Latest / DISGRACELAND / The Grateful Dead Pt. 2: The Ballad of Pigpen and Old, Weird America—an Origin Story

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The Grateful Dead Pt. 2: The Ballad of Pigpen and Old, Weird America—an Origin Story · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis The stories about
0:13
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead. In their early days as a band,
0:16
Speaker 1: specifically about their harmonica player, pig Pen, are Insane, a
0:21
Speaker 1: band known for their drug use, pig Pen did not
0:23
Speaker 1: get high. His bandmates would smoke grass and he would
0:27
Speaker 1: drink booze. His bandmates would drop LSD and he would
0:30
Speaker 1: drink more booze. His bandmates would play improvisational electric music,
0:34
Speaker 1: and pig Pen would play the blues ron Pigpen McKernin
0:39
Speaker 1: was obsessed with the blues. He was one of the
0:41
Speaker 1: band's strongest links to the traditional American music they loved,
0:45
Speaker 1: in part because pig Pen was committed to living the
0:48
Speaker 1: life of his blues musician heroes. Part of this meant
0:51
Speaker 1: dedicating himself to the canon of pre and postwar Black
0:55
Speaker 1: American music, but it also meant the steady diet of cheap,
0:59
Speaker 1: highly potent olcolcohol known as rock gut, supplemented with even
1:02
Speaker 1: cheaper barbecue and hot links, a diet that did him
1:06
Speaker 1: in at the age of twenty seven. But prior to that,
1:09
Speaker 1: pig Pen made great music. That music you heard at
1:12
Speaker 1: the top of the show that wasn't great music. That
1:15
Speaker 1: was a preset loop from my melochron called Mellow Open
1:19
Speaker 1: Door Blues MK One. I played you that loop because
1:24
Speaker 1: I can't afford the rights to Missus Brown. You've got
1:27
Speaker 1: a lovely daughter by Herman's Hermits, And why would I
1:30
Speaker 1: play you that specific slice of peacock cheese?
1:33
Speaker 2: Could I afford it?
1:35
Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
1:38
Speaker 1: May fifth, nineteen sixty five, and that was the day
1:42
Speaker 1: the Warlocks played Magoo's Pizza Parlor in Menmo Park, California,
1:46
Speaker 1: taking the first step for what would become one of
1:49
Speaker 1: the most culturally influential bands.
1:51
Speaker 2: Of all time, The Grateful Dead.
1:54
Speaker 1: On this episode, grass lsd rock gut Blues to the pig Pen.
2:00
Speaker 1: In the beginning of The Grateful Dead, I'm Jake Brennan
2:05
Speaker 1: and this is Disgraceland. Judy liston versus jam.
2:33
Speaker 3: Capital Clay from Lewis and the Year, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir,
2:40
Speaker 3: and Phil Lesh were sitting in the back of a
2:42
Speaker 3: car that belonged to a friend of Bob's.
2:44
Speaker 1: They were getting high on one of Neil Cassidy's joints.
2:48
Speaker 1: Cassidy the inspiration for Jack Kerouacs Dean Moriarty character and
2:52
Speaker 1: his groundbreaking novel on the Road was a hero to
2:55
Speaker 1: all of them. Smoking his dope was seen as a privilege.
3:00
Speaker 1: Jerry and Bob had just played their second show in
3:03
Speaker 1: their new electric band, The Warlocks. Phil had just seen
3:06
Speaker 1: the first rock and roll show of his young life.
3:08
Speaker 1: He was a friend, a fellow musician, but not part
3:11
Speaker 1: of their band. Yet his mind was blown, and the
3:15
Speaker 1: energy of it all was unlike anything he'd ever experienced.
3:18
Speaker 1: It was a different type of gas from the singe
3:20
Speaker 1: of the newly electric Bob Dylan's explosive lyrics that Phil
3:24
Speaker 1: heard on the radio, the postal truck he delivered mail from,
3:27
Speaker 1: and different still from the energy of the Beatles' backbeat
3:30
Speaker 1: and clanging electric guitar as he watched on his television
3:33
Speaker 1: set on the Ed Sullivan Show. For afar, up close
3:36
Speaker 1: and personal, live electric music was something else entirely. It
3:42
Speaker 1: was enough to set your brain on fire smoking Cassidy's dope.
3:48
Speaker 1: They were all on a post show high, and the
3:50
Speaker 1: performance was a success, sure, but that didn't matter. What
3:54
Speaker 1: made the moment special was that they felt an unspoken
3:56
Speaker 1: connection to something they held in the highest esteem. Tradition,
4:02
Speaker 1: specifically the tradition of American music. That night, May twelfth,
4:07
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, at Magoo's Pizza Parlor and Menlo Park,
4:11
Speaker 1: just south of San Francisco, the Warlocks burned to join
4:14
Speaker 1: up with Chuck Berry, Howland Wolf and Freddy King. Covers
4:18
Speaker 1: jumped up blues numbers played with the energy of pent
4:21
Speaker 1: up white teenagers desperate to shake some action. But Garcia Weir,
4:26
Speaker 1: their drummer Bill Kurtzman, and bassist at the time Dana
4:29
Speaker 1: Morgan didn't arrive at rock and roll from Dylan and
4:32
Speaker 1: the Beatles, as so many of their peers would. They
4:35
Speaker 1: instead arrived on the proper course of rock and roll lineage,
4:39
Speaker 1: just as Dylan, Lennon and McCartney had via blues country,
4:43
Speaker 1: and for Garcia and Company via bluegrass and jug band
4:46
Speaker 1: music as well, music that predated and informed and led
4:49
Speaker 1: to the creation.
4:50
Speaker 2: Of rock and roll.
