Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "I Was An Acid-Fueled Teenage Dead Fiend!" [Episode 190]

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"I Was An Acid-Fueled Teenage Dead Fiend!" [Episode 190] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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We're totally booked rock and roll. I mean gotta leave you. You're reading.
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Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll roll. We are totally
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booked. Hey guys, welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for
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those about to read and rock. Find the podcast at booked on rock dot
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com. You can find every episode there, along with lates to your favorite
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media sites, and you can find out all the latest rockbook releases right there
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at booked on rock dot com, along with every episode in full on video
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now, which you can also find on the YouTube channel at Booked on Rock.
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And if you like what you see there, be sure to click the
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like and subscribe buttons that goes along way to support the podcast. Thomas Nordy
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nord Walls is this episode's guest. He's written the book titled tour Head.
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I Was an acid fueled teenage dead fiend. Tour Head details forty years of
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crazy road stories spanning Nordy's teen to adult life, traveling to see the Grateful
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Dead, Jerry Garcia band and Dead in Company. Tour Head chronicles the road
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trips acid trips mind flips and all the ensuing high jinks that went down inside,
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outside, and in between the hundreds of concerts he attended. He's here
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to share some of the crazy stories inside the book, and I'm also curious
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to find out what his favorite Dead show is, his favorite Dead songs,
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and his favorite era of the Dead. Be sure to check out this episode's
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playlist too, plenty of live Dead tunes. NORDI, thank you so much
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for being here. It's so great to see you after an hour and forty
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three minutes. So those who are listening and watching, we just we jumped
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on an hour and forty three minutes ago, and for whatever reason, we
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could not get your video to work. But here we are. We persevered.
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Yes, we tried, like every which way. All right, try
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how about this? Now it's quirking. Now we're good. We're good now,
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man, So how you doing? Where are you calling in from or
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zooming in from? I am in Portland, Oregon, and I lived here
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since nineteen eighty six when Jerry got sick and we thought where it wasn't gonna
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happen again when he went into his diabetic coma, so we moved up here
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to be farmers Yeah. But what's funny is small world. We lived right
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near each other. Yeah, in western Connecticut, in Bethel, Danbury area.
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I went to Bethel High School and a bunch of the people in my
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book we all went to high school together. And I still see all those
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guys and go to shows with them to this day. So it's pretty amazing
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that we've had all these years. What a journey, What a journey,
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and we still are able to perpetuate them somewhat, you know. So yeah,
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before we talk about the book. Born in Minnesota, you moved around
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the US quite a bit, and then you landed in Portland. Right,
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so you're you're a pro snowboarder and ordained reverend. I'm retired. I'm old
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now. I'm fifty nine years old now, but yeah, ordained reverend too.
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Yeah. Yeah, I've done i don't know, twenty five or thirty
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weddings just for friends though. Yeah. Yeah. And of course a writer,
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which landed you on this podcast. So tour Head, this is your
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first book. Uh, yes it is. I do other writing for like
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Thrasher Skateboarder magazine and some snowboard magazines and stuff, but yes, this is
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my first book. What inspired you to write this one. Honestly, I
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was working building sets and stuff for television shows and commercials and stuff with my
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friends at this place called Department of Art DA. And after we get off
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work, my buddy Chan and JJ, the two guys who run the company.
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Would you know, they'd asked me questions about, you know, Dead
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Tour because we listened to some music in the daytime, like, hey,
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did you see this show? And I'd be like, as a matter of
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fact, I did, And so they kept I tell them a story,
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and JJ especially to like, write a book. Write a book. Write
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that book, dude, write that book. So I actually dedicated it to
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lightly. It's mainly dedicated to my girlfriend Naomi and my friends who I went
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on tour with the whole time, but I also sub dedicated it to Chandler
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and JJ for just hyping me up on writing it. And so I started
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around twenty seventeen and just started putting stuff down and I turned into a much
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bigger project. And then I had to reach out to everyone and start interviewing
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everybody. So uh yeah, I kind of just I was inspired by friends
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who I would tell stories to, who would tell me to write it down
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and make something out of it, you know. So, Hey, you
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mentioned your girlfriend. She works on the Stranger Things show. Yeah. Yeah,
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she's a travel coordinator. That's awesome, very cool, very cool,
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a shitload of ours, you're saying. I appreciate her very very much.
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Yeah, today's our only day off, you mentioned too, so I hope
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yeah today. Yeah. So this book obviously surround it surrounds the Dead and
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the world of the Dead, but you do have some really cool experiences that
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you write in the book about other concerts, Like your first concert experience was
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at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut in nineteen seventy nine the Little
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River band Heart and the Eagles with Joe Walsh, who made quite an entrance
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when the Eagles hit the stage. He was playing his guitar inside an equipment
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crate that was being rolled out on stage. But I want to ask you
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about your first Dead concert. Let's talk about that. So you're say in
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the book that you were first a fan of bands like Kiss, Aerosmith,
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Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, but then you discovered the Grateful Dead. Is still
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okay? Cool? Yeah, you made mention you noticed my van Helen banner
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behind me, So you're a fan of VH as well. But The Dead
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made an impact on you. Talk about that your first Dead show March fourteen,
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nineteen eighty one. Where was that and what was that experience? Like?
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It was in Hartford, Connecticut. And interestingly enough, even though I
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was sixteen, my folks still didn't want me driving because there was, you
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know, a certain stigma about rock concerts and stuff. Everybody's going to be
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getting loaded and you know, and everybody was, of course, But so
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our moms drove my one of my closest friends my whole life, Scott Earnest
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he goes by E in my book, because we had a whole bunch of
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Scotts. So everybody got a letter name for their last name because there was
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too many Scotts, E. M. L. Et cetera, et cetera.
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And uh so our moms drove us. Of course, we ran right
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up the street, you know, bought acid right away, got see high,
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had to ride back in the car that night. That was the trippy,
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trippy, trippy part. But to get back to the show, we
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wanted the two of our older friends. Well, Scott's my age, but
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the other Scott mL George is a little older and he had seen shows more,
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they knew what to do. They knew, you know, follow us,
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We'll go find our seats, and I just it was incredible, dude.
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It was so loud and so forceful. Like that was some of the
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things that I remember the most, especially about my first concert with Heart and
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the Eagles and then subsequent shows Grateful Dad Zappa, Like the live sound was
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so immense and so intense and so like driving and just like m the bas
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hits you right in the chest. That it was more of a love for
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live music. But the Dead does live music so well and in so many
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different fashions while doing the same thing that it kind of started to appeal to
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me more and more and more. And even though I still love other music
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and I've seen you know, a thousand concerts literally of other bands, the
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Dead stuck and it became much more predominant throughout my teenage life. And then,
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you know, as we started to get older and see shows, you
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know, you'd see like five Dead shows to one other band show, because
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he just started to Okay, I gotta see more of this, and I'll
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see them once in a while, like go go see Zappa once. But
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I'm gonna see the Dead like seven times in a row, and then I'll
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see another band. So plus you knew the set list we're going to be
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different each time, which, yes, which sets them apart from all the
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other average bands that had a set list of songs that they were gonna play.
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Yes, yes, Now Zappa would play the same songs every night,
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but Zappa, because he's such a virtuoso, would play them a little different
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and the notes were different and stuff, but his set list was still the
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same, you know. And that was I saw Zappa in eighty one also,
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and that was pretty incredible at the time. So there were certain bands
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that were incredibly influential that, like I said, the Dead, the Dead
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took over. They led the way. When did you start keeping track of
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the set list or you know, or trading tapes? How quickly did that
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develop, because that's a big thing with that fans keeping track of the shows.
