A Long Strange Trip (70 page)

45

Shakedown (10/78–10/80)

The tension was exceedingly thick in the Dead’s dressing room on the night of November 11, 1978. They had never before appeared on live national TV, and, as usual in critical moments, their vulnerabilities were exposed. Saturday Night Live was, in one critic’s words, “the victory party for the sixties on television.” Dressed as Elizabeth Taylor for his first skit, John Belushi poked his head into the room and smirked, “You can do it, it’s okay, relax. You’re only performing in front of”—and his voice dropped into a croon—“60 million people.” Ulp.

The Dead’s appearance on
SNL
was an anomaly, not the result of being chic or successful (that year
SNL
’s musical guests included Mick Jagger, and the show’s spin-off comic blues band, the Blues Brothers, had the nation’s number one album), but because of something more personal. Even in 1978 everyone, it seemed, knew at least one Dead Head.
SNL
producer Lorne Michael’s in-house Dead Head was one of his most creative writers, the author of Belushi’s Elizabeth Taylor skit, Tom Davis. Davis had encountered
Live Dead
at a party in high school and staggered onto the bus to stay, attending college in California mostly because of its proximity to Dead shows. In the mid-seventies he had joined an improvisational comedy troupe with his friend Al Franken, and around that time met Garcia. Davis’s and Garcia’s senses of humor fit perfectly, and their initial raves touched on books and movies, especially science-fiction films. Garcia had a poster of the film
Alien
on his dressing room wall, and the conversation swiftly turned to Kurt Vonnegut’s
The Sirens of Titan,
which proved to be both Tom and Jerry’s favorite novel.

Franken and Davis had gone on to be among the first writers hired at
SNL,
and by 1978 Tom was able to go to his boss and beg him to book the Dead, “just for me.” Ever distrustful of television as a performance medium, Garcia didn’t want to do the gig, despite the heavy boost it would provide the new album,
Shakedown Street,
which would be released four days later. The drummers, however, were sufficiently in favor to sway the band. There was an intuitive bond between them and Belushi, the reigning star, a true sharing of manic energy. In fact, the drummers wanted to use giant drumsticks to do a samurai drum piece, a takeoff on one of Belushi’s favorite shticks at this time. The idea was scotched, although Kreutzmann had a part in a skit. Though they were the biggest fans, the drummers had considerable difficulty in actually
doing
comedy. Bill Murray later told Davis that looking into the “dark, dark pools” of Kreutzmann’s eyes during Murray’s “Nick Sands” lounge lizard skit almost bumped him entirely off his stride.

The band asked Davis what he wanted them to play, and he told them, “You know, I think Jerry should play pedal steel, because it sounds so good on television.” This less-than-practical notion ended Davis’s input into the song choice discussion. Ultimately, they chose a reliable old tune, “Casey Jones,” and a Weir medley from the current album, “I Need a Miracle” and “Good Lovin’.” They had rehearsed for several days at a New York studio prior to the appearance, but they were still quite nervous when they got to NBC, especially Garcia. When the director, Dave Wilson, asked Jerry to stand in front of the microphone and stay there, he got a simple “No.” “Well, then I’m not going to get you [in the shot].” “I don’t care.” Fortunately, Garcia settled down for their performance, which proved to be respectable. By the postshow party, everyone was in the best of moods, as well as extremely ripped;
SNL
was one of the very few scenes on the planet that could compete with the Dead for drug abuse. The evening ended at the Blues Brothers Bar, a private club Belushi and Dan Aykroyd owned in the Village, with the “Stink Band”—Belushi played drums, Hart played bass, Aykroyd blew harp, and after every song, they’d chorus, “We stink.”

Their performance had little effect on the reception of
Shakedown
Street,
which was a hit-or-miss piece of work. The cover was brilliant, a comic depiction of Front Street by Gilbert Shelton, creator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. The Dead had brought in Little Feat’s Lowell George as a producer, at least partly on the premise that he would “understand band mechanics.” Unfortunately, Lowell was no more disciplined than the Dead, and contributed very little. Once, he spent the night at Front Street with Mickey Hart, snorting coke and writing a never-recorded song called “The Drum Is My Woman” instead of doing the overdubs they were supposed to be working on. At dawn, as they were leaving, Lowell turned to Hart and said, “You know the conga drum sound on
Diga?
I hated it. It sucked.” Always gracious in the face of criticism, Hart tackled him and began to choke him, at which point Lowell began to hyperventilate and have heart palpitations. In any event, the trip to Egypt had interrupted recording, and when they returned, Lowell was on tour, so the band finished it themselves.