4:54
Speaker 1: Prior to the formation of the Warlocks, Jerry Garcia, Bob
4:57
Speaker 1: Weir and a long list of others put in time
5:00
Speaker 1: with Jerry's jug band mother mccree's Uptown jug Champions. Jug
5:05
Speaker 1: band music was traditional black party music, a genre that
5:09
Speaker 1: dated back to the early nineteen hundreds. Its originators the
5:12
Speaker 1: Memphis jug Band, Gus Cannon's jug Stoppers, and the Dixieland
5:16
Speaker 1: jug Blowers traditionally featured in array of acoustic and makeshift
5:20
Speaker 1: instruments washtub, bassed jews, harp, harmonica, washboards, stovetops, acoustic guitar, piano,
5:26
Speaker 1: and of course the jug stonewaarer glass and blown into
5:30
Speaker 1: by its player to create a deep, wild, buzzing sound.
5:34
Speaker 1: Jug bands were hopped up energetic, intended to drive the party.
5:38
Speaker 1: Jug Band music directly influenced the English skiffle groups of
5:41
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and went on to influence the Beatles,
5:44
Speaker 1: and of course jug band influence can be heard in
5:46
Speaker 1: the American blues, bluegrass and folk that ran from Ma
5:50
Speaker 1: Rainey to Bill Monroe to Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan.
5:54
Speaker 1: Nick could now in nineteen sixty five be heard in
5:57
Speaker 1: the music of the Warlocks as well. Their set that
6:00
Speaker 1: night was modern by bluegrass and jug band music standards.
6:04
Speaker 1: They played Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby, Blue, Rufus
6:07
Speaker 1: thomas Is Walking the Dog, and Slim Harpo's on M
6:10
Speaker 1: King B, among others, but it was all part of
6:13
Speaker 1: the same tradition. A tradition that Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir
6:17
Speaker 1: and their early bandmates were now a part of the
6:20
Speaker 1: tradition of old Weird America. Dylan Rufus Slim. Their songs
6:28
Speaker 1: were part of the deeper lineage, a history of music
6:31
Speaker 1: that linked all the way back to traditional slave chants
6:34
Speaker 1: and field hollers, music that after the Civil War evolved
6:37
Speaker 1: into traditional ballads and breakdowns about bad bad men Stagger
6:42
Speaker 1: Lee the Loner, the Pimp, the end of Billy Lyons,
6:46
Speaker 1: railroad bill feared by brakemen everywhere, train robber extraordinaire, Tom
6:52
Speaker 1: Devil creeping up into unsuspecting girls' beds under the cover
6:55
Speaker 1: of night. And Willie Brennan, the highway robber, bold game
7:00
Speaker 1: of English descent from out on the Moor. These men
7:04
Speaker 1: were legends, folk heroes, desperate to survive their own demons
7:08
Speaker 1: in an America that didn't want them, and America that
7:11
Speaker 1: shut them out because of the color of their skin,
7:13
Speaker 1: the class they were born out of, and their refusal
7:16
Speaker 1: and or inability to conform to the standards of civilized society.
7:21
Speaker 1: Their legends were born of murder, robbery, bootlegging, and other
7:24
Speaker 1: violent acts of rebelliousness. The mythology of these men detailed
7:28
Speaker 1: half a century's worth of rough and rowdy ways and song,
7:32
Speaker 1: their casualties among them and their like Little Sadie who
7:35
Speaker 1: caught a bullet from a forty four smokeless viola lee
7:38
Speaker 1: whose fate inspired violence worthy of a life's sentence. And
7:42
Speaker 1: the Knoxville girl, the victim of an unexpected dull flack
7:46
Speaker 1: from a blunt stick to the skull by her psychotic lover,
7:49
Speaker 1: who then drugger by our golden curls down to the
7:52
Speaker 1: riverside and proceeded a beater to death. Outlaws, scoundrels, men
7:57
Speaker 1: who were in league with the devil. It is perhaps
8:02
Speaker 1: this storyteller's good fortune that those three qualifiers all make
8:06
Speaker 1: up the old English origin of the word warlock, But
8:09
Speaker 1: it is merely the humorous coincidence of cosmic Americana minus
8:13
Speaker 1: the Tolkien magic. Warlocks are bad men, just the same
8:17
Speaker 1: as outlaws, scoundrels, rounders, and ramblers. They are all part
8:21
Speaker 1: of the same musical alchemy that runs from Tommy Johnson
8:24
Speaker 1: to led Zeppelin to Jeffrey Leed a Slayer to Jack White.
8:28
Speaker 1: What's the actual difference? They are threaded by the same spirit,
8:32
Speaker 1: the sorcerer's alchemy, their musical alchemy, the pharmaceutical alchemy, white lightning, reefer,
8:37
Speaker 1: the opium gong, junkheads, moocher sniffers, and ucci coachers, the
8:41
Speaker 1: men with the jive. Preacher drank some ginger said it
8:44
Speaker 1: was because of the flu, and that old man's been lying.
8:47
Speaker 1: He's got the jake leg two. Tell it to me,
8:49
Speaker 1: Tell it to me, drink corn liquor. Let the cocaine be.
8:52
Speaker 1: Cocaine is gonna kill my honey dead. Drugs, liquor, magic,
8:57
Speaker 1: murder killers, thieves, loose women, and other sort of characters
9:00
Speaker 1: old weird America. This was the tradition of the Warlocks.