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And it probably started like we first got bootleg albums that would have different
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you know that like before we started getting cassettes. You know, it took
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a little while, like like probably all the way up till nineteen eighty until
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we started actually were able to find people who had live cassettes, you know,
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we had we had these bootleg records that you could buy. They were
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hard to find, or people would trade them around and people would record those
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onto cassettes. And that's kind of where we first started. And then we
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met a few people who were older to her Heads than us and had some
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tapes and we were allowed to, you know, get a couple of them
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by you know, here, here's some blanks. Make us some, you
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know, and it kind of started from there. I didn't really start collecting
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tapes and understanding heavy set list stuff and you know, the variety of you
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know, they haven't played this song for forty seven shows or whatever until probably
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when I moved out to California in eighty two eighty three. That's when I
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started to meet more people who had more of an ability to trade stuff with
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me, you know. And I had lost all my dead Head friends when
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I moved from Connecticut. My family moved and I had to re establish myself
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in southern California, and there were where I lived, there was no Deadheads,
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so I had to reach out and try and find people, and I
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met people at Jerry shows and different stuff like that. My really good friend
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Alan Petrassak, who's in my book, met him and he happened to live
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really close to me. I met him at this Jerry Garcia show in three
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nineteen eighty three. Is you got the framed concert poster there behind you?
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Yeah? Yeah, yeah yeah? Where was that show? At the Palomino
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station in Riverside. Now, it's not the Palomino that's down in La,
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which is just a Palomino. This is like a crazy cowboy bar and Riverside
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like like like dirt all the way up to the front door, like no
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stage. I think Jerry was like this high off the ground, like basically
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eye level with us, and way out in Riverside, you know, like
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about sixty miles out of La on the way to Palm Springs out the tent
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excuse me, so yeah, and Alan was buying me. I was eighteen.
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Al was in his early twenties and he was grabbing his spears and you
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know, he got me stoned and like I'm like, hey, man,
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where do you live. He's like Pomona. I'm like I'm in Chiano.
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That's right down the street. So truth be told, I guess Al probably
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helped me really start to get my tape collection going, and that's when we
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released started understanding stuff because he would write down set lists. He was a
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little older. He had a little notebook, you know, for some of
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the shows, and that just kind of made it fun and interesting because you
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know, then then the whole tie in of the difference of the set lists
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started to really make an impact, you know, started to really like get
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into my head, where like, oh yeah, they play estimated profit every
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three or four shows, five shows, not every other show, you know,
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like it just it's just expanded the whole idea of what the Dead were
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doing in my head to a much greater level than than many other bands you
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mentioned. Jerry Solo, I always got the feeling that maybe he enjoyed that
12:46
more than a Dead show eventually, just because I think he probably loved that
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that low key thing where he could just do whatever he wanted, small crowd,
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smaller venue, and just have some fun. That's that's that's a good
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point. Yeah, And I did listen to some of your Ray Robertson interview
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and I gotta buy his book. I had that book on my list already
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to get I just didn't must read until you sent it to me last night.
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But his connection with You know, I don't necessarily agree completely with what
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he said about Jerry maybe being tired of the dead or not wanting to play
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with the dead so much. I just think that Jerry had so much music
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inside him to get out that he just wanted to, you know, do
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his own thing with as many different people as he could play with, just
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because he had, you know, that undying musical energy that some musicians have.
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You know, my good friend Willie Waldman, who's a famous trumpet player,
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he was just here not too long ago. He's my age. He's
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in my book too. He played three gigs and did five sessions and barely
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slept for like three days because he loves it. You know. That's just
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that musician headspace that people can get into. And I think Jerry lived in
14:03
that musician headspace where there just wasn't enough time in the day for him to
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get out all the music that he really wanted to get out. But that's
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you know, that's my opinion. But I don't know, you know,
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it's tends to seem like that, you know, because of the way things
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manifested themselves with Jerry Garcia band and Olden in the way and reconstruction and all
14:28
the different projects Jerry would lean to. I mean, I guess Jerry was
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on like one hundred and sixty records for just as a little guitar solo contributor
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or adding into other people's records. I don't know if that's I don't know
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that stat is super specific, but I think it's around there. Yeah,
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he's on Hornsby's stuff, which is cool. I thought the work he did
14:48
with Bruce Hornsby was really cool a lot. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised
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if that were the case, because, like you say, he just was
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making music, recording, performing music all the time. Loud stories in the
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book. Talk about some of the stories here, crazy ones like chapter one
15:05
titled pulled Over on Acid in Utah. This took place on September eighth,
15:09
nineteen eighty five. Tell us the story. Okay, so we left from
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California at Boreoal drove all the way out to Texas, which was insane and
15:20
that was the Dead do that to you too, man, Oh, we're
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gonna play here and then the next beginning of the tours. The next show
15:26
on the beginning of the tours way out in Texas from northern California. So
15:33
we drove all the way out did all those shows. I think we saw
15:37
twelve shows. I think on that it was a Southwest tour eighty five and
15:41
we had just left drag Rocks and my buddy Dan and I had to skip
15:46
the three shows in Oakland because he was late for he was going off to
15:50
study abroad with his college program, and I was already late a week for
15:56
work because I had called in and said we broke down, and because I
16:00
just didn't want to miss anymore tour. Nice move, good move. So
16:07
we got to we got finished up Red Rocks, said goodbye to everybody,
16:11
got some gas, ate some assi because we had to drive all the way
16:15
to la from Colorado and be there by the next day. And we had
16:19
our friends in front of us who were also dosed, and we had been
16:23
touring with them, far L and Sue, and we all got pulled over
16:27
in a speed trap and we were just starting to get high and we didn't
16:30
take a lot, just enough to you know, the I'm gonna get there
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kind of thing. But uh yeah, it was kind of trippy because the
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it was the sun was setting and I write in my book, like the
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cops Shadows seemed super long. We're just like doing everything we know, like,
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okay, don't fuck with your hair, don't you know when he talks
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to you look at him and go okay, yeah, don't look away.
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A little cop tricks, and luckily we we only got a ticket, which
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I actually featured in my book. I kept the ticket and took a little
17:15
picture of it and put it in the book. My book has over ninety
17:19
photos in it too, that from three different photo sections, so I kind
17:23
of added that in as a little extra, and a lot of it is
17:27
for me and my friends too, you know, so we can all have
17:30
some some good back memories, you know. But we got pulled over tripping
17:37
by the Utah Highway patrol and we got away, and if we didn't get
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away, we would have been in a lot of trouble. And you made
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it to the show. That's what I like about this book. To a
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lot of stories. Some of them are really super short, just boom.
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You know, it's just it's it's like you're reading it's almost like a like
17:53
a diary. Yeah. Thanks, It's it's kind of how I did it,
17:57
you know. And I tried to make the chapters real short, so
18:00
that it would just reflect that moment, because tour is kind of like that,
18:07
you know, it's it's moments, moments, moments, moments, moments.
18:10
You're at the show, then you're in the parking lot, then you're
18:11
on the road, then you're you know, like getting pulled over, and
18:14
then you're at the gas station. Then you know, and you bump into
18:17
somebody in the gas station and they have your ticket for you for the next
18:19
show that you didn't have because you had some weed for them or whatever.
18:23
You know, It's just all those kind of little things that happened in between
18:27
the show is basically how I wanted to write it. There's a bunch of
18:32
books about everything Grateful Dead, like every little aspect of every single thing,
18:37
and I don't know, I just kind of wanted to make it more about
18:40
the adventures in between. There's plenty about the dead in there, of course,
18:42
you know, I go over shows and different things that happened inside,
18:47
and you know, the musical nuances and stuff. But I really wanted to
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make it, you know, more more the the in betweens than the shows
18:56
themselves. So I want to ask how many shows the you ended up seeing
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grateful that shows you saw before Jerry passed in ninety five, But also when
19:03
did you start to feel like because it must have been at some point like
19:07
this is this, this is never gonna end. Man, this is going
19:11
to be great and this is going to go on forever. But then Jerry
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starts to get sick mid to late eighties. How many shows did you go
19:18
see before he passed? And then, like I said, when did you
19:21
start to feel like, oh man, this might come to an end?
