pal Alto. They were sort of around me as long
1:23
Speaker 2: as I could remember. But back in the ear late
1:26
Speaker 2: seventies early eighties, I think is when the culture around
1:29
Speaker 2: the Dead really made an impression on me, and I
1:32
Speaker 2: really felt like it was something to take note of,
1:34
Speaker 2: that it was something different about that music culture than
1:37
Speaker 2: any other bands or any of the music that I
1:40
Speaker 2: had encountered, at least up to that point and maybe
1:42
Speaker 2: ever So that was kind of one thread of interest,
1:46
Speaker 2: was to make sense of that culture and to try
1:49
Speaker 2: to convey the power that it had on me and
1:53
Speaker 2: so many other people. At the same time. You know,
1:56
Speaker 2: my main sort of day job is writing about politics
2:00
Speaker 2: and government, and I've been doing that for the Los
2:03
Speaker 2: Angeles Times and Blueprint Magazine and a bunch of other
2:05
Speaker 2: places for many, many years. So I was interested separately
2:09
Speaker 2: in counterculture and in the ways that cultural figures move politics.
2:17
Speaker 2: Someone once wrote that no one did more to end
2:20
Speaker 2: the Vietnam more than Bob Dylan, which is an interesting
2:24
Speaker 2: statement if you think about it, since Bob Dylan really
2:26
Speaker 2: never even talked about the Vietnam War and certainly wasn't
2:29
Speaker 2: in a position to end it in a way that
2:30
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon was. And so that idea, that idea of
2:34
Speaker 2: the interplay of culture and politics has long interested me,
2:37
Speaker 2: and in fact, every other book that I've written is
2:39
Speaker 2: about politics and culture. The big difference this time is
2:43
Speaker 2: that the culture is kind of in the front of
2:44
Speaker 2: the story and the politics are more behind the story. Anyway,
2:48
Speaker 2: that's a long answer to your question, but I've been
2:50
Speaker 2: interested in counterculture in politics and in Garcia separately and
2:54
Speaker 2: relatedly for many years.
2:55
Speaker 1: I was fun or interesting because it depends on who's
2:57
Speaker 1: in the white house. It does affect music that we hear.
3:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes bad white houses produced good music right the sixties,
3:07
Speaker 2: and yeah, I mean music is good when it's speaking
3:10
Speaker 2: out against some or reacting in opposition to something, even
3:13
Speaker 2: if it's not directly addressing it, and that certainly describes
3:16
Speaker 2: the grifful dead well.
3:17
Speaker 1: I think there are a couple painful moments in Jerry's
3:20
Speaker 1: life early on that maybe casual fans listening may not
3:23
Speaker 1: know the specifics about, so just if you could talk
3:25
Speaker 1: about one the loss of his finger and the other
3:30
Speaker 1: the emotional loss with the sudden death of his father.
3:33
Speaker 2: Two very traumatic episodes in back to back summers for
3:37
Speaker 2: very young Jerry Garcia. In the first, he was in
3:39
Speaker 2: the mountains in Santa Cruz at a cabin that his
3:42
Speaker 2: family often vacationed in, and he and his brother were
3:45
Speaker 2: playing around chopping wood. His older brother and Jerry Garcia
3:50
Speaker 2: was Jerry was putting up little pieces of kindling on
3:53
Speaker 2: a wooden sawhorse, and his brother was chopping them into
3:56
Speaker 2: smaller pieces, and they were playing around with it, and
3:58
Speaker 2: his brother accidentally chop Jerry's finger off. His mother, who
4:03
Speaker 2: had been a nurse, tried to wrap it and rush
4:06
Speaker 2: him to a hospital, but they were a long way away,
4:08
Speaker 2: and he lost his finger. Of course, we all know
4:09
Speaker 2: him now is iconically missing that middle finger of his
4:13
Speaker 2: of the one hand. Yeah, not a great start for
4:17
Speaker 2: a guitar player, obviously, but fortunately for him and for
4:21
Speaker 2: all the rest of us, it was of not of
4:23
Speaker 2: his fretting hand. It was his right hand, not his
4:25
Speaker 2: left hand, and so he learned to play the guitar
4:28
Speaker 2: without the finger he didn't never have to adjust to
4:31
Speaker 2: not having a finger. But all of that, of course,
4:35
Speaker 2: is in the future. In the moment, he's a four
4:37
Speaker 2: year old boy who's just had his finger chopped off,
4:39
Speaker 2: and so obviously a very rattling moment for him. And
4:42
Speaker 2: then the far more traumatic moment the following summer, he
4:46
Speaker 2: and his mother and father were up on a fishing
4:49
Speaker 2: trip in northern California, and his father went out to fish,
4:53
Speaker 2: slipped on a rock and drowned. A little bit of
4:59
Speaker 2: conf fusion of memory as to whether Jerry actually witnessed
5:03
Speaker 2: him drowning, but whether or not that's the case from
5:06
Speaker 2: that point forward. Obviously he didn't have a father. His
5:09
Speaker 2: mother was overwhelmed by the challenge of trying to raise
5:12
Speaker 2: him and his brother, so she turned him the brothers
5:14
Speaker 2: over to their grandparents. So he was separated from both
5:18
Speaker 2: his mother and his father for a period. He developed asthma.
5:21
Speaker 2: It was a very difficult young life for Jerry.
5:25
Speaker 1: His dad was just forty five, totally unexpected. It wasn't
5:28
Speaker 1: like something that was coming. Yeah, that was traumatic. There's
5:32
Speaker 1: a connection here with Frankenstein. When I read the book,
5:36
Speaker 1: those two those two traumatic incidents kind of connect with this.
5:41
Speaker 1: He had a fascination with Frankenston, and it just seems
5:43
Speaker 1: like once he watched that movie, it was like he
5:45
Speaker 1: was releasing all of that emotion in him that was
5:48
Speaker 1: left by those events.
5:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, he saw the movie right about that time, and
5:52
Speaker 2: it really touched that core of loss and of reinvention
5:55
Speaker 2: and of magic, and to the very end of his
5:58
Speaker 2: life regarded it as one of the most powerful movies
6:01
Speaker 2: he'd ever seen. So, yeah, it made a real impression.
6:03
Speaker 2: And you know that is the same. It's a little
6:06
Speaker 2: bit after that period, but as he grows up on
6:08
Speaker 2: the Peninsula in San Francisco, he discovers the arts and
6:10
Speaker 2: community and I think he begins to find ways to
6:14
Speaker 2: patch that real hole in his heart. And I think
6:17
Speaker 2: it's no coincidence that the Grateful Dead Family as we
6:21
Speaker 2: as it's often referred to, had a kind of a
6:24
Speaker 2: familial structure. It felt like a community of artistic and
6:28
Speaker 2: like minded folks, and so I think he very much,
6:31
Speaker 2: maybe subconsciously, but built a community around him that, in
6:34
Speaker 2: some ways, I think, patched the hole in his heart
6:37
Speaker 2: left by those early days.
6:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing. Ab and Costello meets Frankenstein that was
6:41
Speaker 1: the first one he saw. Yeah, Dennis McNally was on here.
6:45
Speaker 1: He was the publicist for the dead. He said, towards
6:47
Speaker 1: the end of Jerry's life, he didn't want to do interviews.
6:49
Speaker 1: He was just he was out of it at that point.
6:54
Speaker 1: But the one time, the one time he did perk up.
6:57
Speaker 1: Dennis said, there's a guy who wants to ask you
6:59
Speaker 1: about Frankens. It was returning classics. WHOA And he immediately
7:04
Speaker 1: woke up and he did the interview like that.
7:06
Speaker 2: You know, he loved it. It's one of the last
7:08
Speaker 2: interviews of his life.
7:10
Speaker 1: I can't imagine Jerry Garcia in the military, but he
7:12
Speaker 1: joined the army in February of nineteen sixty at the
7:15
Speaker 1: age of seventeen, and he was discharged and then on
7:18
Speaker 1: December twelfth, nineteen sixty he packs his things leaves the army.
7:21
Speaker 1: And you're right that he went to Palo Alto with
7:24
Speaker 1: a beat up car, which died on his way there.
7:26
Speaker 1: But he soon settled in. Yet his life is without
7:30
Speaker 1: a real purpose or focus, and that's until February twentieth,
7:33
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one. There's a moment in his early life
7:36
Speaker 1: that has a profound impact on him. Again another moment
7:40
Speaker 1: that impacts him. He later said that this is where
7:43
Speaker 1: his life begins, and that was the slingshot. What happened.
7:47
Speaker 2: He was in a car with some friends. They were
7:52
Speaker 2: living in and around Palo Alto at the time. They
7:54
Speaker 2: got in the car late one night and as they
7:57
Speaker 2: were driving one friend home, were in a terrible car accident.
8:00
Speaker 2: The car flipped overturned through that most of the occupants
8:05
Speaker 2: out of the car. One Paul Spiegel, remained with the
8:07
Speaker 2: car and was killed, and it riveted Garcia's young Garcia's attention,
8:14
Speaker 2: and it is looking back on his life, he often
8:17
Speaker 2: pinpointed that is the moment where he realized that he
8:20
Speaker 2: had been aimless and it was time to focus and
8:25
Speaker 2: make something of his life. And obviously that lent itself
8:28
Speaker 2: to music into what became a very compulsive need to
8:32
Speaker 2: practice and to learn and to get better. But up
8:35
Speaker 2: to that point, as you say, he'd really been sort
8:37
Speaker 2: of drifting. He really made his way to the army
8:39
Speaker 2: just because he had really no place else to go.