9:05
Speaker 1: This was the tradition of the music they played that
9:07
Speaker 1: night at Magoose weird, and they didn't mind. It suited
9:12
Speaker 1: them just fine, because twenty two year old Jerry Garcia,
9:16
Speaker 1: seventeen year old Bob Weird, nineteen year old Bill Krutzman,
9:19
Speaker 1: and twenty five year old Phil Lesh were all weird
9:23
Speaker 1: as fuck at a time when other kids their age
9:26
Speaker 1: were taken solely by mop tops, beach blanket bingo and
9:29
Speaker 1: the ensuing space race. These kids were, by comparison into
9:33
Speaker 1: some weird shit mainly music from Way off the Grid,
9:38
Speaker 1: Garcia with his jug band and bluegrass obsession, Weird with
9:41
Speaker 1: his Garcia obsession, Krutzvin's New Orleans and R and B obsession,
9:46
Speaker 1: and Lesh by the time he'd attended his first rock
9:48
Speaker 1: show that night, was already deeply obsessed with classical avant
9:52
Speaker 1: garde composition. But as weird as they all were, there
9:56
Speaker 1: are all still just kids, kids from diverse, back working,
10:00
Speaker 1: middle and upper class socioeconomic backgrounds. They were children of
10:04
Speaker 1: the straight world, no matter how much they fancied themselves otherwise,
10:08
Speaker 1: and their approach to the music they were into at
10:11
Speaker 1: that young age was more scholarly than hand to mouth.
10:15
Speaker 1: None of them lived the tragic lives of the anti
10:17
Speaker 1: heroes portrayed in the folk songs they loved and performed
10:20
Speaker 1: and that influenced them. They mind what they could from
10:23
Speaker 1: those men from the myths and the legends of folk,
10:26
Speaker 1: but otherwise they lived relatively straight lives, how thee it
10:30
Speaker 1: lies that were quickly falling under the dominant influence of
10:32
Speaker 1: cannabis and LSD experimentation, but nonetheless straight in comparison to
10:37
Speaker 1: stagger Lee and Railroad Bill and the members of the Warlocks,
10:41
Speaker 1: despite their youth, knew that by the rights of tradition
10:44
Speaker 1: and because of who they were as people and the
10:46
Speaker 1: nature of the music they played, that they were indebted
10:49
Speaker 1: to tragic, old weird Americana. But the Warlocks were looking
10:53
Speaker 1: to learn and play music, not die or end up
10:56
Speaker 1: in jail, all but one of them, whereas pig pens.
11:00
Speaker 1: Someone asked from the back seat inquiring about the fifth
11:03
Speaker 1: missing member of the Warlocks, Ron McKernan aka Blue Ron,
11:07
Speaker 1: because of his obsession with the Blues aka Pigpen, because
11:10
Speaker 1: of his funk aka pig because his bandmates were not
11:14
Speaker 1: without a sense of humor or brevity. The answer came
11:17
Speaker 1: from in between hits of Cassidy's grass. Oh, Pig, he's
11:21
Speaker 1: probably down by the train tracks, drinking junk. The bread
11:47
Speaker 1: truck barrowed down the side of the mountain above Pawelatto
11:51
Speaker 1: fits driver Tawny, a black man who'd rather do without
11:54
Speaker 1: a stop by the white buzz he suspected were on
11:57
Speaker 1: his tail, and in an unmarked car, pushed his truck
11:59
Speaker 1: to the edge of the speed on it.
12:02
Speaker 2: He believed his truck to.
12:03
Speaker 1: Have magical powers, so he named it the Seventh Son
12:07
Speaker 1: and the truck lived up to its name. It had
12:09
Speaker 1: survived this run before down the mountain side from the
12:12
Speaker 1: bootlegger in the Honda filled to the brim with as
12:15
Speaker 1: much high power to illegal hooch, Tawny and his partner
12:17
Speaker 1: could afford whiskey at only a dollar fifty eight gallon.
12:21
Speaker 2: It was worth the risk.
12:23
Speaker 1: His partner in crime had faith in the truck and
12:25
Speaker 1: inn Tawny behind the wheel down shifting in makeshift Jake
12:29
Speaker 1: bricks to save dough on Warren pads for the bread truck.
12:32
Speaker 1: No doubt more dough more whisky. Tawny was smart, and
12:36
Speaker 1: so was his partner, pig Pen. They'd make it down
12:41
Speaker 1: without incident and take some of their stash out to
12:43
Speaker 1: the railroad yard and post up by the tracks with
12:46
Speaker 1: pigs harmonica, Tawny's acoustic drink junk and play the blues
12:50
Speaker 1: drinking quote unquote. Junk was a reference to the type
12:53
Speaker 1: of alcohol pig Pen harmonica player for the Warlocks, preferred
12:57
Speaker 1: the lowest quality booze and wine he could get his hands.
13:00
Speaker 2: On, bootleg whiskey, white port, and.
13:02
Speaker 1: Lemon juice, a sweet wine known as ombre, and of
13:05
Speaker 1: course night train. This constituted most of pig Pen's diet,
13:10
Speaker 1: and the other part was filled by hot links, pigs feet,
13:12
Speaker 1: and cheap barbecue food and drink that he knew. His heroes,
13:16
Speaker 1: the blues men he worshiped, Lightning Hopkins, te Bone Walker,
13:19
Speaker 1: Howling Wolf lived off of pure rock gut.
13:23
Speaker 2: Didn't matter.
13:24
Speaker 1: It was part of the life, like the bootlegging and
13:26
Speaker 1: hanging out by the tracks playing music, as was everything
13:33
Speaker 1: about pig Pen, particularly the.
13:35
Speaker 2: Way he looked.
13:37
Speaker 1: Unlike the rest of the Warlocks, pig did not look
13:39
Speaker 1: at all like anyone or anything even remotely connected to
13:43
Speaker 1: the straight world. He wore greasy denims so greasy his
13:46
Speaker 1: genes stiffened. The grease on his jeans was second only
13:49
Speaker 1: to the tremendous amount of grease, and his black hair
13:52
Speaker 1: leather jacket, a bike team from a Harley permanently bolted
13:55
Speaker 1: onto his wrist, and a big bad boil marking his chin.
13:59
Speaker 1: He was the wild without Brando's physical attractiveness, and he
14:02
Speaker 1: could have cared less. Little Walter was the archetype, not
14:06
Speaker 1: Little Richard. Blue and lonesome and funky like Fred McDowell's
14:10
Speaker 1: slad and funky, also like the filthy Peanuts character.
