Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 429] Grateful Dead: The Hidden Histories Behind Their Most Beloved Songs with Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMay

Transcript

[EP 429] Grateful Dead: The Hidden Histories Behind Their Most Beloved Songs with Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMay · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There will always be people playing that music, but I
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: sort of struggle with the question of does the music
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: never stop? Or is this a story that ended when
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Jerry's eyes closed and everything after that? It's sort of
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: not germane.
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  Speaker 2: We're totally booked.
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  Speaker 3: Rock and roll.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think I'll leave you to your reading. Little
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: hand says it's time to rock and roll.
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  Speaker 4: Rock and roll.
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  Speaker 1: We are totally booked.
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  Speaker 3: Welcome back to Booked on Rock, conversations with authors, musicians,
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  Speaker 3: and insiders revealing the stories behind classic rock's greatest songs, albums,
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: and artists. I'm Eric Senech. Thanks so much for joining us.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: We're going to be talking about the Grateful Dead.
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  Speaker 2: In this episode.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: If you are looking for some Grateful Dead merchandise, you
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: can save 15% at OldGlory.com with the promo code BookedOnRock. T-shirts, sweaters, shorts, hats, books, blankets,
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: it's all there. So much to check out. Just click
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: the link in the show notes or visit BookedOnRock.com and
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: head to my deals. All right, now on to our show.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: What connects a forgotten prison singer, a psychedelic television appearance,
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: and a lightning storm that helped inspire one of the
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  Speaker 3: Grateful Dead's most ambitious songs? In their book, Friends of
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  Speaker 3: the Devil, writer Alex Papademos and artist Joan LeMay uncover
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  Speaker 3: the remarkable stories behind the Dead's music, from Jerry Garcia's
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  Speaker 3: creative partnership with Robert Hunter to the colorful characters and
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  Speaker 3: mysteries that inspired their songs. Alexander and Joan LeMay. Thank
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: you for being here. I referred you as Alexander because
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: that's the way it is in all the descriptions, right, Alex?
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  Speaker 1: Get serious with it. Yeah, it's a little bit Charles Sheen,
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  Speaker 1: but I'm fine with it.
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  Speaker 3: I'll call you Alex.
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  Speaker 4: It's very Charles Sheen.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks so much, guys, for doing this. I'm a huge
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Dead fan, so I was looking very much forward to
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: talking about The Grateful Dead. And you open this book
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  Speaker 3: with John Mayer's observation that nobody seems to live at
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  Speaker 3: home in Grateful Dead songs. Why were so many of
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  Speaker 3: the band's characters constantly on the move? Let's talk about
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: that first.
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  Speaker 1: Mayer kind of handed me that one on a platter
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: via the Rick Rubin podcast. I was walking my dog
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  Speaker 1: and wrote it down. I was like, okay, if that's
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  Speaker 1: not the first line of the book, then I don't
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  Speaker 1: know what is. And it's one of the few things
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  Speaker 1: that didn't change that much from beginning to end, just
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: because it was such a great observation. And it actually
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  Speaker 1: pulled together a bunch of things that I had been
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: thinking about in trying to figure out how to approach
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: this massive history and everything that, you know, all the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: stories that were, you know, to be, all the stories
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that were connected to the story of the Grateful Dead
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  Speaker 1: and all the stories in their songs, the one thing
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  Speaker 1: that it all seemed to have in common was this
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: sort of footloose quality that everyone was always on the run,
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  Speaker 1: they're always either about to leave somewhere or they have
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: just left somewhere. No one's, you know, there are a
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  Speaker 1: few songs, as I point out, like where people are
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  Speaker 1: hanging out at home, but it's, it is a restless catalog.
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  Speaker 1: It's a restless group of characters and they're always kind
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  Speaker 1: of running. And that sort of, to me, just connected
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  Speaker 1: them to this broader theme of the restlessness of Americans
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  Speaker 1: and all of the, you know, the frontier and what
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  Speaker 1: happens when the frontier is used up. And where you
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: go from there and maybe you go into your brain
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  Speaker 1: a little bit, you go inside your head, you know, and.
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  Speaker 2: All of that. So it just it felt like the
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  Speaker 2: best place to start.
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  Speaker 1: And every time I tried to do something different, it
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  Speaker 1: was like, no, it has to kind of start with
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  Speaker 1: with John Mayer. And I liked it, too, because it
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  Speaker 1: sort of plants you in the in the present day
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and then you can jump back. It sort of gives
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  Speaker 1: you it allows us to this isn't really a book
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  Speaker 1: about dead and company. It's not a book about sort
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  Speaker 1: of the latter day manifestation of the dead.
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  Speaker 2: But I wanted that.
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  Speaker 1: Flag just to be planted. So it felt like, okay,
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  Speaker 1: we are starting in 2026 and we're looking backward.
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  Speaker 3: And Joan, your original paintings bring the characters and stories
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  Speaker 3: in Grateful Dead songs to life. How did you decide
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  Speaker 3: what to illustrate and how did you develop the visual
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  Speaker 3: style for this book, which is amazing, by the way?
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  Speaker 4: Thank you so much. So it's, The Grateful Dead have
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  Speaker 4: the most recognizable visual language of any American band in history,
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  Speaker 4: maybe any band in history, arguably. And so it was
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  Speaker 4: very apparent to me as we were just conceiving of
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  Speaker 4: this book that that was not the language that I
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  Speaker 4: was going to keep my own visual language while approaching this.
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  Speaker 4: Instead of painting dancing bears, I painted bear bears. Um,
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  Speaker 4: you know, uh, what really was exciting to me about
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  Speaker 4: painting these characters, uh, was that I was able to
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  Speaker 4: crowdsource actual deadheads to be the models, um, for lots
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  Speaker 4: of the characters via Instagram. I sent out an APB, uh,
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  Speaker 4: and in the spirit of the band was able to, um,
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  Speaker 4: get a bunch of people who were really excited to
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  Speaker 4: be part of the book who are also part of
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  Speaker 4: the dead community and, uh, and paint them in there.
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  Speaker 4: And in terms of who was and wasn't included, it was,
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  Speaker 4: it was a process, uh, with Alex's writing process that
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  Speaker 4: morphed and changed. And there were a bunch of things
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  Speaker 4: that were there that weren't there. And then some other
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  Speaker 4: things that were going to be, you know, it's, which
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  Speaker 4: is the process of any, of any book. Um, But,
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  Speaker 4: I mean, there's so much to paint about just as
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  Speaker 4: there's so much to write about. There's kind of no
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  Speaker 4: wrong answers.
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  Speaker 3: Jerry was quite an artist, wasn't he?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. And he and Robert Hunter first bonded over
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: watching Harry Smith films. So, you know, thinking about just
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  Speaker 4: the universe of psychedelic art as it was part of
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  Speaker 4: the larger culture there. There's a great, you know, there's
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  Speaker 4: a great relationship always between art making and music making.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: I play bass in two bands in the process of
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  Speaker 4: figuring out a bass line for a song or figuring
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  Speaker 4: out a composition for a painting or not. All that
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  Speaker 4: different of a headspace. So, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: That's cool. So you're a bass player. Phil Lesh had
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  Speaker 3: such an interesting style. I think the story was he
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  Speaker 3: didn't play bass in the beginning, right? He had learned
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  Speaker 3: on the fly. So I think that led to his
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  Speaker 3: own unique style. Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And I think, you know, anytime you get a musician
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  Speaker 4: as absolutely masterful as Lesh, you can pretty much stick
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  Speaker 4: any instrument into a really good musician's hands. And be like,
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  Speaker 4: go to town and you'll get something great and they'll
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  Speaker 4: be able to pick it up quickly. And I think
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  Speaker 4: a lot of the time the most interesting players are
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  Speaker 4: players who maybe started out with another instrument or who
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  Speaker 4: maybe started out having another artistic discipline. Maybe somebody who's
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: a saxophone has started out as a ballet dancer or
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  Speaker 4: something and it shows up, you know what I mean?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: They approach it from a different angle. I told Alex
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  Speaker 3: before we started and before you joined this conversation, Joan,
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  Speaker 3: I could, I had like 50 different questions I could
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  Speaker 3: have asked. And there was so many songs I want
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  Speaker 3: to ask about, but I pared it down to some
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  Speaker 3: of the highlight songs for me personally. And I think
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  Speaker 3: songs that dead fans love. So let's start with, I
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  Speaker 3: know you rider. There's a fascinating history behind this song.
