Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / History Series 1: Dennis McNally / Grateful Dead Former Publicist / San Francisco / Blues and Jazz

Transcript

History Series 1: Dennis McNally / Grateful Dead Former Publicist / San Francisco / Blues and Jazz · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:15
  and we're live. Dennis, I'm so happy to have you
• 0:18
  here. Welcome.
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  Thanks so much for joining today.
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  To be here. So I came across your work a
• 0:28
  couple of years ago. I've started getting into the
• 0:31
  Grateful Dead. I actually found them by way of
• 0:35
  Joe Russo's Almost Dead, if you're familiar with them, and
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  they covered a song called Atlantic City, but that
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  Springsteen row and the band covered it too.
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  And that kind of, you know, so I heard the jammed out version of
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  that song and then I, you know, started listening to more of the
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  music and then I came across this whole world and culture
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  that I was that I was just absolutely blown away by.
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  And it's kind of really had a huge influence on my life ever
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  since then. And your book about the Grateful
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  Dead, A Long Strange Trip was like my road map and biography
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  to like really understanding or starting to understand the
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  culture and get a feel for the main characters, the
• 1:19
  environment. And it was like, I mean, I felt
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  like I was reading a textbook about the coolest stuff that I
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  love to you know, I love to read and love to learn about.
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  And and then and then you said, and then, and then when I sent
• 1:33
  you an e-mail, you mentioned that you just wrote another
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  book, which I have over here also The Last Great Dream.
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  And that that blew me away. You know, that blew me away just
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  as much. So thank you first of all for
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  the amazing work. I would love to talk about all
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  this stuff with you. How did this, how did you come
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  across writing the and I know you have two more books, but how
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  did you come across writing these epics and what are the
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  other books about? It starts, I was in Graduate
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  School and I was looking for a dissertation topic and I was, I
• 2:02
  had let me start all over again. So I was in Graduate School and
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  I, there was, I was, I had spent the summer in France to try and
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  fake my way through a language examination, which I managed to
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  do. So as a result, I stayed in a
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  dormitory. And let me advise all people
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  who, who might not be in that situation.
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  You don't want to live in a in a dormitory in Graduate School.
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  And the kind of people that want to live in dormitories in
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  Graduate School after four years of college are not the kind of
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  people you mostly want to hang out with.
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  But never mind. So there was this one guy.
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  He was the only dope smoker in the building and he was very
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  kind and he shared his weed with me, 'cause I had zero money and
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  nothing else. And one night I was, I, we were
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  talking and I said something about, yeah, I'm thinking about
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  a dissertation topic and, you know, maybe I'll do the beats.
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  That would be interesting. And he said you should do
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  Kerouac. His papers are at Columbia.
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  And you can stay with my friends in the Bronx.
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  Now, having a place to stay in New York City on the subway is
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  right away, you know, incredible.
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  You know, I was truly broke, like most graduate students.
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  And they, the people who were in that apartment that I stayed
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  with, as a matter of fact, are still some of my closest
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  friends. And that's this was 1972, so.
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  Goodyear. More than 5050.
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  That's the year you were born, right?
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  Yeah, sure. It's the year of all the the
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  the, the, the year that my music case was born.
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  So anyway, I started working on Kerouac and of course he was a
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  raving deadhead. And as I went along, I realized
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  the connections most obviously that Dean Moriarty of On the
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  Road was was Neil Cassidy of the famous Grateful Dead song cowboy
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  kneel at the wheel of the best. They never ever land.
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  And so I said, OK, I want to do these two books and I event.
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  Long story short, I eventually finished the Kerouac book, sent
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  it to Jerry and Hunter at the at the Grateful Dead post, you
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  know, fan club post office box. I had absolutely no idea how to
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  get a hold of them. And I also intuitively knew that
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  if I marched up to the Grateful Dead and said hi, I'd like to
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  write a book about you. They tell me to take a number.
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  So I, I just sort of kept my mouth shut.
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  Eventually I met Jerry and mentioned the Caraway book.
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  Yeah, we'll, we'll, I'll take it from there.
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  So as I say, I I wanted to write a book about the Grateful Dead
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  and I sent a copy to Jerry at the Grateful Dead fan club
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  address, which was all I knew. And eventually I met Jerry and
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  mentioned the Kerouac book. And it turned out that in fact,
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  Kerouac and on the road in particular, where where his
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  Bible it was, it was just one of the the building blocks of his
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  entire persona He had, this is a story that's actually in the
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  last great dream because it's kind of pivotal.
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  And that is the transmission of culture.
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  So you have the beats in the 50s, and one of them was a guy
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  named Wally Hedrick, who taught art at the Art Institute and
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  taught classes on Saturdays to high school kids.
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  And Jerry was one of them. And among other things, he
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  played acoustic Blues while they painted.
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  And this resulted that summer. And when Jerry got up accordion
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  for his birthday, he pissed and moaned and cried and and told
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  his mother he had to be a guitar.
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  And eventually it was a guitar, which kind of settled his life.
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  You know, that was it for the next 40 years or whatever it
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  was. And it was also about the beats
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  they asked him about. He was a Wally Hedrick was a
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  very well known beat painter. And they said what what is this
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  beat thing? And while they said you guys are
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  beat, go down a City Hall, it's a City Lights bookstore and get
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  this book on the road, which was, you know, of course, a best
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  seller at the moment. And he did, Jerry did.
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  It was the one question I never asked him was did you buy it or
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  did you take it? I suspect the latter.
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  But I didn't ask, it was my my my old mission.
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  So anyway, Long story short, I began working on a Grateful Dead
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  book and I researched that for about 3 years.
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  It was hugely fun. I, I love research and the
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  publicist needed to go away for his health and did.
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  And the receptionist at a meeting, company meeting said
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  what are we going to do about publicity?
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  And Jerry said, give me now to do what?
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  He knows that shit. So I did and I became the dead's
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  publicist for umpires. And then just, you know,
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  eventually Jerry died. I wrote the book, finished the
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  book. It took 20 years 'cause I had to
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  put it aside while I was the publicist and wrote another book
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  called On Hwy. 61, which is the the sort of the deeper
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  background of all this and was basically the relationship of
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  white people to black music really since the middle of the
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  19th century and going up to Dylan.
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  So that, you know, and then I sort of stopped for any number
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  of reasons. And then in 2016, which was of
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  course a year before 2017, which is to say the 50th anniversary
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  of the Summer of Love, which was in 1967, so-called, I was asked
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  to curate a photo show about that.
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  And I started with the, I found pictures and started with the
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  beats up to the Summer of Love. And the end result was after
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  about a month or two, I suddenly went, this is a book, you know,
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  it takes me a while sometimes I'm not the sharpest blade.
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  And I started and that became the last great dream, which is
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  basically the origins of where the people who were in the hate
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  in 1966, really before it became famous, you know, where they
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  came from and where their values came from.
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  And that basically involved the art, the avant-garde art
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  community of San Francisco, the Art Institute, Wally, certainly
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  a fundamental part of it. And then, you know, electronic
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  composers, theater people, poets, painters, you name it,
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  and they all contributed something.
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  And it's, you know, it's a wonderful story.
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  And then eventually it all sort of combines into a community in
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  the Hate and Shazam. And then if you you those people
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  included a whole bunch of folk musicians, folk music was an
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  essential part of all this. And so you have all these folk
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  musicians like Garcia, but also like Paul Cantner and, and David
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  Freiburg, all of the bands that that would be, you know, all the
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  guys in Big Brother. And what would happen was that
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  they encountered 2 things. So you have all, all these
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  people and they've got these unusual, that unusual in the
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  American context values whether they even consciously think
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  about it or not. And they're all involved with a
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  community and with basically a peaceful, the idea of a peaceful
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  gentle community. And then they encounter 2 things
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  that are very important. They encounter LSD and The
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  Beatles. And after a while, a very little
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  while, they are playing rock'n'roll instead of instead
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  of folk music. And that's the hate.
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  Yeah, yeah, it's it's what I thought was really cool about
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  the about your new about the latest book was all the
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  references that you made to the Eastern cultures impact on San
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  Francisco. And I've only in the last couple
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  of months, actually, ever since really reading your book, I've
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  only noticed the impact of geography on culture, you know,
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  and I've only recently been aware of that.
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  And it's and, and then now everywhere I look, I can't not
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  see it. I mean, all the conflicts in the
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  world and everywhere you look, everything has to do with just
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  where everyone's situated and the and the conflicting cultures
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  that you know, that everyone that the fight seems to happen
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  in these little meeting points where everyone seems to, you
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  know, seems to, I guess convert, converge together, you know, and
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  yes. It's called place.