8:42
Speaker 2: He was unsurprisingly a terrible soldier and didn't last long.
8:46
Speaker 2: So he'd been kind of knocking around from one thing
8:48
Speaker 2: to another. But he identified that car accident as a
8:52
Speaker 2: moment where things began to take shape for him.
8:56
Speaker 1: Very anti authoritarian. So yeah again, seeing just picture him
9:00
Speaker 1: in the army is just unbelievable. The formation of the
9:03
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead, you write quote, their main singer didn't like
9:07
Speaker 1: to perform, their bass player was still learning his instrument,
9:10
Speaker 1: their leader hated to lead. They were the Warlocks, though
9:13
Speaker 1: not for long. How did the Warlocks who eventually become
9:16
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead come together?
9:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. One of the many fun interviews I
9:20
Speaker 2: got to do for this book was with Huey Lewis,
9:22
Speaker 2: who grew up in the Brier music scene and knew
9:25
Speaker 2: the members of the Grateful Dead, and also his mom
9:27
Speaker 2: was connected to the beat Necks, and he has a
9:29
Speaker 2: lot of connections to this story. And he pointed out
9:32
Speaker 2: that something different about the way most musical enterprises come
9:38
Speaker 2: together today and even in those days, from the way
9:41
Speaker 2: the Dead did. So if you're forming a rock and
9:44
Speaker 2: roll band or a country music band or whatever it
9:46
Speaker 2: is today, you know, you would identify your musical needs,
9:50
Speaker 2: you know, identify the best banjo player, you could find,
9:53
Speaker 2: the best steel guitar player or whatever, and you'd build
9:55
Speaker 2: it up that way as a musical enterprise. That's not
9:59
Speaker 2: the way the Grateful Dead came together. The way the
10:01
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead came together is a group of friends who
10:03
Speaker 2: enjoyed each other, who discovered acid together and then learned
10:08
Speaker 2: to play together. Garcia identified Phil Lesh as you know,
10:13
Speaker 2: as a possible bass player, although Phil Lesh did not
10:15
Speaker 2: play the bass when he identified him, so he liked him.
10:19
Speaker 2: He was intrigued by Phil was a classical composer and
10:22
Speaker 2: was trained in classical music. Bob Weird had been in
10:26
Speaker 2: drug bands and was still a teenager at the time,
10:29
Speaker 2: and so they all and Bill Kreutzman came to the
10:32
Speaker 2: band as with a background in marching band music, so
10:37
Speaker 2: they all brought their own sensibilities, but they didn't They
10:43
Speaker 2: weren't picked because of their musual musical expertise. They were
10:46
Speaker 2: picked because they fit together and they enjoyed each other.
10:49
Speaker 2: And so the enterprise that developed the Great First of
10:52
Speaker 2: Warlocks and then later changed their name to The Grateful
10:54
Speaker 2: Dead is really a friendship model that became a musical enterprise,
11:00
Speaker 2: not the other way around. And so in that sense,
11:03
Speaker 2: I think it it helped give an atmosphere to the band,
11:07
Speaker 2: and it helped them. I think identify with their audience.
11:11
Speaker 2: They were. The early interplay with audiences was very much
11:15
Speaker 2: less structure than we would think of today, so it
11:18
Speaker 2: was the barrier between audience and and musician was much
11:22
Speaker 2: more fluid. There is a casualness about their relationships, but
11:27
Speaker 2: a seriousness about the music that is, if not unique
11:31
Speaker 2: to the Gridful Dead, at least unusual to the Griffel Dead.
11:34
Speaker 1: What there differing accounts as far as when Jerry met
11:37
Speaker 1: Bob Weir.
11:38
Speaker 2: There's a little confusion sometimes about it's a New Year's
11:40
Speaker 2: it's New Year's Eve, but New Year's y's are always
11:44
Speaker 2: hard to pin point because people always forget whether it's
11:46
Speaker 2: which year is going into which?
11:47
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and they may have had a few two
11:49
Speaker 1: in too many in them.
11:51
Speaker 2: Well, and also that too, which is by the way,
11:53
Speaker 2: a problem with interviews throughout much of this but right,
11:56
Speaker 2: Hitting people's memories down has been a little tricky. But
12:00
Speaker 2: the fundamental story is everyone agrees on right, which is
12:03
Speaker 2: that Weird was wandering around when New Year's Eve heard
12:08
Speaker 2: music playing, was drawn to it, ended up playing that
12:12
Speaker 2: evening with Garcia. They and then they played in various
12:16
Speaker 2: musical configurations over the couple of years. Before they kind
12:19
Speaker 2: of jailed first into the Warlocks and then the dead.
12:21
Speaker 2: But that the basic story is sort of uncontested. It's
12:25
Speaker 2: just exactly placing it in time and sometimes a little
12:27
Speaker 2: tricky bo podcasts.
12:30
Speaker 1: We'll be back after this.
12:32
Speaker 2: We're going to take a break.
12:33
Speaker 1: I'll be back. One of the things I got out
12:37
Speaker 1: of this book that I didn't know about from Dead
12:39
Speaker 1: History is this lots towers in Los Angeles. This story
12:44
Speaker 1: about is this in nineteen sixty six, and how Jerry
12:47
Speaker 1: was impressed by the artistic expression by this one particular artist,
12:51
Speaker 1: but he imagined an alternate version for his own artistic expression,
12:56
Speaker 1: one that involved working with others rather than alone. And
13:00
Speaker 1: this I found fascinating. First, could you explain what the
13:02
Speaker 1: watch towers are were? And then can you talk about
13:05
Speaker 1: how seeing the watch towers inspired Jerry?
13:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, first of the watch towers are this very unusual,
13:12
Speaker 2: very cool, odd structure set of structures here in Los
13:15
Speaker 2: Angeles where I'm joining me from. They are It's ceramic
13:21
Speaker 2: and rebar and they're tall and sort of ethereal and strange.
13:26
Speaker 2: They've weathered a lot of attempts to tear them down
13:28
Speaker 2: over the years. In more recent years they've been protected,
13:31
Speaker 2: but early in their history they were built without any
13:33
Speaker 2: real permission. And so one night after the wats asset test, Garcia,
13:39
Speaker 2: who had been very high that night, he and other
13:43
Speaker 2: members of the Grateful Dead and Mountain Girl and a
13:45
Speaker 2: few others went out and saw the watch towers early
13:49
Speaker 2: that morning the following morning, and he was trucked both
13:52
Speaker 2: and anyone who sees them as struck by the sort
13:54
Speaker 2: of beauty but also oddity of them, their very unusual
13:58
Speaker 2: set of structures. But I think what seems to have
14:01
Speaker 2: really made an impression with Garcia is the amount of
14:07
Speaker 2: effort that went into building this edifice all alone, and
14:11
Speaker 2: that that's really not the model that he wanted for
14:14
Speaker 2: his artistic enterprise, not to spend his whole life laboring
14:19
Speaker 2: on something that would be physical and iconic, but left
14:23
Speaker 2: behind that. Instead, he was really interested in an experiential
14:27
Speaker 2: model and something that the art would be the experience
14:31
Speaker 2: of creating the art. And that I think, really as
14:36
Speaker 2: well as anything can that really describes the Grateful Dead project. Right.
14:41
Speaker 2: It's not albums, it's not edifices of music, it's the
14:47
Speaker 2: experience of the music, and it goes a long way
14:50
Speaker 2: I think toward explaining why they were always so powerfully
14:54
Speaker 2: connected to audiences in live performance, and that they struggled
14:58
Speaker 2: frankly to capture that on vinyl or later tape or
15:01
Speaker 2: CD or whatever. But the point is they were that
15:06
Speaker 2: the art really is in the relationship with the audience
15:10
Speaker 2: as the music is coming a lot, and that's what
15:12
Speaker 2: Garcia comprehended, probably for the first time that day and
15:17
Speaker 2: really saw it. In contrast to the Watts, Towers.
15:20
Speaker 1: Just read a great book on The Wall of Sound,
15:22
Speaker 1: which is about the band creating something for the audience
15:27
Speaker 1: that everybody in the audience, no matter where they're sitting,
15:30
Speaker 1: they're going to get the best listening experience in that
15:32
Speaker 1: built and built and built until seventy four.
15:35
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, The Wall Sound is a great book, by
15:38
Speaker 2: the way, I just read it myself. But yeah, the
15:41
Speaker 2: Wall Sound actually has a fairly short life in the
15:44
Speaker 2: history of the day just because it was also extremely
15:47
Speaker 2: cumbersome and really difficult to move from place to place.
15:50
Speaker 2: But to your point, exactly right, I think it's a
15:54
Speaker 2: manifestation of that commitment to providing audiences with as close
16:01
Speaker 2: as they could to perfect sound. I never had the
16:04
Speaker 2: opportunity to actually hear the wall sound. I came to
16:06
Speaker 2: the Dead scene a couple of years after that, but
16:09
Speaker 2: it is legendary.