14:13
Speaker 2: He drew his nickname from him.
14:15
Speaker 1: Unlike his bandmates in the Warlocks, pig Pen wasn't interested
14:18
Speaker 1: in smoking grass, or expanding his mind with LSD or
14:22
Speaker 1: really anything that preoccupied the imagination of the middle class.
14:26
Speaker 1: Pig Pen was almost solely interested in the blues he
14:30
Speaker 1: grew up with it. His old man was a boogey
14:32
Speaker 1: wiggy pianist who later turned in his heavy right hand
14:35
Speaker 1: for a gig as a rhythm and blues DJ for
14:37
Speaker 1: the Bay Area's KRE radio station. The old man spun
14:41
Speaker 1: records under the name Cool Breeze, and his son, Young Ron,
14:45
Speaker 1: was knocked out by those records. He made the short
14:48
Speaker 1: leap backward from Elvis Presley to Arthur Crudup. Elvis was cool,
14:51
Speaker 1: but barely raided amongst the originals. For every white version
14:55
Speaker 1: of a rhythm and blues song, be it Elvis Presley
14:58
Speaker 1: or Pat Boone or later the Beatles or b Dylan,
15:00
Speaker 1: there was almost always a more interesting, authentic black version
15:04
Speaker 1: of the song, and thus one of the earliest versions
15:08
Speaker 1: of white America's concept of hipness took root in Pigmen.
15:12
Speaker 2: To be hip in the.
15:13
Speaker 1: Early nineteen sixties for young white musicians meant you were
15:17
Speaker 1: into the blues, and that you identified with the plight
15:19
Speaker 1: of black Americans. It was the same as it was
15:22
Speaker 1: for the Beats in the fifties, whose own hipness equation
15:25
Speaker 1: was answered by the subculture's affinity for early jazz, specifically
15:29
Speaker 1: bebop musicians. So as a young white teenager who was
15:33
Speaker 1: into almost nothing but blues music, pig Pen, when he
15:36
Speaker 1: wasn't hanging and playing with the Warlocks, hung out almost
15:39
Speaker 1: exclusively with Tawny.
15:40
Speaker 2: A black man in.
15:41
Speaker 1: Black populated East Powell out blues booze, nothing else. The
15:51
Speaker 1: railroad yard, it was rhythm, not just romance. The sound
15:55
Speaker 1: of the big trains tracked pig Pen's harmonica, his vocal
15:59
Speaker 1: in Tawni's acoustic guitar. The world was suddenly smaller and
16:03
Speaker 1: the magic of history was suddenly less esoteric. Alongside those
16:07
Speaker 1: old frights, pig Pen rooted himself into his own place
16:10
Speaker 1: and time. He felt connected at one with the tragic
16:14
Speaker 1: and cosmic continuum of old weird America. The pullman Porter
16:20
Speaker 1: saw the fellow black man working his way through the
16:23
Speaker 1: private railcar he was assigned to, and knew immediately that
16:26
Speaker 1: death had.
16:27
Speaker 2: Blown in through his door.
16:29
Speaker 1: He lowered his gaze, went about his business waiting on
16:32
Speaker 1: his wealthy passengers and ignored the man. The man was
16:35
Speaker 1: moving quickly toward the front of the train, brazenly with
16:38
Speaker 1: his side arm out in the open down by his
16:40
Speaker 1: right thigh.
16:41
Speaker 2: All casual.
16:42
Speaker 1: It went unseen coupled with his determined stride, and the
16:46
Speaker 1: passengers were none the wiser, so they were allowed to
16:48
Speaker 1: live along with the porter for now. The porter knew
16:52
Speaker 1: who he was, Railroad Bill. Of course, he of the
16:55
Speaker 1: vendetta against the big railroads. He was the only black
16:58
Speaker 1: man not wearing a pullman unit who was either stupid
17:01
Speaker 1: enough or brave enough to enter the whites only first
17:03
Speaker 1: class train car in eighteen ninety five. But the opulent
17:07
Speaker 1: pullman cabin was in his final destination. He was headed
17:10
Speaker 1: to the jackpot, the freight car, because that was where
17:13
Speaker 1: the loot was. Sheriff McMillan, Stinsonville, and Stewart. They all
17:19
Speaker 1: met their demise at the other end of Railroad Bill's rifle,
17:22
Speaker 1: and so too with whoever stood in his way on
17:24
Speaker 1: this day. Railroad Bill made his way into the freight
17:27
Speaker 1: car and there were two Pinkertons on guard. Bill immediately
17:30
Speaker 1: shot one and then instructed the other to open the safe.
17:33
Speaker 1: He did as he was told, and then filled Bill's
17:36
Speaker 1: gunnysack with all the cash and gold and silver bullion
17:39
Speaker 1: that would fit. When he was done, railroad Bill dispassionately
17:42
Speaker 1: emptied another blast from his rifle right into him. He
17:46
Speaker 1: reloaded and made his way to the engine car at
17:48
Speaker 1: the front. He ordered the brakeman to halt the steam
17:50
Speaker 1: driven locomotive. His loaded shotgun pointed into his face made
17:53
Speaker 1: it clear railroad Bill was not fucking around. The brakeman
17:57
Speaker 1: gripped the heavy brake levers, pulled on the safety trigger,
18:00
Speaker 1: and heaved the levers down with all his might, and
18:02
Speaker 1: as the train slowed, railroad Bill made his way to
18:05
Speaker 1: the sideboard of the engine car and jumped into the night,
18:08
Speaker 1: fleeing away from the train with the loot and bolstering
18:11
Speaker 1: the myth of railroad Bill in the process, a myth
18:14
Speaker 1: that would echo down through the ages and out of
18:16
Speaker 1: pigs Harmonica decades later.
