A Long Strange Trip (9 page)

Rock and roll was only a passing fancy, however, and Garcia remained serious about bluegrass. In September the Wildwood Boys evolved into the Black Mountain Boys, at a cost. One day at the house on Hamilton Street, Hunter came to a rehearsal and realized that everyone was looking at him in a guiltily embarrassed way. It gradually dawned on him that he’d been dropped from the band, although no one could bring himself to tell him directly. It wasn’t an unreasonable decision, because his replacement, Eric Thompson, was a far better instrumentalist, but it hurt. Hunter wasn’t a devoted picker, but he loved playing bluegrass, and of course he enjoyed being part of the band. Shortly after, he moved to Los Angeles.

Originally called Elves, Gnomes, Leprochauns
(sic)
and Little People’s Chowder and Marching Society Volunteer Fire Brigade and Ladies Auxiliary String Band, the Black Mountain Boys was fun for all, and it produced high-quality bluegrass. The players even had vague professional hopes. One of the Tangent bands, the Westport Singers, was now managed by Dave and Stu, the Tangent’s doctor owners, and had won a hoot in Los Angeles. They were cutting a record before joining a package tour that would play Carnegie Hall. Jerry kept asking Dave and Stu why they wouldn’t work with the Black Mountain Boys, but the answer was obvious. His purist bluegrass was not commercial, and Garcia was, said Dave with a smile, “resistant to suggestions.”

In November, the Black Mountain Boys briefly flirted with commerce when they met an agent and promoter named Stan Leed. He had an idea for a tour called the Bay City Minstrels, which would include the Black Mountain Boys and David [Freiberg] and Michaela, a folk duo, bound for schools in the Northwest. Sara wrote to Stu, by now away in the military, that Stan was “sort of a weasel, and much disliked. However, he’s doing good things for our boys, so we don’t mind him.” Unfortunately, a few weeks later her letter would relate that Stan had skipped town owing everyone at least sixty dollars. Far more their style was the newest club around, the Offstage, in San Jose. It was run by Paul Foster, a dropout computer programmer who’d been known to attend political demonstrations with a sign that read “Now.” Foster had fallen in with a group of Santa Clara–area folkies that included Paul Kantner, David Freiberg, and Jorma Kaukonen, and created a club that would give them a home. The charge was a dollar, except for drunks, in which case it was four dollars. There was, of course, no liquor, and even the coffee had to be consumed before the music began so there would be no clinking of cups. They sold pot under the counter to make the rent, and it became a regular stop for Garcia and company.

It was a difficult fall. Phil Lesh had settled in Palo Alto, but a romantic entanglement had encouraged his swift departure. He went off to San Francisco, where he moved in with T.C. and dabbled with amphetamines. His active participation in music seemed to have come to an end. Garcia was painfully learning the demands of being a husband. Because of her pregnancy, Sara couldn’t tolerate drugs, tobacco, or alcohol, not only for herself but for anyone around her. In her own words, she “made life miserable for poor Jerry,” trying to “domesticate him.” “He’d come home silly and I’d get pissed.” It did not occur to her that her hormonal mood swings were natural, and she shoved her anxiety on her husband, whom she described as a “traditional sexual redneck.” “He was moody and I was critical.”

In the country at large, a glorious coming-together was followed by two great tragedies. In August, hundreds of thousands of Americans had gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give one of the masterpieces of American oratory, the “I Have a Dream” speech. And not only did the younger generation join the March on Washington, but its minstrels, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, were able to participate, singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” there. Not since Woody Guthrie had song joined moral purpose so persuasively; the dream was vivid and alive. Three weeks after the march, unspeakable horror struck down four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carol Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley died when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. And on November 22, 1963, there was further madness, with the murder of President John F. Kennedy.

Like so many Americans, Phil Lesh turned “into a robot” on Friday the twenty-second, and he was still in shock on Sunday morning. Driving down McAllister Street in his post office van, he heard music coming out of a barroom door, parked the van, and went in. It was the funeral march from Beethoven’s
Eroica
Symphony, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. “That was the day that my illusions were blown away, one hundred percent. The only gleam of light was Beethoven . . . things shifted an octave, like consciousness rather than political control. Good-bye everything we ever believed in. Welcome to the modern world, where a coup d’état is everyday business.”