16:10
Speaker 1: And history fantastic book Brian Anderson want to give due
16:14
Speaker 1: credit to. The book is called Loud and Clear Griiffil
16:17
Speaker 1: Dead's Wall of Sound in the Quest for Audio Perfection.
16:20
Speaker 2: Great title too, Yeah yeah.
16:22
Speaker 1: How did LSD and ken Casey's acid test events in
16:25
Speaker 1: the mid sixties and San Francisco have an effect on
16:27
Speaker 1: the Dead's approach to playing and creating music?
16:30
Speaker 2: The acid tests are where the Dead takes shape. Really,
16:33
Speaker 2: I think it's it is the formative moment for the Dead.
16:36
Speaker 2: Up to that point, they were playing, learning their instruments,
16:38
Speaker 2: playing a few small gigs Magoose Pizza or in Menlo
16:42
Speaker 2: Park is a famous one or set of them. But
16:44
Speaker 2: the acid tests are well, first of all, what they are.
16:47
Speaker 2: They are. This is in a period where LSD was
16:51
Speaker 2: popular and legal. LSTI didn't become illegal in California until
16:55
Speaker 2: the end of nineteen sixty six, so starting in nineteen
16:58
Speaker 2: sixty five. Kesey, who had experimented with LSD and other drugs,
17:03
Speaker 2: and is of course the author of one flow of
17:05
Speaker 2: the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion and several
17:07
Speaker 2: other books after that. Kesey was interested in LSD and
17:12
Speaker 2: the opportunities that created, visionary opportunities that created, and so
17:16
Speaker 2: he created really what were parties initially where the Dead performed,
17:23
Speaker 2: But that slightly misunderstands or mis COMPREHENSI I think what
17:27
Speaker 2: they were doing. They arrived and played their instruments, sometimes
17:30
Speaker 2: all evening, sometimes very briefly, but they weren't the main attraction.
17:35
Speaker 2: People didn't come to hear the Grateful Dead. They came
17:37
Speaker 2: to have this experience of LSD and lights and camaraderie
17:42
Speaker 2: and enjoying each other and music. And so the Dead
17:46
Speaker 2: would like everyone else, throw a dollar into the hat
17:50
Speaker 2: and would participate in this event, in their case by performing.
17:54
Speaker 2: But I think it's important both because it creates a
17:59
Speaker 2: model of spontaneity and improvisation that of course becomes goes
18:04
Speaker 2: on to define The Grateful Dead as a musical project.
18:07
Speaker 2: But it also goes to this relationship that the Dead
18:10
Speaker 2: had with its audience, with their audience, in that they're
18:14
Speaker 2: wandering up and off on stage and off stage. There's
18:16
Speaker 2: not a barrier between them and others who are participating.
18:21
Speaker 2: That idea that the audience is fully participatory in the
18:26
Speaker 2: experience define the Grateful Dead from that moment forward. I mean,
18:32
Speaker 2: I can remember in the seventies and eighties and nineties
18:35
Speaker 2: going to show as and if they didn't perform well,
18:37
Speaker 2: feeling like I was partly responsible for that. I mean,
18:39
Speaker 2: there is this sense that the audience was in on it, right,
18:43
Speaker 2: that starts with the acid tests, and so I think
18:46
Speaker 2: in many ways that's the most important contribution that the
18:49
Speaker 2: Acid tests made to the Grateful Dead's history, is that
18:52
Speaker 2: they imbued the dead with this sense of connection and
18:57
Speaker 2: energy exchange with the audience.
19:00
Speaker 1: Jim Newton, he's the author of the new book Here
19:02
Speaker 1: Beside the Rising Tide, Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead, and
19:05
Speaker 1: an American Awakening. You have quotes from Jerry talking about
19:08
Speaker 1: freedom in the book. He said, there is a lie
19:10
Speaker 1: about what freedom is. What was his understanding of freedom?
19:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was trying to respond to the
19:16
Speaker 2: idea that freedom was just licensed, that there was just
19:19
Speaker 2: the just doing whatever you wanted whenever you wanted to
19:22
Speaker 2: do it. And some of his notions about freedom also
19:27
Speaker 2: grow up I think in opposition to this notion that
19:30
Speaker 2: music ought to be free. The Grateful Dead probably performed
19:35
Speaker 2: more free events than any band ever. Really, they were
19:38
Speaker 2: constantly performing for free. But it was also important to
19:41
Speaker 2: Garcia that people recognize that he and his bandmates needed
19:45
Speaker 2: to make a living doing this, that it was it
19:48
Speaker 2: was a work for them, that he had worked his
19:51
Speaker 2: whole life to become good enough to perform for other
19:54
Speaker 2: people and for people to enjoy it. So music isn't
19:58
Speaker 2: free really, even if even if musicians sometimes make it
20:02
Speaker 2: available for free, there's a cost to it, and there
20:06
Speaker 2: is responsibility that goes with freedom too, however one defines it.
20:11
Speaker 2: And so what I like about his reading back through
20:16
Speaker 2: those interviews of that period is that it's a bit
20:18
Speaker 2: of a response to what I think other people thought
20:21
Speaker 2: that he thought about freedom. That people thought that people
20:24
Speaker 2: outside the hate and outside the sort of hippie scene
20:28
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties thought that all that freedom meant
20:31
Speaker 2: to these young people was the opportunity to do drugs
20:33
Speaker 2: and sort of cut loose from society, free of responsibility,
20:37
Speaker 2: right and free of any obligations. That's not what he
20:43
Speaker 2: meant by it, and you can hear him in those
20:45
Speaker 2: interviews working his way to a more thoughtful and comprehensive
20:51
Speaker 2: idea of freedom than just sort of dropping out.
20:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what with counter culture. The beliefs of counter
20:57
Speaker 1: culture started that way, and then as more people came
21:00
Speaker 1: from outside of San Francisco and moved into San Francisco,
21:03
Speaker 1: they just they clouded that whole belief up and they
21:07
Speaker 1: were starting to believe, like, hey, I can just I
21:10
Speaker 1: could be free of responsibility, free of and just have fun,
21:14
Speaker 1: do whatever I want. And with the Dead becoming bigger
21:18
Speaker 1: and bigger, they had to have a responsibility and they
21:22
Speaker 1: had to make sure. Jerry, I'm sure this was not
21:25
Speaker 1: something he enjoyed, but he had to understand this is
21:28
Speaker 1: now a business.
21:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jerry Garcia's lifelong attempt to figure out what responsibility
21:36
Speaker 2: meant for him. It was a real struggle. I mean,
21:39
Speaker 2: in some ways he was irresponsible. He was not an
21:43
Speaker 2: attentive father or husband. Of course, drugs eventually took a
21:48
Speaker 2: very serious toll on him. He really did not want
21:52
Speaker 2: to be regarded as the leader of the Grateful Dead,
21:55
Speaker 2: hated to make decisions for the band, and yet every
22:00
Speaker 2: other member of the band looked to him as their
22:02
Speaker 2: central figure, if not exactly the leader. If you read
22:05
Speaker 2: the memoirs of the other members of the Dead, it's
22:10
Speaker 2: very tallying. They all are about their own experience of
22:12
Speaker 2: the Dead and their relationship to Garcia, and so they
22:15
Speaker 2: at least implicitly acknowledged Garcia, and sometimes explicitly acknowledged Garcia
22:21
Speaker 2: as the central figure of their effort. Of course, the
22:23
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead ended as the Grateful Dead per se when
22:26
Speaker 2: Garcia died in ninety five. So in all those ways,
22:28
Speaker 2: I think he spent a lifetime trying to avoid taking
22:32
Speaker 2: responsibility for at least for certain things, but being drawn
22:35
Speaker 2: back into it. It was especially by the nineties, when
22:39
Speaker 2: the Dead was just this gigantic enterprise. It was very
22:43
Speaker 2: difficult to avoid any responsibility for the band or for
22:47
Speaker 2: its audience, and I think it wore him down. It
22:49
Speaker 2: was really difficult for him to do that. He wanted
22:52
Speaker 2: to be an artist, and he was an extraordinary artist.
22:56
Speaker 2: He didn't want to be the leader of a California
22:59
Speaker 2: corporation or of a movement, but sometimes he had to be,
23:04
Speaker 2: and and did it kind of kicking and screaming, but
23:07
Speaker 2: but did when he had.
23:08
Speaker 1: To, Like the Frankenstein Monster, it got out of control. Yeah,
23:12
Speaker 1: Chapter seven is titled Summer of Love. You explore the
23:14
Speaker 1: origins of counter culture, where did it originate? And what
23:18
Speaker 1: is it?
23:18
Speaker 2: The core of.
23:19
Speaker 1: Counter culture beliefs, which you've touched upon already a little bit.
23:22
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's a lot of ways to think about counterculture,
23:25
Speaker 2: and it really doesn't have to be limited to the
23:27
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties either. But there were several ways to I
23:31
Speaker 2: think attack that story. One is, there is a kind
23:34
Speaker 2: of artistic progression, starting with Kerouac and Ginsburg and even
23:40
Speaker 2: going back further to Whitman and others of artists who
23:44
Speaker 2: see themselves as outside mainstream culture. Sometimes we think of
23:49
Speaker 2: them as bohemians, artists not necessarily overtly political in their art,
23:55
Speaker 2: but committed to challenging conventional or dominant main stream authority.