18:21
Speaker 2: The train barreled through the yard.
18:23
Speaker 1: The fire in the trash can burned passively warm Northern
18:27
Speaker 1: California spring air, a bottle of night train between them
18:30
Speaker 1: on the ground, tawny beat down, a crude rhythm on
18:33
Speaker 1: his acoustic the one to the five, again and again.
18:37
Speaker 1: He added time perfectly with the rhythm of the old
18:39
Speaker 1: train snaking its way past them. Pigpen blew into his heart,
18:44
Speaker 1: came up for air after his solo.
18:45
Speaker 2: And leaned into the lyrics.
18:47
Speaker 1: Railroad Bill was standing on the hill. He never worked
18:51
Speaker 1: and he never will. Oh ride ride Bill, Ride sounded
18:56
Speaker 1: about right to Pigpen, We'll be right back after this
19:03
Speaker 1: word word word. The bartender Larry took his eye out
19:14
Speaker 1: and placed it on the bar. It was glass, of course,
19:18
Speaker 1: like the many tumblers and martini glasses stacked into various towers.
19:22
Speaker 1: Behind the stick, there were hardly any pint glasses or stemware.
19:26
Speaker 1: Beer and wine were rarely served, and this was a
19:28
Speaker 1: booze joint. And when Larry took his eye out meant
19:31
Speaker 1: the joint was jumping. Which tonight it most certainly was
19:35
Speaker 1: the in room, a singles joint for the recently divorced,
19:38
Speaker 1: to stop overplaced for flight attendants, and a must stop
19:41
Speaker 1: for traveling salesmen between San Francisco and Pool Alto. The
19:45
Speaker 1: bar was where you went if you were middle aged,
19:47
Speaker 1: horny and hadn't quite given up yet on your chances
19:49
Speaker 1: of getting laid plush reds on pitch black interior. The
19:53
Speaker 1: Inn room was decidedly adult, and it was also part
19:56
Speaker 1: of the West Coast small to mid sized circuit rooms
19:59
Speaker 1: for touring artists Smart and Gaye, Jackie DeShannon, and the Coasters,
20:02
Speaker 1: where they all put in work on their paths up
20:04
Speaker 1: and down the coast. Someone decided the Warlocks should be
20:08
Speaker 1: the house band, warm up for the headliners and keep
20:11
Speaker 1: the joint buzzing and the boo is flowing. Five fifty
20:14
Speaker 1: minute sets a night, six nights a week. It was
20:16
Speaker 1: real work, five sets a night, and by the estimation
20:19
Speaker 1: of all in the band, the pig pen. The only
20:22
Speaker 1: way to work through it was while experimenting with their
20:24
Speaker 1: new favorite pastime, LSD. The drug had recently made its
20:28
Speaker 1: way to the West Coast via Ken Kesey's Mary Pranksters,
20:32
Speaker 1: and during the Warlock's early days, everything about LSD appealed
20:35
Speaker 1: to them, especially as it pertained to their musicianship, finding
20:39
Speaker 1: themselves as a band, and learning how to write their
20:41
Speaker 1: first songs. For Garcia, LSD combined with electric music was
20:46
Speaker 1: total freedom. It was a liberation from the demanding rigidity
20:50
Speaker 1: of bluegrass precision playing, and he carried the clarity of
20:53
Speaker 1: his banjo playing along for the trip, while the rest
20:55
Speaker 1: of the group melded their own influences classical, avant garde,
20:59
Speaker 1: R and B, rock and the blues with Garcia's bluegrass.
21:03
Speaker 1: The parts have been fused into one hole by the
21:05
Speaker 1: spark of acid and electric instrumentation. Out behind the in room,
21:11
Speaker 1: railroad tracks weaved their way north and south. While the
21:14
Speaker 1: band performed, they could hear the passing trains. They latched
21:17
Speaker 1: into the rhythm, and Pigpen rode that old timey rail
21:20
Speaker 1: with his harmonica and sometimes with his orgon, while Garcia, Lesh, Crutzman,
21:24
Speaker 1: and Weir channeled their latest obsession. Another train entirely jazz
21:29
Speaker 1: alto saxophonist John Coltrane, who had been dominating.
21:32
Speaker 2: Their collective musical imagination.
21:35
Speaker 1: Train as he was referred to, provided a vision of
21:37
Speaker 1: improvisation for Jerry, Garcia and Phil Lesh. Train would vamp
21:41
Speaker 1: on one cord, which, from a practical standpoint for Lesh,
21:45
Speaker 1: who would literally just begun to play as instrument the
21:48
Speaker 1: electric bass guitar made all the sense in the world,
21:51
Speaker 1: and Train's genius wasn't that he, as a soloist, would improvise.
21:55
Speaker 1: It was that he would allow his highly qualified sidemen
21:58
Speaker 1: to improvise along with him. The root chord vamping along
22:01
Speaker 1: was their platform, the songs melody, their through line, and
22:05
Speaker 1: their own creative imaginations, the steam powering their live performances
22:09
Speaker 1: far the fuck out down previously on her track, before
22:13
Speaker 1: inevitably returning back to the station from their trip together
22:16
Speaker 1: as one, after achieving dizzying heights of collective improvisation.
22:22
Speaker 2: It was during this heady.
22:23
Speaker 1: Time at the Inn room where the Warlocks wrote their
22:25
Speaker 1: first song, of course, it was called Caution, do not
22:29
Speaker 1: stop on the tracks Garcia Lesh we are Chrismin. They
22:34
Speaker 1: knew they were onto something. They all did except Pigpen.
