Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Grateful Dead's 50 Most Important & Memorable Concerts with Author Ray Robertson [Episode 163]

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Grateful Dead's 50 Most Important & Memorable Concerts with Author Ray Robertson [Episode 163] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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And that's why I say great Dead concerts like life. I mean, not
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every day is great. Not every day's probably got a little bit of everything
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right. And if you hang in there till the end, you might find
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a great scarlet fire. You know, we're totally booked rock and roll.
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I mean gott to leave you. You're reading Little Hans says it's time to
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rock and roll, roll out. I totally booked. Welcome to Booked on
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Rock, the podcast for those about to read and rock online. At booked
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on rock dot com. You can find every episode there, along with links
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to listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs, and the latest rockbook releases.
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One of those new releases is All the Years Combined the Grateful Dead and fifty
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Shows. We have Ray Robertson on the show. He is the author of
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the book Ray listened to and wrote about fifty of Grateful Dead's most important and
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memorable concerts in order to better understand who the Grateful Dead were, what they
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became, and what they meant and what they continue to meet. A playlist
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of Live Dead through the years on the show notes page right. Welcome to
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the podcast. Man, great to meet you. When did you come up
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with this? Idea, it's a chronicle fifty shows. Yeah, ideas sound
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a little bit above my workstation. I just kind of this is my fifteenth
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book, and I'm pretty lazy, I think basically though, when I kind
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of get obsessed with something, I have to sort of get it out.
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You know, I'm not a musician, but I a musician, Francis.
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Sometimes they'll tell me, well, you know, how did you write that,
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Silenes? I was just I had to formalize and structuralize it and get
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it out of my life and onto it. And so I had written a
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novel previous to this, one called The Stage, Alert and Small, which
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has a guy in it who listens to a lot of dead and sort of
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an interesting point in his life. Anyway, at that point I finished the
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novel and the pandemic hap. So every night I got a little studio back
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where I write, So every night. My wife is a painter. She
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paints at night, so I had my evening's free. So every night I
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would go listen to Dead and make notes, and it kind of just felt
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like a narrative started to evolve. It wasn't like this show isn't the fifty
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greatest tits The Dead you know, that would be anybody's opinion. But what
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I found was because I really wanted to share how the music had impacted me
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and how the deads as role models, if you will, as ambassadors of
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integrity and experimentation and coexisting kind of with the main stream. All that stuff's
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very interesting to me. But but then when I started to think about the
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show is, I realized that there was another narrative. But it was sort
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of which is always a good sign. You know, when you're writing a
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book, if you know what you're going to do before you do, it's
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really interesting book. You kind of have to discover things. And I discovered
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the book was kind of also about success, you know, material success,
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commercial success, financial success, and how that isn't always the most successful way
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to live. And it said tension between cause who wants to You want more
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readers, you want more listeners, you want more fans. But obviously with
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the Dead it became something else where you're playing football stadiums and you're losing something
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that was before. So I just found the whole thing. I think initially
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it was just a very very proptly you have to know about Jerry Garcia's guitar
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or you will die. You have to know abou this. I will bring
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that. But then something else evolved and it was the story and that's why
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there's fifty shows. But they're all part of I think this arc that kind
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of goes over you know, well, arc is a good word because it's
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also it's parallel to the arc of our lives. Like you reach, you're
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learning, you're getting better, and then you reach that peak, and then
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you do reach those years where you start to plateau and then maybe there's a
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decline. Yeah. I mean, I've read a million biographies in my life.
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None of them men real well, you know, because they care.
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Yet the person dies around them done. But that's not how we judge a
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life though. It's not like, oh, you know they you know they
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got old and died. Well, we all do it. We're lucky.
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It's the same thing with musical bests. I think what's interesting with the dead
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though, is that simultaneous with their sort of leveling off. As for me
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as a musical experience, that was their highest, greatest peak of commercial success,
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so you've kind of got well, you know, Bruce Hornsby played with
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them a little bit near the end. I always loved his contributions, and
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he they asked him why he, you know, opted out, and he
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said, well, aside from my solo career and I had kids and stuff.
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It was also that, you know, we'd be playing and everybody would
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know it was a craftic gig and the audience be going bananas, you know,
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because it was. It transcended beyond a musical thing. It'd become a
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social, communal wonderful stuff. You know. I have friends who went to
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show's eighties and nineties and changed their lives, not necessarily the music, but
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more the community and all of that stuff. So I think that's very interesting
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too, you know where and also there's almost a resentment, at least on
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Garcia's part, toward their success. You know, I don't think anyone expected
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Touch a Gray to be a top ten hit, and it kind of blew
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the ecosystem over. And previous to that, you kind of found out about
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bands like The Dead by somebody saying to you, hey, she checked this
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out. You didn't hear him on the radio very much. The ecosystem,
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I think was very livable and sustainable. But when you have MTV, he's
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saying, hey, it's the greatest party in the world, lots of free
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love and drugs come on down, and you know, it changes a bit.
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And I think that was really interesting to me too, not not to
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criticize, but just sort of understand how it's interesting that the more successful you
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are, sometimes financially or career wise, perhaps it has an effect on the
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art that's not exactly the same. And I do believe that the debt that
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their people were artists. I think they were right there doing something that no
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one else was doing. They weren't just the rock band in nineteen seventy four
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doing what the Stones did, or that who did something entirely different, not
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necessarily but not everybody's cup of tea, but very very unique and different.
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We're similar. I think we have what we have in common after reading the
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book is you said you became a fan in your mid to late forties.
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Now for me, it was mid nineties, and at that time I would
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have been in my twenties. But still it's after. It was actually just
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before Jerry passed away when I finally decided because my older brother kept saying,
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you got to go to a show, got to go to a show.
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So I remember saying, yeah, okay, well, let's we'll do it.
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We'll do it when they come around again. And Jerry passed away.
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So but it's interesting because there are our fans that come along throughout the eras
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of the dead. There are people that were there from day one. There
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are people there that that's got on the seventies, eighties, nineties, and
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beyond. There are people there are kids today now who are discovering them,
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which I find really interesting. Yeah, and that's kind of what the books.
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But the book's not about, you know, my favorite concerts and a
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day. It's it's somebody listening to this stuff with headphones on beyond, because
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there will come a point in twenty five years and anybody who saw the dead
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isn't around anymore. I mean I have friends who actually saw them in seventy
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three, seventy four, like it's amazing, Yeah, but sixty five years
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old, they're not gonna be around for So what we're going to be left
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with is the same thing we're left with a writer who dies, we're left
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with with her is or her books. We're just with the music. You
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know. We don't need Billy Holiday to be here to listen to Billie Holiday,
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and we can talk about, and I think that's kind of where they're
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transitioning to in terms of the time, speace continuum. I think we're getting
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the point where it's just really the music left. A big part of it
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is the bootlegs, though that's a huge That's the only way. The way
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I was introduced to them was by my brother giving me the May of seventy
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seven New Haven show. Not not Here's in the Dark. You got to
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check out Touch of Gray, you know, And the band didn't think about
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that at the time. I think the story was it that it just became
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so overwhelming for them to try to stop it that they just said go ahead
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and do it. And going back even further than that, when Ousley decides
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to record their shows for his own, it wasn't because all one day we'll
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be old men who will need a pension. They were young men and when
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the gig's done, what do you do. You don't go party. You
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go back to the room and listen to the show, you know, because
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you're younger to pull a pics of vinegar, And they did that. He
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also wanted to know how his recordings sounded or whatever. But they dead to
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a point where they would just record them and store them away, the famous
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grateful dead balls, you know. And to me that's very exciting because not
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everything's in there. You know, stuff happens. But you really can't hear
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a band starting from sixty six, let's say the first show in the book,
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when they were kind of an R and B stone esy cover not well,
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mostly a copper band, really some crappy originals and pig Pen was the
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main guy. And then and you can hear like Garcia. Garcia hadn't been
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playing like a guitar for that. I mean, he picked it up,
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but he was a banjo player, which makes him such interesting like a guitar
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player because he's not strumming. You know, he's picking. It's more like
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a Grand Green as a jazz player. Or and you have lesh you never
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played the bass guitar at all, Garcia said, well, I mean I
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don't play. It doesn't matter. You understand music. You're one of us.