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  Speaker 3: It involves a young woman, Imprisoned at Mississippi's Parchment Farm
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  Speaker 3: in 1933. How did her song eventually become a Grateful
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  Speaker 3: Dead favorite?
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  Speaker 1: This was a song that was collected by Alan Lomax
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  Speaker 1: and his son were traveling around to various, you know,
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  Speaker 1: going around basically trying to catch the kind of vernacular
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  Speaker 1: music of Americans as pop music was coming in and
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  Speaker 1: radio and things like that. They recognized that these things
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  Speaker 1: were the era when there would be songs that were
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  Speaker 1: sort of just transmitted orally between people, you know, sort
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  Speaker 1: of in a community or something like that was, was ending.
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  Speaker 1: And so they were going around to sort of, to
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  Speaker 1: collect this music and record it and document it before
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  Speaker 1: that happened. And at some point they figured out that,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you know, they, they made this determination, which is, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you kind of, whether or not this was true, that
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  Speaker 1: like the place to find people who were authentically singing
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  Speaker 1: the songs of their world and, you know, untouched by
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  Speaker 1: radio and records and things like that were people in
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  Speaker 1: prison just because that was the, you know, they were
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  Speaker 1: sort of in the view of the Lomax is kind
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  Speaker 1: of isolated. And this was, you know, the woman who
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  Speaker 1: sang the song, her name is lost to history because
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  Speaker 1: they did not write it down. So we don't know
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  Speaker 1: who she is beyond what she was in jail for
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  Speaker 1: supposedly murdered. And She sang this song one day and
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  Speaker 1: then went back to whatever, you know, her work in
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  Speaker 1: the prison or something like that. And there's this recording
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  Speaker 1: made its way through and, you know, was published by
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  Speaker 1: the Lomaxes and then sort of taken up by the
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  Speaker 1: folk community in the 60s. And so these were songs
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  Speaker 1: that were just kind of in the air, like everybody
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  Speaker 1: would have known.
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  Speaker 2: I know you, Ryder.
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  Speaker 1: So this woman lives on in the form of this song,
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  Speaker 1: even though her name is lost to history, which I
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  Speaker 1: thought was kind of beautiful that it was, you know.
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  Speaker 2: We don't know who she is.
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  Speaker 1: And yet arenas full of people are singing along to
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  Speaker 1: the song when it comes out of, you know, the
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  Speaker 1: famous transition China cat, I know you ride her. It's
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  Speaker 1: like the, it is the, you know, often the peak
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  Speaker 1: point of, you know, the first set, you know, many,
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  Speaker 1: many a night. And yeah, so I think that was the,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it was stories like that that I thought
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  Speaker 1: were really fascinating that like it And, you know, they're not,
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't uncovering this a lot of this has been
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  Speaker 1: known for a long time, but I just thought making
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  Speaker 1: that connection. broadened the scope of what the dead were
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: about beyond just being about themselves because it can get
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: so self-referential that I tried to make this book tie
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: out and link out to as many things as possible.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: And similar is the Bonnie Dobson song, Morning Dew. I
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: actually did an episode. There was a book on Bonnie Dobson.
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  Speaker 2: No.
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  Speaker 3: And a lot of people didn't even know that she
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  Speaker 3: wrote this song. And the dead made it most famous
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: with their version. And the song's about the aftermath of
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: nuclear destruction. It's a dark topic.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I don't even think they knew. I don't think they
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: really had that information. I think it was just because
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the way that these things, you know, And, you know,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: everybody did this back then. It's like, you know, Bob
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Dylan put his name on folk songs that were folk songs,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and like he maybe brought something to them
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that sort of you could argue made them like differentiated
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  Speaker 1: them from the source material. But this was part of
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  Speaker 1: the folk tradition. And part of the folk tradition was
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  Speaker 1: these songs that had no author. And then another part
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  Speaker 1: of the folk tradition is signing your name to a
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  Speaker 1: song that had no author and being like, I kind
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  Speaker 1: of wrote this. And so like that thing, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the dead, the process, you know, the dead were a
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  Speaker 1: stepping stone in that process to Morning Dew living on.
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  Speaker 1: But there's this whole saga of the, you know, the
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  Speaker 1: different guys who covered it and, you know, added themselves
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  Speaker 1: to it as a co-writer. But with Bonnie Dobson, it's
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: like really cut and dry that like we know who
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  Speaker 1: the person is who wrote it. Like she's still around.
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  Speaker 1: Like so that's the that's the difference, I think, is
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: that we don't have. You know, she was not this
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: sort of anonymous prisoner. And she eventually took with help
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: from I think Robert Plant, I think was like, you know,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: sort of essential in bringing her back. Robert Plant and
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Jarvis Cocker from Pulp like curated a weekend of, you know,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: some of his favorite singers. And she was part of that.
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  Speaker 1: But it starts with Robert Plant basically sort of having
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: covered this song. And then Bonnie Dobson supposedly coming up
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: to Robert Plant's house and just being like, you know,
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  Speaker 1: a good knock knock. Like, you know, you're covering my song.
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  Speaker 1: And like, that's how, you know, it sort of.
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  Speaker 2: Goes from there.
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  Speaker 3: Fantastic story. And Joan, the image you use here for
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: that particular chapter, that's, that's a shot of a Bonnie, right?
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  Speaker 4: Yes. Yeah. It's a shot of Bonnie and just, I
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: wanted to make her ethereal and I wanted to make
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  Speaker 4: her kind of this, this, you know, glowing it's there,
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: there are some, touches stylistically throughout the book that are
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: art nouveau-ish because that ties back to a lot of
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: dead-related art. And so I wanted to abstract her in
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: a little bit of a way. There's kind of a
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: touch of that there. But it's, yeah, it's a pretty
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: dreamlike visage of her.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Bob Weir had a fascination with cowboy songs and country music.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Talk about those influences and how they shape his musical
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: identity and the dead's interpretation of songs like me and
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: my uncle. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting because he was not of that
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: world by birth, right? He was not a cowboy by, uh,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of by, by any kind of, you know, uh,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: demographic standpoint.
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  Speaker 2: He was from Atherton. He grew up in Atherton, California.
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  Speaker 1: He is, which is a very Tony community and was
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: even back then he was a silver spoon kid by
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: his own description. But, you know, we all have just
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: as people have like their summer on the road with
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead that changes.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Their life forever. He had a summer at.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: A ranch owned by John Perry Barlow's father where he
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: learned a bunch of these cowboy songs. And I think
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: it was the it was the beginning of that mythos. And,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I think like one of the things that we,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of the lesson of the 60s is that,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of a positive version of the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Kurt Vonnegut thing of be careful who you pretend to
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: be because you are who you pretend to be.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: And I think you can.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: You can become the thing so completely that it's sort of,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: it actually becomes your identity, even if you don't have
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: those roots. And I think like, you know, Bob, Bob
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: went cowboy, he went native and became somehow like, you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: this sort of this, this figure. And, you know, I
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: think if you listen to like the blue mountain album
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: or whatever, like it's, you know, his, his care for
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: that music and his sort of investment in that music
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: was so complete.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: You know, and Me and My Uncle is, you know, it's.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Written by John Phillips, who went on to be in
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the Mamas and the Papas and, you know, to be
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: somewhat of a controversial figure in his own right.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: Just somewhat.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Just somewhat.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Just a little bit. Somewhat of a not.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Maybe some not. There are some allegations that are sobering
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: about him in the reality. But like this was, you know,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: this was long before even he was, you know, famous
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: in that regard. So it's a cowboy song written by
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: a hippie. And, you know, in a sense, like Bob
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: has every right to to claim that, you know, as
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: as his legacy.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: And then eventually, you know, eventually he grows the mustache
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and like he kind of turns into he just looks
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: like a Buster Scruggs character.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, he's a very Coen brothers. So you figure.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Very Coen brothers.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: Super Coen brothers.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: It's amazing that how he trained. I saw him maybe five,
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: six years ago with his band, the Wolf.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Wolf Bros.