22:37
Speaker 1: Pig as the only non LSD in grass Dvote, hung
22:41
Speaker 1: back and waited for his moment, and when it would arrive,
22:44
Speaker 1: he'd dig into the parts of the set where the
22:45
Speaker 1: band's improvisation took a back seat to more traditional blues
22:49
Speaker 1: numbers aimed at making sure the crowd was still there
22:52
Speaker 1: with them. Howling Wolfe's version of Little Red Rooster Junior
22:55
Speaker 1: Wells version of Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl. Pig Pen's beloved
22:58
Speaker 1: blues have been reduced to be among the functionary bridge
23:01
Speaker 1: between the traditional music that first inspired the group with
23:04
Speaker 1: this new weird Americana. The Grateful Dead were alchymating at
23:08
Speaker 1: the in Room back in nineteen sixty five. For Pigpen,
23:12
Speaker 1: this trip was getting strange, and it was only about
23:15
Speaker 1: to get stranger.
23:38
Speaker 2: They needed a new band name.
23:40
Speaker 1: A downtown New York art band had beat them to
23:42
Speaker 1: the vinyl press with the name of the Warlocks, though
23:45
Speaker 1: they too would eventually abandon the Moniker for another name,
23:48
Speaker 1: The Velvet Underground, But at the time for Garcia and Co.
23:52
Speaker 1: A new name was needed. They were at Phil Lesh's house,
23:55
Speaker 1: bandying about potential band names, all of which were utterly ridiculous.
24:00
Speaker 1: Es Garcia grabbed Lesh's dictionary, closed his eyes, opened it
24:04
Speaker 1: to a random page, pointed with his index finger, opened
24:07
Speaker 1: his eyes, and there it was, in black and white,
24:10
Speaker 1: The Grateful Dead. Without even knowing the meaning, the juxtaposition
24:14
Speaker 1: of those two words immediately spoke to the group, and
24:17
Speaker 1: when they read the meaning of the phrase, it was sealed.
24:21
Speaker 1: The Grateful Debt is a folk tale about a hero
24:23
Speaker 1: who comes upon a dead man, a dead man who
24:26
Speaker 1: left nothing behind, who has no family to pay for
24:28
Speaker 1: his funeral. The hero, expecting nothing in return, pays the
24:32
Speaker 1: dead man's funeral debt. Later, the hero comes upon some
24:36
Speaker 1: impossible task, whereupon the dead man from beyond the grave,
24:40
Speaker 1: grateful for the debt the hero paid for him, comes
24:43
Speaker 1: to the hero's assistance, helping him overcome his impossible task,
24:48
Speaker 1: i e. The Grateful Dead. It's a story about karma,
24:52
Speaker 1: about paying it forward, about a generosity of spirit that
24:55
Speaker 1: was evident in the band's hip origins, demonstrated in their
24:58
Speaker 1: improvisational playing style, in their personalities. The name was perfect,
25:03
Speaker 1: so too was the newly christened Grateful Dead's timing. The
25:07
Speaker 1: West Coast, San Francisco, in particular, was undergoing an evolution
25:11
Speaker 1: from its beatific and bohemian subculture into the big bang
25:14
Speaker 1: of the hippie movement, a movement that would not only
25:17
Speaker 1: dominate the rest of the sixties, but also go on
25:20
Speaker 1: to be the single most influential cultural movement this country
25:23
Speaker 1: has ever seen. Ken Kesey's acid tests were sweeping the
25:27
Speaker 1: subculture on the West Coast. These were the days before
25:30
Speaker 1: LSD was officially made illegal, and Atkezi's tripped out parties
25:34
Speaker 1: up and down the coastline in rooms painted fluorescent and
25:38
Speaker 1: lit by strobe lights, black lights, and flooded with visuals
25:41
Speaker 1: from video loops on repeat and with the new psychedelia
25:44
Speaker 1: being improvised by the Grateful Dead as Keisei's Acid Test
25:47
Speaker 1: house band, the crowd was eclectic, turned on in strange hip,
25:53
Speaker 1: college kids, left over beats. From the beginning of the decade,
25:56
Speaker 1: Hell's Angels poets. Whoever was as Kizi and his band
25:59
Speaker 1: of t traveling Mary Pranksters categorized as being on the bus,
26:04
Speaker 1: a phrase they coined while traveling the States in sixty
26:07
Speaker 1: five and sixty six.
26:08
Speaker 2: In an effort to spread the gospel of LSD.
26:11
Speaker 1: The Acid Tests were a mostly West Coast localized version
26:14
Speaker 1: of Kesey's Roving Tour. The Acid Tests were meant to
26:18
Speaker 1: enlighten the nation in subvert square society. It was a
26:21
Speaker 1: wild scene, to say the least. For Kisi and the
26:25
Speaker 1: rest of his Mary Pranksters, the idea was simple, spread
26:28
Speaker 1: the message and get on the bus. Bring the trip
26:31
Speaker 1: to wherever the people demanded, and in February nineteen sixty
26:34
Speaker 1: six that meant Watt's Los Angeles. The Acid Party was
26:38
Speaker 1: about to hit the road, and so too was its house.
26:41
Speaker 2: Band, The grateful Dead.
26:46
Speaker 1: Someone had found an old rundown warehouse in Compton. Kesey
26:49
Speaker 1: thought it perfect. Word got out that the acid test
26:52
Speaker 1: was coming to LA. Hundreds of kids looking to get
26:55
Speaker 1: turned on showed up, and the acid, mixed with kool
26:58
Speaker 1: aid and served as punch, was particularly strong that evening
27:02
Speaker 1: La Compton Watts. This was not San Francisco, not the Hate,
27:07
Speaker 1: not even the Inn room, and far the fuck away
27:09
Speaker 1: from the Goose.
27:11
Speaker 2: This was dark.
27:12
Speaker 1: Maybe it was the potency of the LSD that night,
27:15
Speaker 1: or the set that the band was putting out there,
27:17
Speaker 1: Death have No Mercy in this land, banging powerfully through
27:20
Speaker 1: the band's new sound system, designed by chief head and
27:23
Speaker 1: an LSD chemist, Augustus Ausley Stanley. And maybe it was
27:27
Speaker 1: the scores of lapds circling the warehouse with its curious
27:31
Speaker 1: young partygoers.