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  Usually when when scholars study this, they refer to it as place.
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  And it's true place, not to get too mystical, because for
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  starters, I'm not really, but you think a certain way to some
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  extent from where you come from. Now, there's lots of variations
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  in all this. You know, I have a taste for
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  Southern food because my mother cooked it a lot.
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  She was from Chicago. It's a whole long story.
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  But the fact is that, so it isn't just one to one.
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  I was living in Los Angeles at the time, but the fact is that
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  the place has an impact on how you live, how you speak, how you
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  think, what you think. San Francisco is a particularly
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  distinct version of all that for the simple reason that most
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  cities, most places that, you know, have a lot of people,
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  which is to say cities don't the, the, pardon me, they, they,
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  they arise for really basic economic reasons.
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  Denver is where it is because the railroads cross there,
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  etcetera. You know, Chicago, I mean New
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  York City, you know, had a harbor and it's usually the, the
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  values are tended to be bourgeois, middle class, you
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  know, business values, capitalism.
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  San Francisco did not get established that way.
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  San Francisco was created by failures, by people who did not
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  fit in on the East Coast. A lot of second sons where the
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  first son would take over the business and the second son was
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  like, what about me? And a lot of them, along with
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  people from Chile and and China, took off for San Francisco to
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  hunt for gold. Their values were not bourgeois
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  values. It was crazy time and and the
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  city eventually became a fair, moderately conventional American
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  city, but it always had a certain amount of room for
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  craziness, for tolerance, for craziness that most American
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  cities simply didn't have. And it's literally on the, to
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  quote Robert Duncan, one of the poets that I talk about, the
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  Western edge of dreams. It is literally, you know, if
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  you envision Western culture starting in Greece and Rome and
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  expanding through Europe, and then everybody getting on boats
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  and going to America, and that, OK, expands across America, and
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  then it gets to San Francisco and it stops a there's an ocean.
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  And the people in San Francisco were a long way from New York.
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  And in many ways, the artists did not look back to New York.
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  If you were a painter, well, if you were a painter, you looked
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  to New York because that was Jackson, you know, where the the
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  Impressionists were. But the fact is that that that
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  in addition to the fact that literally we were just here on a
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  hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean toward China and Japan, we
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  also had a significant population from China, you know,
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  so you didn't have to go very far.
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  And any number of of these artists will will tell you that,
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  particularly the composers. A guy named Lou Harrison grew up
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  near Chinatown and he would hear Chinese music, which is based on
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  completely different own scale from Western music.
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  And he integrated them and started sort of integrated
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  gamelan, which is what he ended up loving the most, gamelan with
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  Western music. So there's this mush, you know,
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  mushing together going on. And San Francisco had
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  institutions by the by the after World War 2 that that you know,
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  preserve that The most obvious was one called the Academy for
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  Academy for Asian Studies AAS. And it, it was remarkable and it
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  brought together all kinds of again, poets, Mystics, artists,
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  you name it. And they studied they studied
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  Asian culture and they, among other things, Alan Watts was the
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  was the chancellor and eventually he would have a show
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  about Zen on KPFA, another uniquely San Francisco plug in
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  into a world culture, into an activist culture.
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  And at a time when in the 50s when, you know, people just
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  didn't they didn't stray from the straight and narrow.
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  It was a a very conformist era. San Francisco wasn't and
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  particularly the AAA S. So you have Alan Watts on the
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  radio once a week telling people about Zen and you know, you
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  weren't getting that in New York and and these this is, you know,
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  this is where San Francisco's culture diverged among them.
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  You know, as I said, going all the way back to their founding,
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  but in particular as as far as Asia goes and Asian thought you
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  you could start with Watts and with with the the Academy
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  evasion studies. Yeah, certainly.
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  I thought it's so cool and it's so funny because when I grew up
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  and I, you know, I say this, I've noticed a lot recently, You
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  know, my education was primarily I thought America was the only
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  country in the, you know, on the map.
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  And I thought that the only history was just American
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  history for 250 years. You know, I never, I never
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  expected that anything else existed.
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  And now I'm learning about all this other stuff and it's in and
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  it almost feels criminal that, that we're not being taught
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  about all this other stuff because there's, because all our
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  roots, all our, the more you learn, the more you see that
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  where our roots came from and where are the, you know, the
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  foundations of being an American, you know, in a lot of
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  different contexts, where they, they come from somewhere, you
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  know, and, and these philosophies are not, you know,
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  born overnight. And, you know, and I thought it
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  was, I thought it was just so wonderful that like education is
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  like part of what the culture is, taking your education into
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  your own hands and as opposed to just describing to subscribing
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  to someone else's education. I thought that was so remarkable
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  and so influential. I think that's why the movement
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  is still so strong, you know, because it speaks so strong.
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  Exactly what the people in the hate did, the basic, the
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  fundamentals of the mainstream American culture are American
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  exceptionalism, which is to say that, you know, really only
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  America counts, which is it's gotten that bad.
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  And in fact, our current administration, that is exactly
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  what they think and they say it out loud, which is.
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  America First is the is the same, right?
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  There you go. American exceptionalism
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  implicit, which it leads to an implicit racism, starting with
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  the Constitution in which black people got 3/5 of a vote.
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  They couldn't use it, but but this their southern overseers
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  were able to to use it to maintain power.
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  Consumerism, the basic the basic principle of freedom in America.
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  There's two kinds of that. There's one that is the freedom
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  to make as much money as possible, which the current
• 20:07
  administration waves the flag for, and the freedom of thought
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  to. Evaluate anything, make jokes
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  about it or, or simply challenge it.
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  Thoreau being the most wonderful example.
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  I mean, he, he, he, he started and just change it challenged
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  everything that, that, you know, Christianity, you know, a vague
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  Christianity, though in fact, you know, at this point that's
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  only a tiny fraction of the country and on and on and on and
• 20:45
  on. And all these things sort of got
• 20:49
  left behind by the 1960s in in San Francisco.
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  Yeah, and I think it's I think it's good.
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  I think that lit a flame that hasn't really gone out, you
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  know, and I think that, you know, even till today, you know,
• 21:03
  you see just your the rise of an individual like Billy Strings,
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  you know, like, you know, where he takes, where, you know, he
• 21:11
  takes these grass roots and you know, these, I'm sorry,
• 21:16
  bluegrass roots, you know, and, and combines it with acoustic
• 21:20
  music, you know, and is, I think that I know that, you know,
• 21:24
  Jerry Garcia did a bunch of albums with David Grisman that
• 21:27
  was kind of similar, but Billy Strings playing is so unique.
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  And I and there's like a whole audience that's just they're
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  just chasing after it, you know, and there's a whole group of
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  there's a whole world of just people that that, that, that,
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  that really live and breathe this kind of stuff.
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  And it's, it's, it's, I think it's beautiful.
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  Bluegrass is a is a fascinating phenomenon and Billy Strings is
• 21:48
  one of the more fascinating aspects of it.
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  His his chops are simply I was talking with your Macalkinen
• 21:55
  once and I this was some years back and I had just heard about
• 22:00
  Billy Strings and was listening to him like, wow, kids good.
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  And and I was talking with Yorma and Yorma has a very dry and
• 22:09
  wonderful sense of humor. And I said, we're talking about
• 22:13
  something completely different than I said.
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  By the way, have you heard about this kid?
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  You, you knowing you, you've heard about this kid, Billy
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  Strings. And he went Yep, Yep.
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  He said don't like really talking about him.
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  And he sort of looks me in the eye and gives me the almost the
• 22:28
  wink and says hate talking about people who can do things I
• 22:32
  can't. And and he was, of course
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  joking. But you know, no, Billy is he's
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  got chops from God and and that's all I can say.
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  But all all that. Well, bluegrass is very
• 22:48
  interesting, among other things, because it is not folk music.
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  It is a it is a professional. It was created by professional
• 22:54
  musicians. It's really challenging.