19:25
Well, I saw about about two hundred and ninety Dead shows and about one
19:32
hundred and twenty Jerry shows roughly. But for me, I had dipped out
19:41
of tour because I felt like I was I could spend my whole life on
19:47
tour and never do anything else with my life. Because I got that deep,
19:51
I started to travel and tour on my own. When friends didn't want
19:56
to go, I'd be like, well, fuck it, I'm going to
19:57
Chicago, and you know, if you guys don't want to I'm going anyway.
20:00
And I knew enough people on tour at that point where I could just
20:03
meet up with people and kind of do my thing, you know. But
20:07
I'm also not a traveling musician. I'm not in a band to make money.
20:11
I'm just following them and spending money and doing my thing for you know,
20:17
my personal fun time. But it also started to tour started to wear
20:23
on me a little bit because there's when you're there all the time, there's
20:27
a lot of elements that aren't always that rosy. You know. There's a
20:33
lot of parking lot problems and a lot of issues, and you know,
20:37
and things were happening on tour. People were coming on tour just to go
20:41
on tour to be part of the party, not to be part of the
20:48
dead scene. You know. They were there to score easy drugs. They
20:52
were there to they could just float along and party and not even go into
20:56
the show. And there were just some things on tour that were starting to
21:03
you know, like make it so it wasn't as cool in my eyes as
21:07
it had been. And of course I was changing a little bit too.
21:12
You know, I had been on on the road for several years at that
21:17
point, you know, like pretty heavily. Like eighty seven, I only
21:21
missed twenty two shows the whole year, so wow, I was And then
21:27
also during eighty seven, I saw every single West Coast Jerry show, including
21:34
all the the acoustic shows in in Los Angeles, I did not see.
21:41
If you look back there, you can see my poster of Jerry. Yeah,
21:45
I see it there. I did not get to see any of those
21:48
shows. But my old friend to her friend, Big Rick, brought me
21:52
back the posters and the T shirt and stuff. So so this was late
21:56
eighties around when you started to feel like you. Yeah. I also my
22:03
snowboard career just it started to happen without me even knowing it was gonna happen,
22:10
you know. I suddenly was like just riding for fun, and I
22:12
started getting some sponsors without even you know, trying, and so things started
22:18
to change in that way as well. And I just wanted to do some
22:22
different stuff. So I I kind of just halfway through eighty eight, I
22:26
just kind of dropped off tour and I went and got a job up at
22:29
Mount Hood. And I write about that in my book as well, because
22:32
it was interesting because I hadn't had too many legit jobs. I had been
22:40
a tour head for like going on like solid for like four years, you
22:48
know, and so and there's people who've been out and done way more shows
22:52
than me. But you know, when you're there that much for that many
22:55
years, it's it's pretty significant. You're there, You're in the mix,
23:00
you know, And I just started to the mix started to wear on me
23:07
a little bit. Yeah, So Jerry's health wasn't even really on your mind
23:10
at that time. You were eighty six. Yeah, we didn't think he
23:15
was coming back in eighty six, and that's why we moved up here.
23:18
That's when he went to the coma. Yes, yes, yes, yeah,
23:22
we have to learn how to play. Pardon me, you had to
23:25
relearn how to play? Oh, I know, I know, and you
23:29
know, I mean, thank god for Merl Saunders, you know, he
23:33
he totally did Jerry write and put him back where he needed to be.
23:37
But yeah, it was interesting because we were in Washington, d C.
23:41
We drove all the way to Ventura, coast to coast and had no idea
23:48
because there was no cell phones or anything, and we did we didn't know
23:49
that Jerry was sick. And we're pulling into Venture and if you've ever been
23:53
to Ventura, it's right off the freeway and you can it's like half a
23:57
mile from the freeway. You can see the fair as you drive by.
24:00
And we're driving off the off ramp and we're seeing all the buses and everything
24:06
going the other way, getting back onto the freeway and leaving Ventura, and
24:11
we're like, what the fuck's going on? We look around and everybody's got
24:15
these dour down faces, and then we see it, get well, Jerry
24:18
on the fence and we're like, oh, we So we pulled over and
24:22
asked the first couple of heads and they're like, Jerry's in a coma.
24:26
So we didn't know what to do at that point. You know, we
24:30
didn't know if he was ever going to come back, you know, like
24:33
and be a normal player again or not. Much to our surprise and satisfaction
24:41
and stoke, a few months later, he was back and I got to
24:47
see his first shows at The Stone in San Francisco. That was a hard
24:52
ticket get. That was a hard one to get. But he came back
24:56
and played super strong, and then he did another small Jerry gig on Halloween
25:03
with Bobby, and then I think he did one more little set at the
25:07
Stone again, and then The Dead played in Oakland at the Coliseum and then
25:14
that's where that where they opened with a touch of Gray and the or the
25:18
whole place the roof just blows off on Jerry sings, I will survive.
25:23
Yeah, what a moment. The book done. Rock podcasts will be back
25:26
after this. Yeah. What were the dead shirt games about? Oh?
25:33
Good that we were all young deadheads and you know, our era of kids
25:41
were different when we were growing up, at least when I was growing up.
25:44
You know, we were we were kind of raw to each other and
25:48
rough and it was fun. We would we would just fuck with each other,
25:52
and we were young, young East Coast kids, so we would we
25:56
all had dead shirts. But we would play different games like games of pool
26:00
or pinball and bet our dead shirts against the games. Sometimes we would also
26:07
play these games where if you lost a bet in pool or pinball or something
26:15
else, you'd have to eat like a tablespoon of salt or like cinnamon or
26:22
baking powder or something like something that you could never hold in your mouth.
26:26
But the main thing with the dead shirt games was just trying to beat each
26:30
other at these different, you know, different games and collect everybody's dead shirts.
26:37
And our friend George, who owned the pool table and the pinball machine,
26:41
it was much better at the games because he owned them, would end
26:44
up getting like a whole bunch of our shirts, and he'd stack them all
26:48
up and like wear like five at once just to taunt us. I've got
26:56
the whole load. I won the whole pot. But George didn't always win.
27:03
You know. We got our shirts back from them, and it all.
27:07
It always kind of worked out, you know, because it wasn't really
27:11
that big of a deal. If somebody won your shirt and you just kind
27:14
of took your shirt back out of their room and brought it back to your
27:17
house and started wearing it again, you know, then it just kind of
27:18
went back into the game again. Now, let's tell tickets, because in
27:22
those days it wasn't as easy to get tickets like it is now with the
27:26
internet. Yeah, expensive today, but easier than back in the day.
27:30
You would stand in line at ticket tron Outlet's ticket tron. I remember that
27:36
chapter twenty two titled Grateful Dead Tickets by any means, So you guys would
27:38
take trade, You would trade shifts so you wouldn't lose your spot in line.
27:42
Yeah, absolutely, it was. There was a couple of different places
27:48
in our town in Bethel, Connecticut. There was It used to be a
27:51
place under this like drive under, which was nice next to this travel agency,
27:56
but they got blown out and they moved it down the street and put
28:02
a window on the side of another building where it was totally exposed to the
28:04
rain. But it still didn't stop any of the heads, you know,
28:07
and people be out there. We'd be out there in Connecticut in the wintertime
28:11
and George and m L another Scott, George and Scott who's known as mL.