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. amazing show here in connecticut waterbury connecticut it was
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: a phenomenal show uh and you know i think his
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: death came as a surprise to everybody unless unless it
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: was those within his close circle right did you guys
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: hear anything.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: I know i mean i there were whispers i think
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: he after gd60 i think people were you know sort
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of looking at the the golden gate park concert you
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: know which turned out to be the last his last
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: dead and go performance i think People who saw that,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: there were moments, I write about it in the book,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: there's a moment when he dropped his pick and Mayer
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: goes and picks it up for him. And, like, he
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: thought it was just, you know, him, John being respectful.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: Deference.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Deference, exactly, to the king, you know, in a sense, like,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the sort of the reigning... I mean, I guess, you know, like,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: he's the longest serving, you know, at that point. You know,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Mickey joined after he did, obviously, so he's the last
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of the core four, like, who's in that.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: But I don't... I think... I think it came as
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: a surprise. We don't know anything about him really, or
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: nobody knew anything about his private life, but also it
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: came as a surprise because it seemed like he would
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: go forever, and it kind of seemed like he would
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: be young forever, in a sense, because he was always
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: the youngest.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, to watch him, you know, I didn't change
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: it after he died because I felt like we should, like,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: let's leave it as it was, but I had written
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the thing about going to see him at Sphere, going
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to see him with Denko, and.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: just how alive he seemed and how kind.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Of like, you know, so much just passion sort of
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: when you are like, you have that tight shot of
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: his face kind of blown up to, you know, stadium
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: height in front of you at the sphere, this apparition
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: of Bob there didn't, he looked like he was going to,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: you know, to do this until he was 170. Like
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: it was just kind of like, I, it was, it
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: was inconceivable in some way just because it seemed like this,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: work was keeping him alive and that he was going
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: to do it until the wheels fall off.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: And he basically did. It's interesting.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: We've talked about John Mayer up top. I feel like he's,
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: he's the guy for the future, although he hasn't said
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: anything that I'm not, not that I'm aware of, but
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: there's that great clip when they did the CBS morning,
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Sunday morning show. And Bob Weir is talking about a
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: dream that he had. And he sees John Mayer with
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: gray hair and taking the music. forward you know beyond
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: him i mean do you see that what do you
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: hope i.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Am fascinated by the idea that this band will live
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: on as like the ship of theseus you know with
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: no original members at.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Some point i think that's what they wanted i think
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: that's what the vision was right i mean the music
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: goes on beyond that?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: I suppose, yeah. I don't know.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm really, I'm so of two minds about
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it because the way that this book is written is that,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't get into Further and Rat Dog
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and all of the things that sort of follow the
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: people who picked up that baton and ran with it
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: and kept going and kept making Grateful Dead music and
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: playing this Grateful Dead music. And there will always be
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: people playing that music, but I.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Sort of struggle with the question of, like, is.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Is this, you know, does the music never stop? Or
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: is this a story that ended when Jerry's eyes closed?
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And everything after that is kind of, it's sort of
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: not germane. And I kind of split the difference because
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I do talk a bit about going to dead and
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: co-shows just because that's what was happening as I was
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: writing this. I had this weird hookup and I kept
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: going just because it was an amazing experience. But then
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I ended up kind of cutting a lot of that
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: stuff out of the book.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I think Mayer was more than not even a capable interpreter.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: That sounds really dismissive. I think that what he was
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: able to do to split the difference between being himself
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: on that stage and being just a conduit and in
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: service of what it was supposed to sound like, I
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: ended up pretty impressed by that over time. I mean,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: he kind of won me over the first time I
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: saw them play though, because we are the exact same
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: age and he had injured his back and he had
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: to sit down for most of the whole, for like
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: most of the set. And I was like, John Mayer,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I know exactly where you're coming from. Like I know
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: exactly what this, I too would probably not want to
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: stand for that entire time.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: I think what's really interesting about that question as a
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: whole also kind of goes back to what is the
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: entity of the Grateful Dead. Because they're so they're this
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: whole time there have been nine million amazing cover bands
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: all over the world and and and small uh small
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: medium large regional dead scenes that always go and support
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: these bands and that tour around with these bands and
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: So I think there's the question. To me, it's almost
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: more of a question of what will be put forth
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: in a capitalist world as the Grateful Dead versus where
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: is the music going? Where are the people going? What
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: is the spirit of it? Because I think for me,
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: the answer is that it's just around and i think
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: um you know just like with with any music genre
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: uh local scenes are are so important and foster really
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: beautiful connections between people and that is so in the
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: spirit of what um of what they were about so
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: i think there's that.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Too Some of the best times that I had at
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: watching Grateful Dead music be played were, you know, going
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: to see the band Richard Pictures at Gold Diggers here
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, which is not a sphere-sized venue and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: not a Dead & Co-sized touring draw.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: By any means.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: But there is an element of, you know, wherever to
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: have gathered in the name of the Grateful Dead, it
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: is the Grateful Dead, you know. And I think it's,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's like how, you know, like there
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: are always, you know, if anybody was around who'd seen
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare at the globe, they'd be like, yeah, you missed it.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: You know, like we still, you know, we still enjoy
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare to this day and there are still, you can
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: still go see Hamlet.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: And, you know, there's a meaning in that as well.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Such a long and rich history to this band going
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: back to 1970 for this next question, which the film's
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: a brisky point. Jerry improvised guitar music while he's watching
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: a love scene. He's matching his playing to the images
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: on the screen. How did that unusual recording session come about?