27:32
Speaker 2: Wild eyed and manic young women with.
27:35
Speaker 1: Their skirts too short, talking gibberish young men with their
27:38
Speaker 1: hair too long, talking jive. LAPD cruisers circled the warehouse,
27:43
Speaker 1: welcome to the show, the only show in town, the
27:46
Speaker 1: long haired, freaky people of.
27:47
Speaker 2: The god knows what.
27:48
Speaker 1: In that warehouse, the cops were all tuned into the
27:51
Speaker 1: same radio frequency in their cars, their windows opened, the
27:55
Speaker 1: clap back from the patrol men squawking into and out
27:58
Speaker 1: of the radios, escaping out into the of the nighttime air,
28:01
Speaker 1: creating a literal feedback weap.
28:03
Speaker 2: Of ignorance and squared on inside.
28:07
Speaker 1: The band played on normally, the acid test gigs were freeing,
28:11
Speaker 1: but something about that night had the band on the run,
28:15
Speaker 1: frustrated by their inability to lock in. Scared like the
28:18
Speaker 1: crowd of the cops lurking outside with the billy clubs,
28:21
Speaker 1: their guns and their punitive, discriminatory, very unhip ideas about justice,
28:27
Speaker 1: the dead lurched on stage.
28:29
Speaker 2: Pig Pen was apart from.
28:30
Speaker 1: The band, drunk, not stoned, and unable to latch onto
28:34
Speaker 1: whatever his bandmates were failing to latch onto themselves. A
28:39
Speaker 1: woman in the audience began to freak out too much acid,
28:43
Speaker 1: and the band stopped playing.
28:44
Speaker 2: And then pig Pen heard it, through.
28:46
Speaker 1: All the madness familiality, the sound again of a passing
28:50
Speaker 1: freight train out behind the warehouse. He looked into the
28:53
Speaker 1: crowd and saw the woman freaking out, saw the men
28:55
Speaker 1: trying to cool her out, saw them fail. He caught
28:58
Speaker 1: her eye and grabbed the mic and stand and in
29:01
Speaker 1: time with the rhythm of the passing train.
29:02
Speaker 2: Out back, pig Pen Blue Wrong sang out, I want
29:06
Speaker 2: to know do you feel good? The woman was.
29:11
Speaker 1: Struck with silent, and the crowd began to come to
29:13
Speaker 1: focus on the pig pen again a little bit louder.
29:16
Speaker 2: Now, I want to know you feel good?
29:20
Speaker 1: She moutled the word yes, looking straight at pig When
29:23
Speaker 1: the train carried on, and so the pig pen.
29:26
Speaker 3: I want to know.
29:27
Speaker 2: Can you find your mind?
29:30
Speaker 1: The crowd freak out chair concluded, responded immunity with.
29:33
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I want to know what do you feel good?
29:36
Speaker 2: And this time the crowd was rapturous. I said, oh yes, give.
29:40
Speaker 3: Me a hair.
29:40
Speaker 2: Yes, I said, I want to know your.
29:45
Speaker 3: Good.
29:46
Speaker 2: Pig Pan left goose, and I want to tell everyone
29:49
Speaker 2: to have his rod this minute. You can gotta do
29:51
Speaker 2: one more time. You gotta think about your neighbors. You
29:53
Speaker 2: gotta think about your friends, you gotta think about your brother,
29:55
Speaker 2: you gotta think about your sisters and everybody that means
29:58
Speaker 2: something to me.
30:00
Speaker 1: He then pointed to the freak out chick, who was
30:02
Speaker 1: by now enraptured with his sermon, and blurted out.
30:04
Speaker 2: Somebody a little long, somebody wants a little bit of fency.
30:09
Speaker 1: If I want to know the move and what I'm
30:10
Speaker 1: talking about, I said, I want to know you don't
30:14
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about.
30:17
Speaker 2: Now tell me what more the time? Do you a faito?
30:23
Speaker 1: Then if you can, you got to get on up
30:25
Speaker 1: out of this place because shit's about to get me.
30:31
Speaker 1: And with that, pig Pen walked off stage and into
30:34
Speaker 1: the la air, and by now the cops had the
30:36
Speaker 1: warehouse surrounded. They'd place sawhorses around the exits to corral
30:40
Speaker 1: the kids as they split. Pig was dejected and the
30:43
Speaker 1: gig was a bust and the party was a bust,
30:45
Speaker 1: and now if he wasn't careful, he might very well
30:48
Speaker 1: get busted. As he made his way out back out
30:51
Speaker 1: towards the tracks, he came upon Ken Kesey wrestling with
30:54
Speaker 1: a giant barrel of red glowing kool Aid, and there
30:57
Speaker 1: were numerous cops shuffling about wondering what he was up to.
31:00
Speaker 1: Kesey bent down by the sewer drain on the side
31:03
Speaker 1: of the road, pulling the barrel down with him and
31:05
Speaker 1: emptying its contents out and into the drain, thus getting
31:08
Speaker 1: rid of the remaining batch of LSD literally right under
31:11
Speaker 1: the noses of the cops.
31:13
Speaker 2: Pig Pen could not.
31:14
Speaker 1: Believe how strange the trip had become, and just a
31:18
Speaker 1: year later, his band, the band he'd started with his
31:21
Speaker 1: close friend Jerry Garcia, would go on to sign to
31:24
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers Records. They'd record numerous albums, two of them
31:28
Speaker 1: Great Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, and those two albums
31:32
Speaker 1: being the ones that hewed closest to the band's old
31:34
Speaker 1: weird Americana roots, ironically in an effort to write a
31:37
Speaker 1: pop hit for Warner Brothers, because the bulk of the
31:39
Speaker 1: material on their other releases was like the Watts Acid Test,
31:43
Speaker 1: too far out for the record buying public, and admittedly
31:46
Speaker 1: too far out for pig Pen as well. He was
31:49
Speaker 1: like an American Brian Jones, not recognizing the value of
31:52
Speaker 1: the very band he and his hipness essentially created because
31:56
Speaker 1: he was too fucked up. And by the time nineteen
32:00
Speaker 1: seventy three year.