There was great material on
Shakedown Street,
especially the title song, which though indifferently recorded on the album would be a performance staple for years to come. “Fire on the Mountain” was another brilliant song, written as the hills near Mickey’s ranch were in flame, and the reggae influence was superbly tasteful. The same could not be said of the flimsy pop sound on “Good Lovin’ ” or the lightweight lyrics of “I Need a Miracle,” a portrait of a woman with an unhealthy obsession about Weir who lived next door to Front Street. “If I Had the World to Give” was one of the odder songs Garcia and Hunter ever produced, an extremely sentimental love song weighed down by its somnolent tempo. It was not terribly surprising that the band would play it only three times. At that, they were pleased to have ground out an album, even if they’d padded it with a retread, a second studio recording of “Minglewood Blues.”

As usual, any number of dark clouds hovered over the Dead. Garcia’s drug abuse was only marginally worse than that of the rest of the band members, but because everyone depended on him to be the emotional center, it got more attention. Studio technician John Cutler had even tried to protest Garcia’s condition by organizing a strike that would prevent them from performing on
Saturday Night Live.
By now, Jerry had moved to the downstairs in-law unit of Rock Scully’s home on Hepburn Heights in San Rafael, not far from 5th and Lincoln. Garcia’s room—it was essentially a studio apartment—was relatively small and plain. Upstairs, Scully conducted his business from a large walk-in closet off his bedroom. In the early eighties, Garcia rarely went to bed, sleeping sitting up in his large lounge chair in front of a TV that was always on, even when he went on tour. Hepburn Heights was a pretty sad place. Somewhat later, Rock and his wife, Nicki, would separate.

The most regular visitor to the house was Nora Sage, a fan who’d been incessantly sending mail and gifts to Garcia since 1976. One day Nicki asked Jerry’s assistant Sue Stephens who the new gardener was. Sue was confused, then replied, “Is she short, and does she wear a string of pearls? Oh-ohhhh.” Sue told Nicki that she felt that Nora was bad news, because at least once she’d been bodily removed from a Garcia Band show at Jerry’s and John Kahn’s request. By now, Rock’s main function, as perceived by the rest of the band, was as Garcia’s partner in drugdom, and it was Sue’s belief that Rock used Nora as a diversion in this pursuit. Soon Nora was the housekeeper at Hepburn Heights, bringing receipts to Sue for reimbursement, and she managed to entrench herself.

The rest of the Dead had plenty of their own emotional problems. Keith and Donna, as individuals and as a couple, had deteriorated badly over the eight years they’d been in the Dead. Keith was a once-brilliant player with terribly low self-esteem and a great deal of emotional pain, and the worst possible environment for him was one with lots of stress and myriad opportunities for self-medication. Cocaine had damaged his sense of time in playing, which had always been his weakness, and by now he was drowning in whatever he could find, ranging from prescription drugs to heroin. The ongoing marital battles between Keith and Donna were distressing to everyone.

The band also had major financial troubles. The adventure in Egypt had cost about half a million dollars, and the plan had always been to release a live album to pay for it, making a special package out of photographs and Kelley’s marvelous pyramid poster, in which American rattlesnakes and roses took the place of asps and indigenous rushes. But Garcia stunned Loren by refusing to allow the material to be released, attributing his decision to the fact that Keith’s electric piano was out of tune. This was true, but if the band had played well, the piano could have been ignored. They hadn’t. The Egypt debt combined with the remaining leftovers of the Bank of Boston/Grateful Dead Records mess meant that there was never any extra money, and that led to squabbling over the infamous O/A, office slang for “on account.” Band members and employees could get advances on their salaries by taking out money O/A, and they did so with abandon. Phil had his Lotus sports car, Kreutzmann had his ranch, Mickey wanted equipment for his studio, Keith and Jerry bought drugs. Despite their increasingly high ticket revenues, their finances were an oppressive carousel that kept everyone stuck.