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: A lot of people had tried to do a soundtrack
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: for this movie. This is a Michelangelo Antonioni movie about
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: two crazy kids, crazy mixed up kids in the America
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: of the 1960s making their way and engaging with revolutionary
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: politics and.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Making love in the desert. And Michelangelo was a difficult
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: to please.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Many bands, a couple of bands tried. Pink Floyd spent
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: months trying to do a soundtrack for this. Very little
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: of that music made it into the thing, although if
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: you're a Pink Floyd fan, you've heard all of it
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: in various forms, including you've heard the song Us and Them,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: which came out of one of the songs they wrote. Obviously,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: so it's good enough for Dark Side of the Moon,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: but not good enough.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: For this movie.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: The great folk blues guitarist John Fahey tried to do
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: it and also did not.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: That went even worse.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: More terribly, apparently, you know, according to Fahey's account of it,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: like he gets in a fist fight with the director
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: at some point. And then Jerry kind of walks in
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and just, you know, being Jerry, I think, and just
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: kind of being someone who could handle sort of almost
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: any kind of, you know, who could just, just someone
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: who had the direct line from the brain to the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: fingers and was able to just sort of do this.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: And supposedly this is one or two takes. This what
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: you hear in the movie, and it is the most
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: fluent and fluid kind of it is as if he
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: has tried is seen this 500 times and written this,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: you know, specifically, but.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: He is improvising.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: He's just it's him on a stool with a guitar
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: watching the movie playing on screen. And that's what he played.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: And that's what came out. As much as like I
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: started out as a fan and admirer of Jerry, like
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: that was, you know, I went that much. deeper, like in, in,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: in my esteem for him every time, you know, every,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: everything that I listened to and everything that I saw.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: And that just to me speaks to, you know.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Kind of his sort of casual greatness that all of
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: these other people have tried very hard to do something
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: that is worthy of this, you know, very important, you know, and,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: and this moment in this movie, by the way, is
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: kind of absurd and like ridiculous. There are sort of,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: it's a bunch of modern dancers kind of coming out
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: of this. If you've ever seen this film, it's like,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a surreal experience. love scene where there's a,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: you know, an orgy on the sand and yet like
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: he brings something to it that like, I think all
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of the profundity, I think much as you know, his
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: in the grateful dead, he was the sort of, he
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: was the emotional core. He was the emotional anchor. He
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: was able to make you feel something in the midst of,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you know, there's two drummers freaking out and there's all
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: this stuff going on and lights and sound and everything.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: And like, it's kind of like that was, you know,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: his singing and his playing, uh, just became the center
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: of it. And I feel the same way about, you know, this,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: this soundtrack performance, you know, and probably wrote too much
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: about the movie as a result.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think so.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: It's the dark star chapter. So it has to be
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: a little too long. It has to go on.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Oh, of course.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: There's a formal aspect to some of it. So you
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: got to riff a little bit. You got to let
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: it flow.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. Joan, this is a question coming from
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: a novice. I am not an artist. Okay. So I
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: wonder if, jerry's approach to making music is do you
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: connect with that in any way as an artist as
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: in your approach.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: I think first i i whenever anybody is like i
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: can't paint i can't draw i'm not an artist i'm
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: a huge believer that.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Everybody's selling myself short.
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: I everybody anybody and everybody we when we're kids we
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: start out drawing right we lose it along the way
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: you just got to get back to that and i
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: think that that um that kind of taps into the
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: you know the the Buddhist idea of the beginner's mind,
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: which is what, like, eight out of ten times you're
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: in your first five days at art school, there's some
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: great teacher who will come in and talk to you
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: about beginner's mind. And having beginner's mind conceptually being, you
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: leave your ego at the door completely. If you walk
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: in thinking your hot stuff thing throw that in the
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: garbage can. If you walk in thinking you're the worst
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: thing that's ever existed, throw that in the garbage can.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: And it opens you up to create in a space
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: of non-judgment and weirder and more interesting and more fluid
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: things come from that. So I think if there's a,
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: you know, one large parallel to be drawn between what
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: I perceive as his, you know, creative process and what
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: I perceive as what my creative process was while making
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: this overall it's kind of that like sitting down and
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: and just I I had I had um.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: You know I.
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: Didn't I did just like with it with most paintings
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: I do anyway you don't exactly know how it's going
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: to be until it's done. And then you look and
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: you see what you did and you're like, huh, I
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: did it.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: Well, that very much is like the Grateful Dead approach, right?
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Start somewhere and see where it takes you.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: One of the pieces in the book is Hugh Hefner.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: And yeah, there's a, there's the memorable appearance on Hugh
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Hefner's Playboy after dark 1969. Let's get to what happened
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: behind the scenes there. And how did the band fit
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: into that unusual setting?
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, about as well as they fit into any setting.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I think they just, you know, get in, get in
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: where you fit in. Um, they just kind of approached
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: it as a set of conditions and, and.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: They, they did their grateful dead thing, uh, within that. Um,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: it was probably not the weirdest show they had ever played,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: but it might rank up there.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Basically what happens.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Is, uh, Owsley Stanley, who is both the, the acid
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: supplier for the band, uh, the creator of the acid
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: that launched the sixties, basically, you know, the Owsley acid
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: is the, it was the good stuff. It was about,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, is also their sound man when they
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: play live.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Brilliant. Brilliant mind.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Brilliant mind, a technical mind. Yeah. One of the, you know,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: there's a great biography of him called Bear by Robert Greenfield.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: And like, it's like, he's worth, he's worth a thousand.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: He's like, there are a couple of people who I
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: think need the movie before we do the Jerry movie.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Cause I think we don't need that so much, but
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: there are people in that orbit who I think need
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: a movie.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: And like, he's behind the wall of sound, I believe.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is his greatest creation, his greatest folly, whenever
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: you want to think about it.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's depicted in both this book and Quantum Criminals, too.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: That is right. He's a crossover with our Steely Dan book.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: He is.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: It was the first thing that we did together.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: So there's a few people for you trivia fans of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: our work.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Sorry, I sidetracked you there. But getting back to the Hugh.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you. Playboy After Dark. So Owsley is not allowed.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: The Playboy After Dark is a TV show.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: It's a real serious like CBS television production, like in
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: a studio with like union guys running the board and
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: all of that stuff. And Owsley comes in like, all right,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: time to set up the Grateful Dead sound for this.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: And I'll only need six hours to tune the room
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: or whatever it is.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: And they're like, get out of here.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: We don't need you to do this. You can hook
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: up the amps and then you can go sit over there.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: And in retaliation for this, uh, slight, uh, he doses
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the coffee pod supposedly. And everyone who has a cup
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of Joe, while they are making this episode of the
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: show begins tripping balls.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Can I say that? I don't know.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: There we go. That's the that's basically what happens.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I think this is a story that has
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: grown in the telling and become sort of embroidered by
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the various people who have told it. And I tried
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: to sort of get at that in the book by
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, it's the story of people telling
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: the story. In some ways, it's the story of Bill
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Kreutzman telling it on Conan and everything. But if you watch,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: you can watch the episode and it does seem like
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: things are getting a little bit weird. So it's this
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: very kind of like, you know, it's kind of a
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Mad Men moment of, you know, where they sort of
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the counterculture and the kind of stuffy culture of the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: 50s are sort of crossing paths a little bit. And,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, supposedly everyone is starts tripping out there
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: in Hugh's Now the question of course is did Hefner
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: have any coffee? The answer seems to be no because
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: he seemed to be very paranoid about people slipping stuff
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: in his drinks for whatever reason and seemed to have
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: a system in place to avoid this and so there's
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: different accounts of what happens.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: I like the.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Idea that he was sort of that this was a
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: psychedelic moment in his life and that he did not
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: know what he was in for. And I kind of
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite illustrations in the book, just
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: because it's like, what's in that pipe?
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: You know, like it's a very kind of like, yeah,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Was he even a dead fan at all? Did he?
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: No.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I can't even imagine.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: No, but Shel Silverstein, who you probably, everybody, you know,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Gen X childhood, like everybody knows Shel from that, you know,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: for like where the sidewalk ends and everything. Shel Silverstein
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: is a cartoonist, was a contributor to Playboy magazine, and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: he was friends with Jerry and with Rock Scully. They
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: were friendly from sort of just Bay Area circles and everything.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And Shel is like, has Hefner's ear and is able
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to sort of get them booked on this show.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: And, you know, chaos happens.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: But it's an amazing moment because it's like it's not,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a very positive moment in some ways.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Everybody seems to be having a really good time. And
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: they're like, this is like you get the sense that
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: maybe this is the most fun this show was.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Ever to do.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: You know, like actually it was like you're having a
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: pretend cocktail party. If you've ever been to a TV taping,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: it's really, really boring. Generally, like a lot of starting
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and stopping. You're just kind of standing around then feigning enthusiasm.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: It's cold in studios. Yeah, it's like sort of like
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: I bet this was not fun. And like it's kind
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: of a it seems like kind of a bad show. Honestly,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: like in general, like it's just it has a very
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: sort of eclectic booking policy. But there's a lot of
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: just like weird.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It's like weird Ed Sullivan age acts kind of crossing
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: over like 60s bands and.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Stuff like that.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: You know, so it's a strange thing. And like, it's, I,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I like it because it's kind of like this, you know,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: everything about it is so this show is so ersatz.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: It's a fake party where it's like, isn't this a
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: fun bar?