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  It is really engaging so that, you know, the best thing about
• 23:04
  bluegrass. One of the best things is, is
• 23:06
  that at a bluegrass concert, the action in the parking lot before
• 23:15
  and after the show are, you know, with every, I mean, half
• 23:19
  the audience play some, you know, to some extent and they're
• 23:22
  all sitting out in the in the parking lot or, you know,
• 23:24
  wherever picking before they come in, they'll hear, you know,
• 23:28
  the star. And so that's, there's an
• 23:31
  engagement there in a community there that's, that's really
• 23:34
  quite wonderful. Yeah, I think it, I think it's
• 23:37
  cool. I'm curious what you think of
• 23:40
  this. I think that we're seeing a lot
• 23:44
  of explosion of, of, of alternative, we'll call it
• 23:48
  thought in today's world. And I think that a lot of the I
• 23:52
  think, and I was talking to a couple of friends about why that
• 23:54
  might be, you know, and you know, and one of the things that
• 23:57
  someone pointed out to me was whenever people feel oppressed
• 24:02
  or squished or like suffocated, it lights something incredibly
• 24:07
  creative inside ourselves, you know, and that's why I like the
• 24:09
  best poetry I ever wrote was after a heartbreak when I felt
• 24:12
  lost and I didn't know which direction I was going to go on
• 24:14
  my life or something like that. You know, he said we have and he
• 24:17
  goes, you know what? Say what you will about anything
• 24:21
  with COVID, it was three years of of people being miserable,
• 24:26
  essentially, right? It was, it was really, it was
• 24:28
  really, you know, and justified, not justified regardless, It was
• 24:33
  years of people felt isolated, lost, unsure what to do.
• 24:37
  And everywhere that you look felt on, you know, you
• 24:40
  everything felt insecure. And I think that since then
• 24:43
  there's been like, you know, I mean, John Mayer's joined again,
• 24:46
  you know, joined dead and Co and, you know, in the way that
• 24:49
  the that the sphere allows this kind of creative level or the
• 24:52
  amount of music festivals. I don't know whether I haven't
• 24:55
  been following the scene enough to really know whether it's more
• 24:58
  than pre COVID or not. But it feels like there's more
• 25:00
  of an embracing of, you know, the same free spirit that was
• 25:05
  alive in the 60s and 70s that's happening today.
• 25:08
  And I'm wondering if you think it has to do with just, I think
• 25:12
  that people feel, you know, lost or hurt or broke down a little
• 25:16
  bit. What do you think?
• 25:20
  COVID and my. OK, my question is, do you think
• 25:24
  that the explosion in creativity today is is due to the feeling
• 25:29
  of people feeling lost and not knowing which direction to turn
• 25:33
  and a general disenhant disenchantment?
• 25:37
  You know, I think that's that that's partly true.
• 25:41
  I think there are a lot of reasons why people feel the way
• 25:44
  they do. I mean, the more aware of us are
• 25:48
  aware that our our climate is going belly up and, you know,
• 25:52
  and we've got an A maniac who's not doing anything about it in
• 25:55
  the White House. And so, you know, that doesn't
• 25:59
  help either. But really all of this is part
• 26:02
  of a, of a, you know, a path that goes back into the 19th
• 26:09
  century. And it's certainly many of those
• 26:12
  issues, you know, popped up bigly, sorry, in the 60s.
• 26:19
  And, you know, I occasionally teach a, a class to, to high
• 26:23
  school kids about the 60s. They're taking a class in the
• 26:27
  60s and I go in and talk about stuff and, and I look at them
• 26:33
  and I say, look, you guys are interested in something that
• 26:36
  happened 50, more than 50 years before you were born.
• 26:41
  If if I did that, I'd be looking at the year 1900 and I don't
• 26:44
  think I'd find anything really great, fantastic to study in
• 26:48
  1900 the way you guys are interested in in the 60's.
• 26:54
  The reason I say that you're interested in the 60s is because
• 26:57
  it hasn't gone away. All these issues are just as
• 27:02
  significant as ever. The the, the hippie thing did
• 27:06
  not affect American politics, unfortunately much.
• 27:10
  Maybe it helped end the war, but it did affect American culture.
• 27:15
  So that if you eat organic food, if you are concerned about the
• 27:20
  environment, if you do yoga, if you pay attention to Asian, you
• 27:24
  know, Asian thought, if you, you know, want, you know, gender
• 27:31
  nonconformity, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
• 27:34
  If if you know all these issues, everything in other words that
• 27:38
  Donald Trump is against, you know, then you were affected by
• 27:44
  the 60s. Let me point out one, you know,
• 27:49
  sort of significant unintended consequence of the 60s, which
• 27:58
  was in 1966, Ronald Reagan got elected governor of California
• 28:04
  by running against the Free Speech Movement, the Haight,
• 28:08
  Ashbury and Watts, the Watts rebellion in others the same.
• 28:16
  And then he got elected president on the same platform.
• 28:20
  And there's a straight through line between from Reagan to
• 28:24
  Trump in which basically white males are protecting their long
• 28:31
  old privileges and, and are terrified of losing them.
• 28:37
  And, you know, that's what's going on.
• 28:39
  We, we made progress in with feminism and with, you know,
• 28:43
  against racism and, and, and with gay marriage, for instance,
• 28:48
  being really, you know, calm, calmly accepted.
• 28:53
  And now we got a Supreme Court that might reverse it.
• 28:56
  Who knows? I mean, you know, it's, it's a
• 28:59
  grim situation, but all of this is a reaction to the 60s.
• 29:07
  That's what Trump is about, you know, and you, you can just.
• 29:12
  I think it's been everyone. It almost feels like it's
• 29:15
  anyone, anyone in the straight world, you know, I mean, if you
• 29:19
  just look at the trajectory of people that are in positions of
• 29:22
  authority and then the way that they treat regular people that
• 29:26
  ask question that, you know, that say anything or that try to
• 29:28
  mind their own business or do their own thing.
• 29:31
  And, you know, it almost feels like individualism is, is a
• 29:33
  threat. You know, that's, it feels like
• 29:36
  that that's been the case. I don't like, I mean, I'm sure
• 29:40
  the administration and politics have to do plenty with it.
• 29:42
  And I, I, I think that there is more than a fair, you know, I
• 29:46
  think that it almost there's been a direct trajectory for the
• 29:49
  last 30 years of, you know, every, everyone in office just
• 29:56
  trying to impose authoritarianism on, you know,
• 29:59
  the American people. It feel but, you know, but but
• 30:03
  yeah, I, I think your point about the fact that the six, you
• 30:06
  know, everything is still a response to the 60s is, is
• 30:08
  correct. And I think that that's because
• 30:09
  they really tapped into something that was really,
• 30:12
  really free and beautiful and, you know, really magnificent.
• 30:16
  And, and I think that's, I think it's threatening to order.
• 30:19
  It's why LSD is, is, is banned. You know, I mean, it's why, it's
• 30:23
  why it's considered a dangerous drug to people that don't know
• 30:25
  anything about it. Yeah, the the irony of course
• 30:29
  with LSD is that that it's it's use and and spread in the 50s
• 30:37
  was controlled by the CIA. And I'm glad this, this is not
• 30:41
  conspiracy theory. This is history.
• 30:44
  They, they, they encountered it and they decided that they might
• 30:48
  be able to make it use it as a truth serum, which after a whole
• 30:53
  lot of experimenting, they, they were wrong.
• 30:56
  But, you know, So what else is new?
• 30:57
  And. And.
• 31:00
  But the fact is that that yes, all, all this is true.
• 31:07
  You know, freedom always scares the this, you know, certain
• 31:11
  aspects of the social order. In the 60s, things felt really
• 31:16
  unhinged. Now more than ever, the same.
• 31:21
  So you know, there you go. Yeah, So tell me about, I have
• 31:25
  to hear about what it was like living in San Francisco with the
• 31:28
  dead as their publicist. And I want to hear about and I
• 31:33
  want to hear about the research and how you go in, how you do
• 31:35
  research in the book. You know, for your books.
• 31:38
  Your books are encyclopedias. Your books are like, you know,
• 31:42
  they're like, like it's, it's not even that there's so much
• 31:44
  information in them. It's so easy to track down the
• 31:47
  information that you're presenting to.
• 31:48
  So like, if I don't know anything about jazz music in New
• 31:52
  York, you give me enough information that it's so easy to
• 31:56
  just put in a name and a date and a location in Google and get
• 31:59
  a book about in a minute, you know, And so I appreciate that.
• 32:03
  First of all, thank you. What's?
• 32:05
  Like living with it. You know it's not me.
• 32:07
  Thanks, Sergey Brin, you know, Google, I, I, I am not young
• 32:16
  and, and, and I and I so I, I get, you know, I grew up in the
• 32:22
  60s thinking hope I die before I get old.
• 32:24
  Well, maybe not that, but but you know, God, do I, you know,
• 32:28
  do I really want to listen sound like my father again.
• 32:33
  And but, you know, it's just, it's beyond astonishing.
• 32:40
  Let me give you an example. So I started working on my
• 32:43
  Kerouac book in 1972. You know, the closest thing to
• 32:49
  the Internet was the New York City phone book.
• 32:51
  I mean, there what you know, I you just bump into thing when
• 32:57
  you research, you bump into things you read, you know, you
• 33:00
  read the first Oh, I should know about that book.
• 33:03
  OK, I'll read it. Check the footnotes.
• 33:05
  Maybe it'll send me the other books.