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And I think that's incredibly anathetical to our age or everything's market driven,
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and make sure it's like no, no, no, this feels right.
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We'll figure the little things out, like how to play the instrument, which
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is one of the reasons that Lesh is just so phenomenally fascinating to listen to
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because he has no desire to hold out the bottom, you know, athlatic
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for friends who are like, you know, old punk friends, Like there's
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a shitty rock roll band, they're not a rock and roll band. When
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they do play rock and roll, it's okay, But there's no bottom too,
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because Lesh is like, you, guys, I'm gonna be up here
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and here and here here. He's he's just he's just fascinating. Initially,
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of course, it was Garcia and the headphones you've noticed leash and weird and
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all the just they're more like a big band in the sense they all these
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different instruments, you know. And that's a perfect transition to what I was
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about to say. Because my dad and my mom, I played the Grateful
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Dead for both of them. My dad and mom both born in nineteen thirty
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nine, and my dad was a big band fan. He was into all
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the jazz stuff, Miles Davis. So when I finally just said, hey,
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give this a listen, he was blown away by it. And here's
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somebody who was born in nineteen thirty nine. Because he was hearing the jazz
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aspect of it. He was hearing the big band thing, he was hearing
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the he was hearing the experiment, and I remember he was blown away.
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I said, I said, no show is the same. Sometimes even if
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they play the same song back to back nights, it's played differently. He
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goes, really, you know, he was well, and yeah, it's
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really music for all ages. It really is an all tastes. I mean,
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when I first got into Dinniman, I had heard of them. You
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read the last essay in the book, which isn't about the show, it's
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how I became a dead so they'd ben their mode because I was a country
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rock guy. You know, I've written a book on Graham Parson and stuff.
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So I was country rock, all country. So of course I knew
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about Workyman's Dead in American Beauty. It's been in my whole life. But
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I think for me, it took me a while to get your dad's years
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to become that guy who could hear the parts. Because really the best of
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their music you can tell they're listening to each other, which is not something
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you get later on. I think, you know, it's a consequence of
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playing for sixty five thousand people getting tired of playing the same people for thirty
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years and next this night, but early on, and you can't have that
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without that. It's symbiosis, and that is jet. You know, there
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are so many shows that in the book where there's just like one little thing,
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like there's a great show from seventy three where they're doing a typical another
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one which is by that eras about twenty eight twenty five, some nice thirty
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minutes and they're about seven minutes in. It's all kind of bubbling, kind
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of spooky, spacey, and then Garcia says in his mind, no,
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I'm gonna play Eyes of the World, real samba, real life. He
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didn't feel like going down that. Iact on that incredibly anathetical to the rock
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star Kundry. We're gonna play our songs. You know, it's like,
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no, I don't feel like like And to me, that's not just a
11:03
musical inspiration, that's sort of an inspiration in terms of living life, like
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I think we can we can learn a lot from that kind of open I
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make a case in the book that the especially Garcia, were never hippies,
11:13
they were beat nicks. And it's the idea is that no, you don't.
11:16
You don't perform for people. You and some people get together and you
11:20
have a party more or less, and if you like it musically grew and
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if you don't, well go see you know someone else next week or whatever.
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Right. So I'm curious now because the book covers the years nineteen sixty
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six to nineteen ninety five, over twenty three hundred shows total while Jerry was
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alive. So what was the process that you went through when you chose just
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these fifty specific shows. Yeah, well, you know, there are some
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that you had to hit, like the one that we mentioned, Papa ar
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or maybe we're to talk about the Cornell Show from seventy seven. You got
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you gotta have that show. So there were shows like that. But for
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me, it wasn't just like fifty. It isn't the fifty greatest hits.
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It's sort of like that show from seventy eight illustrates how you know this or
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that, like seventy eight. Some of my favorite day it is from seventy
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eight. But there are some rough patches, you know, there's some inner
12:03
band stuff, there's some pharmaceutical stuff. There's the fact that it's guys who
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are in their early thirties now and the things are changing, but then there'll
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be these moments that are transcended a piece of the show. So sometimes I
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would include shows for that. You know, one thing that can be said
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about the book is there's a lot, a lot of music post eighty in
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the book, and you know, I've taken some flat for that. But
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for me, the way that I tell the story, my version of the
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story of the Dead, is that the richest, most interesting stuff was earlier
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musically now eighty to ninety five, that's the mega the mega years, and
12:35
there's definitely some good stuff in there, and I you know, point out
12:39
some of the shows, but for me, I definitely have a bias toward
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like my favorite period is like seventy one to seventy four when Keith and Ghana
12:46
goad You joined the band and it gets jazzier, it gets more. I
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think I think Keith facilitated that having a piano player in the band is a
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post and organ player really sort of opened things up, and I think that
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was I think that was Keith jam really was that kind of you know,
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extraterrestrial tinkling going around. I love that stuff, and that's when you get
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your like in Europe seventy two. You know, every other night it's either
13:07
a dark star or another one. I got thirty five minute visited the Cosmos.
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I mean, I love that stuff, so the personally personal, personal
13:13
taste. But also I was really intent as a storyteller, and that's kind
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of what I do with my day job, is to make sure that there
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was this art. There was rising action, there was climax, there's conflicts
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along the way, and hopefully the end of the book talks to the beginning
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of the book. That's always important too. I think when you get to
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that final show in Chicago that Jerry played at Soldier Field, I think that
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you have to turn back and think about nineteen But for me it was you
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know, they're playing at a football stadium, sixty five thousand people, you
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got the big speakers, and I'm thinking of their first one of their first
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shows. I mentioned the friend SEUs Swanson when they played the first time,
13:46
she had to remind them all the stand up when they played because this wasn't
13:50
folk music. And I'm thinking thirty years later, you're you're playing in a
13:54
football stadium and then your friends stand up. Guys stand up. That's part
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of the you know, so specifically that first show that you cover in the
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book, it's not the first Grateful that show, because that was December four,
14:07
nineteen sixty five, at the Fillmore in San France, I think,
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right. So the very first show in the book is the pne Garden Auditorium
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in Vancouver, July twenty nine, nineteen sixty six. What stood out to
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you about this specific gig because it was so Yeah, I could have picked
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a lot of shows now. That one also was good quality too. You
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know, a lot of my education came from listening to Dave's Picks, Dick's
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Picks, road Trips, all that wonderful stuff. So those guys educated me
14:31
a lot too that way. But what I liked about that show to start
14:35
with, other than ironically it was in Canada, it was their first show
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outside California, but really what it was it was an archetypal Early Dead show
14:43
where pig Pen's the main guy. He's the guy. He sounds the same
14:46
in sixty six as he does in seventy two, which is a compliment but
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also kind of It's almost like pig was there to keep them viable till everybody
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learned how to find out who they were. Like I said, Garcia has
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not and guitar that long. That was what's fascinating for me was too,
15:03
is to go back and hear Garcia's guitar. You can hear like he's a
15:05
kind of a amalgam of his influences in sixty six, you know, and
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then you can and then around sixty nine he sounds like no one else.
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He sounds like him, which is the ultimate you know, That's that's really
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to me what I look for an artist, brig or a musician. You
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can say you don't like it, but you can't say it sounds like anything
15:22
else, and so I hear. So that show to me was just sort
15:24
of like, let you know, they're the heavy duty R and B,
15:26
the blue stuff pigs, the one out front. You can hear the weirdness
15:31
coming in a little bit. But still they're trying to get people to dance,
15:35
which I think, you know, we forget this was a dance band
15:37
initially, and I think that's one of the things that's cool about The Dead
15:39
too. I've got a great a grateful Dead tribute ban who's playing in the
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Toronto launch of this book December ninth, and what's so cool is everybody dances,
15:46
you know, it's like one stands around it looks cool. Everyone's afraid.