28:19
They had single moms and much more relaxed kind of environment. You know,
28:25
they didn't have a hard edged dad like I did, to you know,
28:30
dictate when they were gonna come home and do their things. So they
28:33
would do the all night shifts and we'd come back and skip school or hang
28:37
out, and you know, when we had time and spend you know,
28:38
our six or seven or eight hours there waiting along with all the other heads,
28:44
and it would go down the side of the building with tents and then
28:47
kind of go around the corner and it was really cool. And then of
28:52
course some people would be bummed because the tickets would sell out so fast that
28:59
not everybody in the line would always get them, and so it was it
29:06
was a bittersweet thing, you know. It was really great. A lot
29:08
of the time, and then other times you'd be like I would thank that
29:14
sucks, But you must have met a lot of cool Dead fans through that
29:18
experience. I did when I moved to California. That's how I met Melissa
29:23
and Farrel and Farrell's a famous taper and Melissa's good old friend of mine who
29:30
took me up to my first New Year's Eve shows in eighty three. I
29:34
was sitting in line, didn't know any heads, I hadn't even barely met.
29:40
I think I just met Alan at that show, like I said.
29:44
And I was waiting in line with Dead heads up in Upland, California,
29:48
next to a Sears because Sears used to have ticket outlets in them and they'd
29:52
have a little window on the wall and everybody's line up again, and there
29:55
were fans waiting for Violent Fams tickets. And I had never heard of violent
30:00
fems. But I was sort of a hippie punker, you know. I
30:04
was into iggy and different shit like that and Motorhead and stuff, even though
30:07
I was into the Dead, So I kind of was like, oh,
30:11
violent fems they sound kind of cool. I want to find out what they're
30:14
like. And I did right after that, and I loved them, but
30:17
uh yeah, we would. We would sit in line and I met all
30:22
kinds of people that way, some of the people who are still super super
30:26
close. Like Farrell is one of my best friends for my whole entire life,
30:30
and I still he just lives up in Washington and I still see him,
30:34
you know, like every couple of months and talk to him on the
30:37
phone. And another thing too is when I hook up my zoom with him,
30:41
it works great. Can't but with me for some reason, for some
30:47
reason, Hey, let's talk talk Touch of Gray. When did you first
30:49
hear them play that live? And did you did you think it was going
30:52
to be something that would have been such a crossover hit when you've heard them
30:56
play it live, yes, and know that the hit part probably not,
31:03
you know, but they had been playing it by the time it became big
31:10
with everyone else. They had been playing it for years, about five years,
31:14
right, It was totally in the mix, and and you know,
31:18
like it wasn't even considered a new song anymore. So the interesting fact is
31:23
that it it blew up with the general public and with the radio ears,
31:30
if you will, way after it came out. You know, like like
31:36
we all thought if they were going to have any hits, you know,
31:38
they would pop right after the record came out or within a year maybe,
31:42
you know. But I kind of liked the fact that it made two a
31:48
really big although it made it a bitch to get tickets and to get around
31:52
and to get in. But that was my follow up, is how did
31:56
that experience go for you? Seeing a lot of the fair Weather fans show
32:00
up? How did that make you feel? Here's the thing. I liked
32:07
the experience so like, here's an example, and I mentioned this a minute
32:13
ago. When we drove from New York or I mean Washington, DC from
32:15
RFK all the way to Ventura, that show at RFK that had like one
32:20
hundred thousand people at it. I went all the way to the very back
32:25
of the stadium to the very last row at the top and stood in the
32:30
very middle, just me against the wall at the very top, just to
32:35
look out over that and be like, yeah, I'm here with ninety five
32:39
thousand people. We're all here to see the dead. And I was absorbing
32:45
that kind of energy as opposed to being like, there's way too many fucking
32:49
people here, you know. I was just like this is insane, and
32:54
every person is just like, yes, it was. It was just a
33:01
the magnitude of it just was amazing to me. And so when it did
33:07
blow up that big on a certain level, I did enjoy it because it
33:13
was that big, you know, and just that grandiose scale is just so
33:19
amazing onto itself that it just it just blew me away. So and years
33:24
later you realize a lot of those people that became fans through that song are
33:29
still fans to this day. That's quite true. Many of the people that
33:32
I hang out with in chat rooms, a bunch of people who have bought
33:36
my book who have written to me about it were all like, yeah,
33:39
man, I came in during that era, and I'm like, that's great.
33:45
At least you were in during an era, you know, and that's
33:49
killer. I I really respect everyone who came in, no matter what their
33:57
era is, you know. But it did add a huge, huge influx
34:02
of ditch. Yeah, because between what eighty eighty one and eighty seven when
34:08
the single hit, that's kind of considered the down period of the Dead history
34:14
there, because Jerry did get sick the coma and it is an interesting part
34:22
of your story because you started seeing them during that period. What were those
34:25
shows like were there? I'm sure there were great shows. When you talk
34:30
about the best dead shows, a lot of times they kind of avoid that
34:34
early eighties era. I don't know why, because there's so much like Okay,
34:37
here's an example, New Haven Was it three fourteen eighty one, which
34:45
would have been my second show? Is I neglected that show? I didn't
34:50
remember much about it in my book. It's like a one paragraph chapter,
34:54
but I recently listened to it and it's insane. It's like so good,
35:01
and I'm gonna do a little video about it because I had forgotten how really,
35:06
really truly good it was. And yes, there are shows where they're
35:09
where they weren't on, Like I also did a little video and wrote about
35:14
in my book about what I think is the worst show ever, which I
35:16
think was the first show of nineteen eighty seven in uh San Francisco, and
35:29
they blew it in every song and I listened to it three times and wrote
35:32
down the mistakes just because so yeah, during those eras, there were times
35:37
where they just weren't on. You know. Also though people say that,
35:44
you know, the seventies were more more spot on, but you know,
35:47
they're traveling band. People get tired, people get a cold, you know
35:52
people you know, I back went out. You know, it's like,
35:53
not every single show is going to be you know, the the fucking crown
36:00
jewel of the year, you know, but that's the beauty of the Dead.
36:05
They go out there. It really is see what happens. But the
36:07
late seventies I think that played into it too, because a lot of people
36:10
are now comparing them to those shows of seventy seven seventy eight. That period
36:15
was considered the period the height of the Grateful Dead, So they're going up
36:21
against that. What about the US Fest nineteen eighty two. US Fest you
36:23
were there for that show? Was that weekend? You were there the whole
36:27
weekend to see the Dead play a morning slot? Right? What time did
36:30
they play? Like ten in the morning is nine in the morning. And
36:34
here's the thing, Bill Graham. That festival was having some problems. Bill
36:40
Graham came in and took over all the booking, and one of his demands
36:46
was the Dead gets a slot. So that's how the Dead got into the
36:51
US Festival because they weren't even scheduled to play the whole bank in any of
36:54
the advertisement until just a couple of weeks or a month before they actually played
37:00
the gig, So Bill Graham tossed the dead in and they came on at
37:05
like nine in the morning, and I mean, there's the speakers are having
37:12
problems. It's soup, it's already one hundred and five degrees at ten thirty.
37:17
But there's some beautiful things like the China Rider from that show is incredible,
37:25
like incredible. But they had musical problems, and of course they probably
37:31
all slept zero the night before, and who knows what they are all partying
37:38
on, And by their own admission, they were all partying on lots of
37:42
stuff then, so you know, I mean additional fuel. Yeah, if
37:46
you've been up all night doing blow, you're probably going to be pretty sweaty
37:50
and burnt at nine thirty in the morning and one hundred and five degree weather.