• 33:07
  Maybe it won't. And you go, you know, and it
• 33:11
  just, it goes on. It's it's, it's, it's kind of
• 33:17
  mysterious. And eventually you start
• 33:19
  building a night, you know, you have an idea of, you know, where
• 33:23
  you're going. And maybe toward the end, you're
• 33:25
  actually, OK, I need to know this and I need in 1972, you
• 33:33
  went to, you know, you got information by going to the
• 33:35
  library and those lovely librarians, research like
• 33:40
  librarians would, you know, show you, you know, where to go and
• 33:46
  and then you track down people. Here's one example of the
• 33:49
  difference of, of research. There's a very, very important
• 33:55
  person in Jack Kerouac's life by the name of Gilbert Milstein,
• 33:59
  who was an editor in 19. In the 50s, he was an editor at
• 34:04
  the New York Times who review it accidentally got the assignment
• 34:12
  because the the main guy was on vacation, got the assignment to
• 34:16
  review on the road and gave it, you know, a, a well, a review
• 34:22
  that that made it a best seller and also killed Kerouac because
• 34:26
  fame was not really something he was emotionally ready to handle.
• 34:30
  And I found him by watching television and he in 1974 or
• 34:41
  five, whenever I was I found him, he was working for ABC
• 34:45
  News. And I happened to read the the
• 34:49
  credits one night and there was Gilbert Milstein.
• 34:52
  And I said it has to be the same guy.
• 34:54
  So I literally, I just picked up the phone the next day and
• 34:57
  called ABC News and got to him pretty quickly and then went
• 35:04
  down and interviewed him. And, you know, I was the first
• 35:08
  person to really, you know, get to him.
• 35:12
  I was only, I was only the second biographer of Kerouac.
• 35:16
  So you know this, these are very early days.
• 35:21
  Now today, 2025, a woman who's a friend of mine named Holly
• 35:25
  George Warren is doing a new biography of Kerouac where she's
• 35:32
  got, she's been commissioned by the estate.
• 35:34
  And, you know, she has access to a million things.
• 35:36
  I never did. And we were talking and I was
• 35:39
  teasing her and I was saying, well, you know, you, you can do
• 35:43
  all your research, virtually all your research from home.
• 35:46
  You know, even even when you find stuff at a library, half
• 35:49
  the time, if you write the library and they'll probably
• 35:52
  copy it and send it to you. I mean it.
• 35:54
  And on and on and on and off. And she went.
• 35:57
  Yeah. And you got to hang out with all
• 35:59
  the people that knew him that are now that I talk to.
• 36:03
  Good point. So the the point is, you know,
• 36:06
  the evolution of of of well, of research is in our life, in my
• 36:12
  lifetime, not yours. You know, it's phenomenal.
• 36:17
  And literally I, I, this, what the, the approach that I took in
• 36:24
  72 is I, I joked that my, you know, I read, I read his mail,
• 36:32
  which is to say I went to every university archives I could
• 36:35
  find. It wasn't just at Columbia.
• 36:38
  I interviewed everyone that I could find, which was most of
• 36:42
  the people that were, you know, important in his life.
• 36:47
  And I also sort of set a baseline of American culture by
• 36:52
  going through Life magazine during his lifetime, which is a
• 36:56
  lot of magazines. Because I, I did it on the
• 37:01
  premise that if it made it into Life magazine of some issues,
• 37:06
  some personality, some whatever, then almost everybody knew about
• 37:11
  it, or at least they would. It represented the consensus
• 37:15
  and, you know, because again, I'm, I'm not from the literary
• 37:20
  department. I'm, I'm a historian and, and
• 37:23
  which is why they're so stuffed, because I mean, I'm pretty
• 37:29
  serious about the, the history of it.
• 37:31
  And I wanted to, to reveal Kerouac, you know, was a
• 37:37
  diarist. I mean, he, he wrote, he wrote
• 37:41
  fiction, but he wrote fiction that was based on his life and
• 37:45
  what he observed, which is true of every novelist.
• 37:48
  But in his case, it was closer to day-to-day than than others.
• 37:53
  And he, you know, this, this, this reveals there's a principle
• 38:01
  that if you can tell the story of one person with enough
• 38:04
  detail, if you've got enough research, you can tell the story
• 38:08
  of the times, that what we all experience is what's going on
• 38:13
  all around us. And it's certain, you know, he
• 38:16
  lived through World War Two. He served as a merchant seaman.
• 38:19
  You know, clearly he, you know, he hung out with Gary Snyder.
• 38:25
  Gary Snyder was banned. Gary Snyder was a poet who had
• 38:29
  been a a labour union member. And he was he, he had had been,
• 38:35
  you know, earning his living by spending the summer working as a
• 38:39
  fire watch in the Pacific Northwest.
• 38:42
  And after a couple of years he was not retained because of
• 38:48
  security concerns that that is he was, he was banned because he
• 38:54
  had been a union member. Oh wow.
• 38:57
  That did you? No.
• 38:59
  And that's that's the America that Jack Kerouac lived in.
• 39:03
  Now, Jack Kerouac, in fact, was very politically conservative
• 39:05
  and this did not disturb him as much as it should have.
• 39:08
  But that's a whole other issue. Right, right, right.
• 39:13
  And in terms of so, so you, you approach writing like as as a
• 39:18
  historian, not as a novelist, right.
• 39:23
  And but you have what what I do notice is you put in a lot of
• 39:30
  you put in a lot of fun detail like you could tell you put in
• 39:34
  your own commentary into some of this in some of the stories that
• 39:38
  that you can tell is is in great humor and spirits.
• 39:42
  One of my favorite stories that that I remember.
• 39:45
  I even remember when I read this book at this point of the story,
• 39:49
  I was I was two weeks after I got married and I was in Orlando
• 39:52
  and my apartment that my wife and I were supposed to move to
• 39:56
  had fallen through, you know, and we didn't have a place to
• 39:59
  live. And this was two weeks after we
• 40:00
  got married. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm
• 40:04
  going to be this adventurous hippie and my wife has plans
• 40:07
  for, you know, otherwise. And so I'm reading this book and
• 40:11
  she keeps me grounded. It's great.
• 40:13
  And I'm reading about the story of Bob Weir drops the water
• 40:16
  balloon on the cops head and. And then he, you know, he
• 40:23
  couldn't help himself but walk out in the street and, you know,
• 40:26
  while the cop is still looking for the guy that did it and
• 40:28
  saying and just said innocently, good morning, officer.
• 40:31
  And I just remembered that the, the way that you phrased it,
• 40:34
  there was so much like I, I, I, I laughed out loud reading it
• 40:36
  and I tried to convey to my wife, I was so funny at the
• 40:39
  time. But you know, I obviously, you
• 40:41
  know, it fails to do justice whenever you try to retell these
• 40:44
  stories, you know, but we. The point, the point is that
• 40:51
  being a historian is nothing more or less the biggest
• 40:55
  storyteller. You're trying to tell a story
• 40:59
  and you have to make it interesting.
• 41:01
  One of the problems with much academic history is they don't
• 41:05
  have that principle. They, you know, they, they,
• 41:08
  they, they want to expound, they want to, to theorize and
• 41:17
  frequently they want to connect what's going on to a greater
• 41:22
  cultural overview, which, you know, that's sort of post
• 41:27
  Marxist, post feminist post this and that.
• 41:31
  And my argument is, you know, you, you, you, you write history
• 41:36
  from the facts out, not from a theory in So I'm very old
• 41:42
  fashioned and, and have no, you know, no particular connection
• 41:47
  with the academic world because, you know, I, that's why I bailed
• 41:54
  as soon as I got my doctorate. I, I, I ran to the, you know, I
• 41:57
  ran screaming from, from the world at the world of academe.
• 42:02
  As I say, as you say, I, you know, I include a lot of the
• 42:05
  details are what keep people's interest.
• 42:09
  As I say, you know, and it's, it's, you know, there's, it's
• 42:14
  dense. I, I use that in a positive
• 42:16
  sense that, that my material, you know, there's a lot of stuff
• 42:20
  stuffed in. As I say, you know, then the job
• 42:24
  is to make it readable. And on my good days, I do.
• 42:28
  Yeah, and the rereadable is what I've noticed because as I, as I
• 42:32
  learn more about the that world and then I go revisit the books,
• 42:36
  you know, names, dates and and events start becoming more
• 42:39
  familiar, you know, and, you know, and for example, the first
• 42:42
  time reading it and my favorite songs are China Cat, Sunflower,
• 42:45
  I know you writer. And then six months, you know,
• 42:47
  and then six months later, a year later, you know, I've
• 42:50
  listened to a dozen more concerts and read a little bit
• 42:52
  more and listened to some interviews.