15:50
Everyone knows you don't look cool, right, because you can't dance the
15:54
Dead like normally. You just sort of sway around. Well, that first
15:56
show though, that you have in the book, there's like three people there
15:58
and you just hear like, yeah, and Phil least makes a joke.
16:03
Our reputation perced this. Yeah, and I wanted that too, you know,
16:07
it's it's it's I wanted that too, because you think at this point,
16:11
you know you won't because you know, you know your stuff and your
16:14
scholar your feel and everything. But I would just say, oh, they're
16:17
all just classic rock bands. No, these are very different. You know,
16:19
this was a whole different trajectory. The Dead don't really become sort of
16:23
part of the mainstream until you know, like seventy seven or so, and
16:27
there's some great music in seventy some of the eight. But that show to
16:30
me was great too. And this is their first show out of the United
16:32
States. And yeah, they're not playing for a bunch of deadhead They're playing
16:36
people saying, hey, play some music, you know, we want to.
16:37
They probably heard of them. They probably heard of the acid test that
16:41
Hipper people probably did. But for the most part, this is just a
16:44
cold here's our band, here we are. And then when you get to
16:48
sixty seven and sixty eight, couple shows there Winterland in San Francisco October twenty
16:52
two, nineteen sixty seven, February fourteen, nineteen sixty eight, Carousel Ballroom,
16:56
San Francisco. So where do you see the band during those two years
17:00
as far as their evolution and what stood out to you about the shows Because
17:03
we have lyricist Robert Hunter now part of the mix. You mentioned that and
17:07
a great version of Morning Dew in the sixty eight show. Yeah, well
17:11
see, there's a good example. This is I'd rather use examples to speak
17:15
theoretically that Morning Dew is just you know, everybody's that's one of the songs,
17:18
right, So you get in your sweet spots, you never really go
17:22
back. So when I went back and was, you know, putting the
17:23
book together, listening to sixty seven. At sixty you can hear these songs
17:27
and hear them change. So initially morning Dew is like an angry protest song,
17:32
like oh you people are going to destroy the planet. With nuclear war,
17:34
Oh you bad, Generation above Us by seventy seventy two, it's a
17:40
dirge, It's an elegy for human nature. It is truly w B eight
17:44
says, we make it out of arguments with others. We make rhetoric of
17:47
arguments with ourselves that make art. I mean, by seventy two it's art.
17:49
And it changed, and it changed because they played it over and over
17:52
again and it didn't satisfy Garcia. He had to sort of change. He
17:57
learned how to sing while he we can hear him kind of declaiming the words,
18:02
you know, and then he just sings in that wonderful, tender voice
18:04
that he has, and it's just just wonderful. But going back, yeah,
18:07
Hunter is a huge part of it, these guys and I, you
18:11
know, and that's the other thing we'll probably piss some dead heads off,
18:12
is that, you know, I'm a little bit critical like those early songs
18:15
there, their crappy songs, you know, they're not I don't hold everything
18:18
the Grateful did ever did is perfect. I think that they're the most fantastic
18:22
musical experience of my life. But just like life, they're full of sometimes
18:26
where they're boring. Sometimes they sip, but sometimes he screw up. But
18:30
that's what makes them real to me, you know, as opposed to,
18:33
oh yeah, I went to that Eagles concert to sound exactly like the albums.
18:36
That was amazing, which is fine, but for these guys so sixty
18:38
seven sixty eight you were saying, Also, the songs are starting to stretch
18:41
out. The drugs are a part of it to a degree, but they're
18:45
also listening to a lot of jazz. Less brings jazz in the band.
18:48
Chritsman brings jazz in the band. Kircie was always hit to it and instead
18:52
of being like copping licks like I love what Garcia said about Coltrane. He
18:56
said, well, I've never like listened to a song in cople Leaks,
19:00
But what I heard was he was speaking in paragraphs with his horn. And
19:03
that's exactly how I as a guy who came to the guitar late, like
19:07
I was always oh, the guitar solo will get it over with. You
19:10
know, I heard Garcia speaking. I heard his restless sort of like oh
19:14
I'm here, I'm here, And then that's when I said, I got
19:15
to hear everything, and I think that's what's going on that there's so many
19:18
different things, and then they add Mickey Heart, who changes things. It
19:22
becomes it becomes there's more bedlum now, more weirdness the better. And then
19:29
Garcia is just changing as a guitar player. It seems like every six months,
19:33
like his tone too, he's working on his tone. Then yeah,
19:36
yeah, there's different eras of Jerry tone wise, that right, and the
19:40
different guitars. Yeah, but demonstrably by sixty nine it's impossible not to know
19:45
that's him playing guitar, which is a huge accomplishment. To sound like yourself,
19:49
whether it be in life and books, music is really hard to do.
19:52
The real the world really doesn't want you to do that. The real
19:55
wants you to sound like everybody else, and he had and that's part of
19:57
the appeal of sixty seven ccas. Hearing that those change and leash too less
20:00
early on is kind of a well, okay, I'm playing debaate and then
20:04
you just hear him get a little restless, and he'd like, oh,
20:07
preeople, wait here. It's fascinating stuff. The book Down Rock Podcasts will
20:11
be back after this. The chapter on that first nineteen sixty nine show that
20:18
you covered, that's February eleventh, nineteen sixty nine, at New York's Film
20:21
Or East, Jerry called a meeting to address his concerns about Bob Weir and
20:26
Ron pig Ben mcckernan's performance. What were his concerns and talk about how that
20:30
meeting ended or didn't even end. I don't know. They don't know how
20:33
it ended. It's like a Seinfeld episode where George doesn't know if he's fired.
20:37
Yes, and to me again, like this is the beauty of writing
20:41
a book. You know, we can have a great conversation, but then
20:44
you think after, Oh, I wish that I had said dattery. One
20:45
of the things that was I learned was there there is a grateful dead ethos
20:48
So Garcia and Leash feel like pig Pen. You know, he's content to
20:53
drink and play the blues and not practice the organ, and we're who was
20:57
willing to practice? But he was he was well, he played the jug
21:00
in the jug band even play out and Garcia, we gotta have a good
21:07
looking guy in the band, so we need were so we're and then weird
21:10
playing guitar, but he plays pretty much like a folk player a lot of
21:14
and so what happens is what's in the book. But but Garcia and and
21:18
Lesh say to the manager the scout Rocks, going, you know, we've
21:21
got to get these guys at the band and they're like, you can't.
21:22
It's like, can you kick Pig? And what eventually happens is nobody really
21:27
knows what happens. They they they kind of you know, give him the
21:30
business and Pig doesn't deny anything. Pig all you do is drink wine and
21:33
watch TV. Yep, that's me. And we're like, oh, what
21:37
do you mean, I'm not playing? And they so weird goes off for
21:41
a month, Pick goes off for a month, They take some lessons,
21:44
they you know, Garcia and Lash go off with Mickey Hart and David Crosby
21:48
and do some like jammy stuff in town. And then a month later,
21:51
everybody's back on stage. And to me, to me, I love that,
21:55
it's kind of like a metaphor for socideals and said, look, everybody's
21:57
gotta pay, everybody's got to earn their way. But you know, nobody
22:00
gets kicked to the curb. It's Pink Pan, it's Bob. So yeah,
22:03
you can't. Really, it's like your family, you can get a
22:06
fight with your wife, you can walk around the block, but you're coming
22:07
home, right. It's not like when you're you're, you're you know,
22:11
you're dating. It's like that's my house. I gotta come back. You
22:12
work it out somehow, and they did. We'd be king to me,
22:17
I don't really know anyone else who plays like He compares himself to mcoley,
22:19
Kiner's piano to Garcia's cold trade. But for me it's even more, not
22:25
better. But like in the middle, when you listen to normal rhythm guitar
22:29
players and you listen to We're, it's like listen to two differents. But
22:32
as with Lesh, like I love Jerry solo stuff, John conn is like
22:36
in the Pocket guy he comes to that blues background, R and B background.