37:53
But but it was so cool, dude like. And interestingly enough,
38:00
I found a photo or a video of somebody videoing like all the stuff around
38:07
there, and there's a picture of me standing in the in the in the
38:09
computer area because they had this technology section like back then, because computers were
38:15
brand new and it was a Wosney Acte Wosney Act did it, the Apple
38:21
computer founder. And there's a picture of me standing there, just a silhouette
38:28
in the in the the the uh fucking technology tent. Where can we see?
38:32
It's on YouTube? Yeah, I'll find it. I'll find it and
38:36
send you the links. And it's just it's just my silhouette. And I'm
38:39
like, and I remember being there. I have a good memory for that
38:42
kind of shit, and I'm like, that's me. They're part of dead
38:47
history. That was shit? What was I seventeen? The book Done Rock
38:55
podcast will be back after this. Thomas Nordy nordwal So Nordy. People call
39:02
you Nordy, even says by Nordy, it doesn't even have your that's what
39:07
everybody calls me. My skateboard friends from Rebel Skates back in the day.
39:13
I wasn't Norty on tour. Back then, I was just Tom or whatever.
39:15
But my skateboard friends named me Nordy. Just shortened my name and it
39:22
just stuck. And then everybody's been calling me that for the last thirty five
39:25
years. So you know, it's it's easier, and that's what I go
39:29
by. It's you know, there's a lot of Tom's, there's not many
39:30
Nordy's. Yeah, it was, and the book is tore head. I
39:34
was an acid fueled teenage dead fiend. I remember hearing the news of Jerry's
39:38
passing August ninth, nineteen ninety five. Take us back to that moment.
39:43
You write about it in the book, how you found out and how you
39:45
reacted, and did you think that was it? As far as any form
39:50
of the dead going forward without Jerry. At the time, I was kind
39:55
of as far off of tour as you could get. I I was the
40:01
head coach at the biggest snowboard program out there, training camp on Mount Hood
40:09
in Oregon, and it was summer and one of my main coaches, Lance
40:15
Pittman, came and knocked on my door was a day off and woke me
40:20
up. And no one knocks on my door on my day off. So
40:22
I was like, what the fuck? You know, like, like what
40:27
do you want and he's like, hey, dude, I'm really sorry to
40:29
tell you this, but I just heard that Jerry passed away. And so
40:32
I didn't go down and join in with the sadness or the memorials or whatever,
40:39
because they were happening in Portland. They were happening in like at the
40:43
Barley Mill and some of the Grateful we have bars here in Portland. They're
40:47
all Grateful Dead related, you know, and people were all congregating there,
40:52
and I just went back down to my house and just kind of did my
40:55
thing and played some old shows and stuff, you know, and played some
41:00
of my tapes and kind of I didn't have a lot of camaraderie with a
41:07
bunch of Deadheads at the time because I was doing completely other things with my
41:12
snowboard career. You know, like most of my friends didn't even know I
41:15
liked the Dead All my stuff was in storage, you know, because I
41:17
was living and working on Mount Hood and you know, I was busy all
41:22
year long with my snowboard career, so you know, unless you know,
41:27
you know, like a couple of people, like some of my teammates,
41:29
like my buddy Dustin Barga and some other people totally knew, like oh yeah,
41:34
and we talked like, oh dude, did you hear that they did
41:37
another Saint Stephen or you know, or Unbroken Chamber, you know, just
41:40
like shit like that. But it wasn't a part of my every day then,
41:49
and it hadn't been for a while, and it wasn't for a little
41:52
while after that. So it was it was sad, and I wasn't really
42:00
sure how to react, so I just kind of dealt with it myself.
42:05
But I did have a feeling that it wasn't going to continue, you know,
42:12
like because there there was only a few cover bands. Now we have
42:17
hundreds of tribute bands, hundreds. You know, Ventura is coming up.
42:22
You know, it's like that's all tribute bands. Back then we had Qbanzes
42:25
and Purple Turtles and you know, a couple others and that's it. There
42:30
was no dso back then, none of that, you know. So Dukstar
42:35
Orchestra has been around for a while, Dark Stor Orchestra play and Filling Prince
42:38
came in after that too, that Dog and Filling Friends, yep, you
42:43
know, And I mean Bobby had Bobby in the Midnights and you know,
42:46
and and all that. But until all that stuff, until that point,
42:53
you know, it was still just going to dead shows. And then you
42:57
know, Bobby was playing like if you go see Bobby in the midnight to
43:00
be at like Riss Miller's and Risina, you know, like a like a
43:04
Jerry Garcia band size club, you know, smaller and more intimate, you
43:07
know, that kind of thing. But I wonder as the years go on,
43:14
though, and you get into these other formations of the Dead, that
43:17
the guys in the band couldn't couldn't avoid the reality that there was a fan
43:22
base, a huge fan base for this that still wants the Dead. Maybe
43:28
they thought without Jerry that wouldn't be the case. I could be wrong,
43:31
but it just felt like that, like they were doing some low key stuff,
43:36
but it's like the the audience was still there and it seemed to be
43:40
growing despite the fact that Jerry was no longer around. That's a good point
43:45
now because of bootlegs, because of the fact that you could trade this stuff,
43:50
and you know, it was being traded from down to generations like it
43:53
did. My older brother gave me a lot of the shows. My first
43:57
the first bootleg was May seventy seven New Haven, and I was like,
44:00
oh my god, you right, you know, I was like, holy
44:04
yeah, what is this? Yeah, you know, I was. I
44:07
was just blown away. So yeah, that that's what was happening. I
44:09
think a lot in the in the mid to late nineties what do you think
44:13
about that? Well, I couldn't see the rest of the band members not
44:23
playing, of course, because they're that's what they do, that's what they're
44:28
into. It's you know, it's like you're into it. You know,
44:30
you're you're fucking a musician, You're into it. But I could also see
44:37
what I couldn't imagine what it would be like rather without Jerry playing with them,
44:43
you know, because you know, he's one part of the band,
44:47
you know, but he's also pretty significant in his one part of the band.
44:54
He was the figurehead of the band, whether he liked it or not.
44:58
It was the thing, the look, the sound, the whole thing
45:01
was Jerry was the guy. His tone that it just you know, I
45:08
mean, even the best of the best of the best can barely get Jerry's
45:14
tone the way Jerry had his tone, you know, and it's just his
45:19
unique style, that's all, you know, his his brain working with his
45:22
fingers to make that. I mentioned the hornsby stuff. Didn't even realize he
45:27
was on the album. Just hearing the songs, I'm like, oh,
45:30
that's Jerry. His solo kicks in. I was like, oh shit,
45:32
Jerry's on this album. I remember it was if working at a radio station
45:37
PLR New Haven and Cruise controlled by Bruce Hornsby was a single that I don't
45:40
think they ever played, and they just kind of put it in the bin
45:44
and people could just grab it. And I was interning and I popped that
45:46
in. I was like, Oh, that's Jerry nice, that's Jerry dude.
45:52
I love the fact that you worked at radio stations and I know the
45:54
ones that you worked at and stuff from. Isn't that a wild small world?
45:58
Yeah? Yeah, world. But I'm sorry I kind of cut you
46:00
off there because you were talking about as we get into the late nineties early
46:05
two thousands, that's when more bands start to form with all the guy.
46:10
I was still like immersed in my snowboard career, but I started to go
46:15
and see stuff like I'm okay, okay. For the first couple of years,
46:25
I thought Dark Straw Orchestra d s O was a real fucking orchestra.