• 42:54
  And then I go back and I'm like, Oh my gosh, there's all this,
• 42:57
  there's all this, there's all these, all these gems over here
• 43:00
  that I totally missed out on. As you say, you know, it's a,
• 43:06
  it's a big story both of the books that we're talking about.
• 43:10
  And as a result, remember you have a computer in your hand.
• 43:16
  So, you know, although I did put a glossary in with the new book
• 43:20
  because there were so many names and I wanted to identify.
• 43:25
  So so people could, you know, do it quick before they went and
• 43:29
  gave up and and went to Google. But, you know, that's, that's
• 43:37
  the way things are. I mean, they're very dense.
• 43:41
  We have mental filters to screen news or the stuff that we don't
• 43:51
  want to know about. You know, I, I, I look at every
• 43:55
  morning, I look at the, the headlines on my newspaper, I
• 43:59
  read about one story in 20 and it's not usually the most
• 44:03
  important story. I mean, why do I want to know
• 44:06
  more about what rationalizations some political figure has about
• 44:15
  what they're doing? I, I can pretty well guess what,
• 44:18
  you know what, what they are. And learning more is, you know,
• 44:23
  not going to profit me. Besides, I just don't have any
• 44:26
  room in my brain for it. So, you know, we all, but we all
• 44:30
  do this. We all screen the information,
• 44:34
  you know, do I really want to know about a sports team that I
• 44:36
  don't follow? No.
• 44:38
  So you know, that's that's fair, that's fair for everybody.
• 44:43
  So I, you know, I pick up my my information from bits and pieces
• 44:47
  here and there and and the New York Times and and even then,
• 44:52
  you know, I get the halfway through the article figure I
• 44:55
  have the gist and move on. But that's what we all need to
• 45:00
  do in order to just function. We live in a world of, you know,
• 45:05
  just insane information overload and you, you have to, you have
• 45:11
  to pay attention in a kind of a self protective way.
• 45:18
  Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do.
• 45:20
  I think it's, and I think that the other thing is also
• 45:23
  familiarity. I think that when something
• 45:25
  becomes familiar, you know, you become a little bit more
• 45:28
  inclined to pay attention to it, you know, and for example, you
• 45:32
  know, I, I've just started listening, you know, getting to
• 45:35
  the jazz world, the jazz history a little bit.
• 45:38
  And so the details that you mentioned in the beginning of
• 45:41
  your book, you know, the, of the, OR I guess towards, you
• 45:44
  know, the middle ish of your, of the, of the newest book, you
• 45:48
  know, revolves largely around that scene.
• 45:50
  And I'm looking for names that I'm familiar with.
• 45:52
  And then sometimes I find them and sometimes I don't.
• 45:54
  And I have to almost force myself to not just jump ahead
• 45:57
  and skip, you know, and then I have to make it look familiar,
• 46:00
  seem familiar, you know, maybe look up, look them up a little
• 46:04
  bit or look up what people say about it.
• 46:05
  And then when I go back to, I'm like, oh, OK, now, now I have a
• 46:08
  bigger context that I think that I'm able to kind of piece
• 46:11
  everything more together, but from.
• 46:13
  What you, what you're talking about is everybody's education.
• 46:16
  I mean, you know, that's exactly, you know, what you're
• 46:20
  going through. I will say that it's much easier
• 46:27
  now. I mean, I, you know, in 1967, I
• 46:32
  left high school and went to college and there was a guy with
• 46:36
  a jazz show. I I had already gotten into
• 46:38
  jazz. The first album I ever bought
• 46:42
  was Thelonious Monks live at the five spot in in a tank town in
• 46:48
  Dexter. It called Dexter, Maine, in
• 46:51
  which there was a candy store and they had one shelf of
• 46:55
  records, but they also had the Schwann catalog.
• 46:58
  I don't you probably never heard of that.
• 47:00
  I don't even know. I doubt it exists anymore.
• 47:03
  The Schwann catalog was the equivalent of the Internet for
• 47:06
  music. It it was a like a New York City
• 47:08
  phone book. It was enormous.
• 47:10
  And it listed all the records in print in America.
• 47:15
  So I went to the lady at the candy store and I said I want a
• 47:19
  book, a record by Thelonious Monk.
• 47:22
  So she looked up Thelonious Monk and she ordered me one, you
• 47:27
  know, there. And, you know, even then you
• 47:29
  could get information. Then I got to college and there
• 47:33
  was a guy who was really knowledgeable and he, he had the
• 47:37
  jazz show on Sunday nights on the radio station.
• 47:40
  And I would go and sit and study, listen to him and, you
• 47:44
  know, hang out and, and, you know, ask him questions because
• 47:49
  there, there weren't that many books then.
• 47:51
  And certainly there was no, pardon me, no Internet.
• 47:54
  So now you have the advantage of Google and you can find out just
• 48:04
  about, you know, everything this side of of I don't know what I
• 48:08
  mean, but certainly, you know, jazz.
• 48:14
  I don't know if it's true that young people these days don't
• 48:24
  read. Many of them don't read SO.
• 48:26
  Much they do not, and they do not.
• 48:28
  Reading has fallen out of favour, which is a tragedy.
• 48:32
  It is. I find it, you know, I find it
• 48:34
  interesting. I'm, you know, a weird old man
• 48:38
  who, for instance, you know, Sorry, I'm gonna, I don't mean
• 48:44
  to insult you. Please.
• 48:47
  I do all these interviews for podcasts, which I don't I don't
• 48:51
  listen to because I think that reading is a much faster way of
• 48:55
  absorbing information than listening to it on a podcast or
• 48:58
  or audio book. I don't, you know, I don't
• 49:04
  totally disrespect the way you can learn that way.
• 49:06
  I just, it doesn't suit me. And the fact is that there's
• 49:12
  this whole span of, of culture, of history of whatever that,
• 49:21
  that, you know, I, I only learn slowly, as I say, from listening
• 49:29
  to a guy and then listening to a whole lot of records until now.
• 49:33
  I have a fair grasp of the history of jazz, but I've been
• 49:37
  doing it for a whole lot of years.
• 49:40
  It's a very complex phenomenon. And you know, I'm glad, I'm glad
• 49:44
  you found it, but you know this, it's just never going to stop.
• 49:50
  I mean if you keep your mind open and alive, open to
• 49:54
  curiosity, you will run across things like this till the day
• 49:59
  you die. Yeah, yeah, I hope to.
• 50:02
  I hope to, because I find that a lot of this is, is odd and fun
• 50:07
  and super, super just relatable because I think that there's,
• 50:13
  you know, there's something that, you know, I'm an Orthodox
• 50:16
  Jew. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm observant and
• 50:19
  there's a Jewish writer from the 1800s.
• 50:23
  And one of the things that he loves to talk about is the fact
• 50:26
  that, you know, times change, but human nature kind of stays,
• 50:31
  stays the same, you know, and a lot of, and a lot of the, you
• 50:36
  know, and a lot, and a lot of these issues that, you know,
• 50:39
  that I'm, that I'm learning about or these forms of
• 50:42
  self-expression or, you know, history or, or what caused, you
• 50:45
  know, what, what caused an emergence of, of, of culture.
• 50:49
  All that is extremely relatable. I'm, I'm reading, I'm reading
• 50:52
  what's it called book, that book by Danny Sugarman now about
• 50:55
  being the doors, that doors manager.
• 50:59
  And I'm reading it now. And I'm like, yes, I think it's
• 51:05
  called Wonderland. What's called Wonderland, I
• 51:07
  think. I forget the name I I just I
• 51:10
  just ran across Daniel. As a matter of fact, he was very
• 51:13
  he was very kind about my book. Let me tell you that I please
• 51:18
  don't don't think that I'm talking down, but you really
• 51:22
  want, you really want to read my set, my the on Hwy. 61 because
• 51:27
  it will give you the history of black music.
• 51:31
  And I mean, it's the hit. It's not a history of black
• 51:34
  music. It's a history of white reaction
• 51:36
  to black music. But it'll give you a good handle
• 51:41
  on, on, you know, jazz history. If if you know, if, if that's
• 51:45
  something as you say that that concerns you.
• 51:50
  It's and the way white people glommed onto it and why.
• 51:55
  Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
• 51:57
  OK. I'm going to.
• 51:58
  Can you can you elaborate on the difference in the in the Blues
• 52:02
  and jazz culture? Oh well, on the well, again, you
• 52:12
  know, that's a, that's a six hour lecture.
• 52:16
  Just put it this way. You get to the 1890s.
• 52:21
  Black people have been freed from slavery for 40 years.