Two weeks later, on December 8, Sara Garcia gave birth to Heather, named after the folksinger Hedy West. It was a natural childbirth, so Sara was conscious and could inquire, halfway through the process, “Is it a boy or a girl?” “Only the head’s out, honey.” “If she’s smiling,” Sara replied, “it’s a girl.” Garcia charged down the hospital corridor, yelling to Hunter, who would be Heather’s godfather, “It’s a broad, it’s a broad.”

“I can’t describe to you the feeling,” he said, grinning, shrugging, shaking his head. However unready, he was a father. Sara came down with an infection, and had to return to the hospital for a little while. When she got out on December 18, she had to fend for herself, because Garcia had gotten an impromptu out-of-town gig at the Ashgrove, Southern California’s premier folk club. Marshall Leicester, Ken Frankel, a returned Robert Hunter, and Garcia were the Badwater Valley Boys, and they were opening for the God and creator of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, as well as bluegrass’s finest younger band, the Kentucky Colonels. Nervous, Hunter began to spin a yarn as Badwater Bob, and someone yelled, “Shut up and play bluegrass.” So they did.

5

Interlude: A Meeting of Minds (COMPANY MEETINGS, 1984)

It is a California corporation that grosses over eight figures annually, carries an employee pension fund and a health insurance plan, and retains two attorneys. It owns office and sound equipment and a Mack truck, but no stocks, real estate, or diamond mines. It is run by monthly board (primarily band member) meetings, where the president of the corporation is a crew member with nineteen years’ seniority, and the putative manager has no vote. Roughly once a month, there is an all-employee “band meeting” at the rehearsal hall, where everyone gathers around a sixteen-foot-long Victorian Gothic Revival table found in Europe by Alan Trist during the 1972 tour. The opinions expressed there carry weight. The shape of the Grateful Dead, lyricist Robert Hunter once said, reflects the shape of Jerry Garcia’s mind. Hunter described the band as an “anarchic oligarchy.” Garcia once said, “I am not an artist in the independent sense, I’m part of dynamic situations, and that’s where I like it.” The band’s social organization flows from precisely the same principle.

Since he is philosophically antisystematic, his perspective, said one friend, is “a matter of sensibility rather than system,” and he leads only subtly and by example. The result is an intelligent and functioning anarchy, with responsibility so diffused that the essential is accomplished, but only that, and in which, as Lesh once said, “Avoidance of confrontation is almost a religious point with us.” Or, as manager Rock Scully put it, “Default and digression [are] the principal modus operandi of the band.” Although seniority often resolves conflicts, building a consensus is the usual deciding political factor. There is a hierarchy, but it changes constantly, and the considered optimum is for everyone to lead as they feel their moment. It is in fact a conservative democracy, often disorganized because it is quite genuine. The most negative vote carries. “The question is,” Garcia told one interviewer, “can we do it and stay high? Can we make it so our organization is composed of people who are like pretty high, who are not being controlled by their gig, but who are actively interested in what they’re doing? . . . Wisdom is where you find it, every point of view at its very worst will see something that you don’t see . . . It would be a terrible bummer not to be able to go through life with your friends anyway— that’s what the very start was about, you know . . . But as a life problem, the Grateful Dead is an anarchy. That’s what it is. It doesn’t have any . . . stuff. It doesn’t have any goals, plans, or leaders. Or real organization. And it works. It even works in the straight world. It doesn’t work like General Motors does, but it works okay. And it’s more fun.”

The subtext of anarchism is surrealism, and the Dead’s best political statement came in a 1974 letter from Ron Rakow, then president of the Grateful Dead Record Company, to President Richard Nixon. Rakow offered the threatened officeholder an idea on how to continue his administration. “We pass our solution along to you with only the remotest expectation that you will carry it out. Since, while it is brilliant, it is not extremely logical. We have concluded that the problems referred to above would disappear, as if by magic, were you to chrome the entire White House.”

In fact, the one dependable structure in the scene is the calendar of the tour year. Three tours of seventeen shows in three and a half weeks— one in March–April, one in June–July, one in September–October—plus Bay Area and other West Coast shows and short runs in February, May, and December. This added up to about eighty shows a year, and for the best part of the eighties and nineties it is the one constant in an otherwise swirling universe.