46:35
I thought it was like Trans Siberian Orchestra, like a bunch of oboes and
46:39
bassoons and shit at far away from it. I was they go back to
46:45
the eighties, don't they. DARS Orchestra from what I recalled me. I
46:50
think, I don't know, maybe they do. But when when they got
46:52
on my radar was in like probably late nineties or early two thousand's, you
47:00
know, And so I would see they're adding the paper to play in Portland
47:04
all the time, and I'm like, wow, they keep coming back.
47:07
People must really like this orchestra. Shit, the conductor must be And finally
47:16
one of my buddies was just like, hey, there a tribute band,
47:22
and a yes yes, And and then of course rat Dog came through town
47:32
a couple of times, and I dropped in because I had friends who would
47:37
who ran the door. I still have a friend who runs one of the
47:42
main clubs, and actually many of them, and so I even if it
47:45
was sold out, I could still dip in, and you know, and
47:47
it wasn't like I gotta be here, I'm gonna go get in line.
47:51
I'd just show up before the show and go in and do my own thing
47:53
and dance around. And but Phil started coming to town with Phil and friends,
48:00
and then I was and Phil has always been my favorite, and I'm
48:02
like the biggest Pill fan there is. And that's when I really started to
48:07
be like, okay, like I still want to fucking see more shows.
48:13
I'm still this is still a part of me, This is still a part
48:15
of my heart, This is still a part of my head. You know.
48:17
This is what I what I live for forever, and I miss it
48:22
and I need to see a little bit more. I wasn't ready to go
48:25
back on tour or anything. I just it'd be good to see Phil,
48:30
you know, two or three nights in a row when you play here,
48:31
you know, twice a year or whatever. So yeah, and then he
48:37
became part of the other ones. Yeah, it was weird. Yes,
48:43
And I went to my buddy Fird, who's in my book. He's a
48:47
chef who travels all over and he's he does consulting and opens restaurants and he's
48:52
worked everywhere for all the pimpiest restaurants. And at the time he was working
48:55
at Florio in San Francisco, and Florio has ticket to through through their connections,
49:04
and he got tickets to see other Ones with Medeski, Martin and Wood
49:08
for New Year's Eve in two thousand and two, two thousand and three.
49:15
I was gonna ask you about it. It's in your book, and I
49:17
flew down and that was really like the real like, Okay, I've been
49:24
missing this for a long time. I need to be back into this a
49:29
little bit more. And after that, I was like, Okay, I'm
49:32
not going to miss anything. If Phil comes to town, I'm gonna see
49:37
him, you know, like at least once or twice a year. And
49:40
that was enough for me for a long time. And then fast forward up
49:47
to twenty eighteen. I had a friend who a young dead head friend who
49:53
was in her mid twenties or and her boyfriend were these young hippie kids,
49:59
and they were weighed and she kept telling me how rad Dead and Company is
50:02
with John Mayer. And I wasn't paying attention at that point. She's like,
50:06
it's so good. And I'm like, whatever, I saw Jerry.
50:08
And she's like, no, it's so good. I'm like, whatever,
50:10
you didn't see Jerry. I saw Jerry. I'm like I was being stubborn
50:14
about it, which I shouldn't have been, because it's amazing, but you
50:17
know, she was just talking so much shit about how good it was.
50:21
I was like, whatever, you don't know what you're talking about. You're
50:22
twenty seven. And she didn't give up on you. She did not give
50:30
up on you. No, she did not. My friend Andrea and I
50:34
saw her last year at a at a tribute band show, and I told
50:37
her, like, I put you in my book. She's like what.
50:39
But Naomi and I and my lady got tickets to Eugene in twenty eighteen,
50:50
and we didn't know what to expect. We just went and we're like,
50:53
yeah, it's gonna be good. You know. I heard it's good.
50:55
I'd listened to some of it. It was pretty good, but I had
50:58
listened to some just random stuff online and the versions were all right, but
51:02
they weren't kick ass. And I realized I was listening to stuff from when
51:06
they first started touring. And when we went to that show in Eugene,
51:09
it just blew me away. Dude, Like thirteen minute performance of Deal,
51:15
that was your moment of Deal or whatever? Yeah, whatever it was.
51:20
Don't you let that, do you? Yeah, that's a Jerry solo song
51:23
or did he cover that? I was, it's on it, It's no,
51:28
it's it's it's it's a Garcia Hunter song and it's on his first record.
51:30
It's on his record that's got his finger on the front and then the
51:37
half naked the girl and the weird dials and stuff. His very very first
51:39
record. He was playing a lot of those songs when you first first started
51:43
going to shows. He was playing Deal there because that's on the live the
51:47
live one from San fran and eighty one. I think Deal's on there and
51:52
on on dead Set, right, dead Set. Yeah, but that was
51:57
like a reawakening for you that show. Yeah, man, I mean actually
52:00
it was the reawakening, like like I was like, whoa, Like this
52:07
is fucking great, Like I could go back on tour. I could,
52:10
I could go see more shows like that, like this is killer like in
52:15
its new incarnation, this is really fun. And Shakedown was exploding like one
52:24
of my all time favorite Dead tunes like back in the day. I was
52:29
like, whoa, I love it. Yeah, it was like the closest,
52:34
well I was gonna say, Shakedown Street is one of my favorite Dead
52:37
tunes, but that was like the closest to to Jerry Eradad that I think
52:43
we've gotten since Jerry passed. Agreed the book down Rock Podcasts will be back
52:47
after this. At the end of the book, you mentioned Bob Weir and
52:52
Wolf Brothers, and man, I was blown away by this band. I
52:58
saw them here in Connecticut, what Berry Palace Theater. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
53:04
Yeah, really great show, and Bob was just out there having fun.
53:08
He even told a few jokes in between songs. We were all looking at
53:12
each other because usually Bobby will just go from song to song to song.
53:15
But he was having fun. He was having jokes. Never get better either.
53:22
Now. Dead and Company retired last year, which sucks. What do
53:24
you hope to see next from the guys in the Dead, What's a film?
53:29
Phil was pretty much one. If Phil was the oldest of all the
53:30
guys in the band, he's Yeah, Phil turned eighty four. Wow man
53:35
four eighty four. Yeah. He plays some shows in New York up at
53:39
the Capitol Theater maybe once or twice a year. Yeah. I just went
53:44
and saw him in at the film or Fillmore West in December for two nights,
53:49
and that was incredible. He had Stanley Jordan play with him. Yeah.
53:55
And he's just such a phenomenal guitar play and he does Grateful Dead stuff
54:04
in this very sonic kind of way that he plays that just just fits it
54:10
so good. And why is Phil your favorite member of the band. I'm
54:15
a bass guy, like Okay, here's an little example, like I'll be
54:19
standing in line somewhere, you know, at the grocery store of the bank,
54:22
and There'll be some really shitty music song on, but I'll be tapping
54:25
my head to it, and somebody will look at me, like some matter
54:29
with you? This song is terrible, and I'm like, but I'm I
54:30
not even listening to the rest of the song. I just selected out the
54:35
bass. I do that with the drums. I love drums. So interesting.
54:39
Yeah, but he was not a bassist to begin with, which maybe
54:43
that's what lends to his style, right, He's not he was he was.