• 52:25
  One, you know, essentially one large generation, and within a
• 52:33
  few years, 3 phenomena, musical phenomena emerge all at the same
• 52:42
  time in not in the same place. One is the Blues, which started
• 52:48
  coming together in the 1890s. One is jazz, which started then
• 52:55
  in and combined Blues with with in New Orleans.
• 53:01
  And, and the reason it was New Orleans, among other things, was
• 53:04
  that the French military, remember it was French.
• 53:09
  The city had left behind a whole lot of musical instruments so
• 53:15
  that the people, the black people of of New Orleans were
• 53:18
  exposed, had access to and were exposed to these instruments and
• 53:23
  started taking Blues changes and applying them to to popular
• 53:30
  music and gave birth to jazz. And thirdly, at the same time in
• 53:37
  New Orleans, a man named Scott Joplin was marrying Blues
• 53:42
  changes and African American sounds to classical music,
• 53:49
  Western classical, and that became ragtime and changed and
• 53:54
  changed. The, the, it's called
• 53:57
  syncopation, in which you have more than one rhythm going at
• 54:01
  the same time. And they, they, they, they
• 54:05
  blend, they measure against each other.
• 54:09
  And these three things each develop over the course of the
• 54:16
  20th century. And by the time you get to the
• 54:19
  1940's, the Blues has now gone, travelled along with the
• 54:25
  migration of black people to Chicago where it needs, it's in
• 54:32
  a situation that literally needs more volume.
• 54:35
  So they start playing with electric instruments and it
• 54:38
  becomes what is called our, you know, Chicago Blues, the
• 54:42
  electric Blues. At the same time it also
• 54:48
  encounters certain country rhythms and it becomes rhythm,
• 54:54
  what they call rhythm and Blues. And eventually that becomes
• 54:58
  rock'n'roll. And then white people go back
• 55:01
  and look at the the R&B. The same guy, the same producer
• 55:07
  who produced Louis Jordan, who was the fundamental king of R&B
• 55:13
  in the 40s. The same guy and guy named Milt
• 55:16
  Gabler then turned around and produced Oh God, I've forgotten
• 55:21
  his name. Oh my Lord, I'm pulling a blank.
• 55:29
  As soon as you stop thinking about it, I'll pop back into
• 55:31
  your head. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt it was.
• 55:34
  It was the Comet, Bill Haley, Bill Haley and the Comets who
• 55:43
  were started doing rhythm and Blues songs.
• 55:47
  But in a country is sort of he had been a country band.
• 55:51
  It was they were Bill Hilly in the Saddleman first.
• 55:54
  Then he started listening to R&B and went, hmm, and they became
• 55:58
  the Comets and you know, and then.
• 56:01
  That was rock around the clock, right?
• 56:03
  Rock around the clock exactly which of course, it was
• 56:05
  originally a black song. So you know, and and all of the
• 56:13
  all of this is about, you know, and if you really want to take
• 56:16
  it seriously, you can go back to the 1740s and what was called
• 56:20
  the great the great not transformation.
• 56:25
  Again, I'm pulling a blank. The Great Awakening, in which
• 56:30
  there was an enormous series of religious revivals all over the
• 56:36
  United, you know, what was then colonial United States.
• 56:40
  United States only had 13 colonies at that point, and
• 56:47
  maybe a few more. But still it was early days.
• 56:50
  And but what happened was in the South in particular, the revival
• 56:56
  allowed for black people, but they had to sit in the balcony.
• 56:59
  They, they were segregated, but they were part of it.
• 57:02
  And you could hear them. And what happened was that black
• 57:06
  choral singing affected church music as early as the 70s.
• 57:12
  And so that you can't talk about black music or white music after
• 57:17
  that. It's all both.
• 57:21
  And, and you know, there was a guy named Cecil Sharp who was a
• 57:25
  very good musicologist in England.
• 57:30
  The the what they call child ballads, the old sort of classic
• 57:34
  English folk songs. And then he came to America and
• 57:39
  he sort of he studied them in America and decided that, well,
• 57:43
  there were this white music Appalachians that that had, you
• 57:51
  know, that was pure and that was English.
• 57:53
  And then there was black music using the same material, which
• 57:57
  was, you know, to him, commercial and not to be
• 58:01
  trusted. Now the fact is that that the
• 58:06
  the the prichent St. of folk of Appalachian music was the Carter
• 58:13
  the Saints with The Carter Family and the elder of The
• 58:17
  Carter Family went song literally did collect songs and
• 58:21
  he collected them with a black guy.
• 58:24
  In other words, they were they were collecting Blues and and
• 58:27
  folk songs just as much as you know, will the circle be
• 58:31
  unbroken. And so the fact is that all of
• 58:35
  this stuff works together, has always worked together.
• 58:42
  The the most important. And again, this is there's a
• 58:45
  book you should read. There's A, and I forget the the
• 58:48
  name, but it's a biography of, of Harry Smith and it's a Harry
• 58:59
  Smith collected, among other things, collected 70 eights and
• 59:04
  then quite illegally, he and Moe Ash at Folkways.
• 59:08
  They they never got permissions. I mean, it could never happen
• 59:11
  today, but they put out a six, one of the first box sets, A6 LP
• 59:18
  33 and a third collection of American folk, what he called
• 59:24
  folk music. It wasn't folk music, it was
• 59:25
  commercial music. It was music professionally
• 59:28
  recorded between 1929 when electronic microphones became
• 59:35
  available against acoustic microphones, which were really
• 59:38
  crude. And, and he put together this
• 59:46
  package and they were all recorded between 1929 and 1932
• 59:51
  when because of the depression, the record, the recording
• 59:54
  industry just went completely belly up.
• 59:56
  And for several years they just didn't sell anything.
• 1:00:00
  And these songs, he, he, you can't, he does not.
• 1:00:06
  And it's, I'm very proud of him. He does not identify people as
• 1:00:10
  black or white. And you can't tell.
• 1:00:13
  These, these southern, you know, it's a southern accent, so say
• 1:00:16
  it could you know, you don't know.
• 1:00:19
  And this music, which was called the folk, let's see, the folk
• 1:00:29
  music anthology, ended up being the source for that old music
• 1:00:38
  that Dylan and all the other folkies in the early 60s.
• 1:00:43
  Right. Didn't drug music have a big
• 1:00:45
  impact too? Drug music is part of all this.
• 1:00:49
  You know, it had a real it had its biggest impact actually in
• 1:00:54
  England, where it was called skiffle.
• 1:00:57
  Long story and and too complex to explain that, but trust me.
• 1:01:02
  And skiffle, which led to English rock'n'roll.
• 1:01:07
  I mean, John, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had a a skiffle
• 1:01:11
  band called The Quarryman. There you go.
• 1:01:16
  Yeah, who is that? There was yeah, there was So all
• 1:01:21
  this OK, I I, I, I love, I love your answers because they take
• 1:01:25
  me on a on a whole another trip, you know, every single time,
• 1:01:28
  every single time you're. You're bouncing around in
• 1:01:31
  subjects, so I'm responding. I'm loving it.
• 1:01:34
  This is. This is.
• 1:01:35
  This is fun. No, no, no.
• 1:01:36
  This is what I've this is what I've been wasting my time with
• 1:01:39
  for the last 50 years. You know, what can I say?
• 1:01:41
  Doing these interviews. No, no, no.
• 1:01:45
  Oh, that kind of research. I love it.
• 1:01:48
  I love it and I and I have. To say that.
• 1:01:50
  It's your recall is incredible. Your recall is incredible.
• 1:01:55
  Can you tell me a little bit about spending time with the
• 1:01:56
  what is it? What, what was it like being a
• 1:01:58
  publicist? What was it like?
• 1:01:59
  Can you tell me some stories about working with them and
• 1:02:02
  dealing with them with it as difficult as everyone says they
• 1:02:04
  were? Was it fun?
• 1:02:05
  What was it like? It was mostly fun.
• 1:02:11
  It had the only problem. No, it was the ideal situation
• 1:02:18
  in many ways, because, for instance, they were the only
• 1:02:20
  band in history that didn't give a shit about whether or not they
• 1:02:23
  got publicity or not. OK, They lived.
• 1:02:26
  In it was an easy job. And on that level, it was an
• 1:02:29
  easy job. It really was when I thought it
• 1:02:33
  was worthwhile. Eventually I learned that when I
• 1:02:36
  thought it was worthwhile, Jerry, Jerry trusted me.
• 1:02:39
  He hired me. He trusted me.
• 1:02:41
  And he did most. He was the target of most of the
• 1:02:43
  requests and he did most of the interviews.