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah. Cause I could picture Jerry. I can see. Yeah.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: Jerry with that giggle, you know, just kind of shrugging
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: the shoulders. Like, you know, it's, it's right.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, cause it's, if you imagine reality, it's a hallucination.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: things become very amusing like and so if you just
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: kind of if you're more high than not you're just
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: like ah that happened like it's like and i think
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: you can see i love that the footage of him
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: because you can kind of see how he approached he's
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: like this is hilarious what's going on here you know
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: and it's just like there's just those moments like i
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: love when hefner's like so you guys think about playing
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: us a song and jerry's like absolutely not and then
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: he goes and plays like It's just, he just knew
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: what to do. Like it's just another, it's that same
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: fluency of like walking in and like, here's a brisky
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: point on a screen. And like, you're able to instantly
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: sort of just compose in your head.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: He was just fast. And like, there was just something like, that's.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: What I, one of the many things that I love
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: about him from, you know, everything that I've seen.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: Joe, what's the story behind? There's a, there's a man
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: with three eyes.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's Ken Kesey.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: And, and, and, you know, Mary Prankster's acid. I just
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: wanted to make him into a jubilant psychedelic clown with
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: a sweet third eye. I like how that painting came
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: out a lot. Yeah, I just, I wanted to kind
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: of make sort of a caricature of psychedelia I love
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: that one too.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Did you make, is that the poster for the gallery show?
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: Did you do that? Yeah, it is.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Is there a physical poster of that somewhere or is
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: it just the flyer?
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: No, I've just, I've just got the painting. I've got
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: the physical painting, but maybe I should make posters of
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: it too.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Cause some of these, they make you
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: think like the, the, the train conductor driving that train.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: It's an obvious reference, but then there's a snake going
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: through a skull. The Rose is, I'm thinking, a Ramblin' Rose.
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: And the train conductor is Alex. I painted Alex as
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: the train conductor.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: That's so cool. Oh, my God.
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: Look at this. Now I'm getting it here. Oh, my God.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: That's so cool.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I'm driving that train, I guess.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Not high on cocaine.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: And not crashing it, hopefully. But I feel like there
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: were moments when it was like, where is this? It's
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: like Darjeeling Limited. How can a train be lost?
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: It's on rails.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: And the snake going through the skull, man, that is cool.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of kind of crossover between um, dead
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: elements and, uh, American traditional tattoo elements too, that, you know, that,
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: that are these kind of, kind of sailor on the
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: sea sort of roses, skulls, snakes, uh, birds, you know,
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: things like that, that are, that are, um, there's, there's
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: something kind of, The kids use the word iconic all
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: the time, but there's something that has become, and it's
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: become part of an American iconographic lexicon.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: I like that.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Boy, that Janis Joplin one is phenomenal.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: There's a question I was going to ask about that
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: trip that the dead took with Janis. That's in 1970
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: to travel across Canada.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: Together on the legendary Festival Express train tour. Talk about
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: what happened during that trip that reveals just how close
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Janice was to the band.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: A lot of drinking, apparently, because nobody wanted to bring
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: drugs into Canada. It's a bunch of mostly American musicians
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: on a train across Canada performing. The idea is maybe
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: it's after Woodstock, and the idea is, oh, maybe a
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: little Woodstock in each town.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: We'll have them roving So.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like, you know, it's an early attempt
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: at like something like Lollapalooza a little bit was in
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: the 90s, where it's like we're all going to get
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: together and we're going to take this carnival from town
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: to town and do the thing. And the tour itself
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: is kind of a debacle. But there are amazing jam sessions.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: And years later, they will find this amazing footage of
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: all of these musicians, you know, playing together. So it's
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: like the band is on this tour. And, you know,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: I forget.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell. Yeah, it's like all of these folks.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Um, and, uh, the dead and there's a, you know,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: there's a moment when, uh, Janice and everyone else are,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: you know, just visibly wasted playing in a train car.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: And there's a moment that's captured between Jerry and Janice
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: that is very beautiful. And they had a, you know,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: there was obviously like a real kinship and a real friendship. And,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you can sort of, we can think about
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: like why that was, these are both people who were
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: kind of burning the candle.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: A little bit.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: And in Jerry's case, he lived longer than Janice did,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: but like, you know, it's, it's two people who would
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: eventually be taken down by that. And so maybe that's
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: the connection, but I think they also just had a
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: musical connection and they recognize like some kind of, you know, they,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: they had a, a shared lexicon of, of, of blues
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: and of folk music and all of those things. And
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: so they sing this song, uh, you know, uh, they're,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: they're doing a song with Rick Danko and at the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: end of it, like, uh, Janice makes some reference to this,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: the Blue Standard, Alberta, let your hair hang down.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: And Jerry's like, ah. Jerry's drunk. He's as drunk as
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: you've ever seen. He's not a drinker. But he is
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: legless in this. Like you can just tell. But it's
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: a beautiful moment. So I use this to frame the scene.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Story of what happens when Janice dies, which is, you know,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: there happens to be a Rolling Stone reporter backstage at
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a Grateful Dead concert on the night that she passes away.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: And obviously this is a, a chill goes through the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: entire San Francisco scene when this happens. And their reaction
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: in the moment is, reads somewhat callous. It comes across
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: as being a little bit cold and a little bit like, well,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: you know, people die. This happens, you know, And I
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: think there was an element of like, you know, sort
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: of just, OK, we're going to allow these people to,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: you know, to do what they want to do. And
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: if that means they're going to die, then they're going
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: to die. And like that's about, you know, the sort
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: of like to dedicate yourself to personal freedom is to
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: say like, OK, we're not going to try to pull
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: anybody back from the brink if the brink is where
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: they want to go. And so that's that's what happens
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: in that moment. But they also went on to write.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Jerry wrote on his first solo album.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: He wrote Birdsong.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Which they dedicate to Janis Joplin and is now recognized
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: as being about her. And it's this beautiful memorial. for
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: her that they go on to play hundreds of times
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: over the years and in a way i think it
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: was it it speaks to you know there's often like
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: there's the initial reaction to something And then there's the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: sort of like long-term reaction with the dead and sort
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, when you play the same songs
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: over and over again, you change and the song doesn't change, right?