24:02
Speaker 2: I think the Dead and Garcia fit very neatly into
24:04
Speaker 2: that history of bohemian artists, again not necessarily political in
24:10
Speaker 2: their rhetoric or or their confrontation with the mainstream authority,
24:15
Speaker 2: but offering an alternative to that that's appealing to people.
24:19
Speaker 2: To me, the Dead fit nicely into that history. But
24:24
Speaker 2: then there's also a political history that comes to fruition
24:28
Speaker 2: or begins to come to the fore. In the early
24:31
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, there's a major demonstration in San Francisco against
24:36
Speaker 2: the House on American Activities in nineteen sixty or sixty one,
24:39
Speaker 2: I think it's nineteen sixty. By nineteen sixty four, you
24:44
Speaker 2: have the free speech movement in Berkeley that is little
24:49
Speaker 2: incoherent at first, but begins to cohere around the idea
24:52
Speaker 2: that students are going to play an active role in
24:56
Speaker 2: fighting back against a administration and a government that they
25:00
Speaker 2: see is out of touch. That, in turn, of course,
25:04
Speaker 2: is much amplified by the Vietnam War, so by the
25:08
Speaker 2: Summer of Love by the Human Being, which is the
25:11
Speaker 2: January of the summer or January of nineteen sixty seven.
25:14
Speaker 2: The Summer of Love is later that year by the
25:17
Speaker 2: Human Being. You've got recognizable group parts of a counterculture.
25:22
Speaker 2: You have a sort of artistic counterculture and then a
25:25
Speaker 2: more political counterculture. And in fact, the Human Being was
25:29
Speaker 2: billed as an opportunity for the tribes to gather, and
25:32
Speaker 2: in some ways that refers to the political tribe and
25:35
Speaker 2: the more artistic tribe. So all of that is swirling
25:39
Speaker 2: together in the San Francisco Bay area in the early
25:42
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, and by the mid sixties, of course Ron
25:46
Speaker 2: Reagan is elected governor. He becomes a real point of
25:50
Speaker 2: opposition for that gathering counterculture, and so by nineteen sixty
25:54
Speaker 2: seven the major pieces are in place. You have the
25:57
Speaker 2: Berkeley radicals, you have the San Francisco hippies, you have
26:00
Speaker 2: the artistic and the political movements of Reagan as governor.
26:05
Speaker 2: It's then that you really start to feel this coalesce
26:09
Speaker 2: into something rather than a bunch of different pieces, begins
26:14
Speaker 2: to feel like an actual movement of actual counterculture.
26:18
Speaker 1: Book Don Rock Podcast. We'll be back after this.
26:21
Speaker 2: Well, this is heavy. There's that word again, heavy. Why
26:24
Speaker 2: you think so heavy in the future? Is there a
26:26
Speaker 2: probably yours gravitational pull?
26:30
Speaker 1: I love the quote from Jerry when Warner Brothers releases
26:33
Speaker 1: the band's debut album in nineteen sixty seven, and Joe Smith,
26:36
Speaker 1: who signed the band to Warner brother who says at
26:38
Speaker 1: the record release party, and this is in the book quote,
26:41
Speaker 1: I want to say what an honor it is for
26:42
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers to be able to introduce The Grateful Dead
26:45
Speaker 1: and its music to the world. Jerry then says, I
26:49
Speaker 1: want to say what an honor it is for the
26:50
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead to introduce Warner Brothers to the world.
26:55
Speaker 2: Jerry's got a good sense of hearing.
26:57
Speaker 1: He really had a great sense of humor and as
26:58
Speaker 1: you know it in their own way, each of them
27:01
Speaker 1: was right. Was it difficult in those early days for
27:03
Speaker 1: the band and Jerry to be working for a record label?
27:06
Speaker 1: Was it two corporate for them?
27:08
Speaker 2: They struggled throughout it, and they're not the only bands
27:10
Speaker 2: to struggle with a label, as you well know. But yes,
27:15
Speaker 2: they were committed to a kind of experimentalism they carried
27:20
Speaker 2: over into the studio and they were wracked up a
27:22
Speaker 2: lot of studio time playing with ideas. They got very
27:25
Speaker 2: much in debt to Warner Brothers, Maxo Masella, What am
27:28
Speaker 2: I doing with this? And I mean some of it
27:31
Speaker 2: is brilliant, but very laborious. They go over hours and
27:35
Speaker 2: hours and hours, and they could be difficult to work with.
27:38
Speaker 2: At one point just and sends them a very cranky
27:40
Speaker 2: letter telling them to shape up. And their response to
27:43
Speaker 2: that is just to write fuck you on it and
27:45
Speaker 2: post it on the wall.
27:46
Speaker 1: So fearless though, right, yeahs I how many bands would
27:49
Speaker 1: do that to a label? They've been Most bands are
27:52
Speaker 1: working their ass off to get signed by a label,
27:53
Speaker 1: and they're going to do whatever they asked them to do.
27:56
Speaker 2: They were, They definitely did not feel constrained by it,
28:00
Speaker 2: but they did end up in debt, which which then
28:03
Speaker 2: put some some boundaries on their behavior, and they dreamed,
28:08
Speaker 2: as many bands do, of forming their own label, breaking
28:12
Speaker 2: free of the music industry. They ultimately did would mixed success,
28:16
Speaker 2: But the so yes from the very beginning, I mean,
28:19
Speaker 2: I think it's credit Joe Smith. He went out on
28:21
Speaker 2: a limb to hire a band that was very much
28:24
Speaker 2: at the edges of Warner Brothers universe and ultimately, of
28:27
Speaker 2: course very successful. But it was not easy all the way.
28:30
Speaker 2: There were definitely some clashes of cultural the way.
28:33
Speaker 1: And Joe Smith was an older guy, he was from
28:35
Speaker 1: a different generation. Ye, well, he saw something in them.
28:39
Speaker 1: He just he was tapping into something that the young
28:42
Speaker 1: audience was was digging and he got definitely true.
28:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love the One of my favorite details in
28:48
Speaker 2: the book is that when he attended his first Dad show.
28:50
Speaker 2: He was there and his Carol and Company Blazer and
28:53
Speaker 2: his wife was bearing pearls and you can just I
28:55
Speaker 2: just have this image of the two of them.
28:58
Speaker 1: Everybody just turned you to look at it is this guy.
29:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did it, you know, I mean, he really
29:03
Speaker 2: did get them on there. You know, he got them
29:05
Speaker 2: into it. He's right when he says he's introducing the
29:08
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead to the world, and Jerry's right that they're
29:10
Speaker 2: introducing Warner Brothers to San Francisco. So that's what I
29:12
Speaker 2: mean in the book by saying that they in their
29:15
Speaker 2: own way, each of them was right.
29:16
Speaker 1: Dark Star, what a wonderful enigma this song is. There's
29:19
Speaker 1: an early jam the band goes into on Dancing in
29:23
Speaker 1: the Street where there's a moment where the music from
29:26
Speaker 1: Dark Star originates, and then Jerry's longtime songwriting partner Robert Hunter.
29:31
Speaker 1: Dead fans know him very well, he was there for
29:33
Speaker 1: that show. The opening lyrics come pretty naturally afterwards. There's
29:36
Speaker 1: also a ts Elliott influence. If you can talk about
29:39
Speaker 1: the origins of the song and how it developed. The
29:41
Speaker 1: single original singles like two minutes long, and it goes
29:45
Speaker 1: on to become, you know, a twenty minute live jam.
29:47
Speaker 2: Oh and he's yeah, sometimes even longer.
29:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
29:50
Speaker 2: It becomes the iconic Grateful Dead, early Grateful Dead vehicle
29:55
Speaker 2: for jamming and for experimenting. And I love that. It's
29:59
Speaker 2: a real anido show that you're referring to there where
30:02
Speaker 2: you can hear and dancing in the street. There's a moment.
30:04
Speaker 2: I forget what the minute mark is, but I'm sure
30:06
Speaker 2: your listeners can find it. It's widely available you you you
30:11
Speaker 2: can hear the chords go back and forth between Garcia
30:14
Speaker 2: and Lesh as they are dabbling in something they've clearly
30:17
Speaker 2: been playing with elsewhere, but they're sort of beginning to
30:20
Speaker 2: experiment with it on stage. And as you say, Hunter
30:24
Speaker 2: was there, he heard that. He then composed a piece
30:28
Speaker 2: of it right away, then composed some of it later
30:31
Speaker 2: in Golden Gate Park. He draws he's such a widely
30:35
Speaker 2: read intellectual, really, and so he draws pieces from T. S. Eliot,
30:43
Speaker 2: pieces really just from his imagination. And even when he's
30:46
Speaker 2: drawing from other writers, he's changing it in ways that
30:49
Speaker 2: are very uniquely his own. So the result is either, well,
30:55
Speaker 2: it's both brilliant and nonsensical at the same time. Right,
30:58
Speaker 2: it's a it is a it's a flashing of images
31:01
Speaker 2: more than a story. I mean. Hunter also wrote more
31:06
Speaker 2: traditional story songs, Cumberland Blues or some of the other
31:09
Speaker 2: pieces that have a character and a story that are
31:12
Speaker 2: much more identifiably a song. This is much more of
31:16
Speaker 2: an experiment. In fact, back to our earlier conversation, this
31:20
Speaker 2: is the opposite of the Watts Towers right. This is
31:24
Speaker 2: not a finished piece that has performed identically over and
31:28
Speaker 2: over or that is well suited to an album. This
31:32
Speaker 2: is a live experience. Each time is different and sometimes
31:37
Speaker 2: radically different, just from night to night. So it becomes
31:40
Speaker 2: the iconic grateful Dead song, particularly of the sixties and seventies.