• 1:02:46
  There were band members that just didn't do interviews, which
• 1:02:48
  fine with me. You don't want to talk, don't
• 1:02:50
  talk. What happened was that when I
• 1:02:55
  got I became the publicist in 1984, at which point I was in my
• 1:03:01
  mid 30s and the whole general, there was a whole, there were
• 1:03:05
  generations of dead heads, right.
• 1:03:07
  So the first generation were the people in San Francisco in the
• 1:03:10
  60s and the second generation with America were college kids
• 1:03:14
  on the East Coast between DC, Boston and Chicago in that
• 1:03:19
  within that triangle where the Grateful Dead started playing
• 1:03:23
  colleges in the late 60s. Well, by the middle 80s, these
• 1:03:29
  are people like me in their mid 30s and some of them are
• 1:03:33
  newspaper editors and some of them are TV executives and they
• 1:03:38
  want to cover the Grateful Dead. They want to cover it
• 1:03:39
  positively. But as I pointed out to the
• 1:03:42
  band, if that you don't let them in and you can't trust the the
• 1:03:48
  venue to do it. This is a job the Grateful Dead
• 1:03:51
  always, you know, went for a, a self-contained setup.
• 1:04:01
  So, you know, you, you, you had to use promoters, but you
• 1:04:05
  trained them and you, you kept them even when, even when you
• 1:04:08
  found out they were stealing from you, we never changed them.
• 1:04:11
  Oh yeah, like, OK, bad boy, you know, make sure that the
• 1:04:15
  catering's right, etcetera. And, And so I said, look, here's
• 1:04:21
  the deal. These TV crews are going to come
• 1:04:24
  to the show. Your, your story.
• 1:04:25
  Now, you know, suddenly Cincinnati erupts in tie dye.
• 1:04:29
  You, you know, that people, it's a story and you, you know, so
• 1:04:35
  they're going to want to cover the show if they can.
• 1:04:38
  They'll shoot the, they'll shoot the beginning of the show and
• 1:04:41
  it's pretty lights and, you know, pretty music.
• 1:04:44
  And they'll, they'll run that. The Grateful Dead are in town.
• 1:04:47
  Isn't this nice? If you don't let them in to
• 1:04:50
  shoot the music, they will shoot people smoking dope in the
• 1:04:54
  parking lot because they had you know, when you send out that
• 1:04:57
  camera, it's got to come back with footage.
• 1:04:59
  Simple. And everybody and the band went,
• 1:05:03
  yeah, you're right. So as far as that goes, mostly,
• 1:05:08
  you know, what I did was answer the telephone and and make sure
• 1:05:12
  that that reviewers can get in and also deal with the
• 1:05:17
  photographer still and and video mostly to make it as invisible
• 1:05:23
  as possible. So they'd come in, they'd shoot
• 1:05:26
  and they'd leave and they would attract the notice of the band
• 1:05:32
  and more importantly the crew, because the the crew was
• 1:05:36
  extremely entitled and very indulged.
• 1:05:38
  And if they felt like picking on somebody, they did that included
• 1:05:42
  me at times. But anyway, so you know, that's
• 1:05:46
  that was the job of being the publicist for the Grateful Dead.
• 1:05:49
  Other than that, I was, you know, I was sort of informally
• 1:05:54
  put in charge of special outings so that, for instance, we went
• 1:05:59
  to the White House and you know, I had to, or we went to visit
• 1:06:04
  the vice president and his at his residence.
• 1:06:07
  And I'm explaining because of course, you know, the ban and I
• 1:06:12
  had gone, you know, give me your social.
• 1:06:14
  We need the Social Security number to give to the Secret
• 1:06:17
  Service and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:06:19
  And then? Wow, what was that like?
• 1:06:22
  They were, you know, the. Senior service was told about.
• 1:06:25
  Yeah, they were professional. I mean, you know, and I, I, we
• 1:06:29
  worked together. It was no problem.
• 1:06:31
  They were so professional that when I, I, we went to, to, to
• 1:06:37
  the Naval Observatory, which is the home of the vice president.
• 1:06:41
  And I, we get into the van and I discover that Mickey and Carol,
• 1:06:49
  Mickey Hart's wife is Carol and Mickey and Carol's nanny, who's
• 1:06:54
  a Latina lady. They didn't mention to me that
• 1:06:59
  she was coming. Thanks, guys.
• 1:07:02
  So we get out of the, I get out of the van at the door, at the
• 1:07:05
  gate, and I say, so here's, you know, that's, that's who that is
• 1:07:09
  and blah, blah, blah. And here's the, the Social
• 1:07:11
  Security numbers. And that Lady is a nanny.
• 1:07:14
  And quite frankly, I don't have a Social Security number.
• 1:07:17
  I don't even know if she has 1 and I don't even know if she has
• 1:07:20
  papers. I think we can confidently say
• 1:07:24
  that she's of no possible danger to the vice president.
• 1:07:28
  But that's all I can say. And they just saw, you know,
• 1:07:31
  they recognize that famous people do things their own way
• 1:07:35
  sometimes. And they didn't give me a hard
• 1:07:38
  time, thank God. And, you know, we had an
• 1:07:41
  interesting time. And I'll tell you a funny story.
• 1:07:44
  So we're in. Please.
• 1:07:46
  And we gather in the dining room and, and, you know, it's just
• 1:07:52
  they had things to say to him and he had things to say to
• 1:07:54
  them. It was, it was, you know, very
• 1:07:55
  charming. And I went to the bathroom and
• 1:08:01
  smelled a familiar odor in the bathroom.
• 1:08:07
  And later that day, I looked at Jerry.
• 1:08:12
  I just sort of raised my eyes. So I was in the bathroom and he
• 1:08:15
  said, man, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to smoke.
• 1:08:21
  Oh my. God, you know, I couldn't.
• 1:08:25
  I couldn't and you know the other, you know, there was like
• 1:08:33
  one time we were at the White House and no, I'll tell you a
• 1:08:37
  better story. So Pat Leahy, who was a senator
• 1:08:41
  from Vermont and became our good buddy, He he he looked like a
• 1:08:47
  senator distinguishes all get out until he put on a tie dye
• 1:08:51
  T-shirt and shorts and he's dancing on stage to the Grateful
• 1:08:54
  Dead. Frankly, that I'll tell you 2
• 1:08:59
  stories that that I want to be in a country with senators dance
• 1:09:05
  in tie dye T-shirts at at grateful they chose this this
• 1:09:08
  is. I agree.
• 1:09:09
  So, so Pat and Barbara Boxer, who was our, you know, she was
• 1:09:14
  from Marin County, where the band is from.
• 1:09:16
  And we knew her a little bit. And they invite us to lunch at
• 1:09:21
  the Senate Dining Room. And we, we go, you know, chore.
• 1:09:28
  And we, we sit down. And of course, there's a buzz in
• 1:09:31
  the room when Jerry walks in because people recognize him.
• 1:09:34
  And far across the room is Strom Thurmond, the senator from the
• 1:09:39
  19th century. I mean, this is a guy who led
• 1:09:42
  the Dixiecrats in 1948. And, and, you know, just a
• 1:09:46
  barbarian. But you know, senators,
• 1:09:50
  politicians love meeting celebrities because there's
• 1:09:55
  always a possibility they can get something out of them.
• 1:09:58
  You know, like, oh, well, you do a benefit for me.
• 1:10:01
  So, and in fact, the Mickey did with, with Nancy Pelosi, they
• 1:10:07
  have still actually good buddies.
• 1:10:10
  And and Sean Thurman had been eating first.
• 1:10:15
  So and I can see him lean over when we came in, I saw him lean
• 1:10:19
  over to one of his younger staffers saying who basically
• 1:10:21
  who's that? And the guy explains, So as he
• 1:10:24
  comes out, he comes, he comes over to our table and
• 1:10:28
  everybody's polite and standing up because, you know, you're
• 1:10:31
  polite. And Strom goes to Jerry and
• 1:10:36
  sticks out of his hand and says, I understand you're the leader
• 1:10:38
  of this, your organization. And Jerry's going, well, I don't
• 1:10:42
  know about that senator, but they, you know, he's polite.
• 1:10:44
  And he shakes his hand and they go on.
• 1:10:47
  And I'm just sitting there thinking, you know, there's
• 1:10:49
  Jerry from the 21st century and, and Strom Thurmond from the 19th
• 1:10:53
  century. And they meet in the Senate
• 1:10:55
  dining room. It was just utterly bizarre.
• 1:10:59
  Here's another one that's that's just as bizarre.
• 1:11:02
  So Pat Leahy's dancing on stage and I happen to be standing next
• 1:11:09
  to the stage stairs and a runner comes down from the, the, the,
• 1:11:16
  the office of the stadium. This is in, in DC and says, you
• 1:11:23
  know, is Senator Leahy here? I said, yeah.