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Like you come to it in a different way. And
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: you sort of, so.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: It's felt like just going through like the history of Birdsong,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: you know, seemed to like to illustrate that, you know,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: in some way.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: Jerry's solo, the work that he did as a solo artist,
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: I get into it more and more as time goes on,
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: some of the stuff he did.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Oh my God. Yeah.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, all of the ever for the, you know,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Garcia band and then like the stuff with, you know, the,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: the David Grissman stuff is, you know, is amazing. The
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: stuff that he did, you know, even like the, you know,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the shady Grove, the one that he did the end
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: of his life. Like I, I sometimes found it hard
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: to listen to the dead while I was writing this,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: just cause it was distracting. Like you want to, I
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: don't want to be listening to some other dead song,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: but I played that a pizza tapes off lock, which
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: is a real, that's a, that's a, you know, the
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: long like jam.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Sessions, Grissman. I forget who the third guy is, but like,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: that's an amazing. And you just realized what he could do.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: It had nothing to do with, you.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Know, amplification or electric guitars or anything like that, even
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: though he used those techniques, everything you could do with
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: that as well. Like he could just, you know, just
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: get there with just acoustic and, you know.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: Immense weight on his shoulders as the years went on.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: I think he enjoyed those solo projects just as a
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: release for him. Like, oh man, I can just play
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: music and not have to worry about all that other stuff,
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: you know, the expectations.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And I think those expectations were really hard for him.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: And they, everybody's like, Oh, if only he didn't have
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: to keep touring to, you know, sort of finance the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: grateful dead machine.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Cause there was a huge payroll.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: There's a huge organization and he couldn't walk away long
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: enough supposedly to get clean, to go sort of, to
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: actually stay away from that, you know, long enough to,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to really be in.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Recovery and do that.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: But there's also all this evidence that like, The minute
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: he got done with the Grateful Dead tour, he was
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: back out doing JGB stuff and like he was constantly
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: doing that. And I think it's like he's just going
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: to be he was going to be creating all the
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: time anyway. It's maybe the sort of like leading that
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: sort of being an arena band, which is what they
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: were by the end, you know, by the sort of
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: by the mid 90s when he passed away. Like, I
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: think that was a different kettle of fish.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: But the the work.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: He was going to be doing that work. There was
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: going to be a guitar in his hands, no matter what.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, like he was still sort of, you know,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: there was a guitar in his hands and his, the
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: depths of the, at the worst of his heroin addiction
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem like that ever went away. His boy, he
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: lost his voice to it eventually, I think, but like
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: he could still play like, I think pretty much up
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: until the end.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: Like it didn't, you know, that was.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: Agreed.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Agreed. Which is the hard part.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Cause if it was a debil, if it was affecting
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the music, then something then somebody might have done something
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: about it he might have done something about it but
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: it wasn't and it was like that's that's the vexing
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: thing it's like you can say like oh they got
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: into cocaine and whatever but like they made some of
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: their best music in the cocaine years and you know and.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: So many roads from that last show believe it was
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: from the last show boy there was promise for the
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: future they were going to make a 30th anniversary album
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: and that was going to be one of the songs.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a few things toward the very end that
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: didn't really make it into, you know, that never made
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: it onto an album. Because after a while, the studio
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: records kind of were just a, you know, just an
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: excuse to tour a contractual kind of thing. But, you know,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: they were still... Him and Hunter, you know, Hunter was like,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: this was the beginning of something new for us.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: And then he never got to follow up on it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Favorite era for each of you. Joan, would you have
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: a favorite era of the dead?
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: I guess... I'm going to say the bookends, the very
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: beginning and the very end.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: And I say that because I think spending time with
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: the bookends helps to kind of contextualize the whole middle.
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: That's interesting.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm very partial to 77 books. Um, which is
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a real, like, like that's, you know, it's, it's the
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: year of my birth, but like, it's also, I feel
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: like there's something going on where, you know, they just become,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: they morph into this really interesting kind of jazz inflected thing.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: They have, they are playing their own music at the
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: sort of the highest level of like technical facility. And
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: that's kind of amazing to me. You know, we wrote
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: a book about Steely Dan and like, we've been talking
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a bit about the Grateful Dead Steely Dan. connection and
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: in a sense I feel like that might be where
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: they are at their most Dan which might be what
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I love about them at the same time like if
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: you put on anything from 71 72 it's like you
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: don't it feels like you don't need anything else as
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: much as I love the primal stuff that precedes it
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: the real sort of you know the live dead era
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: the psychedelic you know that just sort of the fiery
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: psychedelic stuff there's something about like Europe 72 that just
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: feels like they have arrived at you know, the point
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: where all of this, it's, it's their most American music.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: It's the music that they made in another country. And
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: somehow it's as if they're acting as like the ambassadors
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: of America. Like they have sort of taken in all
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: of this stuff and they're going to, you know, to
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: pour it out, um, in, in their own way. I
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: kind of go up through, uh, I, I, I, the, I,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: it was tough to make myself listen to nineties stuff,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: but I probably, uh, listen to more of it while
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: working on this, just because I was like, I gotta,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: I gotta really get dig into 92 or whatever, you know,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: like that kind of the, the, the later era. And then,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously like I, I, I didn't, I waited
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: to listen to the last show until like relatively late
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: in this process.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: But may of 77 is the, uh, may.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Of 77, incredible time in the history of this band.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: That's how I became a fan. My older brother had, they,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: he gave me the bootleg of, um, uh, New Haven.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: New Haven, May of 77.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Really good. Fox Theater is the one that I love.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: I've been talking about this in every interview, but the
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Jackarrow from the Fox Theater show on the 18th is unbelievable.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: They always turn into talking heads. They're funkier, I think.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: The funk comes to the fore a little bit. It's
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: a dangerous thing for a jam band to play with
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: the funk.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: It can go so wrong.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: And there are so many third rails to step on,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: but I think it really works.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: But those late 80s shows when Jerry was getting back
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: in good health and he was back on his game again.
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: There's some magical shows there, 89. Oh, yeah.
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: And the dead Dylan situation.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Must we forget.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: Well, staying with the 80s, in the mid-80s, this is
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: a great story from the book. An 81-year-old mythologist, Joseph Campbell,
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: attends his first Grateful Dead concert, comes away deeply moved.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: What did he experience that night that made such an
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: impression on him?
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: It's San Francisco. I forget the venue, but he's, you know,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: he's sort of based around there. And yeah, he has
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: this amazing moment where he, you know, he's studied, you know.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Campbell is the mythologist who's kind of studied the basically the,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the idea of like You know, he's the
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: root of the mono myth, the idea that cultures that
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with each other have the same
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: myths and sort of like he's the reason people sort
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: of I think, you know, if you've heard one thing
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: about him, it's that you know that George Lucas kind
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: of took a lot from him for Star Wars, which
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: becomes its own kind of cultural myth.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: And like you were always, you know, it's like sort
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: of the it's the he's the other concept of, you know, the.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Circular narrative of mythology, you know, comes from him.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: But he's also someone who has studied these.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Kind of, you know, orgiastic rights and everything. And he's
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: seen all of these, you know, I think he's never
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: been to a rock concert before. So he's looking out
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: at all of these people kind of like like getting,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you know, participating in it. And like that, he's he
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: makes that connection really sort of really beautifully because it's
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: just it's something so alien to him. And yet it
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: looks incredibly different. familiar having studied all of these other
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: kinds of you know cultural rituals that you know brought
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: people together and i think you know there's not a
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: whole lot in this book somewhat by design about the
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: crowds and about the people going to these shows partly
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: because i think that you know so so much of
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: so much has been written about and by people who
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: participated in this thing you know up through 1995 when
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: it ended and sort of people who were at shows
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: I was not, I never saw Jerry. It would be
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: stolen valor for me to really sort of write too
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: much about what that was like. But I think it
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: was a way to sort of address like the, you know,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the power of that crowd. And like you were, you
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: mentioned that, you know, the sort of the post coma
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: stuff in the eighties, like I think some of what's
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: so magical about that is that you can feel them
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: sort of being lifted almost completely. by the enthusiasm of
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: this crowd that maybe thought they were never going to
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: see Jerry again. And so, like, when he's up there
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, singing I Will Survive, like, and everybody's,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: you know, freaking out.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Like, you can't not get to feel that moment even,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: you know, 30, 40 years hence.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: Jill, you have for the chapter on Terrapin Station, she's
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: taught a lady with a fan.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she also.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: This painting also kind of pulled a little bit from
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: Art Nouveau stylistic approaches where a lot of Art Nouveau
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: work had had sinewy, um, not completely clothed women with
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: dreamy looks on their faces, kind of staring into the
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: middle distance. Um, and, you know, lots of natural bounty
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: around her. Um, it, it, yeah, that's the, that's, those
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: are the, the main things that I remember, um, with
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: my approach to her. I was thinking about when y'all
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: were talking about the Joseph Campbell stuff, the painting that
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: I did for that, for the Holy Ghost, for that
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: has a bunch of, it has grapes because they're Dionysian.
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: There's like the Bacchanalia of it and different masks because
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: Joseph Campbell was really interested in the language of symbols.