31:45
Speaker 1: And what it means nobody knows. It's whatever you want
31:47
Speaker 1: it to mean. And that is brilliant. And I'm sure
31:51
Speaker 1: you've seen this clip where Robert Hunters asked about it
31:53
Speaker 1: and he's lying down on the cause as many years
31:55
Speaker 1: this is like just maybe a few years before he
31:57
Speaker 1: passed away, but he's lying on the couch. Is what
31:59
Speaker 1: are those lyrics means? Says Well, the duckstar crashing, pouring
32:03
Speaker 1: it's light in to ashes, reason tatters, the forces tear
32:05
Speaker 1: loose from the axis. I mean, just what it says.
32:10
Speaker 2: What's the question? Yeah, that's great, it's fun. Yeah, and
32:15
Speaker 2: yeah it is uh and I think really importantly, even
32:20
Speaker 2: when they performed it brilliantly. They didn't get frozen on
32:24
Speaker 2: a version of it, right, So they would perform it
32:26
Speaker 2: brilliantly one night and then come back the next night
32:28
Speaker 2: and perform it all together differently, right. And so there's
32:31
Speaker 2: something that to me is sort of the essence of
32:34
Speaker 2: particularly that early Dead, of them feeling their way through it,
32:38
Speaker 2: being willing to be bad, being willing to get it wrong,
32:41
Speaker 2: or to have the audience not particularly enjoy it, or
32:44
Speaker 2: but just because the experience of it was the point
32:47
Speaker 2: of it.
32:47
Speaker 1: There's a pivotal meeting and Dead History in August of
32:50
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, the band, the managers, the band's engineer,
32:53
Speaker 1: Alsie Stanley. They meet to discuss some simmering issues. And
32:57
Speaker 1: another thing that's hard to imagine is Ron mccernon and
33:00
Speaker 1: Bob we are being fired from the band, but they
33:03
Speaker 1: were facing heat from Jerry and Phil Lesh. What happened?
33:07
Speaker 1: And is there a tape of this meeting? Does it exist?
33:10
Speaker 2: Yeah? The tape is the meeting is as strange as
33:13
Speaker 2: the fact that it was taped. Both are really odd.
33:17
Speaker 2: And yes, the answer is there is a tape, and
33:19
Speaker 2: I quoted a great length, in fact, almost all of it.
33:21
Speaker 2: I think, is quoted in the book. Yeah, I mean,
33:25
Speaker 2: I think this is a juncture. It's a pivotal moment
33:28
Speaker 2: for the Grateful Dead. As you say, in the second
33:31
Speaker 2: half of nine sixty eight, the coming off of some
33:36
Speaker 2: of these more experimental efforts, Lesh and Garcia and some
33:41
Speaker 2: of Tom Constantant, who was assisting on keyboards at that point,
33:45
Speaker 2: all saw a very psychedelic, open ended future for the
33:50
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead, and they felt that pig Pen and Bob
33:55
Speaker 2: were were not keeping up, that they needed to develop
33:58
Speaker 2: musically in order for them all to progress, and so
34:02
Speaker 2: that had been a source of frustration through much of
34:04
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight. This meeting that you're describing, and that
34:08
Speaker 2: this tape memorializes, is of them there. As you say,
34:13
Speaker 2: they're managers and engineers, essentially telling We're and a pig
34:17
Speaker 2: Pen that they're out and that the band is going
34:20
Speaker 2: to move on without them because they haven't been able
34:22
Speaker 2: to keep up. Now that said, it's a firing, but
34:26
Speaker 2: it's a Grateful Dead firing, and so they don't quite
34:29
Speaker 2: pull it off.
34:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure if they were fired really right.
34:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, The fact is they almost really don't miss any shows.
34:36
Speaker 2: There are a few performances after that of Garcia and
34:42
Speaker 2: Lesh and the drummers playing together as Bobby in the midnights,
34:46
Speaker 2: and those are in essence what the Dead might have
34:49
Speaker 2: been had it gone on without Pigpen and We're but
34:54
Speaker 2: a better sense intervened and Garcia and Lesh quickly realized
34:59
Speaker 2: that they've made a mistake, realized it quickly enough that
35:04
Speaker 2: they invited Weir and Pigpen to rejoin them. Very few,
35:09
Speaker 2: if any, actual scheduled gigs were affected by it. Pickpin
35:13
Speaker 2: missed a few gigs in the fall of sixty eight,
35:15
Speaker 2: but it was really because his girlfriend was in the hospital,
35:18
Speaker 2: not because he'd been fired. So they got their wits
35:22
Speaker 2: back together and they went on and as as I
35:26
Speaker 2: noted the book, the whole episode for me is interesting
35:29
Speaker 2: for several reasons. One that it was recorded is strange. Obviously,
35:33
Speaker 2: you know, this is not the kind of thing you
35:34
Speaker 2: would expect to have a tape up. Another is that
35:37
Speaker 2: it's the rare moment where you see Garcia really kind
35:40
Speaker 2: of taking some responsibility. He has to be really pushed
35:43
Speaker 2: into it. You can tell him the tape. He's not
35:45
Speaker 2: enjoying this experience, nor would you expect him to. But
35:50
Speaker 2: he does step up and follow through with what approximates
35:55
Speaker 2: a firing or a break anyway. But then the other thing,
35:59
Speaker 2: I would say, it's a bad idea. I mean, even
36:03
Speaker 2: it's a difficult thing to do for friends, obviously, but
36:05
Speaker 2: it ends up really not being a good musical idea
36:10
Speaker 2: to dump pig Pen and Weird, because I do think
36:13
Speaker 2: they saw they were Lessia and Garcia are mistaken, frankly
36:18
Speaker 2: in that moment, and thinking that the Dead would be
36:20
Speaker 2: better by shedding their kind of jug band blues wing
36:25
Speaker 2: and focusing on a more experimental psychedelic wing. I mean,
36:29
Speaker 2: there would have been a future. They're brilliant musicians, and
36:32
Speaker 2: they would have made the most of it, of course,
36:33
Speaker 2: But what ends up being the hallmark of the Grateful
36:37
Speaker 2: Dead is that they don't choose between those styles, but
36:41
Speaker 2: that they bring them all together. And had they shed
36:45
Speaker 2: Weird and pig Pen at that early stage, I don't
36:48
Speaker 2: know that they ever would have gotten back around to
36:50
Speaker 2: that realization. So everyone is lucky that it didn't stick,
36:57
Speaker 2: really and so better heads prevailed. But it didn't. In
37:01
Speaker 2: that evening, it seemed like it was about to break
37:04
Speaker 2: into pieces, and eventually it just obviously didn't.
37:06
Speaker 1: The last few years of the sixties turbulent for the Dead,
37:09
Speaker 1: obviously turbulent for the country. Their appearance at Woodstock a disaster,
37:13
Speaker 1: the pa issues of the rain, the Altamont debacle led
37:16
Speaker 1: to tragedy, the Manson family murders. It seemed like the
37:20
Speaker 1: message of the counterculture movement of the mid sixties that
37:23
Speaker 1: came out of San Francisco had been distorted. That freedom
37:26
Speaker 1: Jerry talked about turned dark. But you might quote the
37:29
Speaker 1: counterculture itself continued, and it did so in no small
37:32
Speaker 1: measure because the Dead survived. So talk about that and
37:35
Speaker 1: the Dead's influence in the early seventies.
37:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that the well particularly flashing forward even
37:43
Speaker 2: further forward into the eighties and beyond. As the counterculture changed,
37:48
Speaker 2: the Dead became more and more of a sort of
37:51
Speaker 2: guardian of the values of that period. But even as
37:55
Speaker 2: early as the nineteen seventies, as particularly as the much
38:01
Speaker 2: of the counterculture turning much more violent, the students for
38:04
Speaker 2: democratic society kind of migrated into the weathermen. There were
38:08
Speaker 2: protests were increasingly violent, Bombings were more common in the
38:14
Speaker 2: early seventies.
38:16
Speaker 3: The Dead resisted both the war and the kind of
38:23
Speaker 3: mainstream refusal to accept them and the counterculture on one hand,
38:31
Speaker 3: but the Dead also resisted the kind of didacticism of
38:34
Speaker 3: the left.
38:36
Speaker 2: They were not fond of being told what to do
38:39
Speaker 2: by either the left or the right. And so they
38:43
Speaker 2: really are quite steady through the period. They stick to
38:47
Speaker 2: their values, they stick to their art, and you know,
38:52
Speaker 2: despite pressure from each side there certainly they are much
38:55
Speaker 2: more associated with the left and properly so that's that's
38:59
Speaker 2: really where they're situated, I think, in the cultural history
39:02
Speaker 2: of all of this. But you know, they're not drawn
39:06
Speaker 2: into a violent response to Vietnam, for instance, which much
39:11
Speaker 2: of the counterculture was. They are they find there, they
39:16
Speaker 2: find common cause with the Black Panthers and the Hell's
39:18
Speaker 2: Angels or the rare, the rare people who saw a
39:21
Speaker 2: value in both the Hell's Angels and the Black Panthers,
39:24
Speaker 2: but not because of their politics or their violence, which
39:27
Speaker 2: both of them engaged in, but more because of their
39:30
Speaker 2: kind of community cohesion around those groups. And so they
39:33
Speaker 2: knew what they liked and they and they were steadfast
39:36
Speaker 2: about that. And so I think that's a big part
39:38
Speaker 2: of why they remain a kind of touchstone of culture
39:46
Speaker 2: over such a long period is that culture is swirling
39:48
Speaker 2: and changing all around them, but they're pretty good about
39:51
Speaker 2: steering a straight course through all of that.