• 1:11:25
  He said, well, there's a message for him.
• 1:11:26
  I said, fine, you know, I'll take it.
• 1:11:28
  And I gave it to him. He says, do you have a phone?
• 1:11:31
  And I and I said, oh, sure, by then, no cell phones.
• 1:11:35
  But by then, literally we had a phone hardwired onto our stage
• 1:11:41
  because we had to have it. And I, so I go up to our stage
• 1:11:46
  manager and say, could Senator use your phone?
• 1:11:48
  He says sure. So he calls what turns out to be
• 1:11:51
  the Secretary of State. And it turns out that this is
• 1:11:57
  now President Clinton. President Clinton has just
• 1:12:01
  decided to bomb, I think it was Libya, but whatever it was, you
• 1:12:08
  know, and he had to tell by, by custom, something Trump doesn't
• 1:12:15
  do by custom. You tell, I think they call it
• 1:12:19
  the Gang of Eight, which is the, the speaker and the head of the
• 1:12:24
  intelligence committee of both or the, you know, of both
• 1:12:29
  houses. What you've done.
• 1:12:31
  You don't have to ask for permission, but you have to tell
• 1:12:33
  them. So I'm on the I'm standing there
• 1:12:38
  and, and what I hear is, is Patrick saying, well, the
• 1:12:46
  conversation and he obviously he filled me in on on the other
• 1:12:49
  end. And the conversation goes after
• 1:12:51
  a while, the Secretary of State says, you know, it's really loud
• 1:12:54
  there. And Pat said, yeah, that thing,
• 1:12:57
  he's the opening act. I'm, I'm at this concert and,
• 1:13:03
  you know, Sting, who, who, who Sting, who's grateful that, you
• 1:13:06
  know, the Secretary of State has no clue, but he's finally he
• 1:13:10
  says, can you, do you have a minute for the president?
• 1:13:12
  Yes. So the president and tells him,
• 1:13:16
  and obviously the president is a little, you know, is a little
• 1:13:19
  hipper and a little more knowledgeable about music.
• 1:13:21
  Anyway, they hang up and Pat turns to me and tells me all
• 1:13:27
  this. And I'm standing there and I'm
• 1:13:30
  thinking, you know, right now there's people at the CIA,
• 1:13:34
  obviously, and there's people in the Pentagon.
• 1:13:36
  And, you know, they know about all this.
• 1:13:37
  But, you know, very few. You know, Madam, now in half an
• 1:13:41
  hour, everybody's going to know about this.
• 1:13:43
  They'll make an announcement. But at the moment, I'm one of
• 1:13:46
  100 people. And it's like, what?
• 1:13:54
  And that was that's working. Now that is an example of what
• 1:13:58
  it was like working for the Grateful Dead.
• 1:14:01
  We call that a glitch in the matrix.
• 1:14:04
  You know, in some. Oh, the Matrix was permanently
• 1:14:09
  glitched around the Grateful Dead.
• 1:14:10
  We called it synchronicity. Things happened that had no
• 1:14:15
  business happening and you know, that was what life was like.
• 1:14:19
  What was the fire? The fire in the mountain and the
• 1:14:21
  volcano erupting around the same time incident that was in the 78
• 1:14:25
  OR. Around that, it was in 1980,
• 1:14:29
  it's true, the Grateful Dead were playing in Portland, OR.
• 1:14:34
  They started playing Fire on the Mountain.
• 1:14:36
  And in the middle of God's truth, in the middle of Fire in
• 1:14:40
  the Mountain, Mount Saint Helens erupted.
• 1:14:45
  And you know. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:14:51
  There's no explanation for that, and correlation is not, but it
• 1:14:57
  was a very strange. No, no, but it's weird.
• 1:15:00
  Yeah, it's, oh, it's a weird. You have to understand that
• 1:15:03
  weird was a very positive adjective in the world of a
• 1:15:06
  dreadful dead. Sure, sure.
• 1:15:09
  We were weird. We knew we were weird.
• 1:15:12
  Can I, can I ask, and I guess this would be one of our last
• 1:15:14
  questions before you wrap up, what in your opinion kind of did
• 1:15:21
  Jerry in? I know that you said, I know
• 1:15:23
  that you there's a couple of avenues you take in the book.
• 1:15:26
  Maybe it's, you know, stardom. Maybe it was all the pressure.
• 1:15:30
  Maybe it was, it was obviously heroin was not great, you know,
• 1:15:34
  by any stretch. Well, remember, you know, no,
• 1:15:36
  let's let's be clear. Like to be like a superstar.
• 1:15:41
  He did not want to be a superstar.
• 1:15:43
  He wanted to have fun. The heroin probably kept him
• 1:15:48
  going before before you, you know, label that it was a
• 1:15:52
  sedative that that kept him coping.
• 1:15:56
  The fact is that he died of a heart attack because he didn't
• 1:15:59
  take care of himself. I mean, all of the things that
• 1:16:03
  every guy over 40 learns you, you, you know, you have to watch
• 1:16:07
  away. You have to exercise a little.
• 1:16:08
  You have blah, blah, blah. And he, you know, he never quit
• 1:16:12
  smoking cigarettes and, you know, and he was a raging
• 1:16:16
  diabetic and, and that led to a heart attack.
• 1:16:20
  And, you know, he he didn't want to take responsibility.
• 1:16:24
  And you could do a very deep psychoanalysis that I am not
• 1:16:28
  qualified to do. I think the obvious, you know,
• 1:16:32
  one of the obvious things is, you know, being treated as
• 1:16:38
  special when he didn't, you know, really want to be.
• 1:16:42
  And I'll tell you once, well, let's close on one story.
• 1:16:48
  Please. I was sitting in the lobby of
• 1:16:51
  one of the, I think it's the Marriott's, but whatever, it's a
• 1:16:54
  hotel with a glass elevator on the inside.
• 1:16:57
  So you can see who's in the elevator.
• 1:16:59
  I was on, you know, on the floor of the lobby.
• 1:17:01
  And the lobby came up from the basement where the gym was, and
• 1:17:07
  it stopped at our level and I could see Jerry and he was alone
• 1:17:13
  in the in the elevator. And I could watch him tense as
• 1:17:18
  the doors opened because he was assuming that they were going to
• 1:17:22
  be a gaggle of dead heads. And they were going.
• 1:17:26
  And it turned out to be my wife, who was an old friend of his.
• 1:17:29
  And so I could watch him relax. You know, it was, it was quite a
• 1:17:33
  transition. She gets in there chit chatting
• 1:17:36
  or not it didn't, you know. And they go up to another floor
• 1:17:40
  and same, you know, same tents. And he, the door opens and
• 1:17:45
  there's three Latina maids who don't know him, don't care.
• 1:17:50
  And, you know, and then, yeah, the point being that that it was
• 1:17:59
  hard. He couldn't go to museums.
• 1:18:02
  The nicest thing I ever did for the Grateful Dead was I arranged
• 1:18:06
  an hour alone with his major Monet exhibit, travelling
• 1:18:12
  exhibit in Chicago. And you know, and they, I mean,
• 1:18:15
  they Jerry in particular, I mean, he loved his art.
• 1:18:19
  And you know, he couldn't, he couldn't go to the Field Museum.
• 1:18:24
  I mean, they, the museum, the Art Institute, I mean, you know,
• 1:18:27
  he'd be glommed onto it so. Yeah.
• 1:18:30
  That, you know, it's deeper stuff than just fame, but fame
• 1:18:37
  certainly didn't help. I bet, I bet, I bet, I bet
• 1:18:42
  Dennis, I am so grateful for your time and I'm so grateful
• 1:18:47
  that you got back to me and I'm even more grateful for your
• 1:18:50
  work. I think your work is I mean, I
• 1:18:54
  know that every single time I talk to a dead anyone that knows
• 1:18:57
  anything about the Grateful Dead, I mentioned your name, I
• 1:18:59
  mentioned your book. It's the it's the Bible for for
• 1:19:01
  that community. So you know, aside from the
• 1:19:03
  other great and the other great work that you've done and you
• 1:19:06
  know, as you dive into, I just want to say I really appreciate
• 1:19:09
  everything you've done. This is incredible.
• 1:19:11
  And this is such it's such AI have not been more excited to do
• 1:19:15
  a podcast with with any guests more than I was excited for
• 1:19:19
  today. And I really, really appreciate
• 1:19:20
  your time, Dennis. Thank you so much.
• 1:19:23
  You're entirely welcome. I, I hope I I made it
• 1:19:25
  worthwhile. You take care.
• 1:19:28
  All the best, take care. Bye bye.
• 1:19:29
  Bye.