22:41
But then you go back to the day and you listen to lash.
22:42
You said, this isn't the same kind of music. There's no one here.
22:47
It's floats and I love that too. It's on our own terms,
22:49
like this is who we are. We're not We're not a failed Stones,
22:53
We're something entirely different, right, so take it or not take it.
22:56
But we were talking before we started recording. You ask me how does a
23:00
huge Van Halen fan be a gy for Dead fan, which is it is
23:03
funny. But I remember seeing Hagar there's the documentary which maybe you saw.
23:07
It was one from a year or two ago with Weird the other one.
23:11
Yeah, Samuel was talking about the unusual phrasing in which Bob We're plays like
23:17
his the chord structures and all that. He just He's like, I've never
23:19
heard anything like it before. And that's interesting too, because if you listen
23:22
to a lot of shows, and you you know, you listen put fifty
23:25
shows together, for the most part, you're hearing a Weird or Garcia song
23:30
and a Weird song, so you really can't help but compare them in many
23:33
ways. What's interesting. You know, Garcia, for all his genius,
23:36
he was sort of a classicist, you know, coming from the folk tradition,
23:40
whereas Weird has these weird time signatures, weird no pun attended. But
23:45
I call even his rock stuff like one large area and it's like it's like
23:48
Chuck Berry with a limp quite but that's what makes it interesting, you know.
23:52
Yeah, like Saints of Circumstances one that's got that unusual like where are
23:56
we going with this? What estimated profits profit. People say, oh,
24:02
oh, it's it's pseudo reg Gusty. I don't think so, because you
24:04
can't really dance to it. It's like not on the beat, it's like
24:07
and then another beat. So I think that's really interesting when you listen to
24:11
a dead show again keeping it from being Sammy. I mean, I love
24:14
garcia solo stuff, and I might write a book about his solo stuff,
24:17
but there is something about, okay, well, Garcia took us this very
24:21
spacey place and now you know, we're twenty five minutes into this, and
24:26
then gar Weir says, no, now we're gonna play Big River. And
24:29
sometimes the fascinating part is you can hear in your headphones Garcia doesn't want to
24:33
come down. He doesn't want to come down from the sky. He wants
24:34
us to day there, and we'll keep trying to come get him to come
24:37
back. There's some great footage from the the August twenty seventh show in Oregon
24:45
where they're in a really deep, great dark star. The DVD's called Sunshine
24:48
Daydream, and you can see we'd just stop at one point, shake his
24:52
hand, just look around the sun's going down to an outdoor gig and then
24:56
just kind of sigh and then go back in like it. It's a lot
24:59
of I'll go back and then and then eventually he plays El Paso, which
25:03
is just like a begbar of mine. I don't get it, but yeah,
25:07
I'm not a fan of that song. I almost wonder if he plays
25:11
it because he knows it fists a certain amount of which is a great reason
25:14
to do it anyway. But on this night he plays El Paso and it
25:18
feels like we needed to come back down to earth. Thank you, Bob,
25:22
you know. And Garcia at one point is playing the note still passo
25:25
and he's still in the space. Yeah, his mind. You can tell
25:29
whenever Lesh takes his glasses off. He's on acid. But it's this wonderful
25:34
again, not a moment that you can say, oh, check this out.
25:37
Now, they're going to switch from this this you don't know for a
25:41
long time to keep it fun, which was Garcia's number one dictum capital f
25:45
fun. You didn't plan things though. It's the same thing people say,
25:48
you know, did you plan out this book? I'm like, oh god,
25:51
that sounds like work, you know. I want to discover something,
25:52
and I think even with a book like this, which is just you know,
25:56
the grateful Danity shows. I learned a lot about about I think six
26:00
like America and North America and big what big means, you know, which
26:04
wasn't something I thought would be one of the things the book will be about.
26:07
You know, I've taught my wife about this recently because she's a painter
26:11
and we're both in our fifties. Now, how do you keep this being
26:15
fun? Like, how do you keep doing it? How do you keep
26:18
doing it the way you did it before you were a professional. Because professionalism
26:21
is great. It means you get to you know, talk to you and
26:23
have a book. It's great. But other hand, it's not why we
26:26
started. We started because I was trying to make sense of how this music
26:30
has bewitched me and captivated me, and how Jerry Garcia, you know,
26:33
that's where you're starting with. When you have good art, it's like,
26:36
you know, you want to go further, you want to find things out,
26:40
you want to get to that other place that you don't get on day
26:41
to day level. And I'll even get there with a plan. Let's talk
26:45
about the show. May twenty six, nineteen seventy two, Because there are
26:48
a lot of lasts in this particular show, most notably Ron mccurnran, who
26:53
dies in March eighth, nineteen seventy three from liver damage. He was only
26:56
twenty seven, so this is one of his last shows. What stood out
27:00
to you about his performance on that particularly? Yeah, well, I think
27:03
my reaction to some many yours. I mean, that really was his last
27:07
year. He played some organ when they came back to the States and the
27:08
end of May they had a gig in la and he played some organ.
27:11
Okay, so this was his last full show then, Yeah, this is
27:15
sad. He didn't even sing. In June, he played I forget exactly
27:18
whe it's somewhere in California. It's somewhere in Los Angeles area. He plays
27:21
some organ on the first version of Stella Blue actually, but the other show.
27:25
Yeah, by the end of the European tour, he said he's got
27:26
a little less, a little less piss and vinegar. But for me,
27:30
what it is is that that organ that he because that was the first tour.
27:33
Well, Heath joins the band in October of seventy one, but eventually
27:37
it doesn't take too long before Pig now can just add color on the Ham
27:41
and he doesn't have to be the guy anymore, and it's great. He
27:45
has a little percussion as the organ and Keith handles all of the you know,
27:48
the piano. But that show, particularly, you know, Pig doesn't
27:51
really have the same energy. But every time I listen to that show,
27:56
I just hear his organ, that real kind of churchy Ham and Oregon.
27:59
You know, they obviously didn't know it was the last gig, so it's
28:02
not like it's not modeling or sentimental. But you can't help. But but
28:07
you know, the thing is, you know he's still He's still He still
28:08
played really well on that tour. He sang a lot. He debuted a
28:11
couple of songs just before they left town, The Stranger, Two Souls and
28:15
Comedia, which is a whole different way of his kind of blues thing.
28:19
You know, he wrote a song. It's the first song he doesn't try
28:22
to sound like a blues singer. He sounds like him And I think it's
28:26
a huge breakthrough. But something is lost, you know when they come back,
28:29
when they start tuning to get the Fall of seventy two or Summer seventy
28:30
two, Fall seventy two, amazing shit, I mean it's just great,
28:34
but you kind of know there is something miss. You know, Pig was
28:37
the one to sing about getting drunk getting laid. You know, you're old
28:40
lady being mad at you, you know stuff, and the Dead for whatever,
28:42
they are great at that, that's not their thing. You know.