39:54
Speaker 1: Book on Rock Podcasts will be back after this time
39:58
Speaker 1: of lunch. There was a point in the mid seventies
40:02
Speaker 1: where the Dead stop touring, but they re emerging. Seventy
40:05
Speaker 1: six and seventy seven is a landmark year for the band.
40:08
Speaker 1: Talk about that period of the Dead. It was like
40:10
Speaker 1: a rebirth for them, a rebirth for counter culture with
40:13
Speaker 1: Nixing being out of the White House, right.
40:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's a real moment of kind of liberation.
40:18
Speaker 2: I think. Yeah, they had well, as noted earlier, they
40:22
Speaker 2: had formed their own record label. They had come off
40:26
Speaker 2: the road and really kind of retreated back to North
40:31
Speaker 2: of the Bay up in Marin County, San Rafel, where
40:34
Speaker 2: they worked on solo projects and produced a Boost for
40:38
Speaker 2: All At a Grateful Dead album that they produced while
40:40
Speaker 2: they were on this hiatus. But you know, again, the
40:46
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead is often successful sort of despite itself, and
40:51
Speaker 2: in this sense, they I think they they didn't really
40:55
Speaker 2: there's something ill conceived about the idea of the Grateful
40:58
Speaker 2: Dead coming off the road because fundamentally, as we've already discussed,
41:02
Speaker 2: The energy of the Grateful Dead was always on the road.
41:05
Speaker 2: It was always in relation to audiences, and so the
41:08
Speaker 2: idea that they would be some other kind of non
41:11
Speaker 2: touring enterprise doesn't really make a lot of sense. And
41:15
Speaker 2: I think gradually they came to see that as they
41:17
Speaker 2: were off the road and doing their own projects, and
41:20
Speaker 2: so eventually they realized that they wanted to be out
41:25
Speaker 2: there again, they wanted to be together, and they did
41:28
Speaker 2: so they come back out in seventy six, as you say,
41:31
Speaker 2: seventy seven shows. The spring of seventy seven produced some
41:34
Speaker 2: of those shows most revered by fans, Cornell's a Special
41:40
Speaker 2: New Haven, New Haven, Victorium and Florida. A lot of
41:45
Speaker 2: really great music in that period, and a sense that
41:49
Speaker 2: they were at it again. They started small with a
41:54
Speaker 2: lot of smaller venues, got bigger again. There's another through
41:58
Speaker 2: line of the Grateful Dead, which is trying to keep
42:00
Speaker 2: things small, and they struggle with that because they are
42:04
Speaker 2: so popular that it's hard to keep it small. But
42:06
Speaker 2: there are these interludes throughout their history where they sort
42:09
Speaker 2: of ratchet back down. In this case, for instance, they
42:12
Speaker 2: sold off the Wall of Sound. They came back out
42:14
Speaker 2: as a smaller, more nimble enterprise. So they're always ratcheting
42:19
Speaker 2: up and ratching down. The audiences are kind of pushing that.
42:23
Speaker 2: But that period of seventy seven early seventy seven in particular,
42:26
Speaker 2: I think as often regarded as a real Houseian moment
42:29
Speaker 2: for them.
42:29
Speaker 1: We know the rebirth of the Dead's popularity in the
42:32
Speaker 1: eighties because of Touch of Gray in nineteen eighty seven,
42:34
Speaker 1: but it really was more than just that, right, I mean,
42:37
Speaker 1: it was, like you say, in the coldness of the eighties,
42:39
Speaker 1: the Dead offered warmth. So it was it that the
42:42
Speaker 1: culture culture was that way of life that came out
42:44
Speaker 1: of the sixties was now living on through new generations.
42:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no way to prove this, but here's all
42:52
Speaker 2: for you. My take on it anyway, which is that
42:55
Speaker 2: and not uniquely mine. I mean other I've talked to
42:58
Speaker 2: many other people I think buy into this. So it's
43:01
Speaker 2: not I didn't invent this idea. But the nineteen eighties,
43:05
Speaker 2: you know, the nineteen sixties, the Grateful Dead and Ronald
43:08
Speaker 2: Reagan sort of spar in California and kind of circle
43:11
Speaker 2: each other with competing values. In the nineteen eighties, they're
43:15
Speaker 2: both they do the same thing again, but they just
43:18
Speaker 2: do it on a national stage. This time Reagan runs
43:20
Speaker 2: for and of course as elected president, and the Dead
43:24
Speaker 2: emerges as this much bigger than California band, a much
43:29
Speaker 2: really unnational phenomenon by then, And that's even before Touch
43:34
Speaker 2: of Grave, which then puts them stratospherically into another level.
43:36
Speaker 2: But I do think one thing that's going on there
43:40
Speaker 2: is that Reagan and the culture around him were kind
43:45
Speaker 2: of They were mean spirited, They were capitalistic, great as
43:50
Speaker 2: good right. It was the sort of shorthand for the
43:52
Speaker 2: early nineteen eighties in Grateful dead Land. Greed was not good.
43:58
Speaker 2: The Dead and their values continued to be about kindness
44:03
Speaker 2: and compassion and freedom and creativity and improvisation and living
44:08
Speaker 2: in the moment, in tending to one's larger family of
44:13
Speaker 2: a family of artists and others like you know, people,
44:17
Speaker 2: creative people. They were not changed, but the culture around
44:22
Speaker 2: them had changed and had really hardened from the sixties
44:25
Speaker 2: and seventies into the eighties. And so I do think
44:28
Speaker 2: part of what happened is that people who craved that,
44:32
Speaker 2: people particularly young people, but not just young people, but
44:35
Speaker 2: who were looking for something that was the opposite of
44:38
Speaker 2: greed and the sort of maleve of the nuclear war
44:42
Speaker 2: machine and the environmental dismissiveness of Washington. People who were sorry,
44:50
Speaker 2: who were outside that foundly grateful Dead, and they're the
44:55
Speaker 2: number of people who admired their music and the culture
44:59
Speaker 2: around them grew and grew and grew, starting in the
45:01
Speaker 2: early eighties and then really exploding with Touch of Gray
45:04
Speaker 2: and MTV and and by the late eighties they are gigantic.
45:09
Speaker 1: Tape sharing was huge because my older brother gave me
45:13
Speaker 1: New Haven seventy seven. I still have the Maxel cassette.
45:17
Speaker 1: And I was a fan because of Touch of Gray
45:20
Speaker 1: like so many but the moment I pressed play on
45:23
Speaker 1: that it was life changing.
45:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:27
Speaker 1: So if they don't allow tape sharing, what is the
45:31
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead today?
45:33
Speaker 2: Oh? Good question, right, Yeah, you know. The Well, as
45:38
Speaker 2: with so many things, and we've already talked about a
45:39
Speaker 2: few of them, the Dead was brilliant, sort of despite
45:45
Speaker 2: itself or without a plan. Really, Tapers had been at
45:50
Speaker 2: shows going way back, and the Dead never really cared.
45:56
Speaker 2: Jerry famously he said, you know, once I'm done with
45:58
Speaker 2: the notes there, I'm done with them. You can do
46:00
Speaker 2: whatever you want with them. The music industry did not
46:03
Speaker 2: love that approach. The music industry saw that as the
46:05
Speaker 2: opportunity for bootlegging, which then it viewed as undermining album sales.
46:12
Speaker 2: The Dead they had taped other artists, Jury himself, Bob
46:15
Speaker 2: had taped artists, so they weren't offended by taping. And
46:19
Speaker 2: they didn't make that much money off albums anyway, so
46:23
Speaker 2: for them it really wasn't much of a hindrance, so
46:27
Speaker 2: they were always very relaxed about it. By the eighties, though,
46:32
Speaker 2: tapers had become a bit of a bother, and I
46:36
Speaker 2: remember this from shows. I mean partly because they didn't
46:39
Speaker 2: want people dancing around them. They didn't want people jostling
46:41
Speaker 2: their equipment, and so the taping per se didn't bother
46:46
Speaker 2: the band much, but the atmosphere around tapers was bothering
46:50
Speaker 2: some members of the audience. So they created what they
46:53
Speaker 2: called the tapester section later the taper section, which to
46:57
Speaker 2: my knowledge anyway, at least certainly in those days, was
46:59
Speaker 2: the only band to do this, where they moved it
47:02
Speaker 2: around a little bit, eventually settled in just behind the soundboard,
47:06
Speaker 2: and tapers could sit there. They could have their boom mics,
47:08
Speaker 2: they could have their equipment, and there was no not
47:13
Speaker 2: only were there there no penalty, they were openly allowed
47:15
Speaker 2: to be there, so they didn't have to hide or
47:17
Speaker 2: hide their equipment or shush people around them because they
47:20
Speaker 2: had their own section. And then that of course fed
47:24
Speaker 2: this community of taping. The only there were no real
47:28
Speaker 2: enforced rules around taping or distribution of tapes. It was
47:32
Speaker 2: understood that you weren't to sell them, that they were
47:34
Speaker 2: to be traded, not non for profit. There are moments
47:37
Speaker 2: where the Dead rose up to protect its copyright, usually
47:40
Speaker 2: when someone tried to press vinyl, press tapes or something
47:44
Speaker 2: into vinyl, or copied an album without permission, But for
47:49
Speaker 2: the most part, they not only didn't discourage, but actually
47:53
Speaker 2: encouraged taping of shows and trading of tapes, and it
47:57
Speaker 2: became this whole other culture, I mean, this giant culture
48:00
Speaker 2: on top of a grateful dead culture.