54:45
He was a a horn player on a lot of levels, like like
54:52
and some other instruments, but definitely not a bass player at all. He
54:58
never even picked one up. He's like learning on the job and those early
55:00
shows that first year or two, and then he started to get Then he
55:06
started getting into his groove and he found his his unique style. But yes,
55:10
for sure. So here's a We're get to finish with a rapid fire
55:15
Dead question segment. Okay, we start with favorite Dead show that you've seen,
55:27
Greek eighty five, The Cryptical Envelopment, other one show. So we're
55:36
talking down, the portal opened more than it's ever opened, and the whole
55:44
venue left and went somewhere else. It was incredible. Greek Theater, Greek
55:49
Theater in nineteen eighty five, the twenty year anniversary and the show that they
55:54
did Cryptical Envelopment other one Cryptical Envelopment. It was the energy shifted into a
56:06
different realm. It was insane. If we want to listen to Bootleg,
56:10
do you remember the date? Yeah? Yeah, because you know Dead fans
56:19
are listening. They're saying, I want to hear this. Yes, then
56:22
they already know about it. Eighty five, it would happen to have ben
56:27
Uh hang on, I'm almost there. Uh six twenty six, twenty one
56:36
and six twenty two. Okay, so six twenty and six or six twenty
56:45
one and six twenty two, eighty five, six twenty six, twenty one
56:51
and six twenty two, oh three days, Okay, I gotta listen.
56:59
Yes, I think it's second night, but so yeah, by far my
57:07
favorite favorite Dead song, other one right away right away? Yeah yeah.
57:15
I mean, you know, I got my favorites, and I stick to
57:17
them. I have a ton of other, uh secondary favorites. But the
57:25
other one is is hands down my favorite song. It just it just does
57:30
it for me. It's like, to me, it's like the hardest Dead
57:31
song, the craziest beat, you know, and just it just changes the
57:38
tempo every time they play it, you know, like it just it just
57:43
brings the show up in that kind of way. And that goes all the
57:50
way back. It feels intros on that. Oh god, yeah, I
57:58
was gonna say that goes all the way back I think to sixty nine.
58:01
Yeah, even before. Man, you know, like they were doing another
58:05
one in six early sixty eight, and do you you know that it had
58:07
different lyrics part of it for a while too, right yeaheah, with Bobby's
58:12
weird like you know, I don't there just there was a whole different Stanza
58:16
in there. Well. I love the fact Dark Star in a similar way
58:22
how it started off like a two minute song and then what it became live.
58:29
It's funny to listen to the single version compared to to like three minutes
58:35
and thirty seven seconds, and it's alid you do you how about best era
58:43
of the Grateful Dead? Hmmm hmmm. I mean I am very fond of
58:52
the eras that are the era that I got to be a part of it.
58:55
But if if I really want to choose things that I okay, I'd
59:01
have to say like seventy two, seventy three, late seventy seven, early
59:10
seventy eight, and eighty six eighty seven, because eras can go for a
59:19
long time, but I have to break my ears down into a couple of
59:21
years because you know, if they played you know, a couple songs for
59:28
a couple of years and then they stopped playing them, that's almost an era
59:31
change with the Grateful Dead if you will, you know, like because the
59:37
the eras for me are more not about the players but the but the songs,
59:43
you know, like like some songs span every era. Certain songs only
59:49
got a couple of years worth of play, you know, So it kind
59:52
of breaks down the way the sets were put together into eras. In my
59:57
head, I guess as opposed to, you know, a time frame like
1:00:01
the sixties or the seventies or the eighties or the nineties, seventy seven seventy
1:00:06
eight, I go with yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I
1:00:07
mean, just incredible, dude, RPI Rensseller Polytechnic Institute in early seventy eight
1:00:19
is just got the most incredible other one, the most incredible Ico just the
1:00:23
Ithaca show. Yeah, Ethic New York. I mean, and there's a
1:00:29
seventy nine show if we want to push it back a little further. That's
1:00:31
got what I consider I think it's might be Syracuse, but it's got what
1:00:38
I consider the probably the absolute best other one. And it's not just my
1:00:43
opinion, of course, but Phil does his thunder intro like three separate times
1:00:52
before the Bobby even starts singing, and it just shakes the place. It's
1:00:58
just so incredible. How about best best venue to see a dead show?
1:01:04
Oh? Man, I have many, uh, because they had their most
1:01:10
they're they're all their unique aspects. Okay, Ventura County Fairgrounds. And if
1:01:15
you don't have your Venturre tickets, get them for twenty twenty four. This
1:01:19
probably won won't come out until after that's over because it's in a couple of
1:01:21
weeks. But Ventura County Fairgrounds is incredible. I love it there because it's
1:01:25
just the dirt ring and the right by the ocean. Let's see the Greek
1:01:32
Theater of course in Berkeley, Berkeley Community Theater, the zoo Appi Theater in
1:01:40
in the Starlight, which are both in Kansas, ones in Missouri and ones
1:01:45
in Kansas, but in Kansas City and the both Kansas cities on each side
1:01:50
of the river. Those venues were fucking amazing. Alpine Valley shit Filmore one
1:01:58
of the film you know, I know ever saw anything at the fillm More
1:02:04
And the Filmore was closed for a long time, and it was something else
1:02:08
during like times when I might have been able to see like after the Dad
1:02:12
and stuff, you know. But I just recently got to see Phil at
1:02:16
the Fillmore, and ironically enough, I had I had never been there unless
1:02:21
I had been there one other time and I just didn't remember it. But
1:02:24
I didn't really remember the venue at the Fillmore. Now let's see what else?
1:02:30
Uh what else? Are they better outdoor or are they better indoor?
1:02:36
Does it matter? Man? I mean outdoor in the summer, I think
1:02:40
is just you can't beat that. Yeah, I mean it's kind of you
1:02:44
know, like in the winter time, you're freezing your ass off, so
1:02:47
you want to get inside and warm right outdoors hard It's that that would also
1:02:54
be a venue choice too, because some venues are totally blown out outside because
1:03:00
of the way that the stadium or wherever it is is set up so the
1:03:05
sound is not as good, yeah, or it's just the wind is blowing
1:03:07
so hard that it's just sending it all the way down this way and stuff.
1:03:10
But I don't know. I mean, like you said, the sunshine,
1:03:16
being outside is just like the most magical thing. But then also being
1:03:22
in an acoustically sound theater like the Berkeley Community Theater, you know, where
1:03:28
there's not that many people in there, like thirty five hundred or whatever,
1:03:30
and getting to see a show in that realm where you're much more a part
1:03:36
of it because it's it's more intimate, you know, like you feel like
1:03:39
you're a part of this small crowd, not the gigantic crowd. And I
1:03:45
like both feeling part of both of those. But yeah, they get back
1:03:49
to that. It's like, that's a hard question because it's so many variables,
1:03:53
you know. I just I think of petruly weed and beer yep,
1:03:59
yeah, yep, I'm in heaven Y's and and and wait and the sound
1:04:05
of the Nitrous Tank. Yeah, all right. Last one. If there
1:04:13
was a time machine and you could pick a Grateful Dead show before your time
1:04:15
going to shows, which one would it be before you got to see them?
1:04:19
Mm hmm. Probably that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute show from early seventy eight.