28:45
Weird later on did some blue stuff, but to me, they always were
28:48
louder than they were moving. You know, Pig had that funkiness that I
28:52
think that was a real big deal. So by seventy two, yeah,
28:55
and you've got these three and a half four hour shows. You've got country
28:57
music, you've got blues music, you've got bas music, you've got ballads,
29:00
you've got songs that are unclassifiable that are just Grateful Dead songs. Over
29:04
three and a half four hours, it's really a smorgas board of like whatever
29:07
you like, it's there. So for example, someone like me who didn't
29:11
really get the space jazzy stuff at first, oh, I love first sets
29:15
because they had all those great songs, those songs that Hunter in Garcia and
29:18
We're wrote in the beginning of the seventies that are just part of the Grateful
29:22
Dead cannon. But then there's all these other things as we get to like
29:26
seventy two through seventy five, is what's starting to change. Is this when
29:30
the songs start to extend even more. We're getting some more of the space
29:33
seed. Yeah, and not even And what's interesting too, even when they
29:37
came back in seventy well seventy seven and it was they would still play for
29:40
hours straight, but instead of doing a forty five minute darks there, it
29:42
would be a ten minute song into eleven minutes song. And I really find
29:45
that when Keith was still strong for the first half of seventy seven at the
29:49
very least, that's really where they start to change again, where it becomes
29:55
almost like a tapestry. I mean they did that from the beginning. Me
29:57
Live Dead has those connect songs. They learned that from jazz players. But
30:02
really by that point it becomes effortless. They could just whip off. You
30:06
know. Sometimes you'll have a show and you'll think this was this is probably
30:10
the end of the show, and then they'll play for another forty minutes just
30:11
because they felt like it. That's interesting too, because they're they're old enough
30:15
to like know this is the ship, but also they're young enough that you
30:18
know, we're human beings. We're physical beings. They could still do that,
30:22
they could still wake up after four hours sleep, and as opposed to
30:25
saying, you know, where's my masseuse and where's my private chef? But
30:27
you know what's unique when you're fifty on the road. But these are young
30:30
young people who are just they're just so excited. And there's so many new
30:34
songs too, like seventy one, seventy two, there's who doesn't want to
30:38
do that? You know, like you know whatever you time somebody asked me,
30:41
what's your favorite book that I've written? Always the new one? Right,
30:44
So they're they're sharing all these songs and it's it's it's quite overwhelming,
30:48
really, I mean, it's infinitely re listenable. I don't know how you
30:52
could get tired of seventy one through seventy four and I love blues Browla,
30:56
Yeah, what about that? What is it about that album that stands well?
30:59
Number one is the It's off with three connected tunes because's tripped to begin
31:02
with, which is very dead right. They go from helping in the way
31:04
and to slip nod into Franklin's Tower. To me, it's got that kind
31:11
of flow of a grateful Dick. Also, it's got that jazzy timber.
31:14
Garcia is playing a lot of really intricate guitar, and the songs are not
31:18
out of the Americana thing. He said somewhere that they wanted to do something
31:22
different. That was the only album where they didn't have any songs before they
31:25
went in the studio. I mean, obviously people had stuff in their mind,
31:27
like I've been torn around with this, but it wasn't like here's my
31:30
song. So there's a lot of experimentation that goes into that album and not
31:33
all of it works, but I just I adore it because it's again a
31:37
way to Garcia by that point's thirty three years old. It's like, how
31:41
can we be adults? How can we have kids and mortgages but still not
31:45
be the Doobie Brothers. You know, God bless the UBI verse. I'm
31:48
just saying, how can we still have fun? How can we go home
31:51
from work tonight and we go home? How was it? Oh? I
31:53
don't know, you know things I don't know. Yeah, it's alive.
31:56
It's a lot. And Jerry was having fun because you noted he will he
32:00
would play anywhere anytime, like he just he couldn't stop, like the point,
32:04
Yeah, there's one point. I just did the math. I'm certainly
32:07
no great dead scholar. There are people who are those people, but I
32:09
find it fascinating to look at I think I was talking about a series of
32:14
three Dead shows, and then I was looking at the you know, dead
32:17
bass and realizing on the weekend he played twice with Merle playing Merle Saunders playing
32:22
jazz funk at the Keystone, and then they had an their Dead show.
32:25
And at the end of the week he played with bluegrass band you know,
32:29
Old and in the Way, and he was if he was any kind of
32:31
junkie, it was a guitar music jump, you know, that conic,
32:36
constant interaction with the audience. And again in those places he loved him because
32:39
the Dead by that point getting to be more hockey rink and he's still playing.
32:44
Like some of those great Garcia shows have been released from the Garcia family.
32:46
There's one hundred and twenty people. It's a it's a place where you
32:50
have your chicken for our steak and you you know, to drink minimum and
32:52
you know it's a funky little place and you know it, you know,
32:57
and and to me again talking about the podcast. They're writing books. He's
33:00
doing it because he wants to do the experience is the payoff. Sure,
33:04
it's nice to get paid to do your job. I'm sure it's nice to
33:06
have somebody read your book, But really it's about did you have fun when
33:08
you did it? Was it important to you? Did it make your life
33:12
make more sense? Which I really think a lot of already. It's attempt
33:15
to make the grateful dead made sense to me. But also it's a way
33:19
for me to make sense of my days, which you know, are just
33:22
kind of these empty slates that you, if you're lucky enough not to have
33:24
to, you know, get up at eight o'clock and go to something like
33:28
what do you fill your days with? Well, you feel it with purpose,
33:30
and I think that's what Garcia did for a long time. Seventy one
33:32
to seventy four is your era. For me, it's late seventies. So
33:36
now we get into the to the era, which I love. Yeah,
33:38
I mean I did the liner notes for Dave Sicks forty five, which was
33:45
two shows from seventy seven, and Dave knew that my period had seventy once
33:49
before, but he knew how much I loved seventy seven as well, and
33:52
again ratting those gave me a chance. Well why do I love semies?
33:54
It is not the psychedelic thing as much. It's more it's a little harder
33:59
brand, you know, Well that's why. And all of the great songs
34:01
Terraf and Station Yeah, Higher on the Mountain, you know, yeah,
34:05
I don't want to lose those songs. And I think maybe early on I
34:07
was like, oh I did the seventies. Well no, And it's kind
34:09
of like life. You can't say, well, I'd like to have just
34:12
this, because then you're gonna miss this and maybe this. And I like
34:15
some of that intensity from seventy seven to seventy eight. You know, Jerry's
34:17
doing some fanning in seventy seven and seventy eight, These doings you know very
34:22
but you know, partially it's the coke. Also partially it's you know,
34:25
it's being thirty three and being Iowa and like, why am I hearing Tecruary
34:29
in Iowa? God bless Iowa. But just you know, there's some anger
34:32
in their playing. It's refreshing, it's interesting, yes, but it's also
34:36
the era when we hear Jerry with the oh yeah, right, yeah,
34:42
that's interesting love that never grow tired of that. No, I fired them,
34:45
and I get tired of a lot of a lot of the you know,
34:49
when we get to the eighties and nineties, the mid I stuff is
34:52
not my cup and tea. I think one of the things that make the
34:53
Dead so great is all the space and not spaciness, but the space and
34:57
their music like a jazz there lots of white space around, you know.
35:00
Miles Davis is famous for that. I think it was Keith Jarrett maybe said
35:04
to him, uh at some point during the Bitches brief time, like,
35:07
well, sometimes I don't know what to play. There's so much going on.
35:12
So Miles to me said, but don't play anything, then, motherfucker.
35:15
Don't play something. Then you don't have to pay something. But if
35:17
you're playing the stadium or you're playing football, every sound is crankd with it.
35:21
But the moutron to me is connected enough to the guitar that but it's
35:25
got this unique fresh weirdness to it, this estimated profit fire in the mountain
35:30
and yeah, some of those transitions, well that's how you knew. That's
35:34
when I knew I was getting into the debt. When I would say well,
35:37
I love this Starlett Fire, But what I really love is the transition.
35:40
You gotta check in fact, Iowa has a great transition. So there
35:46
you go. And that's why of the shows in here, it's like the
35:49
show kind of sucked, kind of boring in places, and then whoa,
35:52
whoa, hang on, hang on, We're going a different place. And
35:53
that's why I say a great dead concerts like life. I mean, not
35:57
every day is great. Not that. Every day's probably got a little of
36:00
everything to it, right, And if you hang in there till the end,
36:02
you might find a great Scarlet fire. You know, Scarlet PAGOONI is
36:07
a Warfrat are probably made to favorite from there. Now, those are both
36:09
written around that time, I think late seventies, mid seventies. Warfrat was
36:14
is actually on Skull and Roses seventy one, right, okay, Scarlett Pagonias
36:19
is off Us Blues, so seventy four. Those songs are interesting to me.