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: So there are a lot of Joseph Campbell symbols around
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: this ghost that has kind of like a kid's bed
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: sheet sort of situation. But yeah, for Lady with the Fan,
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of the characters were female throughout
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: their catalog and throughout the book. There's a dreaminess there.
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: There's a sort of a spirit inside and there are
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: characters that you can project yourself onto.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: There is that incredible story. You talk about myth and
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: it isn't a myth. Apparently, it is a true story
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: that Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia, they both came up
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: with Terrapin Station during the same lightning storm.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they've given it. They talked about it in interviews
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: and that there's a great interview.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I think it's a David Ganz interview where they like
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: there's like there's a wonderful book of like all of
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: these interviews with them. And obviously so many of the
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: people in this book are dead. And so like I
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: owe for, you know, every every good quote is mostly
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: something that someone else gathered over the years. And, you know,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: kind of that I sort of pulled from those sources. And,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: you know, great thanks.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: To everybody who spoke to the living members of the
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Grateful Dead while they were here.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: But yeah, they have this moment when there's a lightning
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: storm in the Bay Area and they are both, I
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: think Jerry's driving and Robert Hunter is sitting in his house,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: sort of just watching it out over the Bay, like,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of, and he's out there in the,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: you know, on the Marin side. And, you know, he just,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: he writes a line and then supposedly at the same moment,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Jerry has this guitar part just.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Fall into his head fully formed.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: And it's the guitar part for Terrapin Station, which is,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously interesting. Then gets embellished and embroidered and
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: turned into this very elaborate thing, you know, but like
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: the the sort of the moment of inspiration, like there's
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: just things in this book that.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: It's sometimes like it would.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Sound corny coming from anyone else. But they're all the
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: you know, someone like Hunter talking about his muse. And
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: all of that, it's like, these are like, like writers
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: and artists don't really talk this way anymore. And I
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: kind of loved that they were just sort of, they
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: were unselfconscious about it. And they were like, we are
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: acting as conduits for something. You know, we are, Jerry was,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: you know, said he was a composer who just composed
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: in the moment. You know, it wasn't like he was,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: it was not improvisation. It was composition. But so there's
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: a process happening where it's like, you know, there is
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a song and you are the person sort of just
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: translating it to, so people can hear it. you know,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and it just, it, where does it come from? It
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: drops into your head, you know, by itself. And, you know,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: it comes in, it comes in on a pure beam.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Which is what Hunter said about the, about the song.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: And supposedly he just sits for three days and types
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Terrapin Station lyrics and ends up with a song that's
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: like twice as long and twice as complicated and confusing
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: as the version that they put out. So they record
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: like half of it. And there's recordings by, I think
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: it's I think it's Lesh's band maybe did the entire thing.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Like some people, there's live versions where you can hear
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the entire thing performed by, you know, some of the
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: original people.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: I don't think the dead, the dead never played it.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: What's the length of time? It's like 14 minutes. It's crazy.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: It's a long, and there's all of these additional verses
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: and like different characters show up and everything. And like this,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the Terrapin Station chapter, I think though, is really the
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: one that's like, I think it's, it illustrates the best,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: what the Jerry Hunter relationship was about creatively and like
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: what the sort of the greatness of that pairing, which
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: I put up with, you know, even though he was not,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: you know, officially like a player in the band, I
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: put it up with Lennon McCartney, like in terms of the,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: you know, just the synthesis that they had together and
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: the way that they complimented each other. And what it is,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I think is that, Jerry knows what to take away.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Hunter presents this vast sort of like, you know, you know,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: top chef kind of played table of ingredients or something.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: And Jerry knows.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly what to pull out, just the little the best
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: parts of that and what to what to throw out.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: And he sort of tames the like Hunter's kind of more,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of sprawling impulses. And so you end
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: up with something like Terrapin Station, which is really very
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: cut down from like what the original conception was.
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: And we can't forget about the Weir and Barlow combination too,
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: because that was magical as well. Talked about 1977, Estimated Profit.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: It's one of those songs that I took to right
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: away hearing that version, the live version.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: From New Haven.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: Talk about their chemistry too. I mean, that particular song
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: explored that darker side of California's counterculture, you know, with
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Manson and people like that, Jim Jones, devoted followers. Yeah, cults.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that was the, yeah, it's the great
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: dark side of the 60s is that people were prepared to,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: they were looking for something to follow. They were looking
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: for a life outside of the, you know, the life
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: that had been prescribed to them. And sometimes you would
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: find the thing that would be, you know, like really
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: sort of like nourish you spiritually. And sometimes you would
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: find people who are ready to prey on that desire
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: and kind of pull you into some Jonestown-esque situation.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: But those guys, especially, I think.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: You know, by Weir's sort of own account in, you know,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: one of these interviews that's quoted in this book, like
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: they flocked to the grateful dead space. And there were
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of those guys floating around in that world.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: And like estimated profit is a sort of an attempt
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: to kind of project into the mind of some, you know,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: and also of the guys who were convinced that, sort
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: of in a, you know, almost in like a Mansonoid way,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: the way that Manson thought the Beatles were speaking to
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: him and giving him specific kind of messaging about certain
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: things that he should do and what was, you know.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Going to happen.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: There were people I think who felt that way about
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: who flocked to the dead. And so estimated profit is,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: is about those guys. But yeah, it's a product of the,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: the we're John Barlow relationship because basically like we're in
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Hunter fallout as co-writers, like they can't work together, you know,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: like there's a lot of things. It's like, um, You know,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: they just they just don't get along. I think it turns,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you know, into a, you know, like not a physical brawl,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: but it's a creative clash at some point. But Barlow
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: ends up writing a lot with with Bob and with
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Brent as well. Midland over the, you know, sort of
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: the latter sort of run of the band, like they
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: would sort of work together and like they had this,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: you know, they end up having this amazing relationship. Barlow
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: is a fascinating Barlow is another guy who needs a
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: movie like, you know, needs like a doc.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: Least sure yeah because they talk a lot about the
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: hunter garcia pairing but bob and and and john perry
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: barlow boy they had a they had a magic together
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: as well yeah i like how.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Much it's sort of there are so many authors there's
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: so many lead singers and there's so many authors that's
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: like it is uh you know and yet it is
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: sort of somehow becomes one thing and one body of
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: work it's out out of many one i really i
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: that's one of the things i love about it that
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: like there can be You can, you know, again, it's
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: like Ship of Theseus, you can bring in different people,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: but it's somehow it's still the dead if it's all
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: of these people playing it together.
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: Also, I think it speaks to, I guess, the selflessness
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: as an artist, because a lot of artists will probably say,
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: I don't want anybody to write my lyrics. You know,
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: I want it to be all mine.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Jerry didn't write lyrics. He didn't like writing lyrics.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, isn't that interesting, huh?
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: He just didn't, just had no desire and no, I
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: don't think, acumen. And I think he understood that about himself.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: you know, in the, and he just didn't, it just
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't of interest to him. And I think, you know,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: somebody like, obviously like with where you have the more
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: classic kind of scenario of the, the, the, you know, the,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: the number two guy who also has writes his own
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: songs and like has that, you know, there doesn't seem
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: to be, have been a lot of tension around that
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: necessarily just because, because Jerry was so not interested in that.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: But I think it just gets back.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: To sort of the pieces of the rock and roll
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: thing that Jerry had no real interest in.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: He was not looking to be this, you know, dynamic
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: front man. And so in some ways.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Like that fell to Bob to be the sort of the,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: you know, the, the, the genial host, he didn't really,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: you know, he didn't talk to the audience all that much. Jerry,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: he was just kind of there and it was, you know,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: you know, so it's, it's, there's that, there's that element
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: with him that I kind of love that he was
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: able to be somehow private, even when he was up
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: there performing this very emotional music. Like it did, there
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: was a, there was a remoteness. He just, there was
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: a connection that you couldn't form with him or he
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to sort of honor that, you know, like,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: you know, like he wasn't going down and high-fiving anybody
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: in the front row.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: It's just not, it's just not the way.