1:04:29
That RPI is just like I I just it's I had it was one of
1:04:34
my very first tapes. It just it's always just stuck with me as like,
1:04:42
man, I would love to be here just because of the sound and
1:04:45
the way they played it, the tone like Phil you know, and if
1:04:51
like you know, if I could jump back to other things, you know,
1:04:54
I would probably want to go see some of the the bigger, crazier
1:04:59
shit like Walk Glenn, you know, to be stuck in Watkins Glenn for
1:05:01
three days, you know, and the Dead comes out to do their sound
1:05:05
check and plays basically a whole show. People are that, like the Davy
1:05:12
boy that even ses to be on stage like that kind of stuff would have
1:05:15
been all time, you know. Be nice to go back and catch a
1:05:20
show with pig Pen. God yeah, dude, oh my god. Yeah,
1:05:24
I mean I didn't even put that into perspective. Yeah yeah, yeah,
1:05:28
You're would be incredible, Like and I am huge, huge, huge
1:05:34
pig Pen fan. How about one of those Europe seventy two shows. It's
1:05:44
it's insane. I believe that he sang his last in Europe and then he
1:05:47
only did one more show and he just yeah, he just seeing his last
1:05:53
show. He just he just got up and played keys and hung out and
1:05:58
played a little bit of harmonica and that was it. But yeah, I'm
1:06:02
huge fan of a huge pig Pan fan, And I really like the The
1:06:08
Alligators, which is a pig Pen cover band. They the guy doesn't try
1:06:15
and be like pig Pen at all, but he has a good voice and
1:06:19
they do a huge tribute to him, and they're fucking amazing. And nobody's
1:06:25
really out there doing much pig you know. And I like the fact that
1:06:30
people still have a love for it in their hearts because it's it was one
1:06:35
of the most significant parts of the initial backbone of The Grateful Dead, and
1:06:43
he was the band leader forever, you know, until it just kind of
1:06:47
started pushing into different musical realms. You know. Here's a question for you,
1:06:54
and I've asked my other friend this. If pig Pen hadn't been sick
1:06:59
and hadn't passed, do you think he would have stayed with the Dead who
1:07:02
then? Yeah, I don't think so, because if they were going off
1:07:05
into a different direction musically. Yeah, I mean he was, he was
1:07:10
a lot of I think I think he would have been like the Brian Jones
1:07:13
of the Dead. He had been the Brian Jones of the Dead, I
1:07:15
think he'd have been too bummed. I don't think they would have continued with
1:07:18
the bluesy sound that he loved. Interesting and and I think that he would
1:07:25
have kind of been phased out unintentionally. But I don't think that they would
1:07:30
have wanted to continue in that. I think that phasing had already kind of
1:07:33
started a little bit sadly, right, But but it's you know, it
1:07:38
wasn't an intentional thing, you know, I mean, like fuck back in
1:07:43
sixty eight, fucking Jerry wanted to fire Bobby and pig Pen right right.
1:07:48
They had the meeting after one of the shows and be out of the band.
1:07:53
He was like, they had a little rift. It's like it's in
1:07:56
some story somewhere, and Jerry was pissed and he was like, wow,
1:08:00
oh, I didn't know they okay, because I know, I know Ray
1:08:02
Robinson talked about they had a meeting and said, look, you guys got
1:08:05
to pull your weight and think Bob, Bobby and pig Pen they were just
1:08:10
yeah, and so it was along those lines. Yeah, but for sure,
1:08:13
like he wanted him out for a while there, and wow, and
1:08:15
you know it's like they actually played a couple of gigs separately than like just
1:08:21
like and not much, but you know, like where's the rest of the
1:08:27
band. We're just gamminged tonight kind of thing. Amazing just to even picture
1:08:33
in your head of any of those guys getting just any heated arguments. But
1:08:38
that bands together, any band's going to have those moments. They're traveling together
1:08:44
all the time, and and and again they start to change musically, their
1:08:46
directions, what their interests are, and they started to expand into that whole,
1:08:50
that whole jam band psychedelic type of stuff that they start to do.
1:08:55
I don't think Big Ben was interested in that all that much. Did you
1:08:59
hear the story of Jerry pushing Phil down the stairs? I don't think I
1:09:03
heard that one. No. Jerry talks about He's like, I was so
1:09:09
mad and I just pushed him. I just like, wow, and Phil
1:09:20
had that still does that dry sense of humor which I love? Yeah,
1:09:25
yeah, yeah, do I as do? I boy, Yeah, he
1:09:28
pushed him down flight the stairs. Well, you gotta be careful when you're
1:09:33
a musician. Man, it's like, hey, I got the don't hurt
1:09:36
these two hands. I need them. Yeah agree. I mean I've seen
1:09:41
friends, my friends in bands like basically fighting each other right behind the amps,
1:09:46
and so they're so passionate about what they do. So it's not like
1:09:53
a nine to five gig was like, I don't give a ship. Whatever
1:09:56
you want to do it that way, do it that way, just pay
1:09:58
me. I mean, but the rock dues and stuff, you know,
1:10:00
than the Grateful Dead where you don't picture you know, peace love and Grateful
1:10:03
Dead like doing that ship to each other. But everybody's human, and you
1:10:08
know, you like everybody can everybody can piss each other off. Sometimes.
1:10:13
Even Jerry used to say, you know, this whole image of me is
1:10:15
this this peace guy. You know, he wasn't that way all the time.
1:10:18
He had his moods and he he just used human and that's I think
1:10:24
that's what was frustrating for him, is like all of a sudden, you
1:10:27
know, he there was this image of him that now he had to kind
1:10:30
of live up to. I guess I don't. Yeah, yeah, when
1:10:34
and when he when he was you could tell. Also the band was steering
1:10:38
away from the heavy drug use, and he wasn't able to shake that,
1:10:43
and that was an issue too, because then they were all concerned for him,
1:10:45
but also frustrated, like, hey man, we gotta you know,
1:10:48
we got to do our thing on stage. And it's just that was the
1:10:55
problem. Is, you know, like Jerry like fucking heroineverybody else like coke,
1:11:00
you know, and it's a lot easier to fucking shake doing coke than
1:11:03
it is the shape fucking doing heroin, you know. Like so like it's
1:11:11
just a balance, you know, you like, like either you cut it
1:11:14
out or you let it fucking start to cut you out. And now I
1:11:18
think of fifty three when he died, It's like, that's not old.
1:11:21
I remember when at the time, I was like that seems like you've outlived
1:11:26
him. What a couple of years away from that age, I'm thinking,
1:11:30
man, fifty three. But he just he did so much to his body
1:11:33
that he tried, He gave it his best. He got himself cleaned up.
1:11:38
Their late eighties, he was doing really well, and he he held
1:11:43
out as long as he could. Tore head. I was an acid field
1:11:45
teenage dead fiend. It's out now, So you can find out wherever books
1:11:48
are sold and where can people find you online. There's a website for the
1:11:51
book, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh www dot dead Tourhead
1:11:57
dot com and uh, there's a link right there that'll take you right into
1:12:02
my book selling page on book Baby. And you can also find it by
1:12:06
typing in tour Head book into Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Powell Books.
1:12:16
If you just type in tour Head without book, you're gonna get a whole
1:12:20
bunch of tennis rackets because oh really, the Head is the Tennis Racket Company
1:12:27
and their number one tennis racket is called the tour Oh okay, So be
1:12:32
very careful with what you type you me or tennis rackets, and if you
1:12:39
get tennis rackets, go find me. They're gonna thank you. Thank you.
1:12:42
You sold us a lot of tennis rackets. People were googling for your
1:12:45
book and they bought our tennis racket. Ye. Thanks Nori. This is
1:12:53
great, great to meet you, looking forward to looking forward to having you
1:12:58
back on again in the future. Made maybe you'll have another book out.
1:13:00
What do you think anytime? Man? I mean and I'm willing. I
1:13:03
like talking about different stuff and you know, a variety of grateful dead things.
1:13:06
So yeah, man, and and I actually am gonna start working on
1:13:14
a second book about Willie Waldman, the famous trumpet player. So okay,
1:13:19
maybe in a couple of years we'll be able to talk about that one too.
1:13:24
You let me know. You got an open invite, I will all
1:13:28
right, man, thank you, thank you, bro. I appreciate it.
1:13:30
And uh, let's go from there. I'll see you next time.
1:13:32
And much loved everybody, and much much much appreciation for everybody who's purchased my
1:13:40
book so far. I love you guys. And uh, you know,
1:13:44
go out and get your memories going, write down your stories. Don't let
1:13:48
it leave you. Your memories are sacred, especially your grateful dead memories.
1:13:55
All right, man, thank you so much, Bro. This was great.
1:14:02
That's it. It's in the books.