36:22
Those are your favorites because when when writing this book, you're trying to
36:25
say, well, what kind of music is this? Like Warfrat to me
36:29
is unclassifiable, Like you call that country rock, rock blue, I don't
36:35
know what it is. Other than it's a great Jerry Garcia hunters sell the
36:38
Blue as well, sell them Blue consist the nineteen twenties. It's it's a
36:43
ballad that kind of floats, you know, Lesha's notes do. And I
36:50
think that again is why to me, I give my I mean, the
36:52
most you can give to anyone is your time, and I give a lot
36:54
of time to the dead. And it's for songs like that where I really
37:00
so I can see why people don't get it right away because they don't sound
37:04
like any other songs. You know, there was a while there I didn't
37:07
I couldn't differentiate. I didn't know some of those songs d were in the
37:09
sets where Jerry solo songs. I mean they're all, Yeah, they're very
37:14
polymorphous this band. You know, they would switch songs back and forth.
37:17
Apparently I'm not an insider, but apparently there was some resentment perhaps among the
37:22
dead with a lot of Jerry's outside the Dead Gallions is because of course he's
37:27
their guy, but I think they also knew that he needed to do that
37:30
to be himself, to stay interested. That's the other thing. I mean,
37:34
they're very different shows, that Garcia show isn't a miniature grateful Dead show.
37:37
It's very different. Mostly covers. He gets to do all the same.
37:40
He plays a lot of guitar. There's a bottom to it. Ron
37:44
Tutt, the great drummer who played with everybody on Graham Parsons are out there
37:47
with Elvis, John conn who's right in the pocket. Very different experience,
37:52
you know. And I say this as a positive but incredibly restless mind.
37:55
Vs. Pritchett said about the Russian writer Chekhov, he said, genius is
38:00
spiritual greed. I always like that I need more of this, I need
38:04
more of this. Well, and I think that was the addictive behavior.
38:07
Maybe that was also the difficulties that he had with the drugs. Yeah,
38:10
I mean, I know the guy, and I'm not a psychologist, but
38:15
I think there was a disappointment where you end up in say nineteen eighty that,
38:19
Okay, we're a big Rocks band, and do we have to you
38:21
know, it just seemed to me that it was it became kind of boring.
38:23
And there are some great shows and some great moments, even shows in
38:27
ourn't trailers. I got a show from eighty one, it's kind of so
38:30
so, and then there's this moment where it happens. But I do feel
38:34
that we are human beings. We're not just Spotify. These are actual physical
38:38
human beings. I think in the early seventies seventies, they're younger, they're
38:44
stronger. You can't be curious if you're not physically well. You know,
38:50
there's not enough drugs to make you feel good all the time. They'll make
38:52
you feel bad. And I think that's one that sweet spot that we have.
38:57
And I find an incredibly kind of concurreer djing's the right word, or
39:00
sustaining somehow when they come back from the retirement in seventy six and they try
39:06
to exist within the system. You know, we're not going to tour big
39:07
places when to sell our tickets to our fans, and we're our own record
39:12
label and none of this stuff really works, but they tried. They didn't
39:15
say how can we engrace yourselves further? Was like, how can we maintain
39:19
our integrity but yet still make this a career? This is clearly a career
39:22
now we all miss this, but how do we still have fun? You
39:24
know, instead of playing for thirteen thousand people one night, we'll play six
39:29
nights for twenty two hundred people not a good decision financially on a segue,
39:32
because I was going to ask you about that guy. Yes, yes,
39:36
Ray Robertson, the author of all the Years combined The Grateful Dead and fifty
39:38
shows. But yet that is interesting to me. There's a comment you lead
39:43
with on the chapter covering a show on July seventeen, nineteen seventy six,
39:45
at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. So this is what you're right here.
39:50
There's a price to be paid for doing what you want to do,
39:52
just as there is for doing the right thing. And it doesn't take an
39:54
account in specializing in the music business to determine that it makes more economic sense
40:00
to perform once before an audience of thirteen two hundred people that it does to
40:04
play the same city six separate times each before audiences of twenty two hundred.
40:08
And the cost isn't only monetary or logistical. No matter how young or zealous
40:14
you are, it would take an extraordinary amount of energy and commitment to simply
40:17
attend to six Grateful Dead shows and seven nights. When you're talking about performing
40:22
those same shows and performing them like The Grateful Dead did without a song list,
40:27
without a roadmap, without a net, the price physical, psychological,
40:31
and creative is incalculable. But that's what the Dead did July twelve through eighteen,
40:37
nineteen seventy six, because one of their kredos when they returned to touring
40:39
was less is more. It might not have been a prudent move financially or
40:45
physically, but it certainly paid off artistically. So what led to this decision,
40:50
because this is interesting, is this is when it all starts, these
40:52
marathon back to back gigs. Well, first of all, I address a
40:55
previous question. You asked me how I selected for shows. I want it,
40:59
for example, to have there was three shows and or I couldn't do
41:00
six, but to show how they literally did play the same place. Look
41:04
at the setlist, they're not similar. But the thing that you're asking about,
41:07
I think is really at the core of the book. And so we
41:07
talked about the end of the book. Success. Well, they weren't not
41:10
too many when they shut down seventy four for eighteen months. They weren't in
41:15
decline. It was because they got they were too Garcia especially, it's too
41:20
big, it's it's not funn anymore, it's not good. So we're going
41:22
to come back eighteen months. Everybody does their solo albums and they have their
41:25
the record label when they come back in seventy six, we are going to
41:29
do it on a different scale. We're going to try to sell tickets directly
41:31
to our fans. I mean that was something radical at the time, right,
41:35
like you write in and we'll sell you tickets. It worked out,
41:37
but not as well as it would have our own record label. In fact,
41:39
have our own record label for solo projects. And we know weren't going
41:44
to make any money they're weird, but we'll subsidize that. And this wasn't
41:47
like having your own label within a label. This was their own money kind
41:51
of deal, right, which they lost a lot of and the shows too,
41:53
And that's what's really beautiful about that outgible to run those six shows in
41:57
San Francisco was before the break. They were playing hockey rings and they still
42:00
played a few, but yeah, six shows and six nights. The idea
42:04
was, we want to hear each other, you want to see the audience,
42:06
you want to have fun. We want to make this a career with
42:08
still a vocation. But then by seventy seven seventy eight, you see the
42:14
drift. So they're not playing twenty three twentymore because it's always kind of like
42:17
saying, you know, power crops absolute product. It's hard to exist within
42:22
the system and not become part of it, you know. And I love
42:25
the fact that they tried to you know, they tried to say the first
42:29
man to do this. Yeah, yeah, I mean like they're only able
42:32
to sell their own tickets and play play smaller places and not as old rich
42:37
people. But as you know, old rich rock stars. It's like,
42:42
these are guys in their thirties. We were was probably just I don't know,
42:45
probably his late twenties. Of course he was born in forty two,
42:46
so he's thirty four and seventy six, so my thirty four. Yeah,
42:50
you've accumulated some life. You've got some kids, You've got probably some alimony.
42:53
You've probably got a couple of X wives kind of deal. Some people
42:57
have drug habbits that you payed for. Is that drift? But yeah,
43:00
let's put that over here, and let's remember number one. Number one is
43:02
the music and not in a press release, but is the real How can
43:07
I prove it to you? Because we're playing six nights here and not one
43:09
night across town at the hockey r Right, it's so much as this words
43:15
words worth, but these guys really put their money where their mouths was.
43:17
That's when you know which's actually find something financials at stake and it doesn't take
43:22
too long. And that's part of the narrative arc. I feel great optimism.
43:27
And then in seventy eight it starts to change and yeah, you are
43:30
playing the bigger plays. Until the nineties you are playing football stadiums, which
43:34
is a whole different dynamic. You include what many fans say is the holy
43:37
grail of Dead. Show is May eighth, nineteen seventy seven in Ithaca,
43:40
New York. And I remember Rolling Stones, David Brown. He wrote an
43:45
article titled the Grateful Dead's Greatest Year. You say that even if there were
43:50
a greatest Dead show, which there isn't, the show wouldn't be it.