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: He always said, I'm not the leader, but though he was.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: He was. He was the face of the band. And
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: I think that's part of it, too. He said, look,
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: this is a collaborative effort. Robert's the one who writes
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: the lyrics, and I got this band around me. But yet, yeah,
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: all that weight on his shoulders.
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, Pigpen was the singer. That was the thing.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: He was the lead singer. He was not the lead
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: singer when the band started. And so like the fact
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: that he would end up sort of being the center
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: of the thing, it's like we don't like, you know,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I think probably the kind of cult of Jerry, the
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: idolatry of Jerry was already had grown in by the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: time Robert, you know, Ron McKernan, Pigpen, who was the
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: original singer of the Grateful Dead by the time he
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: passed away, like 72, like, but. Yeah, there's something about
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: like he never wanted that role and he didn't set
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: out to have that role. And he would have just
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: been the guitarist with Mystique playing behind, you know, this
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: big biker dude.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: He hated being in charge. It's still a mind blowing
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: that Bob Weir and and Bob Weir and Pigpen that
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: that the band wanted to fire. And there was never
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: really they never really like Jerry was not that type
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: of guy. He was like really passive. So there was no,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: like you're out of the band. It was kind of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: like things aren't working out and then they, they go
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: their separate ways and then just get back together.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I mean, so I don't know.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, have you ever worked at a place where
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: people just kind of showed up And eventually like the
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: George Costanza just showing up.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: A hundred percent. Yeah.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Well, it's that, but it's also, it's like the dead
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: are like, it's almost like, you know, the thing where like,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: if it's a record store or something cool, like it's
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: a surf shop or something, there'll just be people who
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: show up and eventually like they can ring you up.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Like maybe they have some authority, but like no one's
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: ever really hired.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: No one's ever really fired.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: And it was kind of like, it was like, we're
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: kicking you out of this band. And like, that was,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I think a warning to them that, those to to
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: pigpen and to bob that they needed to start growing
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: a little faster in the direction i think bob grew
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: the most is the thing like i think he became
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: the most like he sort of as a singer as
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: a writer like he sort of became the most adventurous
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: like you know from starting from where he started where
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: it was really just a rhythm guitar guy just try
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: you know kind of because jerry could play lead and
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: rhythm almost simultaneously like he was just the other guitarist
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: and then i think he jerry's sort of fully formed
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: by the time he joins dead and bob never stopped
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: growing so.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: True yeah i the sammy hagar had that great quote
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: one of the documentaries about his phrasing it's like so unusual.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: And yeah if you listen to if you listen to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: sort of isolated there's a thing in the talk about
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: it in the book but like you can go on
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: youtube and there's like isolated bob is really some of
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: the weirdest stuff you can listen to because you're like
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: how is this part of the song and yet When
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: you actually hear it in context, there's some kind of
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: amazing thing that happens when these things overlap. But he's
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: just playing some strange phrase that feels like half a sentence.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: It's not a traditional rhythm line at all. He's just
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: filling in these gaps around where Jerry is. And that
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: combined with Phil being basically a lead guitarist who's playing
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: a bass guitar, there's nothing like it in the world.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: Nothing like it. So after you've explored so many stories
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: and characters and mysteries behind this music, has writing the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: book and Joan, for you, contributing with your art for
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: this project, for this book, has it changed the way
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: you personally hear these songs?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: I think yes.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: And I also, I learned a tremendous amount doing this.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: There was, there's so, there's, I mean, One of the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: great things about this band is that you can learn forever.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: There are endless shows to listen to, endless seemingly things
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: to learn. And anytime I think you're really critically looking
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: at a band, if you're the kind of listener who
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: likes to pick shit apart um like i am it
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: it really really makes the experience a lot richer because
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: you start listening for certain things and you start noticing
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: patterns you start noticing things showing up again and again
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: and that that allows you to kind of follow a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: breadcrumb trail into it um that's a really rewarding.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: One exactly what you're talking about yeah alex for you.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Probably, I'm pretty sure I could never get to the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: bottom of this band and what they signified and what
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: they did and everything that they did. And I often
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: had the feeling that I could have written a book
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: that had no overlap with this one from everything that
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: I took in. Like there could be a second book
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: that would have nothing to do with this, which I
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: don't know. Um, but yeah, no, I don't, I'm never, it's, they're,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: they're different every time I come back to it. And,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I've sort of, I took a little break
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: from this music for a while cause I've been sort of,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: you know, steeped in it.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, you look at.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Your Spotify wrapped and it's just comical that you've listened
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: to 103,000 minutes of Grateful Dead music or whatever. And
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: that's not even counting bootlegs cause it's only what's on
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Dick's Picks and Spotify and like, you.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: Know, uh, but.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I took a little break from it, but I've
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: been getting ready for doing these interviews and for the
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: book coming out and kind of re-acclimating to it. And
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: I'm hearing different things. But I will say the biggest,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: I think, change was that I have, as much as
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: I thought he was a cool guy before, I have
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: respect on a level for Philip Chapman Lesh that... I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: never really got it before. It was like, oh, Phil,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: the weirdo bass player, all of that stuff. But I
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: became somebody who kind of is like, where's Phil? I
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: entered the Phil zone in the course of doing this,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I think. I sort of knew that Jerry was the GOAT,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: but he stands head and shoulders for me.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: That's cool.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: I became much more of a sort of just like
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: a real student of like, that's where my ear goes now.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: I'm like, what's Phil doing?
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: Cause I've heard a lot about him and his unique
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: style is unusual, an orthodox style to playing the bass
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: and just how it works so perfectly for this band.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: And maybe it wouldn't have worked for any other band,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: but this one, I don't know, but.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: It sounds like it shouldn't work.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: There should not be the, the bass player in your
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: band should not be the most classically trained musician.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: He should not be like doing his own thing. like
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: all the time.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: Like if you've ever played in a band, it's like,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: they're sort of like you, but he just was like,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: he had no interest in like, you know, he's like
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: in the first two weeks, he was like, okay, so
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: To hold down the one and the three or whatever.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: And like, that's, you know, like you got so bored
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: of that so quickly and just became, you know, throw
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: out the rules.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're all their own. It's like, you know,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: it's the weirdest. There's no, they're, they all learn to
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: play by playing with each other. So there's nothing they
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: could not have really fit into any sort of scenario,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: but like, yeah, I just, I became such a fill head.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: Friends of the Devil, the book's out November the 3rd.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: So about the time that this episode is up, that's
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: probably around the time this book is out. So you
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: can find it where books are sold, right? Online, all
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: the usual places, bookstores, social media sites you want to
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: get out there.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: Both of us are on ye olde Instagram at Joan
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: LeMay and he is on Instagram.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Just my last name, Papademos. You can find out all
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: of those things.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: If you are in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: we will be having in stores, which you can find
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: out about by looking at those socials.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: And in New York City.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, a three day long gallery show at 14 B.C.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: Gallery on the Lower East Side. With all the work
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: from the book.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: Is that the week of the book release?
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: That is November 19th, 20th, and 21st. The opening is
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: the 19th at 6 p.m. I will be there all
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: three days. And you can get books from me there
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: as well. But I will be selling paintings there.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Will you sell a painting off the wall? If somebody's
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: like that one, we will just, yeah, take it down.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: Like, let's do it. That is how it works. That's how,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: that's how I did.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Great, big, beautiful art market.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: That's right. The best place that I should put the
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: links to, to your Instagram sites, maybe your Instagram pages
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: are best. So I can, can look those up and
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: make sure we get those in the show notes. Alex
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: Pepademos and Joan LeMay. Thank you so much. This was awesome.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Such a joy.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: That's it. It's in the books.