48:02
Speaker 1: That's what I was about to say. What fascinates me
48:03
Speaker 1: is this idea that it doesn't matter the size of
48:06
Speaker 1: your audience, not necessarily, because if you have one person
48:09
Speaker 1: that buys a ticket on night one, that same person
48:12
Speaker 1: buys a tickets on nights two and three, three tickets
48:15
Speaker 1: are sold. Yeah, it's just one person, but three tickets
48:18
Speaker 1: and you multiply that times how many other dead fans
48:21
Speaker 1: are out there. That is something that I wonder why
48:25
Speaker 1: other bands don't really pick up on. But then again,
48:27
Speaker 1: it's not so easy to change up your set list
48:29
Speaker 1: every night. But that's why people were coming back for
48:31
Speaker 1: nights two and three. It wasn't the exact same set list,
48:34
Speaker 1: and as we know, most bands are militant about that
48:38
Speaker 1: the set list is exactly the same. Maybe we'll switch
48:41
Speaker 1: a song out with another, but they did not do that,
48:44
Speaker 1: and the song sounded differently every night, I mean, essentially
48:47
Speaker 1: the same. But like you say with Dark Starm, maybe
48:49
Speaker 1: this one has a little jazz jam inside of it.
48:51
Speaker 1: Maybe in the next night it's got a little bluesy
48:53
Speaker 1: thing going on. To me, it's brilliant, but it speaks
48:56
Speaker 1: to the music. The musical talent that the band had
48:58
Speaker 1: in order to do that not that easy.
49:01
Speaker 2: And the courage, I mean the courage, yeah, I mean
49:04
Speaker 2: the idea that you're going out there without it. I
49:06
Speaker 2: mean they always had a rough idea of you know
49:09
Speaker 2: what was in you know what they were playing in
49:11
Speaker 2: those months of any given tour. But where are you
49:14
Speaker 2: gonna start? Where you're gonna end up with what's that?
49:17
Speaker 2: How's that? Is the jam going to be ten minutes
49:19
Speaker 2: or twenty or this commitment to listening to each other
49:23
Speaker 2: and making it up as they went along, that takes
49:26
Speaker 2: a lot of guts and and a willingness to fail.
49:30
Speaker 2: And I would add an audience that permitted that, right,
49:33
Speaker 2: I mean, so I'd never in the time. I mean
49:36
Speaker 2: I didn't go to as many dead shows as many
49:38
Speaker 2: people did, but I never once heard a person say, oh,
49:40
Speaker 2: I want my money back, or that was a whole
49:42
Speaker 2: you know, it was just part of it, right, It
49:44
Speaker 2: was just that was it was the ride. And so
49:48
Speaker 2: the fact that the audience enjoyed even those off nights
49:52
Speaker 2: or was sort of interested in them allowed them to
49:55
Speaker 2: be that, Yeah, there's a story to all those pieces
49:57
Speaker 2: fit together, and.
49:59
Speaker 1: There's this story to be told within each show. And
50:01
Speaker 1: I love watching the videos of each BIM member just
50:04
Speaker 1: looking at each other, the maybe the nod you just
50:06
Speaker 1: you're fast, like what is going on inside of their head?
50:08
Speaker 1: Like John Mayer was talking about when he first joined,
50:10
Speaker 1: and Bob Weir was like, yeah, we're gonna play such
50:12
Speaker 1: and such song and and Mayer's like, all right, cool,
50:15
Speaker 1: but he's like also on mid mid song he decides
50:18
Speaker 1: to just change up the tempo and and he's and
50:22
Speaker 1: he had to be ready, like he had to be
50:24
Speaker 1: and he's and he's a top notch musician. Booked on
50:27
Speaker 1: Rock Podcasts, We'll be back after this.
50:30
Speaker 2: Come out, Come out wherever you are.
50:34
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50:38
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50:40
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50:43
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51:03
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51:07
Speaker 1: You talked about how Jerry and the band wanted to
51:09
Speaker 1: keep it small and in nineteen eighty one there was
51:12
Speaker 1: a there was a reporter that pissed off or tried
51:16
Speaker 1: to piss off Jerry, and he said, he said, he said,
51:20
Speaker 1: you know, it was absurd and disastrous that the Dead
51:23
Speaker 1: had been meandering along for sixteen years, and Jerry's response was,
51:26
Speaker 1: I don't give a damn. In fact, I'd be afraid
51:29
Speaker 1: if everybody liked us. I don't want the responsibility. But
51:33
Speaker 1: that's what happens. By the end of the eighties, right,
51:35
Speaker 1: there was a this was a burden for him. This
51:38
Speaker 1: is when we start to get into the nineties, and
51:40
Speaker 1: now he's not enjoying this as much.
51:42
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. I think a lot of things come together
51:45
Speaker 2: in that period, not most of them not good. But well,
51:49
Speaker 2: first I mean decide. The first one is that they
51:52
Speaker 2: became huge right between Toucher Gray in the Dark. The
51:56
Speaker 2: album suddenly was a hit, the MT drew new fans
52:01
Speaker 2: to them. Suddenly he showed people were coming to shows
52:05
Speaker 2: with no tickets and not even with any intention of
52:08
Speaker 2: getting in, just to be there and to sort of
52:10
Speaker 2: experience the culture around it. And of course Garcia by
52:15
Speaker 2: then was battling and increasingly losing struggle against heroin and
52:20
Speaker 2: drugs generally, and so his enjoyment faded. I happened to
52:24
Speaker 2: be at the show in nineteen eighty six at RFK
52:27
Speaker 2: Stadium when they played with Bob Dylan. It was roastingly hot.
52:32
Speaker 2: I mean, I can they say you can't remember pain,
52:34
Speaker 2: I can remember a lot. It was that day and so,
52:37
Speaker 2: and I was just in the audience. He looked, Garcia
52:40
Speaker 2: looks terrible. People around me were talking about it. And
52:45
Speaker 2: then the next day we went back to San Francisco,
52:46
Speaker 2: and then soon after it fell into a coma, and
52:49
Speaker 2: so his health was precarious, to say the least. He
52:54
Speaker 2: did by the way, I should add, he did recover
52:56
Speaker 2: from that and actually straight got cleaned for a while.
53:00
Speaker 2: They produced some brilliant shows.
53:01
Speaker 1: And they had to learn how to play all over again.
53:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it was a real, real comeback, and
53:08
Speaker 2: it was exciting, Like the joy that people had in
53:11
Speaker 2: his return was just lovely. But then he relapsed and
53:15
Speaker 2: it caught up with him again. And so by the
53:17
Speaker 2: end of the eighties and into the early nineties, it
53:20
Speaker 2: was getting too big. He was overwhelmed, and you know,
53:25
Speaker 2: like like the hate and the summer of love. Big
53:28
Speaker 2: is not always great for counterculture or for music even,
53:33
Speaker 2: and it just became harder and harder to keep it
53:35
Speaker 2: going without the mishaps of a giant enterprise like that,
53:40
Speaker 2: and so I think it became more of a burden
53:42
Speaker 2: for him and I you know, I'll just one more
53:45
Speaker 2: note on that. Other bands could have The Dead could
53:51
Speaker 2: have stopped right, They could have said, you know, forget it,
53:54
Speaker 2: we need to take six months off. But most bands
53:58
Speaker 2: could do that because they were most revenue for most
54:01
Speaker 2: bands is generated by albums. The Grateful that had this
54:04
Speaker 2: huge community of people they they supported, who worked for them,
54:09
Speaker 2: and if they stopped touring, the money stopped coming in.
54:12
Speaker 2: So they felt a responsibility again back to this word
54:15
Speaker 2: responsibility to keep that community alive and healthy. And so
54:21
Speaker 2: to stop was not just to make a decision that
54:24
Speaker 2: they could personally afford that by this point they were
54:27
Speaker 2: all quite wealthy, but that would put people they cared
54:29
Speaker 2: about out of work. That would have really ground the
54:31
Speaker 2: enterprise to a halt. And so the pressure to go
54:35
Speaker 2: on was immense, and so then they succumbed to it,
54:37
Speaker 2: and they and that got harder and harder.
54:40
Speaker 1: In that documentary That Great Long, What a Long Strange
54:43
Speaker 1: Ship It's been Chris Jerry's girlfriend it was. It was
54:46
Speaker 1: a girlfriend from his early years and then they rekindled
54:48
Speaker 1: their relationship later years, and she says Jerry pulled her
54:51
Speaker 1: asign one day and he said, you know, I could.