43:53
Can you explain first why fans say it's the best, and then why you
43:57
disagree? Well, it's a great show. And I also think, and
44:00
this goes back to the older generation, the ones way before me, the
44:04
Traders, the great Betty Knner Jackson tapes, they were circulated and so these
44:07
are these are they sounded really good, and so even if you're getting a
44:13
cassette, the quality of the tape was so good. It just sounded so
44:15
good. And there are shows that are amazing, shows from seventy three that
44:19
sound like what they are. They sound really really rough, so of course
44:22
really, but also it has that great just some great It has that great
44:24
morning do and it has a scarlet flyer as well. I forget, but
44:30
it's just amazing. But the first set to me, isn't a great for
44:34
say, it's a good for shit. I love it, but I think
44:37
it's And also I think people like to be able to say, you know,
44:39
this is my favorite, this is my you know, I don't know.
44:42
It's kind of our mindset. You know, you have to be left
44:44
wing the right wing, or you can't, like say, let me think
44:46
about the issue. You know, you got to have a position, you
44:50
know, which I think is part of the reason our world is so insane.
44:52
It's sort of a session, this binaryy understanding of reality. If you
44:55
listen to the dead enough for taking up drugs, you realize this is all
44:59
made up. St Anyway, we're just making this stuff. This week it's
45:01
called this, and next week it's called that, and last week it was,
45:05
so I think there's something about the Dead that's true of that. So
45:07
I think there's a bit of that, but I certainly agree. I was
45:09
actually tempted not to put the show, and they'd probably get more attention if
45:13
I didn't, but I couldn't help it because it really is an amazing show.
45:15
And when those morning dues are book brought out in seventy seven, when
45:19
they have all that power we talked about, there is that power for seventy
45:22
seven, with the subtlety, with the delicacy. It's a combination that's just
45:27
just overpowering, and I really think that is one of my favorites. Although
45:30
the morning due from seventy two, and there's one from seventy eight in October
45:34
seventy eight. So that's part of the fun of being a dead nick too,
45:37
is you can kind of this version of this version the book Down Rock
45:40
Podcast will be back after this. The last show of the seventies in the
45:45
book is New Year's Eve, nineteen seventy eight, Winterland Arena, San Francisco,
45:50
and you leave with quote the end of the year, the end of
45:52
an era, the end of the line. The show goes all the way
45:53
to the morning hours and morning do by the way, they play that at
45:59
four A or around four am, Bill Graham offers breakfast for five thousand people,
46:04
and everyone went home with the sun and the sky. It's amazing.
46:07
Was this the end of the Grateful Dead at its peak from a consistent night
46:09
in night out aspect? A lot of people would disagree, but I think
46:14
so, And that's again the novelist. I love the fact that they're shutting
46:17
the winter Land down, like so you know, you want something physically commensurate
46:22
with it, so it's like not only I think the gods Chooser kicked out
46:24
of the band two months later. She's not bringing much. I think that's
46:29
been said enough for various reasons. There's sometimes when you're listening you don't even
46:32
know a'e a keyboard player in the band. I do feel that that is
46:36
nothing that shows perfect. But I really think that's the end of a certain
46:38
era of the Straightful Dead. I think that's the end of part two.
46:42
I think part ones that take off two is you know, seventy seventy one
46:45
up to seventy eight, and then after that there's the next part of the
46:50
journey, which is I think for some people conflated with the with the fact
46:54
that, oh I saw a bunch of shows and you know, in eighty
46:58
seven I met my wife. You know, well, that's great with the
47:00
headphones on. After everybody's gone, what have we got? And I think
47:05
it's a more interesting kind of music before. But it doesn't mean there's not
47:08
valuable stuff. There's lots of good stuff. But to me, that really
47:12
is the end. I think Garcia is less interested in the grateful dead after
47:16
that. He gets better, he gets healthy. The Spring of ninety is
47:20
highly heralded, but I just think that it's not everything to him anymore.
47:22
And I think for better for worse, we need our artists, our athletes,
47:27
whatever, to be totally obsessive to It's like, think there's nothing more
47:30
important, although that's not true. We need them to believe that for us
47:34
to kind of find that thing. And I don't know if it's the most
47:37
important thing in the world. And I don't think Garcia was happy with the
47:40
way that the world was in nineteen eighty in terms of like what the counter
47:44
culture turn into, what America had turned into, what the music industry was.
47:47
The music industry was increasingly you know what it was supposed to be from
47:52
the beginning with the mainstream ticket. I was supposed to be entertainment, to
47:54
sell lots of sell lots of units, right and so, and I don't
47:59
want to Sey went life, but that's that's one of the reasons probably that
48:01
he cocoon with drugs. And I hope he didn't regret Shakedown Street because I
48:06
love it. I know it's I know, I know it's a radio single.
48:08
It's kind of discoursed. But the live versions, you know, the
48:13
live version, don't don't don't. Yeah, I mean I even like the
48:15
dancing the street. I just don't like the dancing dancing, dancing, right.
48:19
They could have done a better job of the book with the jam and
48:21
it's good. That's the thing about the day too. Sometimes I'm friends the
48:22
extended jam on that and I'll say to people who are like friends of mine
48:28
who I get into the dead usually I get him in the space stuff,
48:30
and they'll say, what is that? Say, just listen to Jerry's guitar
48:32
forget you know this or that or whatever. There's usually something even on the
48:37
the most you know mundane you know tune to go Wow, that's interesting that
48:42
little thing, and I just find there's less of that as time goes on.
48:45
If we're into a certain point, I think it's more concerned. We'll
48:47
come back to that word professionalism. But there's no real dud shows for the
48:51
dead for the most part after that point. I mean there's some when Garcia
48:54
is sick, you know, with drugs, but I mean like when he
48:57
gets healthy, like in the Ladies. I mean, every show is consistently
49:00
professional. But to me, I don't want professional. I want okay,
49:04
this is kind of whoa, whoa, whoa, I forgot my name,
49:07
you know. I want that. It's not fair to ask people to do
49:09
that for their entire lives. I mean I saw Dylan once at a really
49:15
small place near Niagara Falls, and musically it was karaokees bob building karaokesy to
49:21
keyboard. But he deserves that, right, He deserves the right to fly
49:24
around the world and do bob even karaoke, right. But I would rather
49:28
go to some club and see some young people play who are like this is
49:31
important that you need to know this, you know, in terms of like
49:34
that kind of vibe, right, And I think that there's definitely periods of
49:37
resurgence in the dead in the eighties and nineties, and I note some of
49:40
the high notes. But for me, I think that that kind of like
49:44
the music is the most important thing. There's not people, not relationships.
49:49
This is why people make artists make bed, you know, parents and lovers
49:52
and things, because it's like this is the most important thing. But we
49:54
get these artifacts that will never go away as long as we're on planet Earth.
49:59
You can always listen to those that February night in Iowa and seventy eight
50:02
and go, wow, we don't need the people anymore. We don't need
50:06
Billy Holler anymore. We have our music. Thank God for that. Yeah,
50:09
do you have a show in eighty one, which was May sixth of
50:14
eighty one, Nasaw Veterans Momorial Coliseum, Uniondale, New York. And then
50:16
there's that five year gap. Skip ahead to December fifteenth of nineteen eighty six,
50:22
Oakland, Alameda County Coliseum, and the first song in that eighty six
50:27
show, Touch of Gray, hadn't been recorded yet, which is interesting.
50:30
We've been playing it for almost five years. They had been playing it for
50:32
a while. Here he came back, and also, you know, it
50:35
was my way I always find a way of stirring up a book and making
50:37
it unsellable. So this is probably what I did, in the sense that
50:42
that show is really cherished by dead has because it's a very emotional thing.
50:45
Candy Man, right, Yeah, he's singing a candy man and he says
50:49
the candy Man is back in town. Yeah, and the crowdsy. It's
50:51
beautiful. But I think sometimes we tend to confuse the personal with the aesthetic,
50:57
and I don't think it's a great show. I think it's an amazing
51:00
experience for Jerry Garcia and for fans. But that's kind of my job is
51:04
to say, well, hold on a minute, here, is it really
51:06
Does it hold up to this other kind of stuff? Well? No,
51:08
but that's okay, you know, I try not to be I'm not dismissive.