Late in November they were struck by two waves of trouble, one from outside and one within. On Thanksgiving Day, the twenty-third, they were in Washington, D.C., and Rock Scully came back to his room to tell the band about true horror, strange news coming from the obscure country of Guyana. The story hit home to any Bay Area resident. A local charismatic preacher by the name of Jim Jones had blended left-wing politics and religious cultism and led hundreds of Bay Area people to establish a new world in Guyana. Now they were all dead, victims of a bizarre mass murder/suicide that also killed an investigating U.S. congressman.

The next day the Dead played for a national FM radio hookup at John Scher’s Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey. Garcia was extremely sick with the flu, and his nerves absorbed further damage after the show. He was sitting on a bus chatting with John Belushi when someone put a brick through the bus window. By the next day, he was too sick to perform. The audience for the show at the New Haven Coliseum was already seated, and Danny Rifkin turned to Jim Koplik and said, “You’re the promoter, you gotta tell them.” As he started up the stage steps, Koplik was terrified, thinking the audience would turn on him, and it was one of the sweet moments of his life when he found Mickey and Bobby flanking him as he approached the mike. Bobby made the announcement, and in fact, there was only one response. Someone in the audience threw a rose onstage, and then the audience went peacefully home.

Garcia recovered, and they spent a good part of December back on the job. It was a measure of their financial needs that they played that month in such unusual places as Alabama and Mississippi. On December 30, they played in Los Angeles, and on the morning of the thirty-first they prepared to fly up to San Francisco, where they were to play the traditional New Year’s Eve concert. It would prove to be a stressful day. Because of a bomb scare, they sat at LAX for four hours before they were able to take off. Winterland was not a great deal calmer.

Winterland had been the “big room” of Bill Graham Presents for twelve years, but it was a crumbling wreck; the previous New Year’s Eve, tiles had fallen from the ceiling after the audience had left. Repairing it would cost too much, and the owners decided to tear it down and build condominiums. Graham decided to give it a big send-off, and of course the final night had to be with the Dead. In his initial pitch to Loren he had noted, “The bulk of the space in my musical memory tank is taken up by my memories of my involvement with the GD. I should like very much to add another gem to my collection.” The Dead would headline, coming on at midnight. Breakfast would be served after the show. The band said yes, and the circus began. Ticket demand was mind-boggling. At a press conference, Graham estimated that “there is 100 times the demand than there are tickets . . . I would venture it could have been half a million. You may think I’ve gone off my rocker, but you haven’t seen the letters from Tokyo, New York, Boston, Miami.” In an effort to ease the ferocious demand, Graham induced KSAN to broadcast the show live, with KQED-TV broadcasting. All over the Bay Area, Dead Heads set up their TVs and stereos.

The show itself was problematic in many ways. It simply meant too much to Graham, and his security created a hostile atmosphere. He blamed the Dead, who “invited too many bikers. When that happens, an element of fear comes in and I couldn’t just let it all hang out. I had some problems backstage.” Some of the problems included Dead family members like Mountain Girl not being able to get to the stage from backstage. The backstage atmosphere affected only the few, but it poisoned the experience for the band. For the audience, the Dead chose to do something special, playing a third set that included “Dark Star” and “St. Stephen.” Unfortunately, the band was in terrible shape and the material was underrehearsed; the audience went out of its mind listening, but the performances, though exciting because of the song choice, were less than inspiring.

Four days later, the band arrived in Philadelphia to start another tour. It was the sort of schedule that only the healthiest could endure, and the Dead weren’t healthy. None of them were really robust, but Keith and Donna were in the most evident bad shape, both personally and musically. Donna Jean had a great studio voice, but singing in a high-noise environment required a stronger instrument than she possessed. As a result she would push herself and go flat. Keith’s problems with time had long been evident, and now his habit of parroting Garcia’s leads on the piano became seriously irritating. Their personal behavior was worse. Sober, Donna Jean was a lovely woman. Drunk, she was a terror: “I was an alcoholic,” she recalled. “Never went a day without getting drunk . . . I punched out limo drivers for not letting [her baby son] Zion sit on the armrest . . . I would never be able to count the hotel rooms that I completely destroyed . . . If they didn’t have my cleaning back in time at the hotel, I would just freak out and tear everything up . . . [In one town] all the band came up because they heard that it was the best job that had ever been done on a room.” Her violence was not just directed at limo drivers. “Keith was in a sling from where I’d broken a chair over his arm. I would have my eyes black from where he’d hit me. Once I did half of a tour with a tooth missing that he knocked out.”