54:54
Speaker 1: I could just walk away and live off of the
54:56
Speaker 1: Ben and Jerry's money, right, And she said, what do it?
55:01
Speaker 1: He says, you don't get it. You don't get He said,
55:03
Speaker 1: I've got fifty people road crew, band members that depend
55:07
Speaker 1: on me, and I've got millions of fans who depend
55:11
Speaker 1: on me to go out there every year, year after year,
55:14
Speaker 1: ten months out of the year because they're looking to
55:16
Speaker 1: have their good time for two three hours. Yeah, I can't.
55:21
Speaker 1: And he couldn't go out for a walk, he couldn't
55:24
Speaker 1: go to the store, he couldn't do what he wanted
55:26
Speaker 1: to do, and thus you have the escape in the drugs,
55:31
Speaker 1: and yeah, we lost.
55:33
Speaker 2: The paradox of it is awful. I mean, it's just
55:39
Speaker 2: it's tragic. And for me, the most painful parts of
55:42
Speaker 2: working on the book were watching that, watching him sort
55:46
Speaker 2: of come apart in those later years. There's a I
55:50
Speaker 2: was up at the archive at you see Santa Cruz,
55:52
Speaker 2: which has a Grateful Dead archive, which is extremely important
55:55
Speaker 2: to me and producing this book, and one day I
55:58
Speaker 2: was going through bank records of the ban and it
56:01
Speaker 2: has Christia's personal bank records or part of it from
56:04
Speaker 2: the I think this is ninety three and ninety four,
56:06
Speaker 2: and you see on several days of him making five,
56:10
Speaker 2: six seven trips to the ATM to take out two
56:13
Speaker 2: or three hundred dollars each time, and you can just
56:15
Speaker 2: see the addiction working on him. And you know the
56:20
Speaker 2: fact that at that point that he is successful beyond
56:23
Speaker 2: any dream he had when he was fresh out of
56:25
Speaker 2: the army in Palo Alto in nineteen sixty five or
56:28
Speaker 2: sixty sixty sixty one. He's so far beyond that now,
56:34
Speaker 2: and yet things are falling apart for him personally, and
56:38
Speaker 2: it's really I mean, he died at age fifty three.
56:40
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, were it not for the drugs, he
56:46
Speaker 2: would have presumably lived a lot longer. But it really
56:48
Speaker 2: took a toll on him for sure.
56:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. She I can't remember her name. I apologize, but
56:52
Speaker 1: she said bridget Meyer, right, And she's the one who said,
56:57
Speaker 1: I know you, I know you're doing drugs again. That's fine,
57:01
Speaker 1: but I need you to be open with me and
57:03
Speaker 1: just tell me and so we can communicate. And there's
57:05
Speaker 1: a pause and he looks right at her cold stare.
57:07
Speaker 1: He says, thank you very much, you can leave. It
57:10
Speaker 1: was great. We had a great time it's time to
57:13
Speaker 1: go wow.
57:15
Speaker 2: I mean it was yeah, Well, I don't know. This
57:19
Speaker 2: is not probably the forum to talk about it, but
57:21
Speaker 2: the anyone who has dealt with an addict knows that
57:25
Speaker 2: if you force him to choose, they will not always
57:28
Speaker 2: make the right decision. I think for Garcia in that moment,
57:33
Speaker 2: it's he's incapable of understanding what he's giving up. But
57:37
Speaker 2: it was a heartbreaking, heavy price. It's heartbreaking. You're right.
57:42
Speaker 1: Book Down Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after this.
57:44
Speaker 2: During our brief indomation, let's take a flying crip from
57:47
Speaker 2: Milanda Fantasy to everyday life.
57:52
Speaker 1: Hey guys, thanks so much for checking out the book
57:53
Speaker 1: Down Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
57:57
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58:00
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58:02
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58:06
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58:08
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58:11
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58:19
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58:22
Speaker 1: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel Find it
58:25
Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
58:29
Speaker 1: to the show, so I finish with this. Obviously we
58:32
Speaker 1: know the Grateful dead the music continued. I mean, your
58:37
Speaker 1: epilogue says, quote, the Grateful did die with Jerry Garcia,
58:40
Speaker 1: and sure did. But the members moved on and we
58:42
Speaker 1: know they've different formations. But as for counter culture, you're
58:46
Speaker 1: write that quote. It is unfair to those who participated
58:50
Speaker 1: in the counterculture of the nineteen sixties or who have
58:53
Speaker 1: joined it since to argue that simply because the movement
58:55
Speaker 1: did not achieve what it set out to do, it
58:58
Speaker 1: was inconsequential. In fact, the counterculture influences our lives today
59:02
Speaker 1: in profound, broad and specific ways. Please can you expand
59:06
Speaker 1: on that and we'll finish with that.
59:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think some of those ways are
59:11
Speaker 2: very obvious. We are as a society, we're much more
59:15
Speaker 2: accepting of Eastern religious practices, Buddhism, Hinduism, others that are
59:20
Speaker 2: much more a part of our culture today than they
59:25
Speaker 2: were before the sixties. Health foods, organic foods. There's a
59:29
Speaker 2: whole ways in which the counterculture has infused itself into
59:35
Speaker 2: our being really and into our politics. Some of the
59:39
Speaker 2: things that we're contentious about that the counterculture confronted are
59:42
Speaker 2: now beyond dispute. We don't genuinely dispute that segregation is
59:47
Speaker 2: a desirable I mean, I'm sure there are some outliers,
59:50
Speaker 2: but as a society we accept that racial equality is
59:55
Speaker 2: an ambition of the society gender equality, So there are
1:00:00
Speaker 2: respect for the environment, largely bipartisan consensus around that today.
1:00:05
Speaker 2: In what fashion is something we still debate. But there
1:00:08
Speaker 2: are big principles of the counterculture that have settled into
1:00:11
Speaker 2: our lives that we no longer even think to argue about.
1:00:14
Speaker 2: That's what I mean by it influencing us now. I
1:00:19
Speaker 2: would also say there are things about the counterculture that
1:00:21
Speaker 2: have affected our that didn't succeed, or that have affected
1:00:25
Speaker 2: us in ways that we are not a success. So, yes,
1:00:29
Speaker 2: the counterculture ended the Vietnam War. I mean, I think
1:00:32
Speaker 2: that's a hallmark of its influence. It didn't fundamentally, though,
1:00:36
Speaker 2: change the way we think about war. We still resort
1:00:39
Speaker 2: to violence to solve problems between nations. That's a shortcoming,
1:00:44
Speaker 2: I would say of the counterculture and its influence drugs.
1:00:47
Speaker 2: You know, the counterculture celebrated drugs. You know, I'm not
1:00:52
Speaker 2: here to proselytize about drugs one way or another, but
1:00:54
Speaker 2: I would note that among others that killed Jerry Garcia
1:00:58
Speaker 2: and the counterculture didn't have to wrestle with fentanyl or
1:01:01
Speaker 2: some of the more dangerous drugs that we have today.
1:01:04
Speaker 2: But it's celebrated and even glorified drugs in a way
1:01:07
Speaker 2: that I think, in retrospect feels reckless. So there are
1:01:14
Speaker 2: influences that they continue to shadow or affect our lives,
1:01:21
Speaker 2: for better and for worse. And you know, I think
1:01:26
Speaker 2: that that is a reminder that this was a powerful
1:01:30
Speaker 2: was and is a powerful movement, a powerful current of
1:01:34
Speaker 2: American life. I think for the most part we should
1:01:37
Speaker 2: be happy about that. But that is not to say
1:01:39
Speaker 2: that everything it did to turn.
1:01:42
Speaker 1: To gold here beside the rising Tide, Jerry Garcia, the
1:01:45
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead, and an American awakening, and it is out now.
1:01:47
Speaker 1: Find out where our books are sold. You can look
1:01:49
Speaker 1: forward at your nearest bookstore. Find your nearest independent bookstore
1:01:52
Speaker 1: at bookedown rock dot com. And Jim can people find
1:01:55
Speaker 1: you online if they want to reach out to you.
1:01:58
Speaker 2: They can. You can find me at you see La
1:02:00
Speaker 2: you can find me on Twitter or whatever the fun
1:02:03
Speaker 2: we call it. Sorry, but I'm also on h on
1:02:07
Speaker 2: threads and etcetera. I'm easily found, So look me up.
1:02:10
Speaker 2: I'm happy to get a message.
1:02:12
Speaker 1: And did I see You're in one of the O. J.
1:02:14
Speaker 1: Simpson documentaries, right.
1:02:16
Speaker 2: It was a reporter for the Other Times on the
1:02:18
Speaker 2: edge of Wow, it's another life. That's another long conversation.
1:02:21
Speaker 1: Right, it's so funny. Yeah, once I saw you on
1:02:23
Speaker 1: cameras and wait a minute, I've seen him before on TV. Yeah, yeah,
1:02:28
Speaker 1: that's cool man, Jim. Thank you so much for doing this.
1:02:30
Speaker 1: This is fantastic conversation and a topic that I can
1:02:33
Speaker 1: talk forever about.
1:02:35
Speaker 2: Grateful dead you and me both, and I sure appreciate
1:02:38
Speaker 2: the chance to talk with you. Thank you. That's it.
1:02:48
Speaker 2: It's in the books.