51:13
I think it's amazing experience, just like hearing Jerry sing you know,
51:16
black Muddy River when he could bear to get the words out. But it's
51:20
not an aesthetic experience. It's more like I'm watching a man say goodbye.
51:24
Well, that's what I think of when I think of that last show nineteen
51:28
eighty five. For me, when he's singing so many roads so many roads.
51:32
Yeah, gives me the chills. That gives me the chills. Yeah,
51:36
but if he was singing I don't know they love each other that way,
51:39
you wouldn't have You'd say, God, you can't sing anymore or whatever
51:43
kind of deal. No, it's not that. It's because of the circumstances,
51:45
and that song is so very much There's not a lot of great hundred
51:50
Garcia songs for me in the last fifteen years, but that's one that's maybe
51:53
not musically it's particularly innovative, but it's extremely moving and it's three powerful.
52:00
Supposed to be on their what I was supposed to be on their anniversary album.
52:02
It was going to be like a right forty how many years would have
52:06
been at that point, eighteen thirty, Yeah, a thirty year anniversary album
52:10
they were going to make. Yeah, and this was one of the songs
52:14
to be recorded. And the Dead or Dave lem you did put together ready
52:16
or not sort of a kind of an approximation of what that record would be
52:22
or CD what do you want to call it? And Yeah, there are
52:23
some good songs, but I think they're more impactful because of the circumstance of
52:27
the Garcia's life. So that's kind of the job is to sort of say
52:30
this is this. It's just like when I wrote the first draft of this
52:32
and I had my editor looked at the chapter from nineteen ninety when I talk
52:37
about sort of how it explodes, and yeah, March twenty nine, nineteen
52:40
ninety, when I saw Veterans Memorial Calisium. I want to get that in
52:44
there. I don't want to be a just rereface it by saying that.
52:46
You know, I don't think I think he was right. I think initially
52:50
I didn't have enough respect or understanding how people's people had an amazing experience,
52:54
but it wasn't a sissarily a musical experience. And just ironically this is a
52:58
very dead dead kind of fashion. As I was rewriting that draft, a
53:01
friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a couple of years, two or
53:04
three years because of COVID, the writer Jason Senator, music writer, He
53:07
came by and see him a long time. He said, Oh, what
53:08
are you working on? I told him. He said, oh, wow,
53:10
you know I saw the Dead thirteen times eight rare there in the nineties.
53:14
Oh really, yeah, yeah. In high school they just were like
53:16
the opposite of all that, and it gave him that sense of community.
53:20
And then you go and you see Shakedown Street, and he said it was
53:22
amazing, and I think that's in the book now and I have to acknowledge
53:25
that is. But it's a non musical thing. It was more of a
53:30
He loved the fact too. He said, boy, I was always a
53:31
bad dancer, and everybody was dancing, so I felt it was okay to
53:35
dance. You go to a Neil Young show, you can't dance, you
53:37
know, it's like you're sitting cool. And so I thought that was really
53:40
delightful and wonderful, and I think that's part of it. But again,
53:44
this is we're all gone, there's just a music left. What do you
53:47
hear in the headphone? And to me, I don't hear as much in
53:51
eighty six as I do in seventy six. And I and I try to
53:53
give reasons for that. Not everyone's going to agree, and that's fine.
53:57
We're allowed to have opinions right for now anyway, Well, I guess question,
54:00
is there a particular go to show for you, like personally if you're
54:02
feeling down, stressed out, just any particular show that you go like that's
54:07
the one I gotta play. It's more songs. I know, A good
54:09
Starlet Fire from seventy seven or seventy eight will fill me up, you know,
54:14
if the world's beating me down a bit, if I if I'm really
54:17
wanting to sort of escape from the world, a stellar blue, a Warfrat,
54:22
or a China Doll will China down again. What kind of song is
54:27
that? It's not? You know, think of that in nineteen seventy four.
54:30
Like in nineteen seventy four, you can see how it's like, Oh,
54:32
I got my Steve Miller, I got my Stones, I got my
54:35
Hoop? What them is this? Which still and that song is like forty
54:40
nine years old and it's still to me doesn't sound like any other song,
54:44
which is why we keep listening to them, right, And I think if
54:46
you asked one hundred Dead fans what their favorite song is, probably a hundred
54:50
different answers. Like I remember recently somebody saying high Time. It's like,
54:52
oh, that's a good one. That's a good choice. Well, most
54:55
people would say Ripple right, or triple or or of course, you know,
55:00
to me, my go to if I'm converting someone and trying to turn
55:04
some one of the Dead. It's always a Dark Star for seventy two,
55:06
So, man, what is this or a dark Star? How about though
55:08
the single version of it that, Yeah, it's so much, man,
55:15
what it became and what it started out at. If you asked me,
55:19
the first question you asked me is why I wrote the books, and it's
55:21
kind of well, wrap it up. This is a good, good way
55:23
to come back to it. One of the first shows I didn't write them
55:25
in order necessarily. One of the first shows I wrote was one of the
55:29
shows in the book. I think it's from Austin or texture other Austin San
55:32
Antonio, and it's seventy one. They just added Keith. It's the Fall
55:37
and it's a first set Dark Star. That's kind of cool. And they're
55:40
playing and playing and their thinking and again they're playing a place it's like thirteen
55:44
hundred people, so it was pretty intense. And then at some point Bob
55:47
leads them into El Paso or Me and my Uncle or something, and you
55:52
can just imagine what these textings. I lived in Texas for three year.
55:55
You don't have to be in the country to have country music feel part of
55:59
it. So they're listening this, you know, they're spacing out, and
56:00
then we're into Marty Robbins, they're into Johnny Cash and then come back into
56:05
Dark Star in the first set. No less, I wanted that show in
56:07
the book. I didn't know where I was gonna fit. But this is
56:10
one of the reasons that I said, well, I'm gonna spend the next
56:12
two years of my life in my shadow. But I listened to the great
56:15
Popel Dead and because I still get excited. And these are two tracks.
56:19
These are not like amazing, you know, they sound wonderful, but they're
56:22
not hot. They're not high psyched, you know, high fives. And
56:24
you're listening to this and you're thinking, Wow, these these little group of
56:28
people gathered seventeen hundred people on this Wednesday night in Austin, Texas, and
56:34
they were all part of this experiment, you know, and that to me
56:37
is not a rock concert. That is something different, so so much more
56:42
than just a concert. Yeah. Well yeah, all the years combined,
56:45
The Grateful Dead and fifty shows out in November seventh through Bible Oasis Books.
56:50
What a great name, Oasis. I'm not just saying they're Canada's best publisher.
56:54
They publish a lot of stuff, and the fact that they allow me
56:58
to write, you know, novels and books on death and then go,
57:00
I got a book on the grade from that. Okay, I'm really fortunate.
57:04
They're very again anithetical door culture in the sense that very specific. So
57:07
I'm Bhibli Oasis is a wonderful publisher. Yet I'm gonna lend this to my
57:12
older brother, Marty, who got me into the dead. I don't know
57:14
if I'll ever get it back. I wouldn't go yeah, oh yeah,
57:15
he got me into him. So Marty, this one's for you, beautiful.
57:19
That's lovely to hear. Yeah. Where can people find you online?
57:22
Right? I'm not an online guy too much, but I have a guy
57:24
who does my step. So I've got a website, did a nice job
57:28
on that, and then the usual Facebook Instagram if you want to get a
57:31
hold of me, though, use the website. I'm more of an email
57:34
guy, but I've got Facebook, Instagram for events and you know that kind
57:37
of thing. But and what's the website address? Just Ray Robertson dot com.
57:40
Okay, so I'll put a link in the show notes. So yeah,
57:43
that would be cool. Yeah, yeah, get a hold me three
57:45
emails there and there's stuff about the new books and stuff like that or something.
57:49
Yeah, beautiful, all right, right, thanks so much, man,
57:52
I appreciate it. That's it. It's in the books.