It worked well when the band was relatively small and relatively poor. But that anarchy, which worked as a horizontal hierarchy—the band at the center, then the crew and other senior employees in the next ring out—began to suffer when the scale became distended by the addition of a million fans in the third ring. For anarchy disdains authoritarianism, and the pressure exerted by a million people is enormous. Lyricist John Barlow once endured a spell as road manager and then wrote, “I think you are all operating under pressures which generally exceed human specifications.”

Eccentricity is often encouraged—certain very obnoxious people are considered necessary, the irritant that generates pearls. But this sometimes smug tolerance applies only to family. Once Bob Seidemann, an old friend but a fast-track photographer and art designer, grumbled about some of his billings. Earlier that day booker Danny Rifkin had told him that Dead employee qualifications started with loyalty, honesty, and compatibility . . . but Seidemann heedlessly blasted forward about commercial values as though he were talking to a band seriously concerned with making money, say, a group from Los Angeles. When he reached the point of being very slightly rude to bookkeeper Janet Soto-Knudsen, the president of the corporation (as well as crew chief) could stand it no longer. An Oregon country boy, Ram Rod is the conscience of the band, in Garcia’s words the “highwater integrity marker.” Ram Rod spoke up and put Seidemann in his place. Once again, Seidemann learned the hard way the complexities of doing business with the Dead.

This loose yet complex style can also create a cranky selfishness that lyricist Robert Hunter once defined in “The Ten Commandments of Rock & Roll,” a sort of open letter he wrote to the band after he went along on a tour. Although it came out of a completely different context, it identifies the least-charitable aspects of life in the Grateful Dead hierarchy.

Suck up to the Top Cats.

Do not express independent opinions.

Do not work for common interest, only factional interests.

If there’s nothing to complain about, dig up some old gripe.

Do not respect property or persons other than band property or personnel.

Make devastating judgments on persons and situations without adequate information.

Discourage and confound personal, technical and/or creative projects.

Single out absent persons for intense criticism.

Remember that anything you don’t understand is trying to fuck with you.

Destroy yourself physically and morally and insist that all true brothers do likewise as an expression of unity.

As a meeting collects around the table, it occurs to Scrib that sometimes Hunter comes off as an optimist.

Minutes of the Meetings

1/ Present: Janet Soto-Knudsen [bookkeeper], Harry Popick [engineer], John Cutler [studio engineer], Willy Legate [studio superintendent], Eileen Law [Dead Heads], Patricia Harris [merchandising], Steve Marcus [Ticket Office], Maruska Nelson [assistant to booker], Mary Jo Meinolf [accountant], Sue Stephens [administrative assistant], Mickey Hart [percussion], Steve Parish [crew], Phil Lesh [bass], Kidd [Bill Candelario, crew and merchandising manager], Bill Kreutzmann [drums], Ram Rod [crew chief, president], Hal Kant [attorney], Robbie Taylor [production manager], Scrib McNally [publicity], Jon McIntire [booker, road manager], Dan Healy [director of sound], Jerry Garcia [lead guitar, vocals], John Meyer [guest, founder of Meyer Sound Labs], Bob Weir [rhythm guitar, vocals], Paul Roehlk [truck driver], Candace Brightman [director of lights], Dan Rifkin [booker, road manager], Bill Grillo [crew], Brent Mydland [keyboards, vocals]. Called to order at 2:45 p.m. by Chairman Phil Lesh.

2/ Backstage: per D. Rifkin, Bob and Peter Barsotti [Bill Graham Presents’ house and stage managers] think our backstage is too loose. There needs to be more discipline in number of laminates issued. Graham wants us to play in New Orleans on Mardi Gras. J. Garcia: “They don’t need us.” No.

3/ John Meyer came with a proposal for going ahead with research—cost ultimately could be $1 M . . . using digital, can now adjust sound to
any
room. A whole new level—an organic, not systemic, approach. Band says prepare laundry list and begin. D. Healy: “The game is getting very deep, fellas . . .”

3/ Per S. Marcus, allotment for Berkeley Community Theater benefit series will be 4 purchase tickets per employee per night.

3/ Bammies [Bay Area Music Awards]. PL won best bassist. “I’ll do the show this time if you promise never to put me on the ballot again.”

3/ Merchandising: up to now, the building has received high % [e.g., Nederlander gig—building received 35%—we got about 20%]. Del Furano at Winterland Productions [T-shirt manufacturers] will give us some guidelines to lower building %. Discussion of a T-shirt bootlegger, 5,000 shirts at least. R. Hunter says don’t bust, BW says tell him they’re ugly. Kidd: not allowed to sell within 3-block radius of show. Per J. Garcia, we need to be evenhanded with policy. Per Hal Kant, we are required to take reasonable steps to protect our copyright . . .