32:01
Speaker 2: Olled around and everything had changed.
32:03
Speaker 1: The hate community was scattered, all that money had changed everybody.
32:07
Speaker 1: Janis was gone, oh ded three years earlier. She and
32:11
Speaker 1: pig used to split half a gallon of Southern Comfort
32:13
Speaker 1: every night they were together during their on again.
32:15
Speaker 2: Off again relationship.
32:17
Speaker 1: They used to make so much noise in Pig's bedroom
32:19
Speaker 1: that band members who used harder drugs wondered how they
32:22
Speaker 1: could ball all night while so gone on booze.
32:25
Speaker 2: It seemed like an eternity ago.
32:28
Speaker 1: The band was now settled into something resembling a professional groove,
32:31
Speaker 1: writing music, regularly recording it, and then going out on
32:34
Speaker 1: the road promoted like professional musicians. They even succumbed to
32:38
Speaker 1: traditional promotional tactics of the behestive Warner Brothers weird as
32:42
Speaker 1: fuck promo sure, but nonetheless part of the music industry
32:46
Speaker 1: machine all the same. They weren't part of the straight world,
32:49
Speaker 1: far from it. But they were now part of the
32:51
Speaker 1: music machine, whether they liked it or not. And despite
32:54
Speaker 1: their far out, acid inspired oral explorations on record and
32:58
Speaker 1: on tour America, the Grateful Dead were creating and living it.
33:03
Speaker 1: They were a world apart from the old weird America
33:05
Speaker 1: that inspired them in the beginning. Traditional American music was tragic.
33:10
Speaker 1: The Grateful Dead were becoming an institution but loved, lovable,
33:14
Speaker 1: tripped out teddy bears, a far cry from the bad
33:17
Speaker 1: men that inspired the ballads and breakdowns of the Warlocks,
33:21
Speaker 1: Railroad Bill, Willie Brennan, and Stagger Lee. But the Grateful
33:25
Speaker 1: Dead were still indebted to that tradition, and the Bill
33:28
Speaker 1: was about to come to Tragedy was the currency. Death
33:32
Speaker 1: was at the Dead's door, and death had no mercy
33:35
Speaker 1: in this land. July nineteen seventy two, pig Pen's drinking
33:40
Speaker 1: had spun out of control one too many times. He
33:43
Speaker 1: wasn't quite out of the band, but he wasn't quite
33:45
Speaker 1: in it either. The Dead were touring, but he couldn't
33:48
Speaker 1: keep up anymore. His drinking was so bad that physically
33:51
Speaker 1: he had flare ups of internal beating, and his playing
33:54
Speaker 1: suffered greatly.
33:56
Speaker 2: At a time when the band was exploring.
33:57
Speaker 1: The further reagions of improvisation, his place in the band
34:01
Speaker 1: was suspect, to say the least. Rock Scully, the band's
34:04
Speaker 1: manager called him out on tour for falling asleep on stage,
34:08
Speaker 1: and after that pig Pen was forced to take some
34:11
Speaker 1: time off to try to regain his health, and the
34:13
Speaker 1: band was certain.
34:14
Speaker 2: He would recover, but pig Pen knew better.
34:18
Speaker 1: He was in his Marin County apartment fixing to die.
34:22
Speaker 1: He'd separated himself from his girlfriend, his family, his band, telling.
34:26
Speaker 2: Them, I don't want you around when I died.
34:29
Speaker 1: On March eighth, nineteen seventy three, Pigpen, in the throes
34:33
Speaker 1: of an internal hemorrhage from cirrhosis of the liver, a
34:36
Speaker 1: similar cause of death that killed Jerry Garcia's hero Jack
34:40
Speaker 1: Kerouac led back in his bed and contemplated the new
34:43
Speaker 1: set of lyrics he was working on. Seems like all
34:46
Speaker 1: my yesterdays are filled with pain. There's nothing but darkness tomorrow.
34:51
Speaker 1: If you're going to do like you say you do,
34:53
Speaker 1: if you're going to change your mind and walk away,
34:56
Speaker 1: don't make me live in this pain no longer.
34:58
Speaker 2: You know I'm getting weaker, not stronger.
35:03
Speaker 1: When he closed his eyes that last time, he knew
35:06
Speaker 1: what he was doing, he knew where he was going,
35:09
Speaker 1: and he knew why. It was tragic and necessary. As
35:13
Speaker 1: the debt had come to Ron Pigpen, McKernan generously paid
35:18
Speaker 1: it in his band, the dead would forever be grateful.
35:23
Speaker 2: Tragedy had befallen them.
35:25
Speaker 1: Their very own bad man had broken down, and now
35:28
Speaker 1: the Ballad of pig Pen will forever be sun as
35:30
Speaker 1: an integral piece of the Grateful Bed's origin story. Rooting
35:34
Speaker 1: the lore of the band firmly in the tradition of
35:37
Speaker 1: old Weird America. His tombstone says once and forever a
35:43
Speaker 1: member of the Grateful Dead. He died at twenty seven,
35:46
Speaker 1: and that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in this
35:53
Speaker 1: his disgrace I have. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly
36:17
Speaker 1: and is produced in partnership.
36:18
Speaker 2: With Double Elvis.
36:20
Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
36:22
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36:26
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36:29
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36:32
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36:56
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37:02
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37:08
Speaker 2: He's a bad, bad man,