3/ M. Hart suggested maternity leave for Janet. Approved at full salary and for whatever time she needs. Janet will have phone hookup and will be able to do books at home!

3/ [Attorney] B. Stilson has an offer for use of our recording of “Ripple” in a movie entitled
Mask
with Cher and Sam Elliott. J. Garcia and R. Hunter have already okayed the start of negotiations. Approved.

4/ Ice Nine/David Gans Book . . . Per B. Stilson, Hal says usual industry usage fee is $100–$200 per song. R. Hunter said he doesn’t see any reason to charge anything at all . . . No charge.

4/ Irvine Hotels suffered damage from alleged Dead Heads—we are not welcome at any of them. Note that this year’s Irvine hotel is part of the same chain as our New York hotel—we lose, we lose big. S. Parish: “Is there a problem?” Ram Rod: “If they’ll let us in, there’s no problem.”

5/ Red Rocks Amphitheater, Denver: B. Weir stated he was willing to do about anything to facilitate our playing there in the future. Although advance crew notified Feyline, the local promoter, of our requirements prior to our last appearance, we didn’t get satisfaction; general feeling is that problem is with them rather than unwillingness on city’s part. Changes have to be made, i.e., [JG]: “Take away the dumb side panels and dumb roof.” . . . Security: policy, whenever possible, will be accountable security [ID# or name]. We issue cautionary statements with all tickets we sell . . .

7/ Taper Section: they feel dead center thirty feet from stage is ideal—the area in front of sound booth. We would like to set aside a section for them behind the booth . . . doing this not so much for the tapers, but for the others in the audience . . . Do we want to stop the taping? Do we want to enforce the clause in our contract rider? Philosophical aspects tabled until the next meeting.

8/ Rex Foundation: Scrib has been approached by the SF Blues Festival re sponsoring Little Milton Campbell—yeah, you remember that tune. Sure.

8/ Zena Heard, former crew member Sonny Heard’s widow, will be sent a contribution—Eileen will see that gold records are sent to Sonny’s mom.

8/ Fall tour: Rifkin: as of now, we have a tour in the South, two weeks off, and then a tour of the NE. Our extreme popularity has cost us many venues of late—Carrier Dome at Syracuse, Blossom, Saratoga—and he suggests dropping the South after Hampton and going to the Northeast twice—i.e., saturating the area to the point where perhaps we’ll not have sellouts. Ram Rod: “If it doesn’t work we’ll have more money.” J. Garcia: “It’s a way to find out.” Schedule: Shoreline Amphitheatre is tentative. M. Hart: Bill [Graham]’s squirming—“No prisoners, Rifkin.”

10/ Per W. Legate, Dick Latvala’s services working as vault archivist have been invaluable. Suggests he keep track of his hours and be paid . . . Approved. Computerization of office: J. Cutler has set the Macintoshes up and is giving lessons.

11/ New Year’s: J. Cutler will book NPR satellite for radio broadcast. Opening act suggestions: M. Hart: Mapenzi, Big City. J. Garcia: Los Lobos. B. Weir: Freaky Executives.

Several moments stick with Scrib. One is when multimillion-dollar corporate executive Bill Graham visited the meeting because he is a board member of the band’s charitable arm, the Rex Foundation. He made a suggestion, and had it dismissed as “commercial” by Willy Legate. Everyone plainly agreed with their building superintendent. Graham looked away, presumably muttering to himself, “The janitor?”

This janitor once wrote a note to the band and pinned it on the bulletin board at the studio:

Bad-mouthing someone in his absence is an art form, deliberately cultivated here . . . Optimistic descriptions of situations are sometimes passed out to anyone nearby who is prepared to play the role of patronized fawning multitude. The optimistic description is given with the understanding by all concerned that if it should change within the next hour or week, that adjustment will not be relayed; in other words, that anything good you’re told is meaningless. In the words of the prophet: if you don’t know by now, don’t mess with it. And I want you to know that there is no hope. Insanity, sickness and death are coming.

The second moment came when John Cutler protested the manner in which an employee had been let go. Struggling to express himself without giving in to rage, this man who had been rescued from depression by some of the brothers in the room politely chewed out band members—and they sat and took it.